“I have only dogged you once.” And Farron showed his teeth in that disturbingly toothy grin of his, then went on. “The winds show me everything, rider. Every pulse in the air, every ripple in the stone, each twitch of flesh. But to separate it out into specifics requires focus, and you have given me nothing to focus for.” He sobered, his eyes unexpectedly sane for a moment. “And now you know more of my medicine than any who have not paid the wind’s price, Gabriel Kasun. Do you wish to learn more?”
They both stopped, staring at each other. Gabriel did not blink away from the magician’s gaze, but the way he wetted his lips showed his discomfort, and Steady tossed his head, clearly not wanting to be caught between the two of them.
“Stop it,” she said, breaking into their standoff. “We have no time for this, either of you.”
“Truth, little rider,” Farron said. He blinked once, deliberately, less surrender than truce, then turned to her, resuming his walking pace. “So, what shall we do about this unwanted interloper?”
“You mean the other unwanted interloper?”
“I say we do nothing,” Izzy said, ignoring Gabriel’s taunt and hoping Farron would do the same. “Whatever it is, it hasn’t harmed us. It’s just watching. We shouldn’t provoke it. Like riding near a bear,” she said over her shoulder to Gabriel. “Just acknowledge and ride on?”
“Allowing a potential enemy to get within range seems counterwise,” the magician said. “And yet, as you say, lingering at a distance shows no immediate malice. . . . Might it be a local hunter, displeased at our overlarge feet and too-loud voices scaring game away?” His tone clearly indicated that it was they who were too loud, not him.
“It’s not a native.” Gabriel sounded confident of that, bringing Steady up alongside them, bracketing the magician between the horses while the mule brought up the rear. “They’d have let us know by now, even if they didn’t want to confront us directly. And while I respect their hunting abilities, I doubt they could hide for any length of time, even in these grasses. Not and stay close enough to spook us.”
Izzy lifted her hat and wiped the line of sweat on her forehead, squinting a little as the sun hit her face. They’d seen no rain since that sudden night storm. She wondered if there might be a creek or pond within a day’s ride, and if it would be safe to bathe there. “Another magician?”
“No.” Farron’s response was immediate. “We are not known for being social creatures, and even less with those like ourselves. We do not linger in each other’s company. Another magician would challenge me were our paths to cross, not lurk for days, and likely would not consider the risk of the devil’s displeasure worth nibbling on your little morsel. Not unless they were more mad than most, anyway.”
“Challenge? You mean a duel?” Gabriel asked.
“Most likely. The impulse to drain each other is nigh impossible to resist.” He made a grimace and lifted his long arms in a shrug. “I am not proud of how we are, but it is how we are. We cannot resist the lure.”
Gabriel looked over Farron’s head, speaking directly to Izzy. “He means they’re madmen who cannot be trusted. Isobel, he said it himself; he can’t resist. This thing we’re chasing, whatever it is, it’s powerful, which means for him it’s like liquor to a drunkard. He could be using you to find it, and once he does, you—”
“Your determination to protect your charge does you credit, rider, but your suspicion grows tedious and distracts from the true danger. Must I repeat myself a third time and make it an oath?” the magician asked, irritated. “Then so be it.” He strode forward and wheeled about, forcing them to pause as well or run him over. He took a deep breath and stared at them. “In this place, in this time, in this cause, I am not your enemy. In this time, in this place, in this cause, I am your ally. And possibly your only one, as the tribes have determined that this is the Old Man’s to deal with, as I suspect you have already learned.”
He shot a wicked glare in Gabriel’s direction. “If my interest in the power this holds offends you, remember it is also why I aid you as well.”
Izzy felt the air waver around them, thickening and then thinning again, cooling and then warming. It felt nothing like the touch of the bones, no hint of the boss’s power, yet there was a sameness to it that reminded her of Calls Thunder’s eyes or the feel of the road below them.
Gabriel looked at her, and she nodded, swallowing hard. “It was a true oath.”
“And,” Farron added, an odd glint in his eye, “if I were to chase your morsel myself, it would be in fair contest. I would give her that much respect.”
Izzy made a deep bow in Farron’s direction, a more flamboyant move than she’d used with the judge back in Flood, and hoped that her lack of amusement was clear in the action. From the way he smirked at her, she suspected he knew and didn’t care.
If you see a magician, run.
“All right,” Gabriel said, and she could tell he wasn’t happy, either, but saw no way around going forward. “So, whatever’s lurking, it’s not human, and it’s not magician, and it’s not an animal, because nothing stalks prey this long without attacking. And dust-dancers don’t leave the plains, even if they could hold a thought long enough.”
Both Izzy and Farron nodded in agreement to that.
“You know what that leaves.”
“Demon.” She hadn’t thought any word could sound so sour as that one did in the magician’s mouth. “And determined enough to leave their territory.”
“Can’t you talk to it? You’re both—” she started to say, and he hissed at her, the sheer menace in the sound stopping the words in her throat.
“Never compare us,” he warned her, lips pulled away from his teeth, those dark eyes lit from within. “They are animals, made of power but unable to understand it. I am nothing like that.”
