Of Sorcery and Snow (28 page)

I was terrified that they were going to be hurt, and I was even
more
terrified that I would kill Torlauth.

I'd had the dream three times. I really needed to report to our Tale bearer, and it didn't help that Miriam was in a good mood when Lena woke me up.

“It isn't very different,” the princess explained as she braided Miriam's hair the dwarf way. “We merely braid with four pieces instead of three, but it is an honor among the women of our people, much like the beards are for our men. The four strands remind us what qualities we dwarves seek to embody: endurance, strength, courage, and loyalty.”

Her voice faltered on the last one. She was thinking of her father.

Miriam heard it too. “Well, that's a lot to live up to first thing in the morning, but I'll try,” she said. Hadriane smiled as she tied the braid off with a leather cord. “Thanks. My hair was grossing me out. The worst thing about these quests is that you can't take any showers.”

I grimaced. I was about to tell her something much worse than getting smelly. “I dreamed that we all got captured by the Snow Queen and Torlauth and some minions.”

That got everyone's attention. Chase even stopped stuffing his face.

Forrel said, in a supercondescending way, “Nightmares are to be expected—”

“No, it's not that,” Miriam said. “Characters sometimes have dreams that come true. How many times, Rory?”

“Three,” I admitted.

Miriam nodded grimly.

“That is how many times you will dream it if it'll come true?” asked Hadriane.

“Usually, yeah,” I replied, and when a funny expression crossed her face, I remembered that her mother had been a Character. “Why? Did
you
dream something three times?”

She just shot me a tiny, unreadable smile. She'd definitely spent too much time around Forrel.

“Okay.” Miriam attacked her packing with enthusiasm. “Let's get going. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can get captured and break out and get home.”

We rode off. The sun squatted on the horizon. The icy footprints reflected it like gold mirrors, making me squint. Keeping my eyes mostly closed was
not
helping me wake up. Even the bruises I felt from yesterday's ride weren't doing enough to keep me awake, and I knew Chase would never, ever stop teasing me if I dozed and fell off my reindeer
twice
.

I moaned. “Lena, I know what your next invention should be. Something that can keep you in the saddle and let you sleep at the same time.”

“Um . . .” Lena said, thinking about it.

“They've invented it already,” Forrel said. “We dwarves call it rope.”

Chase grinned. “I have some, if you need it.”

Obviously the
Rory's had a bad day so let's be nice to her
period was over. But that was okay. I would have a lot of time to be upset after we got home and Mom locked me in my room for the next few months.

“Forrel,” Hadriane called from where she was riding in front with Miriam. The sharp note in her voice made us all look up.

I didn't realize what I was seeing until Forrel dismounted and walked over to it. Or rather, what I
wasn't
seeing.

The golden trail of footprints ended just twenty feet away, and the white landscape stretched ahead of us, empty as far as the eye could see.

or a second, we all stared at the spot where the tracks ended. One of Searcaster's footprints was only a half, like someone had cut off part of her foot midstep.

My heart stopped. “A non-Fey glamour spell? Like the one over Kiivinsh?”

If that was true, then we had probably reached the Snow Queen's stronghold, and I wasn't sure if I was ready for that yet.

Forrel shook his head. “I would see the palace from here.”

“Maybe it's a disorientation spell! Like the one I cast around Likon!” Lena said. “We can find the dragon scales they buried. . . .”

“No.” Forrel patted the snow beside the end of the trail. “The tracks have just vanished.”

“Even farther on?” Miriam whispered. She was so tense, her reindeer started to prance nervously.

Forrel took a few steps forward and searched the ground, frowning. Then he did it again. “Nothing.”

“Searcaster erased them,” Hadriane said dully.

“Yes. Probably after we defeated the wolves,” Forrel replied, and Miriam looked like she was wrestling back tears.

“Is that even possible?” I asked Lena.

“General Searcaster is the only sorceress-giant history has ever
seen,” Lena said. “There's really no telling what she can or can't do. But in Philip's Tale, it seemed like she'd completely used up her magic keeping the kids warm during the run. This isn't a small spell. Sending the wolves gave her enough time to recover.”

Chase didn't look very freaked out, but maybe it was hard to look nervous when you're forking hash browns from the Lunch Box of Plenty straight into your mouth. “What's the big deal? We have a map.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Lena unrolled it, turning it around so we could see. She pointed at one spot, a little bit past something labeled the Bay of Vinyais. “This is about where we are, and this is where we're headed,” she said, moving her finger to the castle icon.

