by Don McQuinn
Protesting, she sped over the rocky ground toward Sylah and Tate. Conway followed, refusing to be denied. At last she stopped, back against a huge boulder. She was blushing. “I named him long ago. I couldn’t tell you. You’re not angry?”
“I’m very happy. Tell me.”
“Stormracer.”
He repeated it, testing it. She watched him anxiously. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s a good name. Why, though? What made you think of that?”
The blush deepened. “Oh, I don’t know. But it fits him. He’s so black and strong. When he gallops, his hooves make thunder. It seems like he can outrun the wind.”
For along moment he stared at her, not quite smiling, not quite serious. He said, “That’s more poetic than anything I’d have thought of. Maybe that’s why I like it so much. Thank you, Lanta. Stormracer he is.”
She murmured thanks, and then he had to hurry to catch up to her once again.
A little while later, they were examining Sylah and Tate’s handiwork. A two-layered affair of stone, the lower section was a firebox, the upper a drying compartment. Tate said, “We can do this as long as the wind’s from the west. It wouldn’t do to have the smell of cooking meat blowing downhill to any riders who might be checking that trail.”
Sylah added, “The cuts I mean to smoke are soaking now. I don’t have enough salt for a brine, so I’ve made a hot pickle.”
Conway looked to Tate, who sent him a knowing grin. He turned to Sylah. “You laced it with peppers, didn’t you?”
“Lots.” She laughed. “It preserves the meat.”
“Where is this poison?”
She pointed at a waterproof basket. Conway lifted the lid cautiously, sniffed the brew inside. Gasping, he stepped back and clapped the lid on again. “Murder,” he breathed.
Archly, Sylah dipped a finger in the liquid, tasted it. She blinked rapidly, then sighed. “Ooh, good. Just right.” Her eyes sparkled. Conway knew it was as much from tears as high spirits.
“It’s even hot for you. It’ll fry the rest of us.”
Tate said, “Maybe. But what a way to go, right?”
Sylah added, “There’s mint on the banks of the creek. And I found some thyme. It’s not just peppers. You’ll love it.”
“Sure.” Conway’s sarcasm sent the women into gales of laughter.
Lanta said, “We have to get back to my fires. I don’t want to spoil the salve.”
Dodoy was poking at the fire when they got there. Lanta explained what she was doing. The boy sidled off, not looking back.
“I don’t understand him at all,” Lanta said. “He’s never with us.”
“Don’t waste your time on it.” A heavy weariness swept over him. The gesture of dismissal he sent after the boy seemed to take a long time.
Lanta tested the salve once more. Satisfied, she strained the melted mixture through a fine cloth into a clean ceramic pot. Straightening, she faced Conway. Concern chased across her features. She cocked her head, reached to pull at the bottom of his eye socket, inspecting. Her other hand went to his wrist. “Fever,” she said, and after a short pause, “Fast pulse. Too fast. Back to bed for you.”
“I’m just tired.” She pulled on his arm, and he stumbled. “Maybe a little dizzy.”
She let go of him to scoop up the pot of salve where it was cooling, then she pulled him toward his quarters. There was little resistance.
Once inside the shelter, Conway unhesitatingly went to his bed and stretched, facedown. Lanta built a small fire on a makeshift hearth not far from his head. Folding back the cloth fly overhead, she created a draft hole for the wisping smoke. Wafting the pot back and forth over the flames, she stirred the mixture with a finger, testing the warmth. Immediately, the stone enclosed room was pungent with garlic.
“Undress,” she said, and when he looked questioningly at her, her expression dispelled further conversation. She turned her back, until he said, “I’m ready.” She smiled at the discreet blanket drawn up almost to his shoulders and coolly flipped it down to his waist.
Her hands, laden with the warm salve, moved with a sure gentleness that turned Conway’s wandering thoughts to bird wings or the gliding touch of a breeze. The irritating itch of the lacerations melted away. When she told him to roll over, he was so nearly asleep he hated to move.
