“Got it.”
They moved up the slope, their eyes on the grass at their feet, trying to maintain a slow, steady pace. The sound of their heavy breathing as they labored upwards masked most of the noise around them, but one time when they stopped to rest Kira heard a faint trickling noise off to their right. “This way.”
They angled right, still going upwards, until they stumbled across a small trench wandering down the slope, a stream of water in the bottom splashing its way toward the sea, singing on the rocks with a sound like fairy harps.
Kira, abruptly aware of just how dry her throat was, dropped down beside the stream, lying full length to bury her face in the wonderful, cold, bright splendor of fresh water. She drank, gasped in air, drank, gasped some more, then drank some more. Her mouth numb with the coldness of the water, she splashed it on her face, washing off salt and blood and all the other leavings that had accumulated. “Oh, that’s good.”
“Yeah,” Jason agreed, lying beside her. “How long has it been since you drank your fill of fresh water?”
“It’s been a while,” Kira said. “I guess you haven’t done that since you left Gullhaven. Did I ever thank you for that?”
“Let’s see, you keep telling me that you love me, so I think that covers it,” Jason said, grinning at her.
“I think I finally washed the taste of things I don’t want to taste any more out my mouth,” Kira sighed. She leaned over and drank again, then splashed water over her neck to clean the salt off it as well. “I want to take a bath. Just pull off all my clothes right now and wash every part of my body and— What is that look on your face, Jason? Are you really thinking about that? Now?”
“I’m a guy,” Jason said.
“You also said you were tired! Sorry to disappoint you, but you won’t be seeing anything of me today that you haven’t already seen!” She hesitated, then leaned forward and dunked her head as far as she could into the frigid water, scrubbing her hair furiously. She hadn’t been able to clean it since being kidnapped. The cold was briefly excruciating, then she pulled her head out, combing her hair with her hands and feeling better than she had for a long time.
Jason was eyeing her. “How bad did that hurt?”
“Not too much. You get numb pretty quick. It’s like scrubbing yourself with ice.”
“You make it sound like fun.” Jason bent down, flinching as he ducked his own head in water. He stayed that way for several seconds, hands rubbing over his head and neck, then pulled out and stared around, shivering with cold. “That’s a real wake-up.”
Kira smiled and helped him comb his hair into shape. She pulled the bottles from the front of her jacket, finding that one had cracked sometime since the boat had hit the rocks. But three more were intact. She filled them from the stream, jamming the corks back into place.
“I’ll carry two of them,” Jason said.
“Thanks,” Kira said, passing them to him, realizing now that her thirst was slaked just how hungry she was. “It's too bad this little rill is too small and fast for any fish to live in it.”
“Yeah. Right now I could eat one scales and guts and all.” He shoved the bottles into the deep pockets of his coat, looking around. “We’ve gotten pretty high up. I didn’t realize how much we’d climbed, which is kind of funny considering how much I hurt from climbing.”
“Tell me about it.” Kira came to her feet cautiously, looking back the way they had come. The cliff blocked her view of the coastline, but she could see one of the Imperial ships moving offshore. Which meant that ship could see her and Jason. “They’re watching us. They know where we are. We have to get to the top of this slope, and then move out of sight of the sea.”
“What’s inland like?” Jason asked. “Have you been near here before?”
“I’ve been in the Northern Ramparts,” Kira said, “but only in the parts west of here, around Alexdria. I think we went to Cristane once when I was little, but I don’t remember much about that. There are trails and roads through the Ramparts, so we just have to head north inland until we’re out of sight of the sea and then bear west, watching for any paths we can use. Even the best places are going to be pretty rough going, though.”
“I sure wish that Mage Alera was nearby with her Roc. What are our odds of finding food?” Jason asked.
“Not good,” Kira admitted. “Anything in these parts of the mountains is going to be small and fast, and we can't set snares and wait around for something to get caught. Even if we stumble across a mountain lake I don’t know if we’ll find fish in it.”
Jason struggled to his feet. “Do we have to go to Marida? What if we find a road to Alexdria?”
“Alexdria is farther off, but any of the Free Cities would protect us.” Kira rubbed her face, not wanting to think about how much farther they had to go up the slope. “Our problem is that we’re too close to the border with the Empire, and none of the Free Cities are anywhere near the border with the Empire. Any city too close to that border would have become part of the Empire whether it wanted to or not.”
“So we got a schlep,” Jason said, looking up the slope.
“A what?”
“A long hike.”
“Why didn’t you just say…? Never mind,” Kira said. “It’s my own fault for falling in love with a guy from another world. Mother warned me about this!”
“She did?” Jason asked as they began trudging up the slope again. “Your mother warned you to not get involved with a guy from another world?”
“Yeah, she’s been telling me that for years.”
“For years? Aren’t I the only guy in your age range from another world that’s ever been here? I only got here about six months ago!”
“Yes,” Kira said, “but what Mother meant was that some people might as well be in their own worlds, and if you end up wanting a guy like that, you’ll get his world along with him. She meant like my father, who lives a lot in Mage world, which is this world but an illusion.”
“Speaking of Mages,” Jason began.
