When they finally crawled into their sleeping bags, Magda soon knew all the others were sleeping peacefully. Still she lay awake, troubled without knowing why. She could not help feeling that this whole trip was somehow a reflection of her failures—with Lexie, Vanessa, Cholayna, and, perhaps especially, Rafaella. Somehow, she had made Lexie feel that she must compete with what some people in the HQ insisted on calling the “Lorne Legend”; had said the wrong things to Vanessa and Cholayna or they would not have been here; without meaning to, she had come between Jaelle and Rafaella… But whatever the unknown dangers of the road, Jaelle was right, they could not turn back.
The next morning, Vanessa’s ankle was swollen to the size of a peck basket, and she was running a fever. Cholayna dosed her with salicylates from the medikit, while Magda and Camilla repacked the loads to redistribute weight and Jaelle went out to search the terrain for any signs of the passage of the other women. She came back late in the day with the carcass of a chervine calf slung over her back.
“We can all use fresh meat. Vanessa particularly needs the extra protein.” She set about skinning and butchering the carcass with an expert hand; Cholayna turned her eyes away, but Vanessa watched with fascination.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
“Leading mountain expeditions. We don’t have a lot of fancy packaged rations available,” Jaelle said, “and hunting skills are one of the first things you learn to feed yourself in the wilds. I could bring down a full-grown animal before I was fifteen years old, and if you’re killing your own meat, you have to be able to skin it and cut it up and dry it for the trail, too. We’ll eat as much of this fresh as we can. I’ll roast a haunch for supper, but it’s too small to dry properly. What we can’t eat, we’ll put out for the kyorebni before we leave.” She looked regretfully at the delicate dappled skin of the little animal. “Hate to waste this hide, I could get a nice pair of gauntlets out of it if we had the time to tan it.”
Cholayna shuddered and kept her eyes even more averted than they had already been; but she said nothing. It must, Magda thought, be difficult for her all round, taking orders when she was accustomed to giving them, and resigning herself to being the oldest and the weakest. This assault on her ethical principles—Magda knew Cholayna had never eaten meat, or anything which had once lived, before this—must be the final trial. But she had kept silent about it, which could not have been easy.
By the next morning, the worst of the swelling was gone from Vanessa’s ankle, and Jaelle, looking uneasily at the sky, said they should press on. Cholayna felt that Vanessa should rest her ankle for another day, but Jaelle was uneasy about the weather and studied Magda’s maps for a long time, seeking an easier route.
“We’ll head straight north, but we’ll go around by the trail instead of going straight over the ridge. They have enough of a start on us now that it’s very unlikely we’ll catch up with them this side of the Kadarin; more probably not much before Nevarsin,” Jaelle said.
With horses and chervines well rested, they started again, along trails that did not need to be negotiated on foot. There were flurries of snow as they rode, and it was damp and cold; they all dug out their warmest sweaters and underclothing. At night the sleeping bags were dank and clammy, and even Cholayna drank the hot meat-soup gladly.
On the third afternoon, the trail began to rise again, each hill steeper than the last, and finally Jaelle said that on the upward slopes they must dismount and walk to spare the horses the extra weight—except for Vanessa, who was still unable to bear her weight on the injured ankle.
“I can walk if I have to,” said Vanessa, brandishing the thick branch Camilla had cut for a walking stick that morning. “I don’t need special treatment, either!”
“Believe me, Vanessa, I’ll tell you if it’s necessary for you to walk. Don’t try to be heroic,” Jaelle added. “If we end up carrying you, we’ll never get through.”
They were slogging up the fourth or fifth of these hills—Magda had lost count in the dreary dripping fog— when her foot turned under her, and she lost her footing, fell full length and slipped backward, sliding down the steep path, scraping against rocks, ice and tough roots in the way. She struck her head, and in a flash of pain, lost consciousness.
