"It has to be done soon. . . . What's Lichen been saying to you?"
Wanderer went out to the lip of the overhang and cupped his hands beneath a trickle of water. He carried the cool liquid back conscientiously and dribbled it down her leg. Vole suppressed a cry when the water touched her flesh like a river of fire. The more that Wanderer dribbled on her leg, the worse the pain grew, until she had to bury her face in the crook of her elbow to keep from weeping.
As though he hadn't noticed, he said, "It's not words I hear, it's more like the feathery touch of Lichen's soul against mine." Vole felt him lift the sleeve of his red shirt and heard the squeal of ripping fabric. He kept talking, softly, confidently. "Lichen is a very Powerful Dreamer, so as long as she stays under cover, she'll be safe. I think that by now she can probably sense when enemy warriors are near. All great Dreamers can. It's like ..."
Vole stopped hearing his words. Only a soft drone penetrated the violence of her pain. It took what seemed an eternity for him to wash her bums. She trembled while he gently dabbed the wet cloth to remove the grime that had melded with old blood. Every grain of sand he touched bit into her flesh like a poisoned talon.
Only at the last, when he started applying the rose salve in cool globs, did she break down and weep ... in relief that it was almost over. Her shoulders shook traitorously. He stopped for a moment, his hand faltering in its work, and then he finished and stood.
Vole refused to look up and let him see her tears. Just go away, Wanderer. Don't shame me by asking anything ridiculous, like how do I feel.
His sandals scraped the stone with his awkward movements. After a time, she heard him kneel beside her and felt a large hand, bony and uncertain, clumsily stroke her hair.
"Try to sleep. Vole. I’ll keep watch."
Thirty-one
Around Lichen, brilliant stars twinkled like hoarfrost while darkness flooded outward, rippling m the farthest reaches of the sky. Her skin gleamed blue-white in the eerie light.
Foxfire stopped suddenly and pointed. "Do you see that, Lichen?"
At the end of the blue strands they traveled, a forbidding wall of ice spread for as far as she could see. From its belly, water gushed out in a thunderous torrent, carrying gravel and sand down a broad channel that sliced through towering snow-choked mountains. Where the tortured river collided with rocks, water splashed in crystal sprays and froze into odd shapes.
Foxfire trotted forward. Lichen called, "Wait! Where are we going? We can't get past that. Look at how high that wail is!"
"Let me show you. Hurry. Come this way."
Lichen followed him to a jagged crack suddenly visible in the wall. High over her head, sandwiched between two massive bastions of ice, there gleamed a clear patch of azure sky.
"Through here." Foxfire dropped to his knees and scrambled forward into utter darkness. "This is the way. Lichen."
Lichen grabbed his hide sleeve and crawled through behind him. Blackness weighed down on her, heavy, taking her breath away while it pounded on her eardrums and pressed on her eyelids. Around her, crusted ice creaked and groaned, the sound echoing like gibbering voices.
Ahead, a tiny spot of light shone, growing larger as they neared it. Lichen stepped out onto a water-smoothed boulder. She inhaled a deep breath of the chill, bright air. Strange scents caressed her nostrils, smells of moss and chokecherry steeped together for a thousand cycles.
"Come, Lichen. If s just a little farther."
Foxfire clambered through the maze of boulders ahead until he reached a ridge where the sun blazed on his black braids. He tipped his face to the light and smiled in joy at the warmth that beat down on him. "Up here, Lichen. Let me show you what happens when a Dreamer fails."
She jumped to the next boulder, her sandals crunching on the ice in the shadowed hollows of the stone. When she reached the top, she stared at the majestic land that spread before her. Herds of strange, long-homed animals dotted the rich plain, their ears and tails switching away flies while they inquisitively studied Lichen and Foxfire. Ice-capped mountains thrust up like teeth behind her, their ragged peaks raking the bottom of the clouds.
To the south, hundreds of drainage channels zigzagged through a white maze of ridges. And there, their prey trapped against one of the snow-clad ridges, humans hunted.
An enormous hairy animal with two tails thrashed wildly, flinging its front tail in mad arcs, trying to kill its attackers. Humans dodged and ran, using throwing sticks to launch long arrows into its sides. The animal let out a roar that sounded like a conch-shell trumpet blast. Then it made a feeble run to scatter the humans. But they just circled and kept throwing their arrows, until the creature bristled with them, as if a huge porcupine had been at it.