At the earliest greying of the sky she roused Ash and they went on.
One day they struck a road.
It was really not more than a path, a track; but it had been worn by human feet in leather, pounded by the iron shoes of domestic horses and rutted by the narrow strike of wheels.
Lissar stood, a little back from it, still hidden in the trees, and looked. Ash sat down and let her tongue unroll; she scratched an ear, investigated a flank, and, when her companion still showed no sign of moving, sprawled down full length on the ground for a nap, her head on Lissar's foot for safekeeping. Long months of life in the wild had not eradicated Ash's belief that her person was the chief mover of the world; on the other hand, Lissar, looking down, saw the cocked ear, and knew that Ash's nap was more apparent than real.
Lissar found herself willing to go on standing still simply because Ash's head was resting on one of her feet. It was not as though Ash had not leaned against or collapsed upon all portions of Lissar's anatomy many times before, had been unloaded as many times with protesting groans, and instantly did it again as soon as an opportunity presented itself-thus proving no hard feelings, nor any intention of altering her behavior. But in this particular case Lissar knew she had come to what she had decided, weeks ago, on a mountaintop, she wished to look for-signs of humanity. Having found what she sought, she was grateful for anything, even a dog's resting head, that might be held to be preventing her from acting on her discovery.
When Ash raised her head in response to a crackle in the undergrowth (which might be dinner), Lissar slowly, stiffly, lifted her freed foot and set it down in front of the other one. Then she raised that one and set it down in front of the first; then-then a silvery-fawn streak blasted silently past her, and across the portentous road. There was a brief rustle and squeak, and Ash reappeared at a more moderate gait. She crossed the road once more as if roads were nothing to her, something hairy and mottled brown dangling from her jaws.
Lissar stopped, still several steps away from the road. "We'll camp here tonight,"
she said aloud, to Ash, who twitched her ears. It was rare any more that Lissar needed words to communicate with her dog. She used them occasionally to remind herself she could, to remember what her voice sounded like.
They moved far enough back from the road that Lissar felt relatively safe from discovery, even with a small fire burning. She knew that the road was not heavily used; not only was it narrow, but she had seen no sign of human habitation-inns, she thought tentatively; rest houses for wayfarers, their gear and their beasts-and there were grass and weeds striking up through old ruts and hoofprints. But that the road existed at all meant someone used it; and the weather had been dry, so there was no mud to tell any tales of recent travellers, nor any recent piles of dung to tell of their beasts. All that meant to her, in her anxious frame of mind, was that it was the more likely that travellers would come soon. She stared through the trees toward the road; she felt as if she could smell it, as she had-belatedly-smelled the dragon. As if a miasma or a magic hung over it, a magic derived from the simple friction of human feet against the wild ground.
She drifted off to sleep with her head on Ash's flank, the curly hair tickling her cheek and getting sucked occasionally into the corner of her mouth or her nose as she breathed, so she made little snorting noises in her sleep. She woke up to a sound of roaring; Ash had curled around her, and put her nose in her ear. They rearranged themselves, and fell asleep again.
Lissar gave herself no time to think the next morning. She rolled to her feet, rubbed her face, pulled the white deerskin dress to order, and trotted off to the road, her muscles (and bladder) protesting such rough usage so immediately on arising.
Ash, grumbling and out of sorts at such abrupt behavior during her least favorite time of day, followed her, and they struck the road together, although Ash had set foot on it already and had not noticed this as a significant act. Lissar felt a tingle up through the bottoms of her callused feet as she ran along the road; a tingle she was willing to believe was imaginary, and yet no less important-no less felt-to her for that.
They ran till the sound of water distracted them; and then they halted for some brief ablutions. And then ran on. Lissar had chosen downhill, not because it was faster-though there were moments when running upon the particular angle of slope felt like flying-but because she thought she remembered that cities were more likely to occur on flat plains and meadows beyond the feet of mountains; and it was cities that contained the most people.
But did she want so many people at once? a little voice, scared, whispered to her.
Her direction-pointer had disappeared as soon as she first recognized a human-used trail, as if the pointer were a guide through a limited territory, and, having brought her to the edge of its own land, left her there. Sh,e was a human being; presumably she belonged in human landscapes. But its desertion made her feel lost, more tentative about her decision; it had helped to keep her back among the trees, with Ash's head on her foot. Perhaps, she thought, the words of her thinking coming in the same rhythm as her running footsteps, perhaps what she wanted was a village, something a little smaller than a city.
No, whispered the same voice she'd heard on the mountaintop. City.
She shook her head. There was already too much that was peculiar about what did and did not go on in her mind. She would have preferred simple memories, like other people had ... like she supposed other people had ... But perhaps other people had voices in their heads too, voices that told them what to do, or not to do. She remembered the Lady's voice, the sound of running water and bells.
She and Ash ran on, looking for a city.
SIXTEEN
WHEN THEY BROKE OUT OF THE TREES LISSAR STUMBLED AND
almost fell. Her horizons had opened too suddenly; her vision could not take it all in, and her feet faltered. She slowed to an uneven walk, and great shuddering breaths shook her that had nothing to do with the pace they had been keeping. She kept spinning to look behind her, behind her, always behind her; the wind whispered strangely out here in the open.... She wanted a tree to hide behind, a rock to put her back against. She stood still-turned a quarter circumference-paused-another quarter turn-paused-another. Her breath refused to steady.
Ash had initially wandered off on her own errands when they had come out from the forest, but now she trotted up and looked at Lissar inquiringly. Ash was a sighthound; open ground with long plain vision in all directions must be her heart's delight-or at worst a situation no stranger or more alarming than any other. Lissar lowered her hands to her dog's silky head and stood facing the same direction for several long moments, till her heart and her breathing had slowed. Then they went on, but walking now, Lissar looking to left and right as far as her neck would stretch.