As the airship approached the top of the Barrier from the east, Anton wished more fervently than ever that the Professor was still alive.
The burner was roaring, a blue flame ten feet long reaching up into the envelope; the propeller was a blur, spinning at top speed as it had been for the last half hour while Anton watched the needle of the fuel gauge almost visibly declining. They had been climbing steadily almost since they left the Palace, and yet still the wall of cloud that marked the Anomaly rose higher than they had yet reached.
The wind streaming over the Anomaly from the west formed a layer of tattered cloud above them. If it had been at all a windy day it would have been impossible, Anton thought; they would have had to return to the Palace and try again some other time. But the chattering propeller could still give them headway against today’s light breeze, and though fuel was low, they weren’t out of it yet, and so they continued to rise. Now the gray wall of the Barrier was so close Anton thought he could have had a good chance of hitting it with a rock, if he’d had one close enough to throw, and he could feel the chill of it.
He watched the streaming cloud marking the very top of the Barrier coming closer and closer above them. They would hit a strong headwind at that level, he knew, and if it threw them too far to the east, they might run out of fuel for the engine before they were able to regain the ground lost.
“Gotta dump ballast,” he muttered. “Pop through that, get to the quieter air above it.”
He glanced at Spurl, the Mageborn guard who had accompanied him. He’d hoped the man might at least take instruction as they flew, but Spurl had spent the whole journey cowering in the bottom of the gondola, unwilling to even look over the side. He sat there now, eyes closed, moaning, rocking back and forth.
I wish Brenna were with me, Anton thought again. Though she had no experience in flying an airship, at least she had shown herself to have a cool head.
But Brenna was back at the Palace, and Anton was heading the other way.
The ragged gray clouds streaming over the Barrier were close above them. The envelope would enter them within minutes, and almost certainly they would be thrown back when that happened. He had to act now.
He scrambled over the legs of the guard. He didn’t want to repeat what he had done when he and Brenna were fleeing the manor and release all the ballast at once; if he did, they might find themselves so high they’d not only be gasping for air, they’d pass out and could even asphyxiate before the airship dipped back into thicker air.
But releasing too little would be almost as disastrous.
He hesitated, then decided to follow the simplest course. There were four rows of sandbags on each side of the gondola. He released two buckles on each side, letting half the ballast fall.
Instantly the airship surged upward. Within seconds the envelope was inside the streaming layer of cloud, and as Anton had feared, they were pushed away from the Barrier despite the propeller’s best efforts; but they were rising so rapidly that they were through that layer of cloud and wind within half a minute, and above it the air was much calmer. Almost at once they began to regain their lost ground.
Anton anxiously watched the fuel gauge. It seemed he could almost see it dropping toward empty… but now they were over the Barrier itself. He could look straight down at that enormous wall of fog, and then suddenly he was looking down at the land outside the Barrier, terrain very much the same but completely uncultivated, wild prairie with grass so tall that even after three months of snow the fields were more brown than white.
Anton cut the burner. They wanted to descend now, not climb, and they quickly began to do so as the cold air sucked heat from the envelope. He searched the ground below them anxiously. His navigation had been iffy at best, and he wasn’t entirely sure where they had crossed the Anomaly. But he hoped…
Ah! There, a smudge of smoke near the horizon, a dark stain on the snow-covered prairie. Elkbone, the town he and the Professor had left what seemed like a lifetime ago, though in fact it had been less than two weeks. He looked at Spurl, and smirked. The hand-picked minion who was supposed to enforce Anton’s deliverance of Falk’s reassuring lies to the poor deluded Commoners on this side of the Barrier was currently throwing up his guts over the side of the gondola.
Welcome to my world, Anton thought. Let’s see what survives of MageLord arrogance when the gentlemen of the press descend on us with flashbulbs popping.
Anton had every reason to believe they would still be there. It hadn’t been all that long, really, and since no railpath ran from Elkbone to Wavehaven, travel in winter was fraught with danger. Most of the reporters who had covered the launch had traveled here before the snow fell in the same caravan as he, the Professor, and the airship. They would be unlikely to go back until the weather warmed in spring.
They could send their words and images, though, thanks to the electromissive lines that had been strung along the road that would someday be a railpath, and that meant that whatever was said here would, before nightfall, be making news in Wavehaven. Two or three weeks later, when ships reached Hexton Down across the ocean, the President of the Union Republic would know of it. What he would do about it was out of Anton’s hands.
