Dragonfly

by Sylvia Kelso

  * * * *

  We both knew we must have food for the hills, and find it while the Clettri-farm story would hold. We slugged the horses past one, then another farm-house, tree-bedded in their clusters of folds and pens and out-buildings amid green pastures and the threadbare green of rising grain. Three times Therkon proposed, “This one.” And three times Azo’s training, Two’s instinct, something, answered, “Not yet.”

  The track branched and branched again, hemming us among ploughland between drystone walls. The fourth choice was

  smaller than some, with trees on the hill below it, masking the road. By this time the farm folk would be mostly about their

  business, even fewer witnesses. “This one,” I said.

  By the time we regained the road I almost had Two, at least, under control. As Therkon turned his mount westward, I could keep myself to a mere, “That was—That was—!”

  “My lady.” He gave me an apologetic glance. “Deoren would say, Hide under the lamp. I only thought . . . it worked at the gate?”

  “At least she didn’t set the dogs on us.” I could feel that a laugh would get out of control. “It worked at the gate, to claim we were Attric’s hire, yes. But out chasing us—!”

  “She will know soon enough.”

  “Oh, yes.” When he began to repeat the crier’s notice I had nearly fallen off my horse. But, Two insisted, we would dodge off this track no later, whenever the real hunt brought the truth. And to claim patrol-duty let us ask for food that would last: bread, cheese, but also cured bacon, flour, oil. And about passes and tracks. However perilous that instant when the white-skinned but weathered farm-wife had checked. Stared. Then said, “Aye, ye’re outlanders, I was forgettin’. Aweel, ye can ward the foothills, but there’s no passes,” she nodded sharply, “up there.”

  I squinted sidelong to the jaggedly looming horizon, rising now with every stride of my horse. “Did she mean, no passes at all?”

  He gave me a swift glance. “There must be passage. For deer, for rock-scramblers, if nothing else. We will find a way.”

  He did not have to finish, we must. He glanced behind, and added, “At least, there will be no trouble with tracks.”

  The clear morning had begun to cloud before we passed Jurrick gate. Now the eastward farmland was disappearing under a steadily darker curtain of rain. We could take the second track, not the one we had told the farm-wife we would try. Turn the horses loose up beyond the settled land. After that, trust our cloaks for shelter and the weather to obliterate our traces, and walk, with the saddlebags over our own shoulders. Into the hills. In the rain.

  * * * *

  It did not get truly bad till dusk. We loosed the horses after the rain reached us, sometime not far from noon. By then the track had climbed onto open hillsides of bracken and that sullen green ling Sickle had grown, pressing deeper and deeper between crags that beetled over us as the valley closed. High crags, stacked and fractured sometimes as Rack Head had been, sometimes worn down through three or four kinds of rock, grey or black or cinnabar red, weathered to chimneys and flying buttresses, and more and more often, a precipice only flies could scale.

  By the time dusk came we had found the boulders as well.

  Amid the ling, smaller stones had threatened toes and ankles, especially in the rain, but up the valley the ling ended and earth rose like a cresting wave. Now we faced crevices, crannies, foot-catching narrow spots between slippery, bulging boulder-faces. Naked, massive stone.

  We might have made a quarter mile, through the battle to find and conquer scaleable places amid our dangling bags and

  entangling cloaks, before the light began to fade. As we panted atop the latest monster, I caught Therkon’s cloak and gasped, “Need to stop!”

  If we went on in the dark we would break our necks: he did not have to be told. His hooded head swung to and fro, scattering drops as the seal-furs shed rain like glass. It was not denial. He was seeking any possibility of shelter. Of protection against the cold.

  My own scratched and battered hands were already almost numb. I tilted my head to peer through the hood-drips. Dark, glistening rock faces, jagged and crenellated all the way to the cloud. Grey cloud, wisping close over us and twining through their battlements, steadily shedding rain. But now there was a draft behind us, a whistle and rustle in the boulder-field. The wind was rising too.

