The next morning they were woken at dawn by the strange call of a bird Caden had never heard before; a thrice-shrilling cry that carried down through the mountains towards them, which echoed in turn off the stone walls of the pass only to then fade southward over the expanse of rocky hills.

The call seemed to alert the wardens of the gate, who rose with the sun and set about their morning duties. The Philosopher King’s men woke and ate amongst themselves, with no sign of either the Philosopher or his Heralds, while Caden’s guard sat separately from the rest and ate whatever food they had left from the night before. Within an hour of rising Caden’s Kingsguard had refilled their water vessels from the gate’s ancient well and packed away their tents and furs, and then sat and talked and waited for the men in their strange, wolf-helmed armour to finish what appeared to be some morning ritual of prayer they had never seen before. The foreigners all stood in a roughly rectangular formation where each man was about three feet from another in any direction and they spoke quietly in a foreign tongue while standing, then kneeling, and then standing again.

Eventually their guide stepped into view, still wiping away the water he had used to wash his face, and approached Caden wearing all of the things that a man might need to survive in the mountains – a knife, a bow and a quiver of arrows, a sword, and a leather tent and fur bedroll bound tightly into rolls. “We’re leaving soon,” Eser Vir said, and even as he spoke several of the other wardens were pulling open the old gates, which were made of wood reinforced with iron.

“How long will it take to get through?” Caden asked.

Eser Vir thought for a moment and weighed the possibilities in his mind. “It depends. If we are lucky, perhaps two weeks. If not, then up to four. The snows will slow us down, as could the tribes, should they decide to attack us.”

“Will they?”

“Possibly. It should be light though, a more nuisance than anything. They are like most wild animals in that if we stand our ground, and do not get separated, they will likely retreat.”

“We will,” Caden assured him. “There’s not a man among my Kingsguard here who hasn’t fought with me, and I would expect the Philosopher King’s men are just as disciplined.”

Eser Vir looked back at them and nodded cautiously. “The Ekyrians? More than disciplined, I imagine. I’ve never seen them fight myself but I’ve heard what they say – that they are so loyal to the one they call Sofhakin that they do not even consider their lives to be their own, and that they have such courage that they will throw them away for no more his word.”

Caden suddenly remember Kien, the man who would currently have been standing there with them if it had not been for one of his Sofhakin’s words. He had given his life to the Philosopher, and to Caden, with so little sign of fear that there might not have been any at all. “I did not know they were called Ekyrians,” he eventually said. “Though I had wondered what people and lands they belonged to.”

“Then wonder no more,” said the warden. “Get ready, Sire. We’ll be going any moment.”

As Eser Vir went back towards the opened gate, Caden turned and gave a gesture towards Sir Anselm, who was waiting nearby at a fire. Anselm then stood and went about the camp ordering the men to pick up their packs and get into a marching column, and by the time they had done so the Philosopher’s men at their front had done the same, with both masked Heralds joining the column at separate ends.

Then the Warden at the front raised his hand and signalled that they were leaving and without as much as a word they began to march, then passed through the gate and began to climb up along the old mountain road.

The path they took was, at first, wide and relatively easy, with the mountain walls rising on either side of them in the shape of a V that wound and turned with the rising trail. Yet the higher they got, the more undulating it became, and they had to step over rocks the size of fists and playing balls while the sharp cracking of stones falling in the distance echoed from the walls of their ravine. By the afternoon the trail began to split towards the north like streaks of lightning in the stone, but Eser Vir knew the way, and as he guided them he spoke of how those other paths led to nowhere, and the marching men passed that information back between themselves all the way to the very back.

“I hate marching uphill,” groaned Arthur from Caden’s rear, which caused Sir Anselm to scoff.

“You’re Sarkanian, boy. Hills and mountains are in our blood,” said the old knight, though it was clear he too was struggling.

