Snare (48 page)

‘The Tribes still have it. The health part, anyway, and if they hadn’t chosen such rough lives, who knows how long they’d live?’

‘It’s their ancestors who did the choosing. I wonder if the descendants would continue to choose it, if they knew.’

‘Good question. Probably unanswerable, too.’

‘Probably, yes. And not as important, ultimately, as why they stay so damned healthy. I’m envious, I’ll admit it. They’re just not built like us. Good God, the way they drink! One glass of that keese, and I’d have to lie down, but they knock it back all day.’

‘Yes, their metabolism – you’re right, they’re not like us. And they’re not like the other Inborn, really. If we could find the Settlers’ records, we might come closer to learning why.’

‘Just so.’ Zhoc shook his head in irritation.
‘If.
I wish they hadn’t stored so much data in N’Dosha. There has to be some rational explanation, and thanks to the filthy ChaMeech we’ll never learn it.’

‘If the records are all lost, anyway. Everyone’s afraid of going to find out, so they might as well be.’

‘Yarl of course wanted to. I got so sick of him pestering me for funding.’ Zhoc paused, looking grim. ‘You know what my worst fear is? That Yarl isn’t a charlatan, that he really believes in his grand scheme. If he does, he could cause a great deal of trouble for everyone.’

‘He already has, hasn’t he? What –’

‘Those Kazraks.’ Zhoc leaned forward, his eyes urgent. ‘What if he wants to convince the Kazraks to come search for the lost ships?’

Loy felt herself turn cold. ‘Trouble,’ she said. ‘I see what you mean.’

After she left the master’s office, Loy finished posting the student grades, gave their papers to the guild clerk in case anyone wanted them back, then locked up her office for the recess. She hated holidays, when she had nothing to do but sit around her cottage and worry about Rozi. You should start a new research project, she told herself. The utter futility of the thought nearly made her weep. She had studied the Landfall Treaty for twenty years now, and what had she learned? How knowledge evaporated like water in the sun when a people, a culture, were dying, how
myth sprang up like purple grass in a rose garden to strangle truth, and how well-meaning people had decided that myth was healthier than truth.

Loy left the building and went home, where a stack of books, better than any chemical anodyne, waited for her. She would lie on the couch, she decided, and lose herself in ancient works: classics of other times, other worlds, and other stars.

Before they left Leen, Ammadin insisted they take their horses to a blacksmith to have them freshly shod. Neither of them knew what the roads ahead were like. The road that ran north from Leen was bad enough, an ancient, dead-straight stripe of crumbling grey sponge through the fields and villages. No one actually travelled on it; on each side ran lanes of hard-packed dirt, where the farmers drove their wagons and travellers rode their horses or walked, pulling goods behind them in two-wheeled wicker carts.

By then the summer season had arrived, hot and parched, when the pale sun turned merciless and fended off all rain. Out in the fields water gleamed in irrigation ditches. Whenever they crossed a bridge, Zayn saw a variety of contraptions – wheels lined with buckets, wooden sluices, pumps – sucking or lifting the precious water out of the river below and delivering it to the gold and scarlet fields. Ammadin insisted on stopping often to rest and water the horses. Zayn never objected, even though he knew that Warkannan was gaining ground, that he would be pushing his men and mounts both now that he knew one of the Chosen was heading for Jezro Khan.

During that ride north Zayn took his love affair with Ammadin like a drug. His feeling for her – his honest affection, his gratitude, the sexual pleasure they shared – drowned his thoughts and changed his memories of the Chosen, of Kazrajistan, even of his days in the border cavalry, into stories he’d once heard someone tell. Those events no longer mattered, as long as he and Ammadin could ride together during the sun-drenched days and lie down together at night.

But all too soon they crossed the border into the Canton of Dordan, and another day’s ride brought them to the little town of Lasko, a scatter of white houses tucked among the gaudy fields and shaded by ancient oaks. There was no hohte, but they did find a wine shop, a pleasant place with a true-wood floor, tables
and chairs woven from maroon rushes, and a long bar, also of true-wood, that stood before a wall covered with pottery jars and glass bottles, all tipped onto their sides in elaborate wicker racks. The proprietor, a stout woman wearing a heavy white apron over her smock and trousers, told them that she had a small barn out in back.

‘You can sleep in the hay loft for a couple of vrans,’ she said. ‘Not much hay up there, though, and don’t you go starting any fires.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Zayn said. ‘It’s too hot for that.’