  The best we managed before full dark was a kind of slot between two leaning boulders, close against a cliff. It did face cross-valley, cutting down the wind, and its top was narrow enough to stop most rain, leaving the base just wide enough for two people to edge, single file, inside. And then huddle in our cloaks with the thankfully retained saddlebags under us, to extract, finally, the bread and cheese and my wrist-knife, and amid the drip and splatter of water and the rising wind-howl, swallow the first real food of the day.

  We also had a short but fierce skirmish over who went

  furthest in. Therkon won, mostly because I dared not shout, You’re likelier to catch pneumonia! Nor, I’m troublecrew, I’m supposed to protect you! So it was he who had his back in the outer opening, while to get him in as far as possible I was banging my elbows on the rock at every move.

  When we had managed, the final straw, to catch the only drinkable water by putting our cups out for raindrops, he said ruefully, “My lady, this may not have been the best way, after all.”

  “It was the only way,” Two said.

  “Two thinks so?” I felt his side relax. “I thought—no. I did not really think. It just seemed what we should do.” A sudden little pause. “I did wonder, why you, um, agreed so easily.”

  I had fussed and fretted over his fecklessness too often, too visibly. I was glad of the dark. But Two had given me the answer to that as well.

  “Two says, you’re the strategist. You see the big plan. We’re troublecrew. We just have to make it work.”

  “Oh!” He might have been flattered. He was certainly surprised.

  “But I wondered.” It had nagged me in the fleeting pauses from necessity, all day. “Do you think it was your plan? Or can—it—turn people too?”

  More silence. Silence so long the wind went through an entire cycle of rising scream, squeal, skirl and fall. While the rain pattered unrelentingly, and my longbones measured the encroaching nether cold.

  Then he said, almost under his breath, “I have wondered that.”

  “Two,” I swallowed hard, “Two can’t say. Insufficient data. But surely: if there was a plan, and it did go wrong at Rack Head. Everything since then couldn’t have been, uh, set up?”

  More silence. At last he said, “The chain would be so long. Nouip’s gifts. Hvestang’s past. My—attack. The Tolla, perhaps, yes. A good guess that we might escape, a possibility we would try that ship. But that Frotha would take us? That horses would be at the inn?”

  “Maybe it can only push where there’s a, a weak spot? Like Hvestang?”

  “That would seem sensible. But,” he moved sharply, “who is to say what is sense in this? Or what it considers sense?”

  No-one, if Two could not. Cold comfort, even shared. But talking was better than consciously waiting for the cold to penetrate, for muscles cramped in position to complain, for mind to trace out the still-unexpended span of night.

  And better, far better, than the treacherously rising awareness of his side and flank and hip crammed so tantalisingly close. The memory of that velvet skin, the present, tangible human warmth.

  “At any rate,” he said, and for a moment I heard the crown prince who had also led an army, who would have been expected, however minimally, to support and reassure his troops, “we made our own choice. And whether that was helped or not, we are going south.”

  * * * *

  Talk lapsed after that. Eventually weariness must have won out, and I dropped asleep. Because I know I had been dreaming when I
came round with a strangled shriek and limbs flying upright from the black about me, not lightless air and darkened earth but water, black water, welling, rising, still and soundless as death, black water reaching to engulf me, knowing what it sought . . .

  Something had my arm, noise was in my ears, a voice. All that stopped Two sparking was that known, familiar voice. “Chaeris. Chaeris! It’s all right. I am here. You are safe.”

  My lungs still wheezed for air. I clutched frenziedly around me, my knuckles struck rock, my other hand met cloth, hair, flesh.

  “Oof.” I think I had hit him in the mouth. But the sound rallied me. We were on Phaerea, not the Aspis, in the rocks, far inland, at night. And I had just punched my charge, my troublecrew trust.

  “I’m sorry, sorry—”

  “Not your fault.” His hand found mine, closing on it lightly enough to keep Two quiet. He did not have to say, That was a dream? I did not have to ask, You were already awake? But some things are too much to bear alone.

  “It was like, at Nouip’s house.” I could not control the shudder. “She said, Water. Black water. Only rising round me. Like—like Aspis. Belowdecks.”

