by Myers, Karen
“They’re acting more like armed refugees than an invading army,” Penrys commented to Zandaril.
“What’s the mood of the townsfolk like?” she asked Wan Nozu.
“There’ve been killings, uncontrolled ones like Tak Tuzap’s uncle, and some ugly stuff, but the people are saying it’s not so bad, not what they expected, not like last time, maybe there’s a way to keep doing business if they keep their heads down.”
“Hmm.” Penrys waved a hand at them to tell them to focus on their breakfast for a minute while she thought about it.
“D’ya think something’s driving them, pushing them out?” she asked Zandaril.
“They don’t have much farming land. Mratsanag, it’s very large, but you can’t grow a lot of people on mountains. They’ve got flat coast land further west, on either side of the mountains, but they’ve got neighbors there, too. I wonder if something’s happened.”
He turned to Wan Nozu. “Are these hill people, or just the folk from Nagthari?”
Wan Nozu swallowed his bite. “Mostly hill people, the old tribes, down in the Song Em. The ones in town are more… civilized. At least, the tavern folk said they were like the ones they drove back to Nagthari, before.”
Tak Tuzap piped up. “We know what they want. I found the kitchen folk awake at Kor Pochang’s place. He used to trade with Uncle Tak and he’s on the zopgep, the council. I scratched at the door and they let me in. He’s got an officer there, but they got him a message without the officer seeing, and we had a long talk in the scullery, with the cook standing guard at the door.
“He said what the zopgep hears is that they’ve come to stay, that they had to come. That’s why they brought families and hill-tribes. They mean to live here, and keep peace with us, if they can, or fight if they must. The council’s afraid of being caught between the full might of Kigali and whatever’s behind the Rasesni—they’re fortifying the Gates as best they can, and there’re supposed to be patrols running all over the Craggies in the north.”
“Why only the north?” Penrys asked Zandaril.
“You can’t get an army over the Red Wall, and below Song Em is more mountains and the empty sarq-Zannib, but the Craggies aren’t very high or rugged. North of there is still Kigali, for a while, but the disputed Lomat is just beyond, and the west end of the Craggies joins Garshnag at the Horn.”
At Penrys’s puzzled look, he elaborated. “Mratsanag, the Ram’s Horn—the mountain spine west of here—ends in a pincer of mountains. The south range is Damsnag, the Right Horn, and Garshnag, the Left, is to the north. Between them, they shelter Nagthari, “Between the Horns.” The last eastern peak in Garshnag is called Nakshadzam, the Horn’s Tip—you can see it from a long distance. That’s where Linit Kungzet is, under the Horn, where the upper Seguchi crosses into Nagthari.”
“So, what are you thinking? Some threat coming over the northern part of the mountains and spilling into the Craggies?”
“Maybe. Something like that.” Zandaril said. “Must be big and scary if the hill-tribes have been displaced. Raiders out of Nagthari are one thing. Outsiders haven’t seen the hill-tribes for generations.
“Or it could just be the Kigali army they’re afraid of. If they can hold them at the Gates, what’s to stop them coming in behind them, from the north?”
He paused for a moment.
“If they’re really smart, maybe they want to sit tight in Neshilik and have whatever’s behind them meet the Kigali army, north of the Craggies. That would be very, very clever of this Tlobsung, to bait a trap for his enemy and then duck out of the way of the big fight.”
“And if Kigali wins, and they haven’t been too bloody here, maybe they can work something out,” Penrys said. “But it’s not to their benefit to tell the Kigaliwen what’s coming, is it, or they might not be willing to do the work for them.
“Of course, this is all guesswork. Still, they’ve done what they could to reduce Kigali’s response. At least, to delay it. They tried to stop Chang’s advance, but it didn’t work. That’s maybe as far east as they could send someone in the time they had. How did they know what to try and how Kigali would first react?”
She glanced over at Wan Nozu, and he stopped himself from his next bite.
“Which leads me to my next question, what about wizards?”