“All right,” she agreed, much as she would have tried to calm an angry dog, without moving her body, her voice calm, controlled but agreeable. But a mad dog would still lunge, a voice reminded her. And she had no weapon to beat it back, no stick or club. Not unless she used her knife, and how much good would a knife do against a magician? She found her fingers pressing against the sheath nonetheless, the cool metal a false reassurance.
“Your oath,” she said, her voice faint.
“I am nothing like that,” he repeated, but his face eased, and she nodded, letting go of the sheath’s ties.
“If it is a demon following us,” she said, still alert to every twitch and blink, “why? Boss says they don’t much like being around people.”
“They don’t,” Gabriel agreed. He had come off Steady’s back when the magician had threatened her, and she followed suit now, the three of them standing within the circle of horses and mule. Anyone observing them would not be able to see their faces or hear their words. “They don’t like people and they don’t like being alone, so if there’s one, there’s more than one. Or we’ve been passed off from one group to another. Anyroad, it’s not good news. I’d rather face a war party than demon set on mischief. Isobel, I hate to ask it of you again, but can you catch a whiff of it without it knowing you’re looking?”
“You think she can do what I could not?” Farron’s voice was tight, controlled, as though Gabriel had finally managed to insult him.
Gabriel gave him a long look that managed to be both considering and insulting. “Can’t she?”
The magician gave another shrug and looked away. “She might. Or it might catch and eat her . . . and I doubt she would come back as well from that as I did.”
Izzy met Gabriel’s gaze and nodded once. They needed to know what followed them and why. She would take the risk, although the thought made her blood chill, uncertain if the magician was exaggerating the risk or not.
Gabriel placed one hand on her shoulder, the warmth of his fingers felt even through the fabric of her jacket. “We’re here. We’ll keep g
uard. The last time Steady encountered a demon, he kicked it near into tomorrow.”
She smiled at that, the way he’d intended her to, but her insides felt watery, like she was coming down with the flux. Demon might not be as dangerous as magician, but they were bad enough. And opening herself to find it . . ..
Other things might find her.
Izzy rubbed her thumb into the mark on her palm, hard enough for it to hurt. There was a difference between luring the storm-beast in and leaving herself open to it.
“Don’t look at it, look past it,” the magician told her, arms crossed over his chest, his expression closed off. She still couldn’t read him, the shifting madness in his brain masking what lay below, but she listened to his advice anyway. “Demon are curious; it will want to see what you see, and show itself that way.”
She nodded, her brow furrowed. And if it wasn’t a demon that was following them, she thought, not looking directly at it might keep her unnoticed in turn. “Step lightly,” Iktan always said. “If you step lightly, most everything will let you pass.”
Unless they were drunk. Molly had always added that. Some things were just spoiling for a fight.
She bit her lower lip, trying to think how she might look past something when she didn’t know what she was looking for or how she was even looking. Each time prior, she had touched the ground, slid into the humming, let it take her over. And each time, she had been drawn directly to the creature, an arrow loosed from a bow, a bullet from a muzzle, moth to a candle.
She traced the sigil thoughtfully. “Walk past it,” she said to herself, an idea unfolding. “Walking to the bar to freshen drinks, all the while keeping an eye on the players at a table.” She closed her eyes, visualizing the floor of the saloon, the placement of tables, then imagined herself there, the crowd around her, the way she’d glance and turn. . . .
There was no room for doubt. She had been doing this since she was old enough to carry a tray; the bet was higher but the cards were the same. Bring the things she knew together. . . .
Izzy shifted, turning so that she was at the center of the little group of men and horses, and lowered herself to a crouch. Then she opened her left hand, palm facing toward the ground but not touching it, and thought about being in a crowded room, looking without looking. Then she touched the feeling of being watched, the sensation of something tracking them.
Now-familiar dizziness, steadied by the distant feel of an arm through hers, the press of a body nearby, a horse’s whuffling breath and the creak of leather, the sound of human voices wrapped around her, holding her. Dizziness and the drawing-down, crackling and grinding, moving so slowly her breath felt too fast, too obvious, and she tried to slow it, keep it from sounding so loud against the shhhh shhhhh shhh of the bones and stones below.
This wasn’t like before. There was nothing lurking, slavering, pushing at her. The shhhh shhh shhhh wound through her skin, cradling her thoughts, smelling of water and dry stone, tasting of thunder and flame and fur, singing the skittering of things she could not name, but nothing surged at her, nothing took note. She followed it down, searching the way a dowser would for water, seeking unease, upset, hunger. Nothing. She let go, looked instead for the sense of watching, of lurking, of curiosity. . . .
Something brushed against her, dry heat and rasp, and was gone. Snake. Snake still watches but is not what I seek.
She looked past, further out, waiting.
Hunger. Not the fearsome scrape and claw but a low thrumming hunger, a need. But there was no form she could find, no shape to identify, and then it too faded and was gone. Her eyes opened and she lifted her chin, tilting the brim of her hat back and breathing deep, filling her lungs.
“Iz?”
