Then somehow the magical link shattered and was gone. They were on the downward side of the pass, and high above them, the lumbering form of a banshee was shambling toward a cavemouth in the rocks, without paying them the slightest heed. Caryl was crying in her arms, hugging her tight. “Oh, it was hungry and we cheated it out of its breakfast”
She patted him, too shaken to speak, still caught up in the experience. Carlo said huskily, “Thank you, lads. I don’t really want to be the banshee’s breakfast, even if the poor thing was hungry, it can take its breakfast elsewhere.”
The men were looking at them in awe. Orain said shakily, trying to break the spell, “Ah, you’re too big and tough a boy for a banshee’s delicate appetite – it would rather have a tender young ice-rabbit, I’m sure,” and they all guffawed. Romilly felt weak, still under the spell of the wide-ranging enchantment they had woven with their laran.
Dom Carlo rummaged in his saddle-bags. He said roughly, “I can’t say what I owe you two. I remember the leroni were starving after they did such work – here.” He thrust dried meat, dried fruit, wafers of journey-bread at them. Romilly began to sink her teeth into the meat, and then somehow her gorge rose.
Once this was living, breathing flesh, how can I make it my prey? Or I am no better than the banshee. Once this dried flesh was the living breath of all my brothers. She gagged, thrust the meat from her and thrust a dried fruit into her mouth.
This too is of the life of all things, but it had no breath and it does not sicken me with the consciousness of what once it was. The Bearer of Burdens created some life with no purpose but to give up its life that others might feed . . . and as she felt the sweetness of the fruit between her teeth, briefly, the ecstasy returned, that this fruit should give up its sweetness so that she might no longer hunger….
Caryl, too, was chewing ravenously at a hunk of the hard bread, but she noted that he, too, had put the meat away, though a piece had small sharp toothmarks in it. So he had shared her experience. Distantly, like something she might have dreamed a long time ago, she wondered how she could ever again eat meat.
Even when they made brief camp, with the sun high in the sky, to give grain to the horses and meat to the sentry-birds, she ate none of the dried meat, but only fruit and bread, and stirred some water into the dried porridge-powder, eating a bowlful. Yet, to her own surprise, it did not trouble her when the sentry-birds tore greedily at the somewhat gamy meat they carried for them; it was their nature, and they were as they were meant to be.
She noticed that the men still kept a wary distance. She was not surprised. If she had seen two other people quiet an attacking banshee, she would have been silent in awe, too. She still could not believe she had done it.
As they finished their meal and resaddled the horses, she looked at Dom Carlo, standing straight and tall at the edge of the clearing, with his face distant and listening. She was now skilled enough in the use of laran to know that he was extending his mental awareness along the trail behind them, toward the pass.
“So far we are not pursued,” he said at last, “And the paths are so many, unless Lyondri has a horde of leroni with him, I do not truly think he will be able to pick up our trail. We must keep ordinary caution; but I think we can ride for Caer Donn in safety now.” He held out his arms to Caryl.
“Will you ride behind my saddle, kinsman?” he asked, as if he spoke to a grown man and his equal, “There are things I would say to you.”
Caryl glanced at Romilly, then collected himself and said courteously, “As you wish, kinsman.” He scrambled up into the saddle. As they rode away, she could see that they were talking together in low tones, and Romilly found that she missed the child’s warm weight in front of her. Once she saw Caryl shaking his head, seriously, and a word or two reached her ears.