Eventually the clear weather turned to snow, which fell upon the dry and cold ground like the dusting of sugar on a cake. Caden wrapped his cloak around him more tightly and as air grew chiller his men began to pull them over their faces like scarves. Within an hour the small, delicate snowflakes grew into thick balls of white, and the gentle dusting on the ground became replaced by a thick layer of fresh snow that grew slippery by the time the rear of the column reached the footprints of those at the front.

Eventually, when the snow rose several inches around the imprints they left, word spread that they were stopping for the evening, and the column came to a halt. There they set up camp, with their tents cramped together as close as possible and campfires built along the base of one of the ravine walls that the men could not light. They had, during their march, collected any wood and fire fuel they had come across, but even their packs had been unable to prevent them from growing damp in the snow.

It was Ethelyn who brought them warmth. With the small, dancing flame contained within its glass orb, she walked along the length of the column and knelt by each fire and seemed to draw a piece of the flame through the glass and into her hand. Then, with fire and sparks dancing on her palm, she blew them onto the damp wood and set them alight.

When she reached Caden’s fire, he could not help but grin at her. “You remind me of Fotia,” he told her. “Do you know who she is?”

Ethelyn shook her head as she blew the sparks and lit the fire.

“A Furan Goddess, worshipped in the old cult. She learned how to harness fire and taught the secret to the others so that they wouldn’t freeze.”

“Interesting,” Ethelyn replied. “Many people in the north have a similar story.”

Despite Ethelyn’s words, Caden got the feeling she was, in fact, not interested at all, and as soon as she had finished speaking she got up and moved along down to the next fire. Arthur and Sir Anselm, both of whom shared a fire with Caden, looked amused by the entire exchange.

“Fotia?” Arthur asked him. “Really?”

“What?” Caden replied, then flicked a small stone at Arthur’s head. Arthur winced slightly as it hit him and bounced away, but still seemed to think it was funny.

“You’re trying to gain her affections by saying such things, it’s obvious,” said Arthur. “You’re like a boy in the company of his first sweetheart.”

Anselm let out a deep guffaw as he rubbed his hands by the fire and Caden said nothing more as he looked awkwardly away from them.

That night was cold and it snowed throughout, yet their tents kept them mostly dry and with their fur bundles, clothes and fires they managed to keep warm enough to sleep. By the dawn the snow had stopped and though the sky was white with cold clouds the weather looked clear, and they sat and ate a small breakfast and packed their tents again and within an hour of the sun’s light they were marching once more.

The trail they followed continued to wind slowly upwards, and with each hour that passed the snow grew thicker until they were no longer walking but trudging through it in their boots. Around mid-day the eastern wall of the trail began to fall away and within an hour it abruptly ended, leaving instead a sheer drop on that side that fell for hundreds of feet into a gorge filled with snow-covered trees. The path, which at first was wide enough to fit maybe five men abreast, began to narrow just as snow began to fall again, and soon the clear conditions became treacherous as the column of men pressed themselves against the western cliff to avoid the drop. The snow, which at first fell light, became a blizzard within minutes as a strong wind began to blow from the north.

“Keep together! Don’t lose anyone!” A voice called out, which Caden recognized as belonging to Eser Vir. Caden could no longer see the warden through the snow even though the trail had previously turned in such a way that he could, and because the snow beneath their boots was becoming compact and slippery their march crawled to a snail’s pace.

This continued for what seemed like hours, with each man in turn carefully navigating and keeping a steady hand on whatever rock hold they could find on the cliff to their left as they tried to avoid the one on their right. They were all wet and cold, and through the white winds they must have looked like a pack of hunched, fur-covered monsters.

Suddenly from the rear there was a shout and a scream, and then another, and then a third, accompanied by the sound of snow and rocks falling into the gorge below, and then something hitting the trees and snapping their branches in turn until, like the movement of the column, all noise ceased. In those next few seconds, no man spoke, as though each of them could anticipate what had happened but none wanted the validation of asking for the truth. It was Sir Anselm who broke the silence and from behind Caden he shouted: “what happened?!”

