Wynn cowered alone at the chute's left wall. And to the right stood the white woman, clutching her head.

No-covering her ears.

Chap's instinct urged him to attack before this thing came back to its wits. But even uninjured, he had barely kept out of her reach and then failed. She had killed two anmaglahk, and yet now she was backing away from Wynn.

Why?

The woman slowly dragged one hand down her cheek, fingertips smearing bloody lines below one oddly shaped eye. Her narrow fingertips came to rest on her small stained mouth.

Wynn tried to shift closer to Chap.

The white undead stepped forward so quickly she seemed to blur. He snarled at her as he shouted into Wynn's thoughts.

Do not move!

Wynn froze, but she began shaking uncontrollably. The white woman held her place as her fingertips traced her own lips.

She did not even look at Chap but watched only Wynn's face. Chap's eyes flicked between the two of them.

Not Wynn's face-but her mouth.

Had Wynn's cry somehow hurt this thing? Or was there something else… the words Wynn spoke?

The white woman kept fingering her mouth as she stared at Wynn's. The sound of the sage speaking had somehow stopped this undead.

Speak, he told Wynn, but she glanced toward him in confusion. Talk… it distracts her.

Wynn's voice shook as she spoke. "We… are lost. We only want to find our way back."

The woman flinched at every phrase. Her features wrinkled once, and then her expression shifted to startled fascination.

Chap lifted one paw to step closer to Wynn.

The white woman lunged before his paw settled. She slammed Wynn against the chute wall with a bloodied hand.

Chap went rigid. If he attacked now, Wynn would die. Then he heard another moaning caw from overhead.

Two shadow birds drifted high in the air above the chute-above this undead-hovering on their translucent wings. The woman's thin black brows furrowed as she cocked her head like a crow. She studied him with sharpening suspicion in her delicate features-or was it recognition?

Chap tried to think amid the fear. He needed some way to hold the woman's attention long enough to get Wynn free.

The woman whirled, gripped Wynn's coat, and leaped up the chute as if the sage weighed nothing.

Chap lunged upward over the shifting stones.

Wynn!

When he reached the chute's top, a harsh wind struck his face. Both Wynn and the white woman were gone.

Welstiel scried for Magiere two or three times a night. Keeping his group close to hers yet remaining undetected proved a tedious balance. He glanced east, away from the peaks. Dawn was still a way off, but throughout the night, the snowfall had increased to a blizzard. Welstiel tired of fighting the weather.

"We stop," he called out.

Chane said nothing as he searched for a place to set up their shelter. Since entering these mountains, he had almost ceased speaking at all. Welstiel did not care-conversation was wasted effort. He waited for Chane to finish setting the tent around a hollow dug in the snow, then stepped in and pulled out the heavy steel circlet.

With a brief trace of his fingertips and a thrumming chant, Welstiel evoked the circlet's power to conjure fire, but only at the lowest level. Its marks glowed and slowly filled the tent with warmth. The monks huddled close, their mad faces dull with relief. Chane crawled in last and reached his hands toward the circlet as Welstiel turned to leave.

"I will scout," he said, his voice nearly as raspy as Chane's. "And see how far ahead she is."

Without waiting for a reply, Welstiel slipped out and trudged upslope through the wind.

When the time came, he hoped his ferals would be as useful as expected, but a part of him missed the simplicity of traveling with only one companion. As long as Chane stayed close enough to touch, Welstiel's ring of nothing could hide them both-a much more convenient arrangement. But lately Chane's seething glances raised other concerns for Welstiel.

Hopefully all this would soon be finished, including the growing problem of Chane.

Welstiel tried to gauge how much night remained. His last effort to scry had given him a clear direction for Magiere's location, but he caught no whiff of life until he heard voices in the night. Slowing with his senses opened wide, he spotted a dim glow at the bottom of a sheer rock face. He crouched behind an outcrop.

Light filtered dimly through a snow-crusted canvas strung over the rock's surface. Why were Magiere and her companions still awake? Or had they risen for an early start?

Magiere stepped out around the canvas's edge, and Leesil followed, grabbing her arm before she headed off.

"Not yet," he said, voice strained. "The moment we have light."

A tall male elf in a brown cloak stepped out as well. "Back inside," he said. "We leave soon, so do not waste body heat by standing in the cold."

Another younger elf peered around the canvas behind the first.

Welstiel focused his senses and all his awareness. It was difficult, with so many close together, but he sensed no other life within the shelter. Nor did he catch the scent of a canine. Where were Wynn and Chap?

Leesil did not acknowledge the first elf, and Magiere crouched, staring across the snow, as if searching for something. Welstiel realized why they were up before dawn and yet had not broken camp. Two of their group had gone missing.

The sky began to lighten, and Welstiel scowled, unable to remain and learn more. The last thing he wanted was for Magiere to be diverted by another distraction. He turned away, slow and quiet until he was beyond earshot, and then hurried for his own camp.

Chap ran as fast as the snow and his injuries allowed. He tried to follow the tracks before the blizzard buried them. But as the sky lightened and the snowfall died, he spotted the white woman and Wynn far ahead.

He did nothing to hide his approach, but the undead never looked back. She slowed at a rocky split between two peaks rising into the clouded sky.

The incline was so steep that she used her free hand to climb-her other remained clamped around Wynn's wrist. The sage stumbled in exhaustion, and when she fell, the undead dragged her without breaking pace. They crested the narrow space between the peaks and vanished over the far side.

Chap scrambled upward and emerged at the top. He looked out over a pristine white plateau resting between high mountains all around in the distance. The snow appeared untouched by any footfall in centuries, except for one vague trail leading into the distance-to a six-towered castle, as in Magiere's dreams.

Down the broken slope, the undead had already reached the plateau. She ran effortlessly across the snow, carrying Wynn over one shoulder.

Chap stumbled down and out onto the plain. Fresh snow and older undercrust shattered beneath his paws. He sank and floundered with each step as the white woman and Wynn grew smaller in the distance.

He kept going, and the closer he came, the larger the castle loomed, until it was greater in size than any fortification he had ever seen. Its towers dwarfed those of Darmouth's war keep, or even the spires of Bela's royal castle. Curtains of ice hung from each conical cap. But as Chap neared the outer wall and the peaked iron gates, he saw that it was not the perfection it appeared to be within Magiere's dream.

The gates' curling scrollwork was deeply rusted. One side hung a-kilter, its bottom hinge decayed beyond use. At the top where their curved points joined into a peaked arch, the two ravens gazed down at him, now whole and no longer translucent. The trail of the undead's light footfalls passed between the gates, straight to the high steps leading to the iron doors.