by Kyra Halland
“Can I help you?” she asked.
A lump of ice seemed to have settled in Silas’s stomach and another in his throat. He forced himself to speak. “Mrs. Horden? Adelin Horden? I’m Silas Vendine, and this is my wife Lainie. May we come in for a moment?”
She glanced at Lainie. Seeming reassured by the presence of another woman, she said, “Why, yes.” She sounded puzzled, and a bit wary, but she stepped aside and let them in.
Silas stopped just inside the door, not wanting to intrude any further. “Mrs. Horden, I… Well, there’s no good way to tell you this, so I’m just going to say it. It’s about –”
She went pale. “It’s about Garis, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“He’s… he’s dead, isn’t he?”
His throat tightened, and the next few words were some of the hardest he’d ever had to say. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“I thought – I was afraid, when I didn’t hear – Oh!” She dropped to her knees and snatched the skirt of her apron up to her face as deep sobs wrenched her body.
A sting in Silas’s eyes joined the ache in his throat. He had no idea what to say or do, but Lainie knelt down beside the sobbing woman and put her arms around her. “I’m so sorry,” she said. Her words trailed off into tears, and the two women wept together while Silas stood by, feeling helpless.
At length, Mrs. Horden fell still. She wiped her face with her apron and stood, Lainie helping her up. “I’m sorry,” she said shakily. “I think I knew – it had been so long since his last letter – but to hear it, and know there’s no hope –” She wiped another tear away with her hand and smoothed her hair. “Well. I suppose it’s better to know than to go on wondering. Please, would you like to sit down for a bit?” She indicated an upholstered couch and chair set, nothing fancy but still a luxury here in the Wildings. Horden must have provided well for her.
“Thank you.” Silas removed his hat and sat in the chair. Lainie and Mrs. Horden sat down together on the sofa, Mrs. Horden gripping Lainie’s hand as though it was a lifeline.
“I don’t know if I want to know what happened to him,” Mrs. Horden said, “but I have to ask… Do you know?”
“I didn’t see him killed,” Silas replied, “but I found his body immediately afterwards. It was in Ripgap, down in the Bads. It was quick, and he didn’t suffer.” That wasn’t entirely true, but the lie was out of kindness. Horden’s death had been quick, true, but it had also been brutal, and it wouldn’t help Mrs. Horden to know that her husband had been tortured as well. “I made sure he had a proper burial, with the right prayers spoken.”
“Do you know… how he died?” She twisted both of her hands in her apron and didn’t look at him.
Silas decided to spare her the more horrifying details. “He was murdered by a man named Orl Fazar.”
“Murdered!” she gasped. “But why? He was such a good man; who would want to kill him?”
“I’m sure you know, ma’am, the Wildings can be dangerous for any man, good or not.” Silas had debated whether or not to tell her the whole truth about Horden. Now, he decided, truth was what she needed; it was the only thing that would keep her from gnawing herself to death over unanswered questions about the man she had married. “How much do you know about what Garis did for a living?”
“He never told me very much. All I know is that sometimes he would tell me he had to go away for a while to take care of some business, and he didn’t know how long he would be gone. When he was away he wrote to me whenever he had the chance, but he never told me what he was doing. I asked him about it a few times, and he just said I would be happier not knowing. I got the impression he was a bounty hunter, or a lawman of some sort. It couldn’t have been anything wrong or criminal, could it?” Her eyes and voice pled with him to tell her it wasn’t.
“Nothing like that, Mrs. Horden. He was a good man. Never let yourself doubt that. You’re right that he was a bounty hunter, though he never hunted bondservants or other innocent people. You can rest assured of that. But there’s something else, that might come as a shock. Your husband was a wizard.”
She sat stunned and silent for a moment. “A – a wizard? But he was such a good man. I had no idea –”
“There are a lot of bad wizards, but there are some good ones, too. Like my wife. And myself, I hope.”
