Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga) (36 page)

“Blimey! You let him bite you?” Piran asked, drawing back with a look of revulsion.

“Taking blood from me let him access my memories, see what I saw and hear what I heard,” Connor said. “In exchange, it gave me his protection. We had a bond.”

“But he couldn’t protect you from what happened,” Kestel said quietly.

“Even Penhallow couldn’t prevent what was about to happen,” Connor replied quietly.

Kestel shot a meaningful glance at Blaine. “I’m more curious than ever to put Connor’s map next to the one Ifrem has and see if we learn anything. There are places of power here in Edgeland, and null spots too, if Ifrem’s map is to be believed. Perhaps Connor’s pendant will shed some light on the subject.”

“The pendant used magic, at least for what it showed me in the royal library,” Connor said. “With the magic gone, it may be useless.”

“Ifrem said the person who brought the map to Edgeland had stolen it,” Blaine mused. “Could the two maps be related?”

Connor looked up sharply. “Lord Penhallow also spoke of stolen maps. He said that a mage named Valtyr had made the maps, and three of them were stolen by Nadoren.”

“One of which managed to find its way to Velant,” Kestel mused. “How interesting.”

Blaine frowned. “Are you thinking someone brought the map all the way up here for a reason?”

Kestel shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe it’s just a coincidence. On the other hand, where better to keep something valuable out of prying hands than at the end of the world?” She smiled in a way Blaine knew meant trouble.

“I think that we need to pay Ifrem a visit and have another look at his map,” Kestel said, grinning. “And I definitely think it’s worth a visit to one of these ‘places of power’ Ifrem’s map shows in Edgeland—and a null place, too, if there is one.”

“You’re forgetting about those hunters that disappeared,” Piran said, looking uneasy. “What’s to say they didn’t get too close to one of those spots on the map and it made them vanish?”

“Maybe,” Kestel allowed. “We know Estendall’s a place of power. Now we’ve got a pretty good idea that the volcano’s eruption might have had something to do with all that magic being lobbed around by the two armies. And we know that what happened in Donderath knocked out magic all the way up here. The question is—did the magic go away forever? And is there anything we can do to bring it back?”

T
HIS IS MADNESS.” PIRAN HAD BEEN GRUMBLING
under his breath since they left the road and headed onto the sledge trail. Connor had said nothing, but was inclined to agree.

Ahead of him, Dawe’s loping stride left wide-spaced marks in the frozen crust of the snow. Blaine and Kestel were in the lead, with Ifrem’s map safe inside Blaine’s pack. Blaine had retrieved it from the innkeeper the night before. Verran had stayed behind to tend the farm, and Connor found himself feeling rather jealous.

Penhallow’s obsidian disk hung from its leather strap around Connor’s neck, secure within his tunic. It had warmed from his body heat, but unlike the night it had led him to the library’s hiding place, the disk showed no hint of magic, neither glowing nor changing its temperature.

“I never thought they’d decide to set out like this,” Connor said apologetically.

Piran snorted. “That just means you don’t know Mick and Kestel very well.”

True enough—but I’m learning.
Connor tried to get his mind
off the numbing cold. On one hand, his rescuers had gone far beyond what Connor could have hoped in terms of hospitality, offering him shelter and a ready-made group, no small gift in a strange and forbidding land. They had taken pity on his lack of skills, since little of what he knew from court was any good in Edgeland. He’d found his new friends to be quite companionable, yet his court-honed instincts also suspected that their easy acceptance was hardly casual.

In short, he wondered how things might have been different if he had not arrived with the map and pendant.

The air was mercifully still, which made the cold tolerable, despite Piran’s complaints. Connor wore every stitch of clothing he had been able to scrounge together, as well as a heavy coat, scarf, mittens, and a fur-lined hat, plus boots with heavy woolen socks. Even in the harshest of Donderath winters, he would have been roasting in such an outfit. Here in Edgeland, it barely kept him from freezing.

