She pushed the blanket off her shoulders and got to her feet, checked the pot, she’d washed after supper and hung upside down over the top of one of the young conifers huddled in an arc around the rim of the glade, an adequate windbreak if the wind kept coming from the north as it had the past several days. The pot was dry enough to put away. She moved busily around the camp space, collecting items scattered about and stowing them in the pouches; when she was finished she took a last tour of the camp, came back to the fire.
“We’d best turn in now, I want to get started with first light.” She picked up the blanket she’d been wearing, shook it out and draped it over her arm. “We’ll be sharing tent and blankets, Danny Blue. You’re tired. I’m tired. I’m sure neither of us is interested in dalliance.”
“Kori my Thine, Amortis her very self couldn’t get a rise out of me tonight.” He stood, staggering a little as he unfolded.
“I like to have things clear,” she said. “You go in first, I’ll follow.”
6
Morning. Early. Frost crunching underfoot, whitening every surface.
Ready to start, saddle and packs in place, the ponies are huddled next to the fire, lipping up piles of corn set out for them, tails switching at half dormant blackflies. When the two people speak, they puff out white plumes of frozen breath.
Bulky with her layers of clothing, tendrils of soft brown hair curling from under her knitted hat, the girl stood with her fists on her hips, glaring at Danny Blue. “I don’t give spit for your blasted vanity, man. Either climb in that saddle or get the hell out of here. I don’t care where.”
The Daniel phasma being off somewhere or still asleep, the Ahzurdan phasma seized control of the body; hating his weakness, hating her for her strength, resenting her because she’d saved all their lives and laid that burden of gratitude on them, Danny Blue found himself wanting to smash that imperious young face. He wanted to beat her and by beating her, batter in her all the other women who’d dominated and rejected Ahzurdan, his whining mother and Brann chief among them. Lips pressed together, he swung into the saddle. He felt like a fool; even with the stirrups lowered as far as they’d go, his knees stuck out ridiculously, he thought he looked like a clown in a child’s chair. He pulled the blanket about his shoulders and looked around. The odd little beast that traveled with Korimenei went running past and scrambled onto the packs; Korimenei tossed the lead rein into the small black paws.
She strode past him without looking at him and set off along the Road. He toed his pony into a brisk walk, heard the pack pony snort, then start after him.
##
They passed the whole day in silence; even when they stopped to rest the ponies and let them graze, neither acknowledged the other’s, presence with so much as a grunt.
Danny Blue was exhausted before half the day was gone, but Korimenei kept on, walking with steady, ground-eating strides, never looking back. She was no doubt partly putting it on to annoy him, but there was an impatience about her he couldn’t discount; he knew she was eager to see her home again and he’d cost her time and was still slowing her down, something he found sourly satisfying for a while, until he was too tired and sick to sustain any kind of emotion so even the Ahzurdan phasma who’d been ruling him was forced to give way.
Though the pony had an easy rolling walk, he had to concentrate to stay on its back. At the last stop only the impatient jerk of Korimenei’s shoulders gave him the strength to pull himself into the saddle. He sat there fumbling with his feet, unable to fmd the stirrups. She didn’t say anything; grimly controlled, she caught hold of one boot, shoved it in place, circled the pony, dealt with the other foot, then started off along the Road.
In his head the Ahzurdan phasma sneered at the girl, at Danny Blue, and the Daniel phasma watched both with sardonic appreciation. Wearily, Danny Blue did his best to reclaim his body. Every, step of the pony juddered through him, jolting his brain, shattering his sequences of thought so he had to begin over and over before he finished one. He stared at the striding girl and wondered who the hell he was and where his life was going. He couldn’t get a hold on himself, he came to pieces when he tried, though he was getting a glimpse of something, a feel of potential; fatigue had stripped away his defenses, he couldn’t hide any more. Or slide any more. A woman, a lover, had asked Daniel Alcamarino once don’t you want to do something with your life and he said no and left her behind. Now Danny Blue was being forced to ask the question of himself. And forced to realize he had no idea what the answer was. There was another thing. Puppet, he thought, playtoy, the god’s still jerking my strings and making me dance. Bored. H/it wants to amuse h/itself. I know it. Running me in a circle. I go with her I go back to h/it. Round and round. Not a puppet, no, a rat in a running wheel. Round and round. Back to the place I started from. Kori’s going home. I want to go home. I want to get out of this madhouse reality.
More and more he was drawn to the rationality of Daniel’s world, the reality where gods were products of the mind and necessarily reticent about interfering in the lives of common men. Where the forces that worked on those lives were perhaps as powerful, but much less personal. The Ahzurdan phasma resisted this with all his strength though that was little enough; he was fading, his painfully cultivated Talent slipping away from him into the unappreciative hands of his semi-son. All he could do was try keeping his part of Danny Blue’s double memory shut away from that semi-son, frustrating Danny’s attempt to find a way to transfer himself to the Daniel reality. Danny had no doubt that was one of the constraints that kept him out of the realities, that blocked him from regaining this part of Ahzurdan’s skill.
As the sun went down, the idea came to him. Settsimaksimin. If he can’t do it, no one can. Yes. If he knows where my reality lies, if he can reach it. I’m sure of it. He can do it. All I have to do it is find him. And find out what price he wants for doing it. Kori knows him, maybe… can’t think. God, I don’t know. Is this my own idea? Or is that Compost Heap messing with my head again? Pulling my strings? Jump little puppet, run little rat?
The jolting stopped. When he realized that, he lifted his head. They’d been moving through huge old conifers for several hours, he’d noticed that without being particularly conscious of it; now they were on the edge of a broad clearing with a small village rising up the slopes of both sides of the track, its bright colors muted by the twilight and a dusting of snow; they’d ridden beyond the heart of the blizzard that laid the deeper snow to the north. Gsany Rukkers were moving about the slopes and the broad mainstreet, coming in from the night-milking and other chores, gossiping over the last loaves from the communal oven, going in and out of a notions shop and the tavern built into the largest building, the village CommonHouse. It was a busy, cheerful scene, all the more so in its contrast to the dark, brooding conifers that surrounded it.