So they ran on.
As the days grew longer it was no longer possible only to travel in the dark hours; she would waste too much time, and she was impatient to reach the city she had chosen as her destination. Farmers' dogs occasionally chased them but were careful not to get close: I am merely, they barked, announcing that this is my territory; I have no quarrel with you so long as you continue on your way.
She had not expected to come to the city so soon. Perhaps it had, in the last thirty years, since Barley's journey, reached out to meet him-and got her instead. Dawn was growing, pink and yellow and long streaks of pale orange, and she and Ash were tired, but she saw nowhere for them to rest in hiding. She had been careless; she had grown accustomed to running along a straight and easy road every night, with no decisions to make but which field looked a likely place to find dinner. She had grown accustomed to the steady increase of houses, and the occasional village spilling out from the road like groundwater filling a footprint. But the villages had been small and farmland began again on their other side, and with farmland, small wild groves and untitled meadows.
The first time they came to a town center where there were no fields at all, and the buildings were all attached to each other, as if the road had high thatched walls with shuttered windows in them, she had stopped in amazement. She felt she had run into another world, where the people must be visibly alien, with mouths at the top of their faces, or eight fingers on each hand. But that piece of the road was quite short-she paused to peer down a side-road, similarly lined with unbroken wood and stone-and they soon ran through it and out into the open land again. She realized that farmland now looked almost as familiar to her as unbroken forest once had.
Maze, she thought, thinking about the building-walled town. There was a maze, once, in a garden where I walked, with hedges high and clipped close. You were supposed to find your way into the center and back out again. I went there with Viaka. But with the name Viaka, her memory shut down again, and she thought no more about the town.
Dawn was now morning, and there were more and more other people on the road.
She and Ash had to slow to a walk, partly because it would be too awkward, and partly too conspicuous to thread their way through the throng at a more rapid pace; people on foot walked. Horses and carriages moved more quickly. But partly also it was from weariness. They had nothing to eat; it was not unusual to miss a meal, but to have the prospect of neither food nor sleep was hard. Ash's tongue was hanging out.
At least we can find water, thought Lissar. Somehow. I hope. But Lissar had not taken into account town hospitality; soon they came to a wide low watering-trough by the roadside, set next to a well. A woman was there already, watering her horses by pouring bucket after bucket into the cistern. Ash stepped up beside her and lowered her head.
The woman turned, startled. Her horses were tall and handsome, both pairs dark bay, wearing glittering harness; the woman was short and drably dressed, and her horses' tails had been more recently combed than her hair, which had been bundled erratically into a braid. "I thought I'd missed one," she said to Ash. "You're almost big enough to be a horse, although you don't drink like one." Ash was lapping noisily. The woman dropped the empty bucket into the well; when she pulled it up again, she offered the dipper, attached to the side of the well by a thin chain in case of accidents, to Lissar.
"I thank you," said Lissar, and drained it, and offered it back to the horse-woman.
"You've come a long way," said the woman. Lissar wondered if she was referring to her accent, her thirst, her dishevelled appearance, or her obvious weariness; and she smiled a little. Her thoughts were tired too, and inclined to wander. "Yes." She looked at the ground, and then down the road, the way they were going, toward the yellow city, which must be very near now. Many of the buildings around them were of yellow brick. Perhaps they were already in it and she had not noticed when they crossed from outlying town to the city itself. Was there a gate? Was there a reason she expected there to be one? So, here they were. Now what? The voice in her head remained obstinately silent.
"I don't mean to be rude," said the woman, "but you look like you might be able to use some advice. I am not very good with the kind of advice my mother used to give out-which is why I don't live at home any more"-the woman grinned-"but I've lived here longer than you have, I think, so maybe I can help."
Lissar looked at her. She was still smiling, and it was a nice smile; and her four horses all looked shiny and content. When she made a quick gesture to wave a wasp away from the nearest horse's head it did not startle away from her.
"I-it's hard to say," Lissar began finally. "I do need-advice, as you say. But I don't know what to ask for." Ash sat down in the middle of the road and began digging at the back of her neck with one hind foot, her lips pulled back in the canine rictus of joy that scratching inspires. Lissar looked up again. "I decided to come to the city-but, oh, I forget! And now that I'm here I don't know what to do."
The woman laughed. "You sound like me-although I did remember why: to get away from my mother. But I was still a farm girl-still am-but I was lucky, and they could use a horsewalker. Indeed they need another one for a few weeks, because Jed fell and broke an ankle, the chump. Usually we pick up the post-horses in pairs.
These four"-she patted a shoulder-"are very good-natured-well, all Cofta's horses are good-natured, just like he is; if you want the kind of idiocy that equally idiotic people like to think of as spirit, the Count Mayagim has 'em. Horses that have been let think rearing is cute ... sorry. I mean, one person for four horses isn't enough.
Would you like to come with me? It's not far now, but it'll get more crowded, particularly once we're in through the gates, and I'd appreciate the help.
"There's a meal at the end of it, and a bed, and you can talk to Redthorn, who hired me; he knows everything that goes on in the city. And, you know; the king offers a meal and one night's bed to anyone who asks, so now that's two days-how can you lose? Something'll turn up. Besides . . ." She paused at last, and looked at Ash, who was whuffling in the road-dust after a beetle. "The prince'll like your dog, and the king and queen like anything Ossin likes."