He shook his head, eyes very wide. Now she'd terrorized him, and she was sorry for it. She patted his hand contritely. "In truth, these few days of travel have brought me more ease than the past three years of idling. My flight from Valenda may have begun as a spasm, as a drowning man strikes upward to the air, but I do believe I start to breathe, Learned. This pilgrimage may be a medicine despite me."
"I ... I ... Five gods grant it may be so, lady." He signed himself. She could tell by the way his hand hesitated at each holy point that it was not, this time, a gesture of mere ritual.
She was almost tempted to tell him about her dream. But no, it would just excite him all over again. The poor young man had surely had enough for one day. His jowls were quite pale.
"I will take, um, more thought," he assured her, and scraped his chair back from the table. His bow to her, as he rose, was not that of conductor to charge, nor of courtier to patron. He gave her the deep obeisance of piety to a living saint.
Her hand shot out, grabbed his hand halfway through its gesture of boundless respect. "No. Not now. Not then. Not ever again."
He swallowed, shakily converted his farewell to a nervous bob, and fled.
CHAPTER FIVE
THEY LINGERED TWO MORE DAYS IN CASILCHAS, WAITING OUT A slow spring rain, wrapped in a hospitality that Ista found increasingly uncomfortable. She was invited to meals in the seminary's refectory not of scholarly austerity, but near banquets in her near honor, with senior divines and local notables of the town discreetly jostling for a place at her table. They still addressed her as Sera dy Ajelo, but she was forced to trade the new ease of her incognito for her old constrained court manners, learned in too stern a school, it seemed, ever to be forgotten. She was gracious; she was attentive to her hosts; she complimented and smiled and gritted her teeth and sent Foix to inform the elusive dy Cabon that he must finish his inquiries, whatever they were, immediately. It was time to travel on.
The days that followed were much better, a pleasant ramble through the blooming countryside from one minor shrine to another, nearly the escape Ista had hoped for from her pilgrimage. Moving steadily northwest, they passed out of Baocia into the neighboring province of Tolnoxo. Long hours in the saddle were interspersed with invigorating tramps about places of historical or theological interest— wells, ruins, groves, shrines, famous graves, commanding heights, formerly embattled fords. The young men of the party searched the military sites for arrowheads, sword shards, and bones, and argued over whether the blotches upon them were, or were not, heroic bloodstains. Dy Cabon had acquired another book for his saddlebag's library, of the history and legends of the region, from which he read improving paragraphs as opportunities presented. Despite the odd succession of humble inns and holy hostels, quite unlike anything she had ever experienced as a royina or even as the youngest daughter of a provincar, Ista slept better than she had in her own bed for ... as long as she could remember. The disturbing dream did not return, to her secret relief.
Dy Cabon's first few morning sermons after Casilchas showed the results of his hasty researches, being plainly cribbed from some volume of model lessons. But the next few days brought more daring and original material, heroic tales of Chalionese and Ibran saints and god-touched martyrs in the service of their chosen deities. The divine made contorted connections between each day's tale and the sites they were to view, but Ista was not deceived. His stories of the famous miracles that men and women had performed as vessels of the gods' powers made Ferda's and Foix's and even Liss's eyes shine with a spirit of emulation, but Ista found the divine's message, on all its several levels, entirely resistible. He watched her anxiously for her responses; she thanked him coolly. He bowed and bit back disappointment, but also, fortunately, the temptation to reopen the subject more directly.
A break in dy Cabon's oblique campaign occurred as they wound through the foothills of the western ranges and arrived at the town of Vinyasca, just in time for the mid-spring festival. This feast day fell at the apogee of the season, exactly midway between the Daughter's Day and the Mother's. In Vinyasca, it was also tied to the renewal of the trade caravans over the snowy passes from Ibra, bringing new wine and oil, dried fruit and fish, and a hundred other delicacies of that milder land, as well as exotic fare from even farther shores.
A fairground had been set up outside the town walls, between the rocky river and a pine grove. Mouthwatering smoke rose up from roasting pits behind tents displaying handicrafts and produce of the area's maidens, who competed for honors in the goddess's name. Liss shrugged at the tent of embroidery, sewing, and wool work; dy Cabon and Foix returned disappointed from a reconnoiter of the tent of foodstuffs to report that it did not offer morsels to any but the judges.
Food might be the focus, but youthful energy could not be denied. For all that it was a young women's festival, young men vied for their gazes in a dozen contests of skill and daring. Ista's guard, kindling at the challenges, begged for their commander's indulgence and dispersed to try their luck, although Ferda meticulously apportioned pairs in turn to be at her call at all times. Ferda's sternness eroded abruptly when he discovered the horse races. Having no one else's leave to beg, he sought Ista's, and she hid a smile and sent him off to ready his mount.
"My courier horse," said Liss in a voice of longing, "could make all these country nags look like the plow horses they undoubtedly are."
"I'm afraid the women's race was earlier," said Ista. She'd seen the winner led past, horse and girl festooned with blue-and-white garlands, surrounded by cheerful relatives.
"That was for the young maidens," said Liss, her voice tinged with scorn. "There are some older women getting ready for the longer one—I saw them."
"Are you sure they were not just grooms, or relatives, or owners?"
"No, for they were tying colors on their sleeves. And they had the look of riders."
As Liss did, indeed. She was doing her best to keep her face dignified, but she was rising on her toes.
"Well," said Ista, amused, "if Foix at least will undertake not to abandon me—"
Foix, smiling, favored her with a loyal bow.
"Oh, thank you, my lady!" cried Liss, and was gone as though racing afoot, back to the inn's stable where they had stowed their mounts.
Ista strolled about the makeshift grounds on Foix's arm, taking care to observe any contests in which her own men competed. A contest to gallop with a javelin picking off small rings set up on posts was won by one of her guard; a match that involved leaping from a horse to grapple a young steer to the ground was won by the steer. All brought back their prizes for their officer Foix to hold, and therefore Ista to notice; she felt half courtly, half maternal, and commiserated the dusty, limping steer-wrestler with as many words as she spared to congratulate the luckier contestants.
She had accepted her guard troop at first as an unavoidable encumbrance, and ignored them. But over the days of her journey she had learned names, faces, life stories—most very short. They had begun to look less like blank-faced soldiers, responsible for her, and more like overgrown children. She did not care for this oppressive shift in her perceptions. She did not want to be responsible for them. I had no luck with sons. Yet loyalty must run two ways, or else become betrayal in the egg.
As the contenders assembled for the horse race, Foix found Ista a spot on the slope overlooking the road, above most of the rest of the eager crowd. In a gallant's gesture he spread his vest-cloak, carried over his arm in the warmth of the bright afternoon, on the ground for Ista to settle upon. They had a fine view of the start and finish point, which was a large stump by the roadside. The course ran down the valley road for about two miles, circled a stand of oak trees crowning a mound, and returned by the same route.