The Steerswoman's Road (91 page)

He now sat with the rest of his band, picking at his
breakfast with little interest. He seemed to sense Rowan’s attention and looked
her way. She removed her gaze an instant before he caught it.

“Well,” Bel said, “Kree’s putting him back to work today.”
The statement was innocent enough to permit Chess to overhear.

The cook grunted. “He must be feeling better,” she said, and
jerked her chin once in Fletcher’s direction. “First time he’s done that in
days, too. But he’s late today. Hope his god doesn’t mind.”

Rowan glanced back. Fletcher had abandoned his food and was
walking away, out between the tents, toward the edge of camp. “Off on his
prayers,” Rowan said without thinking; and it was suddenly necessary to
restrain herself from clutching at Bel to gain her attention.

Bel had noted Rowan’s sudden tension. When Chess was gone,
she said quietly, “What is it?”

Rowan leaned very close. “Fletcher is certainly no Christer.”

“And?”

“Then, what’s he doing, Bel? What’s he doing right now?”

Bel’s wide eyes grew wider, and she clearly wished to look
back in the direction Fletcher had gone. “Not praying,” she said.

“I sincerely doubt it.” They finished their breakfast in
silence, and after, with careful nonchalance, strolled to the edge of camp.

Fletcher was nowhere in sight; it was his habit to tuck
himself behind some natural obstruction or another when attending to his presumed
devotions.

“He goes off alone, almost every single day,” Rowan said,
studying the single stand of tanglebrush that likely provided Fletcher his present
privacy. “And he has done, all the time he’s been in the Outskirts. If he’s not
a Christer, why would he need to be alone?”

Bel smiled thinly. “He’s doing something other people
shouldn’t see.”

Rowan was angry at herself for not suspecting this
peculiarity long before. “Can you get close enough to see him, without him
spotting you?”

“Yes.” Bel scanned the sky, gauging the wind. “I’ll have to swing
around from the north.” Then she winced. “Sometimes he’s fantastically good at
seeing people in hiding. And sometimes he can’t see past his own nose.”

Rowan frowned in thought. “Magic,” she said at last. “When I
went to talk to the seyoh of the Face People tribe, and you and Fletcher
followed me, Fletcher knew where the watchers were hiding, even when you didn’t,
despite the fact that you’re a better Outskirter. But earlier—” She paused in
her speech, waiting for a pair of water-carrying mertutials to pass. “But
earlier, when Efraim’s old tribe attacked us, Fletcher had no idea at all that
anyone was about.”

Bel nodded, eyes narrowed in thought.

“What was the difference between those events?” Rowan asked
her.

Bel replied immediately. “The first time, you were standing
right next to him. The second time, he was hiding in the grass, and so was

I. We couldn’t see each other. Whatever he does, he only
does it when no one’s watching.”

“And no one can see him right now.” Rowan’s mouth twisted in
dissatisfaction. “I don’t think you’ll be able to get close to him.”

“I’d like to try.”

Such an attempt might be dangerous; but the only destructive
magic Rowan had ever witnessed had been loud, visible, and required hours of
preparation.

Perhaps Fletcher’s abilities differed from those of the boy
Willam. But if Fletcher had access to a more quickly acting destructive spell,
he certainly would have used it when the Face People had attacked Kammeryn’s
tribe. The wizard’s man had been clearly and obviously in a state of terror at
that time. Had he been able to summon magic to insure his survival, he would
have done so. The only options open to him had been to fight by sword, or to
run; he had fought.

The steerswoman drew a breath. “Do you suppose, if he
notices you by magic alone, that he’ll be able to actually recognize you?”

“Who can say?” Bel thought. “I’ll put together some excuse
to be there. Practicing Efraim’s Face People techniques, perhaps, using them to
play a joke on Fletcher.”

But when Bel returned, she reported only failure.

“I got to within three meters of him,” Bel told Rowan much
later in Orranyn’s tent; the band was on duty on the outer circle. “All I saw
was him kneeling, with his eyes closed and his hands folded. Looking—” She
searched for the proper word, then supplied it with distaste. “—humble.”

Rowan made a dissatisfied sound. “He knew you were there.”
She gave herself to thought. Very little was known about the functioning of
magic spells in general, and less of magical means of perception in particular.
She considered, instead, natural perception, and animals with particularly
sharp senses: cats with their vision; dogs with hearing, smell; frogs, which
could capture small, rapidly moving insects ...

