Winds Of Fate v(mw-1 Page 34

  But having access to this node is going to be bad enough! She shuddered at the idea of Mornelithe with that much power in his hands. This nexus was far more important, far more powerful than the Birdkin guessed. If they had known, they would have either drained it or built their Vale here. Nyara closed her eyes and saw her father's face, slit eyes gleaming down at her, gloating with power beyond her weak imagination as she trembled.

  With that much power, she would never be free of him.

  She straightened and walked into the circle of stones before the nest.

  Her foot stirred a tiny stone as she moved, and the human and gryphons sprang up, gryphons with talons bared, Darkwind with his dagger drawn.

  They relaxed when they saw her; Treyvan sitting back down with a sigh.

  "Gesssta sssaid that ssshe would assk Nyarrra to some ssstand watch thisss night for usss," Treyvan told Darkwind. "Ssshe sssseesss well by night, and we trussst herrrr-"

  "You shouldn't," Nyara replied, stifling a sob. "oh, you should not have trusted me." Darkwind seized her by the arm, and pulled her into the stone circle.

  "Just what do you mean by that?" he snarled.

  And slowly, holding back tears, she told them.

  *Chapter Eighteen ELSPETH

  This was, possibly, the strangest land Elspeth had ever crossed. There were no roads and no obvious landmarks; just furlong after furlong of undulating grass plains. There were clumps of brush, and even tree-lines following watercourses, but grassland was the rule down on the Dhorisha Plains. It was truly a "trackless wilderness," and one without many ways of figuring out where you were once you were in the middle of it.

  Right now, the Plains were in the middle of high summer; not the best time to travel across them. Nights were short, days were scorching and long; the grass was bleached to a pale gold, insects sang night and day, down near the roots. Otherwise there wasn't much sign of life, no animals running through the grass, no birds in the air. Or rather, there was nothing they could spot; the Plains might well teem with life, as hidden in the grass as the insects, but silent. Here, where the tall, waving weeds made excellent cover, there was no reason for an animal to break and run, and every reason for it to stay quietly hidden where it was.

  A constant hot breeze blew from the south every day, dying down at sunset and dawn, and picking up again at night. And not just hot, but dry, parchingly dry. Thirst was always with them; it seemed that no sooner had they drunk from their water skins than they were thirsty again. Elspeth was very glad of the map; since they had descended into the Plains near a spring, she'd puzzled out the Shin'a'in glyph for "water"- the water that was very precious out here in the summer. This was not a desert, but there wasn't a trace of humidity, day or night, and there would be no relief until the rains came in the fall. The mouth and nose dehydrated, skin was flaking and tight, and eyes sore and gritty, most of the time. Many of the water sources shown on the map were not springs or streams, which would have been visible by the belt of green vegetation along their banks, but were wells. There was no outward sign of these wells anywhere; in fact, they were frequently hidden from casual searching and could only be found by triangulating on objects like rocks, a mark on the cliff wall, a clump of ancient thornbushes. There were detailed, incredibly tiny drawings of the pertinent markers beside each water-glyph. Elspeth marveled again and again at the ingenuity of the Shin'a'in and their mapmakers. And she was very glad that she did not have to travel the Plains by winter. A bitter winter wind, howling unchecked across those vast expanses of flat land, would chill an unprotected horse and rider to the bone in no time. And there was little fuel out here, except the dried droppings of animals and the ever-present grass. Would it be somehow possible to compact the grass into logs?

  There were no natural shelters from the winter winds either, at least that she had seen. Small wonder the Shin'a'in were a hardy breed.

  Since their goal was the northern rim of the Plains, they had chosen to follow the edge, keeping it always on their right as they rode. But Elspeth wondered aloud on their third day out just how the Shin'a'in managed to find their way across the vast Plains, once they were out of sight of the cliffs. And soon or late, they must be out of sight of those natural walls. How could they tell where they were?

  Skif shrugged when she voiced her question. "Homing instinct, like birds?" he hazarded. "Landmarks we can't see?" He didn't seem particularly interested in the puzzle.

  The sword snorted-mentally, of course : they use the stars, of course.:

  Like seafarers. With the stars and a compass, you can judge pretty accurately where you are. I expect some of those little scribbles on your map are notes, readings, based on the compass and the stars. And I know the lines they have cross-hatching it are some way of reckoning locations they have that you don't." Elspeth nodded; she'd heard of such a thing, but no one in landlocked Valdemar had ever seen the sea, much less met those who plied it. They both had compasses, bought in Kata'shin'a'in, though Skif had complained that he couldn't see what difference knowing where north was would make if they got lost. She'd bought them anyway, mostly because she saw them in places where the Shin'a'in often bought made-goods.

  She reckoned that if the Clansmen needed and used them, she should have one, too. She bit her tongue when he complained, and somehow kept herself from pointing out that on a featureless plain, if he knew which way north was, he would at least be able to prevent himself from wandering around in a circle.

