1: The Forest of Snow and Shadow

Far from the comforts of civilization, isolated upon a pine-dusted mountainside, a man trod over newly fallen snow, pulling a flagging mount up the steep incline.

He did not know what he would see when he arrived at the top, only that he must persist in the effort. Yet even in this, he found his will faltering. His clothes were insufficient for the weather. His elven boots, ill-suited for hard use in snow and ice, were swiftly coming apart at the seams. His tunic and trousers were thin and already sported several long tears. His fur cloak could not keep out the grasping talons of the frigid winds. His stor, pushed to its limits, then unnaturally sustained beyond them, only remained obedient out of exhausted resignation.

A strand of hair pulled free of the man's ponytail in an errant gust. He tucked it absently behind his ear, too tired to tie it back again.

It was not only the climb that wearied him. Within, his sorcery clamored to be released. He had kept it dammed as best he could, but in the week since it had blossomed such as it had in his days of youth, he had not always succeeded. His failures littered the trail behind him.

A grove of trees, blackened by fire creeping from his skin. 

A river dried, the ground split by the pounding of his feet.

Streams of sorcery, blighted as if by disease from his mere passage.

He could barely sleep, for in dreaming, his sorcery seeped back into his being. And once there, it could not be contained, but only released.

He raised his head and saw an opening in the trees before him. Collecting together his tattered will, he pushed on until he stood between them, then gazed out over the wide World.

The landscape was a patchwork of gray and white. Clouds stifled the sky, flat and featureless. Mountains heaped with snow rose into the low-hanging gloom, their peaks lost in mist. The range stretched in all directions until it faded into fog and swirling flurries.

A valley cut through the mountains. There, a road lay next to a river that still sluggishly flowed. The man had walked upon that road in his sojourn, but caution drove him back into the trees and the tiresome work of forging his own path.

He had no other choice.

Amid that scene, the man spied something dark moving along the road, only a mile or two ahead. Squinting to see, he sought after his sorcery. A trickle pulled free of the dam to expand and extend his vision. Swallowing against the disorienting rush, the man saw it was not a herd of caribou he'd detected, but a caravan of sleighs, heading up the road from Gladelyl and deeper into the East.

Blinking rapidly, he repressed the magic and considered his options. His supplies were low, almost nonexistent. His garb and shelter were in terrible shape. His body deteriorated further by the day. Worst of all, he had little idea of where he was heading. 

He needed a map. 

A caravan venturing into the Westreach would be sure to have at least a rudimentary chart. But maps were a precious commodity, likely the most valued item aboard those sleighs. Unless they were merchants of maps, they would not surrender theirs easily.

His shoulders sagged. Who am I? It always came around, this question that haunted him. 

How far would he go to do what he must? 

How many people would he hurt for a chance to save them?

With no simple answer in sight, he turned and allowed a tendril of the sorcery to suffuse his muscles. Then he led his wearied mount down toward the caravan.

* * *

Both near and far away, traveling through the same winter-cloaked forest, a youth paused to take in the destruction that materialized around him.

During summers, the youth's hometown of Hunt's Hollow had often experienced thunderstorms. After they'd passed, the youth and his childhood friends had ventured out to see if they could find lightning-struck trees, split and blackened from the thunderclouds' lashing tongues.

As he gazed at the pines surrounding the small clearing, they looked much the same as those storm-blasted trees.

His companions murmured among themselves, debating the directions of the tracks and the age of the small campfire, while the youth strayed to one of the blighted trees and placed a hand to it. As he penetrated the ashy exterior to touch the rough surface beneath, he heard something, sounds that were not present except in his mind. 

Beneath his fingertips, the dead tree was alive with sorcery.

The youth withdrew his hand and stared at it. Part of him feared what he had done. The greater half reveled in it.

He was finished with fear, with doubt. The others could follow his old mentor's tracks. But as he had touched the ruined tree, he had felt the sorcerous Song of the World tug him onward. 

Into the East.

A small, satisfied murmur bubbled up in his mind, then faded. The youth closed his fist and turned back to lead the others away.

* * *

It was long after dark when Helnor called for a halt.

Garin slid from his stor and rubbed his muzzle before tying him up with the others. The cold seared the inside of his nostrils and burned his lips to scabs, but as he joined his companions by the fire, he still smiled. The pines surrounding their camp cast long shadows against the shrouded forest. Yet as long as he was surrounded by folks such as these, he had no fear.

"What's the dopey grin for?" Wren asked with a raised eyebrow. 

