Chapter 67

The sun stood high in the sky and the wolves were gone when Evanis woke up again. The previous day she hadn’t been able to see the sun through the dense leaf roof of the forest but all autumn foliage had vanished overnight and been replaced by icicles, hanging down from snowy branches. Apparently, the seasons changed rather abruptly in the neighborhood of the Capassians.

As Evanis looked around the idyllic winter landscape, she noticed the wolves had left a present for her.

“Alright, buddy, let’s say we are even,” she mumbled as she picked up her saddlebags and blanket, lying by a nearby tree. “Horse was a lousy mount anyway. I’m certain he was a much better dinner.”

Evanis proceeded on her journey toward the mountains. The snowfall also continued. At sunset, she was drenched, chilled to the bone, and totally exhausted. After several fruitless attempts to kindle a fire, she ate a few slices of the dried meat she had bought for just such an emergency and the last few chunks of her moldy bread. After her meager meal, she cleared her roost from snow, took off her wet clothes and curled up beneath her thin blanket. She tried to fall asleep, but her shivering prevented it until she finally admitted defeat.

“Alright, you win,” Evanis grumbled, “but only for tonight.”

She held two frozen fingers to her lips and let out a shrill whistle. Only a moment later the big gray wolf stepped out of the darkness. He trotted toward her and lowered his massive head until their noses touched. Then he bared his teeth and licked with his long wet tongue across her face.

“Yuck - that was disgusting,” she grouched. “Alright buddy, you had your fun; now lay down. I’m cold.”

The wolf lay down by her side. Evanis nestled to his furry back and immediately fell asleep.

The next morning it had finally stopped snowing and Buddy lay still by her side. When Evanis opened her eyes she saw they weren’t alone. She was surrounded by the entire wolf pack, more than two dozen wolves, sitting on their haunches and watching her, too. A few curious puppies came cautiously closer and when she didn’t chase them off, they jumped all over her and their tongues bathed her face in wet gratefulness.

“Yuck!”

Yuck or not, at least the nights weren’t too uncomfortable anymore. The wolves even provided her with food as she experienced the next evening. Finally successful, she had just kindled a fire when one of the wolves approached her. The wolf was carrying a fawn in his snout and dropped it next to the fire. Evanis stared at the wolf’s bloody muzzle and steeled herself for the unavoidable expression of affection but it didn’t happen. Gratefully she recognized the wolf was a she-wolf and as such, of course, less mushily sentimental than a male wolf.

Evanis needed two more days to reach the mountains and to give a name to every member of her wolf pack. However, reaching the Capassians didn’t mean she had come across a feasible path to climb the mountains. Several times she followed a trail into the mountains only to discover her chosen path ended in front of an unscalable rock face or led to an insurmountable chasm. It was two days later when she noticed a raven hunkering on a snowy branch. Evanis was certain she had seen this particular bird before.

“Hello, Mother Crow,” she greeted. “Are you just checking up on me or can you do something useful and show me a path up the mountains?”

The raven straightened up to his full height of more than two feet and spread his wings with a span of almost four and a half feet.

“You’re really impressively big ... for a crow,” Evanis complimented.

The raven croaked and flew off.

“And that was an impressively loud caw,” she mused. “I don’t think Mother Crow likes me.”

Evanis went on, searching for a path up the mountains, but only about an hour later she encountered the raven again. He sat on another snowy branch of another snowy tree and watched her.

“Already back?” Evanis asked as she neared the tree. “What happened? Was your boss unsatisfied with your report and sent you back for more?”

The raven blinked, then twisted his neck and nodded toward a nearby rock wall.

Evanis’ eyes followed the raven’s hint. As she scrutinized the rock wall, she noticed the thick bush covering. The next thing she noted was the movement of only one of the bushes and when she moved closer, she felt a draft. Evanis drew her falcata, hacked a swath through the shrubs and saw a cleft in the rock wall. For a length of about ten feet, the cleft was very narrow and she had to squeeze herself through but then the gap widened, turning into a walkable corridor. After twenty more feet the path was still spacious enough but there was no light anymore. During the next hour, Evanis thought about beheading, plucking, gutting, and slowly roasting a particular big crow on a spit, while she carefully felt her way onward in utter darkness. It took another hour until she could see the light at the end of the tunnel. The exit passage wasn’t as narrow as the entree but so low she had to crawl and the last few feet she had to dig through a snowdrift.

When she finally stood in the open, Evanis tapped the snow off her clothes and was muttering under her breath, “You have no idea how badly I’ll make you suffer for all the shit you’ve put me through.”

In the following days, the list of inconveniences she was put through became even longer. Without the wolf pack surrounding her and no wood to kindle a fire, her nights were freezing cold and restless again. Tired, exhausted, and accompanied by heavy winds and snowfall she had to climb steep mountain paths, which often meant balancing on narrow trails along harsh rock faces. Farther up in the mountains, the air became so thin she wondered why she still bothered to breathe. However, she didn’t freeze nor suffocate, and when her provisions ran out after a week in the mountains, neither did she starve to death. Defying all odds, Evanis inexorably moved on, clawing her way toward the summit of the Capassians.

