Dis reached out with his senses, satisfied that Ro was still in front of him and trusting that the old woman knew where she was going. He had to stay alert. There was no knowing what terrors hunted the ice flats, if any life could survive such temperatures in the first place. But if it could, it would be hungry and the slarga would make for a good meal, as would they, even old Kufa whom Dis imagined was little more than skin and bone beneath all those furs.

After an hour that seemed like a day, Dis’s mount lurched to a halt, and for a second he wondered if it had succumbed to the cold and was ready to collapse onto its flat brutish face. He heard boots crunch into the snow ahead. Ro had dismounted and was helping the old woman down from the lead slarga. Dis followed suit, grateful for the glow rod that Kufa ignited, waving it northeast of their current position. They battled against the wind, the light from Kufa’s glow rod blinking on and off as snow sheeted between them. Soon Dis couldn’t sense the slarga they had left huddled together, let alone see them. There was nothing but snow and ice and wind and noise. His body ached, his wingblades heavy from where he had hefted them on his back, every step a trial in itself. Time lost all meaning, and Dis feared on more than one occasion that his senses had abandoned him. Which way was north? Which was south? Was Ro even still ahead of him? He called out, but couldn’t even hear his own voice let alone if the Eye had replied.

Then suddenly he stopped, his senses returned to him. Kufa and Ro had paused, and Dis forced his usually keen eyes to focus through the grime plastering his goggles.

The old woman had led them to a rocky outcrop in the ice, her glow rod illuminating a cleft in the petrified stone, barely wide enough for a monkey-lizard to squeeze through, and yet that was exactly what she was doing, her furs snagging on the rocks. Dis thought she was going to get caught, but she squeezed through the gap like a screerat sliding through a crack half its size. In a second she was gone, and Dis felt a sudden sting of panic that she had taken the glow rod with her, until he realized the illuminator was in Ro’s hand. The Eye offered the rod to him, intending to follow his cousin, but Dis shook his head. The old woman seemed to know where she was going, but there was no telling what was waiting for them on the other side of that cleft. Dis wasn’t about to let Ro push himself into the arms of a frost-spider. Drawing his wingblades, Dis followed the crone into the unknown.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Cyclor Shipyards