The bastards were in our camp. Hannan Mosag’s faith in us…
‘Let us strike the tents,’ Fear said, ‘and be on our way.’
Trull found himself scanning the horizon in an endless sweep, his sense of vulnerability at times near overwhelming. They were being watched, tracked. The emptiness of the landscape was a lie, somehow. Possibly there was sorcery at work, although this did not – could not – excuse Rhulad’s failing.
Trust was gone, and Trull well knew that Rhulad’s future would now be dominated by the effort to regain it. A lapse, and the young man’s future path awaited him, deep-rutted and inevitable. A private journey beset by battle, each step resisted by a host of doubts, real and imagined – the distinction made no difference any more. Rhulad would see in his brothers and friends an unbroken succession of recriminations. Every gesture, every word, every glance. And, the tragedy was, he would not be far from the truth.
This would not be kept from the village. Sengar shame or not, the tale would come out, sung with quiet glee among rivals and the spiteful – and, given the opportunity, there were plenty of those to be found. A stain that claimed them all, the entire Sengar line.
They moved on. Northward, through the empty day.
Late in the afternoon, Theradas caught sight of something ahead, and moments later the others saw it as well. A glimmer of reflected sunlight, tall and narrow and angular, rising from the flat waste. Difficult to judge its size, but Trull sensed that the projection was substantial, and unnatural.
‘That is the place,’ Fear said. ‘Hannan Mosag’s dreams were true. We shall find the gift there.’
‘Then let us be about it,’ Theradas said, setting off.
The spar grew steadily before them. Cracks appeared in the snow and ice underfoot, the surface sloping upward the closer they approached. The shard had risen up from the deep, cataclysmically, a sudden upthrust that had sent wagon-sized chunks of ice into the air, to crash and tumble down the sides. Angular boulders of mud, now frozen and rimed, had rolled across the snow and ringed the area in a rough circle.
Prismatic planes caught and split the sunlight within the spar. The ice in that towering shard was pure and clear.
At the base of the fissured up-welling – still thirty or more paces from the spar – the group halted. Trull slipped out from the sled harness, Binadas following suit.
‘Theradas, Midik, stay here and guard the sleds,’ Fear said. ‘Trull, draw your spear from its sling. Binadas, Rhulad, to our flanks. Let’s go.’
They climbed the slope, winding their way between masses of ice and mud.
A foul smell filled the air, of old rot and brine.