What wasn’t out of his hands was what he would do about it.
He would not leave Brenna at the mercy of Falk and Mother Northwind one minute longer than he had to.
The engines sputtered and the propeller stopped spinning as they swung low over a treed ridge just northeast of Elkbone. They’d obviously been spotted. People were streaming out of the town to meet them, pouring into the open field they were now drifting across. Anton watched the ground approaching and hoped the fools directly beneath him would be smart enough to move out of the way before several hundred pounds of gondola, burner, engines, propeller, and passengers landed on their heads.
At the last moment, with trees approaching and the ground still a little farther away than he would have liked, he pulled the ropes that opened the vents on the top of the envelope. Air rushed out, the envelope sagged, and with great finality, the gondola dropped the last few feet to the snow, hitting with a thump that Anton, holding on tightly, managed to weather standing up.
Spurl wasn’t as prepared, nor as fortunate. He went sprawling, banging his head on the burner and opening his scalp. And so, as the crowd swarmed around the gondola, Anton climbed out to face them while Lord Falk’s chosen emissary moaned and clutched his bloody skull in the bottom of the basket.
As he’d suspected, the reporters were there, shouted questions bombarding him so quickly he couldn’t have answered them if he wanted to, flashes from bulky black imagers half-blinding him. He looked around rather desperately for someone official, and saw him: Ronal Ferkkisson, the Lord Mayor, a short, round man with a red face, pushing his way through the crowds with the help of a quartet of beefy policemen in green capes. “Clear the way, clear the way,” the policemen growled as they approached, shoving people aside with oak truncheons. They managed to open a space next to the gondola for Ferkkisson, “Anton?” he said, peering up at him.
“Lord Mayor,” Anton said.
“Where’s Professor Carteri?”
“Dead, Your Honor,” Anton said.
“Dead!” Ferkkisson shook his head. “I knew it was suicide to cross the Anomaly.”
Um, hello, I’m right here and very much alive, Anton felt like saying, but didn’t. “Your Honor, I have urgent news,” he said. Then he raised his voice. “News that needs to get to the entire Republic!” he said loudly enough for all the reporters to hear.
Ferkkisson licked his lips. “News? What kind of news?”
“There are people on the other side of the Anomaly,” Anton said. “A giant kingdom, hidden from us… until now.”
Astonished murmurs and whispers ran through the crowd, followed by the hisses of people shushing each other so they could hear what he would say next.
Here goes, Anton thought. Taking a deep breath, he added, “They call themselves the MageLords.”
That brought an enormous rush of sound, from gasps to catcalls to outright laughter. Reporters scribbled furiously in their notebooks, smirking. Anton remembered when he would have reacted the same, when “MageLords” had been nothing more to him than the villains in children’s fairy tales.
“Can they do magic?” someone shouted.
“Can they make things disappear?” yelled someone else.
“Did they pull a rabbit out of a boot?” someone else called.
Anton hesitated, wondering how to convince them-
– and then Spurl took care of the problem for him.
The Royal guard looked like something out of a nightmare as he pulled himself to his full height inside the gondola. Blood had streamed down his face, masking his features in red, and then poured down his silver breastplate, giving him the look of someone who had survived, by the skin of his teeth, a horrifying beating. He stared around at the assembled people. They stared back.
And then, as one, the reporters with imagers raised them and started capturing pictures.
Brilliant white flashes exploded all around. Anton winced and turned his eyes away. But Spurl…
It was probably inevitable, Anton thought later, that a Mageborn guard would interpret flashing lights as a magical attack. And inevitable, too, that someone who had just discovered a terror of flying and a tendency to airsickness and had just hit his head would react so instinctively to that perceived attack.
Spurl screamed and thrust out his hands, palms up. A flash of blue hurled everyone within fifty feet of the gondola onto their backs as though struck by a giant fist. Men, women, and children sprawled into the snow. Bones broke as people slammed into each other. Blood ran from scalps and noses, staining the snow. Spurl looked beyond the fallen, moaning spectators to those outside the circle of the attack, who stood in frozen shock. He raised his hands again-
A rifle shot rang out, loud even above the screams of the people scrambling to their feet now and trying to flee.
