Rahelle. Rahelle, furious.
“What are you trying to do, get yourself killed?” Her breath brushed his ear. She was close enough to warm his cheek with the heat of her skin. The nearness brought an unexpected, fleeting laran contact. He felt the roil and surge of her emotions, her determination to protect Cyrillon, her fear that her few years of freedom were coming to an end.
“Go back,” he muttered. “This is not your concern.”
“Your worthless skin is indeed none of my concern. But it would reflect poorly on my father’s honor if you were gutted and flayed for the amusement of the street rats of Shainsa while you are under his protection. Which is exactly what will happen if you keep behaving this way!”
Gareth peered in the direction of Lord Dayan’s men, half-expecting to see them rush back, drawn by the vehemence of her whispers. Through gritted teeth he said, “I absolve your father of all responsibility.”
“It was bad enough for him to take such an arrogant, stubborn, reckless—” she used a Dry Towns idiom that would have scandalized Gareth’s tutor “—as far as Carthon. I have no idea what possessed him to let you come this far!”
“I said—”
She made a sound that was rude in three languages. “You wouldn’t know responsibility if it were inscribed on a tablet of brass!”
A bubble of laughter tickled his throat. She was so sure, so righteous in her anger. And she was correct, or she would have been a month ago.
Gently he disengaged himself from her hold. “Some things are more urgent than honor, and more important than my worthless skin.”
He heard her quick inhalation, sensed the quicksilver change from fury to astonishment. She had understood him, not the specifics of his meaning but the silent cry of his spirit.
Ever since I can remember, I have been a pawn to the schemes and ambitions of others, worth nothing in myself, he wanted to tell her. For the first time, I have found something bigger than my concerns, and it has changed everything.
How could he voice such a thing when it was so new, so cataclysmic an alteration, such an upheaval of all his previous life, that he could scarcely articulate it to himself?
They were standing barely a hand’s length apart, shrouded in near-darkness. The sounds of the night city receded. He felt a butterfly touch on one cheek, the lingering warmth of her hand.
“Tell me,” she whispered. In those short words, he heard her own hunger, her yearning for something beyond chains and veils and an impermanent boy’s disguise.
He could not push her away or deny that longing. Memory flashed like dry lightning in his mind, and for an instant he was back on the trail to Carthon, scrambling for his life, and Rahelle was there, too, fighting as hard as any man.
The street looked empty, but Gareth could not be sure. “Where we cannot be overheard . . .”
She took his hand, strong warm fingers laced through his, and led him back to the Nebran street shrine he had passed earlier. Although no more than a crude hut with barely enough roof to shelter the few offerings, it was set apart from the other structures. No one but a ghost could approach without their knowing. They crouched beside the altar.
“In Carthon,” Gareth said, “I overheard a story, perhaps not alarming to the locals, but to me it suggested that the Federation might have returned to Darkover, but not to the spaceport in Thendara. Out there, near Black Ridge.”
“The Terranan . . . Are they weary of life or simply insane? No outlander can last long in the Sands of the Sun.” She shrugged, a movement Gareth felt rather than saw. “Understanding waters no gardens. The desert will bury their bones, and it will be as if they had never existed. Why should you care? Have you kin-bond or blood feud with them?”
He brushed aside her taunt. “Not them—the weapons they carry. Weapons that can vaporize living flesh or stun a man into insensibility. Perhaps even worse things.” After a moment, he went on. “Our Compact forbids the use of any weapon that does not bring the one who uses it into equal danger. It was not easy to convince the Federation to respect it.”
Rahelle settled back on her heels. “Why should they? Why should any man willingly refrain from using his sharpest sword?”
“That attitude,” Gareth retorted, raising his voice, “is exactly why such weapons must never fall into the hands of you Dry Towners!”
“I am no Dry Towner, as you well know, Garrin of the Domains! And if they did acquire such weapons, what evil would come of it, save to make them the equals of your people, who have always had the military advantage?”
He forced his rising temper under control. Was this how wars began, with words growing hot and hotter, insults traded, hands reaching for swords that were all too readily drawn?
“If we have learned anything in our long history since the Ages of Chaos,” he replied, “it is that having weapons leads inevitably to using them. As the Terranan themselves found out at Caer Donn.”
Rahelle’s breath hissed between her teeth. “I thought Caer Donn was destroyed by fire.”
“Not by any off-world weapon. By the unleashed force of the Sharra matrix, a—” how could he put it so she would understand the immense power? “—a weapon of the mind. The Compact exists not to protect us from blasters and needle-guns but from the much more terrible creations of laran.”
“Bah! Witchery and superstition! Tales told by the credulous to explain such natural events as a mountain fire!” Even as she spat out the words, Gareth heard the quaver in her voice.
“No, it is true. My grandfather was there, and my uncle Danilo. And Dom Lewis Alton, who for all I know is still alive, up in Nevarsin. Do you see, if what I fear is true and the Federation has come back in secret for reasons of its own, the Comyn will not surrender to threat. Darkover could become a battleground far worse than Caer Donn.”
“That’s all very well, but does not explain what you are doing, sneaking about the city at this hour.”