  The cliff wall loomed over their heads, so high above them that the enormous trees on the top seemed little more than twigs, and one couldn't hope to see a human without the aid of a distance-viewer. Elspeth had one of those, too, purchased, again, in Kata'shin'a'in. Skif hadn't complained about that, but he had coughed when he'd learned the price. It was expensive, yes, but not more than the same instrument would have been in Valdemar-if you could find one that the Guard hadn't commandeered. Here they were common, and every caravan leader had one. The lenses came from farther south, carried between layers of bright silk, and were installed in their tubes by jewel-smiths in Kata'shin'a'in. The workmanship was the equal of or superior to anything she had seen in Valdemar.

  Elspeth ignored Skif's silent protest over the purchase of the distance-viewer, as she'd ignored the vocal one over the compasses. She had saved a goodly amount of their money on the road by augmenting their rations with hunting; she also had a certain amount of discretionary money, and some real profit she had made by shrewd gem-selling. She had a notion that Quenten had known these gemstones, amber and turquoise, changes-tone and amethyst, were rarer here, and therefore in high demand, for he had invested quite a bit of their Valdemaren gold in them. She was very glad the mage had. It enabled her to make those purchases without feeling guilty about the expense.

  She'd done very well with her first attempt at jewel trading, so she didn't feel that Skif had any room to complain about how she spent some of that money. There was a curious slant to his complaints-a feeling that it wasn't so much that she had spent the money, but that she hadn't first consulted him. She also had a sneaking suspicion that if she had spent that same money on silks and perfumes, he would not have been making any complaint. And that, plainly and simply, angered her.

  Not that she hadn't wanted silks and perfumes, but this was neither the time nor the place for fripperies. Instead of buying those silks and perfumes, she had bought other things altogether; the compasses and distance-viewer, some special hot-weather gear, and a full kit of medicines new to her, but which the Healers here seemed to depend on. If she could get them home intact, she would let Healer's Collegium see what they could do with these new remedies. She had bought two sets Of throwing knives, in case she had to use and leave the set she now wore. She had purchased an enveloping cloak, and had gotten one for Skif as well-because as they left Kata'shin'a'in at the break of dawn, they had been wearing their Whites again, and she had wanted to disguise fthe fact until they were well down onto the Plains.

>   Wearing their Whites again was not something she'd insisted on just for the sake of being contrary, though Skif seemed to think so. It had seemed to her that, since the Shin'a'in already knew what Heralds were, it would be a good thing to travel the Plains in the uniform of their calling.

  Skif argued that they'd been in disguise to avoid spies. She pointed out that it would make no difference one way or another insofar as possible spies were concerned. If Ancar could get spies near enough the Plains for them to be seen, he was more powerful than any of them had ever dreamed, and whether or not they wore their Whites would make no difference.

  But if he were not that powerful, then wearing their uniforms could provide them with a modicum of protection from the Shin'a'in. The Plainsfolk had a reputation for shooting first, and questioning the wounded. Being able to identify themselves as "nonhostile" at a distance was no bad idea.

  Except that even with all the best reasons in the world, Skif didn't like that idea, either.

  She was just about ready to kill him in his saddle. Now that he had her "alone," he seemed determined to prove how devoted he was to her safety. But he was going about it by looking black every time she did something that was "unfeminine" (or rather, something that asserted her authority) by disagreeing with her decisions, and by repeating, whenever possible, his assertion that this was a mistake, and they should go back to the original plan. If that was devotion, she was beginning to wish for detestation.

  Tonight they camped beside a spring; easy enough to spot from leagues away as a patch of green against the golden-brown of the waving sea of grass. Because of that, she had decided to bypass the well they encountered earlier in the afternoon and journey on into darkness to reach the spring. After all, they were supposed to be making as much time as possible, right? They couldn't possibly bypass the place; it was the only spot ahead of them with trees. They couldn't even miss in the dark; they'd smell the difference when they reached water and the vegetation that wasn't scorched brown. And even if, against all odds, they did miss it, the Companions would not.

  Skif, predictably, had not cared for that either. He only voiced one complaint, that he didn't think it was a good idea to push themselves that hard in unknown territory. But he did brood-she was tempted to think "sulked" but did not give in to the temptation-right up until the moment they made camp. She couldn't think why he should have any objections, not when they'd already agreed to make as much time as possible. All she could think was that it was more of the same-he didn't want her to make the decisions.

  Once there, they had chores, mutually agreed on. She avoided him with a fair amount of success. While he set up camp, she collected water and fuel. Not too much of the latter; they didn't need much more than to brew a little tea. Elspeth was nervous about grass fires; one spark could set the entire area ablaze, as dry as this vegetation was. In her view, Skif was simply not careful enough. When she returned with her double handful of twigs and fallen branches, she discovered he had etched a shallow little pocket in the turf, just big enough to hold the fire she intended to build. Plainly that was not good enough; but Skif was a child of cities, and likely had never seen a grass fire. It was hard for someone like Skif to imagine the fury or the danger of a grass fire. A city fire, now, that was something they could comprehend-but grass?

