3: A Cold Trail

There was no noticeable path through the woods, and the way that Tal had taken fit a stor and its rider poorly. Garin often found himself bending flat against Horn's neck to keep from being scraped by low-hanging branches. The stor's antlers still caught many of them, showering him with cedar needles and filling his nose with their scent.

Before long, the trees stopped, and a heavy drift marked where the ancient road began. Garin glanced around as they emerged from the forest. Snow had started to fall, though lightly for the moment. It was enough to reduce visibility, however, and make him nervous about standing out in the open.

Any Ravagers searching for them could not miss this decrepit pass.

But for the moment, he saw no one, so Garin followed Helnor, Ashelia, and Aelyn deeper into the mountains. To their left, down a steep embankment, a slushy river slithered. The pools in it had mostly frozen over, and the rest promised to follow suit before long.

His eyes settled on a swath of broken river ice. Garin frowned, wondering what could have caused it. An errant stone? A rapid change in the weather?

"Halt!"

Again, the company pulled to a stop. Wren, walking her stor next to Garin, exchanged a look with him. Calling for another break so soon could not be a good sign.

Ahead, Helnor had dismounted again and handed his stor's reins to his sister. He bent over, closely studying the snow beneath him. Garin dismounted as well, though his elven boots were ill-suited for remaining dry. Wren followed suit. They carefully approached, watching their feet to make sure they didn't step on any tracks.

"He lost time here." Helnor's words were barely above a mutter as he stared at the ground. He shuffled further up the road, still bent and studying the disturbed snow. "Then he was sidetracked for a moment. By what, though…"

Garin watched silently as Wren joined Helnor's investigation. She'd looked no more than a few moments before she pointed to the hill down to the river. 

"There. He slid down there."

"Or fell. The pattern's uneven as if he rolled." The Prime Warder became more deadened of emotion with each subsequent observation.

Wren turned and frowned at Ashelia. From Garin's angle, he couldn't see the healer's expression, but he could guess at it.

"Fell?" Rolan piped up. "Why would he do that?"

"He wouldn't," Wren said grimly. "Unless he was forced to."

The elf boy turned to her with his eyebrows raised and another question on his lips.

"He was attacked, Rolan," Ashelia murmured.

"Attacked? By who?"

"By whatever made these prints." Aelyn was standing closer to the hill on their right and staring at the ground. "Deer prints, by the look of it."

"Tal can handle a rowdy buck," Falcon protested. "Silence, he vanquished Heyl, didn't he?"

Helnor stood, his face set into deep lines as he stared down the hill. "It wasn't a deer. It was an ijiraq."

"Was it?" Aelyn sneered. "And how would you know that?"

The Prime pointed at the river below. "Because it's lying right there."

With a start, Garin followed Helnor's direction. Something did lay fifty feet below them. It was half-buried in snow, but he could see enough to tell the creature was far from natural. It had the body of a caribou, but where its head should have been, there was the twisted torso of something resembling a human with antlers. Blood had darkened the ground around it. By all appearances, it was dead.

Ashelia had stepped up next to Helnor. Garin was standing just close enough to hear her ask quietly, "And Tal?"

The large elf shook his head. "I don't see tracks coming up again. But we'll have to search downriver to be sure."

Garin still stared at the corpse of the beast Helnor had called an ijiraq. Was there more to it than its appearance? Did it possess a secret, deadly sorcery?

But even if it did, how could it have killed Tal Harrenfel?

It didn't. It can't have. He'd seen what Tal was capable of. There was no chance that the creature down there could have slain the Man of a Thousand Names. The man who was supposed to challenge a god.

The man he'd come all this way to reconcile with.

"Then we'd better start looking," Garin said heavily, and began walking back down the road. 

* * *

They searched for the better part of an hour before Wren's shout brought them scurrying over.

"Down here! I found something!"

All the weariness and hopelessness that had begun to assail Garin fell away. As he was upstream of her, he had to wade his way back up the slick embankment to where Rolan held his stor for him before he could move around to where Wren had been looking for tracks.

Reaching the top, he hauled himself to his feet and took back the reins, ruffling the boy's hair. "Thanks, lad."

Rolan dodged away from him and stuck out his tongue. Garin smiled, but it quickly slipped away.

Tal might not be dead. Or he might be. Just because Wren had found tracks didn't mean there were any guarantees. Not for the first time, he wished Aelyn and Kaleras' seeking spells had worked. They had not attempted them during the initial chase, as Tal's path was readily apparent. But now, with his fate uncertain, their spells had failed. Aelyn explained through gritted teeth that it did not mean Tal was dead; in fact, it had seemed the opposite, like he blocked their attempts to find him with sorcery. Garin clung to that small hope, though it evoked the question of why Tal would so desperately want to avoid his friends that he would foil all their attempts to find him.

He made his way to where the others had gathered. While Ashelia, Helnor, and Aelyn slid down to Wren, Kaleras remained at the top of the embankment and held their mounts. Elderly and still suffering from the poison Garin had inadvertently administered to him, crawling down precarious inclines was not an endeavor he would easily take on.

Though he makes for an unlikely stable boy, he thought with another small smile.

As the warlock already had his hands full, and he didn't want to risk attracting the attention of his frown, Garin handed back his stor's reins to Rolan and slid down the bank. For a thrilling moment, it looked as if he wouldn't be able to stop — then his feet found a rock. He jarred to a halt feet away from the edge of the frozen river.

"Nice of you to join us," Wren observed wryly as he stood and brushed himself off.

He only raised an eyebrow and stalked over, careful of where he stepped. "What did we find?"

Helnor pointed down at the snow between them. "Someone or something came out of the river here. See how the ice cracked and has only thinly reformed? And here — the way this snow is shaped, it looks as if someone was dragged across it."

Garin traced the trail up the slope and back to the road. "To where?" he muttered.

"I have a suspicion. Come — I'll show you."

They labored back up the hill to the main road. At the edge of it, their party fanned out as Helnor gestured at the churned snow.

"See here? This is from a caravan that passed through not two days ago — about the same time as Tal, I'd wager."

"You think whoever is in that caravan rescued him," Wren guessed.

Helnor nodded. "Easterners are not known for their kindness, but perhaps it's also their custom to aid a traveler in need." He straightened and shrugged. "But it's only a guess. Perhaps Tal pulled himself from the river and went back west. With the snow as muddled as it is, it's impossible to track further."

Garin scanned the area around them. All was cast in shades of white and gray, dark pine trees and the sluggish river the only interruptions in the landscape. He wished he could experience the nudge he had felt before, hear that brief welling of the Nightsong's chilling music. He was sure it was a sign of his former mentor. 

But only the howl of the wind filled his ears now.

"He would not have turned back." Ashelia stared up the mountain pass. "If we have no better path, we'll follow the sleighs east and pray to the Mother we are not wrong."

With that, the Peer turned and walked back toward their tied mounts. Garin lingered for a moment longer, staring into the whirling snow and the dark fog in the distance.

He startled at a touch on his hand. Turning, he saw it was Wren, her eyes the brightest and most colorful thing to be seen for miles around.

"We'll find him," she said with a certainty he envied. "If that bastard stops running from us."

Garin only nodded and followed her back to the stors.