They hadn’t been in time.
His sister had ridden a rogue horse home; she’d gotten it through the gates that defended Tarmin from the Wild. And in the confusion of that horse’s maddened sending, sane villagers had opened doors, rushed to the aid of stricken children, dying neighbors— abandoning their only defenses in the process. In the confusion and the threat the rogue sent into the ambient, the best and the bravest impulses that humans owned had sent neighbors running, blinded by things they thought they saw and cries they already heard—running, some in panic, some to save others—while a swarm of vermin, coming through those opened gates and those doors no one had the sanity left to shut, gnawed them down to bone. The swarm had made the whole village prey; the virtuous, and the fools, and the innocent. Brionne had ridden through it, immune to the swarm, on the deadliest killer of all—wanting them, wanting revenge, wanting—God knew what—
And after the carnage, after the horse was gone, his sister had just started slipping away, not eating, not speaking, eventually not reacting to the world at all. For a few days down at first-stage, they’d been able to make her drink—but last night at midway she hadn’t even done that for them. The horses down below wouldn’t tolerate her. Cloud wouldn’t. They imaged <rogue> whenever they had to deal with her, and it was nothing—nothing—a sane mind wanted to feel again.
Right now his sister didn’t move, didn’t think, didn’t know and probably wouldn’t care if she went off that edge. Not only would she not drink since last night, she wouldn’t blink this morning to save her eyes from the cold. That was how fast she was sinking. They’d tied a bandage around her face to keep her eyes from freezing— Danny’s idea—and a scarf around that, and then folded the skins around her with the fur side in. He could sense Danny and Randy through Cloud’s sendings plain as plain, constant and alive—but his sister wasn’t there. Just wasn’t there.
And he didn’t know whether he even grieved for her.
He wanted to. But maybe that was only to prove he could, after so much death.
He wanted to get her safely to Evergreen.
But he most of all wanted to get her to the doctor in Evergreen, so that if there was a scrap of a human mind left in her that could be suffering, he’d have brought her to die in a civilized and comprehensible environment, not in some bare-boards cabin on ground too frozen to bury her—where—he didn’t want to think about it— the scavengers would leave of her… nothing more than was left in Tarmin now.
Beyond getting her to the doctor, he didn’t know. God forgive him, he wished every night since they’d gotten her back that she’d just drift peacefully deeper and not wake up the next morning. Even unconscious, she’d driven them out of every refuge they had—and when that lost horse had shown up down at first-stage, the last place where they could have been safe, he’d known it was his sister it had come for.
He hated her—and he couldn’t let her go. There was the whole story in those two facts. Danny was probably asking himself how he’d ever gotten them for his responsibility. This morning Danny had been uncertain about setting out, and he’d argued with him—
He didn’t remember all that he’d said, but he’d bent every argument to get them on their way before that horse found them, —the way he’d wanted them to get out of first-stage, because that horse haunting the fringes of the woods down there had come up near the cabin walls that last night, calling and calling for a hapless, foolish girl who’d, please God, passed beyond answering it or any horse.
Because what in hell did they do if Brionne came to and they were in that little cabin with a horse who—Danny tried to keep the lid on that feeling, but he knew—might kill her and maybe him and Randy in spite of everything they could do to stop it? He couldn’t blame Cloud for protecting his rider. And he didn’t want Brionne to wake and answer that lost horse down there, either. He’d felt her stirring, down at first-stage, that last night.
And, God, he didn’t want her near a horse.
He knew, too, he shouldn’t be thinking about it. He tried to stop. He’d learned from Danny how to listen to Cloud and see not just flashes of damning illusion but clear pictures in his head.
The preacher down in Tarmin had always said if you listened to the Wild you’d be attracted to thoughts of sex and blood that came and went for no reason. And he’d felt them—but he wasn’t even sure what the preacher feared: he couldn’t have explained to anyone how noisy the world was when he was around Cloud—and how scarily quiet it was, even in the howling wind, when Cloud was out of range. He’d gotten to depend on that presence for safety—and it wasn’t just hearing some ravening Beast, as the preachers called it— it was hearing everything, it was an intensity of smells he didn’t smell, colors he didn’t see—most of all a sense of whereness that he couldn’t explain in words, a jumble at first that made you think you were off balance alt the time, but that just—slowly turned into a sense of where things were and how far everybody was from each other and who they were and how they felt—that in this place was an assurance you were still on the mountain and not walking off it.
That was the sense you could really get hooked on, and the preachers didn’t know that one—or maybe they did and weren’t telling you that because it was just too attractive, the way Brionne had gone off into it and gotten herself into a place she couldn’t— maybe didn’t want to—get out of.
That was the other side of it—you were bound to a creature that wasn’t human. And if it should die—
The world began to flatten out: Cloud had begun to pull out of range, growing more vague as the snow came between them. He knew then he’d been thinking very dangerous, scary things.
“Pull, dammit,” came from out of the fog beside him.
He pulled harder, and as they came closer to Cloud the world re-expanded. That was the way it seemed.
At the same moment came a sudden shove in what Danny called the ambient, a flash of <water flowing over stones> and an awareness of <Danny beside him.>
Danny wanted him quiet. Danny didn’t want him interfering with his horse. Danny was <upset.>
Foot skidded. Body reacted. Heart caught up late. He was too tired, too out of breath. He’d never walked this far in his life, never imagined what it did to feet and legs to walk up incline after incline with no letup.
The wind came at them from the side in a sudden gust. They couldn’t see Cloud, but Cloud was still there, still aware of them—
Two hours on a good day, Danny had said. He couldn’t be that wrong.
Chapter 2
Storm brought early twilight to a cabin that, on the east slope of a tall mountain, lost the sun in mid-afternoon, and it meant peaceful horses now that they’d run themselves silly in the gale—now that, moreover, they’d eaten something humans found entirely noxious, that left a faint aroma about them of bushdevil musk as they were let in for shelter.
It didn’t stop two horses from starting a little neck-nipping and tail-lifting in the middle of their two-footed partners’ supper in a very small cabin. Then there were the throaty rumbles and the explosive snorts that presaged lovemaking, which had its effect on two humans trying to concentrate on griddle-cakes and hash, an early supper and an early bedtime, by their intentions.