He might as well tell her, for all the good it would do. In the short time he had known her, he had learned how fruitless it was to argue with anything she said in that tone. “I was to meet a man who had more information.”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t know. Lord Dayan’s men captured him.” His throat closed up, half with hopeless dread, half with the simple impossibility of his situation.
“Dayan’s men . . . So that’s why he’s been questioning traders when he never did before, at least not with such keen regard. He is no simpleton, and he loves power. He would not risk any other lord obtaining these weapons. He wants them for his own.”
Gareth nodded, although in all likelihood, she could not see him. “That is my fear. And that is why I have no choice. I have to get there first.”
“And stop him?” She snorted. “Who do you think you are?”
His name almost popped out before he could think. He clamped his teeth together, biting off his breath. “I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Suspicion laced her tone.
“I have given my word.”
Rahelle grabbed his shoulders, her fingers digging into his flesh, and gave him a sharp shake. “Does my father know?”
Gareth blessed all the gods of both lands that he was able to answer, “He has known since Carthon. Keeping my identity secret was his condition for allowing me to travel with him to Shainsa.”
“So that’s it.” She released him with a little shove. “I couldn’t understand why he let you come along. After you nearly got yourself killed the first day, I thought he’d want nothing more to do with you.”
“I believe he was of that opinion . . . until circumstances changed.”
“So he knows? About these weapons?”
“He knows only what I overheard in Carthon, my suspicions, and why it was vital that I find out more. Of tonight’s debacle, nothing.”
Cyrillon would not want to let him go further, not by himself. For a wild moment, Gareth wondered if Rahelle might agree to plead his case. He would have to convince her first, and that might be even harder than facing down her father.
He cleared his throat. “If what I suspect is true, our best—perhaps our only hope is to get there first and impress upon the Terranan the danger if Dayan obtains Compact-banned weapons. If we can, make them a better offer.” Although why they had set down in the barren lands beyond Shainsa and not in Thendara, he could not imagine.
“Shht! I need to think!”
Gareth was so surprised by the force of Rahelle’s command, he kept quiet. His eyes adapted to the near darkness of the shrine, illuminated dimly by the moonslight sifting in through the cracks in the crude roof. The world took on a dreamlike quality, where nothing seemed solid or quite in focus. He supposed the effect was due to how little light there was, at the physical limit of his retinas. He closed his eyes, touched the Nebran amulet on his chest, and tried to see the world through his laran.
At first, he sensed nothing through the psychic insulation other than his own body and Rahelle’s nearness. Swirling currents of almost-heat, almost-color betrayed her agitation. He nearly gave up, for what was the point of trying to work with an insulated starstone? Yet there was something, hovering at the edge of his perception—
Rahelle shifted, rubbing her arms as she got to her feet, and the fleeting impression vanished. She paused, a silhouette against the glimmering lavender-lit street, and gestured for him to follow.
Together they hurried to the caravan encampment. Rahelle said nothing, except to cut off Gareth’s attempt at a question. Clearly, there was no use trying to argue with her. He’d rarely encountered anyone, man or woman, as stubborn.
She drew him to a halt at a crumbling archway on the edge of trader’s square. Just beyond, fires cast wavering circles of light. Men moved between them, to the sounds of murmured conversation, as they went about the tasks of the evening meal and the last of the day’s labors. Gareth smelled grease and spices, evocative of many such times since he’d left Thendara.
Rahelle shoved him against one of the columns. “Stay. Here.”
While she revealed the whole story to Cyrillon? Gareth shook his head. He owed the older man his honesty at least. He was going to have to explain his departure when he retrieved his horses, for he couldn’t very well take off for the Sands of the Sun on foot.
He pushed himself away from the coarse-grained brick.
“You don’t listen, do you? Do you want everyone in five camps to know where you’re going and why? No? Then let me handle this.”
Caught between being astonished and relieved, Gareth mumbled his assent. She left him, slipping through the shadows and fire-lit circles. In her absence, confidence deserted him. She thought him a fool, arrogant and incompetent, a danger to those around him as well as to himself. Why would she help him with the most far-fetched scheme he’d come up with yet?
And yet there had been that other moment, the sense of her own yearning, the kinship of spirit between them, the wordless sympathy. Perhaps she did not understand him, for why should she, but he had understood her.
Rahelle returned so quickly, she must surely not have had time to relate his scheme, let alone debate its lack of merit with Cyrillon. She was leading two saddled horses, her own mount and Gareth’s brown mare.
“The oudrakhi would have been better for desert travel,” she said as she shoved the mare’s reins into Gareth’s hands, “but you’d fall off or get kicked where it hurts most, and then where would we be? At least you can ride a horse.”
Gareth fumbled for the stirrup. As he swung his right leg over the mare’s rump, he encountered the thickness of rolled blankets as well as the usual saddlebags. Waterskins sloshed gently. He settled himself, slipping his sheathed sword into its place.
He didn’t understand why she was helping him. If he asked, she’d likely repeat what she’d already said about defending her father’s honor. But if he, Gareth, rode off on his own in the dark of night and perished in the sands or in any of a dozen other ways, who could blame Cyrillon? Who would even know? Rahelle had some other reason, perhaps one more personal. Rakhal the apprentice might act only as the agent of his master, but Rahelle, the girl who’d declared, “Do you think I wear chains?” had her own dreams.
