The Northern Approach by Jim Galford Page A

somewhere else, but then he looked out the open front door and saw the hillside leading up to the cave he had entered. All of the scents he had followed were gone, swept away with the arrival of the house, complete with its own scents.
    Stumbling out of the house, Raeln stared in complete confusion at the mountainside he had climbed to get there, then turned around and regarded the house that now sat where the peak of the mountain should have been. Nearly fifty vertical feet of stone was gone, creating a flat plateau atop the mountain, occupied only by the slightly leaning home and the mists that were rapidly retreating down the back side of the mountain.
    “Did you find them?” called out On’esquin as he came up the path, but Raeln could not find words to answer.
    The orc lumbered up to the door of the house and looked at it suspiciously. He gave Raeln a queer look and then marched into the house, glared at the contents, and soon came back outside. “Mists?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” Raeln answered, barely hearing himself speak as he stared at the home. Even the construction style was foreign to him. The men inside wore armor with insignias he had never seen before. After years of military training, he had thought he knew all the insignias used in the region.
    On’esquin reached back and closed the door of the home and then smiled at Raeln. “You surprise me yet again,” he noted, patting Raeln’s shoulder. “You got lucky that it didn’t touch you. The mists connect different times and places, but they destroy anything that does not have the power to resist them. No mortal being can touch the mists and not be torn apart. Even the Turessians, myself included, risk being destroyed if the mists catch us.”
    Raeln looked around until he saw the mists far below on the mountainside, sweeping away toward the south to rejoin with the main cloud. He rubbed the bracelet he wore nervously—which was hot to the touch for some reason—wondering what had just happened and where the wildlings he needed to find had gone.
    “The man…his children…” Raeln managed, staring in dismay at the house that did not belong. “Where did this come from? Where are they? I had them…I was right there.”
    “Judging by the sand and style of structure, I would guess the Corraithian desert. The people you sought might be there, though they will likely be in worse shape than the bodies I saw inside. Most mortals are torn to pieces and scattered across the area in a fine red mist where the cloud chooses to spit them out. No matter what we might wish, they are gone, Raeln. There is nothing we can do. Pray these were not the ones we needed.”
    Memories coming to him in a rush of the mere minutes he had spent with the kind wildling man and watched his children suffering through their stay at the slave camp, Raeln felt as though he had lost another person in his life. The plaintive eyes of those children came to mind, making his chest hurt. He did not even know their names, but he had dearly hoped those people would be unharmed and he could be the one to save them. Now, the man and his children were as dead as those down in the valley, despite their struggle to escape. He had failed them twice.
    “Your search is over, On’esquin,” spat Raeln, his sadness immediately replaced with anger. “There are no other people here, and the four that survived the battle are gone. Your prophecy failed us. We’re going back to the camp.”
    “It’s never that simple with prophecy,” countered the orc, setting off down the way they had come. “Prophecy is not what most would tell you. It is a glimpse of one possible solution to a problem, complete with one or more ways it can be resolved. If our four companions are dead, we might be able to replace them. Failing that, we try without them. The prophecy only tells us the most likely way for us to succeed, not the only way. In truth, Turess may have known that we would likely die without their help,