… she was wandering in the gray world; she heard Jaelle calling her, but the hideous old woman was there, laughing… wherever she turned, though she ran and ran, always the old crone was there with that terrible screaming laughter that was like the cry of some wild bird, arms outstretched to shoo her back, force her away… suddenly Camilla was there, knife drawn to protect her, facing the old woman; her knife struck blue fire…
There was something wet on her face; cold moisture was seeping into her collar. She raised her hand—it felt heavy and cold—to push it away and it turned into a damp cloth. It was like fire on her forehead, which felt as if it had been split with an axe.
Camilla’s face looked down into hers; she was pale, and it seemed to Magda that she had been crying. Nonsense, she thought, Camilla never cries.
“Bredhiya,” Camilla murmured, and her hand clasped Magda’s so tightly that she winced, “I thought I had lost you. How do you feel?”
“Like hell. Every bone in my body feels as if it had been beaten with a smith’s hammer,” Magda muttered. She discovered that she was undressed to the waist. “Hell, no wonder I’m cold! Is this standard treatment for shock?”
She tried to make a joke of it, but Jaelle bent over her and said, “I undressed you to make sure you didn’t have any internal injuries. You scraped all the skin off one arm down to the elbow, and you may have cracked a rib. Try to sit up, if you can.”
Magda pulled herself carefully to a sitting position. She moved her head cautiously and wished she hadn’t. “What did I hit, a mountain?”
“Just a rock, Miss Lorne,” Vanessa said. It sounded so absurd; Magda had meant to protest before this. Vanessa asked, “Are you cold?” and put her shirt onto her. Her arm, she discovered, was bandaged heavily over some slick and foul-smelling ointment.
Camilla draped a warm cloak around her. “It will be easier than trying to get your jacket on over the bandages and won’t rub the sore spots so much,” she said, pulling Magda’s jacket around her own lean frame. “Do you feel sleepy?”
Magda tried again to shake her head and didn’t. “No. Sleepy is the last thing I am.”
“Do you think you can go on?” Jaelle asked. “There’s no place to camp here, but if you can’t—”
Magda managed to pull herself upright with Camilla’s help. Her head was still splitting, and she asked for some of Cholayna’s painkillers, but Cholayna shook her head.
“Not until we know how serious your concussion is. If you’re still wide awake when we stop for the night, you can have some. Till then, nothing that might depress your breathing.”
“Miserable sadist,” Magda grumbled; but she too had had basic emergency training, and knew about head injuries.
“Look on the bright side,” said Cholayna, “now you get to ride uphill along with Vanessa, while the rest of us slog along on foot.”
Magda found it almost impossible to haul herself into her saddle, even with Camilla’s help, and when the horse began to move, she wished she were walking; the motion was nearly intolerable. The snow was wet now, half rain and half snow, and clung thickly, soaking through her cloak. She rode in dreary misery, every footfall of her horse jolting as if the beast were actually stepping on her head; and the uphill path was so steep that again she felt as if she were slipping backward off her saddle. Without being asked, Camilla came close and took the reins from her hand.
“Bredhiya, you just hang on, I’ll guide your horse. Just a little further now. Poor love, I wish I could carry you.”
“I’m all right, Camilla. Really I am, it’s only a headache. And I feel so foolish, falling like that and delaying all of you this way.”
“Look, here we are at the top of the ridge. Now we can all ride
again, and if you can’t sit in your saddle, bredhiya, you can ride double with me. My horse will carry two and all you need to do is lean against me. Do you want to do that?”
“No, no, really, I’m all right,” Magda said; and though she knew it was unfair, the older woman’s solicitude embarrassed her—partly because she knew that it must be embarrassing to the other women, especially Vanessa, who could not understand the bond between them. “Please don’t fuss over me so, Camilla. Just let me alone, I’m fine.”
“Please yourself, then.” Camilla touched her heels to her horse’s side, and went to the head of the line beside Jaelle. As soon as she was gone, Magda regretted her words and wished Camilla was still beside her; what, after all, did it matter to her what anyone thought, after all these years? Discouraged, her head aching, she clung to the reins and let her horse find his own way down the hill.
