Page 56 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

“How marvelous!” Sylvia’s boots crunched in the snowfall as she trailed after Lorelei. “The others will be thrilled to know we’ve found a wayforward—andLudwig, too, to have another data point for his project.” She evidently found Lorelei an inattentive audience, for she asked, with renewed indignation, “Where on earth are we going?”

“Toward the Ursprung.”

Sylvia dug her heels in. “What? What about Ludwig?”

Lorelei sighed through her teeth. “He left camp to find a way out of those woods. If that’s all he intended to do, he would have come back. I expect he made his way to the summit.”

“But yousaid—”

“Forget what I said!” Her temper flared helplessly at her confusion. “I lied.”

The grave disapproval on Sylvia’s face rankled her. “I see. Setting that aside for the time being, we cannot just go . . .” She gestured vaguely. “. . . up.”

“That is exactly what we are going to do.” With that, Lorelei pressed onward in the general direction of the summit.

Sylvia let out a sound of frustration. “You are being stubborn. It’s not that simple.”

“You have been a great help so far,but—”

“First of all, it’s deeply unsettling to hear you compliment me in such an acid tone. Second ofall—”Sylvia cut herself off. “Will you stop walking for one moment and listen to me?”

Lorelei stopped so suddenly, they almost collided. “Iamlistening.”

“Then look at me!”

Lorelei drew in a deep breath and reluctantly turned around. Sylvia’s eyes were as cool as lake water, but they were flung wide and her face was flushed. If Lorelei didn’t know better, she’d say she looked almost flustered.

“Thank you.” Sylvia huffed out a shaky breath. “As I was saying. Second of all, I refuse to submit to the tyrannyof...of...!”

“Do finish that thought.”

Lorelei thought she heard her mutter something to the effect of “a scowling wax bean.”Sylvia threw her hands in the air, exasperated. “You may be the leader of the expedition, but I’m not a knight on a chessboard to be moved around at your pleasure. I have expertise you might find useful if we hope to find Ludwig and make it out of this unharmed.”

Sometimes, that obstinate streak of hers was horribly inconvenient. As much as Lorelei wanted to dismiss her, Sylvia had managed to put together what Lorelei had not. Lorelei had no survival skills to speak of and limited knowledge of the creatures that prowled the mountainside. She could not afford to ignore Sylvia.

“Fine,” Lorelei snarled. “We’ll do it your way.”

“And! How do you hope tofind—Oh.” The anger dropped clean off her face. “You agreed? I’d expected more of a fight.”

“Do I want to know what you were going to say?”

“Forests protected by eschenfrau rearrange themselves,” Sylvia said, sounding just a little smug. “You’d never make it to the summit without me.”

Lorelei might have been impressed were she not so chilled by the thought of being lost in an ever-shifting labyrinth of trees. “And you know how to navigate?”

“If Ziegler’s theory is correct, we don’t need a dowsing machine to track a source of magic.” Sylvia beamed. “The wildeleute can guide us there.”

Lorelei felt another headache coming on. “You’re joking.”

Sylvia’s expression soured. “I’m very serious! Of course, if you’d like to tryto—”

“We don’t have any more time to waste. Don’t speak.Walk.”

To Sylvia’s credit, she did.

Although the sky had lightened to lavender as the day wore on, the silence of the forest grew no less oppressive. No birdsong broke the steady crunch of their feet against the snow underfoot. Sylvia walked slightly ahead of her. She’d pinned the wild mass of her chignon in place with a hairpin capped with a red glass bead, as bright as a drop of blood. Lorelei was still considering it when Sylvia stopped dead, her arm held out in warning. Lorelei nearly crashed into her.

“Ash trees.”