Frodo nuzzled in against me, pressing his warm body against mine, surprising me when his cold nose touched my cheek. “You don’t understand the storm, do you, boy?” I whispered. “But you just want to be close to your master, don’t you? That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it?”

I lay back, enjoying the fireworks, thankful for the reminder there was something in the universe far greater than I. Something fierce and out of my control, yes. But also wise and comforting.

As the storm raged, I sank into a peaceful sleep.

The next morning we awoke to much cooler temperatures. As pale strips of blue emerged from the remnants of the previous night’s storm clouds, we sat at the foot of a tall fir tree and attempted to build a fire. David finally got a good light from his flint, and we managed to ignite a few dead sticks and pine cones. Then we tried to coax the fire to take hold of damp, icy logs. After an hour the fire finally took. I watched with fascination the light snow fall on the fire. Eddying blasts of wind caused it to swirl and turn to drops just over the flame, making a hissing sound. I looked to the north side of Peirasmos and saw mists of fog creeping up it, the tall trees drifting on a sea of mist.

We watched the fog lift to the southwest, uncovering a deep blue mountain lake with large chunks of snowfields and parts of glaciers that had slipped down from the surrounding cliffs, now floating like barges. A lone dark elk, clearly visible against the white-snow canvas, drank deeply from a stream feeding the lake. Just above the lake, not far from an alder thicket etched against the snow, a geyser let loose and blew white steam a hundred feet into the air. The elk loped off over a slope and vanished.

“Let’s go take a closer look,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be great to warm our hands on that geyser?”

“There may be some warm springs,” Victoria said. “We might be able to get a hot bath, a real one.”

“You’ve got my vote,” I said.

“We’re travelers, not tourists,” Shad replied. “We need to stay dry. We’ve got a mountain to climb.”

“So much for other people’s ideas,” I muttered under my breath.

“We need to collect light wood to make fires on the mountain,” Shad said, “in case we can’t find anything up there. Come up with what you can, but not too much, and we’ll start the climb in half an hour.”

I wandered off by myself, picking up sticks here and there. Suddenly Marcus appeared beside me, startling me.

“It is hard for you,” the warrior said, with that never-changing emotionless expression. “You wonder about yourself, do you not?”