by Tom Deitz
“Finally,” Div said again—because she wanted to hear a human voice and Strynn had not responded.
“Finally indeed,” Strynn muttered behind her, sounding tired, miserable, and grouchy, not all of which, Div suspected, could be blamed on fatigue and rain. Eight deliver her from pregnant women! Slogging through the Wild with one seemed to be her lot of late—though whether that was to remind her of the discomfort she no longer had to worry about, barren as she was, or to rub that fact in her face, she had no idea.
They were both walking at present because the horses—Div’s stallion, White Sky; and Strynn’s mare, File—had borne them steadily all afternoon and were overdue for a rest, and the footing thereabouts was problematical anyway. She only hoped there was room for their mounts in the cave, for all that the horses were born to weather storms like this and worse. Misery was misery, regardless of one’s shape or skin.
“Another finger, I think,” Div called back. Her voice rang loud off the rocks, only to be muffled by the rain. It was an odd effect and somewhat eerie. Div shuddered from more than mountain chill.
“I hope,” Strynn retorted. “All that’s keeping me awake is walking.” Without breaking stride, she shrugged her sodden, stone-colored cloak higher on her shoulders so as to shift the edge of her hood farther beyond her face. Div did the same, further blurring the distinctions of class, age, and build that would have marked them as coming from different worlds a year ago, but now made no difference at all, and certainly not in how they got along, which was famously.
For another shot they trudged onward, their minds thick with thoughts of rest, while their bodies continued to pick their way across a mixture of mud and slippery rocks, on one of which White Star would have fallen had Div not offered a steadying hand. Only the birkit padding ahead seemed unperturbed. Then again, it was a creature of the Wild, with a double coat to ward off weather. With its low-slung stance and thick, steel-gray summer fur, it was almost invisible against the rocks—especially when both were veiled by rain.
Indeed, it finally disappeared entirely, only to attract their attention by yowling directly above their heads—from a ledge they hadn’t seen, but which, a few spans farther on, proved easier to reach than the cave that had been their goal, and which subsequently revealed a larger cave than the one she’d first spotted had been: easily four spans across the front and half that high, with a dry floor; the whole sufficiently capacious that the horses would not have to share much of their mistresses’ space.
Nor did it take more than a breath to realize that someone had camped there before them: Merryn and Krynneth, in fact, to judge by the distinctive prints of Merryn’s horse’s shoes. Which was pretty much what they had expected.
What they hadn’t expected was that a great many other hoofmarks showed there as well—two with Ixtian shoes—along with the spoor of a number of men, who, by their boots’ characteristic heels, were also Ixtian. Div’s heart gave a little double-thump at that, though they both knew that bands of renegade Ixtians who would not accept the fact that their side had lost the recent war still harried the fringes of the southland like mosquitoes harried the marshfolk. But what filled her with a sense of alarm even her fatigue could not dispel was the fact that the Ixtians’ tracks were the same age as Merryn’s and Krynneth’s. Which meant that two of their closest friends had somehow fallen in with their country’s recently defeated foes.
At least that was the assessment Div made all in a flash, even as she heard Strynn gasp, and knew that her companion had made precisely the same judgment. “Tell me those aren’t what I think they are,” Strynn choked, her voice gone low and shaky with what Div feared was very close kin to the resigned hysteria of someone at the end of endurance suddenly confronted with one more trial to bear.
“If we can guess from here, I don’t think we’ll change our minds when we get closer,” Div heard herself saying, even as she dismounted.
Strynn hit the ground almost as fast as she did. And groaned. “You’re right,” she said numbly, through what Div only hoped was shiver born of cold.
Div regarded her levelly—someone had to remain calm after all, and, in light of what present circumstances indicated, that someone was unlikely to be Strynn. “Let me stress this as strongly as I can right now,” Div began, wishing she had more faith in what she was about to say. “We don’t know what this means. It could mean a lot or it could mean nothing. It—”
“Nothing!” Strynn all but shrieked, pointing to the nearest group of prints. “You call those nothing? There’s no way Merryn would have taken up with a group of Ixtians of her own free will. Think, Div! She was carrying the regalia! The magic regalia. There’s no way on Angen she would have let anything that powerful anywhere near Ixtian hands.”
