She was wrong. It grew worse.
Not an hour after we’d set out the wind turned and all direction lost meaning; up meant deeper into the heart of the storm and down was blinding whiteness and struggling dragon and numb fingers clinging to any handhold I could find. Shards of ice drove through my cloak, knifing through my riding clothes as if they were silk. My hair had stopped whipping around my face only because it was frozen in place. The sweat and melted snow streaming down my neck soaked into my collar, only to freeze again. My lungs burned with the cold.
I opened my eyes and regretted it at once. More tears welled up as the wind scoured bits of ice across my face. Even Alastair’s back was no shelter anymore. He’d refused to switch places when we set off, insisting on taking the full force of the storm, and my heart ached as I felt him shiver through the layers of cloak and armor.
Janna, if you’re listening, give us strength. I mouthed the names of the Fourfold God with all the faith I had left and willed my arms to warm him. Mikla, protect us. Odei, make a way out. Thell—
Akarra faltered. Dark shapes rose out of the snow ahead, faint but growing clearer as we hurtled toward them: sharp, spiky things that looked like they’d hurt if we hit them, and oh gods, we’re going to hit them. The world tilted. My scarf slipped and powder filled my mouth, stinging like a thousand wasps and silencing my scream. I slid sideways, scrabbling for purchase on Akarra’s saddle, but I was no longer master of my limbs. Akarra roared and somewhere Alastair was shouting, but the dark prickly thing loomed out of the storm, and in ducking to avoid it I lost my grip on the saddle. I fell.
There was whiteness and blowing cold and pain. My side throbbed and I gasped for air, choking on snowflakes as I fought to catch the breath knocked out of me. For a second everything swam: frozen tears and trembling shades of blue and white and violet and more of those dark prickling shapes and the biting, driving, howling, ever-present snow.
“Aliza!”
Sensation returned slowly, in gasps and aching everything. Rational thought came next. I fell. I fell and I’m not dead. Akarra must have been close to the ground.
Dark shapes much like the ones I’d seen before falling now swayed crazily in my peripheral vision. I rolled to my side and looked up, realizing as I did that the snow was no longer blinding and the wind had lessened. For a second I stared at the shape above me, numb brain trying to make sense of it. Straight, with bristly bits coming off. And green? Is that green?
“Pine,” I muttered, then louder, “A pine!”
It was the first tree we’d seen since leaving Lake Meera. Hope warmed me like nothing else could. We were still lost, grounded in the midst of a blizzard, and very nearly frozen to death, but at least we’d made it across the Barrens.
“Aliza! Where are you?”
“Here!” I struggled to my feet, wincing at a pain in my hip. The snow was thin beneath the boughs of the tree and I could see bare earth and pine needles underfoot. It was only after I’d taken a few limping steps toward Alastair’s voice that a new thought tempered my excitement. We’d found trees on the border of the Barrens, yes, but which border? I racked my brain for a mental map of the Old Wilds. Our route to the dragon’s Keep at An-Edannathair should’ve taken us southwest, back across the treeless marshes of the Widdermere. If the winds had pushed us southeast, these would be the forests surrounding Lykaina and direwolf country. If we’d been blown north or northwest, we’d be deep in the heart of the Northern Wastes and undisputed Tekari territory. If we’d been driven west . . .
Cold that had nothing to do with the snow filled my heart. “Alastair?” I cried as loudly as I dared.
“Aliza!”
“Here! I’m here!”
Alastair shuffled into sight. Akarra followed, clearing the way with the occasional blast of dragonfire. I caught his arm and pulled him into the protective shadow of the tree. The lowest branches dropped pine needles around us as he crouched next to me, breathing hard and covered in snow. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine,” I said. “But, Alastair, look! We’re through the Barrens!”
He peered through the branches as Akarra dropped to her foreknees outside our little copse. “Do you know where we are, Akarra?”
“I’m not sure.”
Alastair growled something in Eth and Akarra looked at him sharply.
“No, I don’t have every corner of Arle memorized,” she said. “You can’t expect me to keep track of landmarks in a storm like that.”
More Eth.
“It was all I could do to keep us in the air!” she snapped.
“You should’ve turned around when you realized the storm was too much for you,” Alastair said in Arlean.
This time Akarra responded in Eth and their voices rose, fiery words mixed with the slither of falling snow and the howl of the wind, loud enough to set my head pounding. I pressed cold hands to my temples. For Thell’s sake . . .
“ENOUGH!” I cried, no longer caring if there were any Tekari around to overhear. “This isn’t helping! Alastair, we wanted to come this way, remember? Don’t put this on Akarra.”
“Listen to your wife,” she growled.
I whirled on her. “And Alastair and I are about to lose our noses to frostbite, so don’t you start either, all right?”
Akarra looked away. Alastair straightened the hunting axe in his sword-belt and ran a hand through his hair, shaking free beads of ice. His Rider’s plait had long ago come undone. “Fine. Akarra,” he said at last with exaggerated civility, “what’s your best guess as to where we are?”
“I can’t say for certain.”
“I said guess.”
Akarra snorted. A heap of snow slid off the nearest branch with a wet slumping sound.
“Please,” he added.
“The storm pushed us west, khela, fast and far. You know where we are.”
Alastair flexed stiff fingers in front of him and said nothing. My heart sank as understanding crept through the cracks in their silence. “Rushless Wood. That’s what you’re both trying not to say, aren’t you?”
“We can’t be sure,” Alastair said.
“Even if we’re not, it doesn’t matter,” Akarra said. “We can’t keep flying in this weather. You two will freeze to death and I’ll drop from hunger by the time we reach anything like a landmark.” She sniffed the wind and peered up into the darkening sky. “It’s too late to do anything more tonight. We’d best make camp here.”
Alastair pulled off his sword-belt and harness and hung them over one of the lower branches, and after several minutes’ struggle with the buckles, I did the same with our panniers. Together we cleared the dusting of snow around the tree trunk. The ground was cold, hard, and knotted with roots, but it was dry, or at least drier. There were even enough pine needles and dead twigs for a small pile of kindling, which Akarra lit with a carefully aimed blast of dragonfire. Three times it fizzled and smoldered before catching, and the cheers Alastair and I gave at the tiny tongues of flame were loud enough to make Akarra shush us.
“Until we know where we are, I’d rather not advertise our presence any more than we already have,” she said with a frown toward the darkening woods. She shifted closer to the fire and wrapped her tail around the trunk, enclosing us in a living, anxious fortress. Ice sloughed off her, running in little rivulets between scales. “I’ll take first watch.”