“Just a gemzē trail,” I heard him say, clearly. “She's gone into the river, as we thought. Nothing to do. We better get back.”
I rested, waiting for my heart to stop pounding, considering my priorities. I needed to create a shelter, and when that was done, I needed to work out how I got off this clifftop. The first task was straightforward: I had a tent, and rope. I simply had to find a place to set it up. I scouted around the plateau, settling finally on the slope of a small depression rimmed with shrubs. Using a branch and my heels, I levelled out part of the slope; then I strung the rope between two stunted trees and hung the tent. A few rocks on the edges, the pack hung as high as I could manage, and my camp was done.
I glanced at the sun, nearly overhead now. I'd been awake for a day and a half. I should sleep, but I could feel that I would not. I walked back to the edge of the cliff to look out. Vast spaces—the ocean, the grasslands of the Empire—had always calmed me. I sat in the thin grass, and stared at the plain below me.
I traced the river, its course turning away far to the right to disappear behind the escarpment. To the north the mountains continued, blending into cloud and horizon. My eyes followed the trail, zigzagging down the bluff, then bending slightly to continue out into the plain. Eastward? I looked at shadows, tried to remember exactly where the sun had risen this morning. Eastward, or nearly so, I confirmed to myself.
I remembered the villages met at a ring of stones. I tried to find it, but I lost the trail in the contours of the plain. Scanning, I found several shapes, tiny at this distance and height, maybe boulders, maybe something else. One seemed pale, almost gleaming in the sun, but I couldn't make out what it was.
Exhaustion sank through me, weighing down my limbs, closing my eyes. I stretched out in the grass and fell asleep.
The croak of a raven woke me. The sky was the dark blue of evening; I guessed I had slept for six hours or so. I sat up, stiffly; stretching, I stood and found my way back to my camp. Nothing had disturbed it. I had hoped to hunt this afternoon, but my body had demanded sleep.
I lit a small fire, ate cold food, made tea. In the flicker of the fire I fashioned a couple of snares from sinew and set them where I had seen droppings earlier. Stars emerged, glittering against the black of the sky. I leaned back against the slope, looking north. There was the bear…and there the north star. I remembered looking up at these same stars from the bench outside the Four-Ways Inn, thinking how I could follow them home from anywhere. But I had travelled too far for that: the stars had not changed, but they could no longer take me home.
I tracked westward, looking for the hunter and his dogs, but the mountains obscured them. Far to the east, the hero raised his club. Had not the hero been exiled once? I tried to remember the story…something about murder, and a series of tasks set to bring him redemption. Cillian would know.
Cillian. I had avoided thinking about him. I wrapped my hands around the cooling tea. Where was he? The hunting party should have been back sometime yesterday. Surely, he would come after me? But Karel would have reported me drowned.
Did it matter, any longer? I shivered. Bleakness threatened to overwhelm me; no tears, just dry despair. I wanted his arms around me, the comfort and security of being held. Would he even want to do that, after what Ivor had done?
'Nothing in life is either good or bad in itself: it is only our reactions that make events appear positive or negative.’ When had Cillian told me that? It was wrong. It denied the violence and cruelty of Ivor's attack. I focused on the words. Only our reactions. I stared up at the sky. What would his philosopher say? That I could not change what had happened, but I could choose my response.
I considered this. I could let Ivor's violence control me, crush me, which is what he had wanted. Or I could think of myself as wounded. Wounds healed, in time. Most of them.
I am wounded, I said firmly, to the scattered stars. I can heal.
In daylight, I scouted for water, and a way down, finding both together. Some distance from the camp, I found a stream, and in following it north and east, discovered it flowed down off the plateau in an eroded valley, not a simple descent, but feasible. I should go, I thought. If I get down off this plateau today, I can travel at night into the plain. But I did not. We had agreed to cross the plain together. But that was before, I reminded myself.
Midmorning, I knelt at the fire I had lit, roasting the small rabbit my snare had caught. The whine of a dog made me turn. Audo's brindle bitch ran to me, trying to lick my face. She barked. “Shhh,” I told her. “What are you doing here?” Audo could not have come after me, with his bad leg.
