Jennsen looked back over her shoulder when Sebastian whistled.

"That way," the woman called, gesturing toward a cutoff to a smaller trail.

Jennsen urged Rusty to the right, up the trail. It rose abruptly, switching back and forth to ascend the sharp rise. The trees on the mountainside were huge, with trunks as big around as her horse, rising to a great height before branches spread overhead to close off the leaden sky. The snow was unbroken by anyone before them, but the lay of the trail, the dish in the surface of the snow, the undulating but smooth line it took up through the forest, among rocks and snow-crusted brush, and the way it followed beneath steep overhangs of rock wall and along ledges made it easy enough to follow.

Jennsen checked the boy asleep at her lap and found him the same. She watched the forest around them for any sign of people, but saw none. After being at the palace, in Althea's swamp, and out on the Azrith Plains, it was comforting to again be in the forest. Sebastian didn't especially like the woods. He didn't like the snow, either, but she found it peaceful the way the snow lent the woods a sacred silence.

The smell of woodsmoke hanging in the air told her that they were close. A look over her shoulder at the mother's face told her the same. Breaking over the top of a ridge revealed several small wooden buildings along a gently rising wooded slope. In a clearing behind was a small barn with a fenced paddock. A horse at the fence rail, its ears alert, watched them approaching. The horse lifted its head, tossing a whinny their way. Rusty and Pete both snorted a brief greeting in return.

Jennsen put two fingers between her teeth and whistled as Rusty plowed through the drifts toward the small cabin at the upper end, the only one with smoke rising from the chimney.

The door opened as she reached the building. A man threw on a flaxen cloak on his way out to greet them. He wasn't old. He could be the right age. He pulled up the cloak's broad hood against the cold before she could get a good look at his face.

"We have a sick boy," Jennsen said as the man took hold of Rusty's reins. "Are you one of the healers known as the Raug'Moss?"

The man nodded. "Bring him inside."

The mother had already slid down off Sebastian's horse and was standing beside Jennsen to receive her boy into her waiting arms. "Thank the Creator you're here, today."

The healer, laying a reassuring hand on the woman's back, urging her toward the door, tilted his head in gesture to Sebastian. "You're welcome to put your horses in the back with mine and then come inside."

Sebastian thanked him and led the horses away while Jennsen followed the other two toward the door. In the failing light, she still hadn't been able to get a good look at the man's face.

It was too much to hope, she knew, but at the very least, this man was a Raug'Moss and could answer her question.