Div’s eyes went huge, even as her will to do anything but sleep receded. She shook her head to clear it. “Yes, I know—Strynn, I’m sorry. I’m tired and I’m sleepy, and my brain turned off for just a moment. But—”
“But what?” Strynn raged. “My bond-sister has almost certainly been taken captive; that seems to be a fact. Those captors now have the most powerful weapon on Angen, and we have no idea what they plan to do with it. Or—”
“If they plan to do anything!” Div snapped. “You’re assuming a lot of things, Strynn—You’re—” She broke off and slumped down in place, suddenly shaking. “We—We have to be rational, Strynn.” She slapped the stone cave floor for emphasis, then folded her arms around herself and remained where she was, staring at the rain.
The birkit was staring too—first at Div, then at Strynn. Div felt as much as heard what she had come to know as its warning growl begin deep within the creature’s throat. Her already muddled mind clogged even further as the beast thrust its thoughts among them curiously—probably seeking to learn what had her so upset.
“Rational!” Strynn spat, through a scowl that spoke of more personal discomfort. But something about the way she stood proved that she had regained a modicum of control. Or perhaps that had been the birkit, too: damping down strong emotions, as it was wont to do when tempers threatened to get out of hand. “No, you’re right,” she managed at last. “We’ve seen small evidence and used it to reach big conclusions. We’re assuming that because Merry and Kryn are outnumbered they’re not in control. But both of them are Night Guard; these others are probably Ixtian regulars at best; it would be no problem for the two of them together to get the upper hand, if it even came to that.”
“Assuming that Merryn and Kryn are still allies, which, let me remind you, is not a given.”
Strynn glared at her. “Thank you for the optimism.”
Div found her feet again and motioned toward the rain. “We have to be practical, Strynn. It’s raining and night’s coming on. Much as I know we’d both like to start out this very moment to find out what’s happened to Merry, we can’t—not and risk what might now be even more important than it was before, if this bunch of phantom Ixtians really have captured Merry and Kryn and, in a worst-case scenario, found and recognized the regalia. But think: If we can’t continue, the odds are good that they can’t either, given that this rainstorm looks pretty wide-ranging. In any case there’s no way they can know we’re following them, so whatever pace they’ve been making is the pace they’ll continue to make. Therefore, if we stop here, we can rebuild our strength, contrive a course of action that’s based on logic, not emotion—and scour this place from top to bottom for more clues without wasting too much time.”
“You’re right—of course,” Strynn conceded. “Best we make camp, then decide. Anything we do now is likely to get us killed, tired as we are. But I hate it.”
“And the horses,” Div reminded her. “They’re worn-out as well—and we have to have them—to carry supplies, if nothing else. A rest now could result in us making better time tomorrow.”
You need to sleep, the birkit told them flatly, speaking—if that was the term—directly from mind to mind. You go straight, it continued h
elpfully. Those-You-Seek go around.
How do You know this? Strynn demanded.
She dreams: You dream. When waterfalls like this … sometimes We see those dreams and … know.
Strynn fished the ring that bore the finding stone from the neck of her tunic and stared at it speculatively, where it glittered like frozen fire on a chain, barely above the palm of her other hand. “And there’s always this. We’ll never lose track of them entirely.”
Div didn’t want to add that Strynn’s assertion only held true if Merryn still retained possession of her matching ring, but didn’t want to smother what was a barely waxing flame of rationality—in both of them, for she cared for Merryn almost as much as Strynn did. “I think the Ixtians must be career soldiers,” she said, instead. “Look how they’ve cleaned up after themselves when they didn’t have to.”
Strynn nodded wearily. “Which also suggests that they don’t plan to return, which could be good or bad.”