“You’re wizards, too?” She shifted nervously, glancing from him to Lainie. Then, with obvious effort, she collected herself, settling herself firmly in her seat, folding her hands in her lap, and meeting his eyes again.
“We are,” Silas said. “And I think you know that by telling you this I’m putting our lives in your hands.”
“Yes. Of course. It’s just… All the bad things they say about wizards, but Garis was none of those things – We were together for ten years and more. I knew him. Wizard or no, he was never anything but kind and gentle and fair.” She clutched her apron with both fists. “Tell me the truth – was he hanged?”
“No, ma’am. The man who killed him was also a mage, a wizard. It’s a long story, but I want you to know what kind of man your husband was, what he believed in and what he died for. Garis, like me, was a mage hunter, authorized by the Mage Council in Granadaia to hunt down renegade mages out here in the Wildings. These are mages who come out here in search of wealth and power without regard for the laws that mages are subject to or for the rights and freedoms of the Plain settlers. The Mage Council doesn’t care about the Plain settlers one way or the other; they just don’t want unregulated, uncontrolled mages running wild out here. But some of us do care.
“Horden, like me, was involved with group of mages dedicated to working for rights and equality for Plain people, in opposition to the Mage Council and Granadaian law. The Mage Council, or someone on the Mage Council working on their own, sent Orl Fazar out here to eliminate mage hunters who were associated with this group. Besides your husband, Fazar killed another mage who was part of this group, a man named Verl Bissom, and I was next on his list. My wife managed to kill him first.”
Mrs. Horden looked at Lainie. “You killed the man who murdered my husband?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lainie said.
“He’s dead? Did he suffer?” A startling edge entered the woman’s gentle voice.
Silas spoke up, to spare Lainie from having to recall too much about their time with Fazar. “He experienced a considerable amount of discomfort before Lainie was done with him.”
“Good,” Mrs. Horden said vehemently.
Silas reached down for his knapsack. “I’ve got a few things for you.” He took out Horden’s pack, which he had kept all this time, along with a couple of letters and Horden’s mage ring. “Here are his belongings, which we found with his body.” He handed the pack to Mrs. Horden, who cradled it to her bosom. Then he gave her the letters. “This is the letter he was writing to you at the time of his death, and your last letter to him. I’m sorry to say he never got it; we found it at the Bentwood Gulch mail depot when we were trying to track you down.” He had decided to keep back the torn letters, to spare her the knowledge that her husband’s killer had handled and maybe even read them.
Mrs. Horden unfolded her husband’s last letter to her. As she read it, her face crumpled and she began crying again. When she finished reading, she held the letter to her heart for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said, wiping tears from her eyes.
“I’m the one who’s sorry, ma’am, for having to bring you bad news,” Silas answered. He held out Horden’s silver ring, set with a clear blue-green stone. “This was his mage ring.”
Mrs. Horden took it. “I know this ring. He always wore it as his wedding ring, though I hadn’t given it to him. He said it was a family heirloom.”
She was wearing a wedding ring, a plain gold band, on her left hand. “I think you’ll find that if you’d like to wear it, it’ll fit,” Silas told her. Mage rings lost their magical properties at the death o
f their owner, but Silas had set a new resizing spell on the ring right before they came here, which could be removed if she didn’t want to wear the ring after all.
Mrs. Horden slid the ring onto the fourth finger of her right hand, then gasped. “You’re right. It fitted itself to me. Like – like it belongs –” She broke down crying again. “At least I’ve got something of him besides his letters. In ten years, we never had a child. I suppose I can’t…”
“It isn’t that,” Lainie said.
Mrs. Horden looked at her. “What do you mean?”
Silas took up the subject. It was a delicate thing for a man to discuss with a woman not his wife, but better he did it than Lainie have to talk about something that pained her so. “In Granadaia, when mage children begin to mature, a spell is placed on them to block their fertility. It can’t be removed until they enter into a marriage approved by the Mage Council. It’s to manage the bloodlines, since magical talent is a family trait. Horden would have had that spell placed on him as a boy, and if he never married in Granadaia, it was never removed.”