“Perhaps,” she ventured, “he sensed you approaching.”

Bel caught the idea. “Then tomorrow, he won’t. Because I’ll
already be in place, waiting for him.”

The next morning, Rowan was awakened at dawn by hands shaking
her. She flailed out in startlement. “What?”

“Get up,” Jann told her urgently. “Get your clothes, and
your sword, and get outside!” And the warrior was gone.

The tent was already empty. Rowan threw herself into her
clothing and hurried outside.

War bands were congregating by the dead fire pit; Kammeryn
was in place, with relays nearby. Rowan read the reports as they came in, all
of them the same, single gesture: negative, negative, negative ..

She looked about for Bel; the Outskirter was nowhere in
sight. The rest of Kree’s band stood near Kammeryn, all of them seeming intent
and prepared. Among them was Fletcher, his face as grim and determined as his
comrades’, standing with his muscles twitching, like a frightened horse.

Rowan found Jann and sidled over to her unobtrusively. “What’s
going on?”

But it was another warrior who replied. “Fletcher says he
saw someone, hiding. He says”—the woman was dubious—“that the stranger is
inside
the inner circle.”

Now Jann spoke. “I don’t believe it. Our people are too good
for that. It can’t happen.” Her eyes were not on her chief, or on her seyoh;
she watched Fletcher.

Orranyn thumped her on the arm. “Pay attention, you!” Rowan
knew from the tone it was not a sudden anger but exasperation of long standing.

“Orranyn, it can’t happen—”

“Fletcher’s been too right too often for us to ignore him.
If you can’t bear to lose a little sleep for safety’s sake, then think about
crossing over.” The war band stood shocked by the statement. Orranyn pretended
indifference to their reaction; he was reaching the limit of his indulgence of
Jann’s obsession.

But Jann was not the only person watching Kree’s band. “Where’s
Be!?” Jaffry asked, and as he spoke, Rowan watched Kree, across the fire pit,
put the same question to each of her warriors. When the question reached
Fletcher, he reacted with surprise so extreme that he seemed to have been
struck. Then he spoke to Kree, pleadingly; she interrupted him, sternly,
clearly indicating that he should be most concerned with the duties
immediately at hand. When Kree turned away, Fletcher’s eyes sought and found
Rowan, and he looked at her in seeming distress, spreading his hands in a
gesture intended to communicate helplessness. It was very eloquent, and very
clever, and Rowan hated him far worse than she ever had yet.

Rowan might easily have been too conservative in her estimation
of Fletcher’s power. Bel might already be dead, by magic; she might be cast to
sleep forever under an evil spell; she might have been transformed into some
strange creature; she might be crouched in hiding out in the pastures, unable
to move for fear of attracting attack, with all Kammeryn’s tribe convinced that
she was an enemy, and Fletcher’s magic insuring that all eyes would see her as
one.

“What’s happening?”

The steerswoman spun, dropped her weapon, and threw her arms
about Bel, pulling the small woman completely off the ground in an embrace of
utter relief.

The Outskirter pretended amazement at the reception,
extracted herself, and repeated the question.

“Where were you?” Jaffry demanded.

Bel regarded him with fists on hips. “Can’t a warrior visit
the cessfield without the tribe falling apart behind her back?”

But as she left to join her war band, she quickly pulled
Rowan aside and forced the steerswoman down to hiss in her ear, “I’m never
doing that again!”

It was not until much later, after the guards had determined
that Fletcher had been mistaken, after Kree’s band had served their rotation
on the outer circle, after evening meal, that the two women could meet, alone
at the edge of camp.

“Well, for what it’s worth, I did see something,” Bel said.

Rowan found herself almost indifferent; it was far more important
that Bel was unharmed. “What was it?” she managed to ask.

Bel thought, then shook her head in confusion. “I’m not sure
.. perhaps you can make sense of it.

“When he settled down, he had his back to me. I was disappointed,
because I thought I might not see anything ... I shouldn’t have worried.
Because, all of a sudden, there were things in the air.”

Rowan was taken aback. “Overhead? Someone would have seen
them.”

