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Standing before the assembled men and women of Nyrielle’s army as well as hundreds of Frost Walkers, Ashlynn tried to summon a fraction of the calm, self assured demeanor she’d seen so often from her father when he sat upon his throne in Blackwell Manor.

Nothing ever seemed to phase him when he sat in judgment, no matter whether he was overseeing a dispute about a fence line or pronouncing the sentence for a convicted murderer.

Whether he could maintain that calm in front of this audience or not, she had no idea, but just the thought of him sitting here beside her, watching her do as he had done so many times helped her to firm up her resolve as they approached the critical point in this trial.

Perhaps one day, he truly would be able to watch over her, but for now, she would have to continue on as he taught her.

"Old Svenja," Ashlynn said, turning to face the oldest of the Frost Walkers present, the woman who was considered to be closest to the ancestors. "I encountered the ancestors who had become ’Frozen Blood Guardians’ when they were at their worse. When I left, Hauke said that he intended to preserve their horns in order to learn from them. In the time that I’ve been away, can you tell me what’s happened? "

"What would you like to know, your Dominion?

" Svenja asked carefully. Already, her spirit felt restless and her body trembled with a dozen contradictory feelings.

Shock at what Nyrielle had revealed, outrage at what had been done in the name of their honored ancestors, and wrapping around all of that, more fear and anxiety than she knew where to put.

Already, she wanted to call a recess to this entire proceeding, withdraw into her chambers for a week or more to think through everything she had heard in the past hour and try to form some semblance of a scap of wisdom she could offer her people who were doubtless struggling even more than she was at the moment.

But the dead would not wait for justice and the living would wait even less for vengeance.

"Many of us were anxious about allowing young Hauke to learn from the ancestors in the way that he wished to," Svenja said, lowering her horn in shame.

"There were voices that were opposed to it.

Hauke said that he needed to keep their horns close and he wore them on his body.

He said that if he did not sustain them in this way that the ancestors would crumble away now that they had lost their purpose. "

"He did not lie to you," Nyrielle said, speaking up for the young lord who couldn’t speak for himself.

"Without the frozen blood that sustained them, they would suffer all the ravages of time that the blood held at bay.

Years would pass in days and centuries in months until there was nothing left but dust."

"So he said, your Eternity," Svenja said. "Others still disagreed. We wished to place them in an ancestral cave of their own, mounted on traditional statues so that they could be sustained by ordinary sorcery. From your words, I assume that we were wrong and our attempt would have failed?"

"I’m sure they would have endured for a time," Nyrielle said, choosing her words with care.

"Whether you were wrong or not is a different matter. After all, if you had done so, last night’s tragedy would never have occurred.

There would be no dead to demand justice and your lives would continue much as they had before. "

"Who made the final decision?" Ashlynn asked, taking back control of the conversation so she could nudge it in the direction that it needed to go. "Was it left to Hauke to choose? Or were the elders persuaded?"

"Lord Ritchel made the final decision," Svenja said, casting an apologetic glance at Odette.

"As Lord of the High Pass and Hauke’s father, he judged it acceptable if it would allow Hauke to harness the powers of the ancestors for the good of our people.

Perhaps, he hoped that doing so would allow young Hauke to succeed him sooner. "

"And do you think that was likely?" Ashlynn asked. From her experience fighting against the spirits controlling him, it certainly felt like it would have helped Hauke to secure his position as the next Lord of the High Pass but she didn’t know how much of that power Hauke had mastered in the time she’d been away.

"I’ll speak to that, Old Svenja," Commander Jannik said as he stood to address not only Ashlynn but all of the people assembled as well.

"In just a few short months, Hauke transformed into a different kind of person.

Before, we would have called him exceptional for his age and it was clear that he was first among his peers. "

"But once he began to learn from the ancestors," Jannik said, shaking slightly as he recalled the way Hauke had stood over him at the end of their last sparring match.

Never in all his years competing against Ritchel had he felt so.

.. inadequate as he did when he faced off against the young lord just a few weeks ago.

"Once he began to learn their arts, he became a terrifying force with no equal among our clan," he admitted.

Saying that Hauke had no equal was selling things considerably short.

When Commander Jannik faced off against the young lord, in the first two of their bouts, he never made it past Hauke’s blizzards or storms of icy projectiles.

He’d been blinded, disoriented and pummeled into submission without ever brushing a claw through the younger man’s fur.

When they fought hand to hand it was even worse.

Hauke’s movements had gained a refinement that they’d lacked, as if he was receiving guidance on even the slightest of mistakes when he practiced and ruthlessly eliminating him until he could fight with brutal efficiency that left Jannik breathless.

The transformation was so extreme that at times, he wondered if he was really fighting against Hauke, or if one of the ancestors had taken over his body to teach the current commander a painful lesson about his own inadequacies.

"So, in learning from the ancestors, he gained great power," Ashlynn said as she prepared to ask her next and most important question. Thus far, she only had suspicions. There hadn’t been enough time to gather much information while she slept away the day, recovering from her wounds, but the few things that Virve had learned and reported back to her gave her an idea of what had been happening.

"Now tell me, Commander Jannik, Castle Mistress Odette or Old Svenja," Ashlynn said, looking at the three foremost leaders among the Frost Walkers in Ritchel’s absence.

"Did Hauke ever speak of plans for the future, or a purpose that he needed to fulfill with the power he gained?

Had he begun to express ideas that might not have been his own, that would have reshaped the High Pass or the clan itself? "

"He, he did," Odette said, trembling as pieces fell together in her mind.

Things had seemed so innocent then, but now that she heard about the way the ancestors had ruled.

.. "He was learning a powerful protective magic, one designed by the ancestor who designed this very fortress," she explained slowly.

"He would have transformed the pass into a tunnel, covered by a vast sheet of Eternal Ice that spanned between the two mountains," Odette explained.

"He said that it would allow us to close the pass to humans, even in the summer months, if humans ever made it past the Vale of Mists.

He also said that in time, after a decade or two, it would make it easier to traverse from here to Airgead Mountain without having to descend into the warmer lowlands. "

"So it’s true," Ashlynn said, nodding as she heard confirmation of one of the stranger rumors that Virve had brought her when she woke. "Hauke was trying to reverse the retreat of the glaciers," she said, thinking back to the conversation she’d once had with Hauke during her first visit.

The young lord was very concerned with the shrinking of the glaciers and the warming of the world that reduced the Frost Walker’s territory by inches every year.

Knowing how much he cared about his people, it wasn’t hard to guess how quickly Hauke would have jumped at the suggestion that there was something he could do to reverse the trend.

He might even have believed that it was his responsibility to do so.

"His actions were likely paving a way to restore the Seven Peaks," Ashlynn said with growing confidence as she considered the unwavering, intractable positions the ancestral spirits held when she talked to them during their battle.

They seemed frozen in their thinking, products of an age that no longer existed, but what if it was more than that?

What if they wanted to bring about a return to that very age?

"And maybe," Ashlynn said, speaking aloud as wondered if the ancestors had been as unaware of their own history as everyone had assumed as well. "Maybe, the magic Hauke was learning from the ancestors would have been capable of ushering in the return of the Age of Ice."