Spurl jerked. Eyes wide, he stared down at the neat round hole in the middle of his breastplate. As blood pumped from the hole he gave Anton a bewildered glance… then his eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped like a stone into the bottom of the gondola, dead before he hit the wicker.
Anton felt something running down his cheek and wiped away a dribble of Spurl’s blood. For a moment, everything had fallen still, the sudden violence freezing everyone in place; but now chaos erupted.
It was much, much later before Anton had the opportunity to continue his story, officially to the Lord Mayor, unofficially (and very much against Ferkkisson’s wishes, but tough luck) to the reporters. After Spurl’s display, he suddenly found it much easier to convince them all of the reality of the magical kingdom on the other side of the Barrier-and the threat that Kingdom would pose if Lord Falk succeeded in lowering the Barrier and moving into the Outside world.
The stories flew out along the electromissive wires long before Ferkkisson’s official report was ready. Anton had watched the news cycle long enough to know what would happen. The stories would hit the papers. The government would have no comment because no official report had yet been received. When it did arrive, the government would be a day behind, playing catch-up as editorial writers demanded action against this new threat. Maybe they’ll build a whole fleet of airships , Anton thought. Wouldn’t the Professor have been thrilled to see that?
It would take weeks to get much in the way of military to the Anomaly; it was simply too remote. But Falk did not intend to act until after the snow was gone, Anton knew. And when he did emerge, he would find, not a small populace completely unprepared for his assault, but fully trained military armed with the same kind of modern weapons-and far more-that had just made short work of Falk’s hand-selected emissary.
If you want to set up your nasty little magical dictatorship in our world, Anton thought savagely, you’re going to have to fight for it.
But Anton didn’t intend to sit around and wait. He told Ferkkisson he would take the airship west to Wavehaven, to give the governor there an eyewitness account of everything he had seen in Evrenfels. In response to that promise, Ferkkisson spared no expense outfitting the airship for the journey. It took a few days, but at the end of it, the fuel tank was full, the engine cleaned, tuned, and freshly oiled, the burner polished, the ballast replaced, the envelope mended, frayed ropes replaced, stores loaded. Spurl’s blood had been mostly cleaned from the wicker, although a dark stain remained that Anton thought would never come out. And there were new additions, “in case of being forced down in the wilderness,” Anton had explained. A pistol, a rifle, and plenty of ammunition for both; and, at his hip, a long hunting knife with a bone handle.
On a morning whose mild air held a hint of the spring to come, Anton shook Lord Mayor Ferkkisson’s hand, waved to the crowd that had come out to see him off, posed for some final pictures, and then climbed into the gondola.
“Cast off!” he shouted to the men at the tie-down ropes, and as one, they released them. The gondola began to rise. Anton fired the burner, and lifted faster. He waved one last time to the crowd.
No doubt there was great consternation twenty minutes later when Anton fired up the propellers, seized the tiller-and steered, not west toward the distant mountains and the coast beyond, but east toward the Anomaly.
He hoped the Lord Mayor wouldn’t have an apoplectic fit, but either way, Anton was heading back to where he really wanted and needed to be:
Wherever Brenna was.
For Brenna, the journey from the Cauldron back to the Palace was as silent as before… but the silence had a different quality. Falk’s anger seemed to infuse the very air in the magecarriage. Anniska sat sunken in gloom, obviously regretting he had ever become involved, but trapped without hope of escape now. The guard sat impassively as always, but Brenna thought even his face showed more strain than before: something in the set of the jaw and the frown lines between his bushy black eyebrows.
As for herself, she had far too much time to think, far too much time to see, over and over in her mind’s eye, that horrible moment when the boy had slit his own throat, and far too much time to second-guess her decision, driven by anger and disgust, to tell Lord Falk how Mother Northwind had betrayed him.
Mother Northwind at least meant to keep her alive. Falk’s Plan, if it were to succeed, required her death. Had she committed suicide as surely as the boy by telling him the truth?
Well, if I have, she thought, at least I did so of my own free will!
It seemed cold comfort, more bravado than bravery, as she remembered Falk holding her in a tight embrace at the very edge of the platform over the Cauldron, his body pressed against her in a travesty of affection. Falk had every intention of returning her to that spot, to stand once more above the heaving lake, and next time to, she supposed, to slice her throat as wide open as that boy’s.
