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"Like a foul odor, a clammy touch," Riana had whispered. Her
hands, clenched in white-knuckled fists at her sides, trembled
when she spoke. Some fearful thing seemed to hover just beyond
their sight, breathing in the trees like no wind that Tanis had ever
heard before. It groaned piteously, and wept with winter's dying
sign.
Shivering in the raw wind, Tanis nodded to Flint. "We could
follow this feeling like a well-marked road."
"Aye, well we could," Flint said, running his thumb along the
haft of his axe. "But what would we find? Nothing we'd like to, I'll
guess." The memory of the phantoms sent more chill through him
than the real wind stinging his face now.
The faint path broadened for a while, a rocky trail barren even of
dirt, leading them ever upward. It seemed, at times, that the wind's
voice really was the wail of dead things keening for life's loss. The
trees, naked and stunted, warped as though by some de mented
hand, were only ugly growths clinging to life by the whim of cruel
nature. Then, when no thing grew at all, when the forests had been
left far behind and their breath was coming hard and fast in the bit-
ter, thinning air, the path narrowed again, fading to a pass between
high peaks. It vanished suddenly at the top of a boulder-strewn
cliff. Behind them lay the dark forest, before them, and far below,
a narrow vale.
Riana, shivering and exhausted, took the last few yards of the
pass with Tanis's help
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