Varia began to walk on then, and he called after her. “I’m sorry, girl. But if I cannot give you a spell, I give you my best wish that you escape them. And the wishes of a tomttu are not without force.”
She paused to look back at him. “Thank you,” she said softly, then trotted northward on the same trail she’d been following.
Watching her trot out of sight, the tomttu shook his head. Ah, if only my wishes did have force, he thought. But if it’s Tomm followin’ you, it’s little chance you have.
She camped that night by a spring, and healed her new stone bruises. Her feet were toughening. At daybreak she awoke, and soon after sunup called a dove down, and ate it. Raw doves had become her staple food. Near midday she reached the head of the pass, a rugged cleft in the highest ridge she’d come to. There, though the stones were harsh, she climbed to a ledge to see what she could see. The ridges northward were progressively lower. Beyond them, at the edge of vision, the land looked level, and not dark enough to be forest.
As she looked, she heard cawing, saw crows flying southward, and scrambled to hide as best she could beneath a dogberry bush, enduring its sharp spines for the concealment it gave her. When the crows had passed out of hearing, she climbed down into the notch again and trotted on.
Hungering, she spelled another dove to her, and shortly heard water rattling over rocks. Not long after that she came to a brook, and followed it near enough to keep the sound in her ears.
Her way led almost continuously downhill, and often she trotted. It seemed to her that two more days would bring her to populated country again.
That night she dreamed of Curtis. She’d found him, but he refused to believe it was her. “My Varia is young,” he said, “and has beautiful long red hair. Yours is short and gray.”
She raised her hands to her face and felt wrinkles, then remembered. Tomm had caught her, and she’d spent five barren brutal years in the Tiger barracks before Sarkia cast her out, broken and aged. She awoke with a cry, and saw dawnlight. And on an old blowdown near her feet, a man, lean and hard.
“Good morning, Sister Varia,” he said quietly. “You’ve been traveling hard. I thought you should finish your sleep.”
She raised to an elbow, staring at him, willing that this was still the dream. After a minute he got to his feet. “You’re probably hungry for something more than the doves whose bones and skins you’ve left along the way.” Stepping over to her, he reached down for her hand. She shrank from him.
“Come Sister. I’m not a Tiger. I won’t harm you.”
Her answer was hardly more than a whisper. “What greater harm than to take me back? You’ll return me to my death.”
“No, not to your death. Sarkia has better plans for you. She told me so when she sent me. You please her, even in rebellion; she likes your strength.”
“You don’t know what they did to me.”
“The Tigers, you mean. I know. And Idri’s been sent away, months since, to other tasks elsewhere. Sarkia intends to train you in the duties Idri did for her, as her personal aide.”
Idri’s duties! At the sight of Tomm, Varia had given up, but to do the work that Idri had done? Her will took new strength. “What has the Sisterhood ever given you?” she asked.
His expression didn’t change. “Life,” he said. “And the hunt.”
The hunt? Yes, that would be it. “Have you ever thought of leaving? There’s work anywhere for a man with your abilities. What chains does the Sisterhood have on you?”
He didn’t answer at once. Then, “Without the Sisterhood, the ylver will someday conquer the Rude Lands, to command whatever tribute they want. To see the girls and women raped, and punish those who displease them.”
It seemed to Varia that he recited, rather than speaking spontaneously. “And what did the Dynast have done to me? I was raped more than any Sister at Ferny Cove, my punishment for displeasing Idri and Sarkia.