Maybe, she thought. But not right away. I’ve escaped him once. I can do it again.
But last time she had had Anton’s help… and now he was Falk’s twisted tool, and SkyMage-knew-where on the other side of the Barrier. It seemed doubtful he would ever return.
Mother Northwind still needs me, Brenna reminded herself. And she may not be as easy to defeat as Falk seems to think. With the two of them battling, perhaps there will be an opportunity to…
But her imagination failed her. She couldn’t plan, because she couldn’t even guess what awaited her at the Palace.
All she could do was try to remain ready, try to remain alert, try to remain…
… angry, she thought.
And with that thought, she found something to keep her occupied during the rest of the long journey back to the Palace. She sat in silence, and whenever her thoughts began sliding toward despair or self-pity, she turned them again to anger, anger at her supposed guardian, for whom she was nothing more than a vessel in which to capture the Keys, a vessel he would then smash and discard like a badly made pot to claim the Keys for himself; anger at Mother Northwind, manipulating, killing, twisting, so convinced of the righteousness of her cause that any evil she might commit could be excused; anger at King Kravon, lost in a hedonistic haze for decades, blind to the machinations going on all around him; and, finally and ultimately, anger at the Mageborn, convinced that their ability to manipulate the world through magic, an undeserved accident of birth, gave them the right to rule over and abuse the Commoners around them.
Mother Northwind is right, she thought. She’s a lying, manipulative witch, but it’s time this whole damned Kingdom was done away with, and all the MageLords and Mageborn with it.
But with that thought came one cold rivulet of doubt, cooling the fire of her fury.
In her righteous urge to punish Mother Northwind, had she ensured that the Kingdom would not only survive, but break through the Barrier and engulf the whole world?
Only two weeks ago she had been looking out of the window of her room at Falk’s manor, wishing for the coming of Springfest and lamenting the fact that nothing ever happened.
As the carriage rolled on through the silent, snow-covered prairie north of New Cabora, she wished with all her heart she was back there.
Lord Falk’s magecarriage rolled up to the Palace as the sun began to set behind the bloody shreds of clouds torn apart by a day of howling wind.
Prince Karl watched its approach from his window, staring as Lord Falk jumped down from the driver’s seat and stalked up the steps and out of sight. Another man, thin and rather sickly looking, followed, and finally Brenna emerged with one of the bulkier examples of a guard close behind. She moved slowly, almost like an old woman, as though her journey to the Cauldron had aged her beyond her years.
Does she know? he wondered. Does she know that she is the true Heir, and that I am the Magebane? Does she know everything Mother Northwind has schemed?
If so, she was the only other person beside himself who knew the truth, and it suddenly seemed very important to him to talk to her, to have someone else he could turn to. She was apparently as crucial to the success of Mother Northwind’s plan to end the rule of the MageLords as he was. Even though he had decided he shared Mother Northwind’s aims, what if Brenna did not? What if she wanted to be the new Queen, perhaps even hoped to use her position to improve life for the Commoners? What right did he have to strip away that choice and opportunity?
I’ll talk to her, he thought. I’ll talk to her now. And he turned away from the window and strode through his rooms and into the corridor, where Teran stood watch.
“I need to talk to Brenna, Falk’s ward,” he said in a low voice, though no one else was near. “She’s being taken to her quarters by a guard. I want you to relieve him and take her to the boathouse, instead. I’ll be waiting there.”
Teran nodded. “Yes, Your Highness.” He gave a small grin. “Karl.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve had word. My sister and mother are safe. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Teran.” Karl returned the grin. “And I’m glad I can trust you again.”
“I’m glad you can trust me again, too,” Teran said. “I’ll have Brenna at the boathouse within ten minutes.”
Karl watched Teran go down the corridor. When his bodyguard was out of sight around the corner, he stepped out and went the other way, down the main stairs to the grand entrance hall of the Palace, down the front steps, through the ornamental garden. He waited by the boathouse, standing next to the same tethered rowboat he’d now used twice, and staring out over the water.
Five minutes later, Teran said behind him, “Your Highness?”
Karl turned. Brenna stood beside Teran, her face pale, her dark eyes bloodshot and deeply shadowed. “Your Highness,” she said dully. “How may I serve you?”
Karl glanced at Teran. “Brenna and I are going to row across the lake. Would you be so good as to meet us on the far side, at the usual place?”
