Assassin's Quest

His answer made no sense to me. Then we came to the road. I watched Kettricken and the jeppas precede me. The wide road was a straight cut through the trees, its surface lower than that of the forest floor, as when a child drags a stick through sand and leaves a trough behind. The forest trees grew alongside it and leaned over it, but none of them had sent roots thrusting out into the road, nor had any saplings sprouted up from it. Neither had the snow that covered the road's surface been marred, not even by a bird's track. There were not even the muted signs of old tracks covered with snow. No one had trodden this road since the winter snows had begun. As far as I could see, no game trails even crossed it.

I stepped down onto the road's surface.

It was like walking into trailing cobwebs face-first. A piece of ice down the back. Stepping into a hot kitchen after being out in an icy wind. It was a physical sensation that seized me, as sharply as any of those others, and yet as indescribable as wet or dry is. I halted, transfixed. Yet none of the others showed any awareness of it as they hopped down from the lip of the forest onto the road surface. Starling's only comment, to herself, was that at least here the snow was shallower and the walking better. She did not even ask herself why the snow should be shallower on the road, but only hurried after the trailing line of jeppas. I was still standing on the road, looking about me, some minutes later when Kettle stepped out of the trees and onto the road's surface. She, too, halted. For an instant, she seemed startled and muttered something.

"Did you say Skill-wrought?" I demanded of her.

Her eyes jumped to me as if she had been unaware of me standing right there before her. She glared. For a moment she didn't speak. Then, "I said `Hell-rot!' " she declared. "Near twisted my ankle jumping down. These mountain boots are no stiffer than socks." She turned away from me and trudged off after the others. I followed her. For some reason, I felt as if I were wading in water, save without the resistance of water. It is a difficult sensation to describe. As if something flowed uphill around me and hurried me along with its current.

It seeks a way to escape containment, the wolf observed again sourly. I glanced up to find him trotting along beside me, but on the lip of the forest rather than on the smooth road surface. You'd be wiser to travel up here, with me.

I thought about it. I seem to be all right. Walking is easier here. Smoother.

Yes, and fire makes you warmer, right up until the time it burns you.

I had no reply to that. Instead I walked alongside Kettle for a way. After days of traveling single file on the narrow trail, this seemed easier and more companionable. We walked all the rest of the afternoon on the ancient road. It climbed ever upward, but always angling across the faces of the hills, so that the going was never too steep. The only things that ever marred the smooth coat of snow on its surface were occasional dead branches dropped from trees above, and most of these were decaying into sawdust. Not once did I see any animal tracks, either on the road or crossing it.

Not even a sniff of any game, Nighteyes confirmed woefully. I shall have to range this night to find fresh meat for myself.

You could go now, I suggested.

I trust you not alone upon this road, he informed me sternly.

What could harm me? Kettle is right here beside me, so I would not be alone.

She is as bad as you are, Nighteyes insisted stubbornly. But despite my questions, he could not explain to me what he meant.