Tee had warmed his flesh like that, exploring, defining hands drawing tension away. There were no physical wounds then. Tee simply understood that sometimes a man needs an inner healing. Herbs won’t help him. Not even sex is powerful enough to effect a cure. Not by itself.
He wondered if Lanta knew any men who were special to her. Not likely, he decided. She was too involved in her work. Anyhow, who’d want anything to do with a Seer, who knew exactly what you were thinking and going to do before you did?
That thought brought a smile.
Her hands now kneaded the muscles at the base of his neck, working slowly, deliciously down both sides of his spine. Her weight pressed down on him, bowed his ribs. His breath rhythm became her movement.
Through the scent of the salve, something very faint, elusively floral, teased him. It refused to be identified. Something she wore; he was sure of that. The other aroma should have overwhelmed the lighter fragrance, and yet he was much more aware of the latter. He had the strange sensation that the delicate scent was in his head creating a film, isolating him.
His whole body was in flowing cooperation with Lanta’s touch.
Was she humming? He tried to hear. His mind wouldn’t focus.
Not exactly singing. Not a song. A musical repetition. Over and over.
* * *
When he opened his eyes, it was to the guilty suspicion he’d slept a long time. Sunshine passing through the cloth fly bathed the room in a warm glow. He was lying on his side, facing the rock that was the back wall of the room. A deep crack ran across it, a darker black line against the black basalt. He rolled over cautiously, and was pleased to discover how much of the pain was gone. Karda was lying beside him. The dog’s expressive eyes gleamed and the massive tail clubbed the ground. Conway reached to rub the dog’s head, and Karda flopped and lolled happily. The drumbeat of the wagging tail doubled its pace.
Movement at the edge of his vision drew Conway’s attention. Even as he turned to see what it was, Karda was suddenly alert. Together they faced the entryway and watched Dodoy come in. Neither moved or made a sound while the boy edged close and took a seat on the ground. He drew his knees up to his nose, then wrapped his arms around his legs. A hand gripped each wrist. Apparently quite comfortable in his odd attitude, he gave the impression of being knotted in a sack, with nothing but the top of his head and peering eyes sticking out the top.
Conway rubbed a hand across his face. He was startled at the growth of beard there.
When it became apparent Conway was determined to wait him out, Dodoy spoke. “After Lanta said you were sick, Sylah never came in here. Tate, too; she told Sylah they should leave Lanta to heal you and let you catch up. Sylah said they need you and the lightning weapon.”
The boy stopped there, watching, blinking rapidly. Again, Conway’s determined silence revealed nothing, and Dodoy plunged on. “They were afraid. Sometimes I fear you. You’re big, and I’m very small. People don’t always know who’s a friend and who isn’t. If I knew something else that happened that you should know, and I told you that something, would you be my friend?”
Conway said, “I don’t collect information on my friends, Dodoy. If you ever learn that, maybe you’ll have friends of your own. You better leave.”
Retreating back behind his knees, Dodoy said, “See how easily you forgive Sylah and Tate? But you’re still mad at me. I know I don’t understand everything, because I’m a child, but I don’t care, because they need you. I’m afraid because if I don’t tell you what I know, you can’t save them.”
“Save them?”
“There’s a danger they don’t know about. Neither do you. And
I’m too weak to do anything.”
Conway turned his back on the boy. Nausea crawled up and down his throat. His thoughts seemed to be liquid, uncontrollable.
His gaze came to rest on the meandering crack in the stone wall. An insignificant flaw in something so fundamentally sound, yet someday melt water would drain down that face and fill it. Then the wind would shift. The running water would slow. Freeze. Ice would expand in the fissure. The rock would break. Not at once. Not with a roar. Slowly. Agonizingly. A tiny bit at a time.
Hating himself, Conway reached for his clothes where they were folded at the foot of his bed, saying, “If you’ve got something to tell me, Dodoy, say it and get back to your chores. I want to get dressed.”
Dodoy studied Conway for several long breaths, then said, “Somebody made a chant two days ago, when you came in here to be sick. I heard.”