“Lena!” Cillian's voice, calling. I closed my eyes in relief. The dog barked again.
“I'm here,” I said, my voice a croak. “Here,” I tried again, louder. I stood, letting the rabbit drop beside the fire. I heard running feet, and then he was beside me, reaching for me. I nearly fell into his arms, sagging against him, beginning to cry.
“Lena,” he said, “käresta, I'm here.”
“I was afraid you wouldn't come,” I heard myself say.
“I'm here,” he repeated. He kissed my hair. He let me cry, but when the tears slowed he spoke again. “You are shaking, Lena. You do know Ivor is dead?”
“I wasn't sure.”
“Killed by wolves, or so the village believes,” another voice said. I looked over. Eryl. “He was found with an arm missing, and one foot, and his head had been crushed in their jaws.”
I shook my head, my face against Cillian's shoulder. “I killed him. He attacked me,” I said. My voice was shaking as hard as my body. “He had me on the ground: he tried—he wanted to—he forced me. I had seen a rock. I reached for it, and I hit him over the head until he—stopped.”
Cillian swore, savagely. His arms around me tightened. “Lena, käresta, I should have kept you safe.” He was stroking my hair. I had stopped crying. He kissed my head again. “I hope he was alive, and awake, when the wolves came,” he said, his voice low and angry and cold.
“I should have known,” Eryl said. “I should have gone back, when he was missing that third night.” Anger shaded his voice, too. “How could I have been so short-sighted? I wanted your company, Cillian, on the hunt, and did not think of the consequences of leaving Lena alone.”
I turned in Cillian's arms. “And I wish I had not let myself become weak over the winter,” I said sharply, “or he would not have taken the knife off me so easily, and it would have been in his ribs. I should have been able to protect myself.”
“What do we do now?” Cillian asked. “We must go, Eryl. You do see that?”
“I do,” Eryl said. “Karel reported you drowned. Lena, did you make it look that way?”
I nodded. “Yes. I didn't think it would fool anyone, though.”
“Karel hoped you were dead, so he saw what he wanted. It was good thinking.” He considered. “Give me the jerv's teeth, Lena. I will stay out another day or two, and then return home. I will tell them I found your body far along the river, and brought the necklace back to prove it.”
I handed him the necklace. “What about Cillian?” I asked.
“I will tell the village what I believe: that you fled from Ivor's attentions, and that you had wounded him before you fled. The wolves, smelling blood, took advantage of that. There will be little sympathy, except from Grêt and Karel, for an attack on a devanī and another man's woman, and, anyhow, you are dead. As for Cillian, his devotion to you has been obvious, and so he could not return to the village where you were dishonoured, and where Ivor's actions led to your death. His decision to go east into the plain will be derided as suicidal, but that is all. No one will follow you.”
“Eryl, how can we thank you?” Cillian asked. “You are risking much to help us.”
“Repayment, for what has come of my failure to judge what Ivor might do,” Eryl said. “If I am to lead this village soon, I must not make such mistakes.”
“Eryl,” I said. “Can you let Fél and
Kaisa know that I am not dead? I wish Audo could know, but that would be unwise, I realize.”
“I will tell them.” He stood looking at us. “Once you are off these hills, move only at night for a while,” he said. “You do not want to be seen.” He called the dog to him. “I wish you luck as you travel, and a safe home when travel ends, my friends.” He turned to go.
“Wait,” Cillian said. He walked over to Eryl, embracing him. “Thank you,” I heard him say. “I have been honoured to call you a friend.”
“Take care of Lena,” Eryl said. He slapped his thigh, ordering the dog to heel, and walked back into the trees.
Cillian turned to me. “What can I do, Lena?”
“I don't know. Be patient with me, I suppose.” I tried to smile.
“Of course.” He looked very unsure. “You will tell me what you need from me, and if I upset you?”
“I'll try. I just don't know, Cillian. I have no experience, or even stories, to guide me through this.”
