Northlight (24 page)

“What things?” he asked, eyes sharp.

“Things I got to do.” I stumbled through my reasons, how I had to deliver the sealed messages even if I meant to go on with the search. “There's a team of Rangers, friends of mine, that camp a couple of hours' ride from here. They'll take the packet to the fort for me.” I couldn't bring myself to say that then I'd no longer be a Ranger.

“You think you can find us again in this?” Etch jerked one shoulder back at the thick forest leading northeast to the heart of the Ridge.

It was all I could do not to scream at him, You
I could find in a sandstorm. It's
Avi
I can't find.

Terris ran his fingers through his thick black hair, getting longer now and falling in his eyes. “You're right, Kardith. You must finish what you've promised.” Something in his quiet voice pierced me to my bones. I had expected relief that he would still have me as a teacher and guide. I had not expected compassion. But he, too, had left behind a life.

“We'll go with you,” Terris said. Beyond him, Etch nodded.

For an instant, I pictured them standing at my side, lending me their strength as if they were my brothers. I felt cold and shivery, knowing I could never let myself take what they offered. I shook my head and muttered, “I have to do this alone.”

Darice and Meygrethin had set up a base camp their first year on foot patrol, a good three miles north of where they were posted. We'd passed the night and the ale skins here, the four of us, when Avi and I were on our way to a farther patrol. I remembered the place, hidden from the easy approaches, like a little cove in the shadowed outcropping of pink granite speckled with lichen and tendriled air-plant, and the little spring that never failed. It was like stepping back into another world, approaching their empty camp.

I spotted the rocky overhang and pulled the gelding to a halt. Smooth and quiet, I slid from his back and began circling the camp. I stopped to listen for all the sounds that should be there. I tested the air for any taint of blood or burning, leather or flesh. All seemed as it should be, the pungent forest smells, the coolness of the spring-fed dell. No spoor of deer, not this close to camp, nor of wolf either. I moved closer, a few gliding steps, then froze and listened again. Still nothing.

Now I saw the stones of the fire pit, placed so that any traveler chancing so close would think the formation natural. No sleep rolls, no packs of supplies, no bags of grain hanging from the nearest branches so the night scavengers couldn't reach them.

But there, by the edge of the fire pit, a patch of moss scraped bare...

“Come out, Darice!” I called. “I see you!”

“Kardith!” Darice came rustling out of the bar-brushes behind me, tall and blond and hero-handsome. Grinning, he slapped my shoulder. On my other side, Meygrethin rose up from a mass of giant ferns. Her movements were spare and focused. She smiled back at me, that quick shy smile of hers.

“What happened in Laureal City...” Darice said.

“...any news?” Meygrethin murmured, meaning help for Avi.

“Too much, none of it good.” Straight and hard, one Ranger to another, I told them how Pateros had died.

“In Montborne's arms...” Darice said, as if looking for someone to blame.

“Gods.” Blinking hard, Mey ran her fingers through her hair. She almost never spoke on her own.

Darice put his arms around her. Like me, they had taken their oaths at Pateros's hands. Seeing them like that, I realized that more than time stood between me and that day in the plaza. There was Esmelda and Montborne, the goons and the ropeweed, Etch...and Terris. I was no longer a Ranger, first and only. I didn't know what I was. But these people were still my friends.

Darice roused first. “Rest now, some coffee if you want it,” he said to me. “I'll bring...” He tipped his head toward the brown gelding.

“Hunh!” I snorted, following Meygrethin down into the camp. “You could leave him out there, for all I care, that nitbrain disguised as a horse, just so my gear's safe!”

A few minutes later, they had a pocket-sized fire started in the stone pit. I inhaled the savory, precious odor of coffee.

Everyone thought they were lovers, gorgeous Darice and Meygrethin — flat-faced, flat-chested, hardly speaking except to finish his trailed-off sentences. But they were something else, just as Avi and I were something else. I knew that now.

I also knew I must go on with this search, this thing I was caught up in, dreams and all.

