The Northern Approach by Jim Galford

out smells was not as refined as he would need to be sure of his choice.
    “We should split up and hurry,” he announced, pointing at the lower path. “Go that way and meet me back here in a half hour. They aren’t more than a couple minutes ahead of us, so we should find them fast, before someone else does.”
    Taking the high trail as On’esquin jogged down the descending one, Raeln headed up a winding path that kept sharply turning through the trees. He could see little of what was coming, making him nervous that he might be walking into a trap. The scents were definitely getting clearer, and he soon could pick out the healer’s scent, as well as his children and one other. He could not be certain, but he thought the fourth was a fox who smelled remarkably similar to the children.
    Raeln rounded another curve and slid to a stop, facing a nearby wall of mists that cut off the path. The dimly glowing cloud swirled around a cave entrance, pouring into the cave as though it were seeking something the same place he was. Other tendrils wrapped around the peak of the mountain, covering it as though searching for more ways inside.
    The scent was strong now, telling Raeln he had gone the right way. That was little reassurance when facing the glowing cloud On’esquin had warned him about. The other wildlings had come through less than five minutes before. He probably could have thrown a stone and hit them if he could see through the mists. They needed him.
    “He doesn’t know for sure that it’ll kill me,” Raeln told himself aloud, walking up to the edge of the mists. The wildlings were in that cave—he was certain of it. He could clearly smell them now. “Please be alive when I get there.”
    Closing his eyes, Raeln ran into the cave, charging straight through the mists. Pain flared across his skin as though hot ashes had been thrown onto his fur, but the feeling soon passed and cooler air washed over him. When he looked around again, he was inside the cave, where the light of the mist was all that gave him any illumination. The flowing tendrils clearly lit the path ahead, though they mostly filled the passage. He would have to walk through them repeatedly if he were to get to the wildlings.
    “Hold on, I’m coming!” he shouted and plunged into the mists again.
    This time the sensation of falling into snow or being battered with ice assailed his body, making Raeln shiver and slow his pace as his muscles trembled. The cold rapidly turned back to heat, varying every few feet within the glowing cloud. Through it, he attempted to use his nose more than his eyes to find the path.
    The scent came to an abrupt halt, and Raeln looked around in confusion, wondering where the wildlings were. He should have been atop them, but he stood waist-deep in the mists that flowed through the tiny passage in the mountain. The scent around him indicated they had been there seconds before, but no trail led away.
    Slowly, the mists that came up to his waist began to make his legs ache, the pain spreading through the rest of his body. It felt as though his bones were on fire, but Raeln had nowhere he could go to escape.
    A rumbling crash around Raeln gave him only a second to shield his face as the cave collapsed. He fell to the ground, curling into a ball to attempt to minimize how badly crushed he would be, assuming the collapse did not entirely fill the cave. Then the sounds were gone, replaced by a creaking that seemed very out of place.
    Opening one eye tentatively, Raeln found he was not in the cave anymore and the mists were rapidly receding. Around him were the walls of a small unlit home, covered with artwork and sculptures in a style he had never seen before. Lying near his feet, two men in loose cotton clothing lay staring at the ceiling, the pale look of their skin telling him they were long dead.
    Raeln slowly uncurled and tried to grasp what he was seeing. At first he believed the mists had somehow snatched him, taking him