Wan Nozu looked uneasy. “You have to know, minochi, the townsfolk, none of us—we’ve never seen a wizard before. Don’t know what they can do. Don’t even know what one would look like. I mean, you two look like foreigners, sure, but not like wizards, if you understand.” He eyed her nervously.
“It’s all right, we won’t be offended,” Penrys told him.
He looked doubtful, but continued. “Well, there was a lot of talk about them. Very quiet talk, looking around the room, as though their neighbors might have turned into wizards overnight. It was unsettling, that.”
Zandaril said, “More likely they wondered about their neighbors informing on them.”
“I suppose. Still, they acted like there were wizards all over, that any one of the Rasesni in town could be one. There was talk that they’d taken back the old temple school in Kunchik, north, over the bridge, and filled it with sinister folk.”
“I’ve got a name,” Tak said. “Kor said that the council had met someone Tlobsung valued. Some thought he was a political adviser, but there were others who whispered ‘wizard.’ Zongchas, they said.”
Penrys looked at Zandaril with a raised eyebrow.
“It’s a good Rasesni name,” he said. At her level look, he spread his hands and added, “Yes, I know I said there were no Rasesni wizards. I must be wrong, I admit it.”
“Looks to me like they’re getting their wizards organized, just the way you admire,” she said, deadpan, and he glared at her.
“Did you two hear about any other foreigners?” Zandaril asked.
Wan Nozu and Tak Tuzap exchanged looks, and Wan Nozu shook his head. “Just Rasesni, and they don’t look much different from us, especially here in Neshilik.”
“Except they don’t wear braids,” Tak said. He laughed. “They all look like soldiers that way.”
“Did they describe what it was the wizards did?” Penrys asked Wan Nozu.
“No. I thought that was funny. I expected to hear about things. It’s like you two, I haven’t seen you do anything, um, wizardly.”
Tak stared at him as if amazed at his daring, and Penrys chuckled.
“It’s not all that impressive, most of the time. Why, would you like to see something?”
Zandaril gave her a hard look and she shrugged.
Wan Nozu faltered. “If you’d like, minochi. It’d be something to tell my children about, after.”
“I’ll see what I can arrange,” she said, dryly.
“You know what we need to do?” Penrys asked Zandaril. She spoke softly, to keep from waking Wan Nozu and Tak Tuzap who were catching up on their lost sleep in the middle of the day.
“What?” Zandaril said.
“Well, we can’t sneak into Tlobsung’s tent and read his orders, especially if he’s the man on top. Right?”
Zandaril nodded.
She waved her hands as she spoke. “Chang’s other scouts will have a lot more to tell him about military preparedness than we can. No, what we can do that they can’t is look for whatever might be driving the Rasesni to invade, find out if that’s what’s happening and what it’s like. That’s the part he really needs to know.”
“What, go west?” he said, “Up into the hills?”
“We can dodge their scouts easily enough.” She tapped her forehead meaningfully. “And we should be able to detect whatever it is from a distance. Then, if we go north, through the Craggies, we’ll come back out to the land between the rivers again, right?”
“And get back to Chang that way,” Zandaril confirmed. “It would take weeks, maybe, living rough.”
“Depends how close the pursuit is. If we go straight north, the shortest way,
then we only have to go west far enough to confirm it. Then we get out as fast as we can.”
She watched his face, unwilling to invade his privacy further to touch his mind and see what he really felt about the proposal.
He cocked his head at their sleeping companions and rumbled, “Can’t take them with us.”
“And that’s a good thing. They won’t like it, though.”
“Wan Nozu will understand, I think,” Zandaril said.
Penrys broke the news in the afternoon, when they sat and ate a late lunch together.
“It’s the right thing for us to do,” she told Tak Tuzap, firmly. “And you can be of no help to us while we do it. Better you go back to Lupmikya with Wan Nozu.”
The boy looked away from her. She could read the resentment and rejection in the set of his shoulders, but he surprised her—he didn’t protest.