“Of course, Your Highness,” said Teran. As Karl stepped down into the rowboat and turned to help Brenna down with him, Teran started walking along the shore toward the bridge.
Karl put his back to the oars, but when they were far enough from the shore so he felt certain they could not be overheard, he shipped them and let the boat drift. “Your Highness,” Brenna said cautiously. “To what do I owe the-”
“Mother Northwind,” Karl said in a soft voice, “has recently spoken to me. Has she also spoken to you?”
Brenna went absolutely still, so still he thought she had stopped breathing. Then she said, “She has.”
“And what did she tell you?”
Again that absolute stillness. “We spoke of… my childhood,” Brenna said at last. “Her cottage is not far from Lord Falk’s manor, where I grew up.”
It seemed that if they were to break out of this careful courtly dance of noncommittal conversation, he would have to do it. “I see,” he said. “And did she tell you the truth of your childhood… that you are the true Heir of King Kravon, not I?”
Another moment of stillness, then, “Your Highness, I-”
“I’m not Your Highness,” Karl snapped. “You’re mine. Now listen, we can drift here only a few more minutes. I know what Falk had planned for you, and that Mother Northwind thwarted it. But now I must know… do you know what she has planned for you? Do you know what she has planned for us?” He paused, took his own deep breath, and asked the most important question of all. “Do you know who-what-I am. .. what Mother Northwind, if she speaks truth, has made me?”
Brenna licked her lips. “Your Highness-”
“I told you, I’m a Commoner.” And as he said that, out loud for the first time, he suddenly felt a sense of relief. Yes, he thought, I am. And glad of it!
“Your… Karl. She said that she had learned how to create a Magebane. Are you saying… you are it? Him?”
“So she has told me. And I must believe it, having twice seen magic… bounce… off of my person and rebound on the mage who cast it.”
Brenna leaned forward suddenly and took his hands. “Then do it!” she said fiercely. “Do it now! Break the Keys! Now, at a time of our choosing, not Mother Northwind’s!”
Karl felt a surge of hope, then, and relief that Brenna did not mean to hang onto the Kingdom whose rule she seemed to want no more than he did. He squeezed her hands, waiting for something to happen. ..
… but nothing did, except that his hands grew warm. “I don’t know how,” he said at last. “Mother Northwind hasn’t told me everything… she’s closemouthed, that one.”
“She’s a witch,” Brenna snarled. “A horrible hag who talks about setting the Commoners free but who is every bit as willing as Falk or any other MageLord to use and discard them as it suits her purposes.” She pulled her hands free-Karl felt a strange pang of regret as she did so-and sat back again. “But she has us where she wants us. We both want the MageLords cast down-or at least I do-”
“So do I,” Karl said.
“-but she has not told us everything we need to know to make it happen. Which means we must await her pleasure.” She suddenly clenched her fists and banged them hard against her knees. “I hate her!” she burst out. “As much as I hate Lord Falk.”
Karl, glancing over his shoulder, saw that Teran had almost reached their intended landing spot. He turned back to Brenna. “Our conversation is almost over,” he said urgently. “What do we do?”
“What can we do, but wait to be told what to do by Mother Northwind?” Brenna squeezed her eyes shut. “If she survives to tell us.”
Karl stared at her. “What?”
She opened her eyes, and he was struck by how very brown they were, a shining brown like polished wood. “I have told Falk that she has been working at cross-purposes to him. I think he must even now be confronting her in the Palace.”
“Why?” Karl cried. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I hate her!” Brenna screamed at him, and then closed her eyes and hung her head. “And I let my hatred get the better of my reason.” Her voice dropped so low he could hardly hear it. “I may have ruined everything. Handed the Kingdom to Falk, and signed my own death warrant. If he gets the better of Mother Northwind-”
And at that moment, as perfectly timed as if her line had been a cue in a Verdsmitt play, blue light flashed behind two of the windows at the eastern end of the Palace, and those windows exploded outward with a blast that echoed around the Lesser Barrier. An instant later the limestone facade covering the walls around those windows slid away like snow falling in an avalanche, peeling more of the facade with it as it fell, stripping one whole end of the palace down to bare wood. The rumbling of the facade’s fall chased the echoes of the original blast around the Palace grounds, and dust rose up to obscure the gaping holes where the windows of Mother Northwind’s rooms had been an instant before.
