The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,70
more worried about Kiran. He weaved from side to side as he stumbled after me, and he fell often. At first he struggled back to his feet on his own, but as time wore on, I had to haul him up, making my strained side muscles ache and cramp in protest. After about the tenth time of that, I shortened the rope to an armslength and towed him up the talus.
When we reached the cliffs, the world had dimmed to gray, the air choked with blowing snow. Kiran braced his back against the rock and slumped down into a crouch. His eyes were closed, snow frozen on his eyelashes and the ends of his hair. Yelling didn’t budge him, and I resorted to kicks to get him moving again. I dragged him forward, praying desperately to Khalmet that the cave wasn’t far and I would recognize it in the failing light. I began cursing Kiran, the job, Bren, and most of all that damn mage who’d brought on this storm, spitting my words into the howl of the wind.
At last, miracle of Khalmet, a familiar pile of boulders loomed out of the whirl of snow. I untied the rope from my waist, yanked Kiran around in front of me, and by dint of pushing and screaming, got him up to the narrow crack of the opening. The gap was partially blocked with snow and ice. I knocked it clear with one hand and forced Kiran through with the other.
Once inside, the relief was immediate—no more wind, and the ground was dry. The cave was black as a mineshaft, but I’d made sure our fire stones waited at the top of my pack, and I had plenty of practice in lighting a magefire by touch alone. Blue and red flames flared into life and illuminated Kiran, lying curled in a tight ball and shivering violently.
If he was still shivering, he was better off than I’d feared. Once a man stops shivering, death isn’t far away. I snatched up a blanket from my pack.
“Kiran! Hey, listen to me! You gotta get out of those wet clothes, if you want to get warm.” He didn’t respond. His eyes were squeezed shut and his skin waxy-pale.
I hastily stripped off my own snow-crusted outer layers and started working on Kiran. I had enough trouble peeling off his overjacket with him shaking like a palsied drunk, but when I started on his woolen undershirt, he jerked away and batted at my hands.
“Hold still!” I reached for the shirt again.
He shook his head, saying something I couldn’t understand through his chattering teeth, and rolled away.
“Hold still, damn your eyes,” I growled, and dragged him back. I’d seen this before. Men caught out too long in the cold got irrational or even delusional, and attempts to reason with them only wasted time and breath.
He tried to fight me, but I was stronger and far more coordinated. In no time I had him pinned flat on his back, his wrists trapped in one of my hands. I yanked his shirt over his head, got it free of his wrists, and reached for the blanket.
I froze mid-reach, my eyes fixed on his bare chest. Not on the amulet, dangling on its chain, but on the mark etched into the skin over his heart—
The red and black sigil of a blood mage.
I sprang backward. “You’re a fucking blood mage?” The force of my shout tore my throat raw. All the terrible stories crowded my head, full of sadistic, gruesome torture and death. Cold horror rimed my spine.
Kiran was still shivering too hard to move easily, but he tugged the blanket around himself with trembling hands, covering the sigil. He bowed his head, wet black strands of hair falling forward to hide his face. Too late; I’d already seen the stark, despairing guilt printed there, good as any confession.
My chest felt like a boulder was crushing it, my lungs unable to draw air. When Pello had searched Kiran, the sigil must’ve been what he found. Sign of the most deadly and powerful mages in Ninavel...this, not the amulet, had sent Pello running for the border like a man chased by demons. You don’t even know what board you’re playing on, he’d said. Shaikar curse him, he’d been right.
Yet my horrible certainty faltered, as other memories rushed in: Kiran’s wide-eyed wonder at the sight of the stream, his bright, eager smile when I’d called his carcabon idea a smart one, his painfully earnest