Wheat had not wintered well. The Lowland invasion last fall had forced her to stray far to the western highlands with her flock this winter past and she was having a tough journey back to the Middlelands with her Jacob Sheep. The ewes were heavy with lamb, the paths were steep. To compound her hardship, sudden spring rains had swollen the rills and streams as she herded the sheep east, birthing freshets along Glacier Pass that blocked her usual trek, delaying her return. These past few days the smell of smoke increased as she trekked east. Now she was close enough to glimpse it like sooty fog settling into the river valleys under the shadow of the Northland Glacier, burn out from the Crystal Caves that lay behind her now, she had no doubt. The haze of smoke on the horizon struck her with fear at what may have been unleashed from the days of old, but there had been no summon--not that she could have seen any fire in the sky, so far removed from her usual path was she.
Although unavoidable, Wheat's tardiness meant that she had completely missed the World's Fair in Middlemarch, something that had not happened in decades. It was a crying shame, for the fair committee looked to her to judge the skirted fleeces and the finer hand spun yarns. Known far and wide as a fiber savant, she had only to touch fleece to ken its animal family, staple length, loft and future twist. She could even envision the resultant garment and the properties it would have, although this knowledge she kept to herself unless asked.
Only the large felted backpack under her oilskin cloak or the twin crystals knotted around the curl of her shepherd's crook with sheep gut string could possibly give her away, had anyone been near enough to notice. After a close encounter with a band of Lowlanders last fall had sent her scurrying to the western prairies with her sheep, she had seen nary a middle lander or north lander since the winter snows had blocked the migratory footpaths. The shepherds she encountered out west had little knowledge of the twelve or their yarns, although she dared reveal nothing because magic was still forbidden in all the lands.
As if reading her mind, the amber crystals on her staff clicked and clacked together softly in the breeze, chattering to each other in a way they hadn't for years. Crystallized amber from the Burnt Caves, each cabochon encased a large beetle imprisoned within when the crystal had not yet hardened. These rare jeweled coffins were dulled now, weathered by seasons past, but Wheat could recall a time when each scarab glowed with an opaque fire, the beetles preserved for eternity lit from within. Catching the roughened orbs in her hands, Wheat gave the them a gentle squeeze and thought she felt a pulse of warmth in reply. But when she scrutinized the crystals, they remained dormant. With a sigh, she let them loose to swirl to and fro around her staff. Although curious at their sudden liveliness, Wheat had more immediate things to worry about.
What worried Wheat were simple day to day hand to mouth quandaries. She had several rams to cull from her current herd, many of her ewes were due to lamb this spring and she was sorely short of Northland Silver. She hated to hazard the handsome price her yearling rams would have brought under the exotic breed auction tent at the World's Fair in Middlemarch. Small and hardy, their coats glistened black and white, the tiny horns three and four to a head, each marking unique, genetically perfect for stud.
Her favorite was little Tracks and she treated him like a favorite dog, such was her fondness for the young ram who knew his path from the Middlelands into the highlands of the north and back instinctively. This animal was one she knew she could never part with. His silver bell was the first tinkle she heard at daybreak before the hungry bleating began outside her tent signaling time to move on. Plentiful with winter grasses, the western prairies were far behind her now and the sheep grew hungrier as they foraged in the snow. Having missed the fair auction, she had no choice now but to herd the sheep along the high eastern route through Glacier Pass and then south into Bordertown and from there to the stockyards. At the crossed tracks, Wheat stuck her shepherds crook into a snow bank and squatted in her oilskin coat, blowing into her gloved hands as the crystals on her staff clinked once more. There was not much daylight left and the high track ahead looked daunting. Climbing the switchbacks to the mountain passes below the Burnt Caves would add two days to her trip, but taking the southern route only to arrive in Middlemarch after the fair was useless. Tracksie trotted up, his black and white face nosing at her coat, his bright eyes questioning the difficult path looming ahead.
"Two more days, along the ridge track," she sought to explain as the other sheep milled behind him restlessly. "It can't be helped, even if the ewes lamb before we reach the valley."
Ignoring her, the small sheep turned tail and trotted off down the familiar track toward the lower pass instead.
"Tracksie," she scolded, heaving her voluminous self to her feet as the other sheep began to follow him. "Tracks get back here."
With a turn of his fine head, Tracks offered her a questioning look, his bell tinkling merrily, before he turned and trotted off further. Soon the entire flock was ambling along behind the small ram who had disappeared around the next bend. Wheat could not understand his defiance. Shaking her head wearily, she plucked her staff from the snow bank, and tapped it on the ground, crystals clacking.
"Tracksie, now look what you've done," she called. Soon she would have to run to the front of the flock to ward them off or have no choice but to chase her own sheep down the valley. She clapped the staff on the snowy ground again, to no avail and then pounded it, this time with authority. "We need to take the high road."
The crystals tied around her staff hit and sparked as she talked, threatening to ignite. Startled, the sheep moved off more quickly now, the downward slope giving them momentum. "There's too much water down this way," she argued after her dwindling flock.. " I don't want to hike into the valley only to find some new river to ford or freshet to go round." Soon she was alone. "Shards," she swore softly.