“Not feeling anything,” Kira said. “Maybe because I’m worn out. I might be able to use my Mage powers again in an emergency. Mountains aren’t as good for finding power as lowlands are, but they’re a lot better than oceans and seas.”
They headed upwards again, not trying to push themselves any harder because each step already required an effort. Kira kept them near the small stream so they could take occasional breaks to get quick drinks.
Her eyes on the ground at her feet, Kira was surprised when they finally came up against a sheer rock face down which the stream cascaded in ribbons of clear and white foam and silver. She stumbled to a halt, breathing heavily, looking to the right and the left. This cliff face was only about three lances high, but still looked daunting.
“I think we can get up it over there,” Jason said, pointing to their left. “See where part of the cliff has given way? There’s a fall of rock we can climb.”
“Yeah. Let’s rest a little first. We should be way ahead of the Imperials, and I’m worried about trying those rocks when we’re this tired.”
Kira turned to study the way back towards the coast. The slope they had come up seemed to fall away at a dizzying rate, ending at the cliff edge with nothing beyond it but the sea. She grabbed Jason to steady herself, grateful that her experience climbing the masts of sailing ships had helped her learn to cope with heights.
The three surviving Imperial ships were all visible from here, steaming slowly back and forth. Kira squinted, wishing that she had a far-seer. “Can you tell if the longboats are back with any of those ships? I think I see one or two.”
“Maybe,” Jason said, shielding his eyes with his flat hand. “Yeah. At least one.”
“Blast. That means they probably got the people in them landed.”
“Unless they gave up,” Jason suggested.
“Weren’t you the guy who reminded me that these guys aren’t giving up? If they've gotten more people ashore, they de
finitely haven’t gotten up the cliffs yet.”
“Do you see that?” Jason said, pointing to the west. Kira followed his gesture and saw a tiny, vague shape almost lost in the haze. “Is that a ship?” he asked.
“It might be. I wonder whose ship it is? And whether it’s coming this way?”
“It’s coming from the west. Wouldn’t that make it a Free Cities ship?”
“Not necessarily,” Kira said. She jogged her chin toward the east. “The Empire’s northern flotilla is based at Sandurin. They routinely patrol out past the mid-point of the Sea of Bakre because the Empire has never renounced its claim to rule the entire sea.”
Jason grimaced. “I guess it doesn’t matter. We can’t wait around to find out. And even if it is a Free City ship, the Imperials have three ships to its one.”
Still bothered a bit by the dizzying view, Kira sat down, breathing slowly and deeply. “Let me know when you’re ready to tackle that cliff fall.”
“I think we’d better rest some more before we try it.”
He sat down next to her, their shoulders touching in reassuring contact that she welcomed. “Do you remember when I threatened to hurt you if you touched me?” Kira asked.
“I don’t recall thinking of that as a threat,” Jason said. “More like a sure thing. I wasn’t tempted to find out. Did you ever…?”
“Did I ever what? If it involves boys, the answer is probably not.”
“No,” Jason said. “Foresight. About you and me. Didn’t your mother say that your father saw them in the future, being married and all, soon after they’d first met?”
“He did,” Kira said. “But he didn’t realize they were married until Mother explained what the promise rings they were both wearing in the vision meant. She was…unhappy when she learned about that.”
“Why? She didn’t like him?”
“She liked him fine. Mother was already in love with him. But it’s that destiny thing. Who wants to be told ‘you’re going to marry this guy’ as if you don’t really have a choice in the matter? Although,” Kira added, “Father saw himself in that vision, too, which meant it was a possibility, not something sure to happen. So Mother had the choice. I’m sort of glad she decided to go ahead and marry him.”
“Me, too. I like a world with you in it.” Jason leaned his back against the rock. “Being able to see the future, possible futures anyway, should be a big help to this world, but I get the impression it isn’t.”
“Sometimes it is. Usually Mage visions don’t help at all because you can’t put them in any context,” Kira explained. “Mother says the visions Father had during the war didn’t help them, because they couldn’t understand what they were doing in the visions or why until they actually reached that point in time. Oh, yeah, like that vision Father had six months ago of you and me being chased through mountains? How much good did that do us?”
Jason looked around, shaking his head. “We didn't know where we'd be, or when, or why, or…anything that would have helped. Anything that could have told us what we should do to keep it from happening.”
“Keep it from happening? You can't.” Kira fell silent, depressed.
“What?” Jason asked. “You’ve got that sad look.”
“Father had another vision before Dorcastle, of Mother looking like she was dying,” Kira finally said. “He told me he did everything he could to avoid that, and it happened anyway.”
“But you haven't— Have you?”
“No. What if I did? What if I saw a vision of you dying? I couldn’t save you the way Father did Mother. I don’t have that ability. Only a handful of Mages, the most powerful and skillful, have been able to do similar things. I don’t want to see something like that and know it’s coming.”
“Yeah, that’d be an awful thing to see coming,” Jason said. “But, did you ever have a good vision of me?”
“No. Sorry. Remember, my foresight abilities didn't appear until the day your ship arrived from Urth.”
“What if it had started earlier than that? Maybe a year ago? And you’d had a vision of us sitting here right now?”
