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part phantom, his hand a claw." Javin collapsed without another word.

Cheyne huddled over his father for a long while, until Doulos pulled him away and covered Javin with his outer robe.

"What do you know about this?" Cheyne asked Doulos.

The Neffian shrugged his shoulders, took the book from Javin's pack and gave it to Cheyne, who shook his head sadly.

"Only the Treefather can read this. And I've missed my only chance to get through the curtain of light."

With Saelin following at a safe distance and the wind taking his words the other way, Rotapan trudged up the dark, windy mountainside, cursing Riolla loudly and with great exuberance. It made him feel better. More importantly, it made him warm.

Icicles had formed on his long ears by the time he had cleared the tree line. His ill-shod feet were cut and bleeding from the unavoidable patches of obsidian and broken lava, and the only thing that kept him moving upward was the thought of those talking heads and their miserable prophecy. As long as there was a chance to rebuild his tower, to regain his staff, he lurched onward. In his mind, he had already redecorated the topmost pinnacle of the new temple with Riolla's head. The great Lord Chelydrus would enjoy his offering of her adder-poisoned blood.

The higher he climbed, the more an ice cloud obscured his vision. Soon, only the steady strain of moving upward and the dark patches of the barren, wind-scoured rock beneath his feet guided him. He began to imagine smells and noises in the cold fog. A whiff of wet fur and a low growl behind him. The padding of heavy feet in the snow off the trail. The pant and whine of wolves.

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And Saelin nowhere around. He should never have trusted Riolla's assassin to watch his back. Fighting for breath, Rotapan quickened his step, looking for possible weapons on the trailside and sending small rocks plinking down the path behind him. He broke stride to pick up a large piece of obsidian, but his hands were so stiff with cold that he fumbled it. When he turned to retrieve the dark glass, he found himself standing within three feet of the biggest white wolf he had ever seen. Rotapan froze in his tracks, cold weapon in hand.

"It will be sweet, that day when the Lord Chelydrus appears to me before my people. Then they will believe," he said aloud, trying to chase his fears with the sound of his own words.

"Believe what?"

The voice behind him was strangely accented. He turned his head to see a gray-eyed Neffian in furs and a silver slave collar and his other companion, the white wolfs mate.

"Don't move. Do you need help? Are you lost?" said the Neffian.

Rotapan turned his head slowly to face forward again. The wolf stood silently gazing at the half-ore for several seconds, then his lips rippled, his nose lifted in a snarl, and he began to growl almost imperceptibly. Rotapan knew if he made the slightest move, the bigger wolf would be upon him. He felt himself close to passing out from fear and lack of air.

Worse still, the other wolf had moved soundlessly closer to his back. He could feel its hot, rank breath upon his neck. Probably the female, thought Rotapan. She might be a little smaller. The male pulled back into a half-crouch, tightening to spring.

Rotapan swallowed hard, took a deep breath, then shrieked a wordless prayer to Chelydrus at the top of his lungs as he tried to run past the female. She whipped her claws into his back as he went down, but Rotapan somehow found her neck and managed to

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bring the rock across it, opening her throat with a frantic swipe of the glass. She yelped once before dropping. Instantly, the big male sprang over her body with a magnificent leap, but Rotapan ducked and caught him in the belly with the same edge that had killed his mate.

Rotapan looked around for the Neffian, but there was no sign of him. He cautiously kicked at the dead wolves, all the while straining to see into the deep mist where more of them might be waiting. But all he heard was a hungry pup's distant whimper.

Let him go, thought Rotapan. He'll starve on his own, and I can be on my way.

As he turned to go, Rotapan noticed some sort of metal band around the female wolfs neck. "Like that Neffian's collar… the slaves will come for me now," he muttered. "But let them do their worst. Mighty Chelydrus has protected me. And you I did not need, worthless Saelin!" He searched his pocket making certain Riolla's Ninnite coin still rested there, and walked on.

He worked another hour scaling the steep path, slick with snow and black ice, and finally came upon a more level road that led into the castle's keep. Before him, white with five or six inches of fresh snow, stood Drufalden's crystal gates. If the slaves were going to ambush him, this would be the most likely place. Saelin had said there was some kind of secret entrance just outside the gate, which the slaves used when they slipped out to hunt.

The thieves' colony supposedly lay just beyond this point, with Drufalden's castle further up the mountain and within the old volcano's protective shell. If Rotapan could manage to get past these gates, he could slip in and deliver his order, asking for a legion of his own to take back to his temple. After all, he had the coin. How would Drufalden know until he was gone that Riolla's orders were any different?

Rotapan slowed his pace and kept to the shadows of

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the rock wall, where the mist seemed to linger. But before he had taken another three steps, white-shrouded guards stepped out from the gates and advanced stiffly toward him, swords drawn.

"Stop where you stand!" shouted the one on the left.

Rotapan plastered himself to the rock wall. His knees knocked together and his breath came in gasps. Unbidden, stories of travelers lost on this peak, checking their maps and freezing open-eyed and standing, came racing to his mind. The coin, in his hand for the last few feet, was losing its heat even faster, and felt as though it were stuck to his palm like a searing brand.

The guards shuffled through the heavy snow and stopped a few feet away from him. "We hear you. Show yourself, slave. We have warned you about leaving the colony without our escort," said one of them, his eyes strangely vacant, his breath making no mist in the frigid air.

Rotapan could not move. But from the other side of the path came a faint sound. The Neffian crouched behind a snowbank, holding a whimpering wolf pup inside his furs. Rotapan breathed a slow sigh of relief when he realized he was not the guards' objective. At the sound of the pup's cry, they moved in on the Neffian, affording Rotapan a strange revelation. The guards' skin was as white as their stiff robes, and when he looked directly upon their faces, he could almost see the outline of everything behind them. They looked as though they were made of the same ice that covered the entire top of the mountain. They carried swords made of brilliant crystal and their words hung in the air like the sound of steel on steel.

As they came forward, the Neffian released the pup and silently bade him to stay, then broke from his cover and shot past them as they clashed their swords over his head. The slave ran in through the gates, then took to the even steeper path toward the main entrance of the slave colony, the guards following stiffly, but with amazing speed. Rotapan shrugged and