‘You’re right, aren’t you? Go get your horses in out of the sun.’

Zayn tended the horses while Ammadin disappeared round back of the barn – scanning, he assumed – and when she returned she confirmed his assumption.

‘Warkannan is right at the edge of my crystal’s range,’ she said. ‘That means he’s a good long way ahead.’

‘Well, not much I can do about that,’ Zayn said.

‘I know. You don’t look particularly worried.’

‘I’ve been learning from you. If my quest takes me to Jezro, well, then it will, and if it doesn’t, it’s not meant to.’

Ammadin considered this seriously. As always, she was carrying her saddlebags slung over one shoulder. Away from the comnee she never left her crystals out of arm’s reach.

‘I suppose that’s true,’ Ammadin said at last. ‘But it’s possible to fail a quest, you know. Usually the quester fails out of cowardice, but I can’t imagine you being a coward, so if you’re on the wrong path, it has to be for some other reason.’

‘Such as, maybe I never should have taken the quest on. Maybe I should have just stayed with the comnee and let –’

‘ – the Chosen find you and kill you.’

Zayn scowled at her.

‘Well, that’s what you always say, isn’t it? If someone would only kill you, then all your troubles would be over.’

The justice of it stung. He turned and took a step away. He heard her follow, then felt her hands on his shoulders, stroking him.

‘I don’t want to see you dead, Zayn.’ Her voice had turned soft. ‘I don’t know, no one can know what the gods have in store for you, but please, try to stay alive?’

‘Of course.’

‘There’s no of course about it.’

He shrugged, shook her hands off, and walked a few more steps away. Standing in the cool shade of the barn as he was, the sunlight outside the door looked to him like a wall of white fire, and for the briefest of moments he was afraid to walk into it. With a muttered curse he turned back to Ammadin.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘All right, I’ll do my best to stay alive. I promise. How’s that?’

‘That’s fine.’ She was smiling at him. ‘If you died, I’d have to mourn you, and I don’t want to cut all my hair off.’

‘Heaven forbid!’ He managed to smile in return. ‘I’ve never tasted wine. Want to go try some?’

‘I thought you Kazraks weren’t supposed to.’

‘By all the laws of my religion I’m damned already. I might as well get drunk if I feel like it.’ He’d meant it as a joke, but he could hear the bitter twist in his voice. ‘Sorry. I guess I’m just tired. Let’s go.’

Outside, a cloud of dust like smoke drifted from the road. Big wagons were trundling past; Zayn counted six of them, each drawn by four heavy horses. Two of the wagons looked more like moving houses; their wooden sides were about eight feet high, and he could see the peaks of roofs. On this pair hung big banners, announcing ‘The Recallers of Roon’. The word, Recaller, brought back the memory with it, of the small boy crouched on the cold tile floor. Caught between two times Zayn watched until the last wagon passed, and the dust began to settle with one last swirl over the grey roadway.

‘Zayn?’ Ammadin said. ‘Are you all right?’

With a toss of his head Zayn suppressed the memory. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Just tired.’

The wine shop stood empty of patrons. At the counter the stout woman was polishing glass goblets with a piece of white cloth.

‘Something I meant to ask you,’ Zayn said. ‘Does this road run straight through to Burgunee?’

‘Not exactly straight, no.’ She held up a goblet and inspected it. ‘After you leave Sarla, the road goes north, but there’s a fork a few miles out of town. They both look wrong.’ She smiled and set the goblet down. ‘One runs north after a little detour, and that’s the Burgunee road. The other heads east to where N’Dosha used to be. You better ask in town when you get there, just to make sure.’

‘Thank you. I’ll do that.’

Zayn ordered wine randomly, pointing at a couple of glass bottles, handing over the coins she asked for. Once she had the money, she pulled the corks out of the bottles with a spiral of metal wire protruding from a handle. Zayn glanced back and saw Ammadin sitting at a table near the open door. He took the bottles and a pair of empty glasses over, set them down, then pulled up a chair opposite her.

‘I heard you asking about the roads,’ Ammadin said. ‘Could she tell you?’

‘Yes, she sure did. Exactly where are you meeting Water Woman? Did she ever make up her mind?’

