Chapter Nineteen
Snow continued to fall all night and most of the next day. When it finally began to taper off, it was already too late to make a start. Sira had sung for Lorn several times, when the pain began to rise again, and he accepted her help with gratitude. She cooked for him, too, inexpertly. They ate everything regardless of its quality. Between their two saddlepacks, they estimated they had food for about five days. But it was not food that worried Sira.
She fashioned a makeshift pukuru from Lorn’s bedfurs, using the cinch, flank strap, and ties from his saddle as harness. She remembered the cushioned, bone-runnered pukuru that had carried Theo; hers would not be so comfortable. The deep snow would have to be Lorn’s cushion until they found the road. Perhaps there she could find softwood trees to rig as runners.
The second morning in their precarious campsite dawned clear and cold. Now Sira could see the steep, treeless slope falling away to the east, as if they were on some winding mountain trail. It was certainly not one of the roads they had been seeking.
Lorn’s face looked as gray as his hair, his eyes sunken and glazed. He barely touched the bowl of keftet she gave him.
Sira ate, and fed the hruss, then carefully turned it around on the narrow path. She struggled to fasten the clumsy runnerless sled to the back of her saddle. She knew little of knots, and had never tied anything but her hair when it was long. The leather was thick and unwieldy in her fingers, and rigid with cold. She fashioned an awkward sort of tether to attach to the bedfurs, splitting the other end with her knife, and tying the two pieces to either side of her saddle.
Mounting her hruss, and urging it into a gentle walk, Sira turned sideways to watch the improvised pukuru as it slid over the snow. She was afraid it would slide right under the hruss’s hooves, or that it might come undone. They left the body of Lorn’s hruss behind, though Sira contemplated butchering it for the meat. She decided she didn’t need anything else to carry. They traveled for what seemed an impossibly long time, with Sira constantly looking backward until her neck and sides ached with twisting.
The path was treacherous, but the fine Conservatory hruss was surefooted. More than once Sira patted it gratefully on the withers. Once she had to stop and tighten the cinch, doing her best to make it comfortable for the animal but still safe. Lorn appeared to be asleep, so she mounted again, and they resumed their slow progress down the mountainside.
Softwood trees began to appear again, and the sky brightened. Sira could see why Lorn had thought the trail was a road. It widened and smoothed, little by little.
She wondered how she would ever learn all the roads and trails of the Continent, the way an itinerant must. She couldn’t do it alone, that was certain. She would have to apprentice herself to someone. The independence she longed for seemed further away than ever.
At midday, Sira reined in her hruss, and got down to check the injured man. Lorn’s color was no better, and he didn’t rouse when she spoke to him. Rather than do battle with the flint and stone, she ate some cold dried meat and fed the hruss with a bit of grain from her hand.
Climbing back into the saddle, she set off again, stopping once in a while to adjust the sled or retie a strap. Through the long day they rode. Sira’s back ached from the strain of guarding the pukuru. Her legs trembled with fatigue from bracing herself in the saddle.
At last the trail came out into a broad, more level stretch of packed snow that looked as if it might be a road. Sira stopped the hruss, shakily dismounting and leaning against the stirrup for a moment to let her muscles recover. She thought Lorn might recognize the road in the morning. Tonight they would camp here, and eat. Tomorrow they could decide their route.
Lorn still slept, even as she untied the sled and smoothed his bedfurs around him. She spoke to him, and touched his shoulder, but he did not respond. She even extended a gentle tendril of psi into his mind, but the waves of his thought were blank and unreadable.
Sira established a strong, warm quiru before dark fell. She struggled with the fire, almost giving up until she heard a ferrel scream in the distance. Then she tried one more time. The muscles of her wrists wearied of the effort, but she kept at it until a thin line of smoke curled from her little pile of tinder and softwood. She cooked keftet again and ate all of it quickly, though it was cold in the middle and burned underneath. The hruss nuzzled her shoulder and she realized she had forgotten to feed it.
“Sorry,” she murmured, rising to dig grain out of her saddlepack. The hruss dipped its muzzle into the grain, and Sira spared a moment to worry about how flat the saddlepack was getting. The softwood was in shortest supply. It had never occurred to her to bring an axe, and she had no idea whether there would be deadfall to burn.
She bent over Lorn, but he lay ominously still and quiet, as he had all day. Sira did not know what else she could do for him. She turned back to the hruss and snuggled close to the animal’s warmth for a moment. It turned its head to nose her shoulder. “I wish you could talk,” she said. The hruss blew through its nostrils, and shook its shaggy mane. She laughed a little, weakly, and patted its broad head.
Finally she rolled into her own furs, first checking to see Lorn was well covered, and that the quiru would last the night. She slept, but fitfully, with dreams of great roads that led endlessly nowhere.
When the weak light of early morning woke her, a glance told her Lorn was no better. She knelt beside him, noting his poor color and irregular breathing. She knew, as surely as she had ever known anything, that the old Singer would wake no more.
She squatted there a long time, one hand on his shoulder. This was a man who had spent his life as a Singer in these mountains, yet had made a fatal error. She would do better, she swore to herself. Once she had learned this new craft, she would be the best, or not bother.
She could not leave Lorn while he still lived. They had no relationship, but she could not abandon him to die alone. She would do what she could. She tried not to think about what would happen next. Even a man at the point of death was some company. When his spirit left his body, she would be alone in the mountains once again.
In the late afternoon of that day, the old Singer took one last rattling breath, then was still. Sira, watching, knew he was dead. She prayed briefly for his passage beyond the stars. Then, with a pan from her saddlepack, she began to dig into the crusted snow beneath a nearby ironwood tree.
It took some time, and she was wet with perspiration when she had scooped out a hole big enough. She rolled Lorn, wrapped in his furs, into his makeshift grave, and stood looking down at him. It was over for him. Now she had to face her solitude, and decide what to do.
It was growing dark. She would renew her quiru for another night in this place. She had tried to judge her location. She could tell the east and west of it, but she had no way of knowing where she was in relation to any House except Conservatory, or even to a main road. Her education had been painstaking and intensive, but it had omitted the geography of the Continent; that was not something a Cantrix needed to know.
She was sure that west was the direction of Conservatory, Magister Mkel, and Isbel. There lay more arguments to persuade her from her decision. At Conservatory, she would have to confront her memories, and that seemed pointless. Nothing could make them go away. She shook her head even as she thought of it.
To the east lay mystery . . . other Houses, certainly Lamdon. Could she find them? There was risk in turning east, but she thought perhaps she could find Ogre Pass.
She reached for her filla. She had come this far. Fearful as she might be, she had no wish to turn back. In the morning, she would ride east.