She laughed. “I would have said, Who is that guy? Why is he touching me? Why do I look like I’ve spent a few weeks being bounced around in the back of a wagon full of rocks and dirt? What’s happened to my hair? Why am I laughing? Am I going to go crazy? The only thing I would have been sure of was that if anything was wrong it would be my mother’s fault!”
“So it wouldn’t have been too helpful.” Jason looked toward the sea. “Suppose a couple of years ago somebody had shown me a picture of you and said ‘If you get to know this girl, a lot of people are really, seriously going to be trying to kill you someday.’ That would have bothered me a little when I first saw you. It probably would have messed things up a lot. Hey, that story I tell about the Trojan War? The Iliad?”
“Yeah? Hey, that’s where I heard about those Greek people!”
“The ones with goddesses,” Jason said. “Yeah. Wow, you looked good in that dress. Anyway, remember the Greeks had been trying to capture the city and built the big wooden horse? There was this one Trojan woman named Cassandra who could see the future.”
“Cassandra was a Mage?”
“No, she was cursed by the gods. They made it so she could see the future, but no one would ever believe her. She knew the horse would be big trouble, but no one listened to her.”
Kira snorted. “I bet they made up the part about the gods cursing her so no one would believe her. They just didn’t listen to her and then wanted to blame her for them not listening.”
Jason stared at her. “I wish I’d thought of that when I did a report on the Iliad. You know this world is named after a Greek goddess, right? Demeter.”
“How many times have we been over this? This world is named Dematr,” Kira said. “Day-mat-er.”
“The Greek goddess of the earth was Demeter—”
“Dematr.”
“And she—” He suddenly stopped talking.
“And she?” Kira prompted.
“She had a daughter, and the lord of the underworld kidnapped her to be his wife,” Jason said as quickly as possible.
Kira exhaled slowly. “What happened? Did the daughter escape? Did her mother rescue her?”
“Sort of. She finally convinced the other gods to make the lord of the underworld give her daughter back, but because the daughter had eaten some food while in the underworld, she forever after had to spend part of the year with the lord of the underworld as his wife. That’s what winter supposedly was, the time when her daughter was in the underworld and Demeter was too sad for anything to grow.”
Kira stared into the distance. “The Imperials tried to feed me food with drugs in it. If I’d eaten it, I wouldn’t have been able to escape.”
“This isn’t that story.”
“No. My story won’t end like that.” Kira spotted something near the cliff edge. “Here they come.” She saw the figures, tiny with distance, struggling up over the edge of the cliff. “See? They’re exhausted. We could’ve—” More figures came up, spread out for dozens of lances on either side. “—been trapped,” Kira finished. “It’s a good thing I listened to you.”
“At least we’ve got a big lead,” Jason said.
“Not nearly big enough.” Kira stood up. “Look at all of them. Maxim must have stripped most of the crews off at least a couple of those ships. And they’re going to have food to keep them going, which we don’t. Let’s get up that rockfall and out of their sight.”
“It’s getting dark,” Jason said as they approached the fall of rock that offered a path up this cliff. “How well can we move when it gets dark?”
“I don’t know. We can’t afford to walk off a cliff. We’ll improvise, Jason.”
“I’m with you,” he said.
She looked out to sea for a moment, the three Imperial ships still visible just off the coast. “I wonder if Mother and Father have heard anything about what happened in Caer Ly
n? If the Imperials tried to keep anyone from sending the information, people elsewhere might just be hearing about it, days later. My parents might not be able to come themselves if the Imperials are stirring up trouble elsewhere, but they’ll figure things out and send help, Jason. I know they will. We just have to stay ahead of the Imperials until the help gets to us.”
They clambered up the rocks, already tired, more and more Imperial pursuers coming up onto the top of the sea-facing cliffs behind them.
Chapter Nine
The rockfall was helpful but also treacherous. “Like a minor character in an action movie,” Jason commented.
Kira paused in her climb to glare at him. “Jason, if we die out here, please do me the favor of ensuring that your last words are something I can understand!”
By the time they made it up the last segment of the cliff the sun was low in the west, their path already shadowed by the bulk of mountains blocking the light. Kira felt the sweat on her grow unpleasantly chill as the warmth of the sun gave way rapidly to the cold of the breezes whipping among the crags.
From the top of the small cliff, she looked back one last time at the now-distant cliffs fronting the sea. The Imperials who had come up the cliffs were forming into groups, some of them just starting up the slope, their paths still illuminated by the last rays of the sun, their shadows stretching out beside them in long patches that created the illusion of vastly more pursuers.
Kira turned to look around. To the west, a sheer wall of rock reared toward the darkening sky. Even in full daylight that might be too steep for them to attempt. East offered a series of ledges heading upward. North was another slope, covered with scree and larger stones.
“That’s going to be treacherous to walk through at night,” Jason said. He looked haggard, sweat forming small streaks down his face, his chest heaving with deep breaths.
“It’s better than the alternatives,” Kira said. “Just don’t fall.”
“Have you noticed that you say things like that, as if I need to be told not to fall if I can help it?” Jason said. “And that you usually tell me something like that while you’re doing something like shoving me off a moving train?”
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