“The healer,” Liz said. “She’s got a thing with animals.”
“Magic.” Julia sighed. “Helps.”
“Yup. Curls my hair just thinking about it.”
“I suppose we could treat it as just another kind of technology. What I know about motors you could write on a stamp, but I never had trouble driving a car.”
“Right,” Liz said absently, her gaze still fixed on the women. “And sorcerers die like anyone else if you put bullets through their brains.”
2
The roar of the cycles was making the horses nervous. Serroi soothed her mount, watched Hern settle his. She didn’t try to help; he wouldn’t like that. He grinned at her, knowing exactly what she was thinking; he’d come a long, long way from that sheltered arrogant man who’d ridden on quest from the Biserica with her, perhaps in part because he’d shared dreams with her on the plateau and in the sharing had been reshaped-as she had been reshaped by him, though she hadn’t given much thought to that part of the experience.
The membrane passed over them and they were in Southport, a burnt and desolate travesty of the busy, cheerful place she remembered. That’s what the mijloc will be after this war, she thought. The waste, the horrible waste. And for what?
Kry came howling from among the burnt-out houses, set to hurl their spears, but Angel’s band and the folk on the cycles lifted their weapons. There were loud rattles and a series of sharp snaps and the Kry went down, the charge was broken and those still on their feet began to run back for shelter. One of them got off his spear, but a boy rode out and knocked it down, taunting the Kry all the time.
It was quick, lasted a few seconds only, and was as precise as a healwoman’s knife. She began to appreciate Hern’s eye and that part in her shaped by him saw more clearly how he’d evaluated their possibilities from the meager evidence of the Mirror.
The Southgate swung open and a band of meien rode through, came across the scree toward them, familiar faces, all of them; she sighed, deeply pleased to see them all again. “Kindayh,” she said.
“Serroi,” Kindayh smiled, lifted her hand in a quiet, warm greeting, then turned to Hern. “Dom,” she said. “Yael-mri got word of your coming and sent a message flyer telling us to be ready for you.” She looked beyond him at the mob he’d brought through with him. “Though we aren’t quite prepared for all that. Have to stretch, but we can manage, I think.”
Hern glanced at the lowering sun, then faced Kindayh. “That’s good to hear.” A swift arc of his hand sketched the wall and the gate. “A cold night out here; should get them settled by sundown.”
“Right. Follow us.” She swept her arm in a wide arc, brought her macai around and started toward the open gate.
Ombele’s voice came a third time, oddly diminished even in the taut silence that was broken only by the steady lapping of the ocean close behind them. “Going in,” he boomed. “Ahead slow.”
Julia eased up on the brake as the jeep just ahead of her with Braddock and the rest of the council in it began to roll forward. Around her the walking families started after it, moving faster than the pickup’s creep. She could feel their excitement, their eagerness to get their first sight of what they’d be fighting for, then living with. She felt much of that herself. How many months… no, years. Yes, years since she’d felt that bright glow of anticipation. It wasn’t just growing older that had diminished her, but the dusty gray everyday despair that spread over the whole country, darkening and thickening as the years passed. It was different here; she breathed that difference in with the clean bracing air and was exhilarated by it. She couldn’t isolate reasons for this; there was no more hope here, no less violence, but there was a new smell to the place as if the world itself were somehow younger, as if the possibilities they’d exhausted on their homeworld were open here and multiplied. She drove past the gates and nosed into the dark hole that turned in a shallow curve putting the opening at the far end out of sight. The wall was thick, far thicker than she’d guessed, more than six times the length of the pickup. She twitched the lights on and breathed a bit more easily, then she was out and the walkers around her were letting out whoops of their own, especially the children, whoops that bounced back and forth between the ragged cliffs that towered over them, crumbling chalk with a toupee of scrub and scraggly grass. She squinted into the jumping side mirror and tried to estimate the size of the exit hole, wondering if the biggest truck was going to fit through it. Close thing, if it did. They might have to unpack the truck and haul the load through. Too bad to lose that transport. Too bad to lose anything here, no, way of replacing it.
Liz leaned over, slapped the lights off. “Don’t waste the juice. No rechargers here.”
Julia glanced at Liz, was startled to see in the small dark woman no sign of the excitement bubbling in the folk outside or in her own blood. Liz was the same as she’d always been, wired in the face of danger, even a danger that seemed so remote and undefined as the one ahead of them. Julia wanted to say something, to ask Liz what she was thinking, but there was no invitation in the woman’s face, so she only said, “Right.” And started forward, creeping along a rutted excuse for a road toward the vee of brilliant cloudless blue ahead of them.
At the mouth of the deep ravine a stone keep loomed like a continuation of the cliffs, forcing the road, such as it was, to swing wide around its walls. The women stopped them on a rocky barren plain dotted with tufts of yellowed grass and scattered stones. The keep’s outer gate was an opening just broad enough to let two of those lizardish beasts walk side by side and just high enough to clear their riders’ heads. With Ombele and Braddock directing traffic they got the trucks lined up and parked, noses facing the road. The wind sweeping along the plain was like an ice bath and the little heat the sun provided seemed more illusion than reality. Some of the younger children were crying and Julia was shuddering so hard she almost couldn’t walk by the time she followed Liz through the double-gated entrance tunnel into the court beyond.
Around the inside of the high thick walls, slate-roofed three-story buildings were backed against the stone. The lower floors were stables, open face forges, storage rooms, or housed other, less obvious functions. The second and third floors were living space if she remembered her history correctly. She saw two of the women leading the riding beasts inside the stable nearest the gate and a third showing Angel where he could put his horses. The folk around her were beginning to relax now that they were out of the wind. Though it wasn’t warm in the court, the air no longer seemed to slice the meat off her bones. She stood by the well in the center of the paved court, feeling a little lost, wondering what to do, then Ombele came out of the square tower, Samuel Braddock beside him. He bent and listened a moment to Braddock’s murmur, then straightened and used his foghorn voice to get the attention of the thronging mob, sending Georgia to set up a guard rota for the trucks, a clutch of girls to fetch spare blankets and food, a string of boys to haul water for cooking, then broke the rest into groups, took one himself and sent the rest of the council to get the others moving.
Julia leaned on the railing of the gallery and gazed down into the Great Hall of the tower. It was a peaceful and comfortable scene, the fires in the four enormous fireplaces beginning to die down, the floor everywhere except near the hearths and the narrow walkways covered with a thick layer of straw, the younger children fed and tucked away in blanket cocoons, already asleep, warm and safe. Adults and older children were sitting in groups about tubs of coffee and tea, comfortable themselves, some of them beginning to stir about, getting ready to take themselves to bed, others talking quietly, tiredly, contentedly about the extraordinary events of the day. Angel and his bunch were out with their horses; they ate there, planned to spend the night there. Near one of the hearths Dom Hern sat with the council, talking quietly. Braddock, Ombele, Lou, Evalina Hanks and Samsyra. Julia looked for the healer but couldn’t find her. Several of the women fighters were there also, the-what was it?-meien. Meie singular, meien plural. One aspect of the magic in this place is definitely a blessing, she thought. When we passed through the membrane we seem to have acquired the local language. And what’s better, we got it without losing our own; there’s so much you just can’t say in mijlocker. I suspect the children will grow up mixing both languages. Well, English is a mongrel tongue anyway and the stronger for it. Forty-six, that’s not old, got a good thirty years left, thanks to the little healer. Serroi. I know her name, why do I have trouble calling her by that name? Afraid of her? Distancing her? Stop it, Julia. Serroi.