‘Yesterday morning, finally. Out in what used to be N’Dosha, but not far from the Dordan border, she said, there’s some kind of monument. She called it the “white cliff with pictures”. She says there’s an old road that will take me there. Why? Is she wrong?’

‘No. It’s just that your road’s going to leave mine right after Sarla.’

‘That’s not good news.’ Ammadin frowned, considering. ‘You’ll have a ways to travel, and I won’t be able to hide you from the sorcerer. You’re right to worry. You’ll have to be very careful from then on.’

Zayn picked up a bottle and concentrated on filling their glasses with pale yellow wine.

‘Zayn?’ Ammadin said. ‘Something’s really wrong. Please tell me.’

‘Well, hell! In a couple of days we won’t be riding together. Won’t you even miss me?’

Her utter surprise caught him like a slap across the face. Just lie, Ammi, he thought. Go ahead and lie, and I’ll make myself believe it.

‘Miss you?’ Ammadin said at last. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Oh never mind! Here, have a goddamned glass of wine.’

He shoved a glass across the table towards her, but she let it sit. ‘I’ve hurt you somehow,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Well, I was hoping you liked having me around.’

‘What? Of course I do. But we’re both on quest.’

‘Yes, I know that. But –’

‘But what? Do I love you? Isn’t that what you really want to know?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid it is. I know it’s a stupid question.’

‘It’s only stupid because we’re both riding quests. If we were back on the grass, it wouldn’t be.’

‘All right. Suppose I wait till we get back there and ask it again.’

‘That’s fair.’ She picked up her glass and saluted him with it. ‘You do that.’

All those beautiful women back on the plains, Zayn thought. Beautiful, easy women – and what do I do? Fall for a spirit rider. He took his own glass, returned her salute, and drank as much as he could in one swallow.

For five days Warkannan and his men had been riding like fugitives. They followed country roads that ran like ruts between fields; when those roads threatened to take them to towns, they left them and stayed close to wild country, the rocky stream beds and remnants of the old vegetation that had once covered Dordan. No true-oaks grew here – the pale fountain trees fought for sunlight with tall scarlet lace-leafs and a welter of orange and russet herbage.

They crossed the border from Dordan to Burgunee in the middle of the night. Soutan led them straight to an abandoned barn, where they camped to hide from the dawn. What was left of the walls sagged and split, but the roof covered them enough to thwart the spirit rider’s crystals, or so Soutan said.

‘How do you even know if she’s trying to spot us?’ Warkannan said.

‘I don’t, but I don’t care to be caught napping this time.’

‘This time?’

‘If she tries to kill these crystals, of course. Good God, don’t you remember anything?’

‘Well, if we’ll reach Jezro soon, why does it matter?’

‘Because we have to get him safely out of here and back across the border, don’t we? Back to Andjaro, I mean. How am I supposed to do that without crystals?’

‘That’s true, of course. But I don’t think the spirit rider cares one way or the other if we reach Andjaro.’

For an answer Soutan made a growling sound deep in his throat. Warkannan let the subject drop.

With dawn Soutan’s mood improved. He rummaged through his gear and brought out a small rectangle of some substance that looked like blue quartz. When Arkazo asked him about it, he showed it round.

‘This is a signal imp,’ Soutan said. ‘Once I charge it in the sunlight, it will send a message to Jezro, telling him we’re nearly there.’

Arkazo’s eyes widened. When Soutan handed him the imp, he held it up, studied it, stroked it with a forefinger as if it were a pet animal.

‘We’re nearly there?’ Warkannan said.

‘Oh yes. A day’s ride – a long day, unfortunately, since we haven’t come on the main roads. I’m trying to decide if we should wait till nightfall to move out. Let me scan, and then we’ll know more.’

As the dawn blossomed, Soutan spent a long time out in the sun with his various devices as if he’d forgotten his fears of the spirit rider. Warkannan and Arkazo fed the horses the last of the grain and watered them at a rivulet behind the abandoned barn.

‘I suppose Soutan knows what he’s doing,’ Warkannan said.

‘Of course he does.’

A certain calm faith in Arkazo’s voice caught Warkannan’s attention, but he had no idea what to make of it. It’s the machines he likes, he thought. Power from the sun and all that sort of thing. During their long ride, Soutan had been flooding Arkazo with so much information about the Settlers and their mechanical trinkets that Warkannan had simply stopped listening. Soutan’s lectures did keep up Arkazo’s morale; for that, he was grateful.