The Steerswoman's Road

by Rosemary Kirstein

  “Possibly.”

  He nodded grimly. “Good.”

  “There’s no reason to be pleased about it.”

  “I agree with him.” Bel was a few steps ahead, and Rowan, perturbed, moved up to where she could watch her friend’s expression.

  The Outskirter continued. “I’m tired of this. I don’t mind danger, but I don’t like it forever waiting just out of sight. I want to see it face-to-face, or I want it to go away.”

  “It will go away,” Rowan assured her, “when we reach the Outskirts.” She smiled a little. “Then you’ll only have your old familiar dangers.”

  “I’ll be glad to see them,” Bel admitted. She looked at the sky and at the track ahead. “And it’s time we found a place to spend the night.” The Outskirter lengthened her stride and pulled ahead on the trail.

  The steerswoman watched a moment, then returned to her explications to Willam. “Now, the second wizard, a woman, claimed the upper Wulf valley. The area was largely uninhabited at that time, and she lived, for the most part, the life of a recluse—”

  Will interrupted. “But what do they do?”

  “Do?”

  “What kind of magic? Is it different for each wizard?”

  Rowan considered. “Not really. Any specialties they favor seem to be based on their situation. Jannik in Donner has control of the dragons, but there’s no indication that another wizard couldn’t do the same. Corvus, in Wulfshaven, has knowledge of the movements of sea creatures and the weather, but he’s based in a major seaport, where those things are of vital interest to everyone.”

  He brooded a moment. “Abremio seems to be able to do anything.”

  “So I hear. I’ll ask you about him at length, in a bit,” Rowan said. “You have firsthand knowledge.”

  “But I’ve never seen him do what I do.”

  “And what exactly do you do?”

  He hesitated. “Well, I’ve told you ...”

  “Yes. Rocks and tree stumps. Digging wells.” She spotted Bel, who had wandered off the path ahead looking for a discreet campsite. They exchanged waves, and Rowan led Will toward the Outskirter. “You’ve told me what it’s for, or at least the use you put it to. But how exactly do you do it?”

  “Well, I place the charms around the object, or under it, or in a hole ... Then I have to put fire to them. That has to be done from a distance—”

  “How? Magically?”

  “No,” he admitted, embarrassed. “I tried that, but I can’t make it happen. I use a burning arrow. Or sometimes, a sort of path made out of straw, or crumbled bits of another charm.”

  “And then?”

  He shrugged uncomfortably. “When the fire reaches the charms, the spell releases.”

  “And it’s not good to get in the way,” Rowan added, remembering his earlier description.

  “That’s right.”

  Rowan nodded. “How do you make the charms?”

  He did not answer. Rowan stopped and turned to face him, one hand on his arm. He avoided her glance, looking pained and unhappy; it was an expression she had seen before, on a few other faces.

  “Will,” she said, “I’m glad you’re traveling with us. I like you. And I think that on this journey, I can use all the help that I can get.” She paused. “I’m not a real steerswoman at the moment, but the time will come when I shall he again. You can refuse to answer me now, but you can’t forever.”

  He stuttered a bit. “I know that. It’s just—maybe I won’t be able tell you anything, not ever.”

  “How so?” Ahead, Bel hailed them again, but Rowan ignored her.

  “Well ...” His face worked with thought. “There are some things the wizards don’t ever tell the folk. About how their magic works.”

  “There are many things the wizards don’t explain,” Rowan conceded cautiously. “The reasons behind their actions, their shifting allegiances, and the workings of their power.”

  “And we don’t know why.”

  “Correct.”

  “But that’s just it!” He swallowed. “We don’t know why they hide those things. Maybe there’s a reason; maybe it’s the right thing to do. Maybe it’s something people shouldn’t know.”

  Rowan said nothing, but let him work through the problem alone. On the horizon, the westering sun cut below the heavy bank of clouds that hung above like a flat ceiling. For a moment the world turned gold and dove-gray, and a fine drizzle fell briefly, then ceased. One part of her mind noted that there must be a rainbow somewhere over her right shoulder.

