Desperate tears rolling down the milk-white faces of the women made him comprehend the Icewitch had indeed invaded their camp. But he would be cursed further than he was if he would allow the creature to take his youngest brother.
"Ashlan, where she goes, you cannot follow." Alle, his mother, strode forward, her thick covering of furs making the slender woman appear almost as wide as she was tall. Her piercing silver eyes, the only feature Ashlan inherited from the fair-haired woman, filled with crystalline tears. At her command, one of the older boys stepped forward to take the reins of Ashlan’s beast. Ashlan dismounted so he could speak to the tiny woman eye to eye.
"I will not permit her to take members of my family!" Rarely was Ashlan's voice raised It did not befit a shengi, a son of rape, to speak in more than whispers, but he was angry beyond caring.
"It is my fault, Ashlan," Alle protested, her musical voice rising with the strain. "I should have sent out the sacrifice myself. I had not thought she would venture forth in this weather."
"Sacrifice?" Ashlan narrowed the space between himself and his mother. The harsh land made them all callous, but the idea of willingly giving up younglings was beyond reckoning.
"Come with me." Alle ordered to the large central cavern Lyrell reserved for his family. "I suppose you are old enough to learn."
Alle quickly led him into the space she shared with Lyrell, a cuplike cave warmed with a ball of blue-white fire Ashlan conjured atop the high rocks. His new baby sister, Jemoia, blissfully slept cuddled with one of the bitch dogs who aided them in the hunt, wrapped in heavy furs and heedless of all the commotion around her.
“Every moon, the Icewitch took a young male from the clans,” his mother spoke softly. “I caught her coming to claim one of ours and I made an arrangement with her. I’d give her one of the boys from our campfire each winter if she would leave us alone.” She paused tiredly when she glanced toward his youngest sib, only a handful of moons old. “Jemoia’s birth was harder on me than I’d expected...I should have given the duty to another of the women...”
Ashlan’s fists clenched. He strode a pace away from the familiar domestic scene swallowing back horror at what his mother had done. Heat from the close quarters made him want to remove his fur coverings, but he knew if he did, he’d remain by that fire weeping like a woman.
“When I was late with my tithe, the Icewitch came to the camp as in days of old—-” His mother’s voice had the desolate crack of a frozen lake breaking beneath your feet.
"I am going to save him," Ashlan interrupted, silencing her with a slash of his arm.
She recoiled, tear bright eyes wide and for the first time, frightened.
"You must accept this. I can’t lose you.”
Ashlan shook off his mother’s tiny hands, grasping at his muscular forearm. Heartbroken sobs wracked her small form and awakened the baby girl, who wailed along with their mother.
"This is my brother! Your son.” Ashlan’s head shook in denial with every word. His mother placed her small body between the door and him, her lips firming.
"Your half-brother," she corrected. "I tried to keep her from choosing one of this family. I always took the children to that mad creature myself because doing so would give me the right as headwife to choose which boys were taken. I selected the lame, the frail, and halt who’d be claimed by this hard land before their manhood, anyway. But, when she came here, she chose of her own. I am just grateful it was never you."
Ashlan turned his back to hide the tears. Growing up with the taunts, Ashlan believed he was hardened to any abuse, but his mother’s love and favor still stabbed him in his heart. Why she loved him when he was forced upon her, he could never understand.
“I’m getting Aryn back.”
“My son, she has powers you cannot even comprehend.”
“I will either bring Aryn back or I will not return.” Ashlan laid one kiss upon her forehead in parting, then turned from her embrace. Squaring his shoulders, he stepped out into the main camp to reclaim his mount. He let the cold air harden himself to his mother’s sobs. They followed his steps like a ghost, blowing away in the cold arctic wind.
He noted he was yet the only hunter to return.
“Which way did the Icewitch come from?” Ashlan asked of the young man, who pointed a shaking arm toward the ridge that Lyrell had so counted on protecting them.
Ashlan blinked, realizing a portion of the ice-maze next to the ridge was gone.
“Melted,” the youth’s voice was as high as a young girl’s. “Like she’d touched it with fire.”
Then the youth fled. When Ashlan heard the sound of Lyrell’s drummer announcing the warlord’s return, he quickly mounted his own beast and hastened away.
His mother’s words echoed in Ashlan's mind as he followed the trail the Icewitch left. How could they have sacrificed their children all these years? Were they not warriors? Were they such fearful babies they would waste their strength on conquering weaker warlord’s camps and bullying helpless villagers and refuse the challenge of a threat to the countryside such as the Icewitch?
Reproachful thoughts heated Ashlan's blood on the cold trail. And a strange trail it was indeed. He would have sworn the witch was a fool for taking a sled and team on paths his own beast could barely navigate. Surely the rails would freeze. Yet, his puny magic showed him clean two parallel lines over the worst of the terrain.
The trail was straight and clean and easy to follow like that of a poisonous snake or an ice bear. The kind of path only
