The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,68
Kiran was merely thoughtful, rather than edged with wary hostility.
“Not all magic’s outlawed in Alathia, only that not sanctioned by the Council. You’ll need a false identity in Alathia anyway—why not get a forged birth-token to show you’re Alathian-born, and join up with the Council’s crew of mages?”
“The Council doesn’t rely on anything so crude as tokens,” Kiran said. “Alathian mages are taken as children and schooled both in magic and loyalty to the Council. And once each year, adult mages must submit to an examination of their thoughts and memories to prove they’ve held to the Council’s laws.”
“What happens to the ones that fail?”
Kiran shrugged. “The treatise I read said it depends on the severity of the offense. Some are executed, others mind-burned and exiled...”
“Yeah, the Alathians are all heart.” Dev’s scowl returned.
Kiran winced, wishing he’d had the sense not to remind Dev of the harshness of Alathian justice, and retreated into silence. He soon needed all his breath to match Dev’s pace. Climbing out the unrelentingly steep slope of the canyon was far more difficult than the descent had been. His thigh muscles burned and quivered, yet he and Dev still marched through thick trees. He didn’t even want to think about how much farther they had to go.
Sweat dripped from his temples and his breath came in great gasps by the time the trees thinned. The matted pine needles underfoot gave way to polished slabs of angled stone like those Kiran remembered from the opposite side of the canyon. Dark lines streaked the pale rock, and a stream of water slid down one slab in a thin smooth sheet.
Dev called a break. Kiran rubbed his aching muscles while Dev filled the waterskins. Kiran drank eagerly, feeling as if he’d sweated out an entire water jug’s worth of moisture. Dev peered at the sky, a frown line between his brows.
Kiran saw only some high thin clouds, forming streaks and wisps above the western mountains. “Can you tell what Ruslan did?”
“No question something’s building, but it’s too early to tell what kind of storm, and how fast it’ll reach us,” Dev said. “Keep going, and I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
Kiran struggled onward at a pace that felt little more than a crawl. Dev’s progress was made with his usual abundant energy, but in rapid spurts. He would race up the rock, then stand staring at the sky while Kiran puffed his way up the same distance.
By late afternoon, Kiran’s legs trembled with fatigue even though he’d been surreptitiously stealing snippets of ikilhia from trees at every opportunity. Finally he had to ask Dev for another break. Dev eyed him for a long moment, then nodded. Kiran collapsed gratefully onto the rock, his chest heaving.
Dev squatted beside him. “Your friend Ruslan doesn’t do things by halves. See that cloud?” He pointed at a long, contoured and strangely smooth cloud that ran the length of the sky. The wispy clouds in the west had spread into a hazy veil over the sun. “Means we’re going to get one hell of a storm. It’s building faster than I’ve ever seen.”
“A thunderstorm?” Kiran blanched. His exhaustion was so deep he doubted he could hold his barriers under a prolonged magical assault like the one he’d endured in Silverlode Canyon.
“If only,” Dev said. “No. Haven’t you felt the temperature dropping?”
Now that Kiran was no longer sweating his way uphill, the air felt much cooler. He’d assumed that was simply a result of gaining altitude. But if the temperatures plunged to the depths they’d reached at Ice Lake, and a storm hit... “You mean, it might snow?”
“Yeah. A lot, and soon, so we need to find shelter quick. Good news is, I know a protected spot up high where we can ride out the storm.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to stay down in the trees?”
Dev shook his head. “Deep snow will be too soft in the trees, where it’s protected from the wind. Pushing through snow like that is exhausting, slow work—it’d take us days to climb out of the canyon. Higher up, the wind’ll freeze the snow crust solid; we can use boot spikes and travel onward once the storm passes. Besides, I figure Ruslan expects us to run for low ground. Then after the storm, all he’d have to do is move up the bottom of Garnet Canyon until he either found us or picked up our trail in the snow.”
“I see.” Kiran steeled himself to ignore the burn of