Rahelle had already mounted and was reining her horse in the direction of the deep desert. Gareth set aside his speculations.
“Where are we headed?”
“The hill country about three days’ travel in the direction of Black Ridge,” she answered, adding, “Korllen’s people come from a village there.”
The brown mare tossed her head, sending the bridle rings jingling, and pranced a few steps before Gareth settled her into an easy, long-strided walk.
“And then what?” It occurred to Gareth that he himself had had no thought beyond racing out in that general direction. For all he knew, Black Ridge was a vast, uninhabited wilderness.
“There are only a few villages out there, not all of them permanent. Wells dry up, and then the herdsmen move on. The smaller villages are as hospitable as they are able, but they do not welcome travelers when they have barely enough water for their own animals. Your story about an argument over watering rights could have taken place only in the larger settlements. That’s where we’ll look first.”
They went slowly, the horses picking their way along the dried ocean bed. In places, the ground was so pale, it glowed faintly, although that could have been a reflection of the light of the moons. The hoofbeats of the horses sounded hollow. Gareth was glad when they passed out of such areas and onto muffling sand, even though they made slower progress.
Rahelle called a halt just as the first crimson streaks appeared in the eastern sky. Ahead, Gareth made out the contours of what might be gently rising hills or dunes of coarse sand. The air smelled different here, dry with dust but free of the tang of the seabed.
They gave the horses a little water from the skins and a few handfuls of grain as well. Gareth walked about, loosening his muscles. The dawn light brightened. Now he saw the hills were deeply weathered, eroded by wind and heat, etched by the occasional spring downpours. Mounds of grayish-purple brushwood dotted the slopes, denser in the blind ravines and coves that had formed as the earth had been worn away. They headed for one of these sheltered places.
Rahelle hobbled her horse after loosening the saddle girths. “Get some rest,” she told Gareth, and went to gather fallen branches. Within a short time, she had built a little fire. She half-filled a battered trail cup, added a handful of something dark and crumbly, and set it in the middle of the fire. Gareth’s mouth puckered at the pungent steam.
Rahelle wrapped her hand in her folded head scarf, picked up the cup and gulped down half of it. When she held out the cup, Gareth shook his head. He’d had enough foul-smelling tisanes on the road from Carthon.
“You must drink,” she insisted. “It will strengthen your blood against the heat.”
“I’m strong enough,” Gareth said, bristling at the unscientific assertion.
“You have known only the climate of Carthon and Shainsa, both places with cool shade and water. Now we venture where sun and dryness, sand and wind, test even the stoutest heart.” She paused, her eyes narrowing. “It’s better when it’s hot.”
Gareth sighed and took a gulp. The bitter taste of the tea crawled up the back of his throat, but he forced it down. Rahelle had already begun putting out the fire.
The hills dipped and rose, as if the land itself were a beast that had grown weary and lain down to rest. At night, Rahelle prepared the tisane again, downing her own portion as well.
With the coming of the second full day, a wind arose. It ruffled the mare’s mane and tugged at Gareth’s headscarf. At first he welcomed it, but the dry, dust-laden currents soon be
came irritating, and both he and Rahelle covered all but a slit for their eyes. The horses clamped their tails to their rumps and plodded on, heads down.
When the sun hovered overhead, Rahelle found a copse of spindly, wind-twisted trees that offered a spattering of shade. With a little of their precious water, she moistened a cloth to wipe the horses’ eyes and nostrils. Hobbling them to graze on what dried grasses they could find, she curled up beneath the largest of the trees, draped her headscarf over a twig set upright in the gravelly soil, and went to sleep.
Gareth imitated her as best he could. Although he had become accustomed to sleeping on the ground, he could not get comfortable. It was too hot, with the wind hissing and howling overhead. The game of playing the noble hero was over; he had never been Race Cargill, Terran Secret Agent, and now he must face the hot, gritty reality of a fruitless and foolhardy self-indulgence.
Somehow, between feeling heartily ashamed of his daydreams and trying to argue himself into ignoring his many physical discomforts, he must have drifted off. His eyes were sticky with dried secretions, and Rahelle was kneeling over him, poking his shoulder.
They gave the last of their water to the horses before mounting up. Although the heat seemed no less, the sun hung a hand’s length lower in the west.
Tracks marked the lowest paths between the hills, none of them fresh. Spinning clouds of dust arose and as quickly blew into nothingness. Once or twice, Gareth spotted movement on the flattened heights, flashes of white and tan against the sun-crisped grasses. They were desert antelope, Rahelle told him, fleet and shy. No horse could catch them, although they could be trapped where they came to drink.
The trail rose, following the slope of the pass. The horses grunted with effort, heads lowered, slowing. They were thirsty as well as tired. Gareth swung down and took the reins of his mount. After an appraising look, Rahelle did the same. They trudged upward in silence, saving their breath for the climb. The air turned thin, more so than Gareth would have expected. As the sun dipped toward the west, it blazed even redder than before.