Flatlanders didn’t generally have maps showing mountain paths. There were rough sketches drawn in haste to illustrate tales, but there wasn’t enough traffic through the mountains to warrant anything better. Curious, Alissa un-slung her pack again and dropped heavily down beside him. Her eyes widened in recognition. “Where,” she said shortly, “did you get this map?”
“I bought it. Why?”
“That’s one of my papa’s maps!”
“Your father’s?” Strell looked her up and down. “You’re Rema’s daughter?”
Stunned, Alissa stared at him. “By the Navigator’s Hounds,” she whispered. “How do you know my mother?”
His eyes glinted slyly as he fumbled for his water sack. “You look tired, Alissa. Care for a drink?”
“Of all the . . .” she began, then caught her breath. No, Alissa thought. She wouldn’t let him get to her. Calm as a morning in spring, she proffered her cup. “Yes, please.”
Strell managed to pour the water one-handed, eyeing her cup’s ribbon with far more interest than it deserved. Alissa’s eyes flicked to the map. Burn her to ash if its tie wasn’t one of her mother’s hair ribbons. He hadn’t stolen the map; her mother had given it to him!
“It looks as if it will be a clear evening, don’t you think?” he drawled, seeming to take a great interest in the sky.
Fine, Alissa seethed. She could play along. “Oh, yes!” she said brightly. “Very clear.” Her mind whirled as she sedately sipped at her water, trying to find the sense in it. She hadn’t been gone long enough for her mother to go roving about. And why had her mother given him one of Papa’s maps? They were too precious to hand out like cookies on market day. Ashes, Alissa fumed. She didn’t get one! And as for tying it with a hair ribbon? Ribbons were tokens of endearment in the plains and foothills. Why had her mother given him that! “Do you think the weather will hold?” Alissa asked with a pained smile.
Pausing as if this took a great deal of thought, Strell looked up at the clattering leaves. “Oh, I don’t know. What do you think?”
“It’s hard to say,” Alissa murmured. “I do believe there’s the chance for a sudden storm—perhaps even a violent one.”
Her foot began to thump against the ground. The silence stretched. Somewhere in the distance, Talon called. She couldn’t stand this, Alissa thought. If he didn’t tell her, she would do something she would regret later and Strell would regret right now. Alissa took her empty cup, and with immeasurable restraint, set it down between them with a firm thump.
“All right, all right,” he said gaily. “There’s not much to tell. I followed your farm’s irrigation works out of the mountains. I asked for directions. She showed me the maps. I bought this one for a length of coastal fabric.”
Yeah, Alissa snorted, that sounded like her mother. She was a milksop when it came to fabric. Always complaining about the quality. Then Alissa paused, doing a quick calculation. Hounds. That meant Strell had traveled to her home and back again in the same time it had taken her to just get out here. No wonder she was having trouble keeping up. But then another thought stopped her cold. What had Strell done that the plains wouldn’t take him back?
Silently Alissa weighed her curiosity against the bliss of ignorance. Curiosity won. “Let me see if I have this right,” she said slowly. “You were headed out of the mountains, made a trade with my mother, then turned around and came back?”
Brushing a bit of dirt from his coat, Strell grunted, “Yup.”
Alissa swallowed hard. She was beginning to know that grunt. There was something he didn’t want to tell her. “Why didn’t you go home?” she asked timidly.
“Because it’s gone!” Strell exploded. “Washed away five years ago in some accursed flood! I’ve nothing left. Nothing!” Lurching violently, he rose and stormed off to stand with his back to her, looking sightlessly through the trees.
Alissa’s shoulders slumped in relief. He wasn’t a thief or murderer. He was running from the loss of his family. No wonder he had turned around. The ties that bound home and family were far stronger in the plains than in the foothills. It was a matter of survival. He was more alone than even she, Alissa thought, compassion stirring in her. The only reason her mother had left was to escape persecution for her choice in spouses. Foothills and plains do not intermarry.
Alissa’s relief turned somber as she remembered that spring. It had been hard on everyone. Half their early lambs had died with the shakes. Many settlements had been inundated, but she only knew one that was completely lost.
