Hexed

think. “I thought once it might be a fluke, but twice . . .” I’d had this power when I was in training to be High Priestess and thought it stripped away from me, but now twice it had come flooding back, when I felt weak and angry and helpless.
    I glanced up at them. “I was capable of much more than this when I was in my training. I could have so easily torn Vikkommin from his body and thrust him into shadow. So the question is, did I?”
    “No,” Howl said. “The question is, shall we remove ourselves from the White Forest before the rest of their eightlegged brethren come to capture us?” He nodded to the webs where the spiders looked to be amassing.
    “Fuck! Run!” Camille said, grabbing my hand and struggling toward the entrance. “I have no desire to be lunch to a bunch of spiders.”
    Smoky grabbed the both of us up and, tossing us over his shoulders, ran with long leaping strides through the snow. Five minutes and we stood on the edge of the Skirts of Hel. The edge of the world.
    Howl and Roz joined us as we silently gazed up at the towering mountain of ice that stood before us. The White Forest marked the end of the tree line. Above here existed ice and snow and, for the brief summer, scattered fields of wildflowers and scrub brush that were as fleeting as a distant dream. The path, still compact snow, led ever upward, skirting the plains of ice, winding through the windswept trees that lay nearly sideways from the constant storms that buffeted the mountain peaks.
    Camille gazed at the panorama of jagged peaks and frozen sheets of ice. “Where’s your temple?” she whispered, as if afraid of setting off an avalanche.
    “See the bend that winds to the left, near the stand of scrub there?” I pointed to a small thicket of scrub brush in the distance. “When you turn left, you pass behind a tall ridge and then curve back to the right. You can’t see from here, but there’s a fork in the road at that point. The path leads higher, the fork takes you on to the Order of Undutar. I haven’t been this close to the temple in . . . six hundred years.”
    And then it hit me that I was on the way home—but to a home that had cast me out, that had branded me pariah. I’d spent so many centuries writing them out of my life, hiding behind half-truths and truths unknown. And now I had returned, to discover once and for all what the truth of my life was.
    Would I like the answer when I found it? I didn’t know, but whatever happened, I would know, forever, if I was a murderer.

FIVE
     

     
    “WE’RE CLOSE TO SUNSET AND THE NIGHT winds will be howling down the mountain any moment. We have to reach my Pack.” Howl motioned off the trail toward one of the nearest skirts of ice that stretched down from the glacial peak.
    Most people didn’t understand that glaciers weren’t the mountains themselves but rather the ice that covered the mountain in large patches and sheets. Some glaciers melted during the summer—there were areas here that did, but unlike back in the Cascades near Seattle, the Northlands were not subject to global warming. During summers here, the temperature occasionally reached sixty degrees, but days like that were seldom and far between.
    Bits of dried grass occasionally poked through the snow that blanketed the mountain. What rock we could see was dark and granite-hard, peeking out through the windswept snowbanks. We were reaching the highlands here, where the glaciers took hold and the alpine regions started in earnest.
    The ice would be problematic in places, though most of it was rough and chunky. Not easy to navigate but easier than the smooth, hardened shell that streamed in long fingers down the mountain. The Skirts of Hel would be grueling to cross, even with our gear.
    I thought over what we’d brought, but our mountaineering gear was limited. I’d assumed I’d be keeping on trail. I’d forgotten what harsh territory the craggy peaks around the temple really were.
    Roz knelt beside me. “Take heart. I know what you’re thinking,” he said, staring at the expanse of ice before us. “We’ll find a way across.” He stood, turning to address Howl. “Where are we headed?”
    “See that dark mouth against the rock, under the overcropping ledge up there?” Howl pointed to a barely visible splotch against the mountainside. If we could just hoof it without worry, we’d be there in ten minutes. But with the landscape reminiscent of a frozen lava field, it wasn’t