A moment later he was lying with her at the bottom of the big covered cart, bleeding onto a bolt of embroidered linen.
6
Raederle was sobbing. He tried to quiet her, gathering her to him as he listened, but she could not stop. He heard beneath her weeping the grind of wheels in the dust and the driver’s whistling, muffled by the bolts of cloth piled behind him and the canvas covering the wagon. The road was quiet; he heard no sounds of disturbance behind them. His head was aching; he leaned it against the linen. His eyes closed. A darkness thundered soundlessly toward him again. Then a cartwheel banged into a pothole, jarring him, and Raederle twisted out of his hold and sat up. She pushed her hair out of her eyes.
“Morgon, he came for me at night, and I was barefoot — I couldn’t even run. I thought it was you. I don’t even have shoes on. What in Hel’s name was that harpist doing? I don’t understand him. I don’t—” She stopped suddenly, staring at him, as if he were a shape-changer she had found beside her. She put one hand over her mouth, and touched his face with the other. “Morgon…”
He put his hand to his forehead, looked at the blood on his fingers, and made a surprised sound. The side of his face, from temple to jaw, was burning. His shoulder hurt; his tunic fell apart when he touched it. A raw, wide gash, like the scrape of a sharp hoof, continued from his face to his shoulder and halfway down his chest.
He straightened slowly, looking at the bloodstains he had left on the floor of the wagon, on the trader’s fine cloth. He shuddered suddenly, violently, and pushed his face against his knees.
“I walked straight into that one.” He began to curse himself, vividly and methodically, until he heard her rise. He caught her wrist, pulled her down again. “No.”
“Will you let go of me? I’m going to tell the trader to stop. If you don’t let go, I’ll shout.”
“No. Raederle, listen. Will you listen! We are only a few miles west of where we were captured. The shape-changers will search for us. So will Ghisteslwchlohm, if he isn’t dead. We have to outrun them.”
“I don’t even have shoes on! And if you tell me to change shape, I will curse you.” Then she touched his cheek again, swallowing. “Morgon, can you stop crying?”
“Haven’t I stopped?”
“No.” Her own eyes filled again. “You look like a wraith out of Hel. Please let the trader help you.”
“No.” The wagon jerked to a stop suddenly, and he groaned. He got to his feet unsteadily, drew her up. The trader’s startled face peered back at them between the falls of his canvas.
“What in the name of the wolf-king’s eyes are you doing back there?” He shifted the curtains so the light fell on them. “Look at the mess you made on that embroidered cloth! Do you realize how much that costs? And that white velvet…”
Morgon heard Raederle draw breath to respond. He gripped her hand and sent his mind forward, like an anchor flung on its line across water, disappearing into the shallows to fall to a resting place. He found a quiet, sunlit portion of the road ahead of them, with only a musician on it singing to himself as he rode toward Lungold. Holding Raederle’s mind, halting her in mid-sentence, Morgon stepped toward the singing.
They stood in the road only a minute, while the singer moved obliviously away from them. The unexpected light spun around Morgon dizzily. Raederle was struggling against his mind-hold with a startling intensity. She was angry, he sensed, and beneath that, panicked. She could break his hold, he knew suddenly as he glimpsed the vast resource of power in her, but she was too frightened to control her thoughts. His thoughts, shapeless, open, soared over the road again, touched the minds of horses, a hawk, crows feeding around a dead campfire. A farmer’s son, leaving his heritage behind him, riding an ancient plow horse to seek his fortune in Lungold, anchored Morgon’s mind again. He stepped forward. As they stood in the dust raised by the plow horse, Morgon heard his own harsh, exhausted breathing. Something slapped painfully across his mind, and he nearly fought back at it until be realized it was Raederle’s mind-shout. He stilled both their minds and searched far down the road.
A smith who travelled from village to village along the road, shoeing horses and patching cauldrons, sat half-asleep in his cart, dreaming idly of beer. Morgon, dreaming his dream, followed him through the hot morning. Raederle was oddly still. He wanted to speak to her then, desperately, but he did not dare break his concentration. He threw his mind open again, until he heard traders laughing. He let his mind fill with their laughter until it was next to him among the trees. Then his sense of Raederle’s mind drained out of him. He groped for it, startled, but touched only the vague thoughts of trees or animals. He could not find her with his mind. His concentration broken, he saw her standing in front of him.
She was breathing quickly, silently, staring at him, her body tensed to shout or strike or cry. He said, his face so stiff he could hardly speak, “Once more. Please. The river.”
She nodded, after a moment. He touched her hand, and then her mind. He felt through the sunlight for cool minds: fish, water birds, river animals. The river appeared before them; they stood on the bank in a soft grassy clearing among the ferns.
He let go of Raederle, fell to his hands and knees and drank. The water’s voice soothed the sear of the sun across his mind. He looked up at Raederle and tried to speak. He could not see her. He slumped down, laid his face in the river and fell asleep.
He woke again in the middle of the night, found Raederle sitting beside him, watching him by the gentle light of her fire. They gazed at one another for a long time without speaking, as if they were looking out of their memories. Then Raederle touched his face. Her face was drawn; there was an expression in her eyes that he had never seen before.
An odd sorrow caught at his throat He whispered, “I’m sorry. I was desperate.”
“It’s all right.” She checked the bandages across his chest; he recognized strips of her shift. “I found herbs the pig-woman — I mean Nun — taught me to use on wounded pigs. I hope they work on you.”
He caught her hands, folded them between his fingers. “Please. Say it.”
“I don’t know what to say. No one ever controlled my mind before. I was so angry with you, all I wanted to do was break free of you and go back to Anuin. Then… I broke free. And I stayed with you because you understand… you understand power. So do the shape-changers who called me kinswoman, but you I trust.” She was silent; he waited, seeing her oddly, feverishly in the firelight, the tangled mass of her hair like harvested kelp, her skin pale as shell, her expressions changing like light changing over the sea. Her face twisted away from him suddenly. “Stop seeing me like that!”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, “You looked so beautiful. Do you realize what kind of power it takes to break one of my bindings?”
“Yes. A shape-changer’s power. That’s what I have.”
He was silent, staring at her. A light, chill shudder ran through him. “They have that much power.” He sat up abruptly, scarcely noticing the drag of pain down his shoulder. “Why don’t they use it? They never use it. They should have killed me long ago. In Herun, the shape-changer Corrig could have killed me as I slept; instead he only harped. He challenged me to kill him. In Isig — three shape-changers could not kill one farmer-prince of Hed who had never used a sword in his life? What in Hel’s name are they? What do they want of me? What does Ghisteslwchlohm want?”