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he sent a silent howl to Tall Tailless.48FIVEAre you scared?" said Torak. "Yes," said Renn. "Me too."They stood at the edge of the Forest, beneath the last--the very last--tree. Before them stretched an empty, white land beneath an endless sky. Here and there a stunted spruce withstood the onslaught of the wind, but that was the only sign of life.They were now as far north as any of the Forest clans had been, except for FinKedinn, who as a young man had journeyed into the frozen lands. In the two days since meeting the Walker, they'd crossed three valleys,49and glimpsed the distant glare of the ice river at the roots of the High Mountains--where, the winter before last, the Ravens had camped, and Torak had gone in search of the Mountain of the World Spirit.They stood with the north wind in their faces, staring at the trail of Wolf's captors: a brutal knife slash through the snow."I don't think we can do this on our own," said Renn. "We need help. We need Fin-Kedinn.""We can't go back now," said Torak. "There isn't time."She was silent. Since their encounter with the Walker, she'd been unusually subdued. Torak wondered if she too had been thinking about what the old man had said. Twisted legs and flying thoughts... the sideways one... big as a tree... It had raised echoes in his mind: echoes of Fin-Kedinn, speaking of the Soul-Eaters. But he couldn't bring himself to mention them out loud. It couldn't be them. Why would they have taken Wolf, and not him?So in the end, all he said was, "Wolf needs us." Renn didn't reply.Suddenly he was gripped by the fear that she would turn around and leave him to continue on alone. The fear was so intense that it left him breathless.He watched her brush the snow off her bow, and settle it on her shoulder. He braced himself for the worst.50"You're right," she said abruptly. "Let's go." Without a backward glance, she left the shelter of the trees.He followed her into the empty lands.As soon as they left the Forest, the sky pressed upon them, and the north wind scoured their faces with snow.In the Forest, Torak had always been aware of the wind--as a hunter he had to be--but apart from storms, it was never a threat, because the power of the Forest kept it in check. Out here, nothing could hold it back. It was stronger, colder, wilder: a malevolent, unseen spirit, come to harass these puny intruders.The trees became smaller and sparser, until they shrank to an occasional knee-high willow or birch. Then--nothing. No green thing. No hunters. No prey. Only snow.Torak turned, and was shocked to see that the Forest had dwindled to a charcoal line on the horizon."It's the edge of the world," said Renn, raising her voice above the wind. "How far does it go on? What if we fall off?""If the edge of the world is out there," he said, "Wolf's captors will fall off first."To his surprise, she gave him a sharp-toothed grin.The day wore on. The snow was firmer than in the Forest, so they didn't need their snowshoes, but the51north wind blew it into low, hard ridges, which kept tripping them up.Then, abruptly, the wind dropped. Now it was blowing softly from the northeast.At first it was a relief. Then Torak realized what was happening. He couldn't see his feet. He was standing in a river of snow. Around his calves, long, ghostly streams were flowing like smoke, obliterating the trail."The wind's covering the tracks!" he shouted. "It knows we need them, so it's destroying them!"Renn ran ahead to see if the trail was any clearer. She threw up her arms. "Nothing! Not even you could find it!"As she ran back to him, he saw her expression, and his heart sank. He knew what she was going to say, because he'd been thinking it himself. "Torak, this is wrong! We can't survive out here. We've got to go back.""But people do live here, don't they?" he insisted. "The Ice clans? The Narwals, the Ptarmigans, the White Foxes? Isn't that what Fin-Kedinn said?""They know how. We don't.""But--we have dried meat and firewood. And we