He wouldn’t mind any of it, he thought, the riding, the cold or the lack of sleep, if he could see properly, or keep the world straight under him.
The threshold sickness had continued off and on, more on than off in the last day or so. He tried to ignore Danilo’s anxious looks, his concern for him. There wasn’t anything Danilo could do for him, so the less said about it, the better.
But it was intensely unpleasant. The world kept thinning away at irregular intervals and dissolving. He had had no attacks as bad as the one he’d had at Thendara or on the way north, but he seemed to live in mild chronic disorientation all the time. He didn’t know which was worse, but suspected it was whichever form he happened to have at the time.
Danilo waited for him to draw even on the path. “Snowing already, and it’s hardly midafternoon. At this rate it will take us a full twelve days to reach Thendara, and well lose the long start we had.”
The more quickly they reached Thendara, the better. He knew a message must get through, even if Lew and Marjorie were recaptured. So far there was no sign of pursuit But Regis knew, cursing his own weakness, that he could not take much more of the constant exertion, the long hours in the saddle and the constant sickness.
Earlier that day they had passed through a small village, where they had bought food and grain for the horses. Perhaps they could risk a fire tonight—if they could find a place to build it!
“Anything but a hay-barn,” Danilo agreed. The last night they had slept in a barn, sharing warmth with several cows and horses and plenty of dry hay. The animals had made it a warm place to sleep, but they could not risk a fire or even a light, with the tinder-dry hay, so they had eaten nothing but hard strips of cured meat and a handful of nuts.
“We’re in luck,” Danilo said, pointing. Away to the side of the road was one of the travel-shelters built generations ago, when Aldaran had been the seventh Domain and this road had been regularly traveled in all seasons. The inns had all been abandoned, but the travel-shelters, built to stand for centuries, were still habitable, small stone cabins with attached sheds for horses and proper amenities for travelers.
They dismounted and stabled their horses, hardly speaking, Regis from weariness, Danilo from reluctance to intrude on him. Dani thought he was angry, Regis sensed; he knew he should tell his friend he was not angry, just tired. But he was reluctant to show weakness. He was Hastur: it was for him to lead, to take responsibility. So he drove himself relentlessly, the effort making his words few and sharp, his voice harsh. It only made it worse to know that if he had given Danilo the slightest encouragement, Dani would have waited on him hand and foot and done it with pleasure. He wasn’t going to take advantage of Danilo’s hero-worship. The Comyn had done too much of that…. The horses settled for the night, Danilo carried the saddlebags inside. Pausing on the threshold, he said, “This is the interesting time, every night. When we see what the years have left of whatever place we’ve found to stay.”
“It’s interesting, all right,” Regis said dryly. “We never know what we’ll find, or who’ll share our beds with us.” One night they had had to sleep in the stables, because a nest of deadly scorpion-ants had invaded the shelter itself.
“Um, yes, a scorpion-ant is a lower form of life than I care to go to bed with,” Danilo said lightly, “but tonight we seem to be in luck.” The interior was bare and smelled dusty and unaired, but there was an intact fireplace, a pair of benches to sit on and a heavy shelf built into the wall so they need not sleep on the floor at the mercy of spiders or rodents. Danilo dumped the saddlebags on a bench. “I saw some dead branches in the lee of the stable. The snow won’t have soaked them through yet. There may not be enough to keep a fire all night, but we can certainly cook some hot food.”