We sipped the coffee, scalding on the tongue, they from their carved sheep's-horn cups and me from mine. The warmth spread outward from my stomach and then faded. No one said anything. I wiped out my cup with bar-brush leaves and stowed it with my other gear. Then I took out the packet of papers and handed it to Meygrethin. She chewed her lower lip as she read the inscription, then glanced at Darice and shook her head.

I stood up and shrugged out of my Ranger's vest. The leather was worn along the seams and soft with the heat of my body, but that would soon pass. The pockets were empty. I'd taken out everything I had a right to last night. I folded it and put it down on the mossy ground in front of me. I put the packet on top of it.

Meygrethin stared at me, her bark-brown eyes wide. Darice's were narrow and tight. “No,” he said. “The papers, all right, we know you've got to go after Avi, we know...but not...”

“Not,” said Meygrethin, “leave the Rangers.”

“I could die,” I pointed out.

She shook her head. “Not the same.”

“Yes, it is,” I said, but not in the way she meant.

There was a pause, a moment of impasse. Darice got up, arms folded over his chest, hands shoved in his armpits. He paced a few feet from where we were sitting.

“I need your help!” I cried. “If you won't give it, I might as well throw these in the fire right now and to hell with Derron and the company!”

I snatched up the packet, but I wasn't at all sure I could destroy it. I reminded myself it came from Montborne, it could have things in it I would be glad to burn. But it was a thing of trust, not from Montborne, but from Pateros. From Laurea.

I remembered the old shepherd's voice, clear and strong through the fever-soothing rain:
“Safe, you're safe in Laurea.”
And all these years I'd been the one to make Laurea safe. That was why I had to finish this final mission. Terris had seen it rightly.

Darice took the packet from me, as if he were afraid I'd make good on my threat. “We'll bargain, then. We'll carry the papers to Derron, if you...”

 “Keep the vest,” added Meygrethin.

I hesitated. “What will you tell him?”

Darice shrugged. I'd heard him spout the most unbelievable addle-witted nonsense when he didn't want to lie outright, with Meygrethin acting like she understood every word. And he was right, Derron would believe what he needed to believe. After all, he'd sent me clear to Laureal City to keep me safe from Montborne's threat of handing. I'd been so angry when I left, I didn't see it.

The inner folds of the vest were still warm as I picked it up and put it on again. It settled over my shoulders like an old friend. I guess I wasn't ready to stop being a Ranger yet.

“I'll see you in hell,” I said cheerfully, and gathered up the brown gelding's reins.

For the next few days we worked our way through the maze of wind-eaten badlands north of where I'd last seen Avi. Despite the name, this country was far from a desert. The horses grazed well on quick-rye, which sprouts, ripens, and seeds within a week after a heavy rainfall, and my belly was full of the brush-grouse that fed in the same patch. Now the morning shadows stretched long over the dew-wet sauge and wire-grass, below the blue-white sky.

A hell of a morning to have my nose stuck in sheep droppings.

I sighed and straightened up from crouching on the canyon floor. “I don't think we'll find much. Wild sheep have been through here, covering up anything else.”

Terris muttered something no nice University boy should know.

Etch chuckled. “Can't be helped now.”

The gray mare rubbed her head against my back and butted me with her nose as if to say,
Crazy two-legs, what are you doing on the ground?
She almost had her full strength back now and wanted more than a sedate stroll along the canyon floor.

I said, “You're so uppity, Terris, you take the lead.”

He swung his leg over the sorrel gelding's rump and jumped lightly to the ground. Earlier I'd watched him riding and knew Etch'd been talking to him about horses. He'd got the rhythm of his horse's gait. Now he kept his eyes to the scanning pattern I'd taught him, and I was right on his flank, checking everything he saw, everything he didn't see. He missed very little.

 We went on through the noon hour, marking each canyon and all the branchings on our makeshift map, stopping to water the horses when we could. After that I led and then Etch, each of us checking the other. Boring, nerve-wracking, neck-stiffening, eye-watering work. Just before dusk, we halted at the branching of three gullies, a natural crossroads. Ground-hugging rosemarie grew everywhere here, thick enough to hide something small.

