by Jo Clayton
After about three hours she stopped, watered the ponies at one of the Road Wells and let them graze. She leaned against a cairn, crossed her ankles. Ailiki jumped on her stomach; she laughed and began scratching the mahsar behind her twitching ears.
“What are you doing, Kori?” Tres eidolon hung above her, his voice cut through her drowse. “Why are you just sitting there? Get moving. You have to beat the snow.”
“So you’re back.” She continued to stroke the mahsar. “How nice.”
As he always did, he ignored questions expressed or implied. “You can’t waste a minute, you have to cross the Dautas as soon as possible.”
“Tre…” She sighed. “You know what riding stock is like, you push too hard and they quit on you, you can’t have forgot that, what’s wrong with you?”
“You know what’s wrong.” The crystal vibrated though the mouse-sized figure of the boy inside changed neither expression nor position. “I want out of this.”
“Why do you think I’m here?” She sighed. “If I push the ponies too hard, this jaunt stops before the day’s out. Quit niggling at me, Tit, I know what I’m doing.” She lifted Ailiki off her. “Go fetch them, Lili; they’ve had enough rest for now. Tit, what about the weather? From here, it looks clear enough, but that’s a lot of mountains.”
“No blizzards yet. There are some washouts from rain, a lot of rain has been falling, no snow, I’m not sure why. There’s black ice in the passes; it makes treacherous going. You should try to hit the steepest slopes in the afternoon, when the sun’s been at the ice long enough to clear some of it out. If there is any sun.”
“Lovely. Look, Tre, you seem to show up when you want to stick pins in me and ignore me otherwise. I’m trying to remember you’re my brother; don’t leave me hanging out to dry, help me. Talk to me even if there’s nothing else you can do.”
The eidolon flickered, faded, appeared again like a washed-out watercolor painted on the air, vanished completely.
Korimenei sighed, got to her feet. The ponies were standing on the Road, foam dripping from their mouths as they chewed at a last clump of grass. She smiled wryly as Ailiki ran up the packer’s side and perched on its withers. “Aili my Liki, I’m beginning to wonder what the hell’s going on here.”
The mahsar folded her arms across her narrow chest and took on the aspect of Sessa who looked after lost trinkets, one of the little gods who scampered like mice from person to person, coming unasked, leaving without warning, a capricious, treacherous, much courted clutch of godlings. She nodded gravely, but what she meant by it was impossible to guess.
“You’re a big help.” Korimenei shook her head, swung into the saddle and nudged the pony into a plodding walk.
10
Two weeks slid past. Korimenei rode and walked, walked and rode, nibbled at trailbars and apples during the day, usually while the ponies grazed, cooked up stew and panbread When she camped for the night, washing these down with strong tea and a bowl of the rough red wine she’d picked up in Kapi Yuntipek. Water wasn’t a problem, there were wells and troughs at intervals along the road. The sky stayed clear, there wasn’t any frost in the morning, the air was too dry, but even long after the sun came up, the days were crackling cold. Despite that, she passed up the Waystop Inns as she came to them, riding on to camp at one of the wells. As if he were trying to make up for a fault he wasn’t about to admit, Tre came each night with a weather report and stayed to chat a little, mostly about what had been happening to Korimenei, he said it was because he was sealed in crystal, stuck in the cave; since nothing was happening to him, there was nothing to talk about unless they went over and over past times which he didn’t want to do. She grew easier in her mind; she wanted to believe that the closeness they’d shared was still there, waiting to be resumed when he was free.
In the third week she left behind the last sparse clumps of Ternu grass and moved into the foothills of the Dhia Dautas. The waves of land had a flat wispy ground cover, gray-brown, limp; there seemed to be no vigor in it, but the ponies relished it when she let them graze. The thorn-studded brush had small leaves that a series of hard frosts had turned into stiff rounds of maroon leather, and copper-colored crooked branches that wove in and out of each other to form a dense prickly ball that only changed size as it aged, not conformation. It grew in tangled clumps in and around dumps of boulders like the droppings of some immense and incontinent beast.