“Three men. Slipped and fell,” came a broken voice from the back of the column. “They’re gone.”

There was more silence then; the cold of the blizzard magnifying the shock they felt, yet also numbing their capacity to mourn. It was Caden who broke this second silence and said the heartless thing that needed to be said: “leave them. We have to keep moving.”

No man argued with him and just like that, they began to move again. Eventually the blizzard wore off enough to give them some respite and the path they took began to mercifully stop rising and instead fall in a gentle slope. They had to take even more care not to slip as they followed it down, but by the evening it joined the bottom of the gorge and they were able to gather fresh firewood from trees and water from a stream.

“Should we send men back along the gorge to collect the fallen?” Caden asked, as he stood around a lit fire with Sir Anselm, Eser Vir and one of the Heralds. Ethelyn was walking between the campfires again and aiding in their lighting, but even as he looked to those he was speaking to Caden could not help but keep her in his peripheral vision.

“It’s too close to dark, Sire,” said Anselm, rubbing his hands together. “They’d freeze without a fire.”

“But they were Kingsguard. Rosbert, Hope and Welles. I didn’t know them well, but they fought with my father, they fought with me,” Caden argued. “How can I just leave them?”

“Because these mountains are the wild,” Eser Vir suddenly said. “The true wild. Here they return to nature, to the way that all things should be. Their bodies will feed starving wolves, or a bear, and because of that their young will survive. Perhaps because of that they will not be forced to go down the mountains and kill the game that your hunters need to eat, perhaps because of that they will not snatch a young child from a mother.”

The Herald, whoever he was, seemed to concur. “Mourn them,” he said. “Respect them. But do not spend the life of another man to fetch their dead, frozen flesh.”

Caden did not reply, for he knew they were right. Sir Anselm gave him a clap on the shoulder, then walked away to set their tents.

Over the next two days they followed the gorge deeper into the mountains, which rose above and all around them until they seemed to be in a forest of stone. Even the sky, which could still be seen above them, and in the spaces between the peaks, seemed to shrink as they went, and less and less light reached them. On the fourth day they began to climb out of the gorge again and took to an old trail that ran around the side of one mountain and kept climbing higher.

On the fifth and still on that same trail, the snow began to fall again and the weather grew so cold and so bitter that when the night came they were forced to set their camp on the mountainside. The snow grew worse as darkness set and Ethelyn struggled to light the fires even with her orb, and the men took to huddling together in their furs to share what warmth they could. Caden, who had his own tent, found that night that Ethelyn pushed aside the flap and, with snow in her hair, crawled inside with her own furs gathered in her arms.

“It’s too cold,” the sorceress complained. “Can I share with you?”

“Of course,” Caden replied, and though they remained fully dressed she lay down beside him and he pulled her close to him and put his arms around her and covered the two of them in both of their furs.

“My toes are freezing,” she said. Caden then shifted his feet to cover her own and soon, with the sound of the snowstorm raging outside, the two of them shared enough warmth that they almost became comfortable.

“What if I can’t do what he wants?” Caden eventually asked, his voice barely a whisper. Ethelyn, who seemed to be either nearly asleep or extremely quiet, shrugged her shoulders beneath his arms.

“Do you know what he wants?” She asked him, murmuring.

“No. But I owe him, don’t I? I owe you. He must want something.”

“You must think I know so much more than I really do,” she whispered. “I just do what he asks, I don’t ask for his motivations. It was the same that night after your battle.”

Caden suddenly felt more alert. “What do you mean?” He asked, suddenly feeling as though Ethelyn was unknowingly revealing information he was not supposed to know. As such he did not want to push her too far or seem so interested that she realized what she was saying.

“He wanted me to save you. He wanted me to bind myself to you so that you were brought back,” she said in a slightly slurred voice, and Caden became more and more convinced that though she was speaking, Ethelyn could no longer be awake.

“Why did he want that?” Caden asked, his voice low, calm, and quiet as he closed his eyes.

