In Stone's Clasp by Christie Golden

that had been granted to her with the onset of her power. Still, she was not prepared for the sensation of the snow on her skin as she slid off the Dragon’s back.
    It was indeed cold, and—“It’s wet!” she yelped accusingly at the Dragon. He threw back his enormous head and laughed. “You did that deliberately!” She was thigh-deep in the white wetness, and the more she tried to brush it off, the wetter it—and she—became.
    “No, I did not do it deliberately,” the Dragon chuckled. “But I confess, it’s amusing to watch you.”
    She eyed him, not pacified by his comment. “It’s fine for you, it barely covers your toes. How am I to walk in this? I thought it was like sand, but instead it turns to water.”
    Water. “I know the people here suffer under this winter you speak of, but to me they seem rich. To have this much water simply lying on the fields and hillside….” Her voice trailed off as she took in the stark beauty. “A khashim would lead many a raid for this treasure.”
    “What is valuable depends on the time and place,” the Dragon said. “Ten thousand gold coins mean nothing to a man starving alone in the wilderness. And water covering every surface does not mean much when everything it covers is dead. The people of this land may never thirst, Kevla, but it is likely that they are cold and hungry.”
    Kevla was becoming used to the heavy wetness of the snow, and now she noticed something else: the profound silence. She had been slogging through the white stuff, her rhia becoming increasingly soaked and heavy, but now she paused, listening. There were no bird calls. The wind did not stir the branches.
    “It’s so quiet,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, reluctant to thrust the sound of speech upon this silence. She gasped. “My breath—I can see it!”
    “So now you can breathe smoke, too,” the Dragon joked. She smiled at him, grateful for the little jest.
    The snow bowed down the still-green, needled trees and limned every branch of the skeleton trees. As she stood observing, her breath coming in small white puffs, she felt small, cool pricks on her skin. She looked up, and as the snow kissed her face, she realized that it came from the sky, like the rare rain in Arukan. Kevla bent and scooped up a handful, tasting it, feeling it dissolve on her tongue. She stood in the falling snow, taking in the bowed trees, the dim light and the shadows of the deep forest. The silence seemed to swallow her voice when she spoke.
    “I don’t like it here, Dragon, plentiful water or no. I want to find the other Dancer quickly and move on.”
    “That may be harder than you think,” the Dragon said. “You were able to sense that he was in the North, but thus far, that is all we know. We are in the North, Kevla, and we are discovering that it is a large place indeed.”
    Her spirits sank even lower. “How are we to find him, then?”
    “Try to remember, Kevla.” He looked at her intently. “You’ve done this before. The strongest bonds are between a Dancer, her Lorekeeper, and her Companion animal, because they form a complete whole. But all the Dancers have a connection with one another. Jashemi would have been able to sense the Stone Dancer, to feel him more strongly because he was a Lorekeeper. Such was his duty. But you can do some of that yourself, as can I. You were quite good at it once. Keep trusting in your ability to sense him. Practice reaching out to him. Listen when a little voice says, go this way. The Dancers are unique in this world. Their abilities would be known. Someone will be able to point us in the right direction.”
    The Dragon’s reassurance heartened her somewhat, but even so, the enormity of the task was intimidating. She leaned against a tree trunk. Absently she ran her hands over its white bark with curly, rough patches of a darker hue.
    “This is not Arukan, with its open stretches of desert,” she said. “This is a land with dark forests and