Silently, Ista swung her feet out of bed and padded to the locked shutters to the balcony. She eased up the latch and slipped out. The only lights were a pair of wall lanterns, burning low, flanking the closed doors of the temple across the plaza. She gazed up into the night sky at the waning moon. She knew it for the same moon as in her vision. The place, the man, were as real as she, wherever they were. So did the strange man dream this night of Ista, as Ista dreamed of him? What did his dark straining eyes see that made him reach out so desperately, and was he as bewildered by her as she was by him?
His voice had been rich in timbre, though scraped thin with pain or fear or exhaustion. But he had spoken in the Ibran tongue shared by Ibra and Chalion and Brajar, not in Roknari or Darthacan—albeit with a north Chalionese accent tinged by Roknari cadences.
I cannot help you. Whoever you are, I cannot help. Pray to your god, if you want rescue. Though I do not recommend it.
She fled the moonlight, locked the shutter, huddled back into her bed as soundlessly as she could, careful not to wake Liss. She pulled her feather pillow over her head. It blocked all vision except the very one she did not want to see, burning in her mind's eye. When she woke again on the morrow, all the events of the previous day would seem a more faded dream than this. She clenched her hands in her sheets and waited for the light.
AS LISS WAS BRAIDING ISTA'S HAIR, SOON AFTER DAWN THE NEXT morning, there came a knock on their chamber door, and Foix dy Gura's voice: "My lady? Liss?"
Liss went to the door and opened it onto the gallery that ran around the inn's interior well court. Foix, fully dressed for the road, gave her a nod, adding a little bow to Ista, who came up behind Liss's shoulder.
"Good morning, my lady. Learned dy Cabon sends his abject apologies, but he cannot lead prayers this morning. He is fallen very ill."
"Oh, no," said Ista. "Is it serious? Should we send someone to the temple to ask for a physician?" Vinyasca was much smaller than Valenda; was the Mother's Order here large enough to support a physician of good learning?
Foix rubbed his lips, which kept trying to quirk up in a smile. "Ah, I think not quite yet, my lady. It may just be something he ate yesterday. Or, er... wine-sickness."
"He was not drunk when I last saw him," said Ista doubtfully.
"Mm, that was earlier. Later, he went off with a party from the local temple, and, well, they brought him back quite late. Not that one can diagnose with certainty through a closed door, but his groans and noises sounded quite like wine-sickness to me. Horribly familiar, brought back memories. Mercifully blurred memories, but still."
Liss smothered a laugh.
Ista gave her a quelling frown, and said, "Very well. Tell your men to stand down and leave their horses to their hay. We shall attend the morning service at the temple instead, and decide whether to take to the road again... later. There is no hurry, after all."
"Very good, my lady." Foix gave her a nod and a little salute, and turned away.
Early services filled an hour, although it seemed to Ista that they were curtailed, and not well attended; the local divine was rather pale and wan himself. Afterward, she and Liss and Foix idled about the quiet town. The festival tents were being taken down and folded away. They walked along the river over the racecourse, and Foix encouraged Liss to give a blow-by-blow account of her ride, details of horses and riders that Ista had scarcely registered. Liss explained that her remarkable burst of speed, late in the race, was partly illusory; it had merely been that the other horses were starting to flag at that stage. Ista was pleased to note that her five-mile walk did not exhaust her as it had that day when she'd fled the castle in Valenda, and she didn't think it was wholly due to wearing more suitable clothing and shoes.
Learned dy Cabon emerged from his room around noon, his face the color of dough. Ista took one look at him, canceled the day's travel plans, and sent him back to bed. He crept away mumbling pitifully grateful thanks. She was relieved to see he was not feverish. Foix's diagnosis of wine-sickness seemed sound, confirmed when the divine slunk out again, shamefaced, in the evening and took a supper of toast and tea, turning down with loathing an offer of watered wine.
BY THE NEXT MORNING DY CABON SEEMED FULLY RECOVERED, although his sunrise sermon again reverted to a model from his book. Ista's party took to the road while the air was yet cool, fording the rocky river and climbing the hill road out of Vinyasca, heading north.
The country they rode through, on the dry side of the mountains, was sparsely wooded: stands of pine and evergreen oak with scrub between, gray rocks poking up through the yellow weeds. The soil was far too poor for much farming, except in patches and terrace gardens grubbed out and hand-tended, and the thinly populated area around Vinyasca soon gave way to utter wilderness. The road led up and down, one little valley looking much like the next. Sometimes old bridges or culverts, not in the best repair, crossed the streams tumbling down from the distant heights on their leftward side, but more often their horses and mules had to pick their way across boulder-studded fords. They stopped in the early afternoon to picnic by such a stream; the water was this land's one rich gift, clear and pure and cold.
The evening's goal was a reputed holy site tucked high in the hills, the village birthplace of a saintly woman healer, devotee of the Mother, whose miracles had all taken place far from here. Or else, Ista reflected as she rode along, they would have been far more obscure. The scampering golden rock gophers that popped up and chittered inhospitably as they passed would not have written them down and passed them around to attract foreign travelers in after-generations. After the visit, their route would descend to the easier roads in the Chalionese plains. And swing south again toward Baocia and home?
She did not want to go back. Yet how long could she go on like this, trailing these young men around the countryside on random roads? They would be wanted soon for harsher services, as the lords of Chalion prepared for the autumn campaign in the north. Well, then, let us all dodge our duties a little longer. The weather was mild, the season was right; the warm afternoon breathed a scent of mountain thyme and sage. The smell of blood and sweat and iron would overtake them all soon enough.
The track widened, curving around a wooded slope and then descending. Ferda and dy Cabon rode ahead, followed by one of the young guards and Foix. Liss rode close behind Ista, and the rest trailed after.
Ista felt it first as a wave of emotion: hot, confused menace; pain and desperation; a terrible shortness of breath. A moment later, her horse planted all four feet and came to an abrupt, trembling halt. Its head came up sharply, and it snorted.
From the shadows of the trees, the bear charged. Its head was lowered, its great shoulder crest stood up, its bronze fur rippled like water in the slanting afternoon light. It moved incredibly fast for such a bulky, low-slung creature, and its snarl split the air like a saw.
Every horse and mule in the party tried to wheel and bolt. The young guard ahead of Ista, Pejar, swung left as his panicked mount shied right, and they parted company. Ista didn't see him hit the ground, for her own horse reared then, squealing. Too late, she tried to shorten her reins, grab mane. Her saddle pommel hit her hard in the stomach, her saddle jerked away from under her, and then the ground came up in a whirl, knocking her wind half out. Dizzied, she rolled to her feet, missing her lunge for a flapping rein.
Horses were galloping away in all directions, their furious riders sawing at their reins in an effort to regain control. Pejar's horse, its saddle empty, was far down the track already, Ista's horse bucking and kicking in its wake. The young man, flat on the ground, was staring up in terror as the drooling bear loomed over him. Was the animal mad, to so attack? Ordinarily these mountain bears were elusive, shy; and this was no mother defending cubs, but a large male.