  “That is over. A memory.” His hand shut hard on mine.

  “Yes. Yes.” I tried not to shut my eyes on the night’s unbroken but earthly black, the wind’s keen, the pattering drops of rain.

  In a moment he said, very softly, “But?”

  “But,” it broke out like water spurting through those started planks. “It wasn’t just water. It knew. It thought. And it was l-looking. Looking for me.”

  His hand clamped this time like a vice. He did not speak. He did not have to. But once begun, I had to go on to the end.

  “At Nouip’s house, it was like something Two sees. A, a projection. I was awake. But th-this time—it was a dream.”

  A time when my mind would have no defense.

  The rest simply would not come out. Does this mean it’s getting closer? Does it mean the thing is more aware? Getting close in more ways than one?

  Therkon stirred, then began to rub my hand between both of his. “It’s night. And cold. And cursed uncomfortable. If not as bad as Aspis.” His own voice skipped away from that. “With wind. And water. The noise, the wet. Small wonder you dreamed.”

  “You think I was just remembering Aspis?” I could not keep the disbelief, the verge of disillusion, from my voice.

  There was another stretching quiet. But in the end, for all the temptations, he did not fail me. He sounded flat, and very tense, but he said it out.

  “No.”

  Cravenly I thought, I wish I’d never asked. I wish I’d let him try to fool us both. Oh, Mother, I wish I could crawl over there and hide in his shoulder like a baby, like I did at Nouip’s house.

  And in that brief memory of muscle’s weight and warmth under my cheek, I felt the almost imperceptible vibration in his fingers. Not a tremor, something less controllable.

  He was shivering.

  “Fry it.” To flee into concern for another was more than a relief. “You’re cold, I knew you’d be cold there, you’re too far out in the wind—Are you wet? Let me change places. If you get pneumonia, what will I tell the Empress?”

  “My—Chaeris.” Surprised, almost enough to be amused. “I am not wet. The furs are better than a tent. I am not wholly feeble—”

  “But you are in the wind there—”

  “If you get pneumonia, what will I do?”

  A Dhasdeini man, who could never let a woman shield him, rather than shielding her. More fragile than I, after the storm and his stomach’s damage. But this time, I had a face-saver to use.

  “I live in the mountains. I’m used to it.” I took a handful of fur and gave a little pull. “Either you come further in, or I go out.” I let the silence add, Which will it be?

  He sighed, audibly. But he had read that silence too.

  I shoved my own bag to the cleft end, we tangled and un­tangled feet, trying to dovetail the baulky masses of cloak-wrapped shoulders and legs. Two pressed infuriatingly with memories of how much closer two people could get if they both straightened their legs and lay side by side, sharing cloaks. Shut up! I told her,

  maddened by the recall of his shoulder, his body against me, at Nouip’s house, on Evva beach. I’m not getting any closer. I won’t! I can’t!

  Then it struck me that he too was holding back. And with greater shock, that it might not all be misguided Dhasdeini courtesy.

  “Two.” My voice had gone so small that in a new wind-flurry I could barely hear myself. “Two won’t spark. She’d never—”

  Hurt anyone in this situation. Least of all you.

  I felt him move again, an almost ungoverned jerk. Then, rougher than he had ever spoken to me, he said, “I am inside. This is close enough.”

  I could find nothing to answer that. It hurt too much.

  * * * *

  I woke cold through, despite the cloak, hams bitten despite the saddlebag by unrelenting pebbled stone. But I woke because, with a skill taught me on Aspis, I had felt the weather change. Before my eyes opened I knew the rain had stopped.

  The wind had dropped too, in volume, in pitch. And Therkon had slid over, or fallen over, in sleep. He was half lying next to me, his breathing sleep-steady, his head’s full weight against my cheek.

  If I don’t move, I thought. His shoulder was under mine, slack-muscled but solid, his hair in silky strands against my face. He was snoring a little, and bristle roughed my collarbone where his jaw had displaced my cloak. It was miserably cold, just creeping into light. But if I don’t move, I told myself, I can make a dream from things Two knows. That we’re in a Tower room of Amberlight, garnished with rich cloths and furs, warmed through by qherrique. That I’m a Head and he my husband, we’re in the big men’s-quarters marriage bed, and we can stay like this, if I choose it, every morning of my life.

