Frostwind's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Frostwind tightened the straps on her pack and stepped out of the cozy cottage that served as her field base. Snow crusted the stable roof. Inside her notebook, three months of bloodline checks waited beside one blank page: the location of the snow-mare's valley. Without that, none of it mattered. She spent the morning searching the ridge for any sign. Tracks, broken brush, anything. The wind scrubbed the slopes clean. By noon, she was ready to turn back. Then she saw it. A frost antelope picked its way along a narrow shelf, split hooves clicking on ice. It paused, watched her, and slipped through a gap in the rocks she had not noticed before. Frostwind followed. The gap opened onto a hidden draw, sheltered and still, the air colder by ten degrees. She drove her tall compass marker into the frozen ground at the mouth of the draw. The bronze rose caught the low sun. She had her lead. Now the valley had a door — and she had to find what waited past it before the thaw.