After another long silence, Mrs. Horden said, “He could have told me.” Her voice was raw with pain. “Why didn’t he ever tell me about himself? Didn’t he trust me?”
“I’m sure he trusted you,” Silas said. “But the knowledge that someone is a mage is dangerous, both for the mage and for the person who knows about him. I believe he was trying to protect you by not telling you.”
“I hope that’s why, and not because he was afraid I wouldn’t love him if I knew. I would have loved him no matter what… But now I’ll never have the chance to tell him that.”
“I think he knows,” Lainie said. “I’m sure he looks in on you from the heavens whenever he can.”
There was nothing else to say after that. Silas stood up and put his hat back on. “We need to be on our way now, Mrs. Horden. Things being the way they are, it isn’t safe for us to stay too close to the Gap for too long.”
“Of course.” Mrs. Horden stood as well. “Thank you for coming this far to tell me about Garis and bring me his things. It was kind of you.”
“If you ever need anything,” Lainie said earnestly, “write to my father. Burrett Banfrey, in Bitterbush Springs. His place is the Double B ranch. I know it’s a long way away, but if you tell him we’re acquainted, he’ll do anything he can to help you.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Horden said as she saw them to the door. “I’ll remember that.”
Outside, Silas and Lainie unhitched their horses from the fence. Silas got ready to mount up, but Lainie stood leaning against Mala, one hand wound into the horse’s mane, her shoulders hunched and shaking. Silas had known that this errand would be hard on her tender heart, but it must have been even harder than he had realized. “Darlin’?” He touched her shoulder.
She spun around. “Don’t you ever leave me!” she cried.
He closed his arms around her. “Lainie –”
“Don’t you die and leave me alone like that!” she wept, pounding her fists against his chest.
“Lainie. It’s all right.”
“I don’t care where we go, or what I have to give up. I just want to go somewhere where I won’t have to be afraid of you getting killed.”
He held her close, feeling the dampness of her tears through his shirt. Finally she understood how he felt about the possibility of losing her. Somehow, though, he didn’t feel like he had won. “We’ll head west, and talk about it along the way,” he said. It was a decision to be made with clear and careful thought, and now that he found himself faced with making it, he couldn’t help questioning himself. It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? He had vowed to keep her safe, and this was the only way.
She nodded against his chest. “I’ll go wherever you think is best. So long as you’re safe, I don’t care.”
* * *
SILAS AND LAINIE rode away from Piney Ridge, setting their course southwest across the Long Valley. Their plan was to cross the Gap River at the place where it flowed out of the Valley through a narrow canyon between the Ghost Hills and the Sundown Hills. From there, they would continue south to Sundown Pass, then leave the Valley and head west. Compared to going north through the Bottleneck, this route would cut a good three months off the journey to where the wagon caravans departed to cross the plains to Amber Bay, and it would avoid the more heavily-populated areas of the northern Wildings. Riding past the Gap on their way south would be risky, but if they kept to the west side of the Long Valley, that would put a safe distance between them and the mages at the pass.
The grassland here, away from the Gap, wasn’t as lush as in the valley right below the pass, and with the dry, hot early autumn weather setting in, the way was dusty. They rode slowly to save the horses’ strength and avoid raising the dust, while Lainie’s thoughts jumbled through her mind as she tried to come to terms with the decision she had just made.
They would be turning their backs on protecting people like Adelin Horden and Paslund and Mr. Nikalsdon and her Pa. She would never see her Pa again; not that she could ever go back to Bitterbush Springs, anyhow. They could invite him to go with them, but she knew he would never leave his ranch, not after he had worked so hard to build it up from nothing, not after he had already lost one home and inheritance when his mother robbed her own family of their land.
