Snow kissed my face, wind pushed the hair back from my forehead. I stirred from a dark dream to a darker one, to a winterscape in forestland. I was cold, save where the rising heat of my toiling horse warmed me. Beneath me, Sooty was plodding stolidly along. through wind-banked snow. I thought I had been riding long. Hands the stable boy was riding before me. He turned in his saddle and shouted something back to me.
Sooty stopped, not abruptly, but I was not expecting it, and I nearly slid from the saddle. I caught at her mane and steadied myself. Steadily falling flakes veiled the forest around us. The spruce trees were heavy with accumulated snow, while the interspersed birches were bare black silhouettes in the clouded winter moonlight. There was no sign of a trail. The woods were thick around us. Hands had reined in his black gelding in front of us, and that was why Sooty halted. Behind me Burrich sat his roan mare with the practiced ease of the lifelong horseman.
I was cold, and shaky with weakness. I looked around dully, wondering why we had stopped. The wind gusted sharply, snapping my damp cloak against Sooty’s flank. Hands pointed suddenly. “There!” He looked back at me. “Surely you saw that?”
I leaned forward to peer through snow that fell like fluttering lace curtains. “I think so,” I said, the wind and falling snow swallowing my words. For an instant I had glimpsed tiny lights. They had been yellow and stationary, unlike the pale blue will o’ the wisps that still occasionally plagued my vision.