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Whheeee& eeee& Gairloch was nuzzling at the saddlebags even before I had
them off. His nose was wet-and cold from the brook water that felt like liquid
ice.
 Don t drink any more, I snapped. A lot of really cold water wouldn t do
him much good.
I even touched him and let my feelings run through his system. He either
hadn t drunk that much or could handle it. Still, I worried; but then, I was
worrying about everything.
He took the grain cake as soon as it appeared, almost including my fingers
in the first greedy bite.
 Gairloch!
He didn t pay much attention, but I hadn t really expected that he would.
After dried fruit, travel bread, and the last of the white cheese, I laid
out the bedroll under an overhang. The sky was clear, the stars sparkling like
faraway lanterns in the blackness; a chill wind whistled down the canyon. I
slept inside the bedroll.
The stream gurgled, and I slept-in a way. I dreamed that I was refereeing a
fencing match between Krystal and a white knight, except that the white knight
was Antonin, and he kept throwing fireballs at me, and laughing. Every time he
threw a fireball, Krystal looked at me and stopped fencing, and he would slash
her on her blade arm, until her arm was dripping red. The dream seemed to last
all night, and I woke in cold sweats, although the dawn was filled with ice.
Frost covered the grass, and a thin layer of rime ice covered even the
fast-moving waters of the brook.
The season wasn t quite winter, and in the low Westhorns it was colder than
the coldest of days in Recluce, or most days in Kyphrien, I suspected.
Wheeee& Gairloch s breath was a white cloud.
 I m getting up.
When I started moving, I was warm enough, though.
After giving Gairloch a little grain and letting him graze on the sparse
grass, I did my own munching on the remaining dried apples from Brettel. My
supplies were low, probably less than an eight-day of trail food, but one way
or another, I wouldn t need more than that.
The apples weren t enough, and I opened the wax on the last package of
cheese, a brick yellow cheese harder and less tasty than the white. The trail
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bread helped, but I limited what I ate and repacked the rest.
Then-carefully-I reached out with my senses to the wizards road. It was as
deserted as the night before, with no sign of use.
Long before the sun cleared the hills behind us, -Gairloch and I were
riding deeper into the Westhorns, deeper along the narrow and artificial
valley.
In time, having seen nothing unusual, and having sensed nothing beyond the
traces of chaos on the road, we began to near the mass of chaos-energies I had
first sensed the afternoon before, somewhere on the other side of an even
narrower gap in the huge rock wall that,, except for the path of the wizards
road, seemed to block any westward passage.
Wheeee. Gairloch tossed his head, as if in warning.
Ahead, the pass opened wide in the morning sun, the sun that warmed my
back, grassy slopes rising gently, then ending abruptly on both sides against
the rock and crags that distinguished the Westhorns from the lesser mountains
of Candar. The pass was avoided by almost everyone-that much was clear from
the gravel and clay that held only the traces of Antonin s passage. A few low
thornberries and scrub ash bushes grew alongside the road, with its unvarying
width of more than fifteen cubits.
In casting my perceptions ahead, I could sense nothing. Nothing. Not even
rock, or trees.
 Hellfire&  I muttered, realizing what that meant.
Antonin couldn t distort what I saw, but he could prevent my sensing
anything at all, except for the feel of chaos itself. That meant there was
something to sense.
Just for the hell of it, I would have liked to create a good .solid
thunderstorm, but with chaos ahead, using the energy wasn t a good idea.
Besides, while I still resented Justen s comments about frivolity becoming
chaos, I had listened. And I couldn t think of an orderly reason for the rain.
Had there been an artificially-caused drought, use of my talents to create
rain might enhance order. Maybe.
Wheeee& uhhhh& wheeee&
Gairloch s protest jerked my head back toward the road that slowly rose
before us for perhaps another kay. Studying the few trees, scraggly conifers
and pines growing at helter-skelter intervals from out of the knee-high
mountain grass, I could see nothing lurking around or behind them. Nor was
anything visible on the upslope before us.
Right-handed, I flicked the reins.  Come on. We really don t have anywhere
else to go, old fellow.
Whheee.
 No, we don t. I extended my left hand toward the staff, still safe and
waiting in the saddle holder.  Oooo&  The subjective heat flashed to my
fingers even before they reached the black lorken of my staff.
Something was definitely waiting over the crest of the road.
I wiped my forehead, suddenly sweating in the cold glare of the winter sun.
Wheeee& eee&
 I know. There are evil types in front of us.
Again, I tried to sense what lay over the hill-crest before me, whatever it
was that Gairloch disliked. All I could feel was a sense of heat, of the fire
that was Antonin s trademark.
I glanced at the hillside to the left and right of the road. Did I really
have to keep to it?
A quick survey answered that question. All those short and gently-sloping
meadows ended in piles of jumbled rock at the base of rocky slopes that would
have taxed a mountain sheep.
I looked again, realizing belatedly what had happened, shaking my head as I
did. Once the pass had been a standard narrow gap-or just a solid wall of
rock. Then, someone, something, a long time ago, perhaps as far back as when
Candar had been united under the Wizards of Fairhaven, had .blasted through.
Not only had they built the wizards road, but they had rearranged the entire
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geography.
Maybe, just maybe, Magistra Trehonna had been right. I definitely didn t
like that thought.
With the help of the weather and time, the sheer facings had crumbled,
leaving what seemed a narrow natural ravine running into the Westhorns. But
any crumbled rock had been periodically removed from the road surface. Under
Gairloch s hooves was the same white road surface-the same wizard-stone-that
paved the streets of Frven.
Not that any of that exactly helpeo as Gairloch and I proceeded toward the
crest of the pass, toward that narrow gap in the sheer stone wall that towered
hundreds of cubits upward.
Wheeee&
On the edge of the hard surface lay a brownish square, the tattered remains
of a pack or something, and, in the higher grass behind& fragments of white. I
swallowed.
Wheeeee& eeeee& Gairloch s steps skittered.
 I know. I chucked the reins again and looked up.
Ahead, arrayed a half-kay ahead, blocking the entrance to the narrow pass,
was a troop. A white-clad, white-faced wizard troop of warriors& soldiers& at
least they all had weapons that glinted in the near-noon sun.
I wiped my forehead again with the back of my sleeve.
In front of the silent, ghost-white apparitions rode a knight on-what
else-a white horse. The horse, over four cubits at the shoulder, stood there
in the sunlight. Neither the horse s metal breastplate nor the knight s
unburnished plate armor reflected the sunlight. Knights had never enjoyed much
success, except in service of chaos, because that much plate was a wonderful
place in which to concentrate fire. Of course, this knight had probably served
chaos far longer than he had ever wanted to.
A damned knight. In more ways than one, I knew. Behind him waited a pack of
armed figures, not exactly men. Unhappily, each of those figures carried a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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