My wristband began to glow, sending out a wavering pattern of blue-gold, almost as though my flesh had sprouted flames. Nekia snorted, skittering sideways, and I heard Joisan’s gasp behind me. “Kerovan! My ring, the one that came from the Old Ones!”
Cautiously I twisted in the saddle to see that her finger was also lit by the cat’s-head ring. These artifacts, it seemed, still responded to the proper command.
When I turned back, my eyes fastened on a break in the rocky escarpment surrounding the plateau—peering at it closely, I realized the gap marked our path.
“Hold!” I cried, raising my wrist in signal. Climbing off the mare, I bent over, studied the now-revealed way before us by the moonglow and the light from the Old Ones’ gift. It was narrow—scarcely wider than our mounts at some points—plunging downward in a dizzy sweep before leveling out for a space, only to climb at a gentler angle toward the other peak. Nekia stretched out her neck, peering down at the trail, then shook her head, snorting, her eyes rolling white-ringed.
“I don’t like it much, either,” I told her, “but we must take it. Can you see it, Nekia? Well enough to give the others something to follow?” After a second the mare tossed her head, almost as if she understood my words and was agreeing to attempt the descent.
“Should we ride or lead them, Kerovan?” Joisan asked, and I did not miss the tremor in her voice.
“Ride,” I made answer, working to keep my own tones steady. “If we try to lead them, we could slip and pull them after us. Besides, their night vision is better than ours.” I paced downward a step, testing the footing. “The path is dust over rock—slick, but they can dig a footing, I hope. Try and ride as still in the saddle as possible, keeping your weight forward over the shoulders so they can balance. Don’t lean back. They need their hindquarters free.”
I glanced over at Jervon. “Vengi cannot carry double down this way.” I jerked my rope free from my saddle, tossing it to him, as did Joisan. “Knot these together, then anchor the line to one of these rocks, then around yourself in case of a slip. I will go first, then each of you, in turn. Ready?”
All three nodded. I mounted Nekia with a quick motion, turning her to face that downward trail which bore such a disturbing resemblance to a child’s sliding path. “Come on, Nekia,” I said, shaking my reins, squeezing her sides with my legs. She snorted, putting a tentative foot over the side of the plateau, then jerking it back in the next instant. “Come on,” I said again, gentling her with a hand on her shoulder.
She put out one forefoot again, the other following it, then her hindquarters humped beneath me as she was over the side. For several strides she managed a mincing walk, legs bunched together for balance, swaying like a dancer—then, as the slope steepened even further, she was sliding downward, nearly sitting on her tail, with me poised over her withers, trying not to move.
In a last rush of dust, we were down, and safe.
“Joisan next!” I shouted, looking up, moving off the trail to give her room. Arren was plainly balky, but finally, after my lady gave her an audible boot, she, too, came. Guret followed, then the three of us watched as Jervon inched his way downward, finally losing his balance and sliding down on his rear, fetching up beside us ghost pale from dust. Had the situation not been so desperate, he would have aroused our amusement.
“Are you hurt?” Joisan asked as he climbed stiffly to his feet, brushing at his breeches.
“No,” he said as Guret extended his arm and freed his stirrup that he might mount double behind him. “But in the unlikely event we return to your citadel, I shall take the long way “round.”
“May the Amber Lady grant we all may do so,” Joisan agreed dryly. “The crag-deer are welcome to this their range, with no envy from me.”
We moved along this comparatively level portion of the trail, the light from my wristband still helping to pick out the sharpest, most jagged rocks. The world appeared tenuous, insubstantial, as though the moonlight leaching its color had also stolen some of its reality. There was no sound save for the scurries of small night-dwellers and, overhead, the muted winging of an owl.
The trail sloped upward again, ascending in a long curving angle to the top of the peak where Joisan said Car He Dogan had once stood. Nekia’s muscles strained as she began the climb. I leaned forward to give her free rein, digging my fingers into her mane, wishing Kioga saddles were equipped with breast-collars. If the saddle slipped…
But it did not, and eventually we were able to halt on a ledge to breathe our mounts, staring upward at the last short section of trail. I could see what appeared to be ruins farther up, the same ruins we had noticed this morning. By moonlight their shifting was even more pronounced and disconcerting. “This is akin to the glamourie protecting our valley,” Joisan said thoughtfully as she sat beside me.
I glanced over at her, seeing in the wash of pallid light the heavy braid of her hair falling down her back, the shine of her eyes. Below the half sleeves of her mail, her Kioga blouse was dark with embroidery against the white linen. Swept by the sudden knowledge that this might well be the last time in life I looked so upon my lady, my awareness of her caught in my throat like something tangible.
love you, Joisan, I thought, making no effort to link my mind with hers. Even at this moment some vestiges of the old reserve still held, and I feared that if I gave way even by so little to my feelings, I would be unable to ride on that last small distance. I wanted to tell her—how I wanted to!—but the words stayed within me, mine alone.
“We may be forced to ride blind, my lord,” she continued quietly, not guessing, of course, the nature of my thoughts. “The horses, if they react the same as they did yesterday, will-remain unaffected.”
“Do you know—has your vision shown you—what now lies at the top of the peak?” I asked.
“No.”
“Guret,” I called, and the Kioga youth urged his sweating stallion over beside me. Vengi was the strongest of the three mounts, but it was fortunate that neither the boy nor Jervon was heavily built. The Dalesman had scrambled the steepest parts of the trail afoot, clinging to the horse’s tail for an anchor. “When we reach our destination, we will leave the horses with you. The sight of that… thing would surely panic them. I want you to guard them.”
I made my words as positive and inarguable as I could, and to my relief, Guret nodded. “Very well, m’lord.”
“Let us go,” I said, turning Nekia to that last stretch of trail.
We moved upward in single file, and with every stride the disorientation surrounding the ruins grew stronger—for, I was now sure, we rode into the remains of a once-mighty stronghold or Keep. Crumbled walls thrust raggedly upward, the moonlight doing little to illuminate them—instead, they seemed to absorb any and all light, so that they hulked as ebon shadows in the night.
And they changed. I would stare determinedly at what appeared to be an almost-recognizable wall, or courtyard, or balustrade, only to have it ripple, crawl, then melt before my eyes, sometimes changing into another form, sometimes disappearing entirely. My stomach lurched as we approached a tumbled high barrier to our path, only to have Nekia, ears forward, walk calmly up to and through its seemingly solid surface. I shut my eyes as we reached the top of the peak and continued on, for the distortion grew stronger, my vision blurring until at times I saw double—or even triple—images of the roiling landscape.
At last I opened my eyes upon a trail—one that stayed in place, making me believe it truly there—leading in from the right. Looking back along it, I saw that it wound a curving path to the east, back through this forest of pillars and ruins—both real and hallucinatory. That trail, I thought, came from the direction of the Waste and, beyond that, the land of my birth, High Hallack. Was this a trail of the Old Ones? Had the place called Car .Re Dogan been some kind of watch-keep set on the mountain border between the ancient land of Arvon and the newer one of humankind?