But if they would return safely by the overland route, they must leave now. Cob would not take the mageroad and leave others to travel the hard way, and they all knew how the Marshal-General would react to the sudden eruption of horses, mules, and people into the High Lord’s Hall. The Rosemage went with them to the edge of the mountains, and watched until they were safely down into the desert below.
“We’ll be back,” Cob bellowed cheerfully from halfway down. “Or someone will.”
“They grow rich and fat,” one of the blackcloaks grumbled. “Year after year, and for how long? Their horses foul our valley; their caravans clatter and gabble, loud as a village fair. Let us have a good feast now, and forget the rest.”
“Are you truly one of us, or a half-mortal fool?” hissed the black-cloaked leader. “We have no reason to hurry: the fatter they grow, the greater the feast to come. The more folk who come, the more kingdoms or empires involved, the more chaos will follow their downfall. We shall topple not one princeling in a canyon, but all with whom he trades, if we bide our time and prepare. Will the eastern lands blame Khartazh? Will Khartazh believe it a plot of Xhim? Some mortals, at least, will think it a plot of the sinyi. Dasksinyi may turn against irsinyi . . . all is possible. In the meantime, we observe. We listen. We gather from their idle talk much we can pass to others.”
“As long as the sinyi don’t find us first,” the grumbler said, undaunted. All hissed, a long malicious sibilance as chilling as wind over frozen grass.
“If the sinyi do find us,” the leader said, “if the dasksinyi or irsinyi find us, it will be because some one of you was clumsy . . . some one of you was hasty . . . some one of you could not obey my commands and thought to outwit me. Then it would be better for that one to be brought before the forest lord, than before me.” Silence followed; after a time he said, “Is that understood?”
“Yes, lord,” came the response.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Years passed, peacefully enough. Each summer a caravan came, bringing news from the eastern lands that seemed increasingly irrelevant. Late each summer they left, taking with them the copies of the Code, of commentary and history, and taking also the memory of a high red land peopled with grave, courteous folk. As time went on, a few stayed, some of mageborn parentage and some not, but all intrigued by a way of life so different from their own. Craftsmen, finding a market for superlative skill; scholars; judicars intent on pursuing fine points of law; even a few Marshals, unhappy with changes in the Fellowship.
Some disliked the stronghold and its inhabitants intensely. They claimed to sense evil; they blamed the mageborn for using their powers. Their companions laughed—in the face of that peace, that prosperity, that hive of diligent workers who quarreled so seldom and shared so readily, such suspicions reflected on those who voiced them. Perhaps the old magelords had been evil, but not that child charming a bird to sing on his finger. Not that woman whose magery lifted the bundles from the pack animals and set them gently in a row. The suspicious never returned—and some did not survive the trip home, having angered their companions with too many arguments.
For the first ten years or so, Aris and Seri travelled often, sometimes to Fin Panir, where their adventures furnished the substance of many a fireside tale and song. Their other adventures, in distant Xhim, on the vast steppes, no one knew but themselves and the gods. Luap worried, every time, that they might not return. Later, they spent most of their time—in the end all of it—in the stronghold, for despite Seri’s warnings, the mageborn did not maintain active watchposts or keep up militia training unless she was there. They depended on the Khartazh to guard them on the west, and on the desert and mountains to protect them on the other sides.
By the time Cob died, Luap’s position as a distant, powerful, but valued ally had become secure. His version of Gird’s life, of the history of the war, spread copyist by copyist throughout the land. Power kept him young, something he concealed from each year’s visitors as well as his own folk. He lived on, and the other witnesses to Gird’s Life died, one by one, until he was the last who had fought in that army, who had known anything but the end of Gird’s life.
The Council of Marshals even invited him back to be Marshal; his refusal won him support as a moderate, modest man, although the more violent said it proved his weakness. He noticed, in reports of the gossips, that Raheli’s influence lasted beyond her own death. She was blamed for a militant and violent strain of Girdish rule that Luap was sure Gird would not have approved. He ignored the counter-arguments that she had compromised with Koris and his successor only to ensure that women retained their rights in the grange organization, that she herself, and her followers, had been moderate. Rahi’s death left him free to write Gird’s Life as it should have been—he would prove he was right, and she had been wrong. Aris and Seri still held Gird’s original dream, and something in Aris’s clear gaze kept Luap from openly admitting that he had no intention of reuniting the two peoples, not now or in the future. The others were content to leave the eastern lands to their own affairs.
Luap’s calendars of the western lands, meticulously kept though they were, interested Aris little. . . .
Aris climbed the last few steps to the eastern watchtower, aware that he no longer wanted to run up them. He didn’t feel older, but he was, when he thought of it, acting older. He put down the sack of food and the waterskin without speaking to Seri; she was watching something in the eastern sky, and she would speak when she knew what it was.
In the changeable light of blowing clouds, the stone walls and towers seemed alive, shifting shape like demons of a dream. Clefts and hollows in the rocks gave them faces that leered and mocked the watchers, faces that smoothed into bland obscurity when the light steadied. Far below, he could hear the moaning of the great pines; up here, the wind whistled through the watchtower openings.
He felt on edge, his teeth ready to grip something and shake it, his hands curling into fists whenever he wasn’t thinking about them. It was ridiculous. He was a grown man, the senior healer with students (none too promising) under him, too old for such feelings. He glanced at Seri, then stared. He rarely looked at her; he felt her presence always, so familiar that he did not need to see her. But now: when had gray touched that wild hair, and when had those lines appeared beside her eyes, her mouth? From vague unease, he fell into panic. Seri aging? Getting old?
As always, she reacted to his change of mood before he could move or speak. “Aris. What’s wrong?” Her eyes were still the clear, mischievous eyes he had always known; her expression held the same affection. He shook his head.
“I—don’t know. Something just—”
“I’m on edge too, and I don’t think just from you.” She turned to look out again, the same direction. “Maybe it’s this weather; it’s hard to see, hard to judge distance, even for landmarks I know. I keep thinking I see shadowy things flying in the upper canyons, something moving along the walls—but of course those are the cloudshadows, blowing all over.” She sighed, rubbed her eyes, and sat down abruptly. “Whatever it is, if it’s not nonsense, can’t get here before we eat our dinner.”
Aris unwrapped the kettle. “Kesil and Barha brought back a wildcat and two stags; we have plenty of meat in this stew. And the bread is today’s baking; Zil wanted you to have this fresh. He tried something new, he said. I’m to slice it from this end.” Seri spooned out two bowlfuls of stew, while Aris sliced the narrow loaf. “Ah . . . I see . . . he filled it with jam.”
“Before baking? Let me try.” Seri took a slice and bit into it. “Good—better than spreading it on after. And perfect with this stew.”