These frigid mountains were barren-and lifeless. If she raised her mantic sight once more, and saw the world's elemental Spirit layer, she could not miss him in this place.

But the notion was easier than the act.

She had only succeeded in the forest by sinking into memories of Chap. As if he were some mage's familiar who lived in her mind. And she had not been able to end the nauseating sight until she found him, a Fay in hound's flesh who could drive down the taint within her.

If she succeeded but could not find Chap…

Wynn dropped, her knees sinking into the snow, and closed her eyes.

She forced calm and quiet within herself, shutting out the cold and wind. She recalled all the sensations she had ever experienced in Chap's presence, from the feel of his musky fur to his breath on her face and the sound of his multitongued voice in her head. She conjured his presence in her mind's eye with images of him in her mantic sight…

Glistening as if he alone were the only "whole" thing she saw…

Or wrapped in white vaporous fire as he assaulted his own kin to save her…

Wynn sank into inner visions, until they blocked all else from her senses. Then her mind slipped into one past moment.

Chap sat before her in a room at Byrd's Inn, staring into her eyes. At the feel of his thick fur in her fingers, with her thoughts working upon what he was, her mantic sight overwhelmed her. The room had turned shadowy beneath an off-white mist just shy of blue.

It permeated everything, like ghosts overlaying her normal sight. These showed where the element of Spirit was strong or weak. Only Chap remained whole.

In her mantic sight, his fur glistened like a million threads of bristling white silk. And his eyes scintillated like crystals held before the sun.

Wynn clung to that memory as she opened her eyes.

Cold, wind, and snow assaulted her, and the world looked exactly as it had when she had closed them.

Perhaps she was too exhausted, too cold, too weak. As much as Wynn feared what the sight did to her, its absence toppled her into despair. And still, she struggled to her feet.

Leesil and Chap were out here, somewhere, and she had to find them.

Chap fought through the drifts, trying to track Magiere, but no odor lingered on the snow. His nose was useless unless Magiere stumbled directly into his path, upwind and close. He searched by sight between the crags, but the blizzard had covered any trace of her footsteps-if she had come this way at all.

"Magiere!" Leesil shouted.

Chap slowed, reaching out with his awareness to pick up Magiere by any rising memories. It was a worthless act of desperation, for he knew he needed a direct line of sight.

"Magiere!" Leesil shouted again.

Under the blanket across Chap's torso, his body heat was fading. Leesil would be suffering the same, but they had to keep trying.

Chap lunged onward-and a whiff of sweat stung his nose.

He halted, looking about, but the swirling wind twisted so much that the scent vanished before he could draw it deeper.

"What?" Leesil asked, his voice faint beneath the wind even from a few steps behind.

Shallow gullies led upward through varied breaks in the mountainside. If they took the wrong path, they might bypass Magiere, not even seeing her. Chap had to be certain.

He stood his ground and raised his face into the wind. Every time the wind shifted, so did he, turning into it as he paced in half-circles.

"Damn it, Chap!" Leesil shouted. "What are you doing?"

Chap snarled back. He could express nothing more without Wynn to speak for him. He paced into a rise between two outcrops.

Magiere's clear scent filled his nose.

Chap bolted into the wind with a howl, charging between the spires. Leesil pounded through the snow behind him. Chap's thoughts raced as well.

How could Magiere be sweating in this cold?

They struggled on, weaving through more outcrops and past stone spires. Then ahead in the darkness, the flat face of a gully's wall sprang up before them. Wind whipped around in the wide boxed space, making snowflakes twist like a slow-turning cyclone.

Chap pulled up short in anguish. They had reached a dead end.

But something was moving at the far wall's base.

It was barely more than a shadow against the dark stone beyond the whirling snow.

Chap threw up his head and howled. The wind drowned his voice, and the shadow in the dark space did not turn. Leesil came up beside him, looking ahead, and Chap bounded into the dead end. Only one person wandered these barren heights.

Leesil's shout chased Chap across the box gully's floor. "Magiere!"

And it was her, but Chap slowed to a stop as he closed in.

With her back turned, she was clawing so hard at the gully's sheer face that her fingers were marred with her own blood. Even in the turning air, Chap smelled a thick stench of sweat at close range. Thin traces of steam flowed around her head, as if she were breathing too hard and fast.

She did not even seem aware of him.

Leesil caught up, dropped Magiere's coat, and reached out to her.

"Magiere, we have to go back!" he called, and his grip settled on her shoulder.

Magiere lashed back with one hand.

Her arm struck his, knocking it away. She let out a snarl, more panicked than angry. Chap caught a glimpse of her profile.

She shuddered in the cold, yet beads of sweat had crystallized on her pale skin. Her black irises had expanded so much they nearly blocked out the whites of her eyes. She turned back to the sheer rock and tried to reach up.

"Magiere!" Leesil shouted. "Look at me! Wake up!"

Leesil tried to reach her again, and Chap shifted into his way.

Magiere was enwrapped in some delusion, and Chap worried she might not recognize even Leesil. He tried delving for her thoughts, hoping to catch any rising memory that might reveal what she saw inside her head.

He could not touch dreams any more than conscious thoughts. He only saw or experienced rising memories, triggered by whatever entered a person's awareness or where their conscious thoughts turned. But as Chap looked into Magiere's deluded mind, a barrage of flickering images flooded through him.

The castle from a distance, just for a moment…

The same dim and desolate winter wasteland he had seen in Magiere before, but no blizzard raged. The ancient fortress sat in pristine stillness, deceptively peaceful upon a white plain surrounded by distant peaks like black teeth.

Then, approaching massive iron gates, Chap felt the overwhelming urge to pass through, to press his hands against the gates' scrollwork, push them wide, and rush for the steps to the doors…

Hands? No, this was Magiere's memory-not his.

Chap struggled free before her obsession swallowed him.

He called up her past memories, one after another, of Miiska and warm nights in the Sea Lion Tavern. He dug in her mind for anything he could use to break this waking dream or make her stop and question where she was… and what she was doing.

Magiere kept trying to climb, her boots scraping for footholds.

Chap pulled from her mind and lunged. He clamped his teeth on the leg of her breeches and jerked back.

Magiere snapped her leg out, kicking him squarely in the chest, and he tumbled away in the snow.

Chap righted himself as Leesil shouted, "Magiere, stop it!"

Large flakes of snow powdered her black hair. Her half-closed eyelids fluttered as the pupils rolled up in her head. Magiere's slack lips trembled as if she were whispering, but Chap heard no words. And before Chap could move, Leesil charged.

He wrapped his arms around Magiere, locking his hands across her upper torso to pin down her arms.

Magiere screeched like an animal and shoved off the wall with her foot. They both stumbled back, and Leesil's grip broke. Magiere instantly turned on him, drawing back one hand with fingers hooked like talons.