“Mm. The peep still hanging around?”
She closed her eyes, pressed her palms against her temples and got her mind touch moving, slowly and creakily at first, barely beyond the trees, then more surely as the effort completed her waking. “Yes. Fidgeting. Mm. Two of them, actually. Up ahead. They seem to be watching the road. Road, hunh. Beats me how they get supplies in to Chuta Meredel.”
“Free Eolt carry things when they’re needed.” He finished filling the pot and set it aside to steep. “The Meruus don’t want to make it easy to reach the valley.”
“I see. Thus anyone who comes to them with a complaint has work for his hearing.”
He got to his feet, shrugged. “I suppose. I’ve never thought a lot about it.”
While he fed the moss ponies and gave each of them a mouthful of corn, she lay back on her rumpled blankets and made a wider sweep of the area. There was a blurred response out at the very edge of her reach. She thought it was a band of men, but they never got close enough for her to tease out the various life strands. It bothered her that they seemed to know so much about her abilities. Then her hand closed in a fist and she cursed her stupidity in every language she knew.
That chorek set his ambush in a tree because people just don’t look up. I saw him there. I knew why he did it. I congratulated myself because I wasn’t such a fool. Fool! Gods, I keep forgetting what he said. The Chav spy has a miniskip. And of course he’ll have spotting equipment. He’s been up there in the clouds watching us. Watching me. He knows…
She got to her feet and began twisting through warm-up exercises she’d neglected because she’d been too tired to bother with them. By the end of the day they should be in the pass. Whether that meant more danger or less she wasn’t prepared to say. Still, there should be some sort of guard posts if choreks were as thick in these mountains as everyone said. And I can get some rest.
The day unreeled like the past several, plodding uphill through hot still trees, sweat rolling down the back, matting hair to the head, walk a stretch, ride a stretch, Shadith stumbling along, eyes drooping half closed as she kept the sweep fanning back and forth back and forth, worry rising as the amorphous shape paralleled the track, peaking as the pair ahead of them stopped for whatever reason. Stopped, but always moved on before she decided to go after them.
The three were silent when they stopped to feed and water the ponies, Danor hoarding his strength, Maorgan growing morose as the separation between him and his sioll stretched out, Shadith too tired to bother talking.
Clouds occasionally blew thicker above them but didn’t stay long enough to lessen the sun’s heat, just tore apart and flowed on westward. New clouds came to be shredded in their turn. There was no wind, though, beneath the canopy. The air was still, it felt stale, stagnant, the breaths she took brought no refreshment, as if the air were so old and used up it wasn’t any good any more.
The forest began to thin, the trees grew shorter and more frail, twisted by thin soil and storm winds; their leaves hung limp and the needles of the conifers were still and gray with old dust. A saddle began developing between two peaks, one lower than the other. Thin straggly grass dried yellow by the summer sun began to fill the space between the trees. The fungi were suddenly much smaller, ankle high at best, or climbing the sheltered side of trunks. The lichen webs that hung from tree limbs were paler and more thready.
Danor shriveled as the sunlight strengthened until all that was left of him were bones and a pair of-burning eyes focused without deviation on the saddle ahead where Medon Pass was bound to be.
Maorgan brooded. The opening out of the canopy gave him more sky to watch, a sky without Melech hovering overhead.
Shadith relaxed a little and dropped the frequency of her scans. She could see far enough around to pick out possible ambush sites and probe them at need.
They reached Medon Pass shortly after noon, left the stony, barren slopes to ride along a track between crumbling stone walls, moving carefully past falls of scree. Stone and more stone, lichen, moss and assorted mycoflora she couldn’t put a name to, clumps of yellow wind-dried grass, patches of low-growing twisty brush. The clippety-clip of the moss ponies’ hoofs echoed loudly along, overhead a flier shrieked and plunged out of sight, rose again with wriggling in its talons. On and on they went, the Pass replaying the same themes in their varied permutations.
Shadith stopped Brйou, waited for Maorgan to ride up beside her.
“How long is this Pass?”
“Over a day’s ride. We’ll reach watchtower in about an hour. There’s water and shelter. We’ll camp there and start on again tomorrow morning.”
“Watchtower? That mean guards from the Vale?”
He rubbed at his eyes, gave her a weary smile. “Yes.”
By the time the sun was low in the west, the wind sweeping down from the peaks was cold and piercing, crawling in every crevice in Shadith’s clothing, biting to the bone. Her body was born to a warmer climate, hot and humid with few cold days. Despite the thermal underwear, she was shivering and unhappy by the time the track leveled and they moved into the mouth of the Pass.
Some distance ahead she saw a massive tower built into the side of the mountain. The narrow window slits were a pale yellow against the dark granite of the walls; she brushed at the tower with, the mind touch. Two lives in there. The guards Maorgan mentioned. She sighed with relief, closed her eyes and slumped in the saddle. Just a little longer and we can rest.
After a moment, though, she straightened. Can’t let down too soon. Right, let’s see who’s with us… She swept the mountainsides, reached as high in the air as she could.
No sign of the spy. The blob was behind them now, still too far to count the individuals in it. She swept the mindtouch across the tower again, more energy in it this time, got a clearer picture of those inside…
Without stopping or looking around, she said, “Maorgan, is there any way out of this defile?”
He slipped off the caцpa’s back, tossed the reins to Danor and strode forward to walk at her knee. He looked up at her, one brow raised. “Not that I know of. Why?”
“We’ve got a problem. Ambush. Them in the tower, they’re choreks, not Vale guards. Keep looking at me, hm? I don’t want them getting itchy. They’re that pair who’ve been riding ahead of us.”
“You sure?”
She bit back the snarl, said, “Yes. I’m sure. Waiting for us in the tower because they knew I’d expect someone to be there and not get bothered by it.” She wiped her hand across her face. “We need time…” Still carefully facing forward, she called, “Danor!”
There was silence a moment, then he said wearily, “What?”
“Ambush ahead, they’re watching us, we need an excuse to stop. Throw a fit, scream, whatever you think will do it.”
Silence. The scrape/clop of the caцpas’ hooves on the gritty track, the whuff of their breathing. A hoarse cry filled with pain and fear.
Shadith gulped though she’d been expecting something, then she swung from the saddle and ran with Maorgan to Danor’s side.
The old man was swaying in the saddle, his mouth stretched wide, his trained voice producing a tortured sound that filled the hollow between the mountains and bounced off the peaks.
Maorgan cut the ropes that bound Danor to the saddle. He and Shadith got the old man down and stretched out on the road.
Shadith squatted beside him, touched his face. “You all right?”
Danor grinned up at her, the first time she’d seen his face lighting with laughter. “You wanted a fuss.”
She grinned back. “Well, I must say it was a noble fuss.” She took the cup Maorgan handed her, held it out. “You can sit up on your own. The caцpas block their view.”
He pushed up, wincing, his face paling at the pain and the pull of his weakness. “You’re sure, Shadowsong?”