In the fourth week she was on the lower slopes of the mountains winding upward toward the first LowPass, moving through thick stands of trees and a different ground cover, broad-leafed vines that were crimson and gold, crawling across red earth that crumbled into a fine dust which settled on every surface and worked its way into every crevice. The slopes were steeper, the air thinner and colder.
It cut her throat like knives when she was winded near the top of a rise and breathing through her mouth. She saw deer and fiarru herds, wolves trotting in ragged lines, sangas and mountain cats sunning on boulders or in trees, squirrels and rabbits and other small scuttlers, birds hopping along the ground, feeding on seeds and insects. There was a sense of waiting in the air, a feeling that the season was changing, but not yet. Not quite yet. Most mornings there were only a few wisps of cloud scrawled across the sky; as each day wore on, though, the clouds thickened and darkened, the light took on a pewter tinge, colors were darker, richer. She saw no one, the road was open, empty, but she was aware several times of eyes watching her. She ignored them. Let them watch.
At the end of the week she ran into rain and black ice.
11
When she crawled from her blankets the sky was clear and cold as the water in the stream, the world was a glitter of ice and frost flowers. Her skin tingled, she was intensely alive; when she started along the Road again she wore seven league boots and could stride across the mountains like a giant.
A patch of black ice reminded her she was merely mortal. Her feet slid from under her and she landed on hands and knees hard enough to jar her back teeth. She got painfully to her feet and inspected her hands; the palms were scraped raw, smeared with dirt. With slow stiff movements she rubbed them on her jacket; when the dirt was off, shepulled her gloves from her pocket and put them on. She made a face at Ailiki who was being Sessa again, sitting plump and sedate on the saddle, smirking at her. “Laugh and I start thinking Liki stew.”
On the far side of the ridge, was a long narrow valley, smoky with steam from hotsprings, steam that wove in and out of dark ominous conifers and went trickling up to a white-blue sky bare of clouds. About a half mile from the Road, she saw a huddled village; there were no people visible, no stock in sight; the harvest was already in, the fields were mud and stubble. A ghost drifted across the mud, circled her, then fled without saying anything. She could sense hostile eyes watching her and had a strong feeling she’d better not stay around for any length of time.
Half an hour later, she came on a small scraggly meadow; she stopped there, fed the ponies the last of the feedcake and let them graze.
When Ailiki brought them in, they were mud to the belly. Korimenei swore, dug out a stiff brush and went over their legs and feet, cleaning away the mud and the small round leeches they’d collected off infested brush. She worked up a sweat that damped her underclothes and ripened her smell until even she was aware she stank. She knocked the brush against the trunk of a conifer and straightened. “Lili, if it takes till midnight, we keep going until we reach an Inn.”
They plodded on, winding up the next ridge in long slow loops that gained height with the tempered speed of a slug in winter, passing other xenophobic settlements nested on small mountain flats, blank-walled, secret places that turned their shoulders to the Road and refused to acknowledge its existence. By late afternoon more clouds were blowing off the peaks, blocking what small warmth the pallid sun had been providing; a chill, dank wind rolled down the Road. She pushed on, riding and walking, walking and riding. The day grew darker and darker. The sun final
ly sneaked down, no display of color this night, only an imperceptible hardening of the dark. Finally, near midnight, she reached the Waystop Inn at the throat of HighPass.
The doors were barred, the windows shuttered, the Inn was dark and silent. Korimenei was in no mood to tolerate obstacles or delicately weigh consequences. She sent the bar flying from its brackets, kicked the door open and went stalking in. She crafted a will-o, hung it by the thick ceiling beams and stood waiting in the eerie, bluish light, Ailiki on her shoulder, the ponies huddled close outside the gaping door. “Hey the house,” she shouted. “You have clients_ Stir your stumps or I’ll turn this dikkhush into kindling.”
The Host came down the stairs, his nightshirt tucked into trousers pulled hastily on, the lacings untied, ends dangling, He carried a lamp, set it on the counter when he saw the will-o and Korimenei standing under it. “It’s late,” he said. “We closed for the night.”