“I’ll go back to Kor Pochang’s house,” he said, squaring his back. “I can be more useful there. Maybe he can help me with my uncle’s property.”
Wan Nozu looked over at him in admiration. “Won’t that be dangerous?”
“No more than waiting in Lupmikya to be a hostage.”
Zandaril made a seated bow to both of them. “We are greatly in your debt for the risks you’ve taken and the help you’ve given us.”
Penrys rose and brushed off the crumbs from her breeches. She’d already confirmed that no one else was close enough to hear them.
“I owe you something ’fore you go,” she said.
She surreptitiously fingered the power-stones she’d slipped into her pocket, and whisked the leather cap off of Wan Nozu’s head, spinning it up and out of his reach.
“So you wanted to see some magic, did you?”
She kept it dancing between Wan Nozu and Tak Tuzap for several minutes, smiling at the boyish shouts of laughter, then dropped it to hover before Zandaril’s face, evading his efforts to grab it, before finally settling it delicately back onto Wan Nozu’s head, letting it flutter one last time as it landed.
“There. That’s something a wizard can do.”
CHAPTER 27
Three days later, Penrys and Zandaril were following the rough trails in the Craggies, headed northwest. As Tak Tuzap had advised them to, they’d stolen a boat to cross the Seguchi above the series of stepped waterfalls and rapids that gave Gonglik both its name, The Steps, and its industry as a mover of goods.
Tak had warned them there would be no trading trails that far to the west on the north side of the river and Penrys had grown weary of the rough and trackless terrain. It wasn’t truly steep, and you could walk over most of it without aid—though she was grateful for the walking staff given her by the anonymous miller—but it would present a serious barrier to any army with wagons to move.
They traveled by day, using their mind-sense to look for anyone within range, but Zandaril distrusted relying on that entirely. “People can be seen from further away than we can sense, if the conditions are right,” he’d said, and she was forced to agree with him. They tried to keep to the interior of the hills, but water was easier to find on the outer, and lower slopes, and it was harder to walk invisibly in daylight there.
The sky was overcast, threatening more autumn rains. They trudged and stumbled along, trying to avoid ankle-turning rocks.
“How far to the Horn is it, d’ya think?” she asked Zandaril, just to hear the sound of another voice in this lonely place.
“Not sure. They say you can see it from all over the northwest corner of Wechinnat. Start looking tomorrow, I think. That way.”
He lifted his arm and pointed west and a little south.
Penrys stared off in that direction, but it was just a featureless blue haze. She knew the second highest range of mountains in the world were not too far beyond the horizon, but you couldn’t tell that from here.
They’d lost part of the morning taking shelter when they’d felt two Rasesni scouts somewhere on the ridges northeast of them. Penrys had taken the opportunity while waiting to pull out the second book in their language and read further, taking advantage of the connection with them that made it possible. It was frustrating, to have to steal moments like this. Fully half the book remained unread, and any Rasesni-literate contact she had might be her last. Still, at least it wasn’t raining today, the way it did two days ago, when she’d had to forgo another chance at it.
There was more of a chill in the air, even in these lower hills, than down by the river. The cloak was welcome now more for its warmth, than as a disguise.
Zandaril interrupted her thoughts. “We have food for maybe two weeks, if we’re careful. We’re almost that far from Chang, I think. If we don’t turn around soon…”
“I know, I know.” A hawk screamed overhead, and she looked up at it, almost tripping with her next step. “Just two more days, and I’ll call this theory unproven and head back.”
She smiled over at Zandaril. “At least the packs get lighter, the more we eat.”
A rain shower passed through on the next day, in the early afternoon, and washed the air of its accustomed haze. When Penrys shouldered her pack again and took her first steps, watching her feet to avoid stumbling, she almost ran into Zandaril who had stopped, suddenly.
“There,” he said. “There’s Nakshadzam, the Horn’s Tip.” And he moved aside, so she could see.
