She walked without knowing where she was going and without thinking of anyone or anything. It was cold and the terrain was hard and treeless. When she crossed paths with one of the horses, dappled and grey, it came to her.
No saddle, she thought numbly to herself as it stood before her, breathing steam and stamping its hooves against the snow. No stirrups. Hard to get on.
The horse knelt awkwardly on its forelegs before her. She hitched her gown and her robe around her knees and climbed onto its back. Balancing precariously as the horse stood, she found that a horse without a saddle was slippery and warm. And better than walking. She could wind her hands in the mane and lean her body and face forward against the aliveness of its neck, and sink into a stupor of no feeling, and let the horse decide where to go.
Her robe had not been made to serve as a winter coat and she had no gloves. Under her headscarf her hair was wet. When in darkness they came upon a plateau of stone that was oddly hot and dry, its edges running with streams of melted snow water and smoke rising from cracks in the ground, Fire didn't question it. She only slid from the horse's back and found a warm flat place to lie. Sleep, she told the horse. It's time to sleep.
The horse folded itself to the ground and nestled its back against her. Warmth, Fire thought. We'll live through this night.
It was the worst night she'd ever known, skimming hour after hour between wakefulness and sleep, jerking from dream after dream of Archer alive to remember that he was dead.
Day finally broke.
She understood, with dull resentment, that her body and the horse's body needed food. She didn't know what to do about it. She sat staring at her own hands.
She was too far beyond surprise and feeling to be startled when children appeared moments later climbing from a crevice in the ground, three of them, paler than Pikkians, black-haired, blurry at the edges from the glow of the rising sun. They were carrying things: a bowl of water, a sack, a small package wrapped in cloth. One bore the sack to the horse, dropped it near the animal, and folded the top down. The horse, which had shied away with frantic noises, now approached cautiously. It sank its nose into the sack and began to chew.
The other two carried the package and bowl to Fire, setting them before her wordlessly, staring at her with amber eyes wide. They are like fish, Fire thought. Strange and colourless and staring, on the bottom of the ocean.
The package contained bread, cheese, and salted meat. At the scent of food her stomach threatened to heave. She wished the staring children would go away so that she could have her battle with breakfast alone.
They turned and went, disappearing into the crevice from which they'd come.
Fire broke a piece of bread and forced herself to eat it. When her stomach seemed to decide it was willing to accept this, she cupped her hands into the water and took a few sips. It was warm. She watched the horse, chomping on the feed in the sack, poking its nose softly into the corners. Smoke seeped from a crack in the ground behind the animal, glowing yellow in the morning sun. Smoke? Or was it steam? This place had a strange smell to it, like wood smoke but also something else. She put her hand to the warm rock floor on which she sat and understood that there were people beneath it. Her floor was someone else's ceiling.
She was feeling the beginnings of a lustreless sort of curiosity when her stomach decided it did not want her crumbs of bread after all.
After the horse had finished its breakfast and drunk the rest of the water it came to where Fire was lying in a ball on the ground. It nudged her, and knelt. Fire uncurled herself, like a turtle ripping itself from its shell, and climbed onto the horse's back.
The horse seemed to move randomly west and south across the snow. It shuffled through streams that crunched with ice, and crossed wide crevices in the rock that made Fire uneasy because she could not see to the bottoms of them.
In the early morning she felt a person on horseback approaching from behind. She didn't much care at first. But then she recognised the feel of the person and was dragged against her will into caring. It was the boy.
He was also riding saddleless, awkwardly so, and he kicked his poor frustrated horse until it brought him within shouting range. He called out angrily. "Where are you going? And what are you doing, sending your every thought and feeling over these rocks? This is not Cutter's fortress. There are monsters out here, and wild, unfriendly people. You're going to get yourself killed."
Fire didn't hear him, for at the sight of his mismatched eyes she found herself dropping from her horse and running at him, a knife in her hand, though she hadn't realised until that moment that she was in possession of one.
His horse chose that instant to throw the boy from its back, toward her. He fell in a bundle on the ground, clambered to his feet, and ran to escape her. There was a blundering chase across the crevices, and then an ugly scuffle that she couldn't sustain because she grew exhausted too quickly. The knife slipped from her fingers and slid into a wide crack in the earth. He pushed himself away, scrambled to his feet, choking over his words.
"You've lost your mind," he said, touching his hand to a cut on his neck, staring incredulously at the blood that came off on his fingers. "Take hold of yourself! I didn't come after you all this way to fight you. I'm trying to rescue you!"
"Your lies don't work on me," she cried, her throat coarse and painful from smoke and dehydration. "You killed Archer."
"Jod killed Archer."
"Jod is your tool!"
"Oh, be reasonable," he said, his voice rising with impatience. "You of all people should understand it. Archer was too strong-minded. It's quite a kingdom for the strong-minded you've got here, isn't it, the very toddlers taught to guard their minds against monsters?"
"You're not a monster."
"It amounts to the same thing. You know perfectly well how many people I've had to kill."
"I don't," she said. "I don't. I'm not like you."
"Perhaps you're not, but you do understand it. Your father was like me."
Fire stared at this boy, his sooty face, his thatch of filthy hair, his torn and bloodstained coat, oversized, as if he'd taken it from one of his own victims, from a body he'd found unburned on Cutter's grounds. The feeling of his mind bumped against hers, simmering with strangeness, taunting her with its unreachability.
Whatever he was, he was not a monster. But it amounted to the same thing. Was this what she had killed Cansrel for, so that a creature like this could rise to power in his place?
"What are you?" she whispered.
He smiled. Even in his dirty face it was a disarming smile, the delighted smile of a little boy who is proud of himself.
"I'm what is known as a Graceling," he said. "My name used to be Immiker. Now it is Leck. I come from a kingdom you've not heard of. There are no monsters there, but there are people with eyes of two colours who have powers, all different kinds of powers, everything you could think of, weaving, dancing, swordplay, and mental powers too. And none of the Gracelings are as powerful as I."
"Your lies don't work on me," Fire said automatically, feeling around for her horse, who appeared at her side for her to lean against.
"I'm not making it up," he said. "This kingdom does exist. Seven kingdoms, actually, and not a single monster to trouble the people. Which, of course, means that few of them have learned to strengthen their minds as people must here in the Dells. Dellians are far more strong-minded as a people, and far more vexing."