The crazy stared at her for a long time, blinking, frowning in deep thought. Suddenly his expression cleared. His face grew serene and joyful. He started toward her, stumbled, and crawled. On his knees beside her, he caught her hands. His own were dirty and callused. The ring that had cut Snake’s forehead was a setting that had lost its stone.
“You mean you’ll help me get a dreamsnake of my own?” He smiled. “To use any time?”
“Yes,” Snake said through clenched teeth. She drew her hands back as the crazy bent to kiss them. Now she had promised him, and though she knew it was the only way she could get his cooperation, she felt as if she had committed a terrible sin.
Chapter 11
Moonlight shone dimly on the excellent road to Mountainside. Arevin rode late into the night, so immersed in his thoughts that he did not notice when sunset burned daylight into dusk. Though the healers’ station lay days behind him to the north, he still had not encountered anyone with news of Snake. Mountainside was the last place she could be, for there was nothing south of Mountainside. Arevin’s maps of the central mountains showed a herders’ trail, an old unused pass that cut only through the eastern range, and ended. Travelers in the mountains, as well as in Arevin’s country, did not venture into the far southern regions of their world.
Arevin tried not to wonder what he would do if he did not find Snake here. He was not close enough to the crest of the mountains to catch glimpses of the eastern desert, and for that he was glad. If he did not see the storms begin, he could imagine the calm weather lasting longer than usual.
He rounded a wide curve, looked up, and shielded his lantern, blinking. Lights ahead: soft yellow gaslights. The town looked like a basket of sparks spilled out on the slope, all resting together but for a few scattered separately on the valley floor.
Though he had added several towns to his experience, Arevin still found astonishing how much work and business their people did after dark. He decided to continue on to Mountainside tonight: perhaps he could have news of Snake before morning. He wrapped his robe more tightly around himself against the coldness of the night.
Despite himself, Arevin dozed, and did not awaken until his horse’s hooves rang on cobblestones. There was no activity here, so he rode on until he reached the town’s center with its taverns and other places of entertainment. Here it was almost as bright as day, and the people acted as if night had never come. Through a tavern entrance he saw several workers with their arms around each other’s shoulders, singing, the contralto slightly flat. The tavern was attached to an inn, so he stopped his horse and dismounted. Thad’s advice about asking for information at inns seemed sound, though as yet none of the proprietors Arevin had talked to had possessed any information to give him.
He entered the tavern. The singers were still singing, drowning out their accompaniment, or whatever tune the flute player in the corner might have been trying to construct. She rested her instrument across her knee, picked up an earthernware mug, and sipped from it: beer, Arevin thought. The pleasant yeasty odor permeated the tavern.
The singers began another song, but the contralto closed her mouth quite suddenly and stared at Arevin. One of the men glanced at her. The song died raggedly as he and her other companions followed her gaze. The flute melody drifted hollowly up, down, and stopped. The attention of everyone in the room centered on Arevin.
“I greet you,” he said formally. “I would like to speak to the proprietor, if that is possible.”
No one moved. Then the contralto stumbled abruptly to her feet, knocking over her stool.
“I’ll — I’ll see if I can find her.” She disappeared through a curtained doorway.
No one spoke, not even the bartender. Arevin did not know what to say. He did not think he was so dusty and dirty as to stun anyone mute, and certainly in a trader’s town like this one people would be accustomed to his manner of dress. All he could think of to do was gaze back at them and wait. Perhaps they would return to their singing, or drink their beer, or ask him if he was thirsty.
They did nothing. Arevin waited.
He felt faintly ridiculous. He took a step forward, intending to break the tension by acting as if everything were normal. But as soon as he moved everyone in the tavern seemed to catch their breath and flinch away from him. The tension in the room was not that of people inspecting a stranger, but of antagonists awaiting an enemy. Someone whispered to another person; the words were inaudible but the tone sounded ominous.
The curtains across the doorway parted and a tall figure paused in the shadows. The proprietor stepped into the light and looked at Arevin steadily, without any fear.
“You wished to speak with me?”
She was as tall as Arevin, elegant and stern. She did not smile. These mountain people were quick to express their feelings, so Arevin wondered if he had perhaps blundered into a private house, or broken a custom he did not know.
“Yes,” he said. “I am looking for the healer Snake. I hoped I might find her in your town.”
“Why do you think you’d find her here?”
If all travelers were spoken to so rudely in Mountainside, Arevin wondered how it managed to be so prosperous.
“If she isn’t here, she must never have reached the mountains at all — she must still be in the western desert. The storms are coming.”
“Why are you looking for her?”
Arevin permitted himself a slight frown, for the questions had passed the limits of mere rudeness.
“I do not see that that is any of your business,” he said. “If common civility is not the custom in your house, I will ask elsewhere.”
He turned and nearly walked into two people with insignia on their collars and chains in their hands.
“Come with us, please.”
“For what reason?”
“Suspicion of assault,” the other one said.
Arevin looked at him in utter astonishment. “Assault? I’ve not been here more than a few minutes.”
