“Mazlek,” I said softly, “I can go for many days without food. You supply yourself as you want.”
He nodded, but slunk off among the trees to eat. He had not flinched at the bald statement, but, even so, the taboos of a lifetime could not be blown away so swiftly, if ever.
Later, we rode on, keeping a steady but unhurried speed. The land around me seemed quite unfamiliar-I had seen it last under snow, and through a fever haze. Nevertheless, it was a strange journey, this going backward over ground I had crossed before-the first time ever I had returned to any place which it took longer than a day to reach. Beneath the horses’ hooves the soil was now warmly brown, dappled with many greens. Dusk fell more slowly, and birds rang like bells at the dawn light. A fox’s lair among the bracken, and a vixen mottled white on her russet, still half in her winter coat.
Five or six days passed, and Mazlek told me we were not making toward Orash, as I had thought, but would turn eastward now toward the hill line. Beyond the hills-mountains,
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part of the great chain of primeval children folded upward from the southern earth in the first struggles of the landscape. Northward, they would become one with the Ring, broken only by the blue water, Aluthmis. Northeast they would lose their peaks in the rock plains that fell away from Eshkorek Arnor, City of White Desert.
“The best road for us to take,” Mazlek said. “If any followed us, seeking you, they’d guess we would go by the open path-back the way the armies came.” “Road?” I said. “Are there roads across the mountains?” It seemed there were, though ancient and elusive, impassable in winter, tracks of an old mountain people who had vanished like the Lost, centuries before. Mazlek seemed confident enough, but a sense of foreboding settled on me. It was not the road I feared, but the destination-Eshkorek Arnor. I did not know why. I reasoned with myself that it was the Javhovor of Eshkofek who haunted me-that anxious tortoise who had thrust his neck from his shell too far by half. The brave, terrified man who had screeched at me across the Council table in Za, then died in the square with a piece of tile in his brain-Vazkor’s example of power. Yet no need to fear, there was a new lord now-Vazkor’s man.
The eleventh day of our journey, we rode into the hills, and left that valley of failure behind. There was a village or two, where Mazlek would walk off with the black-eyed chief, and return with small bundles of food. I ate a little every seventh or eighth day, and my pampered stomach rebelled each time with hideous pains. The worst trouble was a constant tiredness. Several times I fell asleep as I rode, and miraculously kept my seat until some jolt would wake me up again. Each night, a six-hour halt. We kept no stated watch, though Mazlek slept little, I think. As watcher I was quite useless, and could not keep my eyes open. It angered me, but I was helpless; the thing in me made me so.
But there seemed to be no pursuit. Probably the runaway bitch-witch-whore-goddess had no great interest for them. They had not bothered even to pursue Vazkor, it seemed, simply accepted the word that he was dead. Fools. Where he was, what he did, were problematical, but I knew at least he could not die, my brother, with his healing skin.
Beyond the hills, the mountains rose, clustered, uncut amethyst, dully luminous against the soft spring skies.
I became aware that I was searching, asleep and awake,
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my brain burrowing into itself to remember something. Curious, the sensation of quest, without a known goal.
9
And they were kind to us, after all, the mountains. The horses, with their sure, shaggy, little feet, managed well, and enjoyed the tufts of ice-green mountain grass which cracked the stone. Fresh streams and waterfalls sprinkled themselves into shallow pools. Heather, every shade of purple, furred the old sleeping bones.
There were, at first, winding tracks, safe enough, but crudely hewn. But then we found the road-a pass, wide and paved, not as the slaves of the Lost had paved the roads of the Plains, but in small, palm-sized blocks. Mostly the mountain sides walled us on this way, but here and there a ghastly drop would open to left or right, jagged frozen cascades of rock, plunging into barren valleys. Less beauty now. The farther we rode, the more desolate the road became. Soon the greens and heathers were all gone. We had paid for our safe passage with ugliness.
