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congealing in fragile, pale-green swirls. In an inlet, Renn found
splintered ice and a trace of a paw
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print; farther on, boot prints, unmistakeably Torak's. She was
puzzled. He'd headed downstream, then backtracked. Why?
Soon after, she drew level with the resting place on the other side
of the river, and craned her neck at the cliff. She howled, but no
wolves peered over the edge. She told herself they must have
taken the cubs exploring. But her uneasiness grew.
Her spirits rose when she found the pine trunk where Torak had
crossed the river. His trail was fresher than she'd dared hope, and
he'd been walking with his usual long strides, so he must be all
right, which meant that Wolf couldn't have been howling for him.
She followed the trail into the gully of the Fastwater. She didn't
know it well, except from Torak's description of where he'd first
met Wolf, but halfway up, she spotted an arrow, tied to a birch
tree and pointing east. This was baffling. Torak must have put it
there as a sign for her. But if he wanted her to follow, why not just
wait?
For some reason, she passed the arrow without examining it, and
hurried on. But to her dismay, she found no more tracks. Torak
hadn't come this way.
She went back to the birch tree, and came to a dead stop. The
arrow had been tied in place with nightshade: a deadly plant,
beloved of the Soul-Eaters--especially Seshru, her mother. Torak
would never have used it. This wasn't his sign. It wasn't his arrow.
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A gust of wind threw back her hood. She shivered. While she'd
been tracking, the wind had strengthened, and the sky had
darkened ominously. Storm coming. She should make camp right
now.
But then she would fall even farther behind.
Fighting a rising tide of panic, she decided to flout everything
she'd ever learned, and keep going.
As the wind strengthened, she found Torak's trail and followed it
into the next valley. She paused for breath under a huge, watchful
holly. Her sense of wrongness deepened. It wasn't even
midafternoon, but it was as dark as twilight. The snow had an
odd, greenish tinge. She hadn't seen a single living creature all
day.
Fin-Kedinn would have called a halt long before now. "The first
rule of living," he'd told her once, "is never leave it too late to build
a shelter."
And this was a good place for a camp: a patch of level ground
near the holly tree, even if it was a bit far from the river.
Renn chewed her lip. "Torak?" she called. "Torak!"
Angrily, she flung down her gear. Why had he left without her?
And why hadn't she caught up?
Now that she'd stopped, she realized how little time she had left.
Come on, Renn. You know what to do. First, the fire. Wake it now,
before you're tired from chopping wood, and build the shelter
around it. Plenty of tinder in your
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pouch, keeping warm inside your jerkin; and you've got a bit of
horsehoof mushroom smoldering in a roll of bark, so no messing
about with a strike-fire.
Which was just as well. The trees were moaning, and the wind
was tugging at her clothes and whipping branches in her face. It
was malicious. It wanted her to fail.
Gritting her teeth, she woke the fire, then wrenched her axe from
her belt. Now for the shelter. Bend saplings and tie them together
with willow withes, leaving a smoke-hole at the top. Build long and
low to weather the storm, and cut off the saplings' heads so the
wind can't pull them over--sorry, tree-spirits, you'd better find a
new home. Fill in the sides with spruce boughs, plug the gaps
with bracken, and weigh it down with more saplings, as many as
you can.
Despite the cold, sweat ran down her sides. Too much to do, and
the trees were thrashing and creaking. They sounded frightened.
Bracing herself against the wind, she wove a rough door from
hazel and spruce branches, then crawled inside, dragging in
firewood, and more spruce boughs for bedding. The shelter was
thick with smoke, it was swirling close to the ground, too scared to
leave. Coughing, Renn pulled the door shut. The smoke-hole
sucked the haze upward, and the shelter cleared.
She'd made it just big enough to take two people, in
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