Page 57 of The Sorcerer's Alpha
They made camp that night at the base of the path. While Marut tended to the horses, Sycamore crouched in the rocky scree at the foot of the trail and communed with the earth or whatever it was he did. He rose as twilight settled and said, “If we were traders, I’d say to wait another week or two. But I think we can manage it now. There’s still some snow through the pass, but not enough to hinder us too much.”
“Maybe we should wait,” Marut said. He was more inclined to play it safe when caution meant more time to spend with Sycamore.
But Sycamore shook his head. “I don’t see the need. We can’t stay here, anyway, there’s no water nearby.”
“We can ride back to the last spring and camp there.”
“That’s more time wasted. I know you’re worried about the weather, but we’ll see a storm coming up with enough time to take shelter, and the wind will warn me. I think it’s best if we leave in the morning.”
Marut hadn’t spent much time in the high mountains, but he knew storms could come on without warning, and knew there would be no shelter going through the pass. But he could see that Sycamore was resolute, and so he only said, “I’ll defer to you on this.”
The weather was bright and cold in the morning, but the sun warmed Marut’s face as they climbed the valley’s sloped wall and came up onto the ridge. Ahead of them the snow-crested peaks scraped the roof of the sky. Perhaps he was wrong to worry, and they would have an easy journey without incident. Their passage from Chedi had held enough peril for one lifetime.
They spent that day riding up and up into the mountains. The air thinned and chilled, and a frigid wind blew off the high glaciers. To the south, the steppe went on without end. The winter’s snow and storms had left the trail covered in places by rockslides, and more than once they had to dismount and lead the horses around on foot, carefully picking through the rubble covering the path. Even so, they made better time than Marut had expected, and when they camped that evening in a hanging valley, he could see the pass in the distance, high above, bracketed on either side by a mountain so high Marut was sure no person had ever climbed it.
“I’ve always wanted to see the mountains,” Sycamore said as they refilled their waterskins with snow from an unmelted bank at the side of the valley. “But perhaps not at such close proximity.”
Marut smiled at him. “Few people from Chedi have made this crossing. You can write a book about it once we’re back in Banuri.”
“Something to fill my time,” Sycamore said after a moment, and scooped another handful of snow into his skin.
Marut was cold that night as he hadn’t been since they traded for furs in Spruce Ridge. He held Sycamore close but nonetheless lay awake for a while in the middle of the night, too cold to sleep. In the morning, their breath made billowing clouds in the air as they packed up and saddled the horses. The sky was clear in every direction. Ancestors willing, they would press hard all day and make it over the pass by nightfall, and then down and down into the sheltered valleys of the Mountain Kingdoms.
The trail went up the flat bowl of the valley, then turned to climb the western slope to skirt the mess of scree and snow at the valley’s head. Steep switchbacks led to the ridge, which they followed for a long way as narrow, glacier-filled valleys dropped away to either side. Marut kept a sharp eye on the weather, but the day continued cloudless and bright, although a strong tailwind blew up-slope from the south. Snow on the trail slowed them, but as Sycamore had said, for the most part the going was clear. At last, later in the afternoon than Marut would have liked, the ridge ran into the long, steep incline leading up to the pass.
Under other circumstances, he would have called a halt there and made camp for the night. But the air was thin and cold, and he felt somewhat weak, dizzy, and short of breath, which he knew to be signs of mountain sickness. He glanced at Sycamore, who had been silent for the past hour, and was hunched in his saddle and exuding misery. No: they would need to keep going.
“Almost there,” he said to Sycamore, who managed a thin smile. Marut patted Bunny’s neck and urged him up the slope.
They were halfway up the pass when the storm blew in from the north, a sudden lift of dark clouds from over the crest of the pass, hidden from Marut’s surveillance until it rose above the peak. His heart struggled to push blood through his body as he saw the whirling blast of snow bearing down the slope toward them.
“Turn back,” Sycamore shouted to him, his voice all but swallowed by the roar of wind.
Marut shook his head. There was no time: there was no shelter to be had, and no safe way to navigate the trail in the midst of a storm. They would fall to their deaths. Better to freeze, which he’d heard was painless, like falling asleep.
Sycamore slid from Rhododendron’s back and tore open one of his saddlebags. He furiously dug through it, scowling when he didn’t find whatever he was looking for, then turned to Marut and took the knife from his belt.
Marut’s mind filled with images of Sycamore dramatically plunging the knife into his own breast. Terror-stricken, he slid from his saddle and seized Sycamore’s wrist.
“I’m not letting you die,” Sycamore shouted. “I’m not letting the horses die. And I’m not going to die, either.”
The storm engulfed them: a howling whiteout seething down the side of the mountain. Marut leaned into Bunny’s side, squeezing his eyes shut tight in reaction to the snowflakes battering at his face, so cold they felt sharp. Then he opened his eyes again to see what Sycamore would do.
Sycamore held the knife near his outstretched palm. He drew repeated deep breaths, his shoulders heaving. Marut could feel how afraid he was, and how determined.
In one sudden movement, Sycamore sliced the knife into his hand. A line of blood sprouted in the knife’s wake and dripped scarlet into the snow.
Then the blizzard swallowed Sycamore entirely. Marut could see nothing but white.
The world ripped sideways and shuddered back into focus. The blizzard was gone, and pass before them, and the mountains. Marut’s hands gripped at Bunny’s withers. His stomach rolled, and he turned his head to the side to retch a thin stream of water onto the ground.
“Sun Above,” Sycamore said.
Marut rubbed at his eyes until his hazy vision cleared. They weren’t in the mountains any longer. Sycamore hadn’t sent them back to the steppe, or to the badlands. They stood on a narrow dirt path, and beside them ran a flowing stream with rosewood trees growing on the banks. A hawk-cuckoo called from the branches. The air was damp and balmy with spring and smelled of wood smoke. Marut turned to look behind him, where a small collection of buildings clustered where the path met a larger road, all of them flat-roofed, perfectly square, and painted various bright shades of green and yellow.
“We’re in Chedi,” he said, realizing.
“Yes,” Sycamore said. He put his arm over Rhododendron’s neck and leaned his weight on her. Marut could sense nothing through the bond, as if Sycamore were too stunned to know how to feel. “But I meant to bring us to Banuri.”