The Outskirter's Secret (38 page)

Bel could not hear her. "Rowan! Are you all
right?"

The steerswoman pulled her gaze from the
chasm. Bel was looking up at her, short hair falling back from her
face, dark eyes worried.

Rowan reassured her. "Yes," she called, and
gave a helpless laugh. "And I can see the river."

She descended and stood leaning against the
base of the crag, breathless from exertion or from the impossible
scene, she could not tell which. Bel watched her, waiting.

"It's two miles down, at the least," Rowan
said when she recovered. "And over a mile to the other side. There
are lichen-towers the whole length of the river, all the way up the
cliffs. There's no way down, and no way up if we make it to the
floor of this—I don't know what to call it—ravine, chasm." She
shook her head again.

Bel thought. "None of the cliffs are bare
rock?"

"None that I could see. And I could see far .
. ."

Both were silent.

"We'll have to go around it," Bel said.

"Yes."

"North, or south?"

Rowan called her map to mind, and now she
trusted it. "The river must run to the sea eventually, but I have
no idea how far that might be. It ran to the edge of the wizards'
map. And it may be even deeper farther south." Rivers sometimes cut
deep beds for themselves as they flowed, over the years; but there
was nothing like this known anywhere in the Inner Lands. "This must
be the oldest river in the world."

Bel was not impressed. "North, then."

"North. We'll have to retrace our steps until
we clear this." So much travel, wasted.

Bel leaned against a boulder, crossed her
arms, and gave a wry half-smile. "Kammeryn's tribe will have gone
east since we left them."

"Yes." In the midst of the eerie wilderness,
Rowan felt amazement at the idea: that there were dear friends
somewhere nearby, familiarity, a place to go. "If we travel due
north, we can meet them again." And she wanted to, very much.
"We'll stay with them until they've passed by"—she came back to her
surroundings again and gestured—"all this. Then we can go
south."

"It might have been worse. We might have had
no one to meet, no way to find more supplies. And no one looking
for us." Bel's smile became genuine. "It'll feel like going home."
She straightened, clapped Rowan's shoulder. "Come on."

E
ight notes of
a jolly tune: an Inner Lands drinking song, whistled melodiously
above the rattle of the redgrass. Rowan stopped short and turned
around.

Fletcher stood behind, bouncing on his toes.
"Wondered when you were going to notice me."

Rowan laughed out loud. "Skies above, it's
good to see you!" Spontaneously, she threw her arms around his
waist and gave him a bear hug, its momentum considerably augmented
by the weight of her pack. Taken aback, he stumbled a bit.

Bel watched sidelong. "He's been walking
behind us for an hour."

Fletcher disengaged himself and sent Bel a
look of disappointment. "And here I thought my shiftiness was so
improved."

"Oh, it is. I didn't notice you until you
were as near as a kilometer."

"Well, that's better. Time was, you'd have
known I was here the day before I arrived." He assumed an air of
careful dignity and gave Bel a comradely clap on the shoulder, as
formal greeting.

She responded with a poke in the ribs, which
he attempted to dodge. "Where's the tribe?"

"Oof. Not where you'd think, which is why I'm
here. Kammeryn's been sending scouts to the places we would have
been. We keep moving, so there'll always be someone where you'd
expect."

"You're a scout now?" Bel was frankly
dubious.

"And thank you for your confidence. No, not
really. But we're short, what with Maud gone, and Zo getting
headaches. We're filling in with volunteers. That's me: volunteer,
and I hope you appreciate it."

"We do," Rowan assured him. "Why did the
tribe change route?" She considered possible reasons: land too wet
to support redgrass; land too dry to provide enough drinking water;
troops of goblins; demons; enemies.

"For the most pleasant of reasons." He spread
his arms. "Ladies, to everyone's delight and amazement, it's
Rendezvous."

Both women looked at the sky; it was clear,
blue, and had been for days.

He held up his hands. "I know. Don't ask me.
We came across an open camp in the midst of a tempest. The seyohs
consulted, and decided that it was time. Another tribe joined us.
Then another. Then it started to hail. The next day the weather
cleared, and it's been like this since." He looked abashed.
"Perhaps it's my fault. I prayed for a little sunshine."

