Chapter Thirteen
Sira pressed on, working her way steadily northeast. The floor of the Pass widened and flattened, and the wind blew the powder from the snowpack, making it easier to walk.
She made her next camp at the first sign of darkness. Her quiru trembled in a sudden breeze that had not troubled her all day, and she felt the vastness and unpredictability of the Continent around her. Once she thought she heard a distant roar, but it might have been only the soughing of the wind in the treetops. She hunkered down with her arms around her knees, remembering Rollie’s warnings about tkir. She strengthened her quiru until it flashed with energy in the gathering gloom, but still she felt small and vulnerable. Thinking of Rollie pierced her with grief. The hours of darkness seemed an eternity of solitude.
Though the night passed slowly, she felt infinitely stronger for having eaten. She slept fitfully, but she did sleep, and in the morning she set out with a will. Her pack bounced lightly against her back, and the wound from the arrow did not begin bleeding again as far as she could tell. She kept her filla close to her body, the most essential tool of her survival; the two long knives were stuck through her belt where she could reach them in a heartbeat.
At midday she rested and forced down more of the raw caeru, refusing to gag at the texture and taste of uncooked meat. She remembered with longing the platter of nursery fruits and nuts she had barely touched at Lamdon.
She grew hot with exertion, but she knew better than to remove her furs and feel the bite of the cold. She was grateful for the distant pale sun that illumined the tops of the trees and occasionally reached past their great branches to fall on the floor of the Pass. No more snow fell, and Sira whispered thanks to the Spirit of Stars for not having to ford a foot of new powder. Once she looked back the way she had come, and could see her own tracks clearly, far into the distance. She supposed that could be a good thing. If she lost her way, she would be able to retrace her steps.
Gram and Jane pled with the riders from Bariken for more haste. Alks said, “Doing our best.” Mike said nothing at all.
Theo chafed at the strain in the traveling party. There was something wrong with his hruss, indeed all three hruss Bariken had provided. They were either old or underfed, and no matter how the riders urged them, they could not seem to pick up their pace. There was no conversation to fill the hours, only the constant tension, like an extra traveler in their midst.
As they worked their way into the Pass, the deep powder gave way to an easier snowpack. Gram pointed down, beneath his hruss’s feet, and Theo saw Jane lean from her saddle to see something. Theo kicked his struggling hruss so the beast would catch up, and he, too, bent to look down at the tracks in the snow.
“More than one person passed here,” he said. “And hruss.”
Jane and Gram exchanged a look, and Gram said, “You’re right, Singer. I don’t like the look of this.”
“You don’t think it could simply be other travelers?”
Jane said, “Let’s hope so.”
Gram lifted his reins. “I think,” he said darkly, “that Bariken has done everything they could to delay us.” He thumped his poor hruss with his heels, and was rewarded with a stumbling trot. Jane made a disgusted noise, and did the same.
Theo touched his beast on its neck. “Sorry,” he said. “But you’re going to have to keep up.” He gave it a sharp kick in the ribs, and hurried after Gram and Jane as best he could. When they caught up with Alks and Mike, they were forced to slow again to a flat-footed walk. Theo saw Jane pounding her fist against her thigh in fury and frustration.
Sira took a brief midday rest, turning her face up to catch the weak sunlight. She just might reach Lamdon before dark. The thought renewed her energy. She swung her pack into position, and started walking once more.
Topping a rise, she stepped around an outcropping of rock that thrust up through the old snowpack. The snow was deeper here, some drifts coming to her knees. She was about to drop down into a little gulley when she felt the sharp, warning prickle of her psi. It had been three days since she had any contact with living humans. Her senses were instantly alert, with an almost physical sensation, as if she had heard a noise tear through the silent forest.
Her nightmare experiences had turned Sira into a wary creature. She had been both predator and prey in the last few days, and as her nerves flared, this new Sira wasted no time in questioning her instincts. She cast about immediately for a place to hide.