Two days ago. So that was how long he’d been asleep. He said, “A chant? All Church women do that. It helps them relax, think more clearly. Is that all you wanted to tell me?” Conway remembered Lanta’s lullabylike humming while she rubbed salve on his injuries. He said, “I think you heard Lanta. She was singing to herself while she was in here.”
Dodoy loosened his hands, seemed to expand. “Sylah was here, too? Tate?”
“No. Just Lanta. Treating me.”
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, a knowing grin spread across the thin, sharp face. “Treating,” he said, stretching the two syllables into accusation. “She wasn’t singing. I heard. She chanted.”
“Well, who cares? If she thinks it helps her…”
Sliding backward toward the entry, Dodoy said, “I will be your friend, even if you don’t want to be mine. I help you. I warn.” He reached behind himself, holding the flap open. “There is special chanting. For Seers, for Seeing. She says nothing to the others, not even to you. When she treated you, Matt Conway, did you become very tired? Sleep? Why would a friend wish to See you? Or maybe you should wonder whose friend would wish to do it.”
Dodoy disappeared through the entryway. Conway’s final glimpse of the boy’s shining bright grin was like watching a dagger slide into a scabbard.
With the boy gone, Conway and Karda remained unmoving until Conway finally had to change position. When he did, the dog shifted quickly, continuing to face the door, but leaning his great bulk against his master. Assured that the man couldn’t move without his knowledge, Karda settled down, chin on forepaws. He watched where Dodoy had gone.
Chapter 25
Sylah shrugged out of her sleeping robe and pulled her everyday wear over her head. She shivered at the first cool touch of the wool as its encompassing length whispered down over her body. The warmth she carried over from the snug comfort of bed asserted itself quickly. In the darkness, she bent to draw her fingertips across the tight weave of the Dog blankets, visualizing the imagery. The blankets of Clas’ people. Would they ever be her people?
She was astonished to realize she’d never considered where they’d live when she returned from the search for the Door.
There was no point in considering it. Power would flow to her, and with that, responsibility. No one could anticipate the future created by power. It had a destiny of its own, and people were randomly blown dust. That was the way. Clas would understand.
Straightening once more, she frowned. In her mind, she saw the multicolored blanket tents of the Dog campsite, their bright concentric circles enlivening the prairie. She smelled the honest animals heaviness of horses, the fragrances of herbs, the aroma of cookfires. In the depth of her soul, she felt the vozun and pala drums. Above all that, she remembered how the free, happy children ran and shrieked laughter, playing as all children should.
As she did before the raiders stole her, stole her childhood.
As her first child never would. The child that died within her, lost in Altanar’s dungeons.
Why? Why?
Because she was an object, something to be used, bargained for, traded.
A thing the Harvester would have degraded even more.
To the west, stars boldly decorated the still night. Those in the east glimmered their last. Kneeling at the spring, she hesitated before beginning her ritual wash to savor the crisp tang of the moist air. Tumbling over the lip of its small pool, the flow greeted her with sibilant chatter.
From one of the deep pockets of her robe, she took out her soap container and drying cloth and positioned them on the ground, drying cloth to left, soap to right. Head bowed, she made the morning three-sign of the Iris Abbey. The hand was formed to represent the leaves and corm of an iris; forefinger bent, covered by the thumb, the remaining three fingers spread apart. With the knuckle of the thumb, she touched her forehead, then a point centered on her chest. Next she touched her eyes, right followed by left. To pray, she joined both hands so the index fingers were at the tip of her nose. “May I see the truth and pursue it with a true heart and clear mind. May I see wrong and avoid it. May I see in all things the wonder and glory of the One in All and be ever grateful that He sends the sun to remind us of the One Who Is Two.”
She picked up the soap container. It was an ornately carved box of red cedar that had belonged to the Iris Abbess when she was a girl. It was made in two halves; the bottom held the soap and the top fit over it. A leather strap, with a cunning silver buckle cast in a warty little toad’s head, held it closed. The toad’s tongue was the tongue of the buckle, and she could never open it without remembering the old Abbess’ lecture that he was the cleverest of creatures, because although it had the quickest tongue of all, it used it only to catch food.
