Magda thought, We were lucky with the first fight, and Cholayna is one hell of a scrapper for her age! Nevertheless, there’s no way the four of us—even if Vanessa could be waked in time—we can’t kill off an entire village! We’ll die here… But was that so, she wondered; now that the villagers knew the women would be no easy pickings, could they bargain for their lives? Looking at Camilla’s face, she knew the swordswoman would entertain no such notions; she was prepared for a fight to the death. What other defenses did they have?
They would probably rush them all at once. Magda was aware of pain now in her wounded arm, and her head was beginning to throb. The man Camilla had gutted began, unexpectedly, his terrible moaning again; Camilla knelt and quickly cut his throat.
Cleaning the knife on the dead man’s ragged coat, Camilla stood up, fingering her sword. Magda felt she could almost read her mind, knowing the mercenary’s code of honor. Camilla was more than ready to die bravely. But I don’t want to die bravely, Magda thought. I don’t want to die at all. And I don’t want Cholayna’s and Vanessa’s lives on my conscience if I don’t! Is there any alternative—?
Then, with a dreadful sense of déjà vu, she saw a face peer round the door, as if they had returned to the very beginning of the fight.
Think, damn it, think! What good is it having laran if it can’t save your life now!
A bandit rushed at her, knife upraised. She struck hard, felt him crumple away under her—but they were outnumbered. Desperately she reached out with her laran, remembering an old trick; suddenly seeing, like an image painted behind her eyes, the fireside at Armida, and Damon telling them about a battle fought with laran, long ago.
Jaelle! Shaya, help me!
Jaelle was fighting for her life with a bandit in a red shirt. Magda reached desperately, wove an image, saw the bandits recoil; above them in the barn a demon wavered, no Darkovan demon but an ancient devil out of Terran myth, with horns, tail, and a mighty stink of sulphur… The line of men broke and surged back. Then Jaelle linked with her, the minds of the freemates locking into one; and suddenly a dozen fanged demons armed with swords faced the bandits. The villagers faltered again, fell back yet again, and then with a howl, turned and ran. Some even threw down their weapons as they went.
Vanessa chose that moment to sit up. Staring about the barn with bewilderment, she saw the demons, emitted a strangled squeak and buried her head in the blankets.
The stink of sulphur still lingered. Cholayna ran quickly to Vanessa, urging her to get up. Camilla said, “That ought to hold them for a while! Not for long, though. Let’s get out while we can!”
Swiftly they scrambled to their horses, Vanessa still shaking her head and mumbling dizzily. Magda checked her bleeding arm. Nothing, she supposed to worry about; though blood was still oozing slowly from the cut. If a vein was severed, she told herself, it would be a steady flow, and if the artery had gone, I’d have bled to death already. She tore a strip from the bottom of her undertunic once she’d clambered into her saddle; she tied the tourniquet swiftly, anchoring it with her teeth to keep both hands free.
Clumped together on their horses, chervines on lead reins, they moved toward the door. Jaelle said, “Wait—” and Magda felt the touch of her laran, “let’s make sure they don’t get in here for a good long time… ”
Magda looked over her shoulder at the face and form of the Goddess, dark robe glittering with stars, jeweled wings overshadowing the dark spaces of the barn, her face haloed and her eyes piercing, sorrowful, terrifying. She did not envy the villager who tried to use that barn again, even for an innocent purpose. Where had she found the image in her mind? On the night of that first meeting of the Sisterhood?
They rode together out of the barn into the wind and blowing snow. A few villagers huddled together, watching them go, but made no move to stop them. Maybe they still saw the demons she and Jaelle had created.
All at once, Magda was fearfully sick and dizzy. She held to her saddle with both hands, trying to avoid falling from her horse. Her wounded arm—the same arm she had scraped raw in the fall, she realized for the first time—stung with pain, and her head throbbed as if every pulse of her blood were a separate stone hurled at her forehead; but she clung to the saddle, desperately. The important thing was to put as much space as humanly possible between themselves and that miserable, damnable village. She tried to hang on with one hand and pull her scarf over her face to protect her eyes a little from the stinging wind—without much luck. She bent forward, huddling her face into the neck of her jacket, riding in a dark nightmare of pain. She hardly heard Camilla’s voice at her side.
