But it was still open, and too close to that town to make any of them feel comfortable. Kero knew she slept lightly, and she was fairly certain the same could be said of Eldan and Ratha. After they woke, Eldan seemed preoccupied, and finally asked Kero to stand watch while he and his Companion talked.
Kero had a shrewd notion that strategy was not going to be the subject—that she was. She had gotten the impression more than once that Ratha liked her, but didn’t entirely approve of her. Certainly the Companion wasn’t likely to approve of her as a long-term liaison for his Herald.
He thinks a lot like his Herald, she reflected, climbing through the scratchy pine boughs carefully, to avoid making the tree shake. They couldn’t afford any carelessness; there had been too many near-escapes in the past few days. The hunters were getting thicker, and more, not less, persistent.
Somehow, in the next couple of days, they had to make a try at the Border. Which meant that parting from him was only days away. She settled herself on a sturdy limb, and blinked her burning, blurring eyes back into focus. Blessed Agnira, what am I going to do? Standing watch didn’t occupy a great deal of her attention, which meant she had more than enough left over to worry. I’m in love with this man. He’s in love with me. Should be a happy ending in there somewhere, if this was only a ballad....
She bit her lip to keep from crying. The whole relationship is impossible, that’s all there is to it. It’s all the same problems that I had with Daren, only worse, because I do love him. I want to be with him more than I’ve ever wanted any other person in my life.
But that was the key: any other person. Her independence had been dearly bought, and she wasn’t about to give it up now.
If she went with him, giving up her position in the Skybolts, what would she do in Valdemar? The regular army might not take her, and if they did, she would undoubtedly find herself on the wrong end of rules and regulations every time she turned around. With her record, she could ask for concessions from a Company that she could never get from a regular army force. Her peculiar talents did not fit into the parameters of a regular army. She wasn’t a foot or line soldier, she wasn’t heavy or even light infantry, and she was in no way going to fit into heavy or light cavalry. She was a scout—well, that was a job for the foot soldier. She was a skirmisher—that was under the aegis of either light infantry (bow) or light cavalry (sword). She knew more about tactics than most of the regulation officers she’d met, and that would certainly earn her no points. Lerryn encouraged the input of his junior officers, but that simply wasn’t so, outside of mercenary Companies.
That assumed they’d even take her in the first place; many regular armed forces wouldn’t accept former mercs because they tended to have an adverse effect on discipline.
Which would leave me living on his charity. Not a chance. I won’t ever put myself in that position again. Despite the lump in her throat and the ache in her chest at the thought of parting from Eldan, the resolution remained. Never. I have my own life, and I’m going to lead it.
He just didn’t understand what could lead someone to fight for a living, and it didn’t look as though he ever would. She’d tried to point out that if a relatively ethical person didn’t do the fighting, that would leave it to unethical people—he’d stared at her as if she was speaking Shin’a’in. For her part, she could not understand his fanatical devotion to an abstract: a country. What on earth was there about a piece of property that made it worth dying for? Never mind that territorial disputes were what paid for a merc’s talents, more often than not—she still didn’t understand it. In a way, she was as alien to him as one of those Karsite priestesses. She disturbed him more than they did, because he knew they were alien—she was the woman he loved, and seemed completely rational to him—until she would say something that completely eluded him, or he would say something that made no sense to her.
There were other differences, too; serious ones. Like his attitude toward Mindspeech. The way he shared his thoughts so freely with Ratha made her skin crawl and her shoulders tighten defensively. No one should be able to get inside your mind that closely.
It makes you vulnerable, she thought, with a shiver of real fear. What happens when you open yourself that much to anyone? Gods and demons, the power that gives them over you ... even if they never use that power, it’s a point of weakness that someone else can exploit. And will. There’s never yet been a breached wall that someone doesn’t use to invade.
Then there was that fanatical devotion to duty of his. He’d make it back to Valdemar if it killed him, just to get information back there personally. It isn’t sane, she thought grimly. It just is not sane. There are a dozen ways he could get that news back, and if he took all of them, that would virtually guarantee it would get there. Maybe not as quickly, but it would get there. But it has to be by his own personal hands....
He frightened her; as much as she loved him, she feared him, and feared for him. She was torn between that love and that fear, and when you added in her reluctance to place herself in a position where she would be dependent on him, there was only one conclusion she could come to.
It’s impossible. Oh, gods, it’s impossible. And I still love him....
She clutched the trunk of the tree in anguish, bark digging into her palm, the pain keeping tears out of her eyes. She fought to keep control, finally attaining it just as Eldan himself appeared under the tree, waving at her to come down.
She took a couple of deep breaths to make sure the lump wasn’t going to return, and to steady her nerves. Then she waved back, grinning down at him, as if nothing was wrong.
