“Kardith!” Terris cried, his voice too high and tight for certainty. “Kardith, no!”
The open steppe stretched in one direction, the groves with their branches arching toward the crystalline sky in another. Jorts clustered around a dusty well; ghameli stood tethered beyond them. A pair of women were singing and dipping out water, their wrist bells chiming, children laughing and dodging behind them. Their scarves and robes fluttered in a sudden breeze, bringing me the scent of sandalwood and chirosa bark. A feeling rose up in me, not terror, not anger, no, sharp and melting all at once. I blinked hard.
Terris said something, but I couldn’t make out his words above the pounding of my heart. Something about being sorry, making a mistake.
The flap of the nearest jort was pushed aside and a man emerged. He moved with a knife-fighter’s grace; his beard gleamed like spun red-gold in the sun. He must have thought me a man in my heavy parka, for he lifted one hand in welcome. My knees shuddered.
I whirled to face Terris. “Get me out of here! Anywhere!”
He grabbed my free arm and pulled me sideways. I staggered through a wall of white flame and pulled up gasping, an inch from tumbling into a pool of yellowish, scum-crusted water.
Now I was the one to grab on to him, one-handed as I wasn’t about to put away my knife. He swore, but not at me.
Above us, around us, grayish branches dripped oozing green-black stuff, more slime than moss. Even the sky looked smudged. We stood on a little island of solid ground, lichen over rock and matted weeds. The reek of sulfur in the hot, still air sent my eyes and nose watering. Something squawked in the distance, shrill and ululating, like no bird I’d ever known.
Terris swore again. The steppe was an accident, maybe because he wasn’t yet wise to the ways of those doors of his, but this place — he must have gotten us here in sheer panic. I loosened my grip on him.
“Where are we?” I whispered. At moment, I would have given anything I owned to be back on the steppe, to raise my hands in a stranger’s greeting, to throw myself open to those familiar sights and smells, the dry clean beauty of the dunes.
“We’re still on Harth, maybe south of the Inland Sea.” He stepped carefully over the mounds of yellowed grass. Now that the first shock of the place was fading, I noticed signs of renewal, a spray of violet flowers, a few half-ripe berries. A few blades of green stood like sentinels among their fallen brothers. A water-strider, tiny legs outstretched, skittered across a clear stretch of water. From a thicket, a huge white songbat took wing.
“Why put a gate here?” Terris murmured. “As a warning, a lesson? Or did something come through here? Did they preserve this place deliberately so each generation would be forced to think in terms of all Harth?”
He scraped a layer of glistening mossy stuff off its underlying rock with the edge of his boot. I could see scattered indentations that might once have engraved letters. Terris couldn’t make them out, either.
“Let’s go,” he said at last. “I’ll be more careful this time. I’m sorry about the steppe.”
“I’m not,” popped out of my mouth before I realized it. I thought a moment and went on, “Maybe I’ll go back on my own some day.”
He smiled at me and took my hand.
o0o
The light was just as shifting and glare-blinding, but Terris strode through it even more surely, back through the startling green flashes and out again, dimmer and quieter. With a hiss and a searing flash we came shivering on to the caldera plain.
I jumped ahead of Terris, long-knife drawn, to land light and balanced on both feet.
Etch stood nearest us, with an expression of mixed feelings — worry and fear and joy. His eyes were so full, on the steppe we’d say they were all soul. Beyond him, Avi waited between Jakon and Grissem.
Jakon came toward us, and for a moment he seemed no different from Montborne or the steppe priests or anyone else who led only his own people. I raised my blade tip, bringing it between him and Terris. Once I could have killed him and would not. There was no choice this time.
“Put away your knife, Kardith,” said Terris. “Jakon and I have to talk.”
He pushed past me to face Jakon. “Did you know what would happen to me in there?”
“All that I dreamt has been fulfilled,” Jakon answered.
He doesn’t know what the Light is, I realized. He sits in front of it and drums up all these dreams, but he doesn’t know.
