As the Crow Flies

by Robin

  “Worth the climb, isn’t it?” Tanris asked softly, almost reverently, from beside me.

  “It is,” I had to admit, “though I don’t think I’d want to do it again.”

  “No?” He smiled a little. “Do you not feel a sense of triumph? You have come a long, hard way.”

  “Ask me again when we get to the highest point of this little journey.”

  On the outskirts of the village a gang of curious, noisy children and several farmers and herdsmen greeted us. The men carried tools they wouldn’t likely use that time of year—shovels and hoes as well as a few staffs, even a pair of axes. Friendly, but wary, they wanted to know our names and where we were headed. And most keenly, they wanted to know why we had a rope-bound prisoner with us. Even as Tanris explained how Kem attacked the family of the girl with us and he intended to deliver him to the authorities, someone recognized him.

  “I’ve seen him b’fore. Runs with Kiral’s band.”

  “Buncha no-goods. Stole some of my sheep.”

  “Took grain right out of my barn,” someone else said.

  This turn of events prompted a flicker of alarm. If all these people wanted to claim Kem Bohadri so they could exact their justice, where would we find a guide? Kem, in the meantime, edged over behind me as best he could, tied to the horse still.

  “Here, now, what’s this?” A dark-haired man with a vigorously receding hairline and a fairly decent paunch stepped brusquely through the gathering crowd, and Tanris had to explain all over again. As it turned out, the man was the mayor of Uzuun, and quite adept at getting things done. “We can take that one off your hands,” he said, nodding understanding.

  “Actually, sir, that won’t be necessary.”

  I tried not to appear too interested in what Tanris had to say, and busied myself assessing the crowd to see how well they could support the next leg of our journey. Most of them wore simple but well-made clothes and hardly any jewelry at all, and primitive at that—wooden beads and discs and an occasional metal or stone item. Prospects for lining my pockets or contributing to my comfort were dim.

  “Kiral Stone,” Tanris went on, and wasn’t it a marvelous thing that I’d been chatting up our prisoner? “and his men are wanted for numerous attacks and robberies, and there’s a good-sized bounty on them. We ran into them several days back.” The way he propped his hands on his hips, right next to his sword and the axe he’d inherited, emphasized that he could and would use them. Everyone backed up a little, pretending nonchalance.

  “You’re a bounty hunter?” the mayor asked.

  “That’s right.” And if he hadn’t been five minutes ago, he was now. Can you even imagine Tanris lying? I wondered how he’d collect the bounty—and where—and still manage to give Kem his freedom.

  The mayor’s gaze shifted to me and my obvious lack of weaponry. “And that one?”

  Tanris smiled thinly and not altogether pleasantly. “That’s my other job.”

  “Oh?” The mayor’s curiosity was certainly piqued, and I could have happily kicked Tanris in the shin. The last thing a thief wants is unnecessary attention.

  “Paid protection,” I offered smoothly. “And a good thing, too. Criminals these days are getting more and more bold, as you can see!” I waved a hand at Kem, and he just pursed his lips and wisely kept his mouth shut.

  “I see. Where are you headed?”

  “Baichu,” I said, naming the capitol of Chatahai Province on the far side of the Daryas. Tanris narrowed his eyes, but I ignored him.

  “You chose a poor time of year for the journey,” the mayor responded, cool and assessing. No dummy, he.

  I shrugged and grimaced. “My uncle chose a poor time to pass from this world.” I wondered if there was ever an opportune time to die, not that I actually had any uncles to concern me.

  The mayor nodded slowly. “That is unfortunate news. You have my condolences.”

  I gave him a brief, wry smile. “I never cared for him, but my mother is all alone in the world now, and I must fly to her.”

  “Ah, mothers, yes. The sweetest of gems.” He stepped forward to clap my shoulder companionably and, just like that, he took us under his ample wing. He escorted us through the town, ordered care for our horses, put our prisoner under guard, and explained how Uzuun didn’t have a formal gaol or sheriff, but managed things quite nicely anyway. Not unsurprisingly, Tanris elected to attend to our bags himself.

