Chapter 112: Concerning Trends
"It’s fine," Ashlynn said as Hauke struggled to find a way to explain Formless Ice. She reminded herself that despite his size, Hauke was still more than five years younger than her. Learning something well enough to use the knowledge was one thing, but even she recognized that it took even greater knowledge to teach it to someone else.
"You said there were seven kinds of sorcery your people practice," Ashlynn said, offering a way to get the conversation back on track. "Is Formless Ice the one that convinced your father to invest so heavily in teaching you differently or is there more?"
"Right, seven," Hauke said, relieved that she wasn’t going to press him for an explanation. Lady Nyrielle had asked him to teach but now that he found himself trying to explain things to someone who hadn’t grown up around snow and ice their whole lives, he was finding it much harder than he thought it would be to do so.
"When we’re born, every Frost Walker has a bit of talent for at least one form of sorcery," he explained, pointing at his horn. "It shows up as the primary color at the base of the horn. Pale blue for Formed Ice, milky white for Drifting Snow, and so on. People who have only one color are said to be very unlucky unless their talent is so overwhelmingly strong that it makes up for the lack of versatility."
"But, your horn doesn’t look like it’s any one color, or even two or three colors," Ashlynn said. "It even feels like it changes color depending on how the light hits it."
"That’s why Father insisted I study so much," Hauke said. "Because I have all the colors. I can use all seven kinds of sorcery. It, it’s very rare," he said, his shoulders slumping slightly. "No one has had an iridescent horn in more than two hundred years. But everyone who has had one has been a legendary Eldritch Lord or Hero."
"That sounds like a lot of pressure," Ashlynn said, handing her fishing pole to a surprised-looking Andrus and getting up to rest a hand on Hauke’s furry arm. "Do you want to be the next Eldritch Lord? Or do you wish you could just study your magic and do something else to help your people?"
"I need to be the next Eldritch Lord," Hauke said, his voice growing firm. "Father is right that change is coming whether we want it to or not. Even our mountains are changing. The lakes are getting deeper and the glaciers are smaller than they were in my grandparents’ time."
"Some people are excited because there are more fish than ever before," he said with a heavy sigh. "And only the elders remember having lean winters where we ran out of supplies before the pass began to thaw. But Father is worried about the milder winters. He’s afraid that the mountains won’t protect us as well as they used to."
"And humans are coming," Ashlynn said with a heavy sigh of her own. "It’s the worst time for the weather to change. It makes you vulnerable right when a new enemy is preparing to attack. Wait," she said, a sudden thought occurring to her.
"I’ve been thinking about the pass between the Vale of Mists and the High Fen, but what about Airgead Mountain? Is there a route from here to there that’s affected by the change in weather?" Ashlynn asked.
"There is," Hauke said, pulling on his fishing line for a moment and then relaxing when he didn’t feel the resistance he expected. To his practiced fingers, it felt like there was still bait on the hook, but whatever had tugged on his line hadn’t taken the bait.