“I think he was… I think he knows something about you that you do not. I think he needs you for something.”

Caden fell silent and let her keep speaking.

“I think he’s worried… Which is why he sent us down here to the south. Regardless… I had to trick your brother into letting me save you without him being suspicious of why, so I pretended it was about there being a king on the throne,” she murmured, as she shifted her weight around a little more and then seemed to settle.

Caden sighed but said nothing else. He was not likely going to get any more satisfactory answers to his questions, and he had more questions now than he had before. He could also not discount the possibility that Ethelyn was merely whispering nonsense in her sleep, or had misinterpreted some order or memory that she had then revealed to him. Either way Ethelyn too had fallen silent, and her breathing had stopped, and slowly Caden opened his eyes to look at her.

She was staring at him.

Her head was turned to look back at him with wide open eyes, which were as black as pitch with no outlying white. Caden’s heart froze and suddenly a terror gripped him that he had scant felt before, yet Ethelyn did not move, or speak.

“Ethelyn?” He asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

She did not answer. Caden brought a hand up before her eyes and clicked his fingers, but she did not react. “What’s wrong? He asked and shook her slightly, but she seemed caught in some trance.

Then without warning tears began to fall down her cheeks and she stared deep into his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she told him.

“What for?”

“I would not have taken you from her if I had known,” she said in a voice that was not entirely her own. “I wouldn’t have done this to you. But I was scared, and it hurt, and I did not want to die… So, I kept going, and I finished it, and now my life is joined with yours. My life binds your own to this world, and she is angry at you for being with me and not her. And I want to save you… But I can’t.”

“What are you talking about?” Caden asked. “The woman with black… Eyes?”

“You have cheated death thrice,” said Ethelyn, two voices now spoken from her one, but both were still filled with the sheer terror that the sorceress felt and Caden could not place the second one. “And she is drawn to you in a way that cannot be compared, in a way that no thing is drawn to any other thing in this world. She cannot stop, she cannot rest, she cannot be free of her never-ending pain until you are with her again. She is forever part of you, and because she is part of you, she is part of me and hates me. She can see you through my eyes, she can feel you through my senses. Caden, it hurts.”

“Ethelyn, stop!” Caden snapped, leaning over her and holding her face in his hands. “Wake up!”

Ethelyn did not respond. Her eyes remained wide and black, and it seemed as though she was trying to speak or scream but the sound was caught in her throat. Then it was no longer the sound but the air in her lungs, and suddenly Ethelyn was no longer breathing.

Caden began to panic. “Stop!” He said, suddenly realizing that it was not Ethelyn doing this, but that woman clad in death. “Let her go!”

There was no reply.

“Let her go,” he said, his voice firm, and cold, and commanding. A voice that could have silenced an army of men and frightened them with the sheer tenacity of his tone. There was a flicker then in her eyes, nothing that any normal person could notice, but a feeling… A presence, like an unseen ghost. Caden leaned in until he seemed to hover over her and he searched her eyes for something else that might tell him she was still there. He could find nothing but a sudden, unexpected desire to press his lips against hers, and he would have done so if he were not so terrified that he would be kissing nothing more than her corpse. Then something unseen changed in her; air began to fill her nose and the black began to fade from her eyes, and he pulled back from her she slumped down into the furs and breathed again.

“Why are you lurking over me so?” Ethelyn asked, the slightest warm blush on her face despite the cold of the outside storm. She looked at him with unremembering eyes, as though she had just woken from a dream she could no longer remember.

Caden stared at her for a moment but did not have the heart to remind her. “I thought you were trying to say something,” he lied.

“I don’t remember,” she mumbled. “I must have been talking in my sleep.”

“Then go back to it,” Caden told her, and as he said those words a look of pure exhaustion settled on Ethelyn’s face.

“I will,” the sorceress replied, barely able to keep her eyes open. A moment later she was sleeping for real, and Caden settled in by her side and prayed that nothing else happened.