As she rounded a turn in the downhill road, past a huge stand of conifers, she could see lights below. A little village huddled in the valley, just a crossing of the narrow road; first an outlying farm or two, then a forge and a stream dammed for a mill, with a granary warehouse, a windmill and a few small stone houses, each surrounded by a patch of garden.
“I wonder if there is an inn in this place?” Camilla asked.
Children and women and even a few men had come out to the roadside to watch as they passed; a sure sign, Magda knew from her years in the field, that the place was so isolated that the appearance of any stranger was a major event.
Jaelle asked one of the women, heavy-set, imposing, in clothing somewhat less coarse than the rest, “Is there an inn where we can spend the night and command supper?”
She had to repeat the question several times, in different dialects, before she could make herself understood, and when the woman finally answered, her own dialect was so rude a patois of cahuenga that Magda could hardly understand her. She asked Camilla, who had returned to ride beside her, “What did she say? You know more of the mountain languages than I do.”
“She said there is no inn,” Camilla said—speaking pure casta so that they would not be understood if they were overheard. “But there is a good public bathhouse, she said, where we could bathe. She also offered us the use of a barn which is empty at this time of year. They look like a fine lot of ruffians to me, and I would just as soon not trust any of them, but I don’t know what alternatives we have.”
Vanessa had heard only part of this. “A bathhouse sounds like exactly what we need most. I’m sure my ankle, and your arm, can use a good long soak in clean hot water. And bathhouse or no, these people look dirty enough that I’d rather sleep in one of their barns than their houses. Or, for that matter, their inns. Lead me to the bath!”
The woman who had appointed herself their guide led the way, a small procession of children following. Cholayna said, “I had not expected to find amenities like this outside Thendara.”
“There are hot springs all through the mountains,” Magda said. “Most little villages have bathhouses, even if every house must fetch water for drinking from a common well. And they have separate soaking rooms and tubs for men and women, so you need not worry about differing customs of modesty.”
Vanessa shrugged. “I am used to mixed bathing and bathhouses on my own world. It wouldn’t bother me if the whole village bathed in one big pool, as long as they changed the water occasionally.”
“Well, it would bother me,” Camilla said, and Jaelle chuckled.
“Me, too. I was brought up in the Dry-Towns, after all.”
She turned to haggle with the woman, who seemed to he the proprietor of the bathhouse and a sort of headwoman of the village, over the bathhouse fee. it seemed exorbitant to Magda, but, after all, this village was very isolated, and the hire of the bathhouse to occasional travelers was, no doubt, their only source of coined money. At least, Jaelle told her, she had managed to secure the place for their exclusive use that evening, and had arranged with the headwoman for a cooked hot meal to be brought to them; the fee also included use of the barn to stable their animals and spread their sleeping bags. Because it was a stone barn, with no stored hay, they had permission to make a fire there. They went to deposit their goods, unsaddle the horses and off-load the pack beasts before they went to the bath.
“How is your head, Magda?” Cholayna asked. “How do you feel?”
“Better for the thought of a bath.”
“Wide awake? Then you can have some pain pills,” Cholayna said, and dug some tablets out of the medikit. “Is something wrong, Camilla?” For the woman was standing over their loads, scowling.
“I do not trust these people,” said Camilla, still speaking casta, although they seemed to be quite alone. “It looks like the abode of bandits. If we are wise, we will not all go to bathe at once; we should not leave all our goods unguarded.”
“Most hill-folk are so honest, you could leave a bag of copper unguarded in the center of the square, and find it there untouched when you returned half a year later,” Jaelle reminded her, “except that they might have put up a little shelter over it so that the bag would not be destroyed by the winter rains.”
“I’m perfectly aware of that,” Camilla said testily. “But have you been to this particular village before? Do you know these people, Shaya?”
