When the sun stood about its own height above the western horizon, Eakkashet came back once again, this time empty-taloned, and landed in front of them as they all staggered to a halt. He didn’t transform, but somehow he managed to get recognizable words out of that beak.
“There are no caves,” he said. “What would work for shelter?”
Ahkhan looked around the hill they were on top of. “Down there, that little valley, there’s a thicket. That will have to do. At least it doesn’t look like rain.”
“Go there. I’ll get the others,” the fire afrinn said, and he launched himself into the air, winging off to the left.
The thicket proved to be made of some of those same evergreen bushes that had threatened to rip Tory apart, back at the prison. They were about half again as tall as a man, and were bushy right down to the ground, making the whole thicket look impenetrable. But with some careful probing, Kee found there was an opening into it, and there was some room in the middle of it where a lot of the branches had died, and they were able to break off enough of the dead wood to make a tolerably generous space. Enough to lie down in, at least. More than enough for everyone since they were all sitting at the moment. Tory was suddenly reminded of how he and Kee would hide in the bushes up against the walls of the Palace and the Collegia and pretend they were camping in the wilderness. At least, until the gardeners found them and chased them off.
All three afrinn arrived just as they finished cramming all the broken bits in against the bases of the bushes. They had a distinctly resinous scent, which was not unpleasant, but it suddenly made Tory think of something alarming.
“Eakkashet, you’re not going to catch this place on fire, are you?” he asked with anxiety. “These things smell like pine, and pine goes up if you even look at it sternly!”
“I will make sure I do not,” the fire afrinn assured them.
Tory pulled the first of the rabbits out of his pack and frowned at the stiff body. “Well, that brings the second question. How frugal are we going to be with these rabbits?”
“Frugal?” Sira asked.
“I mean . . . we can’t eat the skin, but are we eating everything else?” Tory elaborated. “Because normally I’d go bury the guts but—”
“Sleepgivers waste nothing,” Ahkhan said sternly. “Each of those rabbits can make three meals for a person if we waste nothing.”
Tory sighed. He was afraid that was going to be the case. That was going to mean a fair amount of work. “Can either of you help me with them, then?”
“I will. And Atheser.” She crooked a finger at the water afrinn, who wagged its tailfin. “Let’s take this work out of the shelter, and into the open, since it’s going to be messy.”
“I can—” Kee began, getting to his knees.
“No need,” Sira told him with a smile. Tory put the rabbit back in his pack and crawled on hands and knees behind Sira out into the valley itself. He glanced upward; Merirat, the air afrinn, was gliding in lazy circles above the thicket, keeping watch, wearing its winged-lizard shape. He looked like a bit of colored smoke.
I’m not sure we could have gotten this far without them.
Tory had learned how to skin and clean game a very long time ago, right after his brother had come back from his adventure out in the Pelagirs. So he trimmed off a big patch of grass almost even with the earth to give them a place to work, covered that bare patch with the trimmed grass laid flat, then skinned the rabbits expertly, without even a single tear in the skin, and laid the skins out, fur-side down. Then he took off his headwrap and helm, impaled the helm into the dirt by its point, and set to work butchering.
“I’ll clean the guts,” Sira said, instantly seeing what he was about. And as he emptied the innards into a skin, then added the head, she took up the “clean” parts—the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and put them in the upturned helm, cracked open the skull and added the brains, then with the help of the water afrinn made short work of cleaning out the stomach, intestines and bladder before adding those as well. In fact, with the help of Atheser, that cleaning went so fast that she was done about the same time as he finished quartering the rabbit. So he laid the quarters on the pelt, and she bundled it up, while he went on to gut the next.
When they were done, they had a helm full of innards, and four packages of meat. Sira took charge of the helm, he got the packets and they wormed their way back into the heart of the thicket. There he and Kee split the innards between their two helms, Atheser added water, and Eakkashet cooked it all up into stew.
It wasn’t bad. It could have used some salt and a lot of herbs and wine, it certainly had a liverish and very gamey taste to it, but it wasn’t bad. And at least there was plenty of it. While they were eating, Eakkashet grilled the rabbit quarters on his hands. As Ahkhan had said, these would serve for breakfast in the morning and the midday meal on the run. Sira brought out some (hopefully clean) rags from her own makeshift pack to wrap them in, and they each took one set of quarters and stowed them in their packs.
At least it’s too cold for ants. The food should be safe enough, and they wouldn’t have to brush a layer of insects off it before they ate.
By the time they were finished eating and Atheser had cleaned the helms, it was full dark, with a darkened sky so thickly spangled with stars overhead that it looked like a tradesman had spilled silver beads over a swath of black velvet. “Shall we?” Kee said to Sira—who evidently understood perfectly without any further words that he meant “shall we feed the afrinns?” because she sidled up next to him and put her hands onto Merirat, and he put his next to hers.
And oh, how Tory envied them that perfect understanding in that moment. And something more than envy, a sadness that made his eyes sting for a moment, and he wasn’t certain if it was sadness for what he didn’t have or what he was losing. Maybe both.