"And did it arrive straightaway?" Rowan
asked, amused. Bel weaved uncomfortably.

"Well, no," Fletcher admitted. "About a week
later, really. But I also asked to be the one to find you two."

Bel spoke up. "Can your god tell you where
you left the tribe?"

He laid a hand on his breast. "Just follow
your scout."

They proceeded, ambling along a grassy ridge;
a small brook crossed the land below, lichen-towers crowding its
edge. One was so tall that Rowan looked across, instead of down, at
it. She found she held it in disdain: she had seen the king of all
lichen-towers.

Presently Fletcher said, "Oh, and one of the
tribes at Rendezvous is Ella's."

Bel was delighted. "That's good!"

"And another," he continued, "is Face
People."

They were four clear, cool, sunlit days
traveling to Rendezvous.

On the night of the second day, Rowan dreamed
that Bel stood above her in the darkness, listening to the night.
Rowan's dream-self, aware that she dreamed, wondered if it was a
real perception woven into the dream. It reminded her of the last
time Bel had stood so, silent in the dark, and the memory struck
her awake.

It was true. Taking up her sword, Rowan rose
to stand by her companion's side and waited. She could see and hear
nothing to prompt Bel's concern.

Eventually, the Outskirter said, "There's
someone nearby."

Rowan moved to where Fletcher was sleeping
and nudged his foot with hers. She dimly saw him shift. By Inner
Lands reflex, he rolled over and burrowed deeper into his blanket;
then Outskirts training assumed command and he was on his feet, his
sword glittering starlight.

Silently, the three moved to stand
back-to-back in a triangle.

Rowan studied her section of the landscape,
with all her senses. The redgrass chattered, sending fleeing
shadows of dark and greater dark across the view. The only breaks
in the dim pattern were placed where Rowan knew, from the previous
day's observations, that natural obstacles stood. No smell of human
or animal reached her.

Presently Fletcher spoke, quiet words falling
from his great height. "I think I've got him. Bel, you check,
you're better than me."

The two traded positions. "At eleven by me,"
Bel confirmed.

"Nothing here," Fletcher told her from his
new position.

"Nothing," Rowan added, "but—" She was
ashamed to be so distrustful of her own perceptions, but the two
warriors were better trained than she.

Fletcher touched her arm lightly. They traded
places. "Nothing," he confirmed. Then he turned to stand beside
Bel; Rowan followed his example. The three stood facing an enemy
imperceptible to Rowan; and as they stood so, it came to Rowan how
good a thing it was to have these two comrades to stand beside, in
the dangerous, hissing darkness.

They waited long, and nothing changed. "I
fight from the left," Fletcher eventually reminded Bel.

"Trade with Rowan."

They reconfigured. They waited. The wind
died, and rose again. They were facing west.

Rowan risked a quiet question. "You're
sure?"

"Yes," and "Yes," from the warriors.

She could not help from whispering,
"How?"

"Listen."

She listened. The redgrass chattered in
dithering waves. She tried to listen to it more closely, tried to
hear each and every individual reed as it tapped against its
neighbor. And she did hear them, sharper and more clearly than ever
she thought she could, each tap like a tiny blow upon her ears. But
there was no sound other than that.

Her heart became a fist, pounding her chest
for escape. She waited until the strain of waiting became an agony
in her bones. "Listen for what?"

"For silence."

Then she heard it: among the chattering of
the grass, one place from which nothing emerged, one small pocket
of silence where there should have been sound. She could almost
hear, in that absence, the very shape of the person's body,
although that might be illusion; but the shape seemed to her
smaller than the average man.

Fletcher shifted, tense. "No attack?"

"He knows we're ready."

As Rowan listened, the pocket closed, filling
from the edges. "He's going," she whispered.

"He's gone," Bel said.

They slept in shifts. They did not hear the
stranger again.

"
S
kies above,"
the steerswoman said.

Fletcher beamed with pride. "And there it
is," he confirmed.