Garin might have stuck his tongue out at her had he not feared it would freeze. "Oh, nothing."

"You're smiling at nothing?"

"No, just at you." He winked at her.

She groaned. "Fine, don't tell me."

"Really, it wasn't anything much." Garin stared into the fire, the movement of the flames mesmerizing to his tired mind. "I was just thinking of my family. How we would huddle around the hearth on cold nights like this, and drink hot tea or cider, and tell each other tall tales. Some we made up — you could always tell when Naten lost the thread in his yarn. I was actually getting pretty good at inventing my own last winter. But some of the stories we told were the traditional Avendoran legends. Markus Bredley. Gendil of Candor. Tal Harrenfel."

At the last name, Garin's eyes slid over to meet Wren's. Her mouth twisted, but not in a mocking way. She moved as if to reach out to him, but hesitated and settled her hand back into her lap.

"Odd to find ourselves in one of those stories, isn't it?" she muttered.

Garin snorted a laugh. "That's not the strangest part. For most of the time I've trailed after Tal, I've been uncertain of myself. Worried I couldn't compare. Even when I hated his guts, I still envied and looked up to him."

He tilted his head back to gaze at the stars. "But ever since leaving Elendol, I feel that, for the first time, maybe I'm not so out of place after all."

Her punch to his shoulder hurt more for being unexpected. Garin yelped, drawing stares from their companions across the fire.

He ignored them and glared at Wren. "What was that for?"

Her eyes gleamed with her golden elven tendrils. "Get too large of a head and you'll tip over, Dunford. If either of us are sung into the legends, it'll be me. Don't go thinking otherwise."

Garin grinned, but it quickly slipped away at another thought. 

If any of us survive to tell the tale.

* * *

They packed up camp early the next morning and headed further into the mountains.

They had been hunting Tal for a week. The snow had appeared as soon as they crossed the sorcerous barrier that marked Elendol's borders. Since leaving the Westreach, the landscape had only grown more desolate. A cruel wind blew over them, burning the bared skin of his face and stealing all hope of warmth. Cedar trees lined their way, seeming dark sentinels guarding the Eastern border and watching the intruders with ancient hostility. Even their fragrant scent held the bite of frost behind it. In the silence, broken only by the crunching of their stors' hooves, hovered an ominous waiting.

The East, from how the older members of the party told it, was a forbidding place. It began with this gauntlet of inhospitable mountains, then eventually filtered into forests and plains where its residents lived, as well as where the capital of the Empire, Kavaugh, lay. But as the Westreach was divided by nationality and Bloodline, so was the Empire. Each of the Eastern races, Kaleras had informed them, kept primarily to their own fiefs. They were held together only through fealty to the Sun Emperor and adoration for Yuldor.

From all Garin had seen of the Ravagers' raids, it was more than enough to match the Reach Realms' paltry strength.

In that week, his party had driven themselves to exhaustion. Yet the mountainous terrain conspired against them, for they gained no ground on their elusive quarry. Whatever strength Tal had found in Queen Geminia's throne room seemed to be lasting. Though at first Ashelia had pressed them on until darkness fell, each day, his tracks grew fainter. He was widening the distance between them. Aelyn and Kaleras had bolstered their mounts with spells, but even that did not seem to be enough. 

Garin wondered if Tal knew he was being pursued. Why else would he push his stor to death's threshold? Though why the man would avoid his closest allies, he could only speculate, and the conclusions he drew made him too uneasy to long consider.

On the fifth day, with the components for sustaining charms all but exhausted, Ashelia reluctantly called for a slower march. To catch him now, they could only hope that at some point, Tal would have to stop and rest. 

At Helnor's behest, they often dismounted and walked for hours at a time, giving their mounts a chance to rest. The marches were even more miserable than the rides, but the Prime Warder's will persisted.

"Stors are made for spring, not winter," he explained more than once. It began to sound as if he was trying to convince himself as much as them. Even Helnor, Garin guessed, was nearing the end of his rope.

Wishing for some small measure of comfort, Garin removed his glove. Wincing at the stinging cold, he raised his hand into the air.

"Bisk."

The Nightsong murmured in his head, but these days, he barely noticed it. Ice crystallized into snowflakes that whirled away from his hand. Soon after, through the baffling principles that governed magic, heat began to spread through him.

He sighed. The warmth was a relief, to be sure. But it was the use of sorcery that had become his true joy. During the long, dull days of travel, he'd often used the time to practice the cantrips he knew, to the annoyance of his companions. Wren complained of the draft his ice spells blew back to her, while Aelyn griped that he should not practice without close supervision.