The faint frown left his brow and he grinned in return.
We’ve more important things to worry about, she told herself as she slipped down the tree as carefully as she had climbed it. Right up at the top is staying alive to reach the Border in the first place.
A rock was digging a hole in Kero’s stomach, but just now she didn’t want to move to dislodge it. “Where are they all coming from?” Eldan whispered, as they watched yet another of the Sunlord’s priestesses pause just below the entrance to their current hiding place. She pulled back the cowl of her robe, and stared up at the face of the cliff above her. It looked blank from that angle; the ledge they were lying on obscured the entrance, and Kero had seen it only because she had been up in a sturdy oak spying out the land when she’d spotted it. And it couldn’t be reached from the floor of the valley; they’d had to backtrack and come up over the ridge to get down to it.
Hopefully that meant no one would look for it. Except the priestess, like all the others, seemed to have sensed something.
From up here, they couldn’t make out her features; they could just barely distinguish her face from her blonde hair. The scarlet robe she wore was a sure sign of high rank, though—the only rank above scarlet wore gold, and there were never women in gold robes. Against the green meadow below them, she looked like some kind of exotic flower.
“I have no idea where they’re all coming from,” Kero whispered back. That was at least half a lie; at this point she was fairly sure they were tracking Need somehow. It would make sense, since neither she nor Eldan ever used unshielded Mindspeech. Since magic was forbidden, it followed that the priesthood had some way of detecting its use. And Need was created with magic; even when she wasn’t actually doing something, she must be “visible” to someone capable of detecting magic. And no doubt she could hide herself, but she had to know she was endangering her bearer, and her bearer wouldn’t know that until a priestess actually was in sight.
Kero held her breath, waiting. Surely this time the camouflage would break; they’d be spotted. This red-robe was the highest ranking priestess they’d seen yet; all the rest had been white-, blue-, or black-rank. Surely this time would mark the end.
The woman pulled her hood back up over her head, and rode off across the meadow.
Kero let out the breath she’d been holding.
Eldan put his arm across her sh
oulders and hugged her wordlessly. She snuggled into his shoulder for a moment, content just to enjoy it, and his warm presence.
But her mind wouldn’t stop operating.
That’s the third priestess today. We see two and three search parties every day. It’s getting harder and harder to find a place to hide by dawn.
Some of that was to be expected; they were right on the Border now, and there were regular Border patrols all the time. Eldan had mentioned that, and mentioned, too, how he’d avoided them in the past. But he had not mentioned ever seeing the clergy out on these hunts before, an omission Kero found interesting.
But although he was trying to pretend that this kind of activity was entirely normal, it was fairly obvious that he was worried. Quite worried.
Which meant that a good number of these patrols were new, and probably called out to find them.
He knew the priestesses were able to pick up something about them, but he didn’t know what, and so far Kero had been able to keep Need’s abilities from him. So far he hadn’t asked any awkward questions, and so far he didn’t seem to have made the connection that only the female clergy were detecting whatever it was. It helped that he seemed utterly incurious at moments when she’d have expected a barrage of questions. That was odd, but no odder than the fact that she was literally unable to talk about anything involving real magic to him. Absolutely, physically, unable. She’d tried, and in the end, couldn’t get the words out of her mouth.
She suspected Need had a hand in both those conditions, though she had no idea what it was doing, or why. But she was getting used to that.
She didn’t like it, but she was getting used to it.
And it was doubtless the fact that Need was attuned to women’s problems that was the reason for the priestesses detecting her, and not the priests.
That maddeningly logical part of her kept right on reasoning as she tried to enjoy the moment with his arm around her. We’ve had three narrow escapes, it said, scoldingly. Each one got narrower than the one before it. There’s no doubt about it: Need is bringing in the priestesses. We’re never going to make it across the Border together.
He’d given his word to send her his ransom, and she had every reason to believe his word was good. She had no logical reason why she should stay with him. In fact, if she wanted to ensure his survival, she should leave him. With the target traveling westward, this little section of the Border should be empty long enough for him to get across.
She inched back into the cave, grating along the sandstone, with a hollow feeling in the bottom of her stomach. She’d known all along she was going to have to face this moment, but that didn’t make it any easier now that it was here.
She stood up and dusted herself off once inside. It would be stolen rations tonight, Karsite rations. One of those narrow escapes had been just this morning, and had ended in the death of the scout who’d discovered them making their way across the ridge. His body was in a tiny hollow just below the trail, stuffed into a cavelet barely big enough to conceal him. His horse had been run off in a state of sheer animal panic, thanks to Eldan. His rations now resided in their saddlebags. Eldan had been a little squeamish about robbing the dead, but she’d just taken everything useful without a comment, and after a moment, he’d done the same.
