High Couch of Silistra (21 page)

“Are you so unsure that you will ignore the boy’s wishes?”

The Slayer turned from me, mute, and went to harness the threx.

I smiled to myself and followed. Such verbal swordplay is woman’s game, and in it I can usually count point. And I was sure that the coin girl had conceived. I looked at her when the question first arose, and I had seen the egg in the womb, silver on red, and the sperm swim, and their ultimate ‘connection. The sharpness and self-mobility of the image denoted truth. In such simple psychic function, I am as good as any.

Issa was cranky, twitching her ears and snapping the air, but no real trouble, I wondered, as I fitted her gear, what had made her bolt that afternoon. I remembered the cracking sound I had heard. I wondered how extensive the cowled one’s ability to control material reality truly was.

I was soon to find out.

By the time the sun, directly overhead, cast no shadow, we had made the plateau of Santha and turned due east, making our way across the relatively flat rocky ground with ease. To our left, the Sabembes towered, ice caps glittering, and the wind that swept down upon us was dry and chill. The air here was noticeably thinner, and my lungs seemed ever-hungry, my pulse thumping in my ears. I was grateful when Sereth called a halt, but I could get little respite from it. The view, to our right, of the foothills we had climbed, and Morrlta and Arlet spread below, mantled in mist, was magnificent, but I could not enjoy it; the apprehension I felt all morning had consolidated into precognition. My body was chilled with it, my stomach aching and cramping. Yet the vision was unclear, the feeling without reason I could name.

I explored the rocks, looking for something I could not find, and came away dissatisfied. Sereth, lounging with his back to a large boulder, watched me, unspeaking. He seemed in good spirits, and I envied him. I was not so resilient.

I collapsed beside him, content to let my pumping lungs have rest.

“What did you see?” The unspoken laughter was again in his brown eyes.

“Nothing. I would find shelter this night. I have a feeling, and I dare not ignore it this time.”

He looked at me, his eyes searching. I had thought he would dismiss my fears out of hand.

“I know a place,” he said. “A cave, with good cover, easy to defend. Would that do? What do you sense?”

Defend from what? I could not say, but the weight I felt lightened.

“How far?” I asked.

“We could make it before sun’s set. The cowled spirit—is that what you fear?” He did not mock me.

I nodded. He shifted against the rocks, his hand unconsciously going to his sword hilt, loosening it in its scabbard. His eyes checked the shadows around us.

“I would get this thing done, and you safely back to Arlet.”

I smiled at him, touching his shoulder.

“You and I will part at the Falls of Santha. I will be no burden to you on your return trip.” I had known since my confrontation with the cowled one.

“You are no burden that I have not willingly taken up. I would not have you try the mountains alone.” He did not understand.

“I will find my way from Santha, and it is a path for one only.” I tried again to make it clear. “If we make it there, you will have fulfilled your charge.” I did not underestimate the cowled one. Within the available probabilities, it seemed to me that I would make it to Santha. I was not so sure about the Slayer. But my recently surfaced scanning skill was adamant. To discuss it further would solidify a time line unacceptable to me.

“To fulfill my commitment to Dellin, I must return you in good shape to Arlet. If your inner voice speaks otherwise, I suggest you share your information with me. If you had done so before, we might have fared better.” That was the first time he had spoken of my complicity in Tyith’s death.

Yet I could not tell him more than I had.

“I have no specifics, just a feeling.” I lied, to protect him. “But give me some time, and I will go and see what I can see.”

He nodded, and I lay back against the rocks and prepared my body for trance. Not, as I had said, to clarify my feeling, but to do what I might to shift and solidify the time flow as best I could. I could not alter the draw to crux, but perhaps I could designate which approach we would take.

I made my heartbeat and respiration slow, and my limbs cold and tingling. Sounds around me became magnified, then faded, leaving me floating, with no-feeling flesh, in the red-dark where the time tracks meet. Into the ball of writhing color I went, instinctively, for I had never been taught to do so, finding my branching line and Sereth’s, luminous and intertwined amid countless unborn tomorrows.