“I think,” Div retorted, “it simply means that they’re taking matters as they come, just like we are. Now,” she continued, more loudly, “we have to put this behind us for a while. There’s nothing we can do at present but plan; we therefore tend to business as usual. ‘There is strength in routine,’ my one-mother used to say. We can think while we work, and the work itself will help us think more clearly.”
“ ‘And one can endure anything as long as one knows how long that enduring will last’—as my one-mother used to say,” Strynn added, with a yawn. And with that she started toward what had clearly been the previous tenants’ fire pit.
Per their usual arrangement, Div, who had Beast-Hold connections, attended the unpacking and care of the horses, while Strynn made fire and saw to the rest of camp. It was good they’d arrived when they had, too, because the rain was falling harder than ever. There was also enough wind to whip those drops about, though the steep sides of the ravine kept all but the worst gusts at bay, even if enough still managed to find their way in to irritate the quasi-feline birkit. Div thought that odd, given that the beast had seemed untroubled when actually out in the weather. Suddenly it seemed very human: willing to suffer stoically when there was no choice, but anxious to choose comfort when that was an alternative.
“Big fire or small?” Strynn asked, seeking solace in routine as she wandered over to help Div unharness their mounts. “It’s not all that cold, but a big one would help us dry out. On the other hand, there’s not enough firewood to see us through the night.”
Div nodded toward the saddlebags she had just hoisted down. “We’ve dry clothes if we’re lucky, and tomorrow might be sunny enough to dry these, if we make ourselves take the time. So I’d say we should change, then make a cook fire, eat, dry what we can, and get a good night’s sleep. The … previous tenants have left sleeping hollows, so we should avail ourselves of them.”
Strynn stifled a yawn, then snared a saddlebag and padded off—barefoot—to lay out their bed pads and find dry clothes. When Div saw her again, she was naked and drying off with her towel. Her hair hung in damp black tendrils around her face, and even thus disarrayed she was beautiful. Taller and more full-figured than Div, whose body displayed a hard wiriness born of years in the Wild, Strynn’s true distinction in a nation of beautiful people was the absolute symmetry of her face and—now Div saw it revealed—figure. The rest wasn’t that different from other High Clan Eronese women—not even that different from Div, who had the same black hair (though shorter, for convenience), the same dark blue eyes, the same sharp cast of cheekbones and jaw.
Avall is luckier than he knows, Div thought, with a mental sigh. Twice lucky, actually, to have both Strynn and Rann as lovers—lovers who were not only beautiful, but brilliant and loyal as well. Either would die for him. She wondered if Rann would do as much for her.
No! she told herself. Better not to think of that now. Rann was far away with the army. Perhaps he was even now recovering from a day of battle, for the army had certainly had time to reach Gem-Hold-Winter. Perhaps—
No! she told herself again, and forced her mind into more practical—and imminent—channels, all of which, not unexpectedly, wound up back at Merryn.
Strynn had found a dry undershift by then, and pulled it on. Div located another amidst her jumble of garments and accepted Strynn’s towel when her own proved damp from a bath in a river that morning—a bath she had naïvely assumed would be her sole wetting of the day.
Soon enough they were dry, the horses fed and tended, and the birkit become less restless. Strynn got a small fire going, then yawned again. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, shaking out her blankets in another homage to mindless routine, “but I have got to get a nap. If you’ll stand watch for a hand, I’ll cook when I wake up. Don’t let me oversleep.”
Silence. Then, from Div: “You don’t think I’m crass for not suggesting we go after Merry now?”
“No more than I am,” Strynn replied seriously.
“Merry can take care of herself,” Div continued through a yawn of her own. “We need to remember that.”
You need to sleep, the birkit told them again. I will keep watch.
Div stared at the beast keenly, wondering if the sudden increase in fatigue she had felt wash over her with its “words” was coincidence or something more purposeful, for she knew that the beasts were more than casually tuned to human emotions and desires—and could sometimes link their own emotions to minds they had shared. A second yawn ambushed her, then another. She finally gave up thinking and stretched out on what, by its size and shape, might have been Krynneth’s sleeping place.
