So I let them struggle. The water finally boiled, the oats and apples eventually cooked. We each had a small portion and then waited while Per cooked more. Lant looked a bit better after he had eaten. I gave the crow a stingy portion of bread. I filled my own little pot with snowmelt and made tea for us. We each had a cup and drank it slowly. I gave Per the first watch, with strict instructions that he was to keep the fire well fed. I no longer had a wolf to protect me through the night. This place and its memories were cutting my heart with loneliness and I longed for the Fool as he had been, for Nighteyes at my side. I could almost recall how the fur on the back of my wolf’s neck would have felt, tipped with cold and then warm near his skin. I reached for him but found only silence.

I showed Perseverance a star, and told him to wake Lant for his watch when the star was over the top of a fir tree. I gave Lant the same instructions, and told him to wake me when the star had journeyed into the bare branches of an oak.

“Keep watch for what?” Lant looked around the silent forest.

“Wild creatures. Big cats. Bears. Anything that might see us as prey.”

“They’re afraid of fire!” Lant insisted.

“And that’s one reason why one of us stays awake and keeps the fire fed.” He did not ask me the other reasons and I did not offer them: That at least once the Servants had used this same portal. That sometimes forest creatures were hungry enough not to fear fire.

Lant and I tried to make ourselves comfortable in the cramped tent. When we had settled back-to-back, I was grateful for his body-warmth. I had just begun to doze off when he spoke. “I know you didn’t want me to follow you.”

“Coming through the Skill-portal with me when I didn’t expect you or Perseverance was incredibly dangerous. We were very lucky.” I thought about taking them back through the pillar. The obvious broke over me. Perhaps one of Nettle’s Skill-users could come through and then take them back, so I didn’t have to. Belatedly, I realized that I had not told Nettle that we were safe. I composed myself and reached out.

“Why do you dislike me so much?”

“Hush. I’m trying to Skill.” I pushed his blunt question aside. I reached out. Nettle? Dutiful?

I heard a distant music, like wind in the trees. I focused on it and tried to draw it closer to me. Fitz? Fitz? Hearing Dutiful was like listening to someone shout over driven surf. His thought was carried to me on Thick’s Skill-music, like flotsam tossed on a wave. I pushed my thoughts at him. We’re all safe. Lant and Perseverance came with me.

Perseverance?

The stable boy from Withywoods.

What happened? You were silent so long!

We needed to build a shelter and make a fire right away. It’s very cold here.

Fitz, it’s been a full day since you left, and a bit more than that.

Oh. I was silent for a time, absorbing that. It didn’t seem that way. It seemed as if we stepped in and out again.

Fitz?

I’m here. We’re fine. My distrust for that pillar flared anew. It had devoured Bee, and we’d experienced a delay. I would not ask Nettle to risk one of her Skilled ones in it, nor chance sending Lant and Per through it again. Thick’s Skill-music rose and fell. I reached for it, and it slipped away. I arrowed my message to them. Don’t worry! We will be fine here. Tell Chade that Lant is with me.

Nothing. No response. Distant music and then that faded. I came back to the tent and Lant’s sullen silence. No. That was the deep steady breathing of sleep. I’d not have to answer his question tonight. I had others to occupy me. Was my Skill damaged somehow? How had I not realized how long we’d been in the pillar? Why was it so difficult to reach Nettle and Dutiful? I should have lain awake worrying but I didn’t. I realized that when Lant shook my shoulder.

“Your watch,” he said hoarsely. I sat up in the dark, and beside me Perseverance muttered at my letting the cold air under the blankets we’d shared. I hadn’t even woken when Per and Lant had changed places. Not good. Dragging them through the Skill-portal had taken a heavier toll on me than I’d realized. I crawled out of the tent, every joint aching, and reached back to take the cloaks I’d added to our blankets but, “Here,” Lant said, and pushed a small bundle of bunched fabric at me. “The boy let me use it. It was all I needed.”

“Thank you,” I said, but Lant was already crawling into the tent. The Elderling cloak was lighter than silk. I shook it out and wrapped it around me and pulled the hood up over my head. For a short time I shivered, and then my own warmth surrounded me. I went to the fire and sat down on a chunk of a log. It was too low and uncomfortable but it was better than sitting in the snow. When I wearied of that, I rose and paced slowly around the old market-circle. I came back to the fire, fed it, packed snow into the pot, melted it with a few tips of the evergreen needles, and drank it as tea. Twice I tried to Skill to Nettle with no success. I sensed a strong current of Skill and the muttering of the Skill-road, imbued with the thousands of memories of Elderlings who had passed over its surface. If Nettle heard me, I could not pick her voice out from theirs.