Back-lit by the sun, a dark ridge lay athwart their distant path. The higher end was to the south, jutting up above the plain of the upper Seguchi. South of that gap, she could just barely make out the tip of the Damsnag range framing the other side.
She’d thought the Horn would be a single peak, but it ran north and south for a few miles along a smooth ridgeline, only slightly lower at its northern end, high above the hills of the Craggies that piled up at its feet.
“Nagthari’s through the gap, there,” Zandaril said.
She looked for the fort, Linit Kungzet, somewhere near the river and the gap, but the base of the Horn was blocked from her view by the shoulders of the lower slope she stood on.
Penrys cast her mind out as far as she could, in all directions. The clarity in the air was deceptive, and the distances were more than they seemed. It seemed unnatural that no people stirred in this landscape, as far as her mind reached.
Zandaril had shared her cast and felt her disappointment.
“Eyes see further than the mind, sometimes, whatever books may tell us,” he said.
This would be the last day of the search, and Zandaril was relieved by the thought. Tomorrow morning they would set their faces east again, back to Chang and his soldiers.
The ridge of the Horn was close enough now in the late morning light to make out its ragged edges. It wasn’t the sheer barrier it had seemed from a distance, but something eroded, with rough trails. Whatever stone composed it was completely different from the ancient weathered Craggies, like an intrusion placed by giant hands.
He looked back at Penrys, and surprised a smile on her face which wakened one of his own. “One more day,” he said.
“Let’s go north and get out of the Craggies,” she said, “before turning east. We’ll make better time, and we’re less likely to hit Tlobsung’s scouts beyond the hills.”
“Why don’t we swing north now? We could start angling that way.”
She nodded, and he turned right, climbing upward on the broken scree, keeping the Horn on his left. It seemed immediately less oppressive to remove that wall from his path, and his heart lightened. The air was chilly but pleasant, drawing off the heat of his exertion.
He reached the top of his local ridge and stopped to let his breath recover. When Penrys joined him, she paused for her usual scan of the area.
“Hsst!”
Startled, he did his own scan and felt two people moving, north of them and not far away. His eyes flicked around their surroundings, seeking a place to hide, and found a rocky depression, a hole at the base of two trees, partially masked by bushes. There wasn’t room for
both of them inside the hole, but they hugged the ground in and around it and covered themselves with their cloaks.
The two men passed east, out of range, and Zandaril began to pick himself off the ground when Penrys grabbed his arm. “More of them,” she whispered.
He sensed two more pairs of men, both north of them. We mustn’t mind-speak. He tapped his forehead and shook his head, and she nodded in understanding. She moved her mouth to his ear and whispered, “Rasesni. Not the same as the ones in town.”
They hadn’t thought it through well enough, he realized. They forgot they’d be putting themselves in the path of whatever followed the invaders.
He flattened himself, partially covering Penrys with his drab cloak, a better match for the ground than her brown. She muttered into his ear, “Think like a tree.”
It was impossible to still his mind. He tried to make himself part of the ground, but Penrys’s shoulder was warm beneath his chest, and lumpy, and his nose was smashed against the back of her head. He found it difficult to ignore the scent of her hair. Not now, this isn’t the time to think of that.
He closed his eyes, but that just made him focus on his body, so he opened them again and stared at the ground, a couple of inches away, and began counting, slowly.
Nothing happened, and he started to doze off.
*What have we here?*
A strange mind-voice rattled him awake, and he felt Penrys twitch beneath him. He cast his mind out and felt three pairs of men converging on them, and then he couldn’t feel anything with his mind. When he tried to get up, he found he couldn’t move.
CHAPTER 28
Penrys’s arms wouldn’t obey her, and she felt Zandaril’s panic at her back. She couldn’t speak, and she suspected whoever this was could hear her mind-speech if she tried to reach Zandaril privately.
He knows where we are, and if he has mind-speech he knows what we are, too. Might as well try to protect ourselves. I’ve got to play the part of an apprentice from sarq-Zannib. Trapped by the invasion, just trying to get out in an unwatched direction.