“Looks like I just opened you. I want a hot bath, a hot meal, and a bed. And stabling for my ponies. We can debate the metaphysics of open and closed all you want come the morning. Right now I’m tired and I haven’t a lot of patience.”
“Sorceror.” It wasn’t a compliment the way he said it. He shrugged. “Bath’s no problem, we’re sitting on a hotspring. Meal, that’ll take some time and it’ll cost. M’ wife works hard and she needs her sleep, you’re not the only one tired this night. Ponies, take ‘em round yourself, get ‘em settled. You had no trouble getting in here, do the same to the stables if you can’t wake the boy up. I’d take it kindly if you didn’t scare a year’s growth out of him. He’s m’ wife’s cousin and worth hot spit on a summer day, but kin’s kin.”
She laughed. “You’re a clever man, Hram. You could milk the poison from a reared-back cobra. I expect to pay, but control your appetite, Hram Host; double is enough, more than that is sin and punishable by wart, eh?” She listened. “It’s starting to rain, I’d better get the ponies under cover.” She beckoned the will-o to her. “And let you shut your door so all the heat doesn’t leak away.”
##
Warm, replete and clean for the first time in days, she crawled between fresh, sweet-smelling sheets and sighed with pleasure. “Well, Aili my Liki, this is something else. Why oh why am I putting myself through this muck? Ah I know, oh I know; poor Tre, he didn’t deserve having his life taken away from him like that, just so Old Maks would have a hold on me. It’s my fault he’s there, my fault I’m here. I owe him. Sometimes though…” She yawned, turned on her side and pulled the quilts up to her nose. Ailiki was a hotspot curled up against her stomach; the mahsar was already asleep and snoring with that tiny eeping that was a comforting nightsong. The rain was slashing down outside, a steady thrum against the shutters. A cold draft wandered past her nose. She murmured with pleasure, dreaming she was home again, a girl in her narrow bed, safe in the arms of her kin and kind, then she dropped deeper into sleep and left even dreams behind.
##
In the morning she half-fell out of bed and barely made the slop basin before the nausea erupted and she emptied her stomach.
When the spasms stopped, she dipped a corner of the towel in the pitcher and washed her face, then sat on her heels, eyes closed, while she waited for the upheaval in her body to die down. Ailiki came trotting over to her, pressed against her leg. She lifted the mahsar, held her against her breasts, her warmth helping to soothe away the ache. “Well, Lib, I’m going to have to look, aren’t I.”
Sitting in the middle of the bed, rain dribbling down outside, a dull dreary drizzle, she turned inward and explored her body.
There was no mistake, no way of avoiding the truth. She was pregnant. The wind had worn away more than her nerves those days in Ambijan. She sat there in the quiet warm room, thinking: What do I want? What am I going to do? In the end, it was all words. She wanted the baby and she was going to have it. She needed it. Karoumang’s child. No. Mine. The thought warmed her. My daughter. She knew it was going to be a daughter. She wasn’t going to be alone any more. It didn’t matter what her brother did. Didn’t matter if Maksim wouldn’t have her as apprentice. She folded her arms across her body, hugging herself and what she bore. I’m not going to worry, she thought. There’s plenty of time to finish this thing before there’s enough child to worry about. Tell Ire if he bothers to show up again? No! No way. It’s none of his business.
##
She crossed HighPass and went through the serried ridges of the western flanks of the Dhia Dautas, daughters of the dawning sun, though there was little sun in evidence, dawn or dusk or anything between. It snowed twice in the first week, light snows, two inches one storm, six the next. Then it rained and that was worse. Each morning she woke and vomited. Then she rode on. Day after day, walk and ride, ride and walk until she was down in the grass again and twenty days out of Dil Jorpashil.
12
Korimenei looked at the tuber stew. The cook’s heavy hand with the spice jars couldn’t disguise the sweetish sick smell from the shreds of anonymous meat. I can’t eat this, she thought, there’s no way I can eat this.