There were no landmarks between us and our destination. None at all. Just a whole bunch of white space.

“Compass?” Miriam said, kind of desperate.

Hadriane shook her head. “They don't work very well this far North.”

“It will probably be too cloudy tonight to navigate by the stars,” Forrel said, looking up at the sky. That hadn't even occurred to me, which shows how good my sense of direction is.

“So, basically,” Chase said,
finally
starting to look worried, “we're screwed.”

No one responded, which I guess was answer enough.

“I know what my next invention will be,” Lena said after a moment. “Magical GPS.”

Miriam nodded mournfully. “Turn-by-turn guidance even in the Arctic,” she said, and we were still optimistic enough to find that kind of funny.

Our Tale bearer decided to keep going in the same general direction as the trail where the footprints ended. We all knew it
was a long shot. But lots of quests were long shots.

It was Miriam's
Tale
, after all—the help the Tale bearer needed the most usually showed up right when everything looked bleak. Maybe Searcaster had only erased a piece of the trail; maybe it would show up again. Or maybe Iron Hans would appear ahead, worried about us after those Dapplegrim got back to Atlantis.

Then a sudden gust blasted us, hard enough to blow our reindeers off course. The chill invaded our clothes and our heating spells. It was hard to imagine a happy ending when the wind pelted you with tiny bits of ice and your teeth chattered too hard for you to think.

My reindeer stumbled once, and when I looked down to see what had tripped it, I glanced down at the ice, blown bare of snow.

Something
dark swam underneath it, as long as a fireman's hose.

“What was that?” I yelped, my voice shaking from the cold. “The tentacles of an evil Arctic squid?”

Forrel looked back, annoyingly calm. “Probably the sea serpent.”

“But it's the Snow Queen's pet, right?” Chase said. “That means we're probably in her backyard.”

“Except her backyard is about the same size as Denmark.” Lena sighed deeply—I couldn't hear it with the wind whipping around us, but I could see her jacket heave up and down. Then she nodded shortly, like she'd come to a decision.

“Okay, everybody—we need a stronger heating spell.” She pulled out a couple fresh dragon scales. In Fey, she pronounced,
“We need more heat, please make us warm, don't make us wish we'd never been born.”

She trotted down the line, passing out two scales to every quester, even the dwarves. When the princess refused to take them,
Lena said, “I can
see
you shivering in that big polar bear skin.”

“You can't save the twins if you lose your hand to frostbite, captain,” Forrel added, and even Hadriane couldn't argue with that.

I was last. She stuck close, biting her lip as I repeated the spell. She was worried about something. “What is it?” I asked after she refused to meet my eyes for a whole mile.

“You know those fifty dragon scales I packed? To make a portal to get the kids back home?” Lena whispered. “Well, I just dipped into them. I didn't know what else to do.”

“It's okay,” I said. Maybe it wouldn't be if she told the others that she'd made such a big decision on her own, but she couldn't let us freeze. “I mean, there's bound to be some dragons at the Snow Queen's palace, right? We can get more there.”

“That's what I thought too.” She didn't sound that relieved though. “But we're running out of dragon scales. Those fifty won't last between the six of us.”

“How long?” I said. She'd packed enough for weeks.

“Maybe two days,” Lena whispered.

It felt like the cold had seeped into my chest and frozen it, refusing to let my lungs pump air. Maybe three days was enough to search the Snow Queen's backyard, but not two.

“Do you think I should tell Miriam?” Lena added.

“Yeah, I think you'd better,” I said, but I knew why she hadn't. Miriam was at the front of the line, her face still eager. She didn't believe the quest could fail. I didn't want to burst her bubble either. “But maybe wait until we stop for food or sleep or something.”

A few hours later, Mirriam pointed over to our right. “There! Look there!”

My heart gave a great big thump, warm with sudden hope. I
looked for Solange's palace and saw . . . an icy plain. Also, snow blowing in the wind.

In other words, nothing. “Um…” I said.

Hadriane pushed her polar bear hood back and squinted, trying to see what Miriam saw. So at least I wasn't the only one confused.

Miriam slipped down from her reindeer. She pulled off her glove and picked something small and square from the ice. She must have been watching for footprints. I'd forgotten to keep searching the ground.