“Time to find out where the well is. Jorhan said there was one here somewhere.” Beltur stopped. He could see and sense that Jessyla was shivering. “You sit close to the hearth until you warm up.”
“I’m all right.”
“You will be … once you warm up.”
“I … I could stand to warm up.”
“Just stay put at least until you stop shivering.”
Beltur should have realized that her coat was nowhere near as warm as his was. You should have known … and she never said a word.
He did find the well, behind a door on the north side of the barn, but the water he drew up felt chaos-tinged. He swirled order into it, and promptly got very dizzy, so dizzy he had to sit on the side of the well for a time. He was still sitting there when Jessyla appeared, pale, and still shivering slightly.
“Are you all right?”
“I think so.” Except when he started to stand, the well room seemed to swirl around him, and he sat down again. “I’ve done more than I thought. Can you get me one of those acorn cakes and the water bottle?”
“I can do that.”
Beltur lowered his head. That helped a little. Had he really done all that much? Or had all the sensing through the snow worn him out? You also haven’t eaten since before fifth glass this morning, and you’ve done a lot of magery, especially in dealing with Cohndar and Waensyn.
Jessyla reappeared with the package of acorn cakes and the water bottle. “I think I need some, too.”
Sharing the water bottle, they both ate slowly. A good quint passed before Beltur could move without dizziness. While Jessyla was still shivering intermittently, she was no longer pale.
Beltur sensed that the water no longer held chaos, and he poured it from the chained pail into another bucket—after using a hint of chaos, tentatively, to clean the second bucket. “I need to water and feed the horses.”
“Take your time.”
The way he felt, Beltur wasn’t about to rush anything, and he didn’t, first returning to the west side of the way station, which was divided into two sections by a chest-high wooden wall, and ushering the three mounts into the north side, which seemed a shade warmer to Beltur. Then he unsaddled and watered the horses, which required several buckets to fill the trough. After that, he groomed the horses, while Jessyla unloaded the packhorse. Finally, he spread some of the fodder from the big bag into the wooden manger, adding grain in three separate places, and watching to make sure each horse got grain, before returning to the hearth, where Jessyla had dragged the sole trestle table and a bench near the fire, and had set one of the meat pies on the hearth stones to warm.
“Are you done?” she asked.
“For now. I’ll have to get the horses more water later. There’s really not enough fodder and grain for them for more than a few days.” If that.
“You have enough silvers to buy some, don’t you?”
“It might be possible if there’s anyone close enough to the road who has horses.”
“You need to sit down and eat.” She motioned for him to join her on the bench. “It’s getting warmer at last. I added more wood to the fire. We’ll need to sleep close to the hearth.”
Beltur could see the candle lying on the table, clearly snuffed out. He smiled briefly. Jessyla wasn’t one to waste anything. “I brought one heavy blanket.”
“So did I. Two might be enough, but we still have our coats, once they dry out.”
Beltur looked at her. “I never planned for things to happen this way. I was saving silvers. I’d planned to buy us a house in a year or so.”
“I know.” After a moment, she added, “Sometimes, things are meant to be. You weren’t meant to be a white in Fenard. We weren’t meant to stay in Elparta.”
Beltur had his doubts about what was meant to be or not to be, but refrained from saying so, instead soaking in the warmth from the fire.
“I know you don’t believe in that,” Jessyla went on. “I do. Mother does, deep inside, but she won’t say anything about it.”
“And your aunt?” asked Beltur.
“Auntie believes most of all in the silvers she can count. That’s why I never told her about all the ones you gave me.”
“But they were for you and your mother.”
“We used them. We just never told her.”
“That was why she wanted you to consort Waensyn.” That scarcely needed to be said, Beltur knew.
“You’ll do far better than he would have. You make things and do things. He just took.”
“I still worry about taking you from your family.”
“You didn’t take me. I chose. You couldn’t have taken me anywhere if I didn’t want to go.”
He laughed softly. “I shouldn’t ever forget that.”
“No. You shouldn’t.”
But she smiled after she spoke, Beltur could see.
“We need to eat and to get some rest.”
Beltur nodded. “I am tired.”
“Not too tired. I hope.”
Beltur hoped that the ruddy firelight concealed the way his face flushed.
XXX
Beltur woke on threeday morning nestled close to Jessyla. His face was chill, but nothing else was. His side was also sore from lying on the hard and warped wood floor.
She turned to him, then kissed him on the cheek, wrapping her arms around him. “You were sweet. I think we need more practice.”
Beltur flushed, knowing she was right, but also feeling more than willing.
“Not now, dear.”
He knew she was right, but that didn’t make getting the rest of his clothes on any easier … and he was definitely chilled by the time he had his trousers, tunic, and boots on. The last thing he put on was the City Patrol medallion.
“You took the patrol medallion. Good. You earned it.”
“I thought so. I’m not sure the Council would agree.” He started to turn away as she began to dress herself.
“You don’t have to do that. We are consorted.”