She finished the dusty tea and the bread, got quietly to her feet and went outside. She leaned against the tie-rail and breathed in the clean cold air off the grass, thinking about the gaunt little girl who’d carried her gear to the sleeping loft with its scatter of husker mattresses and tattered privacy curtains. Ten years going on a hundred and running the Waystop alone; most likely her father was in the hedgetavern built onto the back of the hostel, playing host to the local drunks, a drunk himself if she read the signs right. From the smell that wafted up to the loft, he stilled his own sookpa. Must taste worse than that rancid meat. I’ve got to do something about food, she thought. She smiled into the darkness, patted her stomach, Well-fed cows make healthy calves. Old cow, I’d better see about keeping you properly fed.
She went exploring and found the girl in the kitchen, washing up. “Where’s your father, child?’
The girl’s eyes darted to the back door, flicked away. She shrugged, said nothing. She stood hunched over the washtub, her hands quiet in the greasy water, her body saying: go away and leave me alone.
“I see. Your mother?”
“She dead.”
“You do the cooking?”
“You din’ eat ye stew. We don’t give coin back f what ye don’ eat.”
“A starving sanga wouldn’t eat that stew. It’s not the cooking, child. It’s the meat. I take it you don’t raise your own?”
The girl shook her head, began scratching at a bit of crust in a loafpan.
“Your father doesn’t hunt?”
“An’t no game close enough. r Road scare ‘em.” Her voice was muffled, defensive; once again her dark eyes went to the door, turned away.
“Hmm. If I brought you meat, would you cook it forme? I’ll leave you what’s left over in payment.”
“What kinda meat?”
“Geyker.”
“Ah-yah. When?”
“Soon. An hour, perhaps a little more.”
“I wanna see t’ hide.” Her shoulders were hunched over, her hands shaking; she wouldn’t look at Korimenei. She was terrified, but determined.
Korimenei laughed. “Yes yes. You’re a good sonya. I wouldn’t give you forbidden fare. You’ll see hide, hooves, and all. Tell me something. Would Waystops down the Road take meat instead of coin?”
“I couldna say f’ sure. I think so. Dada woulda if ye’d asked.”
“Thank you. Good e’en, sonya.” Korimenei left the kitchen, paused in the middle of the common room to consider site options. There was the sleeping loft, but she didn’t like the feel or the smell of the place. The stable. No. The hostler was nested inside there like a rat in a wall and not even the sookpa stoups in the tavern were going to entice him out. She didn’t want anyone looking over her shoulder while she went dipping for a demon to hunt some meat for her. She pushed away the fears that kept recurring about attracting notice and even a challenge from
a local sorceror. She had to do this, she had no choice. She moved to the door; it wasn’t barred yet; the sun was barely down; a few rosy streaks on the western horizon lingered from a pallid sunset. The Wounded Moon was breaking free of the horizon in the east; nearly full, the moonhare-crouching plainly writ in streaks of blue-gray on the yellowish ground. The night was clear and brilliant with almost no wind to blow the grass about or stir the naked branches of the three gnarly olive trees growing beside the well. The well… ah, the well. Wells are powerpoints and sanctuaries or so Master Kushundallian claimed. I’ll know the truth of that before the night’s much older.
She pulled the door shut behind her. “Lili, I need you,” she called. The mahsar was out hunting her dinner; she turned her nose up at anything cooked or dead before she made it so; in emergencies she’d share Korimenei’s meals, but not without expressing her opinion of such slop with some full-body grimaces. “Aili my Liki,” she called again, then went to sit on the well-coping and wait for her backup, smiling at herself, amused by her new-won prudence.
Ailiki materialized in Korimenei’s lap, sat washing her whiskers with tongue-damped forefeet. Korimenei laughed, scratched behind her tulip petal ears, then lifted her and carried her to the bare earth where horses, mules, four-footed beasts of all kinds had milled about waiting their turn to drink from the troughs, their hooves cutting up the grass, grinding it into the earth, beating the earth into a hard crusty floor. She set Ailiki down and began drawing a pentacle. “What I’m going to do, Lili. I need a hunter who will go and get me a geyker. Hmm. I need fruit too, maybe I can do something about that.” She inspected the pentacle. “That’s done. Come here, babe.”