The snow was so deep at the sides of the road, and so easily marked, that she could see no way to escape without making deep and unmistakable tracks. The irontree branches began far above her head, too high for her to reach.
She hurried on, her mind open to receive whatever clues might come her way. Someone’s mind was insufficiently shielded, or she would have received no warning at all. Now, as she concentrated, she felt little tendrils of uneasy thought leaking from the careless one, like smoke curling from a cookfire. Someone, a Gifted one, was agitated. And that someone was not far away.
Sira’s body began to drip with perspiration under her furs, and her thigh muscles to burn. She panted as she forced her way through the drifts. Struggling over the far side of the arroyo to look down at the long valley beyond, she wasted a moment in gasping for breath. No clouds obscured the pale sky, and the air was so light and empty that she could see, looking ahead to the steep slope at the end of the valley, the peaked roofs of Lamdon and the great curve of the nursery gardens behind them. So near did they seem, she felt she could reach out and touch them. In truth, they were surely at a distance of four hours’ walk. The danger she sensed behind her was much, much closer.
On the near slope of the valley there was a little stand of softwood trees, young and slender. The branches of several stretched just an arm’s reach above her head. Her shoulder was still stiff, and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to pull herself up. But she had to try.
As she loosened her pack to free her arms, she thanked the spirit of the little caeru that had given her its life’s energy.
She chose the thickest tree in the little grove. With another prayer, she jumped off the snow and grasped a low limb with both hands. Pain flamed in her shoulder, but she ignored it, scrabbling with her boots for purchase on the trunk of the tree. She pulled herself up, bit by painful bit, grunting with effort. Fresh blood leaked from the wound in her back, but she hardly noticed it, so hot was she from her struggles.
With intense effort, she reached the lowest limb with one foot, and wriggled upward until she straddled it. The branches above were thinner, but offered more camouflage. She climbed until she thought she had gone as high as she dared without breaking through.
She stood with her legs braced on different limbs, one a little higher than the other. Her back pressed against the spongy bark, and she looked down through the leaves to the road below. She felt like a caeru at bay, and she knew the hunters were closing in. In a last attempt to save herself, she concentrated all her psi energy into one powerful broadcast for help. The mind leaking warnings behind her would hear it, too. But she was trapped. She poured all her strength into one long, silent scream of terror.
Theo’s breath caught in his throat at the scream that seared his mind. He had experienced only the vaguest of psi impressions since his childhood; his parents had carefully taught him to close his mind to them. But this one broke through with incredible strength, and a definite impression of distance. Crude though the cry was, Theo was certain of what he had heard.
“Jane! Gram!” he shouted, urging his hruss forward. “I’ve heard something—something I’ve never—it’s the Cantrix, in my mind!” Unfamiliar though his impressions were to him, certainty drove out any doubts. “She’s up ahead, and she’s in danger. Now!”
Jane pierced him with a glance, then nodded to Gram. The two kicked and whipped their weary hruss into a gallop, forcing them past Alks and Mike and on up the road at a dead run. The Bariken riders looked back at Theo, then hurried their own much stronger hruss to catch up.
Theo’s psi might have been blunted by his parents’ training, but his years on the road had sharpened his instincts for danger. His gut told him what they had to fear in that moment, and he gave a hoarse cry as he kicked his hruss hard, brutalizing it into a faster pace.
“Gram!” he shouted. “Watch out! Watch out behind you! They—”
He saw Alks draw his long knife, and rein his hruss around to face him. Theo had not time even to slow his own beast as Alks pulled back his arm and threw the knife with wicked speed. He watched it come for what seemed an interminable time, sawing on his reins, bracing himself. When the knife reached him, the impact knocked him completely out of his saddle. He fell hard on his back into the snow.
Shock immobilized him and stole his breath. Theo couldn’t tell how badly he was wounded, or even if he still lived. He heard the cries of the other four riders as from a distance. He knew a battle ensued, but he couldn’t tell who was victorious, and before its sounds ceased, darkness closed over his head, as sure and complete as midnight in the Marik Mountains.