Eldan joined her back in the tiny cave. There was just barely enough room for them and the horses, though she could never bring herself to think of Ratha as a “horse.” She never looked at him without a feeling of surprise that there was a “horse” standing there, and not another human.
Eldan handed her a strip of dried meat. She accepted it, and pulled her water skin out of the pile of her belongings.
“So,” he said, around a mouthful of the tough, tasteless stuff, “It looks like tomorrow isn’t going to be a good day to try a crossing.”
She swallowed her own mouthful. It had the consistency of old shoes, and was about as appetizing. She found herself longing for the Skybolts’ trail-rations, something she’d never have anticipated doing. At least those had been edible.
“We probably ought to hole up here for a while,” she offered, feeling her heart sink and tears threaten at the lie. “Probably they’ll give up when they don’t find anything, and leave this area clear for us to make a try.”
Eldan nodded. “That sounds right. And we’ve got supplies enough. All we need is water, and one of us can go down after it about midnight.”
“I’ll do that tonight,” she replied. “I’m better at night-moves than you are.”
He smiled in the way that made her blood heat. “I’ll agree to that,” he said huskily. “And we’ve got all day to wait. What do you say to doing something to make the time pass a little faster?”
“Yes,” she said simply, and reached for him even as he reached for her, desperation making her want him all the more. For this would be the last time, the very last time....
She shielded her thoughts and exercised every wile she had to exhaust him, both out of a desire for him that made her ache all over, and out of the need to make him sleep so deeply that little would wake him—and certainly not her departure.
Then she dozed in his arms, wanting to weep, and far too tired to do so.
Finally the sun set, and she woke out of a restless half-sleep full of uneasy dreams, fragments of things that made no sense.
She extracted herself from his embrace without making him stir, packed up her things, and waited while the sky darkened and the rising moon illuminated the meadow below. Tears kept blurring her vision as they trickled unheeded down her cheeks. She wasn’t even going to get to say “good-bye.”
She’d left a note for him, on top of the remaining rations, advising him to stay where he was for as long as they held out, then make his crossing attempt. She told him that she loved him more than she could ever tell him—and dearest gods, those words had been hard to write—and she told him that she could not go with him. “We’re too different,” she’d said. “And we’re too smart not to know that. So—I took the coward’s way out of this. I admit it; I’m running away. Besides, I hate saying good-bye. And don’t you forget you owe me; I have to replace my gear somehow!”
She didn’t look back at him, where he was curled up against the back wall of the cave; that would only make it harder to leave. Instead, she saddled Hellsbane and strapped on the packs, then led her toward the mouth of the cave, knowing that the familiar sound of hooves on rock would never wake him.
But Ratha was suddenly there, between her and the entrance, blocking her way.
Before she could react to that, a strange voice echoed in the back of her mind. :Where are you going?: it said sternly, :And why are you leaving in stealth?:
She gulped, too startled by this sudden manifestation of Ratha’s powers to do anything more than stare. But the Companion did not move, and finally she was forced to answer him.
Mindspeech was not what she would have chosen if she’d been offered a choice, but if she spoke aloud, she might wake Eldan, and then she’d never be able to leave him.... So although it made her stomach roil to answer the Companion that way, she ordered her thoughts and “spoke” as clearly as Warrl had taught her.
:I have to go,: she told Ratha. :I’m putting Eldan in danger while I’m with him.:
:He was in danger when you found him,: the Companion pointed out with remorseless logic. :What difference does your leaving make?:
She took a deep breath, and rubbed her arms to get rid of the chill this conversation was giving her. :It’s the sword,: she said finally. :It’s magic, and I’m fairly sure that’s what has brought the hunt down on us. More than that, it is magic that only works for a woman, which may be why the priestesses are involved. And it’s very powerful, I really don’t know how powerful.:
The Companion’s blue eyes held her without a struggle. :So,: Ratha said finally. :Your sword must be attracting these women. I agree that may be why no priests have hit on the trail. Why not abandon it?:
:And leave it for them to find?: she flared. :Do you want something like that in the hands of your enemies? It may not let me go, but if it does, be sure it will have a new bearer before the sun dawns. My bet would be on a priestess finding it, which might be good for your land or bad. I don’t think any of us dare take a chance on which it would be.:
:True.: Ratha seemed to look on her with a little more favor. :And by taking this sword of yours away, the hunters all follow you, and you leave the Border here open to our crossing. You sacrifice your safety for ours, becoming a target leading away from us.:
:I think so,: she said with a sigh. :I hope so. I’m going to double back to Menmellith, which would have been our logical move if we’d been blocked here. That should make sense to them, and since they’ve been following the sword and not an actual trail, they’ll follow me and ignore you.:
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