The blast seemed to have frightened every living thing in the Palace grounds into silence. Karl had been looking at the Palace already; Brenna had flinched, then spun around as the facade crumbled. Now she turned back to him. “He did it!” she gasped. “Falk has killed Mother Northwind!”
“And that means you’re next!” Karl shot a look over his shoulder. Teran was gesturing frantically to them to get to shore. Karl grabbed the oars, gave a sharp tug with his left and backwatered with the right, and then began rowing as if in a race.
“Where are we going?” Brenna cried.
“Out of here,” Karl panted. “Before Falk realizes you’re gone and comes after you, too.”
“But the Barrier-”
Karl said nothing, but kept rowing. Moments later he was floating just offshore from where Teran was. “Get in,” he said.
“What?” Teran said. “No… there’s been another attack… you’ve got to…”
“It wasn’t aimed at me,” Karl said. “It was aimed at Mother Northwind.”
Teran’s eyes widened. “Falk?”
“Who else? Now get in!”
Teran splashed off the shore and into the water, wading out and tumbling over the gunwale, almost upsetting the boat. Brenna fastidiously pulled her feet away as he splashed mud and water across the bottom boards.
The light was fading fast. Karl could hear shouting from the direction of the Palace, and glimpsed guards dashing through the pools of magelight, no doubt fearing some additional attack. Down by the boathouse, men were scrambling into another of the rowboats. They’ve seen us, Karl thought. Was that Falk himself, emerging through the massive front doors? Karl couldn’t be sure in the uncertain light.
Karl drove the boat as far in among the reeds as he could. Teran jumped out and pulled it up farther, then held out his hand to help Karl and Brenna out of it. Karl took Brenna’s hand, and together they staggered through the mud and pushed through the screen of bushes toward the shimmer of the Lesser Barrier and the drifted snow behind it. Teran hung back, watching the Palace. “That boat’s coming fast.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Karl said. “We’re leaving.”
Brenna’s eyes widened. “But… that’s the Lesser Barrier. You can’t-”
“Yes,” Karl said. “I can.”
With another boat heading their way Karl couldn’t take time to explain, couldn’t explain, didn’t even know if what he hoped would happen would happen. All he knew was that if Falk had truly eliminated Mother Northwind, then Brenna would die as soon as he could get her back to the Cauldron. And if Falk had discovered the truth about him, then his life was also forfeit: he might be impervious to magical attack, but he was pretty sure a crossbow bolt or dagger blade wouldn’t care that he was the Magebane.
He might only be buying them a few days-maybe just a few hours-before Falk tracked them down, but that was better than nothing. He knew-or thought he knew-that he could pass through the Lesser Barrier. But could he take Brenna with him?
Could he take Teran?
Only one way to find out. He held tight to Brenna’s hand, held his other hand out to Teran. “Take it,” he said.
Teran refused it. “No,” he said. “They won’t have seen where you went. It’s too dark. I’ll get back in the boat, lead them away. Buy you some more time.”
“Falk will kill you.”
“Maybe. But I will have done my duty.” Teran’s face was grim in the dying light. “I swore to protect you, Your Highness.”
“I’m not-”
“Whether you are or not, I swore an oath. An oath I have failed twice now. An oath I violated in spirit every time I reported to Falk about your actions and conversations.” Teran stepped back. “Go, Your Highness. Let me do my duty.”
Karl hesitated. Teran’s voice hardened. “Karl, go! Take Brenna. Good luck. And… farewell.” And then he turned and ran back through the bushes toward the boat, leaving Karl still reaching out with a futile hand to try to stop him.
“Farewell!” He called after his friend, then, tears stinging his eyes, turned to Brenna. “Hold on,” he said. He grabbed her, pulled her tight to him in a lover’s embrace, felt her stiffen-
– and with a twist and a thrust of his legs, hurled both of them at the Barrier.
Bursting into the cold air felt like plunging into an icy bath. A moment later they were rolling together in the snow.
Karl scrambled to his feet, pulled Brenna up, then spun back toward the Barrier. In the fading light, he saw Teran rowing away, his boat a long dark streak on the pale water.
Then he grabbed Brenna’s hand and led her at a run through the snow toward the yellow lights of New Cabora.