  Grass was tinder, it wasn't serious, it burned up in the blink of an eye and was gone with no damage.

  Right.

  Elspeth knew better. It was tinder; it caught fire that easily and burned with incredible heat. But there was a lot of it out here-acres and acres-and that was what Skif couldn't comprehend. She had never, ever forgotten the description Kero had given her of a patrol caught in the path of a grass fire during her days as merc Captain of the Skybolts. Kero had described it so vividly it still lived in her memory.

  "It was a wall of flame, as tall as a man, driving everything before it.

  Herds of wild cattle were followed by a stampede of sheep. that was followed by a sea of rabbits, frightened so witless they'd charge straight up to a man and run into his legs. that was followed by the little birds that lived in the grass, and a river of mice-and then the wall was on top of you. You could hear it roaring a league away, and nearby it was deafening. It moved as fast as a man can run, and it sent up a great black pall of smoke, a regular curtain that went straight up into the sky. The burning area was farther than I could jump-at the leading edge the ends of the grasses were afire, in the middle, all of this year's growth-but on the trailing edge, all the previous years' growth that was packed down was burning as fiercely as wood, and hotter-" Kero paused and passed her hand over her eyes.

  "Everyone let go their beasts; you couldn't hold 'em, not even Shin'a'inbreds.

  A couple of the youngsters, I'm told, tried to run across the fire. It was unbelievably hot; their clothing, anything that was cloth and not leather or metal. caught fire. Not that it mattered. The hot air stole the breath from them; they fell down in the middle of the flames, trying to scream, and with no breath to do it, burning alive. The rest, the ones that survived, wet their shields and cloaks down with their water skins, put their shields over their backs and their wet cloaks over that, and hunkered down under both."Like turtles under tablecloths' is what one lad told me.

  They stuck their faces right down into the dirt, and did their best to breathe as little as possible. That was how they made it. And even some of those got scorched lungs from the burning air. She shook her head. "Don't ever let anyone tell you a grass fire is 'nothing, 'girl. I lost half that patrol to one, and the rest spent days with the Healers, for burns inside and out.

  It's not 'nothing," it's hell on earth. My cousins fear fire the way they fear no living thing." No, a grass fire was nothing to take lightly. On the other hand, there was no purpose to be served in giving Skif a lecture, especially not the way she felt right now. Anything she told him would come out shrewish; anything she said would be discounted. Not that it wouldn't anyway.

  Rather than risk sounding like a fishwife, she simply took out her knife and cut a larger circle in the turf, removing blocks of it and setting them aside to replace when they were finished. She made a clear space about half as wide as she was tall. Skif sat and seethed when he saw her kindling a tiny fire in the middle of this comparatively vast expanse of clear earth, but he didn't comment. Then again, he didn't have to; she didn't even have to see his face, his posture said it all.

  Even without her saying a word, he took what she did as criticism.

  Was it? She couldn't help it. Better to do without a little tea than risk a fire. She decided that he was going to seethe no matter what she did,

  whether or not she said anything.

  And when the tea was boiled and their trail rations had been toasted over the fire, she put the fire out and replaced the blocks of turf enjoying, in a masochistic kind of way, the filthy mess she was making of her hands-again to the accompaniment of odd looks from Skif.

  "He thinks you're doing this just to avoid him," the sword observed cheerfully.

  I don't particularly care what he thinks," she retorted. "I do care about making sure any watchers know that we're being careful with their land. It seems to me that since we're here on their sufferance, we'd better think first about how they're judging us. And I know they're out there."

  "Watchers?" the sword responded. they're there," she replied.

  There're at least four," Need said, after a moment. "I didn't know you could See through shields. You must be much better than I thought." She came very close to laughing out loud. "I can't. I simply guessed. the Shin'a'in are notorious for not allowing strangers on their land; and that they not only allowed us, they gave us a map, says that they are bending rules they prefer to leave intact. that didn't mean that they were going to leave us on our own, they don't trust us that much; if we didn't actually see anyone watching us, it followed that they were hiding. they aren't going to stop us, but I'll bet that if we did something wrong, we'd be dis-invit
ed, and if we strayed from the path, we'd be herded back." She thought about it for a moment; it was the first thing that had offered her any amusement all day. "Might be fun to do it and see how they'd get us back on track. I bet it wouldn't be as straightforward as riding up and helping us back to the "right" way. I bet they'd start a stampede or something." The sword was silent for a moment. "Convoluted reasoning, that; 'if we can't see them, they must be there.'"

  "Merc reasoning," Elspeth replied, and let it go at that.

  When she finished replacing the turfs, she looked up to see Skif still sitting there, watching her. There was no moon tonight, only starlight, but his Whites stood out easily enough against the high grass and the night sky, and seemed to shimmer a little with a light of their own. He looked like something out of a tale.

  Or a maiden's dream, she thought scornfully. A hero, a stalwart man to depend on for everything. Perfect, strong, handsome-and ready to take the entire burden of responsibility on his shoulders.