Beltur flushed again, but he took Jessyla at her word, just enjoying watching her for the very few moments it took her to get into her healer greens.
“Is it still snowing?” she asked after sitting on the bench and pulling on her boots.
“I don’t think so, but I’ll look.” Beltur walked to the door, noticing the greater chill the farther he moved from the coals remaining in the hearth. But before opening it, he let his senses range over the area outside and the road. He sensed no one and no large animals, except for the horses in the way station itself. Only then did he unbar the smaller door and peer out.
It was earlier than he’d thought, but the sky was clear, the grayish green color it often took on just before dawn, and his breath was an icy plume in the bitter air outside. Something less than fifteen digits of snow covered the path from the way station, and Beltur didn’t see any new tracks on the road, just the snow-covered depressions that remained from their mounts.
Just to be on the safe side, he re-barred the door and walked back to Jessyla, who hugged him fiercely for a moment.
“It’s just before dawn, and the snow’s stopped.”
“Then we need to eat and get moving if we want to catch up with Jorhan and the traders.”
“There are a few other things we need to do.”
“You take care of the mounts. I’ll see what else we can eat … besides acorn cakes.”
“You don’t like them?”
“They’re food. They’re also bitter, and they don’t taste of much except bitterness.”
Beltur hadn’t thought they were that bitter, but he also hadn’t thought that they’d tasted like much of anything. “We probably ought to save the other meat pie.”
“I’d already thought that.”
Almost a glass passed before the two left the way station, after Jessyla had found some travel bread in the provisions sack, along with a small jar of berry preserves, and a large wedge of cheese, from which she had cut se
veral slices. The road was as of yet untraveled, but Slowpoke didn’t seem to mind the ten to fifteen digits of snow above the packed base. From what Beltur could tell, the base was hard-packed snow, and while there might have been ice farther down, there didn’t seem to be any ice shards that might have cut Slowpoke or the two other horses.
Riding through the new-fallen snow was a bit slower than it had been on twoday, and Beltur found himself riding with his eyes closed and using his senses much of the time because of the glare caused by the reflection of sunlight from the snow, light that brought little warmth.
Sometime after eighth glass, Beltur saw a set of tracks in the road ahead. As they neared the hoofprints and the wide runner traces of a sledge—in fact, several sledges—Beltur saw that they came down a side lane that ran due south of the Axalt road.
“Those look like they might belong to Jorhan and the traders.”
“Where did they come from?” asked Jessyla.
As they drew closer, Beltur studied the traces and looked southward, where he could see several lines of smoke coming from what looked to be a stead several hundred yards from the main road. Or could it be an inn? But an inn that far from the road? Or had one of the traders made an arrangement with the steadholder?
He shook his head. While an inn or a hospitable stead might have been a better place to stop, there had been no way that he and Jessyla could have gone any farther the night before. “There’s a stead or an inn down that lane. It must be a lane of some sort.”
“We might not even have seen it in the dark.”
“You might be right.”
“Might?”
Behind his scarf, Beltur winced. “You’re right. We were cold and tired.”
“How long ago did they come this way, do you think?”
“We left the way station pretty early. I’d think that we might be able to catch up with them sometime today. Maybe by midafternoon?”
“You don’t sound that certain,” replied Jessyla, a hint of laughter following her words.
“That might just be because I’m not.”
For the next glass, Beltur said little, studying the tracks of the party before them, hoping it happened to be the traders, especially since he knew nothing of the way ahead, only that it could take as little as four days or as long as an eightday to reach Axalt, about which he knew even less, except that it was reputed to take those not in favor in Gallos, Spidlar, or Certis, and perhaps elsewhere. He knew that they were likely more than two kays behind the others, because he could sense close to that far now that the snow had stopped and the sky remained clear.
The snow on each side of the road seemed to grow higher with each passing kay, so that his eyes, even while he was mounted, were only a yard or so above the snow, and when he dismounted to check Slowpoke’s hooves to make sure ice was not building up there, he could barely peer over the white barrier on each side of the road.
Then slightly before first glass, they stopped to rest and eat some acorn cakes, along with drinking some water. Beltur could sense that the horses needed water, but what was in the water bottle wouldn’t help much, and trying to find a stream under all the snow wasn’t exactly practical. Nor did he have any container in which to pour the water.
At that thought, he stopped and shook his head. An open containment could handle that. If he just put a containment around some snow that looked clean, added a little chaos for heat, and then shifted the containment to allow the horses to drink …
In the end, however, it took some four tries to get it right, because the first time there wasn’t enough snow. The second time, while there was enough snow to create a bucketful of water, in amid the snow was a sizable horse dropping. Beltur was more careful of that the third time, but the heat melted the snow on one end of the containment that he hadn’t anchored, and the water ran out. The fourth time worked, and Slowpoke lapped up the warm water almost greedily. Beltur had to repeat the process for each of the other horses. He was fairly certain he hadn’t overwatered them, but he wasn’t sure how soon it would be before he had to repeat the process.