  There was no inn, for the village saw too few travelers to make it worthwhile, but the mayor had a grand house that was half in and half out of the cliff and had plenty of extra rooms for guests. I luxuriated in the first hot bath I’d had in over a month. I shaved! Delighted to have someone to feed and stories to listen to, the mayor’s wife plied us with hot pumpkin soup, loaves of mouth-watering bread oozing creamy butter, roasted venison and potatoes, and some local vegetable unfamiliar to me. It tasted mellow and sweet, and I had three helpings, which made the mayor’s youngest daughter, a girl about nine summers, giggle until she nearly fell off her chair. Then, for dessert, Mistress Mayor produced a rich, moist spice cake drizzled with honey. Who could have known that such a remote little village could boast such an extraordinary cook?

  The mayor basked in pride, and after the children went to bed, he fetched a bottle of well-aged brandy to share with us in exchange for news from the coast and a story or two. I was glad to oblige him, though the news was old and relatively mundane. I had no restriction on the stories though, and several times made Tanris cough in his snifter while the mayor and his wife howled with laughter.

  And then, much to my joy, when the meal and the fine drink had come to an end, there was the bed. Such a deep, soft mattress! A fire—in a real fireplace, right in my room!—was warm and crackly. Best of all, I need not wake up to the cat licking my nose, Tanris’s snorting snores, or water dripping on me.

  It was paradise.

  At least until Tanris roused me at the crack of dawn, insisting that we needed to get an early start. Logic agreed with him, but oh! that bed was soft and I hated to leave it. Still, Mistress Mayor filled us with scrambled eggs, hot cakes smothered in boysenberry syrup, and rashers of mouth-watering bacon—which very nicely banished the taste of the morning’s dose of bitter antidote. Then she gave us a basket with a few loaves of bread, fresh cheese, an entire leftover chicken from the previous day’s cooking and—be still my heart!—the remains of the spice cake, which she had noted I loved particularly well. Tanris modestly protested her generosity. I, on the other hand, thanked her profusely, and she blushed prettily when I kissed her plump cheeks.

  Her daughters giggled.

  Tanris just looked sour.

  After all that, we replenished our supplies and I made sure to purchase a bottle of kemesh—that excellent beverage made from fermented honey and plums, the flavor of which delights the tongue and offers as well a cure from headaches to rashes and everything between.

  We also foisted off the still-silent girl. What would eventually become of her I did not know, and I didn’t particularly care. She had done nothing to endear herself to me. The folks of Uzuun seemed a friendly enough people, and if they couldn’t find a way to return her to her kin, they would find her a place to stay and work to do. With the parcels of real, edible, enjoyable food tucked away, I even forgave them for having nothing at all worth stealing.

  :-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:

  Another day and a half of travel, and I revised my opinion somewhat. I wished we had stolen—or even bought—some lanterns. And some oil. And I wished I could put Kem Bohadri in a little, tiny box and toss him down the mountain.

  To use the word “passage” to describe the narrow black crevice before us would have been generous in the extreme. To get the horses inside we were going to have to unload them, and they were going to have to duck their heads—no easy feat. Reassuring me the cavern got wider a few feet inside did not help, but the horses were happy in their ignorance.

  “Are
you really afraid of the dark?” Tanris asked as we removed our gear from the pack saddles and reorganized it to carry some of it ourselves. Now and then he looked back the way we had come and around the edges of the hollow in which we worked, still watching for Kem’s missing companion. I didn’t tell him about the fellow in the gorge, and Kem didn’t tell us if there might be any others. Even if he did, one could expect him to lie.

  “No, I am not afraid of the dark,” I said shortly.

  “You’re afraid of caves?” Tanris set his ugly cat atop a rock where it promptly settled down to clean itself. Licking the dirt off one’s body, never mind ingesting body hair along with it, was a disgusting habit.