But he choked both down. This is life, and life isn’t fair, and I know that. And I am not going to make Kee unhappy just because I am.
Besides, depending on what was waiting for them tomorrow, the last thing he wanted on his conscience if everything went to hell was to have spoiled the last hours those two had together.
“So. . .” he said instead to Eakkashet. “What exactly was going on in that prison before we got there?”
The fire afrinn chuckled. “I had a very good view of it all. Sira is . . . remarkable. Let me tell you some tales.”
* * *
• • •
Sira belatedly realized what Eakkashet was about to do too late to stop him.
I am never going to hear the last of this from Ahkhan, she thought, cheeks flaming, as Eakkashet began with a brief explanation of how he and his fellows had been bound into their bronze talismans, then proceeded with the moment the deluge made Sira take shelter and discover that the storm had been the cover for the demons to surround her.
As she and Kee moved to fill Atheser with power, Eakkashet had moved on to her interrogation at the hands of the Karsite priests, and Kee chuckled once or twice as the fire afrinn made her words sound rather funnier and much more defiant than she thought they had been at the time.
And he kept on talking as they finished with Atheser and moved on to him. Or rather, Kee did; she sat back and watched him work with admiration for his deft handling of ley-line power, something she could only dream about doing. Of course, that also left her free to listen to the fire afrinn’s tales with chagrin.
When Eakkashet was done, she was very glad it was dark; her cheeks were so aflame it was almost painful. All she could think about was all the missteps she’d made in handling—or rather, not handling—the Karsites. And, of course, the colossal misstep she’d made that got her captured in the first place.
She sat there in the darkness with Eakkashet cheerfully radiating warmth, with her hands cradled in her lap, and wondered what to say. Or was it better just to say nothing at a
ll? Surely now Kee was thinking she was quite the fool. And her brother! Any moment now he’d begin—
“I’d have bungled that from the beginning and probably be very dead,” Ahkhan said into the stillness. “I’d have tried to jump the guard that brought me the first meal, proved by that I was a Sleepgiver, and I doubt I’d have gotten far out of the prison tower.”
He cheeks cooled and she raised her head. “Surely not,” she objected.
“Oh, absolutely I would,” he assured her. “I wouldn’t have made it past a day once I was awake.”
Well, that made her feel better. She could still see all the blunders she’d made . . . but perhaps anyone would have made those same blunders. At least she had managed to string things out so long that help had arrived at the very moment of her escape!
“It would have been easier if I had been able to—” She was about to say scry, when a sudden idea hit her. Kee was a much more powerful Mage than she was, even if he was untrained. If he could scry, if she could manage to teach him how, that would be even more effective than the three afrinns scouting.
“Been able to what?” her brother prompted her.
“I just had an idea,” she told them all, and she picked up one of the helms. “Atheser, can you fill this with water?”
A moment later the weight of the helm told her the afrinn had done just that.
“Kee, come sit knee-to-knee with me, with the helm between us,” she ordered, and the rest of them all shuffled around a little to give them the space to do that. She spun up a very dim, temporary Mage-light to shine down on the water in the helm, as she directed Kee to put both his hands on it. “Now, I am going to try to teach you how to scry.”
“Is that like Farsight?” he asked, “I can’t Farsee anyone Tory and I aren’t related to—”
“It’s a bit like Farsight, but you aren’t limited in what you scry except in what you know,” she corrected him. “For instance, you know exactly what the Karsite troops look like. So you concentrate on that, lend your magic power to your thoughts, and project both into the water.”
As he frowned and stared down into the helm, she coached him with everything she could remember about how the Sleepgiver Mages taught scrying, keeping her voice calm, even, and persuasive.
And when she had come to the end of what she remembered, she began again. Patient. No expectation in her voice, but at the same time, plenty of confidence. He was untaught, but he was very powerful. He could do this. She had faith in him. And she told him so repeatedly.
And then, gently and slowly, a picture formed in the water in the helm.
A fire, with a pot over it.
The view receded. There were men around the fire, bowls and spoons in the hands. Karsites, there was absolutely no question of it; they wore the same uniform as the guards at the prison.
The view receded again. Now they could see much more detail, and the extent of what was around the fire and the men there. This was a temporary camp: no tents, only the men, bedrolls, and horses picketed nearby.
And the view pulled back again. And her heart sank. This was not just a camp. This was a line of camps. As the images grew smaller, she counted three . . . five . . . seven . . .
They were about three furlongs apart, close enough that each encampment could see the ones on either side of him, easily.
And the image receded even farther, showing a very, very long line of camps, each camp with its own campfire, a line of little yellow stars across the black dark of the hills.
“That’s—a lot of men,” Ahkhan said quietly. “That’s way more men than were quartered in that prison. That’s an army. Where are they?”
The line of little yellow dots blurred and vanished as Kee moved slightly and the water stirred. Kee looked up.
“Due west of us,” he said, bleakly.
