He nods and begins to move us forward only to be met by raucous snorts from the horses. Another minute, and they flat out refuse to go farther, and when I nudge Haven, she actually nips at me.
Colin shakes his head. “We’re gonna ’ave to go around.” He heads for a path no wider than a deer trail.
“That’ll take us north.”
“It’s the only way available.”
Good point.
I follow him, but we’ve not even gone fifty feet before the blending of trees and snow opens up on our left, and there, hardly any distance away, sits a tiny, dilapidated village. It’s built on platforms high off the ground with bridges running from treetop to treetop amid houses attached to the trunks. In the morning gray light it’s impossible to see the dead bodies, but I can smell them. The original path we were on would’ve led us right to them.
My stomach threatens to retch again.
“It’s that village that dwarf was talking about,” Colin murmurs.
I nod and try to keep the medicine from coming up while holding my breath from the plague-infested air. No wonder the bolcranes didn’t follow.
I glance at Colin who’s now holding his mouth shut too, then back at Breck, who’s obliviously snoring. My words slur as I try to keep my head clear. “Let’s keep moving.”
It’s two hours of working our way across the snowy trails with me nodding off frequently until we find one that’ll return us in the direction we need. The paths still climb the mountainside, but the area is starting to appear more like the earlier part of Litchfell—noisier and darker, even with morning dawn in full bloom and the rain gone. My shoulders are drooping hard and I’m having a difficult time controlling the temperature when we finally burst from the path through the thick forest growth into a frosty clearing, which spans fifty feet across ice-covered grass before butting up to a towering, smooth wall of rock. It’s the Fendres line.
“What in hulls?” Colin murmurs, staring up. The cliff face shoots forty feet above us and to the right and left for as far as the eye can see, like nature’s barrier to keep the forest and bolcranes contained. One that’s only partially effective as I recall, since over the years the forest has continued on up the mountain above it.
Colin rides over to stick his hand against the massive stone. The ground rumbles slightly, and then he turns back. “It stretches in both directions for a couple hours.”
The air exits my lungs. The detour took us too far north. “Can you make a path?”
“If it were a bit lower, yes. Right here? It would take quite awhile.”
I grit my teeth. Nod. “Let’s get going then. We can still reach the fortress sooner than Adora’s way, but . . . I . . .”
Colin clicks his mount.
“But . . .”
Something’s wrong with me. What was I going to say? My head suddenly feels like a boulder my shoulders can’t keep aloft. My lungs, my leg . . .
I attempt to prod Haven forward and end up leaning over her to settle my forehead on her neck. Her heat pours off in waves.
“I think I need—” My foot catches in the stirrup, and then Colin’s hand is holding me in place as behind him Breck stirs.
“What’s going on?”
“She needs rest,” Colin answers Breck, while the thought surfaces that Haven would be very put out if I dry heaved into her mane.
A loud rumble and tearing rips the air, and somehow it’s Breck’s arm holding me up and Colin is off his mount and bent to the ground.
An arcing crack appears in the rock wall, followed by a crumbling.
“I just need a minute,” I try to mumble, but the words sound funny.
Another shredding noise. Colin makes a pulling motion and a rush of stones comes tumbling out, leaving behind a neatly carved-out cave.
He really is incredible, I think just before my body hits the dirt, and I swear I hear Breck cackle.
CHAPTER 29
WHEN I OPEN MY EYES AGAIN, I’M LYING inside the freezing, earth-scented cave. The horses stamp in the dark and between their noise and the stench of sweat, I become aware that something else has stirred my thoughts awake. Like someone moving around inside my mind.
“Colin?”
From his sprawled-out position near the sunlit entrance, the boy’s breath puffs up warm and steady and sleep laden. He doesn’t move.
“Breck?”
No answer except for a soft cough beside Haven.
Straightening, I squint at the spot and am rewarded by a pair of blinking green eyes.
My heart lightens and plunges all in one burst. How he got here—how he found us—I don’t know. My body protests when I stand, but I don’t care. What’s he doing?
Eogan strides over and brushes a hand over my arm.
It makes my skin bristle. I pull back. “What are you do—?”
“To check on you,” he murmurs, moving in so that I’m wedged between his body and the cave wall. “And to warn you not to destroy the fortress.”