  “What could I possibly have to fear from caves?” I prevaricated.

  “Small, tight places. Billions of tons of rock pressing down on you. Some people don’t like that.”

  I attempted to suppress a shiver. “Even if that were true, it’s only three days.”

  “If nothing happens,” Kem put in, working on another unsuspecting victim—er, horse.

  “What’s going to happen? Isn’t it stable?” I asked, busy hands stilling suddenly. “Are you saying there could be a cave-in or something? What, isn’t this thing shored up? No supporting beams or anything?”

  Kem kept right on with his task and pointed to Tanris. “Make sure those top packs come off easy. We’ll need to move some of them ourselves to get the horses through.”

  “Has anyone ever considered enlarging this byway?” Were they even listening to me?

  “Do you remember its name?” Kem asked, threading a strap through a buckle and pulling tight.

  “The Ghost Walk,” Tanris said.

  “Yes.”

  “Which means what, exactly?” I asked. “It’s haunted?”

  “Yes.”

  I stopped again to stare at him, then at Tanris, then back. “You believe in ghosts?”

  “Yes.” Not the slightest trace of humor showed in the man’s face. If anything, he looked a little strained.

  “And you?” I turned to Tanris, who set about resolutely reorganizing our supplies and tightening things down. He could probably make a career out of reorganizing.

  “I’ve never seen a ghost, so I can’t say with absolute certainty that they don’t exist.” There we were, back to that argument again.

  “I have seen them,” Kem said soberly. “You will see them.”

  “Joys,” I muttered under my breath, and for a moment or two I stared at the evil black crevice and considered what I knew of fictitious ghosts. They were disembodied spirits. Phantoms. What could a phantom do to me? Nothing. The thought cheered me somewhat.

  “How’d this place get its name?” Tanris asked.

  Oh, good, a story to feed my insecurities.

  “A long time ago, before there was even an empire, the ancestors of my people lived in these mountains. They lived much as the people of Uzuun live—simple lives, raising horses and sheep, trading with travelers, farming.” He tugged another strap tight and the horse shifted, reaching down to nibble at the winter grass at Kem’s feet. “They lived in tribes then and guarded their territories with great determination. As the tribes grew, it was necessary to expand territories. In one particularly fierce war the Mazhar Tribe suffered great losses at the hands of the Nahzym. Men, women, and children were forced to flee their homes, and the Nahzym chased them for many days. They chased them into the crevice where the Mazhar hoped to escape out the other side and block the way and thus get away from their enemies, but the Nahzym had come before them.”

  “If the Nahzym blocked the openings, who reopened them?”

  “They did not.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “They burned them,” Kem said tersely. “They filled the passage with oil and burned them. And when the Mazhar tried to flee to safety, Nahzym archers picked them off.”

  Sometimes having a vivid imagination was not such a good thing. I could picture all too well the smoke billowing from the opening, people on fire trying to run away, only to be shot down. My stomach churned.

  “You all right, Crow?” Tanris asked, looking me over critically.

  I swallowed the bile in my throat and straightened. “That is a horrible story, but it was hundreds of years ago. People do terrible things to each other all the time. What difference does it make now, besides turning people’s stomachs?”

  “You will see.” Without another word Kem led the horse closer to the opening.

  “Not afraid of ghosts, are you?” Tanris asked, and I didn’t much like the mocking gleam in his eyes.

  “No, but you should be, because if I die of Baron Duzayan’s poisoning, I’ll come back to haunt you both. Regularly and noisily.” I dragged my horse over with the others, then went back for the pack Tanris had made for me. I would not miss the snow that clung to it in icy patches. Flicking it off, I hefted the thing to my shoulder.

  Kem disappeared inside the crevice, then reappeared again a moment later holding a meager half-dozen torches.

  “Are there more of those?”

  “No, no more.” He handed two to each of us. “We will burn only one at a time, and only when it is necessary.”

  “Darkness requires torches.” They would each burn for a couple hours, and six of them would get us halfway through one day. “Are there others stashed along the way?”