“Margali? Bredhiya? Are you all right? Can you ride?”
I sn’t that what I’m doing? Would it make any difference if I said I couldn’t? she tried to say, irritably; but her voice would not obey her. She felt that she was fighting the reins, fighting the horse that would not obey her. Later she knew that she had fought and tried to hit Camilla when the older woman lifted her bodily from her horse and into her arms. Then Magda’s mind went dark and she fell into a dark dream of screaming demons pinioning her to a cattle-stall while a banshee-faced kyorebni tore with a fierce beak at her arm and shoulder; then it pecked out her eyes, and she went blind, and knew no more.
* * *
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
« ^ »
She was wandering in the gray world; alone, formless, without landmarks. She had wandered there for a hundred thousand times a hundred thousand years. And then, into a universe without form and void, there were voices. Voices curiously soundless, echoing into her throbbing brain.
I think she’s coming around. Breda mea, bredhiya, open your eyes, speak to me.
No thanks to you, if she is. This was Jaelle’s voice, and it occurred to Magda in the formless grayness that the emotion which formed and inhabited and throbbed in Jaelle’s voice now was anger; right-down, gut-level, honest wrath. You say that you love her so much, yet you do nothing to help…
There is nothing I could have done. I am no leronis, I leave that to you.…
I have heard you say that before, Camilla, and I believe it no more than I did then. If it is your fancy, as it may well be your privilege, to say at all times that you were born without laran and to maintain it when it harms none but you, so be it; but with her very life at stake—
Her life? Nonsense; the goddess be thanked, she breathes, she lives, she’s waking—breda, open your eyes.
Camilla’s face came out of the grayness, pale against a clear, cold starry dark. Magda said her name shakily. Behind Camilla she could now see Jaelle; and then the fight and its aftermath came back to her.
“Where are we? How did we get away from—from that place?”
“We’re far enough away that it’s not likely they’ll come after us,” Cholayna said, somewhere out of Magda’s sight. “You’ve been unconscious for four or five hours.”
Magda raised her hand and rubbed her face. It hurt. Camilla said, “I am sorry, Margali—I had no alternative. You would not let me take you off your horse to carry you before me on my saddle—you seemed to think I was another of those creatures from the village.” She touched, tenderly, the sore spot at the point of Magda’s jaw. “I had to knock you out. While you were healing her, Shaya, couldn’t you have done something about that?”
“You don’t know anything about it.” Jaelle’s lips were still tight and she was not looking at Camilla.
Her fingers strayed to the narrow crimson seam of the knife scar along her own face. She said, “I have repaid you for this, at least.” Years ago Magda had discovered her own laran in helping Lady Rohana to heal it. Then she asked, “How do you feel?”
Magda sat up, trying to assess how in fact she did feel. Her head still ached; apart from that, she seemed quite all right. Then she remembered.
“My arm—the knife—”
She looked curiously down at her arm. It had been skinned raw in the fall, later laid open by the bandit’s knife, b
ut there was only a faint pale scar, as if long healed. Jaelle had called upon the force of her laran to heal the very structure of the cells.
“What else could I do? I slept through most of the fight,” Jaelle said lightly. “And Vanessa didn’t really get herself awake until we were an hour outside the village; I don’t think she really believed there had been a fight until she saw your arm, Margali.”
“Was anyone else hurt?”
“Cholayna’s nose was bloodied, but a handful of snow stopped that,” Camilla said, “and one of the bastards cut open my best holiday tunic, though the skin was not much more than scratched under it. Jaelle’s ribs will be sore for a tenday where you squashed that bandit against her chest.” Magda vaguely remembered, now, trying to pull a bandit off Jaelle and cutting his throat in the process.