“That will be determined,” the first one said. She reached for his wrist to lock shackles on him. He pulled back with revulsion, but she kept her grip. He struggled and both people came at him. In a moment they were all flailing away at each other, with the bar patrons shouting encouragement. Arevin hit at his two assailants and lurched almost to his feet. Something smacked against the side of his head. He felt his knees go weak, and collapsed.
Arevin woke in a small stone room with a single high window. His head ached fiercely. He did not understand what had happened, for the traders to whom his clan sold cloth spoke of Mountainside as a place of fair people. Perhaps these town bandits only preyed on solitary travelers, and left well-protected caravans alone. His belt, with all his money and his knife, was gone. Why he was not lying dead in an alley somewhere, he did not know. At least he was no longer chained.
Sitting up slowly, pausing when movement dizzied him, he looked around. He heard footsteps in the corridor, jumped to his feet, stumbled, and pulled himself up to look out through the bars on the tiny opening in the door. The footsteps receded, running.
“Is this how you treat visitors to your town?” Arevin shouted. His even temper took a considerable amount of perturbation to disarrange, but he was angry.
No one answered. He unclenched his hands from the bars and let himself back to the floor. He could see nothing outside his prison but another stone wall. The window was too high to reach, even if he moved the heavy-timbered bed and stood on it. All the light in the room was reflected downward from a vague sunny patch on the wall above. Someone had taken Arevin’s robe, and his boots, and left him nothing but his long loose riding trousers.
Calming himself slowly, he set himself to wait.
Halting footsteps — a lame person, a cane — came down the stone corridor toward his cell. This time Arevin simply waited.
The key clattered and the door swung open. Guards, wearing the same insignia as his assailants of the night before, entered first, cautiou
sly. There were three of them, which seemed strange to Arevin since he had not even been able to overpower two the night before. He did not have much experience at fighting. In his clan, adults gently parted scuffling children and tried to help them settle their differences with words.
Supported by a helper as well as by the cane, a big darkhaired man entered the cell. Arevin did not greet him or rise. They stared at each other steadily for several moments.
“The healer is safe, from you at least,” the big man said. His helper left him for an instant to drag a chair in from the hall. As the man sat down Arevin could see that he was not congenitally lame, but injured: his right leg was heavily bandaged.
“She helped you, too,” Arevin said. “So why do you set upon those who would find her?”
“You feign sanity well. But I expect once we watch you for a few days you’ll go back to raving.”
“I have no doubt I’ll begin raving if you leave me here for long,” Arevin said.
“Do you think we’d leave you loose to go after the healer again?”
“Is she here?” Arevin asked anxiously, abandoning his reserve. “She must have got out of the desert safely if you’ve seen her.”
The dark-haired man gazed at him for some seconds. “I’m surprised to hear you speak of her safety,” he said. “But I suppose inconsistency is what one should expect of a crazy.”
“A crazy!”
“Calm yourself. We know about your attack on her.”
“Attack — ? Was she attacked? Is she all right? Where is she?”
“I think it would be safer for her if I told you nothing.”
Arevin looked away, seeking some means of concentrating his thoughts. A peculiar mixture of confusion and relief possessed him. At least Snake was out of the desert. She must be safe.
A flaw in a stone block caught the light. Arevin gazed at the sparkling point, calming himself.
He looked up, nearly smiling. “This argument is foolish. Ask her to come see me. She’ll tell you we are friends.”
“Indeed? Who should we tell her wants to see her?”
“Tell her… the one whose name she knows.”
The big man scowled. “You barbarians and your superstitions — !”
“She knows who I am,” Arevin said, refusing to submit to his anger.
“You’d confront the healer?”
“Confront her!”
The big man leaned back in his chair and glanced at his assistant. “Well, Brian, he certainly doesn’t talk like a crazy.”
“No, sir,” the older man said.
The big man stared at Arevin, but his eyes were really focused on the wall of the cell behind him. “I wonder what Gabriel—” He cut off his words, then glanced at his assistant. “He did sometimes have good ideas in situations like this.” He sounded slightly embarrassed.
“Yes, mayor, he did.”
There was a longer and more intense silence. Arevin knew that in a few moments the guards and the mayor and the old man Brian would get up and leave him alone in the tiny squeezing cell. Arevin felt a drop of sweat roll down his side.
“Well…” the mayor said.
“Sir — ?” One of the guards spoke in a hesitant voice.
The mayor turned toward her. “Well, speak up. I’ve no stomach for imprisoning innocents, but we’ve had enough madmen loose recently.”
“He was surprised last night when we arrested him. Now I believe his surprise was genuine. Mistress Snake fought with the crazy, mayor. I saw her when she returned. She won the fight, and she had serious abrasions. Yet this man is not even bruised.”
Hearing that Snake was injured, Arevin had to restrain himself from asking again if she was all right. But he would not beg anything of these people.
“That seems true. You’re very observant,” the mayor said to the guard. “Are you bruised?” he asked Arevin.
“I am not.”
“You’ll forgive me if I insist you prove it.”