Even though darkness was falling, she felt the weak glow before she saw it. The amber crystals sputtered to life like an oil lamp whose wet wick almost refused to catch, sending a pulse of warmth through her staff. Wheat looked up in awe as the golden glow spread through the orbs, outlining the scarab beetles within which shone with a jeweled radiance all their own. Tilting the staff, Wheat focused the ambient light on an icy drift, satisfied to hear the hiss and sizzle as the circles of amber burnt holes through the snow in seconds.
The insects encased in the amber crystals looked as luminescent as they had when alive. How long had it been, ten or twenty years since the crystals last came to life? Winter Wheat had come to believe that like all other forbidden things the magical cabochons would remain forever dormant. Mesmerized by her staff she almost failed to recognize the insistent glow for the signal it was: danger.
First she scented the acrid smoke, then the crystals began to pulse with the footfalls of many booted feet before she glimpsed the dark outlines of soldiers on the trail above heading toward her. Their short muscular stature revealed them as Lowlanders she would have met head on had she continued along the high road. It was a large raiding party, maybe fifty or more of them, carrying the oily smudge torches used to burn out the ice caves, hauling a sledge of ice encased plunder. Hurriedly, Wheat pulled off her oilskin cloak and unshouldered her felted backpack, loosing the drawstring in one swift move. They would come upon her any second. There was no place to hide but in plain sight. First she dowsed the crystals with the hooded staff cover. It had been cleverly dyed and felted by Sierra's own hand in the colorway of Winter Wheat for emergencies such as this, although Wheat had not needed to hide the amber crystals from anyone in twenty years. Thank heavenly hand knits she threw nothing away. Hurriedly, she donned the matching traveling cloak, snug after all these years and stood there unseen along the icy track as the Lowlanders came to the crossed paths and halted not ten yards away.
Too late, Wheat noticed her oil skin cloak discarded in the snow and hoped the night sky would hide it, but the slick cloak was the first thing the advance scouts saw in their torchlight. One of them hooked it on the edge of his pike and sniffed it disdainfully before swinging it around as an offering to his leader who gave it only a desultory glance. There were a few dismissive hand gestures Wheat did not understand before her oilskin dropped to the ground unwanted. Further eye movement and gesturing made it obvious even to her inability to translate that they had seen the sheep tracks and meant to steal her flock along with whatever else they had plundered this day. She thought of poor Tracksie and his companions herded south to feed Lowland armies and it was all she could do not to reveal herself, but her ability to pass unseen was her only advantage. Except for maybe the crystals.
As the Lowlanders moved off down the southern track after the sheep, she retreated silently to let them pass. It was full dark now and as the guarded sledge pulled by sturdy Lowlanders slid by, she saw it held a large chunk of glacier ice yellowed with age, opaque with a darkened form inside. Fear stabbed her heart and it was all she could do not to cry out with dread as she recalled Sierra's legends of the tales of old.
When last the world ended, it had been in a sudden and swift age of ice that had taken the ancients unaware, according to Sierra's yarns. First one sun burnt out and then the ancients fought among themselves over the remaining sun which weakened as well, throwing the world into darkness. Snow packed upon ice timelessly. Younger and much larger than it was now, the Northland Glacier began its slow trek south as the world began to thaw, sculpting mountains and scraping valleys as it reshaped the lands. The frozen graves of the ancients and the evil they had spawned lay entombed deep within its belly, secreted in unnamed caverns that had formed labyrinthine beyond the Crystal Caves in the thousands of years it took for the world to wake again.
When the Potluck broke up, the Lowlanders had burnt out the opening to the south face of the Glacier as their first act of defiance as in search of the Crystal Caves. The yawning caverns of melted ice froze once more. Now called the Burnt Caves, they were used as a detainment area by the Northland Guard. Political prisoners and enemies of the Borderlands were brought to the caves, never to return home.
Wheat wondered if the Lowlanders had finally discovered a hidden entrance to the Crystal Caves and gone deep into the belly of the glacier as well, for surely this entombed form must have been robbed from the frozen graveyard within the lost caverns beyond the legendary chambers that held the magic crystals. Wheat had never been to the Crystal Caves for to venture there meant no sane return, but she knew Lavender Mae had been to the Caves and beyond. Last year she had stumbled upon Mae at the edge of a freshet below the Burnt Caves and Mae had recognized her but run off to the high cliffs beneath the shadow of the glacier where no one dared to venture.
Wheat watched the Lowlanders silently. No wonder her crystals had roused themselves. Wheat had to reach the Potluck and quickly, for there was no time to waste if Lowlanders were robbing ancient graves or worse yet, trying to wake the dead. She must convince Aubergine to summon the twelve and soon or risk the world ending again as the legends said, in fire or ice. And from the smell of smoke in the air, she feared it would not be ice this time. After the last Lowland soldier passed she picked her oilskin from the snow and stuffed it in her sack before following them down the well beaten path south.