The Eye of the Hunter Read Free

the
Fé
and
Mygga
came near. Rolling on the ground. Nuzzling. Bouncing. Dropping down on their forelegs, inviting play. Savages acting like puppies! Aye, these were the folk of legends told by the lore tellers while gathered ’round the fires; of that, there was no doubt.
    “Yah, yah!”
    Onward hammered the team through the storm, the sled
shsshing
after.
    Faeril looked at Gwylly, her gaze of amber capturing his of emerald. “Shlee knows,” she said, smiling, glancing up at B’arr and then back to Gwylly. “Shlee knows.” Then the damman turned to face front once more.
    Out before her ran nineteen dogs, two by two, except for Shlee alone in the lead, the dogs of each pair running on opposite sides of the tow line, each fastened to that gang line by their individual tug lines. Had Faeril measured, she would have found that the team was evenly spread out over a distance of nearly eighty feet from the first dog to the last, giving them room to run, and Faeril could see at most ten yards beyond the lead dog ere her vision gave out. Hence she knew that if the eyesight of Shlee in the lead was like her own, then the dog could be seeing no more than thirty or forty yards beyond into the storm, and the wee damman wondered what would happen should there be a crevasse in the way?
    * * *
    They came to the old stone ring atop the low hill within a half hour, Shlee somehow finding it in spite of the storm. Ruluk’s sled with Laska in the lead, and Tchuka’s with Garr, running in on their heels. Still the snow blew and swirled in the moaning wind, and the stone wall of the ruin was but a vague darkness on the crown of the tor.
    And as the Aleutans separated the three teams a distance from one another, and began driving widely spaced individual stakes into the frozen ground and tying a dog to each, Gwylly and Faeril were joined by Riatha and Aravan, and they began unloading the sleds, carrying goods through theblow and into the tumbled remains of a small round building, the ruin open to the sky, snow swirling in.
    Her voice nearly lost under the groan of the wind—” ’Tis from the eld days,” murmured Riatha, setting down her burden, the golden-haired Elfess running her hand over the stone, her silver-grey eyes gazing hither and yon, her head turning this way and that, as if seeking unseen sights and listening for unheard voices.
    “A watchpost, I would say,” responded Aravan, placing his bundle next to Riatha’s, the Lian Elf slender and dark, his hair as black as a raven’s wing, his eyes deep blue, as were those of other Elves of his kindred.
    A faint tremor ran through the earth, and Faeril placed a hand against the rock. “Dragonslair?” she asked, receiving a nod from Riatha.
    “Aye, wee one. From Kalgalath’s ruin thousands of Springdays agone. As a bell remembers its ring, so too does the world remember the Dragon’s destruction.”
    Faeril said nothing in return, for she had read the ancient diary of her long-dead ancestor, some thirty generations removed; and the faded writing spoke of a region of quakes, there in the Grimwalls. Even so, to actually feel the earth shudder gave her pause. And words from a thousand years back rose up in her mind and her heart raced, for she knew that when they reached their goal they would be at a place where, now and again, the world shook even more violently, than these faint echoes from afar. And that would be soon now, for they were but a day or so from their destination: the Great North Glacier, a wide, deep river bound forever in ice, imperceptibly flowing out of the Grimwall. And though it lay only a day or so away, time was of the essence, for she knew as well that in the dark of the night the Eye of the Hunter now streamed overhead, and an eld prophecy stood due, the augury of a seer cast more than a millennium past Faeril shivered at the thought.
    Aravan raised up his hand, reaching for the top of the standing wall, falling a foot or so short. “Not very tall, this