Toward evening, perhaps five days into the mountains, we passed a ramshackle little hut about twenty feet from the road. A half-barren field stretched sloping toward us, and three or four despairing trees leaned on each other for support near the door. There were two old men in the field, both skin and bone got up in rags, with long light hair flapping in the breeze. Not of the Dark People, these two, but outcast city dwellers presumably. One crouched on his haunches staring at us, unmasked, the other stood up stiff and straight, his back turned. After a moment I saw that there was a flock of gray mountain pigeons in the field, pecking at the impoverished crops. Every so often a group of these would fly onto the standing man’s head and shoulders, and stamp up and down, or settle to preen.
Our small supplies were low. I could see, from the tail of my eye, Mazlek drawing rein and dismounting.
Suddenly the squatting man called out: “Don’t let her near me! Don’t you let her!”
“Forgive him, goddess,” Mazlek said, sounding irritated. “Only a mad old man-a woman-hater no doubt. He means nothing.” He went up through the field, and the birds scattered with
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what looked an almost melodramatic act of fright, except for the group on the scarecrow, however, which remained unruffled.
Mazlek spoke to the man. He shook his head frenziedly, and waved sticklike arms.
“No-nothing left-those others took it-thieves!”
“Others?” Mazlek’s voice came sharp and clear now.
‘Ten men and horses-black riders-skull masks-except for him, the dark one-the wolf-”
Mazlek turned and looked back at me. My hands were tight on the reins, and my heart thudded in intermittent, painful, nervous beats. Mazlek left the man and came back to the road.
“Vazkor,” he said unnecessarily. “Still alive?”
“Oh, yes. I never thought him dead.”
“Making for Eshkorek-as we are,” Mazlek said. He mounted swiftly. “We should hurry, goddess; perhaps we can catch them, now that we’re on the same road.”
“No,” I said.
The old man shouted hoarsely at us, without words.
“Wise to ride with him,” Mazlek said. “Twelve men can protect you better than one.”
He was anxious for my safety. It was useless to protest. We urged the horses forward, and left the old man standing in the field, beside the pigeon-heavy scarecrow he had put up to keep the birds away.
Darkness thickened around us. Stars burned blue-white between the distant crag-crests.
“We do not know how long ago they passed,” I said. “We may be days behind.”
“I don’t think so,” Mazlek said. “That one would have had a short memory, yet he remembered them very well.”
“I must rest soon,” I said.
He nodded through the gloom.
“I will find a safe place, then ride ahead to them. Hell wait, or return with me.”
“Will he? I wonder, Mazlek, if he will.”
But he would, of course. I carried what was his.
Not long after, the road began to drop downward. Across rock thrusts came a new light, faintly red.
“A fire,” Mazlek muttered.
We saw the dip a minute later, a trickle of path and scrub bushes clinging around it, and, at the bottom, a hollow full of firelight. It seemed blatant, careless even. I saw horses mov-
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ing beyond the flames, shapes sitting against the rock. Abruptly two men leaped from the scrub, one for each of our bridles. A third stood a little behind, a couple of knives very ready. Not so careless, after all, for he had posted sentries. Mazlek’s ambusher prodded at him. “Who are you?”
Mazlek said calmly, “I am Mazlek, Commander of the Goddess Uastis’ Guard. I have conducted her to her husband.”
The skull faces turned to me. There was nothing about me recognizable, no golden cat mask or rich robe. Even the pregnancy had shown itself since they saw me last.
“Well,” I said, “go and ask your Lord. He will remember me, I think.”
A little hesitation, then they pulled our horses aside, and led them down the path into their camp, the knife man coming last.
It was warm in the hollow, and smoky. One of our guides strode off around the fire into a cave beyond it. I began to feel stifled, the smoke catching in my throat and eyes. I wanted to run away, and cursed Mazlek unfairly for bringing me here. Damn Vazkor, I did not want his venomous weight on my freedom again.