Her eyes rose to his stiffly held back. “You’re a Hirdune potter?” she breathed, well-acquainted with the high regard her mother held that family’s work in.
“Not anymore,” came his ragged voice.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” she called, unsure if he would welcome a show of sympathy from her. As she sat in an awkward silence, wondering what to say that wouldn’t sound trite, her eyes fell upon the map. She snatched it up, bringing it close. She hadn’t seen this one before!
All but forgetting Strell, Alissa oriented the map and found they were, as fate would have it, within easy reach of a lake. Then she scanned the entire map until she found what she was looking for. There in her papa’s handwriting were two words that might explain it all. The Hold. “May the Wolves of the Navigator come to earth and hunt me,” she whispered. “It really exists.”
“Strell!” she shouted. “It’s here! The Hold is here, and we can reach it before it snows!”
Slowly Strell turned and came back, his face expressionless and his manner distant. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he murmured, gesturing to the map.
“Yes,” she agreed absently, used to her papa’s work. “But look.” Her finger stabbed down. “The Hold!”
“The what?”
“The—uh—Hold.” She faltered, suddenly unsure if she should say more. Keepers, magic, and a mythical fortress? That ought to go over like a blue-eyed bride at a plains wedding. “That’s where I’m going.” Alissa frowned. “Only I didn’t quite know the way. With this map, I should be able to make it before winter sets in.” Alissa stared at the map and bit her lip, her thoughts turning decidedly uneasy. She didn’t really want Strell to know about her destination.
Strell looked down at her with his hands on his hips. “That’s my map, and I’m not going to the Hold. I’ve never even heard of it.”
She gritted her teeth. He was a minstrel, she thought darkly. He must have heard of it. “You know,” she muttered, not eager to hear him laugh at her. “Masters, magic—”
“There’s no such thing as magic,” Strell scoffed. He leaned over and yanked the map right out of her hands.
“Then why do you throw rocks around when we set up camp?”
“That’s different.”
Alissa rolled her eyes. Why was she defending something she didn’t believe in? “Fine. No such thing as magic.” She snatched the map back and flung it down. “But there’s the Hold,” she said, pointing, “which means there are probably Keepers at it, and while I refuse to believe they can do magic, they must be of some use.”
“Keepers?”
She thought back to her papa’s stories. “Yes. They administer to the Masters.” Alissa couldn’t help her frown. She would never be anyone’s servant.
A faint grin stole over Strell. “Does Alissa want to be a Keeper?” he teased. “Magic from her fingertips. Oooo. Should I be afraid?”
“Hush your mouth,” she muttered. “This wasn’t my idea.”
He chuckled. “Well, I’m going to the coast.” He glanced into the trees.
Alissa’s brow smoothed out. “Good,” she said. “I’m going to the Hold. I want to see if there’s any truth to the stories my papa told me.”
Strell nearly jerked himself out of balance, so quick did he turn around. “Stories?” he said. “Wait a moment. You said Masters? As in the Masters of the Hold?” He dropped down beside her, and Alissa drew back, alarmed at the eager lig
ht in his eye. “The Keepers carry out the wishes of the Masters in return for being taught magic, right?” he said.
She nodded, edging back from him. “Something like that.”
“I heard about Masters at the coast,” Strell exclaimed. “The people there are terrified of them. Refused to tell me anything. Every time I asked, they ran me out of town and burned the chair I had been sitting on. They were afraid I’d bring the Masters down upon them. Apparently whenever they show up, they steal the children and leave war in their place. I thought at first they were just stories to scare the children into behaving, but the adults are afraid, too.”
“Must be some other Masters,” Alissa said, scooting back until Strell was a proper distance away. “The ones my papa told me about were very civilized.”
“And they really exist? They live here?” He pointed excitedly to the map, and Alissa nodded uneasily.
“That’s what the map says,” she offered.
“Hounds,” he breathed. “I’m coming with you. I have to see this.”
“No, you aren’t,” she said quickly.
Strell snorted. “What can you do to stop me?”