Arevin stood up, intensely disliking the idea of stripping himself before strangers. But he unfastened his pants and let them fall around his ankles. He let the mayor look him over, then slowly turned. At the last moment he remembered he had been in a fight the night before and could very well be visibly bruised somewhere. But no one said anything, so he turned around again and put his pants back on.
Then the old man came toward him. The guards stiffened. Arevin stood very still. These people might consider any move threatening.
“Be careful, Brian,” the mayor said.
Brian lifted Arevin’s hands, looked at the backs, turned them over, peered at the palms, let them drop. He returned to his place by the mayor’s side.
“He wears no rings. I doubt he’s ever worn any. His hands are tanned and there’s no mark. The healer said the cut on her forehead was made by a ring.”
The mayor snorted. “So what do you think?”
“As you said, sir, he doesn’t talk like a crazy. Also, a crazy would not necessarily be stupid, and it would be stupid to ask after the healer while wearing desert robes, unless one was in fact innocent — of both the crime and the knowledge of it. I am inclined to take this man at his word.“
The mayor glanced up at his assistant and over at the guard. “I hope,” he said, in a tone not altogether bantering, “that you’ll give me fair warning if either of you ever decides to run for my job.” He looked at Arevin again. “If we let you see the healer, will you wear chains until she identifies you?”
Arevin could still feel the iron from the night before, trapping him, enclosing him, cold on his skin all the way to his bones. But Snake would laugh at them when they suggested chains. This time Arevin did smile.
“Give the healer my message,” he said. “Then decide whether I need to be chained.”
Brian helped the mayor to his feet. The mayor glanced at the guard who believed in Arevin’s innocence. “Stay ready. I’ll send for him.”
She nodded. “Yes, sir.”
The guard returned, with her companions and with chains. Arevin stared horrified at the clanking iron. He had hoped Snake would be the next person through that door. He stood up blankly as the guard approached him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She fastened a cold metal band around his waist, shackled his left wrist and passed the chain through a ring on the waistband, then locked the cuff around his right wrist. They led him into the hall.
He knew Snake would not have done this. If she had, then the person who existed in his mind had never existed in reality at all. A real, physical death, hers or even his own, would have been easier for Arevin to accept.
Perhaps the guards had misunderstood. The message that came to them might have been garbled, or it was sent so quickly that no one remembered to tell them not to bother about the chains. Arevin resolved to bear this humiliating error with pride and good humor.
The guards led him into daylight that momentarily dazzled him. Then they were inside again, but his eyes were misadjusted to the dimness. He climbed stairs blindly, stumbling now and then.
The room they took him to was also nearly dark. He paused in the doorway, barely able to make out the blanket-wrapped figure sitting in a chair with her back to him.
“Healer,” one of the guards said, “here is the one who says he’s your friend.”
She did not speak or move.
Arevin stood frozen with terror. If someone had attacked her — if she was badly injured, if she could no longer talk or move, or laugh when they suggested chains — He took one fearful step toward her, another, wanting to rush to her and say he would care for her, wanting to flee and never have to remember her except as alive and whole and strong.
He could see her hand, limply dangling. He fell to his knees beside the shrouded form.
“Snake—”
The shackles made him awkward. He took her hand and bent to kiss it.
As soon as he touched her, even before he saw the smooth, unscarred skin, he knew this was not Snake
. He flung himself backward with a cry of despair.
“Where is she?”
The shrouded figure threw off the blanket with a cry of her own, one of shame. She knelt before Arevin, hands outstretched to him, tears on her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Please forgive me—” She slumped down, her long hair hanging around her beautiful face.
The mayor limped out of the darkness in a corner of the room. Brian helped Arevin up this time, and in a moment the chains clattered to the floor.
“I had to have some better assurance than bruises and rings,” the mayor said. “I believe you now.”
Arevin heard the sounds but not the meanings. He knew Snake was not here at all, not anywhere. She would never have participated in this farce.
“Where is she?” he whispered.
“She’s gone. She went to the city. To Center.”
Arevin sat on a luxurious couch in one of the mayor’s guest rooms. It was the same room where Snake had stayed, but try as he might, Arevin could feel nothing of her presence.
The curtains were open to the darkness. Arevin had not moved since returning from the observation point, where he had looked down upon the eastern desert and the rolling masses of storm clouds. The killing winds turned sharp-edged sand grains into lethal weapons. In the storm, heavy clothing would not protect Arevin, nor would any amount of courage or desperation. A few moments in the desert would kill him; an hour would strip his bones bare. In the spring no trace of him would be left.
If Snake was still in the desert, she was dead.
He did not cry. When he knew she was gone he would mourn her. But he did not believe she was dead. He wondered if it were foolish to believe he would know if Snake no longer lived. He had thought many things about himself, but never before that he was a fool. Stavin’s older father, Arevin’s cousin, had known when the little one was ill; he had come back a month early with one of the herds. His ties with Stavin were ties of love and of family, not of blood. Arevin made himself believe the same abilities would work in him.
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