“Does that blasted pendant of yours tell you anything?” Piran asked, his breath fogging on the cold air.

“Not a thing,” Connor replied. It was cold enough that it hurt to breathe through his mouth. “How do you tell night from day around here? For all I know, we’re out here in the middle of the night.”

Piran snorted. “We’ve got the town bells and the notched candles. Other than that, it’s anybody’s guess, or you read the stars.”

Connor shielded his eyes against the falling snow. Lord McFadden—or Mick, as he preferred up here—had arranged for a trapper to take them as far as the road’s end on a horse-drawn sledge. That had been preferable to slogging through snow that was knee-deep where it wasn’t drifted and hip-deep or worse in other places. Connor was not yet used to the wide,
sinew-woven snowshoes laced onto his feet, contrivances his companions wore as easily as if they had been doing it all their lives. Connor struggled with the odd, wide-legged stance and the rolling gait, afraid he would pitch headfirst into the snow with every step.

“Look on the bright side,” Piran said. “We hardly ever get blizzards this early in the season.”

“Blizzards?” Connor repeated, trying to stay in the tracks of those who had gone on ahead so that it wasn’t quite so difficult to walk. Dawe’s stride was enough longer than his that he would have had to leap to go from step to step, but Blaine was closer to his own height, and Kestel was a good bit shorter. The footprints gradually blurred into a trail of sorts.

Chagrined, he realized there was a reason his new friends had taken this particular trekking order, placing him at the rear. Piran, who didn’t seem to be having difficulty walking, was probably there to make sure Connor didn’t vanish into a drift or collapse of fatigue. Under other circumstances, Connor might have felt embarrassed, but right now, he was too tired and cold to care.

“Yeah, real whiteouts,” Piran answered. “It’s when the snow and the wind make it impossible to see your hand in front of your face. I’ve heard of men who froze to death between their house and their barn because they couldn’t find their way to shelter. Nasty stuff.”

Connor stifled a groan. Piran chuckled. “Don’t mind the trek today; Kestel and Mick have a nose for trouble. The rest of us get dragged along into one damned fool thing after another.”

While Connor didn’t doubt that Kestel and Blaine had a gift for finding trouble, he also imagined that Piran, by the look of his oft-broken nose, had no problem getting into scrapes on his own, without help. And despite the grumbling, neither Piran
nor Dawe had made any serious objection to the expedition. Verran had voiced the most qualms and, as a result, was the one who stayed behind. Yet even Verran’s vocal concerns had more to do with the weather than with the wisdom of the journey.

Connor returned his attention to what he could see of Blaine McFadden, disgraced lord of Glenreith. He could barely glimpse Blaine’s shoulders and the top of his hat in the light snow that swirled around them. Although Engraham had talked a little about his “friend” in Edgeland, Connor had imagined a much different man than the one who had taken him into his home. It was obvious that Blaine’s housemates and many of the villagers looked to him as a leader. Yet there was nothing of an aristocratic mien about him. The Blaine McFadden Connor had met would have been right at home among the dockworkers at the Rooster and Pig back in Donderath, perhaps more so than in the salons of Quillarth Castle.

Had it always been so? Or did Blaine camouflage himself with more than a new name up here?

“That trapper thought we were crazy,” Connor said after a pause.

Piran laughed. “We are. Don’t doubt that a bit. But now that the warden-mages are gone for good, it would be a fine thing to have the magic back again. Gods know, we need it up here.”

“Oh?”

Piran had pulled his woolen scarf across his mouth to warm the air as he spoke. His scarf rapidly gained a fine covering of ice as his breath condensed and froze. “There weren’t any powerful mages up here ’ceptin’ the warden-mages. Guess the king had other ways to deal with rogue magic users than exile. But a lot of the folks here had a little magic; you know, to keep a fire lit all night, or make bread rise right, or nudge crops to grow a
wee bit better. Didn’t appreciate it until it was gone how much that magic made it a mite more livable up here.”

“
Is
it livable without magic?”