He nodded. “I will listen if you want to talk, and hold you if that is what you need. I also have nothing to tell me what to do for you.”
“Just don't quote your philosopher,” I said. “I don't think I could stand being told that there was no evil in what happened.”
“I wouldn't,” he said grimly. “I am finding no guidance there, right now, at all.”
We broke my small camp, working silently together as we had on so many mornings in the mountains, and then followed the stream down its valley, reaching the plain by mid-afternoon. The trail ran arrow-straight across the gently rolling ground. The grasses here grew sparsely, interspersed with low, silver-leaved plants I could not name. Cillian walked in near silence, angry with himself, I knew. I felt exposed: anyone looking down from the escarpment would see us easily. “I think we should sleep now, until dusk,” I said.
The river curved southward, away from the trail. We walked along its bank, looking for a sheltered place, finding one under the hanging branches of a willow. The day was warm enough, and dry. Cillian dropped his pack and stretched out, the pack under his head. I did the same. We did not touch. I turned my head to look at him; he was watching me, his eyes troubled. He reached out a hand. I took it, feeling the strength in it. I rolled onto my side, and let the running river lull me to sleep, my hand still safe in his.
We ate cold food at dusk, not risking a fire, and waited for the moon to rise.
“How did you find me?” I asked. “You didn't climb the cliff?”
“No. We came across the top, from the high lands above the village. Lena, I should not have left you alone. I should have seen what Ivor might do.” His words were bitter.
“How were you to know he would leave the hunting party early? Cillian, even your father could not see—does not see—all outcomes, famed as he is for doing so.” I said, exasperation in my voice.
“I know,” he said flatly. “I'm living proof of that.”
“And no one knows that here but me, and only you care,” I snapped. “Leave it behind, Cillian. I'm sorry I brought it up.” I was in no mood to be kind. I was fighting self-pity, and he appeared to be giving in to it.
“Do you really not care that I'm Callan's son, Lena?” he asked. The question took me unawares.
“I don't know,” I said slowly. “I don't think about it. It mattered in Linrathe, because it saved your life. But now? You're just—you.” He looked over, at that. “Does it matter to you? Not that he's your father; of course that matters. But that he's the Emperor?”
He looked out into the night. “I have been defined by an absence, a void, all my life. I grew around that space, encompassed it within me like a tree with a hollow core. Now there is a shape, a name, in that space, and a bit more, but I cannot separate the man from the role, yet. Can you understand that?”
“A little, maybe,” I said. “I knew who my father was by name, but in Tirvan, in the Empire, it didn't matter that that was all I knew. Some girls' fathers came to visit them, but mine, never, and I wasn't alone in that. I don't think I cared until I met Casyn, and then I had the merest glimmer of what it might be to have a father. Galen,” I added, “didn't live up to Casyn, when I did meet him.”
He laughed, but it was not a true laugh. “At least he didn't exile you.”
“Well, in a way, he did,” I pointed out: it had been Galen who Casyn had sent to accompany us to the Durrains, and tell us how to begin to cross them. “Callan saved your life, Cillian,” I said again. “And mine.”
“I know. But as my father, or my Emperor?”
The trail was wide enough for two people and smooth enough that we could walk quickly in the moonlight. The creak and buzz of night insects broke the silence sporadically, and once, far behind us, wolves howled. A pale owl drifted silently across the path.
The night wore on. The moon peaked, began its descent. We stopped for food and water. For the last hour, my groin had begun to ache, the familiar, dragging pain of my bleeding time. I moved away from the path, found my cloths at the bottom of my pack, tucked one in place. I still had some anash, but we could not risk a fire to make tea. I'd just have to put up with the pain.
The pain rose and fell as we walked, worse than usual. Sleeping on cold ground would be why, I thought, biting my lip. Nausea threatened. As the sky began to lighten, I saw a line of small bushes ahead of us: shelter, and perhaps some dead wood with which to build a small fire.
“We need to stop here,” I said to Cillian.
Something in my voice alerted him. “What's wrong?”
