Andana Frostedge's Arc

Chapter 9 of 9

Varek and the hunter were gone by dawn. Andana stood alone at the shed and did her sums. The child's map named a blue lake and small houses. But more hunters would come by spring, and she had one leaning wall and one fire pit. She could not warm ten people at once. She could not test a crowd without the crowd seeing her tests. A waystation that took only two travelers at a time would kill the third. She needed a bigger room, and she had no way to build one alone. A striped animal broke the problem for her. It came nosing past the woodpile, a skunk with a long snout and thick fur, digging under the snow crust. She followed it because she wanted to see where it slept. It ran a straight line north, then vanished behind a fold of rock. Andana climbed after it. Behind the rock a gap opened in the hillside, wide enough for her shoulders. Warm air touched her face. She had never felt warm air on the tundra. She went in. The cavern was ice and stone, but it glowed. Crystals lined the walls and held a soft light. A hearth burned near the center with no wood in it. The heat was steady and gentle. The room was three times her shed, dry, roofed by solid rock. It would hold twenty travelers. It would hide her tests behind stone. Something moved in the far shadow. A giant stood there, taller than the shed's leaning wall, covered in spiky light-blue icicles. Andana reached for her knife and stopped. The giant only looked at her. He did not lift a hand. "You followed the skunk," he said. His voice was flat and plain. "It lives here. I do not mind it." "You made this place?" she asked. "I made it. I do not use it." He stepped closer. His spikes clinked. "Heat hurts me. I keep to the cold country. This hearth is too warm for me now." He said it without complaint, the way a man names the weather. Andana's chest went tight. The warmth she needed was the warmth that drove him out. "I bring lost people off the tundra," she said. "I have one wall and one fire. It is not enough for the ones who are coming." The giant looked at the hearth, then at her. "Then take it. A made thing should be used." He named his reason once and stopped there. "I am crossing the mountains soon. Someone waits for me." She did not thank him with many words. She put her hand flat on the warm stone wall and felt the room hold heat that no wind could steal. By nightfall she had moved her medicine trunk inside. The shed would stand as a marker. This cavern would be the waystation now. She could warm a crowd at last. But a warm cave draws every kind of traveler, and she still had only her beast and her moss to tell friend from hunter, one guest at a time, in a room built for twenty.