Piran met his gaze. “Well, now, that’s the question, innit?”

Connor was relieved when Blaine and Kestel signaled for a stop. They had walked at least two candlemarks, perhaps more, after the road’s end. He longed for a fire to warm his hands and a hot meal, but he knew what provisions had been packed in his own backpack: dried fish, a hunk of bread, and a wineskin with watered wine. They found shelter in a shallow cave and sat down to eat.

“A flask of brandy would be nice right about now.” Connor sighed.

Piran chuckled. “It’s a death wish to drink hard spirits when you’re in the wild.” He paused to tear off a hunk of bread and wrap it around one of the dried fish. “Brings your blood to the surface so you feel warm, but all the while you’re losing heat. Then you get sleepy and figure it’s the brandy, so you decide to sit down and rest. When you fall asleep, you freeze to death.” He shook his head. “Don’t worry. There’s whiskey enough for all of us once we get back to the house.”

Connor was quiet for a while, chastened by Piran’s response and the continued revelation of just how little he knew about surviving in his new home. No one said much, although Blaine and Dawe conferred in quiet tones.

Finally, Blaine stood and stretched. “We’re almost to the place where the trappers were last seen. We’ll be there within half a candlemark. If I read Ifrem’s map right, it should be near one of those places of power. If there’s anything left of the magic, we’re likely to find it there.”

Connor looked around at the group. They all looked as cold as he felt, despite their years of exposure to Edgeland’s harsh
weather. Dawe and Kestel were out here because, like Blaine, they had some minor magical ability. Blaine was the leader; it had been his idea to come. Piran was along as muscle, in case anything went wrong.
And I’m here because of that damned map and pendant
, Connor thought.

They didn’t waste much time eating. Connor had the distinct impression that everyone else wanted to get back to the homestead’s warm fire just as much as he did. Without the normal rise and set of the sun, Connor found his internal sense of time was completely haywire and he wondered how long it took to grow used to it, or whether anyone truly ever did.

It wasn’t long after they left the shelter of the cave that Blaine, who was in the front, slowed down and held up a cautioning hand to warn the others. Connor looked around the barren, snow-swept landscape. They had begun the day’s trek on nearly flat ground, heading into the foothills of the mountains that loomed on Edgeland’s inner horizon. As they had climbed higher, the flat land had given way to rolling hills, and then to a path between steep cliffs topped with frozen overhangs of snow.

Connor could imagine why the trappers liked these valleys. Snow clung to the needles of scrubby bushes, and icicles hung from the pine boughs of the larger trees. Unlike the open landscape closer to the settlement, this area offered hiding places for the foxes, rabbits, and other game. Except for the carved stone markers that peeked above the snow from time to time, indicating a rough trail, there was no indication that any humans made their dwellings here.

They picked their way around boulders and piles of loose rock that had tumbled down from higher places. Several times, the remains of rock slides forced them to work their way over difficult terrain to get back to the path. The slopes of the
mountains were covered with birch, juniper, and aspen trees, but in some places, it looked as if large swaths of the trees had been flattened, with trees snapped or uprooted and the rest a tangled mess of branches.

Connor strained to see what had caught Blaine’s attention. Dawe and Piran lit two of the torches they had carried in their packs. Blaine turned his back to the slight wind and motioned for Dawe to bring the torch closer as Blaine unrolled one of the maps.

“We’re close,” Blaine said. “If the map’s right, the place we’re looking for should be just on the other side of that pile of rocks.” He pointed to where a landslide had collapsed part of the pass’s cliff wall into a jumble of boulders.

“How will we know when we get there?” Piran asked through his woolen muffler.

“Leave that to Dawe and me.” Kestel turned around to search for Connor. “Can you dig out that pendant of yours, Connor? Let’s see if it reacts to the map or the place.”

Reluctantly, Connor nodded and took advantage of the pause in the wind to reach under his coat and dig out his pendant. Despite the warmth it held from being against his skin, it lay dead against his palm, dark and shining.