'It's a magic-post.' Ingold walked around it, cat-footed, leaving barely a trace of tracks on the dry crumble of the turned-up earth. His fingers caressed lightly the smoothed wood, as if to read something there by his touch, then brushed the dangling
glass. That's odd.' He said it half to himself, like a man who found in his garden flowers not of his own planting. Rudy shivered and scanned the horizon, as if expecting to see the Raiders materialize like Apache from the pale wastelands of sand and thorn.
'Did the Raiders make it?'
'Oh, yes.' Ingold went over to the remains of the sacrifice, hunkering down to examine the loathsome bones. Rudy looked away. The Raiders will make a sacrifice in propitiation of something that they fear - you saw that in the valleys below Renweth - and usually, but not always, put up a magic-post to hold the soul of the tormented dead.' He straightened up, frowning. 'Generally they will make the propitiation against the ice storms, which they consider to be evil ghosts; lately they have begun to do so against the Dark. But this...' He came back to the cross, like a ghost himself in the pallor of the shadowless afternoon. This I have not seen.' He moved a little way off, poking with his staff at the hard, cracked clay of the ground, the knobby yellow twigs of the catclaw snagging at his mantle and the blown dust blurring his tracks. They fear something, Rudy, and fear it enough to sacrifice one of their own band to divert its rage. But it wouldn't be an ice storm this far to the south -and it isn't the Dark.'
'How can you tell?' Rudy asked curiously.
'I can tell by the pattern of the streamers and the marks scratched in the wood. This isn't the regular hunting ground of any tribe of Raiders that I know - they do not range the desert at all, but stick to the plains, following the bison and mammoth. Only the extreme bitterness of the winter and perhaps the coming of the Dark have driven them here.' He came back and collected Che's lead-rope again, for all the world like a ragged old prospector hunting for the motherlode among the cactus and ocotillo. 'We shall have to be careful and cover our tracks,' he went on, turning back toward the road. The Raiders prize steel weaponry and would in all probability cut our throats to steal our swords.'
'Great,' Rudy said fatalistically. 'One more thing for us to worry about.'
Two,' Ingold corrected him. The Raiders - and whatever it is that the Raiders fear.'
But in the two empty days that followed, they saw no sign of White Raiders. Toward afternoon of the second, Rudy thought he could discern a dust-cloud and movement on the road ahead and he suggested concealment.
'Nonsense,' Ingold said. 'Any Raider who raised dust higher than his own knees would be expelled from the band and left for the jackals.'
'Oh.' Rudy shaded his eyes and gazed into the clear greyish distance. That's a hell of a dust for just one family, though.'
As they drew nearer, Rudy saw that this was indeed far more than a single family, or even several families. An entire town was on the move, as the refugees from Karst and Gae and the ragged survivors of Penambra had moved. A long line of swaying wagons was surrounded by a skirmishing ring of riders and a broad scattering of scouts afoot. The creak of leather and the barking of dogs sounded weirdly unfamiliar
to Rudy's ears. He had not been aware of how used he had grown to the silence of the desert. At the head of the wagon train, a cloaked woman walked afoot, and it was she who hurried her steps to meet them as the mounted scouts drew in from both sides. Something in the arrangement of the band reminded Rudy of the way Ingold had said the dooic travelled, and he smiled to himself at the thought.
The woman threw back the hood of her cloak as she came toward them, revealing a long, plain face that had been just short of homely before it had acquired whip-cut scars from the tails of the Dark and the blotched burn of acid. Her warriors fell in behind her, grim, dusty men and women in sheepskin jackets with seven-foot longbows in their hands. The woman herself carried a halberd, which she seemed to use as a walking stick, its enormous blade glittering in the pale daylight.
'Welcome,' she called out to them as she came near. 'And well met on the road, pilgrims.' Close up, Rudy could see she was about five years older than he was, with a long, straight mare's-tail of black hair and the hazel eyes so often found in Gettlesand. 'Where have you come from, that you're moving west? Are you from the Realm?' Hope, eagerness, and anxiety struggled in her face and in the faces of those behind her.
Ingold held out his hand to her and inclined his head in mingled greeting and respect. 'We have come out of the Realm,' he replied. 'But I fear we bear ill news, my lady. Gae has fallen. King Eldor is dead.'
The woman was silent, the hope stricken from her eyes. Around her, the warriors, men and women, exchanged quiet glances. Back in the train, a baby cried, and a woman shushed it.
'Fallen,' she said after a moment. 'How fallen?'
The city is a ruin,' Ingold said quietly. 'It is the haunt of the Dark by night, of ghouls and beasts and slave dooic gone feral by daylight. The Palace burned, and King Eldor perished in its ashes. I am sorry,' he said gently, 'to be the bearer of such news.'
She looked down, and Rudy saw her big, rawboned hands tighten on the shaft of the halberd, as if to steady herself, or to cling to it for support. She looked up, and her eyes were sick with weariness. 'Have you come from Gae, then?' she asked. 'Because if you're bound for Dele in the west, if you'd hoped to find refuge there...' She gestured behind her at the train, which was slowly coalescing around the strangers in the road. 'About two-thirds of these people are from Dele. The rest are from Ippit, or the country around the Flat River. I'm Kara of Ippit. I was -am - spellweaver of the village.'
Ingold looked up at her sharply. 'You're a spellweaver?'
She nodded. 'The priest always understood. And I've been able to help, with what powers I have...'
'Are you ranked?'
'No. I had to leave Quo after my first year there because my mother was ill.' Then
she looked down at him with sudden eagerness, realizing what his question had meant. 'Are you a spellweaver?'
'Yes. Is your mother?
She nodded, and Rudy saw the quickening of new life from the dead exhaustion of her face. 'Have you had any word, heard anything at all, from Quo?' she demanded. 'I've been trying so hard, trying for weeks, but I can't even get sight of the town. You're the first wizard I've seen since any of this began.' She reached out to clasp his hand. 'You don't know how good it is...'
'I know very well,' he contradicted with a smile. 'I haven't had word or sign from Quo or news of any other wizard but yourself since Gae fell. We're bound for Quo. now, to find Lohiro and ask his help.'
A faint stain of colour flushed up under the burnt brown of her skin. 'Well,' she said, 'I'm afraid your calling me a wizard is like calling that little burro of yours a battle-charger. In the same family, maybe, but different in kind.' She looked at his face again, the black line of her brow kinking suddenly, as if she sought some lost memory.
He smiled again. The colt of a battle-charger, perhaps,' he said. 'Where were you and your people bound for, Kara?'
She sighed and shook her head. 'Gae,' she said simply. 'Or the river valleys, anyway. We left Ippit for Dele, which was the nearest city. We couldn't hold out in Ippit - too many buildings had been destroyed, and the raiding of the Dark was too heavy. Three days out of Dele, we met a great train of people fleeing that town, most of them half-frozen and starving. We shared what food we had... We've been on the road for three weeks. We thought if we could reach the river valleys...' Her voice trailed off hopelessly.