Exhaustion and the soothing warmth from Xanthar's feathered body conspired to lull him to sleep, his arms entwined in his makeshift harness. When he awakened, the brassy blue and white skies told him it was early afternoon. He watched the sky turn orange-yellow as afternoon deepened. Finally the horizon grew pink, orange, and red as sunset eased toward twilight. Through it all, Xanthar never flagged. Tanis looked back over his shoulder but saw no sign of Caven Mackid.
Occasionally the great bird coasted to conserve his strength. When the owl turned his head, the half-elf could see that his eyes were orange slits in his brown-and gray-feathered face. Owls were night creatures, he knew, wondering how Xanthar had fared in the bright light of day.
For a long time, the giant owl flew as high as possible, but by evening, he had eased lower, and some details revealed themselves to the windblown half-elf clinging to his back. They were passing through the southern boundary of Qualinesti, the half-elf guessed, marveling at the strength and speed of the giant owl. All around them, rising especially steeply to the southeast, were the jagged peaks of the Kharolis Mountains. Xanthar drifted closer to the ground. The highest mountaintops were draped with snow; lower peaks showed crags of lichen-encrusted rock, unbroken by tree or bush until the tree line hundreds of feet below marked the sudden appearance of ground-hugging yews and scrub trees. Below that, starting up almost as abruptly as the tree line had, the real alpine vegetation started—spruce and fir and birch standing out in stark blue and green and white against the mottled gray of the rocky soil.
The giant owl swooped and glided to a perch atop a knoll. He dipped to one side to help Tanis dismount and then flexed his wings, resembling a feathered Flint easing the kinks out of his shoulders after a hard stint at the forge. Tanis stretched, too.
"It feels good to be back on the ground," the half-elf commented.
Xanthar, for once, answered directly, not in mindspeak. "You ride well for a novice, half-elf. Now I must hunt for supper. And then I will rest, too. Although it surely will be strange to sleep during the dark of night. Usually, for me, it is the other way around."
"Do you think Kitiara and Lida are all right?" Tanis asked suddenly.
The owl considered before replying. "I think they are alive. I believe that if Kai-lid were dead, I would sense it."
"You mentioned that name before. Who is Kai-lid?"
The owl hesitated. "Kai-lid Entenaka. It's Lida's Darken Wood name," he finally explained. Tanis nodded, feeling uncertain as to whether he should pry further.
The half-elf offered the owl a bit of bread from his pack. The bird eyed the offering, then turned his head away. "I must hunt," was all he said before coasting off into the valley below. Tanis sat against a rock, munching the bread, enjoying the last display of the sunset and keeping an eye on the diminishing form of Xanthar. If it weren't for his concern about Kitiara, this would be almost pleasant. Xanthar was a crusty companion with a short temper and a sarcastic turn of wit, but so was Flint Fireforge, after all. Cradled against the rock, lazily following the movements of the owl as he swooped over the terrain, Tanis felt his eyelids drooping again.
He awakened with a start when something crashed into the ground before him. Instinctively he leaped to his feet, his sword in his hand, although he couldn't recall unsheathing it. But no goblin or slig crouched before him. In fact, Tanis could see no threat at all in the twilight. His gaze fell to the ground. The body of a small rabbit lay twisted on the rocks. He looked up, and his nightvision caught Xanthar far overhead.
Bread will not take you far, half-elf.
Tanis waved his thanks. Then he gathered dry grass and twigs and found a few branches at the bottom of a dead tree. He was on one of the few escarpments with foliage, and he realized that Xanthar had taken that into account before choosing a spot to land. Tanis scraped at the inner bark of the branches and added the resulting fluff to his pile of tinder, which he moved to the leeward side of the boulder against which he'd slept. Then Tanis struck steel against flint. Several times sparks fizzled, then one finally caught. Carefully, the half-elf fed dry grass and twigs to the spark until it grew into a flame. Then he poked larger twigs into the tiny blaze. Soon he was crouched before a respectable campfire, skinning and gutting the rabbit and sliding the meat onto a long, peeled stick. He propped the stick on two rocks and sniffed the aroma as fat from the rabbit dripped and sizzled.
Xanthar returned as Tanis removed the cooked rabbit from the fire. The bird landed on the ground but stayed well away from the flames. He shook his head at the half-elf's offer to share.
"Cooked flesh doesn't suit my pallet," the giant bird said. "Fire destroys the taste, to my mind."
As Tanis dined, the owl walked—although "waddled" might better describe his passage, the half-elf thought—to a bent pine and made himself comfortable on the stub of a broken branch. Xanthar closed his eyes and buried his golden beak deep in the pale fluff of his throat.
Tanis, his belly comfortably full, leaned against the warm boulder and gazed at Xanthar, who huddled next to the trunk of the tree. Once, as though sensing the half-elf's stare, the giant owl opened one eye a slit, then reversed his position on the branch, presenting a dark back to the half-elf. Tanis saw the horned feet lock around the branch stub. The bird seemed to sag, and Tanis knew his companion was asleep.
Chapter 15
The Icereach
It was the cold of death, Kitiara was sure. Her face, breasts, and hips were pressed against snow. The front of her shirt was sodden; the back