And she would never have children. But she had known for a while that this was a vain hope; she just hadn’t wanted to admit it. The Mage Council never would have approved their marriage. There was the wishcatcher the A’ayimat woman Kesta had given her, with its promise that somehow a hidden way would be found, but it was hard to believe in such a vague promise. Would the wish even work if they were going to a land where there was no such thing as magic? What of adopting an orphan – were foreigners allowed to adopt children in those lands across the sea?
On the other hand, they were leaving behind people like Landstrom and Flania’s husband and Mrs. Bington, and the hands who had bragged about hanging wizards and the people who had tried to hang her in Bitterbush Springs. They were leaving behind mage hunters and assassins and the Mage Council. Much as it broke Lainie’s heart to think of going away, she couldn’t banish the memory of Adelin Horden’s grief and of Garis Horden’s lonely grave far away in the hard, barren dirt of the Bads.
Still, they were turning away from what they believed in, and giving up all hope of having children or seeing her Pa again…
A thought came to her. “I’d like to write to my Pa,” she said to Silas. “Tell him where we’re going, and ask him to go look up Mrs. Horden sometime if he’s over this way on the drive.”
Silas glanced at her. “You aren’t thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?”
She shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I? She’s a widow, and my Pa’s a widower, and neither of them are that old –”
He gave her a crooked grin. “Mrs. Horden’s no older than I am. Younger, I’d say.”
“Well, yeah –” It was easy to forget that Silas was so much older than her, thirty-three to her twenty. “I mean, my Pa’s not that old, and not too bad-looking. They could have a baby or two, and then Pa would have someone of his blood to leave the ranch to.” That would ease her conscience a little, at least in the matter of her Pa.
“Let’s get away clear from here, then we can stop and send a letter at Sundown Pass. There’s a mail depot there.”
“Yeah, let’s do that as soon as we can.”
As the day wore on through the afternoon, they continued south and west, angling towards the hills. Silas kept up a constant survey of their surroundings, while Lainie went on trying to convince herself she had made the right decision.
“What’s that?”
Silas’s voice after what must have been a couple of hours of silence startled Lainie out of her thoughts. He was looking back over his shoulder, peering into the distance. She turned to see what had caught his attention. To the southeast, back in the direction of the Gap,
a cloud of dust hung low in the air. After several heartbeats, Lainie realized that whoever was stirring up the dust was heading towards them.
“Riders,” Silas said.
Now Lainie could see the shapes of men and horses in the cloud of dust. Five or six of them, she guessed, and coming on fast. Gralen and his gang? Or – She reached out with her mage senses and was slammed with the presence of power. Fear clenched at her insides. “Mages,” she said.
“And not even trying to hide it. Ride straight for the hills.”
They both kneed their horses into a gallop, heading directly west now rather than southwest, lengthening the angle between themselves and the hunters coming from the southeast. Lainie leaned forward in the saddle and urged Mala on as fast as the mare could run while Silas and Abenar kept pace beside them on the left. If they could make it to the hills, maybe they could lose their pursuers in the rugged landscape or seek refuge with the A’ayimat. It was so far, though; a good thirty leagues lay between them and the safety of the hills. The horses would tire long before they made it that far. But then, so would the hunters’ horses. She and Silas would make it to safety, Lainie repeated over and over to herself as she rode. They had to.
A blast of magic exploded between them, sending grass, rocks, and dirt flying into the air and pelting down on them. Startled, Mala veered to the right while Abenar shot off to the left. Lainie struggled to bring her panicked horse around and close the widening distance between her and Silas, then a second blast sent Mala running even faster in the wrong direction.
Silas reined Abenar around, riding to put himself between Lainie and the hunters. “Ride!” he shouted over the pounding of the horses’ hooves. “I’ll hold them off!”
Lainie couldn’t leave him to face them alone. She fought again to turn Mala back. “No!”