For nine days she fought the mountains and on the tenth day, it got even worse. The constant, heavy snowfalls and winds, she meanwhile was used to, intensified all morning. When at midday lightning and thunder joined the fun, Evanis added a blizzard Capassian-style to her list of complaints. She was climbing a rather steep slope when a thunderbolt struck a rock at the top of it. The rock broke asunder, causing an avalanche. To Evanis it looked like a stampeding herd of savage snowmen was coming down on her. She dropped flat, rammed her dagger deep into the frozen ground and clasped the hilt with both hands.

Evanis had been hit by a flying lava boulder before, and a dragoness had bathed her in her fiery breath, but being overrun by an avalanche of ice and snow was very different. It lasted much longer and it also was much colder, of course, but after the roaring excitement of the avalanche had rolled over her, she almost felt peaceful. Buried under tons of ice and snow, it was silent for the first in a long time.

“It seems you can’t make up your mind whether you want or don’t want me to visit you on top of the mountain,” Evanis voiced her thoughts. “Did you forget I don’t care what you want? If I can’t dig myself out of it, I may have to wait for the summer melting the ice, but I will get out and I will climb the bloody top of this bloody mountain. So why don’t you help me to get out of it now. It would spare me the hassle and in the end it will also be much easier on you. That much I’m willing to promise.”

Evanis had to wait for almost two hours for someone to come and melt the ice.

On the previous day in Katerra, the parents of a prince gone missing discussed their family situation.

“I thought I’ve done well enough raising our children,” Irja lamented, “but both my kids turned into runaways so they obviously must hate me.”

“Did you never run away from home when you were young?” Agon asked.

“Are you telling me I’m old?” His wife responded, the pitch of her voice rising. “And don’t you dare to compare me with your mother!”

Agon immediately realized the enormity of the mistake he had committed. “Of course you’re not - to both questions,” he hastened to answer but knew it was far too late already.

“My mother warned me about marrying you, a spoiled princeling. How right she was!”

Agon snorted. “Your mother wanted you to marry Khalib, the Crown Prince, not merely his cousin, who was a so much less desirable prospective son-in-law.”

“And I should have respected my mother’s wish,” Irja huffed. “I guess it’s fate’s revenge that now my own children don’t listen to me either.”

Agon stared at his wife, open-mouthed and speechless, before he erupted in laughter.

The door to their daughter’s chamber opened.

“Momma, why is poppa laughing?” Nahseyra investigated.

“Your poppa is laughing because he wrongly believes I’ve made a joke,” Irja calmly answered.

“Oh,” her daughter accepted. “Have you seen Grishon and Nieferitie? I cannot find them anywhere.”

“No,” Irja curtly answered but then she hauled off. “Although your dragons have grown as big as cattle, and I repeatedly asked you to let them sleep in a barn and not in your room next to a dollhouse, I never know where they are since they come and go as they please. Why don’t you ask God Jabbit? An all-knowing god like him, who supposedly demands the dragons have to sleep in your room, should also know where they are.”

Agon stopped laughing and wiped the tears from his eyes, then took his daughter’s hand. “Come Nahsie; I’ll help you find your dragons,” he said. “Your momma feels a bit tense today because she worries about your brother.”

“But auntie Anja told us Hammie is on Captain Shinta’s ship and safe there,” Nahseyra remembered. “God Jabbit likes pirates.”

“Yes,” Agon replied as they left the family quarters, “God Jabbit likes pirates and mercenaries, merchants and craftsmen, children and orphans, as well as monks, nuns, and priestesses - at least as long as they are his monks, nuns, and priestesses. He even likes the dead, or rather the undead. Of course, he also likes a lot of pretty girls. Apparently, the only people God Jabbit doesn’t like are the mommas and the poppas of the pretty girls he likes so much.”

Nahseyra giggled but then she wrinkled her nose. “Maybe God Jabbit just doesn’t understand mommas and poppas because he never had a momma and a poppa.”

Agon watched his little daughter and slowly nodded. “Maybe you’re right. I even hope it’s true that he didn’t have a father.”

A little later Agon and his daughter had left the main building of the White Citadel and were crossing the courtyard.

“Where are we going?” Nahseyra asked.

“We’re going to the soldier barracks,” Agon answered. “I hope the sentries will know where your dragons are.”

“A good day to you, Prince Commander, and to you, your Majesty, the Queen of Ibanee,” one of the perplexed soldiers greeted them as they entered the barrack sleeping quarters.

“A good day to you as well,” Agon replied. “My daughter and I are searching for her two dragons. I’m sure you have noticed them roaming the premises lately and know where they could be.”

“We sure did notice!” One of the soldier’s comrades jumped in. “And we really like the dragons. Two weeks ago, when the dragons were as small as kittens, all the rats around here suddenly vanished. A week later the dragons had grown to the size of sheep, and all the stray cats and dogs vanished too. We were wondering if our horses would vanish next when the Princess Anjatta approached our cook and they made a deal. Now there are always some goats running around and the cook pays us to keep our horses in the stables, closed and guarded ... Our meals have improved as well,” he finished, musingly.