Chapter Seven
Ice splintered under Nanda’s feet, the sound attended by the slush and squelch of soft earth drowned in snow, and half frozen. The Bones was perilous territory at any time, but in the depths of the winter, only the foolish ventured to leave the roads, and plunge into the wildernesses that lay in between.
The foolish, or the spirit-sighted. Nanda walked with her eyes half-closed, relying on other, superior senses to warn her where to set her feet, and where lay obstacles to avoid. Here a hillock, scrubby with withered grass and hidden beneath drifting snow; there a sudden dip in the earth, deep enough to break an ankle in, lying meek and deadly beneath an ostensibly solid surface of ice and snow. Even she, sensitive though she was, did not venture lightly into the Bones at s