* * *
• • •
“At least we had plenty of warning,” Tory said, after all of the How did they get there so fast? and Where did they all come from?s were spoken and chewed over without any progress. “And Kee was right yesterday. We need to go North.”
“They must have been scrying us,” Sira said, coming out of her daze at last. “That’s all I can think.”
“But if they had someone scrying us continuously, they’d have ambushed us already,” Ahkhan pointed out. “So it must have been just a glance, maybe today, long enough to know what direction we were heading.”
“They also must have some way of sending messages almost instantly,” Tory replied, thinking out loud. “We can do that, with a relay of Mindspeaking Heralds. Or with my father alone, he can reach to the Border and maybe beyond. So—it’s probably just one Mage, with a way to do the same thing, but he’s busy with a lot of things right now, and maybe he can’t tap—what was that? Ley-line power? Maybe he can’t tap that, so he gets tired. So he just sees what general direction we’re heading, maybe even two days ago, sends out messages, and all the men that are available go straight to intercept us before we get to the Border. But all he has time or strength to do is see that we’re going west, so that’s why they deploy in a long line, to catch us no matter where we turn up. So. What do we do about it?”
“We go north,” Kee repeated immediately. “To Valdemar.”
“More—” Tory prompted the two Sleepgivers. “We need more of a plan than that. I don’t know anything about magic, but when we don’t turn up, that Mage is going to go looking for us again. More—what more can we do?”
Sira pulled on her lower lip. “He must have been able to see through that illusion Merirat bubbled over us, somehow.” She looked to the air afrinn. “Can you do something against scrying?”
The air afrinn shook its head.
But then he brightened, and hissed.
“He says he can cast the illusion of the four of you continuing to move toward the west and then turning south before you reach the line of troops,” Eakkashet translated. “He says that if the scryer looks no farther than that, and does not cast his nets wider, that will deceive him. His kind have done that before.”
“Will you have enough power to keep doing that for a while without getting more power from me?” Kee asked, anxiously.
The afrinn nodded vigorously.
“That will buy us a lot of time, if it works,” Ahkhan said.
“Is there any way we can, I don’t know, confuse how we look? Some sort of illusion that will work against the scrying?” Kee asked Sira. “Or would a shield against magic work? Is there such a thing?”
She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I never got that deeply into scrying and illusions.”
“Is there a way to tell if we’re being scryed, at least?” Kee asked again, sounding a little desperate.
She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she repeated.
“We’ll have to take our chances, just as we have from the beginning,” Tory said, keeping his voice steady and confident. “We all knew this was a possibility and that much of what we’re doing is going to depend on luck. And every league we can put between them and us is an advantage. Once we get into the mountains, we’ll be better off than mounted men.”
“That’s true,” Ahkhan agreed. “So, we have a new plan.”
“North and west,” Tory said. “And trust to luck.”
18
Sometime between when Tory managed to fall asleep and the time he woke up, the temperature had plummeted. Drastically. When he woke, all four of them had moved in the night to snuggle up to Eakkashet, with the other two afrinn perched atop him. And he had turned to lie flat on his back with arms and legs outspread to give them all something to snuggle up to.
Even so, with Eakkashet’s warm—well, whatever it was made of—to get his back against, Tory woke because his nose was cold . . . not quite painfully cold, but not far from it. And although his back was toas
ty, he was curled in a ball with his arms and legs tucked up and they were still cold. His breath made white smoke in the cold air, and when he opened his eyes, all of the tiny needles on the trees around them were white with frost.
“Winter is here,” said Kee from the other side of the fire afrinn. “And I don’t like it. It’s one thing to look at frost from the inside of a warm room while it’s forming on the window. It’s quite another to have it forming on your nose.”
“I bet the Karsites will like it even less,” Tory pointed out, as the others started to stir. “I wouldn’t mind some snow to slow them down at this point, except it would make our tracks really obvious.”
That startled a hiss out of Merirat, followed by a series of hisses, as Tory rummaged in his pack for the cold rabbit. Eakkashet sat up and increased the heat he gave off, while the rest of them treated him like a campfire, dug out their rabbit and began eating.
“Merirat says that gives him an idea,” the fire afrinn said. “And he thinks he knows now how a scryer found you. By the movement of the grass as we passed. The scryer looked for you, saw nothing—then saw the grass moving and understood that was where you were. There wasn’t anything he could do about that.”
“We did plow through it, and there was no way to keep it from briefly showing a wake,” Ahkhan admitted ruefully. “Well, now we know. Too late for it to do us any good, since Merirat is leaving us to lay a false trail.”
“Yes, but Merirat says that now he knows how to make the illusion of you running to the south more convincing. Instead of flying above the grass, he’ll fly through it, to make it move as if the four of you are running through it.” Eakkashet did that unnerving smile again, although Tory was slowly getting used to it. “So everything will look as it should.”
“We should just be glad they don’t seem to use tracking dogs,” Tory pointed out. “If they did, we’d be cooked.” He finished gnawing the last shreds of meat and tendon from the rabbit bones, sucked what little marrow there was out of them, and stuck them in among the debris at the foot of the tree behind him.
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