We continued our descent, and after a time something cold and moist touched the back of my right hand. I looked down in time to see a snowflake melting in the twilight glow which surrounded us. Moments later several more breezed by. A little after that we became aware of a larger brightness, far below.
I don’t know what it is either, Frakir pulsed into my mind.
Thanks, I thought strongly back at her, having decided against advising Jurt of her presence.
Down. Down and around. Back. Back and forth. The temperature continued to decline. Snowflakes flitted. Arrays of rocks in the wall we now descended took on a bit of glitter.
Oddly, I didn’t realize what it was until the first time I slipped.
“Ice!” Jurt announced suddenly, half toppling and catching himself up against the stone.
A distant sighing sound occurred, and it grew and grew, nearing us. It was not until it arrived, with a great buffeting gust, that we knew it to be a wind. And cold. It fled past like the breath of an ice age, and I raised my cloak against it. It followed us, softer thereafter, yet persistent, as we continued our descent.
By the time we reached the bottom it was damn cold, and the steps were either fully frosted over or carved of ice. The wind blew a steady, mournful note, and flakes of snow or pellets of ice came and went.
“Miserable climate!” Jurt growled, teeth chattering.
“I didn’t think ghosts were susceptible to the mundane,” I said.
“Ghost, hell’” he observed. “I feel the same as I always did. You’d think whatever sent me fully dressed to cross your trail might at least have provided for this eventuality.
“And this place isn’t that mundane,” he added. “They want us somewhere, you’d think they might have provided a shortcut. As it is, we’ll be damaged merchandise by the time we get there.”
“I don’t really believe that either the Pattern or the Logrus has that much power in this place,” I told him. “I’d just as soon they stayed out of our way entirely.”
Our trail led outward across a gleaming plain-so flat and so gleaming that I feared it to consist entirely of ice. Nor was I incorrect.
“Looks slippery,” Jurt said. “I’m going to shapeshift my feet, make them broader.”
“It’ll destroy your boots and leave you with cold feet,” I said. “Why not just shift some of your weight downward, lower your center of gravity?”
“Always got an answer,” he began sullenly. Then, “But this time you’re right,” he finished.
We stood there for several minutes as he grew shorter, more squat.
“Aren’t you going to shift yourself ?” he asked.
“I’ll take my chances holding my center. I can move faster this way,” I said.
“You can fall on your ass that way, too.”
“We’ll see.”
We started out. We held our balance. The winds were stronger away from the wall we had descended. The surface of our icy trail, however, was not so slick as it had appeared on distant inspection. There were small ripples and ridges to it, adequate to provide some traction. The air burned its way into my lungs; flakes were beaten into swirling snow devil towers which fled like eccentric tops across out way. It was a bluish glow which emanated from the trail, tinting those flakes which came within its ambit. We hiked for perhaps a quarter mile before a new series of ghostly images began. The first appeared to be myself, sprawled across a heap of armor back at the chapel; the second was Deirdre beneath a lamppost, looking at her watch.
“What?” Jurt asked, as they came and went in a matter of instants.
“I didn’t know the first time I saw them, and I still don’t know,” I answered, “though I thought you might be one of them when we first began our race. They come and go-at random, it would seem-with no special reason that I can figure.”
The next was what appeared to be a dining room, a bowl of flowers on the table. There were no people in the room. There and gone-
No. Not entirely. It went away, but the flowers remained, there on the surface of the ice. I halted, then walked out toward them.