“No, not up. Just in front of him. Floating things, like
they were trapped in a trawler’s shoot—but flat.” She held her hands before
her, delimiting an invisible vertical surface. “They went no higher than the
grass tops, and all the way down to the ground. The things were small, like
insects, bright colors. But they didn’t move, they just hung. And they glowed.”

Rowan had not expected anything quite so dramatic. “Glowed?
Like fire? Was there any heat?” There could not have been, or the grass would
have caught

“No. More like stars: cold light. Blue, red, yellow, all
colors. It was strange. The colors were bright, but the light didn’t seem to be
... It’s hard to describe.”

“Just spots of light, hanging in the air in front of him?”
Rowan tried to imagine it, but failed. “Not ... scenes from far away, or
writing, or a pentagram?”

“Some of them might have been arranged in something like a
pentagram ... it’s hard to say, I didn’t get to look for long. Fletcher sat
down, the lights appeared; then he shouted, the lights vanished, he jumped up,
drew his sword and turned around—” Bel leaned closer, spoke more quietly and
more intensely. “—and he came straight at me!”

“He knew you were there.”

“He knew
exactly
where I was.”

The magic lights had somehow told him. “What did you do?”
Rowan was aghast.

The Outskirter leaned back, tilting her head. “I moved. And
he went for exactly where I used to be.”

Fletcher’s magical perceptions were limited to the moments
when the spell itself was active.

“I tried to stay put after that,” Bel continued, “but he
started flailing around in the grass, at random, and I had to dodge. Then he
stopped and signaled to six; a reply, I think. He must have been seen carrying
on. He told six that there was an intruder in the inner circle, and then he
took to his heels, back to camp.”

“Was there any indication that he knew it was you?”

Bel shook her head broadly. “But I don’t dare try it again.
So that’s all we’re going to learn about Fletcher’s prayers.”

Rowan’s mouth twitched in dissatisfaction. “We have to wait,”
she said grimly, “for him to do something more obvious.”

They did not wait long.

* * *

It happened over breakfast. Fletcher was late from his prayers.

And then Rowan heard someone calling his name, wondered why,
then saw him enter the center of the camp at a flat run, ignoring the voices
that asked why he ran.

Bel’s eyes narrowed. “What’s he up to?”

Rowan rose slowly. “I don’t know.”

Fletcher stopped and stood by the fire, arms splayed out as
if he had forgotten them. He was glancing about, wide-eyed, as though desperate,
and blind to everything but what he sought. “Where’s Kammeryn?” he called out.

All were now watching his performance. “In his tent,” someone
supplied. Fletcher rushed to Kammeryn’s tent as the seyoh was emerging. “Seyoh,
the tribe has to move.”

Kammeryn was bemused. “What?”

“We have to move,” Fletcher insisted. “We have to go east.
We need to do it now!”

Kammeryn put a hand on his shoulder and studied his wild
eyes. “Calm down. What are you trying to tell me?”

“I had—” Fletcher drew a great breath. “I had a vision. We
have to move. We have to go east.”

Someone had fetched Kree; she came up to them, all
confusion. “Fletcher, what is wrong?”

He turned to her, saw her, dismissed her. “A vision,” he repeated
to Kammeryn.

“What sort of vision?”

The wizard’s man seemed to find no appropriate words,
settled for vague ones. “Something terrible is going to happen. It’s coming
here. I don’t know what, a tempest, a monster—something. We have to go away.”

Kree made to protest; but Kammeryn gestured her silent. He
paused long. “Perhaps ...” he began, and he was watching Fletcher’s pleading
face closely. “Perhaps we ought to do it. But I’ll send scouts around first,
have them report what they find—”

“No! We won’t have the time.” In his urgent act, Fletcher
dropped all form, all deference to the seyoh. “Send a scout ahead of us if you
like, but let’s start moving now.”

The Outskirters were stirring with discomfort at hearing
their seyoh spoken to in this fashion by a mere warrior. Rowan and Bel stood
among them, quiet, intent.

Kammeryn must not do anything Fletcher required.

“Very well.” The seyoh became decisive. “Karel, relay to Zo
and Quinnan that I’ll shortly have new directions for them. Everyone, prepare
to pull out. Fletcher, come with me and tell exactly where the tribe is to
move. Kree, with us.” He walked to his tent and entered, with Fletcher hurrying
behind. Kree watched an instant, amazed, then rushed to join them.