He’s never been inside.
“I too have had a vision sent by the Northlight,” Terris said. His voice took on the steely ring of truth. “A terrifying vision. A vision of your people and mine kept apart, two static societies — no matter what the cost. You’re just strong enough so we can’t spread out over your lands and just weak enough to pose no more than a border threat. We’re the only place on Harth that has any technological capability, but we have no frontier, everything’s closed in and watched, and who cares what happens on the steppe?
“But it’s no good,” Terris continued. “They’ve forgotten what it’s all about — the gaea-priests and Guardians. It’s not enough to keep from doing harm, hanging on from one generation to the next, squashing all research except in narrow little projects that go nowhere. Sooner or later, somebody like Montborne comes along to upset that brittle balance, and now it isn’t just Montborne we have to stop, it’s Esmelda.”
Avi moved silently toward Terris, her face white and pinched. I caught something in her movement, a tenseness that sent my skin crawling. I felt her in my blood, moving with all her Ranger’s stealth, cold and deadly intent. Her eyes fixed on her brother, and something in her watched and waited like a coiled sand-viper. All because Terris had mentioned Esmelda?
“You said Esmelda,” said Jakon, looking like he hadn’t understood a word Terris said. “We have no quarrel with her. She has been as much a friend to us as any souther could. If you mean to stop your general’s war, why include her?”
Avi kept coming, and I kept watching her. She moved like satin, like flowing brandy. Etch and Grissem had their eyes on Terris. They didn’t notice. Me, I stood absolutely still. I wanted her to see Terris, only Terris and not me. I held my knife low and hard to spot.
“Esme, our enemy?” I heard the shift in Terris’s voice, something that reminded me of the old dragon. “I must have not spoken clearly. I meant the whole situation being ripe for Montborne to exploit.”
Avi paused, the relief across her face thick enough to smell. My stomach uncoiled and I took a deep breath. Whatever it was had come and passed. But I shook a little as I let the breath out. Terris passed some kind of test out there in the Light and came out changed forever, and now it had happened to me too, just the same. Standing here, not moving a muscle, my knife ready to slice Avi’s throat if she drew her own, these few moments gave a whole different shape to my life. I could go on, but I couldn’t forget.
I’d become what I’d chosen.
And what had Avi become, that she’d draw steel on her own brother to protect some damnable secret of Esmelda’s?
Holy sweet Mother — was this why she’d left home? Had the old dragon somehow forced her to swear a thing like that?
“If it hadn’t been Brassaford,” Terris went on, “he’d have found some other excuse. He sees the end as justifying any means — killing Pateros, me, you if he could — anyone he thinks he needs to.”
Jakon’s eyes narrowed. “I asked you once before, why would you join forces with me against him?”
“For the truth,” Terris said, echoing his first promise to Jakon. “The truth alone.” Truth and steel. He held out his hand, souther style.
After a moment’s hesitation Jakon took Terris’s hand and shook it.
“We are going home now, aren’t we?” said Avi. She had already slung her pack over her shoulders with her good hand. Her face looked less white, but her eyes were still jumpy. “It’ll take at least a week from here.”
“No,” said Terris. “We can make it
in a few hours. Get the horses and I’ll show you.”
Chapter 34
We entered the green tunnel a little way from the base of the volcano. Terris wove his horse back and forth across our trail until the others all thought he was crazy. Me, I knew he was looking for the in-place, and when he found it, it was only a slip of a thing. Nothing I could see, really, not even a shimmering of air like the Ridge weirdies, just an itch behind my eyes. Getting the horses through was a bit like threading a needle with rawhide strips — we marched them right past it half a dozen times. My mare seemed to know just where to go, but that pea-brained sheep-hocked bat turd Etch called a horse kept sidestepping, and finally Terris had to lead it through on foot.
The tunnel was wide enough for three to ride abreast and too tall for me to reach its ceiling, even standing on the saddle. It seemed to go on forever, curving slightly so the ends were out of sight. I looked over my shoulder and saw no trace of where we’d come.
