footing. This glacier is more dangerous than the hillside we have been crossing. It is very steep, and you do not want to slide off the bottom. It-is a long plunge down to the swamp.'
Rishi allowed her to help him down, and to Atreus they appeared to be floating in the fog. She turned and started to angle up the glacier it looked as though she were climbing the cloud into the heavens themselves.
'Be careful to step only where I step,' Seema said, looking back over her shoulder. 'Glaciers are full of hidden perils. It is easy to fall into a crevasse or drop into the melt water underneath,'
Yago peered over the edge of the cliff into the gray haze, then looked back to Atreus and said, 'I don't see no snow. Let's go another way.'
Atreus gave Yago a gentle push, 'One foot at a time,' he whispered, mindful of the ogre's pride. 'We're going in the right direction. These are the High 'Yehimals, and.Langdarma is somewhere up there.'
'According to those bird scratches on your map?' sneered Yago dubiously.
Despite his doubts, the ogre gingerly lowered himself over the edge. When his foot finally touched the snow, he smiled and stepped away from the crag. In the flat light, Atreus still could not tell the snow from the fog. It looked as though even an ogre could walk on air.
Atreus lowered himself over the edge and started up the glacier after his companions. The climbing quickly grew steep and fatiguing, with Seema zigzagging back and forth so sharply that they seemed to take four steps to advance one pace uphill. Sometimes, Atreus could see her reason for swerving. From time to time they would encounter a looming tower of ice-what Seema called a serac-that seemed ready to topple over, or an abyssal crevasse so narrow and snow-choked it was almost invisible. Other times, it was more difficult to tell what she was avoiding. Here and there a small furrow marked a buried crevasse, or a faint gurgling showed only her where a snow-covered pit opened into the river of melt water beneath the glacier. She gave any rock a wide berth, for stones collected heat when the sun was out and melted treacherous holes around themselves, and she always avoided exposed ice. On such a sheer slope, even a tiny slip could mean plunging into a deep crevasse or slamming into a serac.
The steep climb aggravated Rishi's leg wound. He fell back to the end of the line, and soon Yago was hauling the Mar on his back. Atreus followed close behind Seema, carrying the supply bundle over his shoulder so her hands would be free in case she ran into trouble route-finding. After a time they came to a high ice cliff and began to traverse along the base, looking for a way around. Atreus finally caught his breath enough to start a conversation.
There hasn't been time to thank you for staying with Rishi and me.'
'You and your servant were in poor health when Tarch pulled you from the river.' As she spoke, Seema continued along the ice cliff, peering into the white fog ahead. 'I wanted to be certain you would recover.'
'Still, it was kind of you not to leave with your people,' said Atreus. 'At the moment, my resources are limited, but if there is anything I can do to repay you…'
Seema stopped and turned, looking up into Atreus's pouchy eyes. 'If you keep your promise,' she said, 'that will be enough. Besides, the others were not 'my people.' They are from Gyatse and Yamdruk. I come from much higher.'
The names caused Atreus's heart to leap into his throat Both places were on his map, and Yamdruk was no more than six valleys from Langdarma.
Seema started forward again, casting a wary eye on the cliff above their heads. Atreus followed along, trying to quell his growing excitement and avoid alarming his beautiful guide. Given her anger over the dead slavers, he was far from certain she would be eager to help him find Langdarma, especially if that happened to be the high place from which she came.
Atreus took a deep breath, then tried to sound casual as he asked, 'If you aren't from Yamdruk or Gyatse, how did you come to be captured with their people?'
'I needed yellow man's beard,' she explained. 'They do not grow in my home, so I came down to search for ft.'
Atreus frowned and, confused, asked, 'Do you mean you have no men in your home?' Perhaps she came from some sort of devotional order that allowed only women. 'Or that your men have no beards?'
'We have men! What kind of place has no men?' she laughed. It was a light, happy sound that chimed off the ice cliff and sang away into the fog. 'We do not have hemlock trees, and they are where yellow man's beard grows. It is a moss good for curing black-belly fever.'
'So Tarch captured you in Yamdruk?'
It was a hopeful guess. On his map, Yamdruk was closer to, Langdarma than Gyatse.
Seema grew quiet, then said, 'He caught me near Yamdruk, yes. But my people do not make a habit of visiting others.'
'Perhaps you will allow me to repay your kindness by going to Yamdruk and collecting some yellow man's beard for you?'
Seema glanced over her shoulder warily, then shook her head saying, 'The child is long dead. Black-belly fever kills quickly, and I have been gone for weeks.'
Atreus could not tell whether her tone was suspicious or sad. 'I am sorry to hear that,' he said.
Seema was careful not to turn around.
'Yes, so am I'
They reached the edge of the ice cliff and began to pick their way up a jumble of toppled seracs, pausing every now and then to offer Yago a steadying hand. As they climbed, the fog began to thin. The wind came up, the temperature dropped, and the glacier came alive with silver light and blue shadows. They cut holes in their extra blankets and wore them over their shoulders like tunics, but this did nothing to protect their fingers and noses from the biting cold.
At last they crested the slope and found themselves looking across a vast crinkled plain of ice, bulging with pressure ridges and furrowed with concentric rings of crevasses. Here and there, pyramids of granite jutted up through the ice in the interior, while long curving glaciers swept like spider arms down into the canyons along the edges. Scattered along the rim, scratching at a cobalt sky with pinnacles as sharp and gleaming as sword tips, were the impossibly high peaks Atreus had seen from the far side of the swamp. And there, almost directly across the ice field, were three bell-shaped spires. The Sisters of Serenity.
The crash of a tumbling serac rumbled up the glacier behind them. Atreus cast a wary took down the slope but saw only the billowing white clouds through which they had just ascended.
'Probably just an avalanche,' he said.
'Just an avalanche,' agreed Yago.
Rishi rolled his eyes and shook his head, and neither Atreus nor Yago looked away until Seema pointed toward a small glacier on the left.
'That leads to Gyatse. I will see you safely down to the valley, then return to my own home.'
Atreus shook his head and told her, 'We're not going to Gyatse.'
He could feel that it was a bad time to broach the subject, but he did not want to waste any steps going in the wrong direction, especially not with the Sisters Of Serenity in plain sight and Tarch on their trail.
He pointed across the ice field toward the three mountains and said, 'That is where we're going.' Seema did not look as surprised as Atreus expected. 'The Sisters?' she asked. 'There is nothing but ice and rock there. Why would you want to go there?'
Atreus's reply was frank. 'To find Langdarma.'
Seema regarded him with a combination of wariness and pity, then pursed her lips and took his forearm. 'What is it you are looking for in Langdarma?' she asked quietly.
A sense of profound relief filled Atreus. 'Beauty,' he answered. 'I have been told I will become handsome there.'
Seema's eyes grew glassy. 'You have journeyed all this way for nothing,' she said simply. 'You cannot find beauty in Langdarma. It is a myth, just as is Ysdar.'
She touched his heart, 'It exists here,' then reached up to touch his face, 'not here.'
Atreus caught her hand. 'Don't. I know what you're doing. I've seen it all my life. You think an ugly man has no business in Langdarma.' He withdrew Sune's map, unfolded it, and pointed at the valley beneath the Sisters of Serenity and said, 'I know about Langdarma. There's no use lying to me, so please don't'
A clatter echoed up from me clouds below.
