At the end of the week she ran into rain and black ice.
When she crawled from her blankets the sky was clear and cold as the water in the stream, the world was a glitter of ice and frost flowers. Her skin tingled, she was intensely alive; when she started along the Road again she wore seven league boots and could stride across the mountains like a giant.
A patch of black ice reminded her she was merely mortal. Her feet slid from under her and she landed on hands and knees hard enough to jar her back teeth. She got painfully to her feet and inspected her hands; the palms were scraped raw, smeared with dirt. With slow stiff movements she rubbed them on her jacket; when the dirt was off, shepulled her gloves from her pocket and put them on. She made a face at Ailiki who was being Sessa again, sitting plump and sedate on the saddle, smirking at her. “Laugh and I start thinking Liki stew.”
On the far side of the ridge, was a long narrow valley, smoky with steam from hotsprings, steam that wove in and out of dark ominous conifers and went trickling up to a white-blue sky bare of clouds. About a half mile from the Road, she saw a huddled village; there were no people visible, no stock in sight; the harvest was already in, the fields were mud and stubble. A ghost drifted across the mud, circled her, then fled without saying anything. She could sense hostile eyes watching her and had a strong feeling she’d better not stay around for any length of time.
Half an hour later, she came on a small scraggly meadow; she stopped there, fed the ponies the last of the feedcake and let them graze.
When Ailiki brought them in, they were mud to the belly. Korimenei swore, dug out a stiff brush and went over their legs and feet, cleaning away the mud and the small round leeches they’d collected off infested brush. She worked up a sweat that damped her underclothes and ripened her smell until even she was aware she stank. She knocked the brush against the trunk of a conifer and straightened. “Lili, if it takes till midnight, we keep going until we reach an Inn.”
They plodded on, winding up the next ridge in long slow loops that gained height with the tempered speed of a slug in winter, passing other xenophobic settlements nested on small mountain flats, blank-walled, secret places that turned their shoulders to the Road and refused to acknowledge its existence. By late afternoon more clouds were blowing off the peaks, blocking what small warmth the pallid sun had been providing; a chill, dank wind rolled down the Road. She pushed on, riding and walking, walking and riding. The day grew darker and darker. The sun finally sneaked down, no display of color this night, only an imperceptible hardening of the dark. Finally, near midnight, she reached the Waystop Inn at the throat of HighPass.
The doors were barred, the windows shuttered, the Inn was dark and silent. Korimenei was in no mood to tolerate obstacles or delicately weigh consequences. She sent the bar flying from its brackets, kicked the door open and went stalking in. She crafted a will-o, hung it by the thick ceiling beams and stood waiting in the eerie, bluish light, Ailiki on her shoulder, the ponies huddled close outside the gaping door. “Hey the house,” she shouted. “You have clients_ Stir your stumps or I’ll turn this dikkhush into kindling.”
The Host came down the stairs, his nightshirt tucked into trousers pulled hastily on, the lacings untied, ends dangling, He carried a lamp, set it on the counter when he saw the will-o and Korimenei standing under it. “It’s late,” he said. “We closed for the night.”
“Looks like I just opened you. I want a hot bath, a hot meal, and a bed. And stabling for my ponies. We can debate the metaphysics of open and closed all you want come the morning. Right now I’m tired and I haven’t a lot of patience.”
“Sorceror.” It wasn’t a compliment the way he said it. He shrugged. “Bath’s no problem, we’re sitting on a hotspring. Meal, that’ll take some time and it’ll cost. M’ wife works hard and she needs her sleep, you’re not the only one tired this night. Ponies, take ‘em round yourself, get ‘em settled. You had no trouble getting in here, do the same to the stables if you can’t wake the boy up. I’d take it kindly if you didn’t scare a year’s growth out of him. He’s m’ wife’s cousin and worth hot spit on a summer day, but kin’s kin.”
She laughed. “You’re a clever man, Hram. You could milk the poison from a reared-back cobra. I expect to pay, but control your appetite, Hram Host; double is enough, more than that is sin and punishable by wart, eh?” She listened. “It’s starting to rain, I’d better get the ponies under cover.” She beckoned the will-o to her. “And let you shut your door so all the heat doesn’t leak away.”
##
Warm, replete and clean for the first time in days, she crawled between fresh, sweet-smelling sheets and sighed with pleasure. “Well, Aili my Liki, this is something else. Why oh why am I putting myself through this muck? Ah I know, oh I know; poor Tre, he didn’t deserve having his life taken away from him like that, just so Old Maks would have a hold on me. It’s my fault he’s there, my fault I’m here. I owe him. Sometimes though…” She yawned, turned on her side and pulled the quilts up to her nose. Ailiki was a hotspot curled up against her stomach; the mahsar was already asleep and snoring with that tiny eeping that was a comforting nightsong. The rain was slashing down outside, a steady thrum against the shutters. A cold draft wandered past her nose. She murmured with pleasure, dreaming she was home again, a girl in her narrow bed, safe in the arms of her kin and kind, then she dropped deeper into sleep and left even dreams behind.
In the morning she half-fell out of bed and barely made the slop basin before the nausea erupted and she emptied her stomach.
When the spasms stopped, she dipped a corner of the towel in the pitcher and washed her face, then sat on her heels, eyes closed, while she waited for the upheaval in her body to die down. Ailiki came trotting over to her, pressed against her leg. She lifted the mahsar, held her against her breasts, her warmth helping to soothe away the ache. “Well, Lib, I’m going to have to look, aren’t I.”
Sitting in the middle of the bed, rain dribbling down outside, a dull dreary drizzle, she turned inward and explored her body.
There was no mistake, no way of avoiding the truth. She was pregnant. The wind had worn away more than her nerves those days in Ambijan. She sat there in the quiet warm room, thinking: What do I want? What am I going to do? In the end, it was all words. She wanted the baby and she was going to have it. She needed it. Karoumang’s child. No. Mine. The thought warmed her. My daughter. She knew it was going to be a daughter. She wasn’t going to be alone any more. It didn’t matter what her brother did. Didn’t matter if Maksim wouldn’t have her as apprentice. She folded her arms across her body, hugging herself and what she bore. I’m not going to worry, she thought. There’s plenty of time to finish this thing before there’s enough child to worry about. Tell Ire if he bothers to show up again? No! No way. It’s none of his business.
##
She crossed HighPass and went through the serried ridges of the western flanks of the Dhia Dautas, daughters of the dawning sun, though there was little sun in evidence, dawn or dusk or anything between. It snowed twice in the first week, light snows, two inches one storm, six the next. Then it rained and that was worse. Each morning she woke and vomited. Then she rode on. Day after day, walk and ride, ride and walk until she was down in the grass again and twenty days out of Dil Jorpashil.