  “This magic I can do, it’s just something I figured out for myself,” Willam went on. “There was nobody—” He struggled for a moment. “There was nobody wiser than myself to tell me what it means, or what to do about it. I just don’t know enough. Maybe it would be terrible if anyone else knew how it worked. Maybe it’s terrible that I know.”

  “And how am I to judge, without information?” Rowan said.

  He shifted the pack on his back and used both his hands in a wide, pleading gesture. “Lady—Rowan, I’m going to be a wizard someday. When I am, if I find that they’re keeping their secrets for some mean reason, I promise you that I’ll tell you everything, anything. But until I really know it’s safe, please, don’t ask me to do something that might be bad.” He dropped his hands, looked stricken. “I can’t do anything that hurts people.”

  He stood before her, a tall boy, bigger than his years, strong for his age, more intelligent than his peers, possessing some secret power—and begging her, humbly, to not make him hurt anyone.

  “You’ll be a poor wizard,” Rowan said. “Or, you’ll be the best of them.” She turned away and walked toward Bel’s waiting figure.

  He caught up with her in two long strides. “You won’t ask me again?”

  “I’m going to think on this awhile.”

  Bel had found a clearing a few paces off the south side of the trail. A damp circle of ashes showed where some previous traveler had camped, months earlier. A tangle of low birches surrounded it, and Bel was using the branches to create a rain fly from the merchant Attise’s cloak. She had refused to abandon it when Rowan returned to using her own gray felt cloak, declaring it to be too useful.

  “We’ll need a fire tonight, with this damp.”

  Rowan scanned the sky and decided that the mist would continue to midnight without converting to a proper downpour. “If we can get one going at all, we might be able to keep it all night.”

  Bel was digging in her pack for the trail provisions purchased in Kiruwan. “If we can find dry wood after all that rain.”

  Rowan and Willam foraged through the underbrush and managed to acquire a pair of stout damp branches, which Willam cracked methodically and effortlessly across his knee. A handful of dry twigs and needles from the lee of a lone fir tree was the best that could be found for kindling, and Rowan plied her flints doggedly, creating a series of merry little blazes that guttered dismally against the logs. As she tried with one last pile of needles, Willam spoke up reluctantly. “Let me try.”

  Rowan eyed him a moment, then rose, slapping the damp from her trousers.

  Willam went to his sack, opened it, inserted one hand, and felt inside carefully. What came out was one package, the size of his fist, wrapped in oilcloth. Rowan moved closer to observe, and Bel watched him cautiously from across the clearing. He spared the Outskirter a single glance, then studied Rowan, his face unreadable. Perhaps it was a surrender of sorts, or a bargain: he could not tell her, but it seemed that he was going to show her.

  The package unrolled to reveal a layer of wool, and nestled in it, separated from each other, were three objects wrapped in paper. Willam removed one, carefully rolled the others back into the oilskin, and replaced it in his pack, which he carried to the edge of the clearing and secreted behind a weedy tussock.

  Returning to the fire site, he seated himself on the ground. Rowan dropped to the ground beside him.

  The paper was secured by twists, which he
casually undid. Inside was a quantity of black gravel that faintly glittered. Taking a pinch of the gravel between his fingers, he crumbled it to powder onto the logs, creating a thin line along the surface of each. Rowan noted that the lines continued from each log to the next, creating a continuous network, then recognized that the lines formed a hexagram. The final arm continued outward from the heap, ending a foot outside the first circle. There Wiliam arranged Rowan’s little pile of needles, adding one more tiny pinch of the black gravel. He paused a moment, studying what remained in the paper; he had used less than a third of the quantity.

  Finally he twisted the paper closed again and methodically returned it to its place in his pack behind the tussock. When he returned, Rowan wordlessly handed him her flints, and he gestured her back, doing it twice before he was satisfied with her distance.

  With his back to her, she could not clearly see what he was doing, but from the sound it seemed nothing more than striking sparks into the pile of kindling. He tried three times; then there was a sudden hiss, and he stepped back quickly.