The three travelers stood with the base of a
high ridge to their left, an undulating valley before them, another
ridge beyond. Down the valley, up and down the folds in the land
and on both sides of a meandering creek, splayed a single mass of
gray and brown tents.

"How many tribes at Rendezvous?"

"Six," Fletcher replied. He had told her
before; nevertheless, intellectual calculation and immediate
perception were two quite different experiences. There were well
over a thousand people camped in the valley below. Rowan had never
before seen one thousand people gathered together in one place.

The travelers descended, and as they
approached the first outlying tents, Bel reminded Rowan, "You don't
walk through another tribe's area unless you've been invited, or
there's an emergency. There are paths between each tribe."

They found one: a broad straight avenue
running from the edge of the encampment, sloping downward with the
lay of the land. To the right, a scene both familiar and strange to
Rowan: everyday camp life, with warriors lounging, conversing,
practicing, mertutials bustling and drudging, children at play—but
none of them people whom Rowan had ever seen before. She smiled at
a pair of twin boys who had stopped a make-believe sword challenge
to watch the newcomers pass; when she waved to them, she received a
hearty wave from the bolder of the two, a shy one from his
brother.

But along the left side of the wide path
stood tents smaller than usual, and more crudely constructed. They
were crowded close together with no access between, creating, in
effect, a shabby wall guarding the residents from the eyes of
passersby. The only sound from that direction was a muffled
conversation, two voices speaking quietly in the distance.

Even the smell was strange. Over the
right-hand camp, a familiar miasma composed of goat must, food
smells, garbage, and human sweat hung in an almost visible cloud:
strong, friendly, welcoming. The quiet camp on the left smelled
only of the veldt: a faint scent like sour milk, cinnamon, and
dust. The absence of the usual odors disturbed Rowan. It seemed to
imply not cleanliness, but a lack of the normal and healthy
adjuncts of human existence. It was a smell of poverty.

She turned to ask a question of Fletcher, but
Bel asked it first and provided the answer simultaneously. "Face
People?"

Fletcher nodded, then lifted one finger to
covertly indicate the path ahead of them. On the ground, in the
center of the avenue, sat a man.

He was small, with short dark hair.
Cloakless, he wore a shabby goatskin tunic, a single garment with a
hole for the head, belted around the waist, its hem ending well
above the high tops of his boots. His sword was slung on his back,
and his arms were wrapped around his drawn-up knees. The
arrangement of his limbs left his genitals partially exposed; he
was as indifferent to the fact as would be a dog. He simply sat,
with his back to the lively camp and his face to the mottled walls
of the quiet one, staring, neither blankly nor with hostility, but
with infinite patience.

When the travelers parted to pass around him,
he ignored them, gazing ahead stolidly. Rowan and Bel exchanged a
disturbed glance over his head. Fletcher, however, remained
irrepressible. "Morning," he called out cheerfully to the fellow in
passing.

The man looked up, his expression unaltered;
but a moment before Fletcher's glance turned away, he nodded, once,
in acknowledgment. Then he returned to his study.

Out of earshot, Rowan asked, "Is he an
outcast?"

Fletcher winced. "You'll have to ask him
yourself; no one else wants to. He showed up about a week into
Rendezvous; sits there for a few hours every day, then vanishes, no
one knows where."

"Not into the Face People's camp?" Bel
asked.

"Don't know."

They found Kree's tent, left their equipment
within, and then proceeded to Kammeryn's tent to inform him of
their return. But as they approached, Rowan noticed something lying
across the threshold: two cloaks, one of them Kammeryn's,
identifiable by the pattern on its bright woven trim.

The three stopped short, paused long. "Oops,"
Fletcher said eventually. Bel emitted a pleased "Ha!" Rowan blinked
twice, then began perusing a mental list of the tribe's less
decrepit female mertutials. Fletcher took charge of the situation
and gazing at the sky with ostentatious nonchalance, led the women
away. "Lovely weather," he commented.

"I didn't recognize the other cloak," Bel
said quietly. She was suppressing a grin.