The wood of the box was dark and silky, impregnated with the oils of thousands of bars of soap. Visually, as well as by texture, it gave life to the carved images of flowers on the sides of the lid. On the larger surface at the top was a portrait of a sister at prayer. Directly behind her head, placed so it could be taken for a halo—were such a thing not forbidden to Church—was a golden sun disk.
Sylah scrubbed vigorously, enjoying the spur of ice-cold water. When she was through, she dried as briskly, then replaced her belongings in her pocket and sought a place to greet the day.
As she had the previous mornings at this camp, she went to a flat rock at the edge of a sharp drop into the blackberry valley. There was only a moment for her to wonder where Lanta was before the first edge of the sun became visible through a low space between the looming, black peaks of the Enemy Mountains. She raised her arms, held them out horizontally.
Men called the posture obscene, said it was meant to expose women’s bodies. Women called it greeting the sun.
And laughed secretly, knowing it was a cross, forbidden to women by men.
A petty victory, some would say, rather like the sun disk on the soap box that every sister knew was a halo. Still, a victory, in a world where oppression was a tradition and defeat was constant.
Perhaps not so petty, after all.
It was a good sunrise. With her eyes closed, Sylah sensed the light, felt the first, tentative warmth on her chilled face. “The darkness passes,” she intoned. “Light is. Life is.”
When she turned to go back to camp, she saw Lanta coming toward her from higher up the slope. When the smaller woman was beside her, Sylah said, “I didn’t hear you get up this morning.”
Lanta said, “I wanted to be early. I noticed a place up there yesterday. It’s not a hard climb, and the view’s much grander. I should’ve asked you to go with me.”
“I understand. We get little privacy. Especially you. You’ve been with Conway almost constantly.”
Lanta gestured a shade too casually. “You spent a great deal of time with him, too. And you did much more work on Stormracer and Mikka.”
Sylah was about to make a remark about the division of labor when she heard the noise. She stopped abruptly, throwing back her cowl, the better to listen. When Lanta tried to ask what the problem was, Sylah stopped her with a sharp, chopping gesture. Together, they posed li
ke deer scenting the air.
“There,” Sylah said at last. “You hear?”
“Barely. An elk bugling?”
Sylah grimaced, continuing their walk. “It could have been a mountain lion. Listen: Can you hear it now?” Once more they stopped. Tauntingly, the breeze stirred branches and fir needles, set the forest to snickering at them. Saw-edged blackberry leaves rubbed against each other with a noise like rushing water.
Lanta said, “The wind makes it so hard…”
Sylah lied. “My imagination, I guess. We’re all nervous. It’s the sitting, doing nothing, that makes us that way. I’m glad we’re moving today.” She had heard something. Vainly, she scanned the area for some visual clue.
“I’m not glad we’re breaking camp, not at all. It’s going to be very hard on Conway.”
Sylah forced the matter of the noises out of her mind. She patted Lanta’s shoulder. “He has to learn to endure. I’ve watched him. He’s a fighter, but I sense something different about him. If I didn’t know how many adventures he must have had, finding his way to Ola, I’d say he was untested. The fever’s an example. He wasn’t terribly injured in the fight with the boar; he was recovering exactly as we expected. Then, for no good reason, he’s sick. Terribly, frighteningly sick. Have you ever seen a man drop so quickly, so completely?”
Lanta was angrily defensive. “Many times. In plagues and things. He’s very strong. He’s almost completely well. And he’s a good patient.”
Sylah answered with careful solemnity, pointing with her chin. “Right now I think he’s worrying about his stomach.”
Conway was outside his lean-to, moving carefully, but making steady progress toward the cookfire where Tate was preparing porridge. Dodoy glanced up from poking the coals with a stick. Offering no greeting, he went back to it.
The meal passed smoothly, with everyone returning easily into the routine of breaking camp and loading the pack animals.
Tate was delighted to be on the move again, particularly since Conway’s unsteadiness made her the only choice to ride point. Whistling up her dogs, she instructed Dodoy to stay with Conway, and left ahead of the others.
