The Dragonstone

CHAPTER 19

Light!" Ruar shouted the single word to Arin riding double behind, his voice barely heard above the howl of the blizzard.

Arin slipped back the cowl of her cloak and peered over Ruar's shoulder. Ahead up the mountain vale she, too, could see a flicker of yellow light glimmering through the shrieking darkness. Turning to the others strung out behind and barely glimpsed in the hurling snow, she beckoned to them and pointed ahead and called out, "Lantern-light! Mayhap a village!" but her words were shredded by squalling wind and lost in the yowl.

Struggling, up the vale labored the six horses, deep drifts barring the way. The seventh horse, Arin's, lay dead a hundred miles and twelve days arear; even farther back, nearly five hundred miles, were the corpses of the two mules. The mules had been blizzard-slain, having broken away from the campsite and gotten lost in the second of the howling winter storms. Their corpses had been found three days later when the blast had finally expired. Arin's horse, on the other hand, had simply collapsed and died; her heart had given out as she had labored in the deep snow left behind by another blizzard and another. And now the fifth winter blow whelmed upon the Elves, and they struggled through the thundering dark to find shelter…

… And up ahead they saw lanternlight, or so Arin believed.

But Ruar's horse had stopped, unable to go farther, its energy gone. "Down!" he called to Arin, and together they dismounted.

Floundering through a deep drift, Arin worked her way to the fore, and together, she and Ruar pulling and calling to the steed, they managed to get the horse moving again, the other Elves doing likewise in the track behind.

And with wind and snow battering at them, into the tiny mountain village of Doku they finally came, eight hundred miles and fifty-three days from the cote of Dalavar the Mage, fifty-one days of which had been through driven drifts of snow.

It was a village of huts and hovels, though it had a town square in the center of which stood the community well. All this they discovered as up the snow-covered frozen-mud streets came Arin and her band, while the unrelenting wind raged and clawed and battered at them with stinging ice crystals and tried to steal their heat away.

Since there didn't seem to be an inn or tavern, Arin chose one of the larger huts and bearing her quarterstaff knocked on the door, loudly, to be heard above the wind.

Nothing.

No response.

Again Arin knocked, this time with the butt of her staff.

Moments later the door slid aside, revealing a small yellow man. Surprised that he had a visitor, his gaze took her in-chestnut hair, alabaster skin, tilted hazel eyes, pointed ears, holding a big stick-

"Waugh!" he cried and leapt backwards, for surely this was a snow demon come to claim him, for who else would ride a howling blizzard down from the mountain and come to his very own door?

The demons spent two days sheltered in Doku, until the storm died, and when they left, the one who had ridden the blizzard was now mounted on a rugged mountain pony, with four more of the sturdy animals laden with supplies and trailing on tethers after.

The villagers behind were glad to see these demons go, even though they had not slain a single person, nor had changed a single time into the hideous monsters they truly were. Instead the demons had been polite and had enriched the village exceedingly with two gemstones in trade for the supply of food and five ponies and grain. Nevertheless, it was a great relief to see the seven demons gone.

Down the frozen path they went, the great demon horses broaching the drifts of snow; then leftward they turned, heading perhaps for the col to gain entrance into the realm of the towering Grey Mountains to the east, where other demons dwell.

And when they had passed from sight, the entire village celebrated.

On the fourth day after leaving Doku, Arin and her companions found themselves moving upslope between grey stone ramparts looming left and right, perpendicular slabs soaring up, immense somber massifs, towering dark giants overlooking their progress, and clad with ice and snow.

And although the sun shone down upon the Elves, little warmth did they gather from its light, for it was the dead of winter-just seven nights past they had celebrated Year's Long Night, stepping through the Elven rite of the winter solstice ere the blizzard had struck. And now although the day was clear and the sun rode low in the southern sky, it was small and diamond bright and cast no heat unto them or to the grey mountains at hand.

Up through this windswept frozen hard land of dark unyielding rock plodded horse and pony, led by the Elves afoot, the air thin about them. And as they came through the col, in the distance before them they could see peak upon peak without number marching beyond an unseen horizon.

Yet, to the north and east stood one snow-covered crest above the others, and where the stone shone through it was ebon as the night.

"There," said Rissa, pointing, "there lies our goal."

"Black Mountain," murmured Perin.

"The Wizardholt," added Biren.

