“Of course,” the Shantasi said, but they all knew the doubt in her voice. She looked away, out between the trees.
“Not far from here,” Rafe said, “there’s a place that will make you all believe.” He closed his eyes, and suddenly the life seemed to drain from his face, skin growing sallow and lined, flesh sloughing down, as if he aged ten years in ten seconds.
“Rafe!” Hope said. No! she thought, darting to the boy, holding his arms, pressing her ear to his mouth. The others were on their feet, gathering around. The witch felt Rafe’s breath in her ear, warm on her cheek and neck, and she closed her eyes, wondering what could pass between them should she remain this close. Here, now, inside him, a hand’s breadth away… but it was not really that close, she realized. Magic was still an infinity away. Even though out of all of them she believed the most, still it was as far away as ever.
“He’s asleep,” she said quietly, trying to hide her disappointment from the others. Her confusion. Her yearning.
I’ll stay with you, Rafe, she thought. I believe you, and I’ll stay with you whether I eventually have what I want… or not.
THEY STAYED ONthe hillock just long enough to have a bite to eat and a brief rest. Trey chewed more stale fledge and told them that the land was still smudged red, bleeding eastward, although he did not know how far away that blight lay. He grew quiet when Kosar asked, shook his head and looked at Alishia where she sat slowly fading away. They had all tried to feed the unconscious girl, force water down her throat, but with her mind torn to shreds her body had lost the survival instinct. Food fell from her mouth unchewed, and water drained away down her chin. And there was something else. They could not be certain, but she looked younger than she had before, smaller. Lessened by her experiences, perhaps… or maybe something else.
When they set off again, Kosar was consumed by a dreadful sense of foreboding. He looked at them all-Hope, Trey, Alishia, the terrifyingly normal Rafe and A’Meer, the woman he perhaps loved-and they were friends and strangers. For an instant they were characters in a story of his own devising, so close that he could never know anyone better, yet so unreal that their impending loss was a blankness within him. He walked close to A’Meer, brushing her arm with his, trying to see a similar recognition of their fate in her eyes, finding nothing.
Rafe’s request and the discussion back on the knoll still lay unresolved. Yet they headed southeast, their route taking them nearer and nearer to New Shanti and A’Meer’s intended destination. Rafe sat astride his horse and quietly let himself be led, though now there was a definable tension in the group. Rafe’s words seemed to echo back at them from the land: There’s a place that will make you all believe. Kosar had no idea where or what that place was-none of them did-but they all looked with new eyes now, trying to find hidden truths between blades of grass, epiphanies floating in the sunny air with the dust and pollen. Kosar hoped that they looked with better eyes… but still he feared that it was greed that drove some of them, guilt others. The purity of their intentions was yet to be proven.
Around midday they paused by a small stream so that the horses could drink. Kosar filled his water canteen upstream from the horses, splashed his face and neck and gasped as the cold water bit through the grime of the road. It had been a long time since he had felt like this. He had worked hard in Trengborne, but it had been a more comfortable life than he had realized at the time. His muscles truly ached, stretched and turned in ways they had long forgotten.
“We’re off course,” A’Meer said. She was standing in the shade of a large boulder, measuring its shadow with her eye, glancing up at the sun. “We’ve turned due south.”
“I never noticed us changing direction,” Kosar said.
“None of us did.” A’Meer glanced at Rafe and then walked away, sitting by the stream and drawing her sword. She plucked at her finger and blood smeared the blade. In the sunlight it spread thin and fine.
Nobody said any more about their change of direction, but as they set off again A’Meer led the way, heading away at a noticeable angle from the route they had traveled thus far. Kosar walked with her, but did not ask. Voicing his fear would confirm that control was slowly being taken from them, that their route was being planned and controlled by forces other than their own. That was not something that he wanted to hear.
They dipped into a shallow valley and followed the stream along its base, picking pale fruit and berries from the few errant trees that survived. Kosar sniffed at them. They smelled fine, but he saw a dead rabbit and something larger, longer dead, so he threw the food away. The stream led past small hills and back into the open plains, where to the east they could still spy the foothills of the mountains bordering New Shanti. Ahead of them now lay Mareton, the small town perched on the edge of the Mol’Steria Desert. It was here that they would take on supplies for their final journey across the sands. It was almost two hundred miles to Hess.
“Not far from here,” Rafe said suddenly, looking southwest.
“We have to go to Mareton,” A’Meer said, “stock up with water and food for the crossing, maybe get some fresh horses.”
“Not far from here, just a few miles that way, and something will open your eyes,” Rafe said again. “I don’t know what, and I don’t know how. I only know it to be true. A’Meer… a few miles.”
A’Meer glanced at all of them, and her eyes never changed when she looked at Kosar. He felt a brief kick in the stomach from that, confused and sad. “We can’t waste any time!” she said. “The Monks could be right behind us. They’ll have our trail now, and they won’t stop, not even out in the desert. Our only hope is to get out there before them, make a head start across the sands.”
The others were silent, waiting for Rafe or A’Meer to say something more.
It was Trey who spoke at last. “I want to see what Rafe means,” he said. “If it’s something so wonderful, maybe it will help us all.”
“And maybe it’ll kill us,” A’Meer countered. “None of us know anything about what’s happening here! I have to take this boy to Hess and let the Mystics figure it out. We go a few miles off track, that’s more chance that the Monks will trap and kill us. Perhaps we have the advantage right now-a head start, a few miles maybe-but what happens if we go off on some fool’s errand to see some mysterious ‘thing’? Remember what those mimics showed us? Monks. Closing in from the west. Trey’s seen the same! And you, Rafe… after all that, you still want to head that way?” She pointed southwest with her drawn sword, and it whispered at the air.
“He’s the reason we’re all here,” Hope said, “and I’m for following him.”
“He’s led by something mindless!” A’Meer said. “Soulless.”
“But it cares for us all,” Rafe said. “It would not lead us into ambush. Most of all, it cares for itself.”
A’Meer looked at Kosar, and for the first time since leaving Pavisse there was something of friendship in her eyes, an old knowledge, language without words. But why now, and why here? Because this was when she needed him most.
Kosar felt sick. “I’ll go with Rafe,” he said. “I believe it’s the right thing to do, A’Meer. Just a few miles, to see what’s so important. Then we can all finally decide what to do. And if Hess is still the best idea, I’m with you all the way.”
A’Meer cursed, shook her head and stormed off southward. She went a few dozen paces and then squatted down, the weapons at her belt scarring the ground. There was no pride, no dented perception of leadership, Kosar knew that. A’Meer simply wanted to do what she thought was right.
She turned around at last, stared back at them, and then past them. Her eyes grew wide and her jaw slackened. “Exactly how far is this place?” she hissed.
“I don’t know,” Rafe said, “but we can make it, and then I think it can get us away.”
Kosar turned his back on the Shantasi and looked the way they had come. At the head of the shallow valley they had just emerged from, maybe two miles distant, several red specks were moving slowly down the heathered hillsides.