I did what was needed. My own line, before me, twisting mist of unsolidified reality, ceased to branch and became clear. Like a great pulsing ball, the crux sucked all the alternatives within itself. I could not see beyond. Not one twisting path toward the crux failed to enter it. I wanted no more foreknowledge; my mind reeled. Yet I found the strength to enter Sereth’s flow, to disentangle his from mine just before the great ball devoured it, and to cause the sharp cessation of his line to fold back upon itself and become absorbed. As I watched, new branches sprouted from that spot, so close to crux, and drifted away tangentially. It was enough. I saw the main path firm and take color, and I knew I had done all I could. I pushed back from the flickering probabilities, and floated free until my body claimed me.

I found my eyes, and caused the lids to open. The numbness drained slowly from my limbs, and I felt the wind tickle my face with strands of hair, and my ears again sorted sound. I saw the sun, still high, and Sereth, his position unchanged. What had been done had taken only moments.

When the tingling was gone, I sat up and met his questioning gaze. I shook my head as if nothing had been accomplished.

Sereth got to his feet and extended his hand to me. I took it and rose, and he put his arms around me, holding me close, stroking my back.

“You lie to me, lady,” he said softly in my ear. “But I will not press you. I, too, sometimes see.”

Eventually he released me, that we might make the cave before dark.

Not long afterward, as we rode three abreast along the wide rocky shelf, we heard a thunderous noise that shook the ground under the threx’s feet and made them snort and dance in fear. I could feel Issa tremble between my legs. There was not a cloud in the sky, yet it was as if lightning had struck uncomfortably close. The air was charged, the silence deafening in its wake.

I looked at Sereth, and he at me, but Krist plunged and reared, and I had my hands full with Issa’s fear, and Wirin’s ears were flat to his head, and it was perhaps five neras later that we found the source of that ear-splitting crack.

We stood at the edge of a wide crevice, perhaps two threx lengths across, that extended, barring our path, endless in both directions.

The threx sidled back from the abyss, from which steam hissed, blowing toward us on the west wind.

“This was not here the last time I came this way,” Sereth said needlessly, dismounting and squatting uncomfortably close to the edge. He picked up a fist-sized rock and tossed it into the maw that had opened in the ground. Beside him, I waited to hear it land, but no sound came out of the crevice.

“Would you chance it?” he asked me. “It will take us a set to retrace our path and come up again from the south.”

“Let it be your decision.”

He squinted at the far side, where a luckless tree dangled by its scrawny roots, top downward, over endless descent. The mist curled around its tortured limbs, and the smell of rock dust and warm earth belly was acrid in my nostrils.

“We will try it,” he said finally. He went to Wirin and began loosening the straps that bound Tyith’s body, gamy now from so long in the brist pelt. Taking a deep breath, I went to help him. When we had it free, the Slayer picked the corpse up in his arms and carried it to the abyss, where he let it fall. Again I listened for the sound of the weight striking bottom, and again I heard nothing. So much for the words we might have said at the Falls of Santha.

We checked our gear, and, sure that no girth would give at a critical moment, led the threx well back from the yawning split.

Sereth stripped Wirin totally, while the steel threx stood, eyes rolling. We left the harness on the ground, not wanting to burden Krist further.

Sereth, mounted, trotted Krist another few lengths back from the crevice, turned him, and launched the black threx at full speed toward it. Almost at its edge, when Krist should have bunched for the jump, the black slid down on his haunches, shying right, foam flying in gobs from his mouth. Again Sereth tried him, and again the threx refused.

The Slayer, angry and tense, walked him a third time back from the crevice. He dismounted and took one of the discarded sword belts from the ground, and stood with it in his hand as he spoke reassuringly to the agitated animal. On the third try, at a dead run, goaded by the strap stinging his rump, the black launched himself, stones flying, across the gap. It seemed that they hovered there unreasonably long, over beckoning eternity, and then Krist’s front hooves were on the far side. He scrambled for footing, his rear feet pounding the air, and he was over, on his knees, safe on solid ground. Sereth vaulted from his back, taking his head, urging him up. Heaving, the black got his feet under him and stood, legs spread, his huge head pressed against Sereth’s chest, his whole body slick with froth and sweat.

Issa turned her head and rubbed it against my knee.. I walked her slowly, farther back than Sereth had gone for a start on the leap, and turned her. I was frozen with fear, facing the crevice with the trembling threx under me. For some time I sat her there, stroking her neck, until her trembling ceased.