It was blurred, like a nightmare, and she preferred that it should stay that way.
“We were lucky to get out of there all alive and well,” Jaelle said. “Camilla, I owe you an apology.”
“Nine times out of ten you would have been right and the place as safe as a Guild-house,” Camilla said gruffly.
“And still you insist you have no laran?”
Camilla’s pale narrow features flushed with anger. “Drop it, Shaya,” she said, “or I swear by my sword, I will break your neck. Even you can go too far.”
Jaelle clenched her fists and Magda felt the anger again surging up in both of them, like tangible crimson lines of force woven into the air between the women. She strained to speak, to break the tension, but realized that she could hardly sit up, hardly manage a whisper.
“Camilla—”
Jaelle let her breath go. “Hellfire, what does it matter? You heard the warning, kinswoman, call it what you will. I don’t doubt it saved all our lives. That’s what matters. Vanessa, is the tea ready?” She set a steaming mug in Magda’s hand. “Drink this. We’ll rest here till it’s light enough to see our way.”
“I’ll stand guard,” Vanessa offered. “I think I have had enough sleep for a tenday!”
“And I will stand guard with you,” said Jaelle, sipping from another mug. “These three have a fight behind them, and they deserve some rest. We’ll offload the beasts till morning, too. Cholayna, is there any dried fruit?”
Cholayna gestured toward a saddlebag. “But you can hardly be hungry, after that meal—I didn’t think any of us would be hungry for three days!”
But Magda knew, watching Jaelle gnaw on dried raisins, the fierce hunger that succeeded the depletion of laran. Camilla took a handful of the raisins too.
“You girls stand watch. You missed the real fun,” she said, spreading her blankets beside Magda and Cholayna. Magda suddenly felt anxious about Camilla. She was not a young woman, and that had been a dreadful fight. And Camilla had been so worried about her that she had probably not troubled to look after herself. Yet she knew if she inquired, Camilla would make it a point of honor to insist there was nothing wrong with her.
Cholayna, lowering herself to her spread blankets, hesitated.
“Shall I cover the fire? It might show us up to—to anything that’s prowling in the woods.”
“Leave it,” said Jaelle. “Anything on four legs, the fire would scare them away. Anything on two legs— Goddess forbid—we might as well see what’s coming after us. I don’t want anyone—or anything—sneaking up on me in the dark.” She laughed, nervously. “This time Vanessa and I will do the fighting and let you sleep.”
Magda did not feel sleepy, but knew she should rest. The healing skin on her arm itched almost to the bone. The fire sank lower. She could see Vanessa, seated on a saddlebag; Jaelle was somewhere out of her sight, but Magda could feel her pacing boundaries of their camp, protecting it, as if she spread brooding wings over it… dark wings of the Goddess Avarra, sheltering them…
For so many years she had thought of Jaelle as younger, fragile and vulnerable, to be protected as she would have protected her child; yet from the first Jaelle had assumed leadership of this journey, taken responsibility for seeing all of them safe. Her freemate had grown; it was time for Magda to stop thinking of Jaelle as less than her equal.
She is as strong as I, perhaps stronger. It is high time for me to realize that I cannot, I need not, carry all the weight alone. Jaelle, if I let her, will do her share. And more…
They took the road northward, cutting across wild country by little-known trails toward the Kadarin, avoiding main roads and villages. After five days of travel they came on a better-traveled road; Jaelle said that she would rather keep away from main roads, especially with Cholayna with them. “Even this far north, gossip may have run into the hills that among the Terrans in Thendara there are some with black skins, and I would as soon answer no questions about what we are doing with a Terran in our company. Renunciates raise enough question in these hills, without a Terran woman as well. Vanessa could pass for a mountain woman, some of the forge-folk have animal eyes. Nevertheless we must ford the Kadarin, and for that we must go to one of the main fords or ferries; last spring’s floods have made the less-traveled fords too dangerous.”
“I’ll risk anything you will,” Vanessa said.