Alissa closed her eyes in a long blink, wishing she would learn to keep her mouth shut.
Map in hand, Strell rose to his feet and strode forward, seeming to have forgotten she still had her rump in the dirt. Alissa took a breath to rise, letting it slip from her in surprise as he whipped around, striding back to her. “Wait,” he said excitedly, waving the map. “You said ‘That’s what the map says.’ You can read this swirly stuff?”
She grimaced, not pleased at all with how things were working out. “My papa taught both my mother and me. Can’t you read?” She dropped her eyes and tightened the laces of her lovely boots. She didn’t care if she sounded like a spoiled plainsgirl. This wasn’t what she had planned.
“I can read,” Strell said defensively. “I have a chartered name.”
She shrugged. What did she care if he could trace his lineage back four hundred years to the first families who settled the plains? “You can’t read that,” she said, gesturing at the map.
Strell hesitated, then crouched. “No. But I’ve never seen writing like that. Anywhere. Can you read this?” Brushing away the leaves, he made a series of scratches with a twig.
Alissa glanced at it, then away. “No.” So as not to appear completely brainless, she pointed to the seventh figure. “I recognize that one.” It was the figure etched on the hearth tiles at her home. They were Hirdune-made, she thought, stifling a groan. She should have known.
“Good.” Smiling, Strell got to his feet. “I like knowing something you don’t.”
That got to her, and she threw his old hat at him in disgust. He caught it, gave her a slow wink, and threw it back. “Hey!” she exclaimed. “I can read.”
“I’m sure you can,” Strell drawled, picking up her bag.
“That’s mine!” Alissa cried, struggling to her feet and snatching it back. How irritating, she thought as she pushed past him to take the lead, but it wasn’t long before she was lagging behind as usual. Somehow though, she found her heart wasn’t in her sharp words anymore.
10
They found the lake long before sunset, and after a discussion loud enough to set the jays off, decided to camp at the edge of a nearby clearing. Alissa was scuffing up a spot for the fire when there was a thump in the grass. She looked to find Strell with his hand full of stones.
“Magic?” she said, her eyebrows raised.
Strell flushed. “No.” A rock was tossed to his left.
She sucked her teeth as a third went to his right. “Really?”
“Really,” he said, blowing the dust at her.
“Uh-huh.” Plainsmen, she thought. “Is it safe now?”
“Unless you brought something in on the bottoms of your boots.”
Alissa shook her head in exasperation, intercepting his reach for her water bag. “I’ll get it,” she offered. “I’m going to take a swim anyway.” Strell’s bag was nearly full, but they would need more than that to get through the evening.
Strell nodded. “I’ll see what I can find for dinner.”
Grabbing her soap and spare clothes, Alissa walked to the lake and followed the shoreline until she couldn’t see the camp. She prudently went a bit farther, and with a nervous look behind her, she slipped out of her clothes and waded in, gasping at how far she sank into the muck before she found firm ground. It was cold, but it felt so good to be clean that she went deeper, losing track of the time, the soap, and nearly the rock where she had left her clothes. Gooseflesh and a sudden irrational fear of what the dark water might be hiding sent her rushing back to the bank.
As she crouched on a rock checking for unexpected guests between her toes, Strell’s music came faintly across the flat purple water. It sounded different than the last time, higher pitched but stronger, richer. Her fingers were clumsy from the cold and her damp skin as she struggled into her fresh shirt and trousers, tying a narrow band of fabric tight around her waist. She liked this outfit. The shirt came down to her knees, and she could at least pretend she was wearing her more customary dress. The water dripped from her hair to make a cold trail down her back, and she shivered, wanting nothing but to get back to the fire. Carrying her boots, Alissa minced through the scrub.
Strell looked up as she entered the ring of light. His eyes widened upon seeing her naked feet, and decidedly red-faced, he quickly averted his gaze. Mortified, Alissa sank down on her bedroll and tugged on her stockings. No one had seen her bare feet since she was five. Ashes, she may as well have come dancing through the trees naked. He must think her an absolute barbarian. Even knowing an entire society of farmers spent days without shoes did nothing to alleviate her disgrace. “Was that your music?” she said into the uncomfortable silence.
