The fire was carefully banked coals; it was Tarma's watch. Kethry sighed and prepared to go back to another hour of sleep -- then stiffened. There were no sounds beyond what she and the two saddlebeasts were making. Tarma was gone.
Then, muffled by the fog, came the sound of blade on blade; unmistakable if heard once. And Kethry had heard that peculiar shing more times than she cared to think.
Kethry had lain down fully-clothed against the damp; now she sprang to her feet, seizing her blade as she rose. Barefooted, she followed the sound through the echoing trunks, doing her own best to make no sound.
For why, if this had been an attack, had Tarma not awakened her? An ambush then? But why hadn't Tarma called out to her? Why wasn't she calling for help now ? What of the Hawkbrothers that were supposed to be watching out for them?
She slipped around tree trunks, the thick carpet of needles soft beneath her feet, following the noise of metal scissoring and clashing. Away from the little cup where they had camped the fog began to wisp and rise, winding around the trunks in woolly festoons, though still thick as a storm cloud an arm's length above her head. The sounds of blades came clearer now, and she began using the tree trunks to hide behind as she crept up upon the scene of conflict.
She rounded yet another tree, and shrank again behind it; the fog had deceived her, and she had almost stumbled into the midst of combat.
The fog ringed this place, moving as if alive, a thick tendril of it winding out, now and again, to interpose itself between Tarma and her foe. It glowed -- it glowed with more than the predawn light. To mage-sight it glowed with power, power bright and pure, power strong, true, and -- strange. It was out of her experience -- and it barred her from the charmed circle where the combatants fenced.
Tarma's eyes were bright with utter concentration, her face expressionless as a sheet of polished marble. Kethry had never seen her quite like this, except when in the half-trance she induced when practicing or meditating. She was using both sword and dagger to defend herself --
Against another Shin'a'in.
This man was unmistakably of Tarma's race. The tawny gold skin of hands and what little Kethry could see of his face showed his kinship to her. So did the strands of raven hair that had been bound out of his face by an equally black headband, and ice-blue eyes that glinted above his veil.
For he was veiled; this was something Tarma never had worn for as long as Kethry had known her. Kethry hadn't even known till this moment that a veil could be part of a Shin'a'in costume, but the man's face was obscured by one, and it did not have the feeling of a makeshift. He was veiled and garbed entirely in black, the black Tarma had worn when on the trail of those who had slaughtered her Clan. Black was for blood-feud -- but Tarma had sworn that there was never blood-feud between Shin'a'in and Shin'a'in. And black was for Kal'enedral -- three times barred from internecine strife.
There was less in their measured counter and riposte of battle than of dance. Kethry held her breath, transfixed by more than the power of the mist. She was caught by the deadly beauty of the weaving blades, caught and held entranced, drawn out of her hiding place to stand in the open.
Tarma did not even notice she was there -- but the other did.
He stepped back, breaking the pattern, and motioned slightly with his left hand. Tarma instantly broke off her advance, and seemed to wake just as instantly from her trance, staring at Kethry with the startled eyes of a wild thing broken from hiding.
The other turned, for his back had been to Kethry. He saluted the sorceress in slow, deliberate ceremony with his own blade. Then he winked slowly and gravely over his veil, and -- vanished, taking the power in the magic fog with him.
Released from her entrancement, Kethry stared at her partner, not certain whether to be frightened, angry or both.
"What -- was -- that -- " she managed at last.
"My trainer; my guide," Tarma replied sheepishly. "One of them, anyway." She sheathed her sword and stood, to all appearances feeling awkward and at a curious loss for words. "I... never told you about them before, because I wasn't sure it was permitted. They train me every night we aren't within walls... one of them takes my watch to see you safe. I... I guess they decided I was taking too long to tell you about them; I suppose they figured it was time you knew about them."
"You said your people didn't use magic -- but he -- he was alive with it! Only your Goddess -- "
"He's Hers. In life, was Kal'enedral; and now -- " she lifted up her hand, " -- as you saw. His magic is Hers -- "
"What do you mean, 'in life'?" Kethry asked, an edge of hysteria in her voice.
"You mean -- you couldn't tell?"
"Tell what?"
"He's a spirit. He's been dead at least a hundred years, like all the rest of my teachers."
It took Tarma the better part of an hour to calm her partner down.
* * *
They broke out of the trees, as Tarma had promised, just past midafternoon.
Kethry stared; Tarma sat easily in Kessira's saddle, and grinned happily. "Well?" she asked, finally.
Kethry sought for words, and failed to find them.
They had come out on the edge of a sheer dropoff; the mighty trees grew to the very edge of it, save for the narrow path on which they stood. Below them, furlongs, it seemed, lay the Dhorisha Plains.
Kethry had pictured acres of grassland, a sea of green, as featureless as the sea itself, and as flat.
Instead she saw beneath her a rolling country of gentle, swelling rises; like waves. Green grass there was in plenty -- as many shades of green as Kethry had ever seen, and more -- and golden grass, and a faint heathered purple. And flowers -- it must have been flowers that splashed the green with irregular pools of bright blue and red, white and sunny yellow, orange and pink. Kethry took an experimental sniff and yes, the breeze rising up the cliff carried with it the commingled scents of growing grass and a hundred thousand spring blossoms.
There were dark masses, like clouds come to earth, running in lines along the bottoms of some of the swells. After a long moment Kethry realized that they must be trees, far-off trees, lining the watercourses.
"How -- " she turned to Tarma with wonder in her eyes, "how could you ever bear to leave this?"
"It wasn't easy, she'enedra," Tarma sighed, deep and abiding hunger stirring beneath the smooth surface of the mask she habitually wore. "Ah, but you're seeing it at its best. The Plains have their hard moments, and more of them than the soft.
Winter -- aye, that's the coldest face of all, with all you see out there sere and brown, and so barren all the life but the Clans and the herds sleeps beneath the surface in safe burrows. High summer is nearly as cruel, when the sun burns everything, when the watercourses shrink to tiny trickles, when you long for a handsbreadth of shade, and there is none to be found. But spring -- oh, the Plains are lovely then, as lovely as She is when She is Maiden -- and as welcoming."
Tarma gazed out at the blowing grasslands with a faint smile beginning to touch her thin lips.
"Ah, I swear I am as sentimental as an old granny with a mouthful of tales of how golden the world was when she was young," she laughed, finally, "and none of this gets us down to the Plains. Follow me, and keep Rodi exactly in Kessira's footsteps. It's a long way down from here if you slip."