Stalking Darkness

lovers?
    Seregil had kept this possibility resolutely at bay, telling himself the boy was too young, too Dalnan, and, above all, too valued a companion to risk losing over something as inconsequential as sex.
    And yet, lying exhausted among Ekrid’s daughters, he suffered a guilty pang of arousal as he thought of Alec’s slender body, his dark blue eyes and ready smile, the rough silken texture of his hair.
    Haven’t you had enough hopeless infatuations in your life?
he scowled to himself. Rolling onto his belly, he turned his thoughts to the palimpsest, running through its cryptic phrases once again.
    Horns of crystal beneath horns of stone. Stone within ice within stone within ice
.
    Damn, but there seemed little enough to be wrung out of it at this point. Slowly he repeated the phrase in its original Dravnian, then translated it into Konic, Skalan, and Aurënfaie, just for good measure.
    Nothing.
    Start again
, he thought.
You’re overlooking something. Think!
    After this came the directions to the chamber. Before it were the prophetic ramblings: first the dancing animals, then the bones, and the strange words of the unscrambled cipher that unlocked the secret—
    “Illior’s Eyes!”
    One of the girls stirred in her sleep, running a hand down his back. He forced himself to lie still, heart pounding excitedly.
    The phrase! The phrase itself
.
    Those alien, throat-scraping words. If they were the key to the palimpsest, then why not to the magic of the chamber itself?
    Assuming he was correct, however, this raised other considerations. If the words were simply a password spell, then he could probably use them without danger to himself or anyone else. But if they worked a deeper magic, what then?
    He could go back to Nysander now with what he already knew. Still, the Plenimarans might be beating a trail up the valley at this very moment and Nysander would be too drained from the firsttranslocation spell to send him or anyone else back immediately. Unless, of course, he enlisted the aid of someone more magically reliable rather than risk mishap—Magyana perhaps, or Thero.
    To hell with that! I haven’t come this far for someone else to see the mystery’s end. First light tomorrow I’m going up that pass again, avalanches be damned
.
    As he drifted happily off to sleep, he realized that the wind had dropped at last.
    Someone pounded on Ekrid’s door just before dawn, waking the household.
    “Come to the council house!” a voice shouted from outside. “Something terrible has happened. Come now!”
    Extricating himself from a soft tangle of arms and thighs, Seregil threw on his clothes and ran for the council house with the others.
    Faint, predawn light painted the snow blue, the towers black against it. Snowshoeing through the icy powder, Seregil found the village almost unrecognizable. The storm had buried the towers up to their doorsills, leaving the exposed upper story looking like an ordinary cottage drifted up with snow.
    Shouldering his way through the crowd at the council house, he hurried downstairs to the meeting chamber.
    The central fire had been lit and beside it crouched a woman he hadn’t seen before. Surrounded by a silent, wide-eyed crowd, she clutched a small bundle against her breast, wailing hoarsely. Retak’s wife knelt beside her and gently folded back the blanket. Inside lay a dead infant. The stranger clutched the baby fiercely, her hands mottled with frostbite.
    “What happened?” Seregil asked, slipping in beside Retak.
    He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know. She staggered into the village a little while ago and no one has been able to get any sense out of her.”
    “That is Vara, my husband’s cousin from Torgud’s village,” a woman cried, pushing her way through the crowd. “Vara, Vara! What’s happened to you?”
    The woman looked up, then threw herself into her kinswoman’s arms. “Strangers!” she cried. “They came out of the storm. They refused the feast, killed the headman and his family. Others, many others, my husband, my children—My children!”
    Throwing back her head, she let out a scream of anguish. People gasped and muttered, looking to Retak.
    “But why?” Retak asked gently, bending over her. “Who were they? What did they want?”
    Vara covered her eyes and cowered lower. Seregil knelt and placed a hand on her trembling shoulder.
    “Were they looking for the spirit home?”
    The woman nodded mutely.
    “But they refused the feast,” he