With a rueful snort, Strell extended his good hand for the water bag. He filled Alissa’s mortar and set it in the outermost flames. “I can manage the easy tunes,” he said, “but it’s still too tender for anything tricky.”
Alissa squinted across the fire. “That’s a new pipe, isn’t it?”
“Yes—I mean, no.” He shrugged. “It’s my grandfather’s. I don’t play it very often.”
“Why not? It sounds better than your other one.”
“It is,” he agreed hastily. “It just that . . .” Strell’s mouth shut and he frowned. “I just don’t. That’s all.”
Alissa’s predatory instincts stirred. It wasn’t sorrow that had closed his mouth, it was embarrassment. “Can I see it?” she asked, and when he actually hesitated to think it over, she knew there was something here he didn’t want to admit. She raised her eyebrows in a mocking challenge, and he slowly rocked to his knees to hand the pipe to her.
It was small, about as long as her forearm, but heavier than it looked and finely crafted out of a single length of reddish wood. The faint smell of tart apples and pine seemed to linger about its polished smoothness. It was exquisite, and she could see why he was hovering over, as anxious as a new mother letting a stranger hold her baby. “It’s beautiful,” she said, handing it back.
His smile as he took possession of it was half relief, half pleasure. “It’s been in my family for generations,” he said. “Tradition is to lull an ill-tempered baby to sleep with it. My mother says . . .” He hesitated for a heartbeat. “She said it never worked on me. I’d just cry all the more.”
Alissa chuckled, not surprised that even as a baby Strell had been too stubborn to succumb to such wiles. “Huh,” she said, hoping to worm the truth out of him. “If my pipe was that nice, I’d play it all the time.”
“Special occasions or rich takings,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “It—ah—gives me a headache if I play it too long.”
“A headache?” Expecting her to believe that was ridiculous.
In what Alissa thought was distraction, Strell sent a simple melody into the cricket-filled night. She couldn’t help but slump i
nto its sound, as mellow and rich as the pipe’s color. “That’s beautiful,” she said with a sigh, not caring if playing it made him break out in purple spots. Strell inclined his head graciously, his music not missing a tick.
By now the water was boiling, and as Alissa put the tea leaves in to brew, her smile widened. Not only was camp set in good order, but Strell’s cooking pot was already full and bubbling. “My,” she breathed, noticing he was clean-shaven. “How long was I gone?”
He hit a sour note and lowered his instrument. Grinning, he took a spoon and ladled something thick and steamy into his bowls, handing her the fullest. “Not long. I rushed.” He absently rubbed his chin.
Alissa’s eyes closed as she took a deep sniff. “Mmmm, smells wonderful.” She took a careful bite. “And tastes delicious.” Evidently it was the right thing to say, for Strell favored her with one of his expressive grunts before putting all his attention into his bowl. He never talked when he ate, consuming his meals with the seriousness of a beggar counting money.
“This is very good,” Alissa said, needing to fill the silence with something other than the scraping of spoons. “It’s been ages since someone cooked anything edible for me.” She poked at a soft root. “I was eight when I took over the kitchen. My mother never managed to master it.”
Strell came up for air with a faint smile. “She was burning the bread when I met her.”
“Her bread invariably is.” Alissa shuffled the white and brown lumps about in her bowl, looking for something recognizable. Even the taste was unfamiliar. It had an earthy, woody spice. “But this is really good. What is it? A traditional plains dish?”
Strell glanced up and away. “This and that.”
“This and that?” Alissa felt a faint stir of unease. That last root was really tender. She hadn’t been gone long enough to cook it that soft. “You didn’t put any of your—”
“I promise,” he interrupted, “I didn’t put anything in the pot that ever had feet.”
Satisfied, Alissa resumed eating, starting to see Strell’s attraction with silent dining. But then she got to thinking. If it wasn’t meat, what was it? Her chewing stopped. Her tongue felt around, trying to identify what it was pushing on. Soft. Smooth. Squishy. It wasn’t a root.