But in just the week they'd been trekking, he had progressed leaps and bounds over what little proficiency he'd possessed in Elendol. Gone were his doubts and fears, and from them emerged the reckless curiosity that had been lying dormant. Before, he had not dared to practice between lessons; now, he worked magic every moment he could manage it. Cantrips were becoming intuitive to summon. And whether it was because he was growing used to it, or if it had quieted, the Nightsong no longer bothered him as it once had.

There was more to his desire to learn than mere curiosity. He and his companions journeyed through a land reputed far and wide for being dangerous and rife with monsters, Ravagers, and Silence knew what else. He had a sword belted at his side and a shield hanging from his stor's panniers, but sorcery was the deadliest tool he owned. 

He meant to make every use of it. 

And there was more than himself to protect. Though Wren could hold her own, as could most of their party, Garin would never forgive himself if something happened to her or his companions, not if he might have prevented it.

There was also the matter of the Singer. Though Ilvuan had often risen to protect him, he could not do so now. Garin guessed it had taken much of his strength to manifest as an incorporeal dragon and do battle with the fire demon. It promised to be awhile longer before he recovered. 

But more than that, Ilvuan still had an untold task for Garin. And he'd be damned if he was forced to do his bidding. Perhaps the Singer wasn't a devil. But once, he'd forced Garin to stab Kaleras and try to harm his friends. He would never forget that, nor how it might affect his future.

"What shall we sing next?" Falcon spoke into the snow-deadened silence, startling Garin from his reverie.

"No more singing," Aelyn snapped back. "I've had enough of your 'Legend of Tal' as it is."

"How else am I to mentor Rolan in bardship?"

The mage barked a laugh. "The last thing my nephew needs is tutelage in the most frivolous of arts."

Rolan twisted in the saddle to peer around his mother. "But I want to learn, Uncle Aelyn! Why else would Momua let me bring my lute?"

"Why, indeed?" Aelyn muttered, loud enough to be audible to all the company, bunched together as they were.

Garin glanced at Helnor to see the Prime Warder sporting a weary frown. More than once, he'd warned them to keep down the noise. But it was difficult to restrain the Court Bard for long, much less Ashelia's energetic son.

"Precisely!" Falcon exclaimed. "Young as he is, Rolan has divined the truth that all men and women implicitly know: music transcends borders, be they blood or country. And a charming little troubadour may come in handy in a pinch, wouldn't you say? Who knows — at some point, Rolan might be the protector of us all!"

The boy grinned at the bard, delighted at the prospect.

Before anyone else could speak, Helnor raised a hand. Their party immediately fell silent. Garin's heart thumped against his ribs, wondering what the Prime had seen. Ahead, a break in the trees allowed them a view of the snow-covered landscape below.

The elf dismounted, and they all followed suit, leading their stors to the overlook. Helnor kneeled for a moment, then rose.

"He came here," he announced. His gaze traveled to the trees downhill from them. "Then he went down to the road."

"The road?" Garin walked his stor to the edge, having to tug harder the closer they neared. His mount, Horn, did not seem fond of heights. Standing next to Helnor, he saw what the Prime had: a pass a mile ahead that led between the mountains along a river. It looked just wide enough for a wagon to pass through, were the path not covered in snow.

"What was once a road, at least. It was part of your High Road at one point, when there was still trade between the Westreach and Easterners." Helnor gave him a half-hearted smile. "But like much of the World, it has fallen into disrepair over the past millennium. Not much more than crumbling stones now, I suspect."

Garin had not even thought of relations between the East and the Westreach before Yuldor. But though he burned to know more, he turned his focus back to the task at hand.

At times throughout their hunt, they had come across signs of Tal's passage. A copse of blasted trees, and not by an errant strike of lightning. A gulley, once frozen, but rent apart and drained. Garin had stretched himself forward at these places, and though he had expected nothing to come of his investigations, he had felt… something. It had been like Ilvuan's tug on his mind when he pursued Tal in the alleys of the Mire. Garin felt himself compelled to continue east, as if Tal were calling to him.

Though he knew that his old mentor summoning him was not likely. After all, if he had wanted Garin and the others to come, he would have told them rather than fled without a parting word.

Garin felt nothing of the sensation now. Yet, since they had resolved to help a man who evidently wanted no aid, and in a task none of them could hope to succeed in, there was only one thing he could say.

"I guess we should follow his lead," he spoke with heavy resignation.

Helnor nodded and, mounting his stor again, gestured for the others to follow.