Strynn lay down beside her, close enough to touch hands but not to crowd. Thunder rumbled. The sky grew darker as night advanced. Rain fell harder but never reached them. At some point, the birkit inserted its firm, warm bulk between them. Still fighting it all the way, Div slept.
She awoke to find herself still lying on sandy stone beneath an overhang of harder rock, with someone close beside her. Yet when she sat up and looked around, it was to find the rain gone and the sun shining in what was obviously a glorious morning.
But … she had only meant to nap until dinner! Had she in fact slept through the night? A glance at Strynn beside her made her start. Her floor-mate wasn’t Strynn at all! Rather, the face that blinked bleary eyes at her through a fringe of long black hair belonged to … Rann.
Chills raced over her—at which point something told her this was a dream, even as something else urged her not to fight it, that she was entitled to this much peace and joy, however ephemeral.
Rann smiled sleepily at her, then rolled back over, turning bare shoulders to her—shoulders that she saw to her surprise were tanned where by rights they should be white as marble.
Unable to confront such a novelty, yet strangely unconcerned, she rose and moved—walking was too ordinary to note in a dream—toward the light of day. It came, she discovered, from beyond a brow of rock not unlike that under which she and Strynn had sheltered, save that neither horses nor birkits were present. Filled with a joy she could not source, she drifted toward full daylight—and gasped.
She looked out at a perfect bowl of blue: blue water beneath a sky of that same hue, save that it shone where the water glittered. A conical island of dark stone spangled with lush vegetation rose maybe two shots beyond the invisible shore, close to the center of the lake. Cliffs surrounded it, of the same stone, and much of a height. They were steep, too, nearly vertical, but ringed with terraces and shelves, and pocked with caves. None of which was to say that the area was bereft of life. Trees cloaked the island and crowned the cliff tops, while patches of vegetation clung languidly among the rocks, as though they were leafy visitors from the Wild come to lie in open sunlight for a season. It was the most beautiful place Div had ever seen, and the most peaceful, the most serene, the most … restful. She was as happy as she had ever been.
She had to tell Rann! Breathless with joy, she turned and dashed back into the chamber. But it wasn�
��t Rann who rose from his bed to meet her, it was a hollow-eyed Strynn rising from where she had obviously been busy reviving the cooking fire; and this wasn’t the bright and wonderful place, it was the darksome cave in which they had sheltered from the storm. Div’s heart sank, even as she felt the remembered joy like an ember of warmth in her soul. The birkit was happy, too, she saw. Why it was almost smiling—as much as a birkit could—in its sleep and, barely audibly, purring. Strynn, however, looked more troubled and nervous than ever. “What?” she demanded, as she saw Div’s grin.
The grin wilted. “I dreamed … a good dream—though I suppose that’s all it was. I’ll tell you later. What’s wrong? Besides the obvious, I mean.”
Strynn shook her head; then, to Div’s surprise, stumbled forward and hugged her: not as a friend, but as a child would clutch its mother. “Oh, Div,” she sobbed wretchedly. “I … I dreamed I was the birkit, and then I dreamed about Merry. I don’t know where she was, because it was dark. But I know she’s in terrible danger.”
CHAPTER III:
SUNSET AWAKENING
(SOUTHWEST OF ERON–HIGH SUMMER: DAY LXXIV–EVENING)
“Where are we?”
“How did we get here?”
“What about the war?”
“What about the gem?”
“What about Avall?”
“What about Kylin?”
“I’m cold.”
“You’re shivering.”
“So am I.”
The words were a litany of shock, surprise, amazement, and alarm as they echoed around what was not quite a cave yet more than a cove inset in solid rock.
Six voices. Six young men who were conscious, and a seventh who was not. Four clad mostly in bright silver mail and the maroon velvet livery of Eron’s Royal Guard, one in the similar garb of a royal page, one in a stark white prisoner’s robe, one nude. Two half brothers, two sets of bond-mates, one legally linked to no one at all. The youngest: thirteen; none older than twenty-three. Three smiths, two stonemasons, a musician, and a shipwright-warrior.
