She found herself dreaming, clear vivid dreams, as if she flew, linked in mind with Preciosa, over the green, rolling hills of her own country. She woke with a lump in her throat, remembering the view of the long valley from the cliffs of Falconsward. Would she ever see her home again, or her sister or brothers? What had they to do with a wandering swordswoman? Her ears ached where they had been pierced. She missed Orain and Carlo and even the rough-tongued Alaric. As yet she had made no friends among these strange women. But she was pledged to them for a year, at least, and there was no help for it. She listened to Caryl, sleeping quietly at her side; to the breathing of the strange women in the tent. She had never felt so alone in her life, not even when she fled from Rory’s mountain cabin.
Five days they rode southward, and came to the Kadarin river, traditional barrier between the lowland Domains and the foothills of the Hellers. It seemed to Romilly that they should make more of it, going into strange country, but to Janni it was just another river to be forded, and they crossed with dispatch, at a low-water ford where they hardly wetted their horses’ knees. The hills here were not so high, and soon they came to a broad rolling plateau. Caryl was beaming; all the trip he had been in good spirits, and now he was ebullient. She supposed he was glad to be coming home, and glad of the long holiday that had interrupted his studies.
Yet Romilly felt uneasy without mountains surrounding her; it seemed as if she rode on the flat land, under the high skies, like some small, exposed thing, fearfully surveying the skies here as if some bird of prey would swoop down on them and carry her away with strong talons. She knew it was ridiculous, but she kept uneasily surveying the high pale skies, filled with rolling violet cloud, as if something there was watching her. At last Caryl, riding at her side, picked it up with his sensitive laran.
“What’s the matter, Romy? Why do you keep looking at the sky that way?”
She really had no answer for him and tried to pass it off.
“I am uneasy without mountains around me – I have always lived in the hills and I feel bare and exposed here. . . .” she tried hard to laugh, looking up into the unfamiliar skies.
High, high, a speck hovered, at the edge of her vision. Trying to ignore it, she bent her eyes on the rough-coated grass, only lightly frosted, at her feet.
“What sort of hawking is there on these plains, do you know?”
“My father and his friends keep verrin hawks,” he said, “Do you know anything of them? Do they have them across the river, or only those great ugly sentry-birds?”
“I fly a verrin hawk,” Romilly said, “Once I trained one-” and she looked uneasily around again, her skin prickling.
“Did you? A girl?”
The innocent question nibbed an old wound; she snapped at him, “Why should I not? You sound like my father, as if because I was born to wear skirts about my knees I had neither sense nor spirit!”
“I did not mean to offend you, Romy,” said Caryl, with a gentleness which made him seem much older than his years. “It is only that I have not known many girls, except my own sister, and she would be terrified to touch a hawk. But if you can handle a sentry-bird, and calm a banshee as we did together, then surely it would take no more trouble to train a hawk.” He turned his face to her, watching with his head tilted a little to one side, something like a bird himself with his bright inquisitive eyes. “What are you afraid of, Romy?”
“Not afraid,” she said, uneasy under his gaze, then, “Only – as if someone was watching me,” she blurted out, not knowing she was going to say it until she heard her own words. Realizing how foolish they were, she said defensively, “Perhaps that is only because -the land is so flat – I feel – all exposed-” and again her eyes sought the sky, dazzled by the sun, where, wavering at the very edge between seen and unseen, a speck still hovered … I am being watched!