  “It wouldn’t do any good if there were,” he replied cryptically. “Take this.”

  I recognized the remains of one of Tanris’s shirts as he handed me a piece, then proceeded to cover the horses’ eyes as Kem instructed. As I tied one onto my mount, I considered blindfolding myself. I refused to ask how the three of us would manage four horses. No doubt Tanris would sort it out.

  “Kem will take the lead with my horse,” Tanris advised me, reading my mind. “You’ll follow him, and I’ll bring up the rear.”

  “Who’s going to slit his throat if he betrays us?”

  “That would be you. Unless you want to switch places?”

  I found neither position particularly appealing. In front, I’d bear the brunt of whatever catastrophe Kem might have in store for us. In the back—What could happen to me in the back? I did not even want to consider. I have far too vivid an imagination. “I’ll take the middle.”

  He made an amused snorting noise. “Don’t get too close, or you might get yourself kicked,” he warned.

  Or stabbed or led into a pit or… “Yes, Father. Shall we go now?”

  “Can you think of any reason we shouldn’t?”

  Yes, several, but the alternatives were just as abhorrent. “How about if we eat first?”

  I was stalling, but he considered my request seriously, then nodded. “That’s probably a good idea. Kem?”

  “I’d like that.” He gave us a strained smile, and I could tell he was in no particular hurry to enter the crevice, either. It should have made me feel better, but it made me feel worse. After all, he knew what to expect.

  Just ghosts. Ghosts aren’t real, and even if they are, they can’t hurt you, I said to myself several times. We sat down on the rocks scattered near the opening and enjoyed the tasty meal the mayor’s wife had provided. I took my time and made Tanris and Kem wait for me. By then, even Kem was peering at me dubiously. The cat even gave me critical looks, the tail wrapped around its feet twitching with unveiled impatience.

  13

  Fascination Cast a Spell

  We shouldered our packs, Kem lit his torch and then he led the way inside, bringing Tanris’s horse behind him. The horse balked and protested, whickering a soft sort of terror that made gooseflesh creep over my skin. Tanris put a hand to its rump and helped push him along, talking quietly the while. The broad backside disappeared suddenly, and then it was my turn. Settling my hat firmly on my head and bracing myself with a last lungful of fresh, icy air, I stepped inside.

  Darkness wrapped around me like a wooly blanket and the bulk of the horse blocked the faint glow of Kem’s ligh
t ahead. The air of damp and of earth I expected, yet it didn’t seem as cold as the slope of the mountain. “Careful, it’s tight at first,” Kem said, his voice oddly disembodied.

  Pulling my horse through immediately occupied my attention for the first several feet, so narrow the saddle scraped against the walls. She—I had learned her gender during the course of our tedious journey—braced her legs and refused to budge. Tanris said something about moving out of the way, and there came a sharp whack! that startled us both several feet into the passage. I danced backward to keep out from under the mare’s hooves and had to lean into the poor creature to get her to stop. She stood still, shivering and twitching.

  I stood still, shivering and twitching.

  “Crow, you must come.”

  Right. Instinctively, I looked at the ground behind me so I could lead the horse, for all the good it did. I had to grope my way carefully. One hand on the bridle and the other on the wall, I pulled the mare gently ahead. “Come on, Horse, let’s go.”

  She came along in spite of her reluctance, trusting me. Noise filled the entrance as Tanris brought one of the packhorses in behind him. Kem kept moving. He reassured me that the passage grew a little wider about twenty feet inside, and to my relief he spoke the truth, though I knew the more generous space would not last. We waited while Tanris went out again to get the other horse.

  “All right,” he called softly. “All set.”

  He blocked whatever daylight might linger behind him in the cave’s entrance. Torchlight reflected off the cat’s eyes where it crouched on top of one of the packs. I shifted my cold hand on the bridle and patted the horse’s nose.

  “We’re ready,” I lied to Kem, in case he hadn’t heard, and the torch abruptly winked out.