I wake just after dawn to a clear sky. The weather has held good since he left yesterday. I busy myself, using precious thread to mend a rent in my shirt. As I sew I glance up from time to time expecting to see Amlarad walking to the fire, some white-furred creature in his grasp, its paws and small ears already beginning to freeze as the warmth seeps from it.
As morning becomes afternoon, he does not come.
The sun slides from the sky and thin broken clouds set a fine mist over the land, pale veil on white snow. I heap up the fire and burrow into our furs as the meagre heat from the sun fades from the land. The night is longer than I recall and sleep does not come easily.
But sleep I do, and open my eyes slowly in the blue morning, half-expecting his familiar bulk to be beside me, a silent arrival in the night.
As morning becomes afternoon, he does not come.
The snow begins, a thin half-hearted flurry that changes into a steady light fall. I watch the snow, watch the spaces between the flakes as afternoon moves inexorably towards evening. The clouds begin to thicken slightly as my unease begins to rise. Three days. Three days for a hunt.
The wind begins to increase as the clouds begin to scud across the sky, the moon not yet arisen. The ragged clouds part briefly and the mariner shines out like one clear note in a crowded hall. Pure, high, unreachable. My vision and the hope within it are suddenly broken - from the north a great roiling cloud descends, black and laden with snow, the wind rises further and then announces the arrival of the deep northern weather with a vicious triumphant howl.
The fury of the north arrives with no warning. Wind gathers snow, shrieking with malevolence, takes up ice shards and hurls them dagger sharp across the land. My shelter of animal skins is plucked up and thrown, tumbling into the furious chaos and lost in a moment. The fire buckles under the determined pressure of the storm, its life quashed to the merest thin glow. I dive for the furs with a shout, pull the layers over me so that only my eyes are visible, squinting into the thick dark.
I can see nothing but the boiling angry blizzard, hear nothing but the savage screaming wind. I huddle to myself, wrapping my arms about me as vulnerable as a baby unborn. The wind dies for a moment as a new sound weaves itself into the freezing night ... there... in the air... the chilling voices descend upon me, the voices of the ice cave, the voices that only a flame at my back could silence ...
... and alone, they are upon me, as savage and relentless as wargs. Intelligent, ancient and pitiless, the full force of them battering at my mind... and I see.. with startling clarity, how I am betrayed.
He is gone, they say, gone. Abandoned you to death in the snow, a fragile creature of the sun too far north and now alone. I fight the voices, covering my ears with my gloved hands and bringing to memory his star, the touch of his hands, his unchained laughter, our nest of furs... the frozen voices whip them from me, leach out the warmth and heat as though hungry for it ... and return the corpses of memory twisted into fear and doubt.
They say ...he knew the storm was coming. He knew that once past the ice wall I could never survive alone. He tested me at the lakeside and has bided his time, 'til I have revealed most of my duties to him, and now... I am left to die. His heart as cold as the blizzard, as pitiless and alien as this savage place.
I am betrayed.... lie down and die... the cause is lost... let this forgotten heart be buried in the snow...
On my exposed cheek the snowflakes feel like feathers. The touch of them a caress... a warmth spreads through me as the driven snow heaps against my back, falls ticking against my eyelashes. The white world receives me like a child, wrapping its numbing arms about me as I sink into it, abandoning my long-carried burdens as it sings its simple deathly lullaby. Sleep... he has left you ... sleep... forget ... be at peace.