Taking a deep breath, I dug both heels into her side and leaned low on her, against the bristles of her neck, my weight on her forequarters as we sped toward our fate. My eyes were on Sereth, safe on the other side, waiting. I thought she would refuse it, as we pounded close to the edge, but she bunched under me and leaped with such force that I had all I could do to stay steady on her withers. My head pressed to her neck, I could see with clarity the mist and steam below us. My heart sank with Issa’s bulk, and my stomach rose in my throat as we passed the apex of our arc. I thought us far too short, but her front legs hit the ground and her rear the half-rooted tree, and she lunged, scrabbling, her belly scraping the edge, the tree under her rear feet cracking beneath her weight. Her left rear gained solid footing just as the tree, ripped away from the edge by her struggles, plunged into the gap.

I was off her, pulling at her head, without knowing how I had gotten there. Her knees were cut and bleeding, but she had made the jump. I stroked her where she lay, sucking wind and trembling, until I had my own legs under control. Then, Sereth at her other side, we urged her to her feet. The threx would not put her left rear on the ground, but held it gingerly high.

Sereth; kneeling beside the injured foot, cursed softly. Her pastern was ripped open to the tendon, the blood flowing down her tri-part hoof and puddling on the rocky ground.

I cut from my tas jerkin two long strips and got the salve Celendra had given me in Arlet from my belt. Sereth held Issa’s head still while I spread the yellow gel thick over the cut and bound it. The threx almost jerked Sereth off his feet in her attempts to rip the foreign object from her leg, but he managed to hold her.

When I took her head, he went to the edge of the crevice and picked up two good-sized rocks. Wirin, on the other side, his nose high in the air, snorted and paced back and forth along the abyss.

“Wirin, home! Go home!” he shouted, throwing the rocks for emphasis. Both hit the ground short of the steel-gray threx, who snorted and backed uncertainly away. “Go on! Home!”

Trumpeting, pawing the ground, Wirin regarded us. Then, with a final shake of his head, he turned tail and loped away.

“Do you think he will?” I said to Sereth’s back, watching the retreating threx.

Sereth shrugged and turned from the crevice, going to Krist, who was sniffing Issa’s bandaged leg.

“No matter. He will survive in the mountains, surely, if he does not choose to return to the farm. I caught him, perhaps eighty neras from here, the year Tyith was born. His mother, whom I was hunting, was dead when I found them. He was born in this range, still suckling when I took him.”

I was surprised. There are few threx herds left in the mountains. They are too tempting a prize, too valuable. I wondered if Wirin would go to the farm, or become another loss I had caused Sereth of Arlet.

We led them, Issa hobbling, snorting every time she tried her left rear with her weight, until dusk came upon us. I had said nothing, but was desperate to reach shelter before night. We could make little time with injured threx, but we had no choice.

I looked up into the darkening sky.

“Will we make it to the cave by dark?” I asked him, trying to hide my agitation.

“Must we?”

“It would be wise.”

Sereth, his eyes turned to Issa, quickened the pace. The threx struggled to keep it. Dark was falling fast around us. I found myself sweating, grinding my teeth together so hard my jaws ached.

As the first star appeared, uncannily bright in the thin air, we began to climb from the shelf up the slope. I heard, high above me, a rustling as if of many wings as the night came to life around us.

“Almost there,” said Sereth, as the first ebvrasea, shrieking, dived at us out of the gloom.

Krist trumpeted before me, but I could not see him. Wings brushed my head, and the wind from their passage was a fierce gust. I hurried Issa up the rocky incline, the ebvrasea all around me. Beaks ripped at my clothing, my hair. I tried, with my knife, to fend them off. I heard Issa squeal in pain as I collided with rock in front of me.

“Here,” said Sereth, the voice coming from my right, mixed with the snap of wings and the unmistakable kill cry of the mountain ebvrasea.

The great beaks tore at me, and I lost Issa and sank to the ground, protecting my face with my arms. Claws dug into my back, and I screamed and felt Sereth’s hand on me, heard the sing of his sword and the thunk as it bit into feathered flesh.