Restless Abode: An Elfquest Holt

(Takes place directly after this.)


After their staggering brush with the Palace in Aurek's mind, and with real, warm food in their bellies, Firn and Kalt found themselves nodding over the last bites of their dinner, exhausted with the pent-up weariness of weeks of cold journeying and troubled spirits. They watched, hardly seeing, as Aurek gestured toward the wall to one side of the space, and stone flowed in to describe three more walls, a roof, a doorway, and a low shelf around the perimeter of the new room, all as if carved from the same solid, featureless rock. He helped Firn and Kalt bring in their piles of pelts from the stags still hitched outside, then bade them rest while he saw to the animals. It was a sign of just how drained they both were that they let him, didn't even make an effort to keep an eye on him as left the lodge again. The moment they'd lain down on their piles of warm skins, the two of them curled together again as they had done for weeks in their little tent, they slept heavily, dreams uncertain and restless, forboding just at the edges of consciousness, but not troubling enough to wake them.

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Travel in the early weeks of snowmelt was always a risky proposition. What little new growth there was to find in the Frozen Mountains was still half-hidden in snow or aggressively competed for by every hungry mouth just out of hibernation. Game was still lean and stringy from winter. Worst of all, the weather was about as reliable as a troll's good word - all bright sun and slush one day, then the next, bone-chilling wind off the mountain that billowed the walls of Kalt and Firn's little tent all through the night and forced them to break the trail for their deer the next day, lest the newly re-frozen, brittle snow crust slice their mounts' legs to ribbons.

The only bright spot as the harsh days dragged on was that the weather did noticeably gentle as they left the mountains behind. By the time they'd traveled for two-eights of days, the deer were able to truly graze on new green grass instead of digging for frozen winter leavings, and their riders were able to remember what it was to be, if not warm, at least better than half frozen.

But getting clear of the mountains had been only the first step - the next was deciding a place to go, and what to do when they got there. That was a question that had left Firn stirring her brains until her head felt like a pot of cold mash. Did they just dig a lodge out of the first likely hillside they found and set up what passed for a tribe there? Did they try to find an overland route to other elves? Maybe, but what other elves were there? Rayek had long since taken Cutter's Wolfriders away to another land, if Kahvi's tales were true. The Sun Village was at the end of a long troll tunnel, and High Ones only knew if Zey had left any of them alive on his double-cursed quest.

But then again, there was Kahvi, who'd returned so briefly with her monstrous lovemate, Tyldak. He'd stirred half-remembered tales from Firn's childhood, of a mountain full of magic-strong elves who rode on great birds. They were all supposed to be dead too...but still. There might be something left there worth investigating, even if only an empty place to hole up and stock supplies until they had a better plan on where to strike out for.

Those stories hadn't come with marching directions, of course; there wasn't much to do for that except keep heading south and hope that a bear-poking mountain wasn't too small a landmark to miss.

And, as it turned out, it wasn't.

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This artwork (c) Warp Graphics.