  A line of sparking fire fled from the kindling, sped to the logs, and raced along their lengths, spitting madly. There was a group of sudden quiet noises from the wood, like gasps, and one log abruptly split down its length with a loud crack. Rowan was aware of a sharp, acrid odor.

  Flame flared, faded, leaped again, and then the fire settled down to blaze in earnest. Bel fearlessly strode over, kneeled by the fire, and peered at the still-sparking wood. “Can you make anything burn?”

  The boy watched her broodingly. “No. I can’t burn stone. But I can break it. It’s easy.”

  “Is that when it becomes noisy?”

  “Yes. Very. And dangerous.”

  Rowan moved to Bel’s side. Each log, she saw, was burning individually, along the line the gravel had traced. Using the toe of her boot, she rearranged the wood so that the flames better fed each other.

  Bel looked up at her. “Are you going to ask how he did it?”

  She shook her head. “No.” But she sat up long that night in thought, watching the fire.

  They spent the next day following the narrow trail down one ridge and up the next. The land began to open, and deep in one valley the travelers came across an abandoned farm, with a burnt-out, ruined cabin. There was no sign of the previous inhabitants, but when they crossed a fallow field they found a low hill of violent green, such as grew where corpses were buried. Rowan considered the extent of the mound and calculated. “More than those who lived in that house. I suspect this was a battle site.”

  “That definitely puts us in Shammer and Dhree’s holding?” Bel asked.

  Rowan shrugged. “That depends on which side won this particular battle.”

  The past winter and now the spring had claimed the land for wilderness, all the shouts and the clash of arms lost in the past as though a hundred years had gone. Only the mound remained, its shape unnatural, its green too bright, feverish. The travelers stood silent for some time, each lost in thought. A fresh light wind rose, and the grass shivered, then rippled like the shining surface of a rising wave. The valley was a bowl of clean sunlight, quiet, and when Bel shifted the creak of her gear was a sudden, strange, human sound: an intrusion.

  Willam studied the scene grimly. Bel looked about, faintly puzzled. With a gesture, Rowan led her friends around the edge of the mound, and they continued east.

  They soon left the farm behind, and their spirits lifted again. Rowan could ignore, briefly, the sensation that danger hovered somewhere, like a high hawk, too far to see.

  She studied the land about her, comparing it with the few maps she had. As Attise, she had allowed herself only the sort that the common folk usually carried: copied from those of the Steerswomen, but by a less exacting eye, with less detail, excluding information not of interest to the average traveler. Rowan made corrections and additions, and found satisfaction in the routine.

  With deception and manipulation abandoned, the three travelers had learned to be at ease with each other, and the going was enjoyable for itself. Rowan amused herself watching Bel’s reactions. “Everything keeps changing,” the Outskirter commented. They were moving along a rocky ridge, among stands of young pine.

  “How so?”

  “The Outskirts are much the same everywhere. The only differences come when you get closer to the Inner Lands, like the approach to Five Corners. But here, you’ll have one kind of tree for a while, then pastures, then flat land, like the mud flats in Donner. Every place is different, with different kinds of life.”

  Rowan nodded. “Certain terrains encourage certain types of vegetation and certain types of animals.”

  “There aren’t many different animals in the Outskirts. It’s the goats and us, for the most part.”

  “And the goblins.”

  “Yes. And the demons. And insects.”

  They continued in silence for a while. Halfway up the ridge, the view was clear to the north, and the two women paused. Half a mile away, pines gave way to maple, which carpeted the hills to the horizon. Far off, a line of silver indicated a distant lake.

  Bel looked up at the sky, as if expecting it, too, to be different from the Outskirts. “The Inner Lands seem to go on forever.”

  “They don’t,” Rowan told her. “They end to the north, just past the land where I was raised. It’s red earth there, and no one’s been beyond it yet. There are a few mountains visible to the west. I often wondered about them. They’re probably an extension of the same range that runs north from The Crags.”