“Never mind; Cholayna, just keep your hood around your face and don’t answer any questions. Pretend you’re deaf and dumb.”
“I should have stayed in Thendara, shouldn’t I? I’m just endangering all of you,” said Cholayna with a touch of bitterness, but Jaelle made an impatient gesture.
“Done is done. Just keep your wits about you and obey orders, that’s all I ask.”
And for a minute Magda wondered if her freemate was actually glad to see the Terran woman, head of Intelligence, for a change taking orders rather than giving them, if Jaelle was pleased to have Cholayna under her command. Then she absolved Jaelle, mentally, of that pettiness. She herself might have felt that way, at least for a moment; Jaelle was all too obviously only worrying about the safety of the group.
And in fact there was probably less danger for any of them, even if Cholayna was recognized as Terran, at the large populated fords and ferries, than in some remote village where the Kadarin could be forded in secret. They had had enough of remote villages for one trip.
Half a dozen caravans were at the ford before them, and Camilla, who was wearing a short down jacket, her ragged gingery hair and scarred gaunt features hardly identifiable as a woman’s, made some excuse and rode along the stacked-up groups awaiting the ferry. She came riding back looking disappointed.
“I had hoped to see Rafi here, with the Anders woman, perhaps.”
Jaelle shook her head. “Oh, no. They are a long way ahead of us, kinswoman.”
Camilla tightened her mouth and looked away, her eyes veiled like a hawk’s. “That’s as it may be; there is always the chance. Are we going to ford, or pay the ferryman?”
“Ford, of course. I don’t want anyone getting a good look at Cholayna; there’s a proverb in these hills, inquisitive as a ferryman’s apprentice. What’s the matter, afraid to get your feet wet?”
“No more than yourself, chiya. But I thought we were in a hurry.”
“We’d have to wait an hour for the ferryman, with all those people ahead of us; we can ford as soon as that man and his dogs and his chervines are all across,” Jaelle said, watching the badly organized group ahead of them, a pair of young boys urging dogs and chervines into the water with sticks and menaces, women in riding-skirts clinging to their saddles and squealing; something frightened one of the nervous riding-beasts in midstream, and one of the women was out of her saddle and floundering in the water; it was an hour before the ford was clear again, and Jaelle paced the bank restlessly. Magda could see that she was itching to get out there and show the men how a well-organized caravan forded a river. Their mission permitted no such indulgence.
“Never mind,” Magda said as they started leading their pack animals into the trampled mud at the near edge of the ford, “you can get out there and show them how a Renunci
ate guide takes her crew across.”
Jaelle grinned, abashed. “Am I as transparent as that?”
“I’ve known you a long time, breda mea.”
They went in orderly fashion, Jaelle leading with the foremost of the pack animals on a lead rein, then Magda, Vanessa, Cholayna muffled like a leronis in Magda’s spare riding-cape, and Camilla bringing up the rear. They had, she reflected, forded the Kadarin more easily than if they had waited for the ferry, which was now caught in one of the eddies of the ford, while the ferryman and his sons, swearing and shouting, were trying to pole it free.
They left the ferry behind, and the Kadarin, and rode away into the mountains.
At first the slopes of the foothills were gentle, and they rode on well-marked trails, every slope leading between deep canyons filled with conifers and cloud. Jaelle led, setting the fastest pace the horses could endure. This was home country for the chervines, and they headed into the fiercest winds with pure pleasure.
Gradually the hills began to rise higher, the passes now leading between naked rock. Jaelle was careful not to be caught above the treeline after dark, but at night, cuddled in their doubled sleeping bags for warmth, Magda shivered at the savage shrilling cry of banshees in the frozen passes, a cry which could, she remembered, paralyze any prey within range.
“What in hell is that?” Vanessa quavered.
“Banshee. You read about them, remember? They probably wouldn’t come below the treeline except in a specially hard winter when they were starving. This is still summer, remember?”
“Some summer,” Cholayna grumbled. “I haven’t been warm since we forded the Kadarin.”