Sira waited, her nerves on fire with suspense. The mental spill from one of her pursuers tormented her, and it grew worse when she began to hear them with her ears, too. They had given up any effort at stealth, and were racing toward her as fast as their hruss could carry them. One of them had heard her silent cry. It had forced them to deal with her as swiftly as possible.
The leaves of the softwood tree rattled around her, vibrating with the strength of her psi. She drew a deep breath, and quieted her mind. The leaves ceased their trembling, but there was nothing she could do about the deep tracks she had made in the snow.
A moment later two strong hruss charged over the rise into her little valley. With curses, their riders reined them in, and called questions to each other as they cast about for her path.
Sira knew their voices. Wil and Trude had found their way to her once again. In moments, they stood below her slender softwood tree, peering up through its branches.
Wil’s familiar voice was redolent of easier times. “Cantrix Sira, are you there? You must be so frightened! Come down, and let us escort you safe to Lamdon. This political struggle has nothing to do with you.”
Sira gritted her teeth. The old Sira, the innocent one, might have believed his words. But that naive girl was gone, leaving in her place one who trusted no one. Her breath whistled slightly in her throat, and her legs trembled with fatigue from bracing on the uneven branches.
“Cantrix Sira?” This time it was the sweet, low-pitched tone of Conservatory. Trude’s hruss pressed close to the softwood tree as Trude tried to project sympathy and concern. The effect was awkward, her mental discipline too long unexercised. She forced her psi in a way that would have shamed any second-level Conservatory student.
She tried again. “Sira, you poor thing! You’ve been alone up here so long. Let me help you down, won’t you? I’m sure you need hot food and a bath, and—”
Hot temper, born of the fear and grief of the last days, flooded Sira’s mind. In a fury, and without making a sound, she sent an angry blast of psi to Trude that made the older woman gasp in mid-sentence.
Traitorous bitch, Sira sent. You are not fit to touch a true Cantrix!
She heard Trude mutter something to Wil, and then there was an ominous silence.
Theo struggled up from the depths to wakefulness once again. Something was pressing tightly against his stomach. With difficulty, he forced his eyes open to see Gram bending over him, tying something around his middle, beneath his furs.
“Theo,” said the rider in a tight voice. “Can you hear me?”
Theo meant to say yes, but all that emerged from his dry throat was a choked sort of croaking sound. He caught Gram’s eyes, and managed a brief nod. The muscles of his face were stiff with shock and cold.
“We need to hurry, and that means we have to leave you here for a while.” Theo’s eyes tried to close again. His head lolled, and he had to exert all of his will to remain conscious. “You’ll need a quiru in about five hours,” Gram went on. “We’ll be back for you, but maybe not till morning.”
Theo, with a great effort, forced his rigid tongue to work. “Cover me,” he rasped. “In case . . .”
“Yes.” Gram’s face gave away nothing, and Theo understood there was no time for emotion. “Jane’s hurt, too, but she says she can ride, and I need her. I think you ought to try to stay awake. You’re still bleeding, I’m afraid.” While he talked, Gram spread Theo’s bedfurs over and around him, tucking him tightly into them. Theo saw a long knife lying in the snow where Gram must have tossed it. Blood–his own blood–smeared the blade. He looked away.
“Got your filla?” Gram’s voice was rough. Both men were aware that Theo would freeze to death if he was unable to call up a quiru. Gram didn’t apologize, nor did Theo expect it. There was no choice to make between the life of an itinerant Singer and that of a full Cantrix.
Theo felt with his fingers until he had his filla in his hand. When he nodded, Gram touched his shoulder once, then disappeared from Theo’s line of sight.
Theo fixed his eyes on a nearby ironwood tree as he listened to the sounds of the two hruss departing. He held onto consciousness with all his strength. He was warm, at least for the moment. He felt shockingly weak, but then, he told himself, he didn’t have to go anywhere. He didn’t have enough energy to laugh at his own unspoken joke, but it made him feel better.