A quint or so after they resumed riding, he began to sense riders and mounts ahead of them, around a long sweeping turn in the road. “There are travelers ahead of us. I can’t tell how many yet.”
“The tracks in the road look fresh, and we just passed some horse droppings that hadn’t frozen.”
“I just hope it’s Jorhan and the traders.”
“Aren’t they the most likely?”
“I’d think so, but the way the snow’s been packed, there are more winter travelers than I thought.” He paused, then said, “Maybe I’m being overly cautious, but I’d like to get closer to them before they see us. I’m going to put a concealment around us. After I do, tell me if you can sense where I am and where the packhorse is.”
“I can do that.”
Beltur raised the concealment and waited.
“I can sense everything for twenty or thirty yards. After that … it just gets fuzzy.”
“That’s good enough. So long as you can sense where Slowpoke and I are, you can stay on the road.”
“I can do better than that. I can sense the sides of the road.”
Beltur smiled. “That’s even better. You’ll improve with practice. And I did say that you are more than a healer.”
“Yes, you did. I’m glad you did.”
So am I. Beltur lifted the concealment. “We won’t need that for another kay or so, after where the road goes around that hill ahead.”
“You did something like making a shield when you watered the horses, didn’t you?”
“I created a containment. It’s what I had to do to restrain lightfingers and cutpurses. Except with the horses, the containment was much smaller and open on top.”
“I could feel that, but … there were tiny black coils and fuzzy white coils, and the black ones sort of confined the fuzzy ones.”
Beltur didn’t sense order and chaos quite that way, but he knew most mages sensed them differently. “I sense them a bit differently, but that sounds right.”
“How do you shape them into a containment or a shield?”
“I picture them in my thoughts the way I want them to be. It took me a long time to get it to work.”
“You said Taelya could already do that.”
“I have the feeling she’d been working at it secretly for some time.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“You mean that you’ve been able to sense order and chaos for much longer, but haven’t been able to shape or use it?”
Jessyla nodded.
“Maybe we need to think about a different way for you to think about them.”
“But they are what they are.”
Beltur managed not to sigh.
“You’re humoring me.”
“What you’re doing isn’t working as well as you want it to. I’m just suggesting a change. If you don’t like the change I’m suggesting, then think of a different way that feels better to you.”
“I just might.”
Beltur hid a wince. “It’s hard to explain, because every mage, and probably every healer, senses order and chaos differently.”
“You said that.”
“I do repeat myself sometimes.” He managed a rueful and dry tone.
“I’m sorry. It’s just…”
“So frustrating?”
“Yes.”
“I do understand that.”
“I know.” Jessyla sighed.
They rode a good hundred yards without speaking before Beltur said, “I’m going to have to conceal us now. When we get closer, we’ll have to stop talking, because the concealment doesn’t hide sounds.”
“I didn’t think it did.”
Another half glass passed before Beltur and Jessyla neared the last sledge, the one Beltur thought might be Jorhan’s. He waited until he was certain none of the riders were looking back before he lifted the concealment. He immediately could see for
certain that the trailing sledge was Jorhan’s, as was the mount beside the sledge horse, and presumably the bundled rider was indeed the smith.
“Jorhan!”
The smith jerked his head around. “Beltur! Where the frig did you come from?”
Beltur rode forward, closer to the rear of the sledge, before replying. “From Elparta to your smithy to the way station last night. We left early this morning, and I hoped the traces we found were yours.”
“Hold up, ahead!” shouted Jorhan. “The mage is here!” As soon as Jorhan halted the sledge, he turned in the saddle to face Beltur. “I’ve been worrying about you two. We didn’t stop at the way station. Karmult said the water there was bad.”
“It was,” agreed Beltur, “but we managed.”
“He knew a stead where he’s stopped before.” Jorhan looked at Jessyla as she reined up her mount beside Slowpoke. “Pleased to meet you, Healer. I can see why he didn’t want to leave you behind.”
Jessyla smiled politely. “I told him he’d better not.”
Jorhan laughed. “She knows her mind.”
“She always has.”
“Best I introduce you to the others.” Jorhan motioned.
The rider escorting the second sledge eased his mount back beside Jorhan.
“Trader Karmult, this is Beltur, the black mage. He’s the one who helped forge the cupridium.” Jorhan looked inquiringly to Beltur.
“And this is Jessyla. She’s a healer, and also my consort.”
The sandy-haired and bearded man nodded. “Having a mage and a healer can’t but help when we reach the foothills before Axalt. There are sometimes brigands there.”
When the other rider appeared, Jorhan went on. “This is Vaenturl. He’s from Vergren. He trades whatever he can. Vaenturl, this is Beltur, the one I told you about … and his consort Jessyla. She’s a healer.”
Beltur wondered about the trader, but then Vergren was the capital of Montgren and likely one of the few places where a wide-ranging trader could easily sell his goods.
The dark-bearded trader inclined his head. “Hope we don’t need either of you, but it’s good to have you.” His eyes went to Slowpoke. “Big horse you’ve got.”
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