A hunting horn blew three crisp notes and I tightened Feather's cinch and swung back into the saddle. There was another part of the dream that bothered me. I wrestled with it as Feather trotted over the flat Tallvenish landscape.
When we walked again, I stayed in the saddle. My time in the Asylum had robbed me of endurance. I would just have to depend upon Feather.
By chance I found myself riding beside Garranon. He was walking beside his mount some distance from anyone else. We traveled in silence for a few miles, Feather as content to match her walk with Garranon's as I was to match his silence.
Apparently it was more restful on my part than his because he said, abruptly and angrily, "Aren't you afraid to catch it, too?"
Bewildered I wondered if I had dozed off and missed part of a conversation, or if my exhaustion had made me stupid.
"Catch what?" I inquired.
"The desire to sleep with men instead of women," he said with great bitterness.
Confounded I stared at the top of his head. I cleared my throat and ventured an answer. "No."
My reply seemed to stymie him and he walked on a little faster. Obligingly Feather increased her pace as well. Despite Garranon's obvious desire to get away from me, I didn't slow Feather because I realized what Garranon's problem was.
"My uncle doesn't dislike you because you sleep with the king," I said. "He dislikes you because you served the king's writ on me while I was under his protection—and he couldn't do anything about it. Tosten has a similar problem. The rest of them," I jerked my chin at the Blue Guard, "they might just not like you because you're an Oranstonian. But, more probably, they think homosexuality is catching."
Garranon turned his head away for a moment, then relaxed and laughed.
"Now as for me," I continued, "I have my eye on a woman and could really care less what bed you spend your time in."
He looked up at me to say something, but changed what he was going to say when he got a good look at me. "I've seen people look healthier than you on their funeral pyre."
"So I've been t-told." I'd been stuttering a lot since I left the Asylum. I took a small sip from the water bladder I carried on my saddle and tried not to think about the touch of Jade Eyes's hands.
My experiences in the Asylum had left me with a couple of questions and it occurred to me that Garranon might be able to answer them.
"In the Asylum," I said struggling both with the words and getting my stubborn tongue around them. "Jade Eyes … " My throat froze and I looked away.
Garranon's hand rested on my knee. "Rape is rape," he said, "whether your body responds or not."
I flushed scarlet and shook my head. "He didn't actually …"
Garranon waited for me to finish, but when I couldn't he said, "Rape is one person hurting another because he can. Sometimes a rapist hurts your body, sometimes your soul."
After a while he said, "Making love, to a man or a woman, is about caring, passion, and joy; not just physical pleasure." When I looked at him, he grinned and continued lightly, "But done right it feels good, too."
The signal for mount-up broke through the crisp air. Garranon got on his horse.
"Thank you," I said.
He smiled at me and bowed in the saddle, before we set our horses off at a trot.
By next afternoon I gave up any pretense of conversation, and that evening Oreg pried my fingers loose from the reins and led Feather himself. Mornings were better, but in the late afternoon I was barely staying in the saddle. Tosten gave the order to open the packs and distribute the woolen riding robes among us. Oreg made sure that I put mine on. Tisala rode next to me, talking quietly with Oreg.
I didn't see much of Kellen, probably because he couldn't be in much better shape than I was. I asked and Tisala told me Rosem was taking care of him.
When it snowed, I was too far gone to do much besides turning my face toward the sky, because I knew we were getting closer to home. I suspect I was the only one in the whole, cold mass of men (and Tisala) who took quiet satisfaction when the night's bitter temperatures made Feather's feet squeak on the snow in the morning. I told Tisala as much while she examined my hands for frostbite—I was too clumsy by then to get my gloves off and on by myself.
"It's true what they say about Shavigmen," she said, turning my hand over in hers.
"What? That we're tough?" asked Tosten with a grin as he checked Feather's cinch for me in preparation to hoisting my uncooperative self into the saddle.
Tisala shook her head sadly and finished with my hands. "Stupid. Only a stupid person would enjoy this weather."
The horses felt the nearness of home, too, and lifted their weary hooves faster. The snow was up to their hocks when, in the very late afternoon, we saw the walls of Hurog in the distance.
Feather whinnied and quickened from trot to canter, then when I didn't slow her, into a full-blown gallop. Power surged through me, swept away my tiredness, and welcomed me home.
As I neared the gates, I saw they were properly hung and reinforced so that they could keep out an army if need be. There were two guards on the gates and when they saw me, they started down the stairs to open them, but it was unnecessary.
Hurog opened to me all by itself.
I stopped Feather without entering, staring at the gates. It hadn't been me. Working magic is just that, work. I hadn't even thought about opening the gates, though I felt the surge of power that had accomplished it. Directed by Hurog.
Hurog wanted me home. It should have frightened me more, but how can a man be afraid of his own home?
Feather and I walked somberly through the gates. The guards on duty welcomed me formally—with a little touch of awe that told me they thought I'd been the one to fling the gates open with magic. I let them keep thinking it.
A few questions ascertained that my cousin and his wife had arrived from Iftahar only this morning. Ciarra was resting comfortably with her new daughter in one of the lower storage rooms where a temporary bed had been erected. I dismounted and began giving orders, the fatigue of the journey held at bay by the euphoria of being home. I sent a runner with orders for the keep. Kellen and his man would share my room. I gave Tisala the room next to it, the only other finished room on that floor. Garranon, Oreg, Tosten, and I would share the library. My uncle would join my aunt in their customary room.
I sent another man to gather grooms to take care of the spent horses that were just beginning to filter through the gates.
"So is it war?" asked Stala after threading her way through the confusion to my side.
I hugged her once, tightly. "Not immediately," I said. "But yes."
"With all of Shavig behind us, we will still lose," she said, teacher to student, not as if it bothered her. "But we can make him hurt."
I shook my head. "We might do better than that. I don't know if Beckram told you—I come bringing a royal guest to Hurog. We've rescued Kellen out of the Asylum so that Alizon can put him on the throne."
She drew in a breath, then laughed. "That does change things, doesn't it."
"Maybe not enough," I answered.
"We'll make it be enough," she said. "Now give me that horse; I'll see she's taken care of. You go in and get warm."
I spent the night on a pallet in the library with Oreg, Tosten, Garranon, and a wary street rat with Hurog eyes. I was going to have to find something for Tychis to do, something that would make him feel like one of us.
I was still thinking about it when I fell into a (thankfully) dreamless sleep. I awoke at first light, feeling like myself for the first time in a long while. I breathed in Hurog air and felt the familiar currents of magic that flowed through me, filling the terrible emptiness I'd felt away from Hurog and cleaning away the lingering effects of the potions Jakoven's mages had fed me.