Suddenly he realized that he didn’t know what had become of the Bariken riders. Lifting his head hurt too much, but he could twist his neck enough to look about him. Two fur-covered figures lay not far away, legs and arms askew in attitudes of death. Gram and Jane had let them lie where they had fallen. Their hruss stood nearby, shifting their weight uneasily on their wide hooves. They were still saddled, reins hanging to trail in the snow. Two still had bedfurs strapped behind the cantles. Only Theo’s had been removed.
Gram and Jane had killed Alks and Mike, just as one of them had tried to kill him.
Well, Theo thought. I don’t feel like dying this afternoon.
His fingers found the bit of metal that had been his mother’s, and he held it in his hand. He lay still, but he kept his eyes open, and concentrated on gathering his strength. One thing he knew well, and that was how to heal the injuries that befell those who plied the icy roads of the Continent. Weakly, he concentrated his psi on the wound in his belly. He had little energy, and he couldn’t play his filla, not yet. But he could try to slow the bleeding. If he could stay awake.
Sira’s softwood tree began to quake, and she knew someone was coming up. It was easier for Wil, because he had his big mountain hruss to stand on. His boot found the bottommost branch with ease, nothing like the painful effort it had cost her.
She looked above her for a way to escape, but the boughs over her head were so thin, and already shaking with the impact of Wil’s approach, that she was sure they would never hold her. Her breathing slowed. She felt distant, separate from her fear. She became that trapped caeru, an animal at bay, with an animal’s instincts.
She found, to her surprise, that she had drawn Shen’s long knife out of her belt. The heft of it felt good in her hand. She turned the point downward, holding it behind her, away from her body, as the tree shivered and swayed under Wil’s weight.
Wil seemed unconcerned about his own safety. She was not surprised at that. She was a Singer, after all, and they were known to be a gentle breed, soft, even effete. She supposed Wil could not conceive of her as dangerous. He did not hesitate, but climbed higher and higher until their eyes met through the quaking branches of the softwood tree.
Sira’s eyes narrowed as she gazed at him, and her purpose crystallized to an icy focus.
Keeping the knife behind her, she worked her way around to the opposite side of the tree. Wil cursed as he struggled to follow. He weighed more than she did, and the branches began to bend and crack beneath him.
But at last he ascended to the same branches she had been standing on. His lean hand reached around the trunk.
She breathed steadily, silently, as Wil stretched one long leg out to a limb on Sira’s side of the swaying tree. He found his foothold, then pulled his body around with his hands.
Just as he came around the trunk, fully in her sight, Sira switched the knife in her hand so that it pointed outward. Wil pulled himself up beside her, his arm reaching for her, his fingers spread to seize her throat.
She gathered all her strength, and plunged the long blade into him, past the skin and muscle, as far into his body as she could thrust it.
Part of her mind knew that the memory of the act, of the resistance of flesh and tendon and muscle to the knife, would be too ghastly to bear. But at this moment, her mind was no part of the event. It was her body that acted, driven by the need for self-preservation. It was the culmination of three days of a struggle to survive.
Wil fell, crashing through the tree branches. The knife went with him. Sira stared down at her hand, shockingly empty now, the air suddenly cold against her palm.
As if from a great distance, Sira heard Trude scream, and scream again, not with her mind but with her throat as Wil, already dead, thudded to the packed snow under the softwood tree.
Sira heard, but felt no pity. Shut up, she sent, in a cold fury.
Trude ignored her, and the waves of shrill sound went on. Sira hissed aloud, “Shut up!” Still Trude screamed.
Sira had never used her psi for ill, not even taking part in the teasing dormitory games at Conservatory, which too often left younger students in tears. But she was more animal than Singer at this moment. She sent a tide of psi into Trude’s mind, anything to stop her screaming.
Shut up or I will kill you too!
