“Iz.” Gabriel’s voice, nearby. Not a question, merely telling her he was there, if she needed him.
She nodded, then used the bloodied salt to draw the devil’s sigil once, twice, three times on largish rocks several paces apart. Salt, for protection. Blood, the blood that had been sealed to contract with the Master of the Territory, to bind it to the stone and hold it there.
Bad hunting, the sigil would tell hunters, thinking to find game here. Angry spirits, the sigil would tell wanderers unwarned. Danger, the sigil would tell the unwary. Stay out.
When she was finished, she placed the remaining stick back into her pack and looked at her palm. The cut had healed, the sigil quiet in her hand. Isobel felt nothing but cold.
“I should mark the other entrance,” she said faintly. “Someone might come. . . .”
“The wapiti guards that entrance,” Gabriel reminded her. “If the spirits are so concerned, let them do a share of the work.”
“But . . .”
“Isobel.” His voice had gone hard, shoulders tense, the battered brim of his hat pushed back so she could see his face. “Back on your damned horse before I throw you on and tie you there.”
Her eyes wide, she remounted and followed him onto the trail, the mule grumbling behind them.
The path Gabriel had found led up into the ridges, hardscrabble trail and bare rock covered by low brush. The footing was unsteady, dirt barely covering fist-sized rocks, occasionally winding along steep cliffs, and Gabriel couldn’t stop his thoughts from contemplating what might happen if another quake hit while they were here, imagining the way the ground might ripple and fold, shaking them off the way a horse might flies, and with as little concern.
Telling himself that the cause of the quakes was contained, that they were fewer and further between, did not ease him, not when Isobel kept glancing around her as though expecting something to rise up or fall down on them, how careful she was to not look back the way they’d come, as though the haint she’d riled might be coming after them.
It would not. He was mostly certain of that, as he was mostly certain the ground would not shake under them now.
Steady picked his way along the trail, living up to his name, and Gabriel distracted himself by studying the ground itself, the way the peaks stuttered to jagged stops, the runnels where water had flowed. He wondered if the local people had a story to tell of that, about why the peaks were flattened like tabletops, why the water deep within the bones tended to explode upwards with heat rather than flowing calmly into springs or pools. He wondered who might live here, with the dry air and the poor soil where nothing could grow, and the only thing to hunt would be sure-hooved sheep that would laugh at a stumble-footed mortal on two legs.
Catching a glimpse of a rabbit or squirrel would calm his nerves, he thought, but there still wasn’t a songbird to be heard, much less anything land-bound. He glanced again at Isobel, her own hat pulled forward, her shoulders rounded until she might almost be asleep in the saddle, save for the look-arounds and occasional pat along her mare’s neck, stroking encouragement.
The sun rose higher, and the trail led them through a thick, sudden mist and then above it. When the trail broadened out enough, they paused to stretch their legs, allowing the horses to rest. There was nothing to be seen but more jagged-edged peaks of dun rock and green pine to every side, the sky wide open above them, the sun filling the pale expanse with glare intense enough to slide even under the brims of his hat, making his eyes squint and water.
They also discovered at that point that the insects, at least, had returned; they managed to surprise a flock of butterflies rising out of a scrabbly patch of flowers, and when they paused for lunch just before the sun reached apex, Isobel was itching madly where something had bitten her.
“You can see forever from here,” Isobel said, shading her eyes to look out over the peaks. The angular shapes of trees dotted the slopes below them, broken by blotches of grey rock and red cliff and the occasional sparkle of sunlight off water, where a creek or lake hid in the folds. “What’s that up there?” She pointed to a more-distant peak, where the reddish-brown faded to white.
“Snow,” Gabriel said after a moment to follow where she was looking. “It’s still cold enough there for snow to linger.”
Isobel stared at it, then shook her head, not disputing him but likely not believing him either.
“Snow, in mid-summer.” For a heartbeat, she was young and wide-eyed, then she shook her head again with a quiet laugh, as though that were the most marvelous thing she’d ever heard and she didn’t believe it for a moment.