“I need to make anash tea,” I said. “It's my bleeding time, and I'm in a lot of pain, more than usual.”
The bushes grew along a stream trickling out of rocks in a small gulley. At the stream's edge Cillian told me to sit. He gathered wood, building a small fire tightly against the edge of the rock, as hidden from view as it could be. I took anash leaves from my pack, broke them into water in the small cooking pot, and put it in the flames. Then I found a stone about the size of my fist and placed it in the fire.
I drank the tea as soon as I could, scalding though it was on my lips and tongue. The stone, hot from the fire, I wrapped in more of the blood cloths, holding it against my lower belly. I lay down, bringing my knees up, waiting in silent misery for the anash to work.
Ten minutes, fifteen. The pain began to ebb. Cillian knelt beside me and gently replaced the cooling stone with another. The small kindness brought tears to my eyes.
“Could you let me touch you?” he asked. “If so, would it help if I rub your back?”
“It might,” I said. “You can try.”
I lay on my side. He moved closer, reaching over me, his palm making firm circular movements on my lower back. It felt comforting, if nothing else. The pain faded. I fell asleep.
When I woke the sun told me it was mid-morning. I sat up. “Cillian?” I called, quietly.
“I'm here,” he said, descending from the gulley's rim. “Are you feeling better?”
“Yes.” The pain was a dull ache now, tolerable.
“I've been keeping watch,” he said. “I didn't think we should both sleep. But I've seen nothing but hunting hawks and a fox.”
“Good,” I replied. “Do you want to sleep now?” I stretched. I was hungry.
“Soon. I want to show you something, first.” He beckoned me over to where the stream emerged from the rocks. “Look at this carefully, Lena,” he said. “See these blocks of stone?” Surrounding the spring were jumbled rocks, looking at first glance like fallen chunks, nothing more. But they were too regular and smooth, and in places two or three were still mortared together.
“The builders.” The words came unbidden, a memory from something Cillian had told me months before.
“Yes. This might be the first evidence of the Eastern Empire, Lena. And look here.” He crossed the gulley. “Look eastward, where the trail goes—it was easier to see when the sun was low, but if you look along the trail, can you see there are depressions
, either side, quite far back from it?” He touched my shoulder to orient me. I flinched and he drew his hand back quickly.
I sighted along the trail where it ran out of the gulley and back out onto the plain. I could just make out what Cillian meant, slight dips in the land paralleling the trail. What did they remind me of? My mind flashed back to the Wall and the track we were building through the camp, cobbled, with ditches on each side. “Ditches,” I said. “Ditches, on either side of a road.”
“Yes,” Cillian said. I glanced up at him. He was smiling, the teacher delighted with his student's observation.
“Cillian,” I said, my throat suddenly tight, “right now, you look exactly like Colm when he was pleased I understood his teaching.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. He was your father's twin, Cillian. And I think he would have been proud of you right now.”
He shrugged. “I wouldn't know. But we should eat, Lena, and then I should sleep.”
While he slept, I built another fire to make more tea. This time I made several pots, filling one waterskin with the liquid. I'd never drunk it cold and I had no idea if it would keep its potency this way, but I also had no idea when—or if—I could build another fire after today. I fingered my supply of anash: only a few leaves remained. Not that it mattered, I thought, except I needed it for pain. Then I sat among the bushes on the gulley's western rim, keeping watch. I had my bow beside me. The water would attract animals, or birds, and some fresh food would be welcome. I scanned the plain, watching for signs of movement, but I saw nothing.
I grew stiff, and the ache in my groin was increasing. I drank some cold tea and got up to stretch my legs and back. Wandering along the gulley, a clump of bushes caught my eye, their silvery green leaves delicately divided. I broke one off, crushed it, brought it to my nose. Anash. Here?
But it made sense. If this was a rest stop, a water source on the long road west from Casil, then planting medicinal herbs would have been practical, prudent, even. Anash relieved pain and fever as well as preventing pregnancy: I remembered my mother telling me that its effectiveness in that way had been a chance discovery. And armies and travellers needed remedies against all manner of disease.
Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy Page 74