“Nothing behind, nothing above.” She scanned the pale blue sky, able to see buzzards far over them, circling something distant to the left, the peaceful dryness of the single tree in the distance, the slow push-presence of whatever followed them, blending into the push-presence of the rocks, the grasses, the dirt below their feet. The bones of the world, crackling as they moved, slow, so slowly, wind and water rushing over and through. She knew its mood the way she’d know the mood of a player at the table, reading the hundred surface marks and movements that answered her questions even though they never spoke. The unease that had rested in her bones for so many weeks melted and subsided. “I can’t find anything,” she said, and her voice cracked, dry as the stone underfoot. Gabriel fetched a waterskin from Steady’s saddle and pressed it on her, making sure her fingers closed around it so she could drink. The warm, stale water felt magnificent against her throat, as though she’d been screaming for hours.
“There’s nothing behind us?” The magician frowned. “But I thought—”
“Something’s there, dry and deep below, but I can’t . . . I can’t see it.” She frowned at him, feeling an ache begin to form behind her eyes, that brief sense of contentment gone, replaced by the queasy feeling of having been thrown hard from a horse. She was suddenly hungry, but the thought of food made her want to vomit.
“I can’t . . .” She struggled to form words, to explain. “There’s nothing to see, nothing I can catch at.”
“Dry like a rock, or dry like a hot wind?” The magician’s voice was hard, cold, and she forced herself to focus on it.
“Like . . . both? But more like wind,” she told him. “But it slipped away the moment I reached for it.”
“Demon,” Farron said. “That’s what they taste like: dry and full of nothing.”
“Why can’t I see it?”
“Because they don’t want us to. I scorn their intellect, but we’re the interlopers here, little rider. Me and thee and even the People, who claim to remember the lands rising from the waters, we’re all invaders compared to them. They’re the dust of the first bones, ancient stones. The way we use power, it was theirs first.” His voice had taken on that singsong lilt of madness again, his smile distracted, his eyes vague on the distance, seeing something she could not.
“If they’re that old, that powerful, maybe they know what sent the storm, too. Let me try again.” Her brave words were undercut when she swayed on her feet, nearly falling into Gabriel, who caught her up around the waist.
“None of that, Iz. Back up in the saddle you go, and a good hold on the reins.”
She wanted to protest, but the dizziness she’d felt came rushing back like a stampede. It would be foolish to resist, so she let him help her back into the saddle, gathering up the reins and leaning forward to rest her face against Uvnee’s warm neck, even as the magician took up position on her right. “You watch the road for me, all right, girl?”
The mare snorted, and she heard Gabriel swing back into his own saddle, and they started forward again.
Gabriel was both amused and worried when Isobel fell asleep as they rode, waking only long enough to help untack the horses when they halted to make camp. Her eyes glazed with sleep, her hair loose over her shoulders, a smudge of dirt on her chin, the facade of adulthood was cracked, if not shattered. He gently pushed her aside when she would have tried to follow her usual routine of cleaning and storing the tack, and made her sit down on a flat stone set just outside the fire circle.
“You did most of the hard work today,” he told her. “Rest.”
She looked as though she wanted to argue, but he scowled at her, and she ducked her head, busying herself finger-combing the tangles in her hair, then rebraiding it.
“I did no hard work?” the magician said, his voice mock-offended but low, meant for his ears, not hers, as they unloaded the packs from the mule and set up camp.
“I’m not sure what you did today,” Gabriel said sharply. “Why would a demon be following us?”
The magician looked down at him, his face schooled in a mask of quiet confusion even as he smoothed a place for the bedrolls to lay out. His hand barely touched the g
rass, rocks and sticks stirring themselves to the side. “You ask me? It follows you.” He cocked his head, considering. “Or her. Most likely her.”
“Why?” Gabriel set his own bedroll down a distance away and turned back to face the magician. “As you said, they’re ancient and care nothing for our doings, have no truck with the devil’s workings, any more than your kind do. Nor do they travel under the open sky.” Demon lingered in shadows, in caves or riverbanks, not well-marked roads.
“She is new. It may be curious. That is a trait we all share, even demon.” His smile did nothing to warm his face, and Gabriel distrusted it.
“What do you mean, new? She’s green, you mean?” Between them, working in surprising harmony, the camp had been established, and only the fire remained to be started. But he hesitated, waiting for the magician to respond.
“There has been no Hand on the road in decades. No—” He frowned, this one an oddly open, honest expression. “Longer than that. The devil had his players, his dogs set to track deal-breakers, his jacks to do his bidding. But none with such . . . authority. None who bear his mark so clearly.”
“What does it mean? Why now?”
The magician laughed and shook his head, no humor in the sound or the action. “You ask me to interpret the devil? Madness only drives me so far, rider. But the winds are restless, the natives uncertain, and settlers disappearing and dying, all as she rides by? Something trembles the bones below our feet? You think all that coincidence?”
“I think that not all events are connected. She came of age and offered bargain; that is why she was chosen now.”
“Spoken like a true advocate, clinging to the facts. But this is the Territory, and you are bound. You know better.”
Silver on the Road Page 31