“We've cut so far eastward, we're closer to due north than we were when we started,” I thought aloud. “There are connections, and these gully walls can be climbed.”

“We'll have to mark this on the map and then go through the tributaries one by one tomorrow,” Terris said. He was tired, more from worry nerves than anything, and trying not to show it.

If it were me, I thought, this is where I'd leave something for Avi to find. If I could. A coin, maybe, a bit of torn clothing, a horseshoe nail...

I crouched down on the loose dirt and pushed aside the pungent clusters of leaves. Scanning, forcing myself to focus on each shadow in turn and yet to see the pattern of the whole. My eyes flickered over something small and circular, carved, bone-white.

“Ah!”

My fingers closed around it, smooth under its lightly incised markings. I handed it to Terris, grinning despite myself.

He smoothed off the dust. “A button?”

“Not just
any
button. It's chevre horn, see, and this far north there's only sheep. It's too cold here for chevre — they do better by the Inland Sea. The horns fall off every year and the village women carve them like this. Each family's got its own design, and each worker adds her own mark here, on the back. I know this pattern — it's one of a set I bought for Avi. She left it just where she knew I'd look.”

“Hidden,” Etch said, looking grim.

“There's been no sign of a struggle,” said Terris.

“She was well enough to leave that button where it wouldn't be found except for someone who was looking for it.” My heart pounded.

“The light's not good for much,” said Etch. “I'll make some torches.” He bound kindling strips together to burn long and slow. We each lit one and went on, on foot. The night closed in on us.

The flickering torchlight turned everything to shadows that seemed part alive and part illusion, watching us as we passed with their lidless eyes.

There was nothing I was afraid of, not in this night. The things trapped in the shadows had no wings, no teeth, no knives.

Partway up a rapidly widening gully, Terris spotted what looked like faded footprints.

“Boots,” I said, “but they're old enough so I can't tell much more.” I held my torch up for better light. There, on the ground-clinging rosemarie —

I knelt down, hardly daring to touch it. The break wasn't fresh, but neither was it very old. The exposed woody core was dry and yet the leaves beyond the break were still water-soft.

“Look there,” Etch pointed. “More. Leading north.”

I nodded, balancing the heady adrenalin rush against the day we'd had, the night ahead.

Terris marked my hesitation. He was as tired as any of us, but his voice was firm. “This is far enough. We make camp here.”

“We can't give up now,” Etch said.

“We aren't giving up,” Terris shot back.

“What good will we be to her half-asleep on our feet?” I added. “You said it yourself, the light's gone and it's too easy to miss a track by torchlight. Against the chance of an error like that, what difference will a few hours make? Tomorrow morning with clear eyes and good daylight will do us just as well.”

In the end, Etch and I agreed. Terris had better sense than either of us. We might wander around as if we had no more brains that the brush-sheep, losing the track because it was too damned dark. We might face a fight to the death. Part of me wanted to go on, but I couldn't listen to that part. I couldn't make a mistake, not with Avi's life.

I was in the lead when we came to a sharp bend in the canyon. Here the clumps of rosemarie and wire-grass gave way to split-bark oak, so there must have been an underground spring for their taproots to draw from. Split-bark meant squirrels nesting in the branches and getting fat on the acorns. Just our luck, because the nitbrains would chitter out a warning as soon as we got close.

Beyond the grove, part of the western canyon wall had tumbled down and half across the trail, huge rough boulders easily big enough to hide a mounted man. All in all, an excellent place for an ambush.

From the gray mare's back, I studied the narrow passage ahead. Nothing moved except for a branch that a squirrel had just jumped off. The squirrel, of course, was gone.

As for Terris and Etch, I couldn't count on what they'd do if someone came barreling at them, knife in hand. Best thing'd be to run and hope their horses were faster, and I told them so.

“Stay behind me,” I said.

“And ride right past that?” said Terris.

“
Around
that,” I answered, sliding the long-knife out. The leather-wrapped hilt fit exactly into my hand. The steel whispered through my veins. “And we'll be ready for them.”