The road flattened out and the snow grew thicker, wetter. The wind was suddenly blowing into their faces with stinging force. The quiet vanished and the cold got worse, fast. Tuli started shivering so hard she thought she was going to shake herself right out of the saddle. Rane left her side and rode in front, blocking the worst of the wind’s force.
After another eternity of straining to follow the seen-unseen shadow in front of her, Tuli heard the rush of running water, then they were on a low humped bridge. Creeksajin, she thought. It can’t be too much farther before we stop.
Tuli’s macai bumped his nose into the haunches of the beast Rane rode, stopped. Rane dismounted and came to stand at Tuli’s knee. “There’s a turn we have to make just ahead.” She was shouting but Tuli had to bend down and listen hard to catch the words the wind was tossing and shredding. “I’m going to walk awhile, feel my way, but I could miss it in this mess. Keep your eyes, open for a hedgerow. You see one on your right, we’ve gone past the turn and will have to come back. You hear?”
Tuli shouted her acknowledgment, felt a pat on the thigh, then the lanky figure-faded into the whirling snow.
And came back a moment later with the end of a rope. “Tie this someplace,” Rane shouted. “Keep us together, this will.” She shoved the rope at Tuli. Her fingers were clumsy and as cold as Tuli’s.
They went on, it seemed forever, the wind battering them, the cold numbing them, but this eased a little when Rane found the mouth of the lane and they turned into the meager protection of the lines of trees that grew thickly on both sides of the rutted track.
A long time later Rane stopped again. As Tuli’s mount stomped restlessly about, she caught glimpses of stone pillars and a wooden gate.
Moving again-along a curving entranceway similar to the one at Gradintar, Tuli felt a surge of homesickness. Tears froze on her eyelashes as she blinked.
Stopped again. Behind a high flat surface that kept the wind off. Rane leaned to her, pinched her arm. “Wait here. You hear me?”
Tuli nodded, croaked, “I hear.”
Time passed. An eternity of black and cold. Hoots of misery from her macai. Nothing to measure the moments against, just darkness and wind noise and slanting snow.
Then someone was beside her. Rane. Someone beside Rane, a long thin shadow.
And the beast under her was moving, Rane’s macai moving beside her.
And there was a grating sound-not too loud but she could hear it over the roar of the wind.
And they were out of the wind, going down a long slant into darkness-but the snow was gone and the air was warmer. As she woke out of the numbness, she began to shiver without letup.
The darkness lightened as they turned one way. Lightened more as they turned another.
They stopped.
A stable of sorts, straw on the floor, water and grain, a fire off in the distance filling a long narrow room with warmth and a cheerful crackling.
She felt the warmth but she couldn’t stop shivering. Hands pulled at her.
She was standing rubber-kneed on the stone floor, hands holding her.
A MAN’S VOICE: Hot cha, I think.
RANE: Any chance of a hot bath?
MAN: Depends on how many people do you want to alert you’re here?
RANE: No one would be best. Other than you, Hal. I suspect everyone now, old friend, everyone I don’t know as well as I know you.
MAN: (chuckling) Eh-Rane, you sure you know me well enough?
RANE: Fool.
All the while they talked they were helping Tuli stumble closer to the fire. They eased her down on a pile of old quilts and cushions and Rane knelt beside her, rubbing her frozen hands.
RANE: Is it too much to ask for the cha you offered?
MAN: Hold your barbs, scorpion. Have it here in a breath and a half.
Heat. Hands stripped soggy clothes off her. Hands rubbed a coarse towel hard, over her. She protested. It hurt. Rane laughed, dropped the towel over her head. “Do it yourself then, Moth.”
They were at one end of a windowless room with roughly dressed stone walls. The loudest noise was the crackling of the fire; Tuli caught not the slightest hint of the storm outside. At the other end of the long room one of the macain had his nose dipped into a trough, sucking up water. The other was munching at a heap of corn. Both made low cooing sounds full of contentment.
A contentment Tuli shared. When her short hair was as dry as she could get it, she dropped the towel and pulled the quilt up over her shoulders. She stretched out in front of the fire on the pile of cushions, soaking up the heat until she wanted to purr.
Later. Dressed in boy’s clothing, long in the leg and tight about the buttocks, she sipped at the steaming spiced cha and struggled to keep her eyes open as Rane talked with the man she called Hal.
RANE: How are the Followers taking this weather change? Asking questions of the Agli? Blaming us? Angry? Confused? What?
HAL: Hard to say. Most of them are dupes. Agli doesn’t tell them anything, keeps them happy with a tilun now and then and promises of a better life. We have to sit through interminable sermons on the virtues of submission and the evils of pride. Soдreh’s will. I wonder how many times I’ve heard that over the past few days. I want to spit in their faces. Very disconcerting for a placid soul like myself. That’s about all I’ve got for you, gossip from the rats in my own walls. I’ve stayed away from Sadnaji since the heat broke. Followers there’ve turned nasty, bite off any head that pokes out. I’m exceedingly fond of my head.
RANE: We came through Sadnaji a few days ago. Looked dead.
HAL: Might as well be. None of the fкte-days being kept, no one laughing. We’ve all forgotten how to laugh.
RANE: Braddon’s Inn was shut down, torch out. I never thought they’d go that far. What happened? Where were all his friends? Is he all right?
HAL: Friends. (He shakes his head.) Those of us nearby keep our mouths shut and don’t look him in the eye. He’s alive, doing well as could be expected. (He goes silent a moment, the lines suddenly deeper in his long ugly face, a gentle face, mournful as a droop-eared chinihound.) His son’s in the mountains somewhere, I expect you’ve got a better idea about that than I do. Somewhere’s close as I can get (a sigh). Shut Braddon down, put him in the House of Repentance. For a while it looked like the Agli was going to burn him out, but he backed off, Sadnaji was tinder dry. The little meie, she managed to burn a good bit of hedge (sigh). Had to spend a tenday setting posts and planting hedge sets. Which will probably freeze if this keeps up.
RANE: Little meie? What happened?
HAL: It was just after the sky went bad. The little meie showed up at Braddon’s, you know who I mean, Serroi, a man with her. Braddon says he tried to hold her there but she got suspicious and tunked him on the head. He won’t say else to anyone. He says he didn’t know the man with her, never saw him before. Whispers say it was Hern (shrug). She tangled with a norit staying there, turned the attack back on him somehow, she and the man both got away, traded their worked-out macain for a fresh pair, took the norit’s mounts which steamed him some to hear tell. He went after them, wouldn’t wait for anyone, anything. Agli rounded him up a mob, took three guards from the Decsel in the Center, sent them all after her. What happened to the norit, Maiden knows, but there’s a man-sized charred spot in my pasture grass. Guards came chasing her through the gap in my poor abused hedge. First one through was an air-head carrying a torch. Soon’s he was on the grass his macai went crazy, threw him and tromped on him. He let go the damn torch and it landed in my hedge. Agli’s mob, they had to stop being a mob and fight the fire or Sadnaji could have gone up too. The two guards left followed the meie and her friend, got back a couple days later, hungry and tired, scratched up and scratching-idiots didn’t know enough to stay away from ripe puffballs-feeling mad and mean. Lost the meie in the foothills past the ford.