Arin shook her head. "We know not whether this is our goal. If the green stone lies within, then perhaps it is. Perhaps all I need do is deliver my vision to the Wizards and then we are done. Yet perhaps this is but a way station along a predestined route."

The other Elves looked at her and somberly agreed, and Silverleaf said, "If that is what Fortune has in store, then so be it," and he turned his eyes once again toward the mountain of black.

They stood and gazed out across the bleak range for long moments more, then, still leading the horses and ponies, down through the col they continued, the way turning northeasterly, heading for a winding vale below that led toward the ebony stone. Night fell ere they came down from the heights, and weary, they made camp in the curve of a mountain wall.

As they sat huddled with their backs against the chill stone rampart, no fire warmed them, for there was no wood to burn among this sterile rock.

The wan light of the dawn of Year's End Day found the Elves ready to move onward, for they had not rested well in the frigid night, for even Elves get cold, though not as easily as Men. Down from the col they fared, and as they rode toward the twisting barren valley below, the sun rose up into the sky, remote and chill, its hard, bright rays lacking comfort. And still the silent grey stone of the high bleak mountains of Xian frowned down upon them, as if this band now intruded where none were meant to go. Yet the dark mountain ahead drew them onward until night fell and they halted travel.

Four more days they fared down within the folds of the harsh grey land, struggling through the deep snow, the horses taking turns breasting the drifts and breaking trail for all others. And for those same four days they gradually drew closer to the dark spire, though to Arin it seemed as if they made little or no progress at all.

The following day, onward they struggled, and nigh the noontide, as Arin eyed the great black mountain towering upward in the near distance, "Huah!" exclaimed Melor, his voice echoing and slapping along the high, bleak stone. Moving afoot to a patch where snow lay in but a thin scattering, he squatted and brushed the white aside, revealing a pavestone. "This is a tradeway."

"Tradeway?" asked Rissa. She stepped to Melor and knelt beside him and helped brush even more snow away, exposing additional pavestones covering the canyon floor.

She turned to Silverleaf. "Vanidar, he's right-it is a roadway."

Perin turned to his twin. "Perhaps this leads unto the very Wizardholt itself."

"Most likely," replied Biren. "They would need to bring in supplies: food and clothing and other such, including Wizardly things."

Perin's eyes widened. "Wizardly things?"

Biren shrugged, and as he did so he heard the chrk! of a ptarmigan, then the hammer of wings, and looked up to see the bird in white winter plumage flying away to the north.

All the rest of that day, the band pressed northeasterly, drawing nearer and nearer to the great black slopes. And the deeper they fared into the mountains, the more certain they became that they were upon the correct path, for frequently could they see signs that this indeed was a road. Pavestones running in unbroken stretches for up to a furlong ere they disappeared again under the drifts of snow; a hundred yards of stone curbing revealed along one stretch upon the right; a bridge over a frozen stream; stone slopes carved away to provide passage alongside sheer rises: by these indications and more did they see that this was a well-traveled route, a path of commerce.

Now the land began to rise, and they rode and walked up and over ascensions and down again into the folds of the earth, slowly gaining elevation. And as they topped each crest they could see far and wide, peaks rising up beyond peaks, to the limit of the eye's seeing. But always the dominant view was of the great black mountain in the foreground reaching upward toward the sky.

And now the stone about them began to darken, and the deeper they rode, the deeper the shading became. "It is the dark of the Wizards' mountain," noted Vanidar Silverleaf, "reaching outward to touch even this."

The meager sun passed low across the sky and fell beyond the distant mountains and night came upon the land. And once again the band made a fireless camp, settling against the cold, dark stone while remote stars wheeled overhead throughout the icy nighttide, and just ere dawn the thin pale crescent of the waning moon preceded the sun into the sky.

They rode all that day and the one following, drawing unto the very flanks of Black Mountain. And each day near the noontide they saw a ptarmigan winging north.

"Wizards' eyes?" asked Perin.

"Mayhap," replied Biren. "Just as I suspect the white falcon was the eyes of Dalavar Wolfmage."

Perin nodded, and together they watched as the snow-white bird flew toward the black stone ahead.

Just after setting out the next morn they arrived at road's end. And before them recessed and embedded in the jet black stone stood two massive, shadow-wrapped, frost-rimed iron gates.

They had come to the Wizardholt at last.