Sawtooth Spire zweiter teil

mahler gave a careful look to phaedra's expression, surrounded by the pale curling of a coat that had not been tamed. it gave her a rather roguish look, or would have completed that, were it not for her small words, suddenly swallowed by what he took to be trepidation. "here? yes," mahler said softly, remembering how she had almost drowned, and how in her little child's heart the first fear of rivers and all waterways took hold.
"ve vill travel downstream," the shadowpriest chose, pitching his voice somewhat louder to compensate for the current's rush. "stag named this river vindholme," he told phaedra as he picked a path for them back into the proud shadow of green-needled things. here he could keep the water in sight and note where its foamed cascade ended.
a cough, and this time it irritated him. 
he had seen phaedra leap and wheel and scamper upon their journey; that she felt subdued now, her luminosity dampened somewhat, was more than enough reason for mahler to urge her away from windholme and into easier things. "i had almost expected this mountain to be claimed," mahler rumbled softly. "perhaps it is too vild for anyvone else."
here he pointed out the track of a moose, here the rut of an elk, here where a deer had scraped his bleeding antlers, leaving strips of velveteen on the ground below the tree. 
and then mahler gestured up and up, toward the eversnow peak of the place once called sagtannet. "do you think you can climb so high?" he teased phaedra; of course she would be able, but stoneflower eyes shone with the promise of a coldwinter run.