Mountain pass: 6

Harbend woke late in the morning. Arthur watched him stirring and left the wagon. He was back in a moment and offered Harbend a cup of steaming tea.

"Welcome back."

Harbend groaned and shivered. "It is freezing! Where are we?"

"We're where you fell asleep yesterday, and you're happy to be freezing," Arthur answered.

"We have to get going. How late is it?"

"It's late, but we're not going anywhere today. There are a couple of funerals to be taken care of first." Arthur was surprised by the coldness in his voice.

"Funerals?"

"Yes, a soldier and a trader froze to death during the night before Gring could find them. A few others suffer frostbite but they'll recover."

"Frostbite?"

Arthur explained, still feeling strangely detached from what he was saying. Somehow he couldn't accept that Harbend, who he had trusted to know everything about this world, could have made such a dangerous mistake. Somehow, if he was honest to himself, he couldn't accept that a friend he trusted didn't know everything there was to know, and the thought shamed him. He had no right to expect Harbend to handle all dangers they encountered. After all, the man was close to twenty years his junior, and Arthur, not Harbend, was supposed to know how to travel during winter. That lack of foresight cost a man and a woman their lives.

He turned away so as not to have to meet Harbend's stare.

"Arthur, thank you."

"Thanks for what?"

"I thank you for saving my life."

Shame grew even stronger, and Arthur only nodded before leaving the wagon.

He started to untie his horse but decided against it. Instead he climbed the trek to where he knew people were making ready to mourn. He needed to see what his negligence had cost others.

He was almost at the burial when he met his two human self-appointed apprentices. Both men were wearing no more than the silks they had donned several days earlier, and Arthur wondered why he didn't see any signs of frostbite. Probably some more of their strange magics. He examined the man closest to him. Trai of the Achnai family, and titled Khar, just like his companion, Escha. They looked tired.

"What are you two doing here?" No response. Arthur was about to repeat his question when he realized neither of the men would understand a single word he said if Gring wasn't present. He bowed stiffly and continued past them.

#

They crossed the summit two days later. It was slow and dangerous, but with the worst of the blizzard behind them they had to move on before the trek turned into an icy hell impossible for horses to climb.

The descent was a somber affair. Two lives lost so soon after they left the Roadhouse was more than enough to remind them of the dangers ahead. It was no longer the tedious but safe journey between Keen and Erkateren, and their lack of respect had already cost too much. The evenings were silent, and only a few campfires saw people laughing at stories told. Arthur knew the mood was turning low, but he couldn't find a way to remedy the dangerous situation. It wasn't until Gring and the two mages from Khanati cornered him one day he was forced to acknowledge his own importance. He agreed to attend different campsites strewn out along the track. He told stories, none very long, but the prospect of listening to a taleweaver was enough to keep away complaints from all but the angriest.

Some made big eyes at his three followers, but most of the scared stares were aimed at him. The rumor of his use of a magic device of death had spread through the entire caravan, but still, he was a taleweaver, and it was apparently a thing rare enough for anyone to ever listen to one that not once did he hear a complaint or a comment of fear voiced. At the cost of much needed sleep Arthur managed to give the escort their respite. When he finally became too tired to ride during daytime and talk people into laughing after nightfall, the soldiers had managed to enforce discipline again.

Despite his earlier resolve to find anything unusual about the flora and fauna on Otherworld Arthur only managed to identify gigantic bracken he suspected grew nowhere back on Earth. Pines and firs were less common on this side of the mountain range. Of dragonlings there wasn't even a trace.

Arthur forced his horse to catch up with the vanguard one late morning. The air had something new to it, a freshness it had lacked during the descent into the woods on the eastern side of the mountains and he was eager to know what it was. He heard gasps and when he rounded a corner he was stunned as well. A mat of whiteness stretched out into infinity, almost like the surface of a moonlit sea. He sat on his horse, fully enjoying himself for the first time in days in a stillness broken only by gusts of winds running through the trees around him and bending the high grass like waves on an ocean. Yes, it was definitely amply called the Sea of Grass.