Trude’s ululation broke off abruptly. There was a moment of silence before she screeched, “You great idiot! Do you know what you’ve done? I’ll see to it you never step foot in a Cantoris again, you whore, you—”
Sira did not stop to think. She was, in fact, not thinking at all. She cut through Trude’s mind with her psi as brutally as a carver cuts through a chunk of ironwood with his obis knife. It was a wordless, formless blow, with all the power of a great Gift behind it. Trude fell instantly, and permanently, silent.
Sira shuddered, coming to herself as if waking from a nightmare. She took a horrified breath, and reached out with her mind to see if Trude still lived.
The former Cantrix did still live and breathe. But there were no thoughts in her mind, no emotions to sense. Her mind was completely, and Sira feared irretrievably, broken.
But there was no time for sympathy. Sira pulled out her remaining knife, Rollie’s knife, and held herself poised to strike again. Her heart felt like a piece of chiseled stone, and her lips pressed together until they stung.
She waited. She had no sense of passing time. Her mind and her emotions were frozen as solid as the blue ice of the Great Glacier.
She had no way of knowing how many hours it took for Gram and Jane to reach her. When she heard their voices beneath her tree, it took her some minutes for her to relax her muscles enough to move.
“Cantrix Sira?” called Gram urgently. “Are you there? Sira? It’s Gram, and Jane . . . from Conservatory. Maestra Lu sent us when you–when she—”
Sira’s voice cracked when she spoke. “I am here. I will come down.”
“Are you hurt?” Jane’s voice sounded glorious to Sira, familiar and strong.
“I was wounded three—no, four—days ago, but it is almost healed. I am well.”
Sira gingerly descended a branch, and then another. Her muscles trembled with sudden weakness, and the aftermath of crisis. “I need a hand down. I have not eaten in some time.”
Gram and Jane together reached up to her, and she slipped down into their waiting arms. Trude was a huddle of yellow-white furs against the snow, crouched beside Wil’s inert body. Only when Gram had satisfied himself that his young charge was all right for the moment did he turn to look at her.
“Who is this?” he asked.
“It is Trude v’Bariken.” Sira spoke without inflection. “She is harmless now. Her mind is gone.”
“Are you sure?” Jane had let go of Sira the instant she was safely on the ground, but she stayed so close, Sira could feel the rider’s breath against her own face.
“Yes,” said Sira. She added indifferently, “She was a Singer once.”
“And this?” Gram prodded Wil’s body with his booted toe.
“That was the Housekeeper of Bariken.” Sira looked away. “His name was Wil. I have killed him. Is Maestra Lu all right?”
“She’s very worried about you,” Jane said.
There was no more talk. Sira brought out her filla. Gram busied himself bringing the hruss close, spreading out bedfurs, bringing food and cups. He rolled the Housekeeper’s body away from the makeshift campsite, but pushed Trude onto his own bedfurs. Her face was blank. From time to time she gave a wordless moan, but she seemed unaware of the activity around her.
Sira played, and the quiru blossomed. When it glowed warmly around them, they ate, especially Sira. Her young body craved nourishment. Gram and Jane fussed over her, coaxing her to eat and drink just a bit more.
“Sleep now, Cantrix Sira,” said Jane.
“We’ll be at Lamdon by midday tomorrow,” Gram added.
Sira lay down at once on her furs. Jane found Trude’s own bedfurs and rolled her into them without gentleness. She slipped into her own, while Gram stoked up the little fire of softwood from his pack, and prepared to stand night watch.
“I hope Theo’s all right,” Jane said.
“Yes,” said Gram, gazing out into the darkness. “He’s good, for an itinerant.”
“We’ll send him help from Lamdon. We owe him.”
“We’ll see he’s repaid.” There was a pause, and Gram added softly, “If he lives.”
There was no answer from Jane’s bedroll but a deep sigh as she eased into sleep. Trude seemed to be sleeping as well.
Sira lay with her eyes open, staring up at the stars twinkling faintly beyond the light of her quiru. Only when she realized Gram was watching her did she close them.