“Not really. But I have been in many, many mountain villages very like this one.”
“Not good enough,” said Camilla. “All of you, go off to bathe. I will stay here and guard our goods.” And though they argued, she would not be moved from this stance. Finally it was agreed that Jaelle and Vanessa would go and use the bath first, and that Magda, Cholayna and Camilla would bathe in a second shift, which meant that one person in each party would be unwounded, healthy, and skilled in the use of weapons.
“I am still not pleased,” Camilla grumbled, as Jaelle and Vanessa went off to the bathhouse, carrying clean clothing over their arms. “These people would cut our throats for the scented soap! The idea might well be to split up our party so that we cannot defend ourselves properly. We should have camped outside the village, and set guard.”
“You have a terribly suspicious nature, Camilla,” Cholayna reproved gently, kneeling on the floor to light a fire. “I for one will be delighted to get a bath!”
“And so should I, in any decent place. Or do you think I am fonder of dirt than a Terran? But here, I would feel safer sleeping in the muck of the road.”
“Camilla,” said Magda quietly, out of earshot of the others, as they looked for fresh clothing in their packs, “is this a premonition, is this your laran?”
The woman’s face was tight-lipped and closed. “You know what I think of that. If it were so, would not you or Jaelle have known it, you who are leroni of the Forbidden Tower? It needs no laran to know that a ruffian will be a ruffian. Laran!” she snorted again, crossly, and turned away.
Magda felt troubled, for she respected, with good reason, Camilla’s intuitions; but the party was already split, and her head and injured arm ached dreadfully, so that she felt unwilling to forgo the prospect of a bath. She felt she would even endure an onslaught by bandits if she could get a bath and a good hot meal first.
* * *
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
« ^ »
There was a little sound in the corner of the room. Within seconds Camilla had her knife out and rushed to the hidden space behind the door; she came back dragging someone by the wrist: a woman, not young, her dark hair braided carelessly down her back. She was no different from any of the people of the village except, Magda noticed, that she seemed personally clean.
“Who are you?” Camilla growled, gripping the woman’s wrist so hard that she flinched and squealed, and emphasizing her words with a flourish of her knife, “What do you want here? Who sent you?”
“I didn’t mean any harm,” the woman said, with a little yelp of fright. “Are you—are you Shaya n’ha M’lorya?”
The name Jaelle was a Dry-Town name, very uncommon i
n the Kilghard Hills. Magda herself called Jaelle, mostly, by the casta version of her name, and had given it to her daughter.
“I am not,” Camilla said, “but I am her oath-sister; and this—” indicating Magda, “her freemate. Speak! What do you want with her. Who are you?”
The woman’s eyes swiveled furtively to stare at Cholayna. Magda thought, No doubt she has never seen anyone with a black skin before this, maybe she has just come to gawp at the strangers. But then how would she know Jaelle’s name?
“My name is Calisu’,” the woman said. “There are no Renunciates in our village. The headman won’t have it. But some of us are in—in sympathy.” She pulled the loose hair away from her ear, revealing a small earring; the secret sign, Magda knew, recognized for hundreds of years, of women in sympathy with the Guild-houses, who for one reason or another could not legally commit themselves. Lady Rohana herself had worn such a hidden ornament, and Magda was sure not even Dom Gabriel had known why. Seeing it, Camilla’s grip loosened somewhat.
“What do you want? Why were you sneaking around like that?”
Calisu’—the name, Magda remembered, was a dialect version of Callista—said, “Two Renunciates passed through our village ten days ago. They asked for the village midwife, saying one of them suffered from cramps, and when they came to me, asked if—if I wore the earring.”
That was Rafaella’s artifice. Not in a thousand years would Lexie have thought of that.
“And then they wanted me give this message to Shay a n’ha M’lorya. But if’n you’re her freemate, I can give it to you? If they find me here—”
“You can give the message to me,” Magda said.