I’d never in all my days imagined of a place like this, not even when the priests loaded me on so much dreamsmoke I could hardly stand. Who could envision these featureless green walls? Instead of a natural color all shaded with yellow and brown like you’d see in living plants, this green bore a slight purple tinge, like a badly simulated gemstone.
After a few moments, none of us able to do anything more than draw one breath after another, my mind started to sort things into a crude imitation of sense. The others weren’t doing much better. Jakon clutched his pony’s reins, his face all white and beads of sweat gleaming on his upper lip. Grissem, behind him, chanted under his breath while his fingers wove mysterious symbols.
Avi doubled over as if to empty her stomach. “Not again!” she moaned. “Oh drat!”
“That’s the most lukewarm cussing I’ve ever heard. I don’t think you could talk mean if you tried,” Etch muttered between gritted teeth, and we all laughed, even Avi, the kind of laughter that brought tears to the eyes.
“Tell me this is a gods-damned hallucination,”
she gasped when she could talk again, “and I’m still lying in that root cellar.”
This was no hallucination, no instant insanity. Thanks to the steppe priests, I’d had my fill of that sort. And we weren’t dead, either, that was sure.
“It’s the same place you fell into,” said Terris.
Avi’s face looked sick in the green light. In another life, I’d have gone to her, but now all I could do was stare.
“So you’ve been here before and returned. And there’s no reason to think we can’t all get back, so there’s nothing to be afraid of, yes?” he said.
“Harth’s sweet ass, man, you’re not trying to reason with her?” said Etch.
Jakon gestured at the tunnel walls, deathly still around us. “This can’t be real.”
“You’re right!” Terris said cheerfully. “It’s an illusion. Or a theatrical decoration dreamed up by us wicked southers. You can think whatever you like, just so long as you get on that pony and moving.”
I picked up the gray mare’s reins and swung up on her back. Other than a whuff! of surprise when we first burst in to the tunnel, she seemed as solid as ever. The two northers, of course, were not going to sit there like a pair of brain-addled twitterbats while some bats-crazy Ranger went on ahead. Yet I was more worried about Avi’s condition than theirs. She bit her lower lip, hard enough to draw blood, then vaulted onto her pony’s back and booted the poor beast so hard it almost leapt straight up into the air.
We moved off, after a fashion, shedding our heavy fur parkas. It was too warm for wool cloaks but too cool to be comfortable without them. Hell, it wouldn’t kill us to be naked here, except of boredom.
As we rode on, I noticed piles of green silty stuff, dust I’d almost call it. I remembered Avi saying she tried to mark a trail and couldn’t. Assuming all the green tunnels were similar, that made me nervous.
Nervous and worse. Something jingled along my spine and sent a dry crawling feeling up the back of my throat. My tongue went thick and gummy. I started to curse to hide how scared I was, and then it came to me I was thirsty, that was all. I couldn’t help laughing out loud.
Terris, in the lead, twisted in his saddle and looked at me as if I’d gone berserk. I hauled out my skin of honeyed water and lifted it to him in a toast.
“Drink up, everybody,” he said. “It’s just a bit farther.”
I couldn’t see a thing as we lined up along the tunnel, then reversed, head-to-tail, took a few steps, and the next thing we popped out into the sweet yellow light of Laurea.
o0o
I grasped the hilt of my long-knife and kneed the gray mare forward, but there was no need. We’d come out at the edge of a garden plot, shielded from everything but the cabbages by a hedge of lemon ash and brambleberries. Mother knows what the country people must think of the weirdie there, if they even saw it at all.
I paused, breathing in the fruity ripeness of the berries and the tang of the ash leaves. The slanting afternoon sunlight warmed the leather of my Ranger’s vest.
Along the far end of the field, a thread of reflected light marked a creek running east-west, probably a feeder for the Serenity. From the position of the sun, I put us southeast of the city. All we had to do was follow the farmer’s market road.