  Was it a minute, or five, or a yearning century? Before Therkon gave a snort and a grunt and either from a weather signal like mine or just bent muscles’ complaint, came awake.

  With another snort as he jerked his head away, coming almost upright on a gasp and a smothered “Dhe—!”

  “I told you,” I could not help it, “Two wouldn’t spark.”

  The pause fell between us like a cataclysm. I could have bitten out my tongue. He—I could not tell what he felt. But the words were more than stiff.

  “My lady. I beg your pardon.” He started to struggle with the gear. “It will not happen again.”

  * * * *

  We each sortied into the rocks. Tried to tidy ourselves up. Carved up the last bread, both probably silently cursing the lack of fire for hot food or even water. As we donned our packs I could bear the other chill no longer. It came out whisperingly small, but it came.

  “I’m sorry. I only thought—it would be better—warmer—”

  He turned round with a jerk. His hair was in elf-locks as on Aspis, his face stubbled, his new clothes the predictable wrinkled mess. But of a sudden the rigid expression melted away.

  “My lady.” Two steps and he had my hands. “I do beg your pardon. It was nothing to do with you. It was . . . No matter what it was. Forgive me. I did speak truth in one thing. It will not happen again.”

  He found a smile for me. A true smile, as he would have given me on Aspis. He still looked a perfect ruffian, but the sudden,

  redoubtable barriers in those eyes had gone.

  So at least we confronted the boulders in something like the accord of yesterday.

  The moraine finally topped somewhere in mid-morning. Puffing, sweating despite the wind and cold and prevailing damp, we looked out the through the low V of sinking cliffs. Into another unrelieved landscape of boulders, rising to a perfect boar’s chine of jagged, unbroken rock.

  “Blight and blast it!” I gasped.

/>   Therkon heaved at his pack. In a moment his eye turned westward, and I knew his thought.

  “We’ll have to find another gap, or whatever this was. Work sideways, through that mess.” The pack dragged at my own

  shoulders. “Oh, Mother. Do you suppose, at least, there’s water? Anywhere?”

  And again, the Mother answered. The wind gusted along the hillside, bringing a faint tinkle and gurgle. Somewhere to the west.

  It was a little spring, a freshet, perhaps, falling out of a

  boulder interstice like a city tap. Cold, pure, fresh. Best of all, dropping into a tiny rock oasis: ling, some bracken, a spindly white-barked tree.

  We had gathered twigs and dead wood and sacrificed some precious tinder, Therkon had unearthed the new little cooking pan, I had dug out ingredients for pan cakes, before the next

  calamity struck.

  “Flour. Oil. Water. Salt, if you have it. I’ve watched mess-cooks make them.” Therkon actually scratched amid his mare’s nest of hair. “But the proportions—!”

  And to invade Shia’s kitchen would have been more than my life was worth.

  We cooked bacon, in the end.

  * * * *

  What I would have given, by sunset, to see that little bay again! We had kept westward, taking the spring as the Mother’s sign. By sunset we might have made two miles, or maybe two and a half. Every inch was a giant’s labor of prospecting a

  possible route, then climbing it. Then, blocked again, having to cast, and search, and scramble, for a further advance. Not counting the back-casts, the simple dead-ends, from which I had begun to think we would never escape.

  Sheer exigency, if not gravity, had pushed us steadily downhill, deeper into the boulder maelstrom, lower under what, on our side, had become cliffs again. There was no shelter. There was no water. The sky greyed, the wind probed and prised at us, and the jagged skyline beside us had never showed a sign of breaking in the length of the day. The sole blessing was that it did not rain.

  We were in the bottom of the dip when the light finally began to fail. My feet were bruised to the bone, my thigh muscles felt to be falling off their bones. The pack had cut my shoulders to infuriation point. My eyes ached, my head ached. Every fiber of me ached to simply fall down, give it all best, and expire where I lay.