  Bel puzzled that over, trying to piece together Rowan’s picture of the world. “And what lies west of those?”

  Rowan looked dissatisfied. “No one’s been there to report. Or perhaps some of Abremio’s minions have gone, but they haven’t given out any word.” She mused for a moment, then continued. “The southern shore of the Inland Sea is inhabited, too, but not to any great distance. The vegetation gets odd farther south, and it’s hard to introduce anything useful. It might be a worse version of what you have in the Outskirts.”

  Bel nodded. “Goats.” She adjusted her pack and began to continue the ascent, tugging the reluctant donkey’s lead. “You need goats about if you’re going to spread the greengrass. They’ll eat anything.”

  Rowan followed, sidestepping on the steep ground. “They can’t eat redgrass or blackgrass.”

  The Outskirter looked back. “Of course they can. Our herds do it all the time. We couldn’t survive if they didn’t.”

  “It must be a different type of goat.” With dust from their scrambling rising around her, Rowan’s mind filled with speculations and calculations. “That might explain a great deal. It might even be one of the reasons the Outskirts keep moving.”

  Bel was puzzled. “Moving? How can they move?”

  Pausing to brace herself against a splintered tree trunk, Rowan gestured out at the far horizon. “East. The Outskirts have been shifting for hundreds of years, and the Inner Lands spreading behind them. You can trace the shift by comparing the maps at the Archives. Some thousand years ago, this was the Outskirts.” Bel took a moment to peer about in plain disbelief. Rowan laughed. “It’s true.” She continued. “Your goats might do well in the south. What a difference that could make to the people there ...” They continued on silently for some time, the steerswoman lost in thought.

  Bel watched her with amusement. “You’re going to be writing a lot tonight again, aren’t you?”

  “What?” Rowan came back from her preoccupation with difficulty. “Yes, I suppose I am.” Since Willam was in their confidence, she openly treated her folio like a proper steerswoman’s logbook, crowding the pages with her close, eccentric handwriting.

  “Don’t you sleep anymore?”

  “Too often, and too long,” she replied distractedly.

  Will came back up the trail to meet them. Like a ranging puppy, he had the habit of “following from in front,” as folk called it; he would lope ahead, just o
ut of sight, double back to check their position, receive some unspoken confirmation recognized only by himself, then wander off again when his curiosity got the better of him. Generally Rowan simply swung along at her own efficient pace, with the ease of the long-distance walker, and Bel ambled beside her tirelessly, taking a step and a half to Rowan’s one.

  “I flushed some turkeys up ahead,” Willam informed them breathlessly when they reached the ridgetop. “They didn’t go far. I’m sure I can get one for our dinner.”

  Rowan grinned. “That’s a good idea. You give it a try.”

  Since she had dropped her disguise, the change in her relationship with the boy had altered astonishingly. She often wondered how she had ever found him difficult. It had seemed before that he was always in the way, always had to be considered and planned around—a mere nuisance. She had never understood what Bel saw in him.

  But now she saw what Bel had seen: a big healthy lad, strong and intelligent, always trying to please. He was by nature cheerful, yet when Rowan answered questions he was all attention, wide copper eyes focused on her face in utter concentration. She began to learn the style of his intellect. Less quick, less flashy than the sharp minds she knew among the steerswomen, Willam tracked down her ideas doggedly, winning his understanding more by single-minded persistence than native talent. Once understood, the information the steerswoman imparted became like rain on dry ground; it soaked in deep, and made something grow—something he could use, either to nourish himself, or to turn into a weapon in his private war.

  The change, she knew, was only in herself; she was relieved of deception, and her mind was free to work on its familiar paths. She recognized for the first time that lies worked damage in two directions.

  Willam had strung his bow and was giving more of his attention to the tops of the trees than to the path he was walking. He stubbed the toes of his oversized sandals.

  “Shall I take your pack?” Rowan volunteered. “I wouldn’t want you to fall with it again.” She laughed. “I don’t think my nerves could take it.” The donkey was carrying hers and Bel’s.