Stalking Darkness

few go on from here. Turik knows the way and I know the snow. The rest of them better go home.”
    After some disgruntled grumbling, the others headed back to the village.
    Shradin took the lead as they began their cautious ascent, Seregil and Turik following in single file. Seregil watched in silent admiration as the man probed ahead with his pole, leading them safely around deep fissures concealed just beneath the deceptively unbroken snow. Glad as he was of this, however, Seregil couldn’t help glancing nervously up at the tons of snow and ice clinging precariously to the mountainsides above.
    As they neared the top of the pass, Turik took the lead.
    “We are almost there,” he said at last, pausing for Seregil to catch his breath.
    Struggling up a last, steep face, Turik halted again and began casting around where the lip of the glacier met the rock face. After frequent sightings up at the peaks and much prodding with his pole, the young Dravnian raised his hand and waved for the others.
    Hung with icicles and half drifted over with snow, the opening of the passage resembled a fanged and sullen mouth. Digging with hands and snowshoes, they soon cleared the opening and peered down the steep black tunnel that descended into the ice.
    Seregil felt a strange tingling in his hands and up his back as he leaned over it; strong magic lay below.
    “The first part of the way is slick,” Turik warned, pulling a sack of ashes from his bag. “We’ll need to scatter these as we go, or it’s nearly impossible to climb back out again.”
    “I have to go alone from here,” Seregil told him. “My magic is strong, but I can’t be distracted worrying about the two of you. Wait for me here. If I’m not back by the time the sun touches that peak, come down for me, but not before. If your spirit kills me, give all my things to Retak and say he is to divide them as he sees fit.”
    Turik’s eyes widened a bit at this, but neither he nor Shradin argued.
    Seregil took off his bulky hat and tied his long hair back with a thong. Taking the small lightwand from his tool roll, he grasped the handle in his teeth and shouldered an ash bag and the cumbersome box.
    “Aura’s luck be with you,” Shradin said solemnly, using the Aurënfaie name for Illior.
    Let’s hope it is
, Seregil thought nervously as he began his descent.
    The steep tunnel was narrow and slick as glass in places. Scattering ash in front of him, he crawled down, dragging the box behind. By the time the ice gave way to a more level stone passage, he was smeared black from head to foot.
    The magic permeating the place grew stronger as he went down. The uncanny tingle he’d first noticed increased swiftly. There was a low buzzing in his ears and he could feel an ache growing behind his eyes.
    “Aura Elustri málrei,”
he whispered, speaking the invocation to Illior aloud to test the effect. The silence absorbed his words without an echo and the tingling in his limbs continued unabated.
    The tunnel ended at a tiny natural chamber scarcely larger than the passage itself. The shards of a broken bowl lay against the far wall.
    The ceaseless noise in his ears made concentration difficult as Seregil began a careful search of the place. It wasn’t a steady tone, but rose and fell erratically. At times he seemed to catch a faint hint of voices beneath the rest, but put it down to imagination.
    Satisfied at last that no other passages were concealed by any method he could detect, he tucked his chilled hands into his coat and hunkered down to review the few facts he possessed.
    “Horns of crystal beneath horns of stone. Stone within ice within stone within ice,” the palimpsest had said.
    Seregil looked around, frowning.
Well, I’m certainly beneath horns of stone. And to get here I’ve gone through the ice first, and then stone
.
    That left stone within ice still to go, but where? Though obscure in method, the palimpsest had been quite specific in giving the necessary directions. If there was some secret way beyond this point, then logic suggested that the final clues leading to it were also concealed in that same document.
    Massaging his throbbing temples, he closed his eyes and recalled the details of the palimpsest’s various inscriptions. Could he and Nysander have missed something in the rambling prophecies? Or perhaps Nysander had been wrong in his assertion that only one side of the document concealed a palimpsest.
    Now there was an uncomfortable