Avi spotted it, deeply rutted and a little muddy from a recent rain. Suckerflies buzzed around our horses’ ears, and crickets whined from the patches of wild millet that lined the road.
Jakon shifted uneasily in the saddle as his pony dipped its head to snatch a mouthful. He knew the drowsy calm of the field was just a sham. He couldn’t do a damned thing if we met a company of Montborne’s men. Even I wouldn’t be able to hold off that many. Unlike him, I might get a moment to explain what I was doing here.
“Listen, all of you,” said Terris. “If we run into any trouble, remember that I’m Esmelda’s adjutant, which is still true enough. But I’ve also been dispatched on a secret mission, an — er, clandestine diplomatic mission. With an — um, expert agricultural consultant and two Rangers for security. We’re escorting the norther ambassador and his spiritual advisor for confidential high-level negotiations with the Inner Council. Got that?”
Avi sputtered, holding her sides. Jakon looked skeptical, as if thinking, You people really talk like that? Etch muttered, “Got it? I don’t know what half of those words mean.”
“It means,” I said, “that he’s point man and if anything goes wrong, it’s his mama who’ll bail us out.”
“Better not be her,” Avi said, no longer laughing.
We walked briskly along the road as the shadows grew darker and cooler. Somewhere in the line of woods ahead of us, a songbat woke up. I said to Avi, “You two’ve been through enough ghamel-shit from her, it’s time you got some benefit of it.”
“True,” added Terris, “but keep your knife handy, anyway. Using Esme’s name could be our ticket in or else an instant trip to the nearest prison cell, depending on how things have worked out here.”
Which was not, I agreed, a particularly encouraging thought.
“If things go sour, we split up,” Terris said.
“Split up!” said Avi.
“We can’t risk all of us getting caught. One of us has to get through.”
Avi shook her head, chin up, like a whip-shy mare, nose to the sky.
“I know how to deal with Montborne,” Terris continued. “You have to get to Esme and make your alliance with Jakon.”
One moment, Avi was the sweet wild girl who made love to me on the Ridge. The next, she turned hard and fierce, eating Jakon’s bread and salt, damning him — daring him — half-crazy, half-driven. Daughter of the dragon.
Then the flickering images came together and a single fire burned through all of her. She nodded as if she’d known all along this was what she’d come back to do.
“Right.” She glanced at me, but she knew I would stay with Terris no matter what. “Jakon and Griss with me. Etch?�
�
Etch looked at me, a long agonized look, and turned back to Terris. “Don’t ask me to leave her.”
He means me. I went cold and hot at the same time. As Avi would say, Drat.
o0o
It was near dark when we reached Laureal City and made our way through the outskirts. I kept my eyes sharp, feeling more than a little twitchy from thinking of all the things that could go wrong. The place was too damned quiet. Surely there should be more people abroad this early, walking openly, not darting from one darkened doorway to another. Patrols of City Guards stood at key intersections, tense and alert. We’d have to find a place to leave the horses soon.
Etch took the lead, down a side street that looked like a half-dried runoff ditch and back between a rank-smelling barnfowl coop and a shed full of bawling milch sheep. He knew where he was going. Not a real stable, he told us with a knowing twist to his mouth. Not a place anyone’d look for horses, but decent and safe. His friend would keep them and our gear out of sight for a few days.
By then we’d either have done what we came for or else we wouldn’t care.
We dismounted in outside the narrow yard, keeping only our weapons and what little money we had. Terris emptied his travel pack of everything but the dagger and his first-aid kit.
Etch gathered up all the reins. My gray mare rolled her eyes at him, maybe remembering this was the man who’d slit her throat.
“The ponies are sure to be spotted as norther,” said Avi. “Are you sure you can trust this friend?”
He nodded, and I trusted that sureness. I’d seen a new strength in him ever since we passed the first stockyard. Him and Terris too. Out on the Ridge they both looked to me, just as we all looked to the northers through the tundra ice. But here in the city, Etch knew this place.
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