He fought it out onto the road, where it was at least pleased to convert vertical into horizontal motion. Only a sketchy illusion of wolves, a fragment of geas learned from his shaman friend, allowed Pen to force the turn—more of a shy—onto the south road. At that point, he could crouch in his stirrups and let the blighted beast run itself out of piss and vinegar.
It took five miles. Pen, gasping for breath, was impressed. Bastard’s blessing, are you?
The gallop fell to a bounding trot almost as hard to sit, then a blowing walk. The road followed the winding valley as it rose toward the hill passes. Between patches of tangled woodland, little farmsteads clung to the creek. At one, a woman was out working in a vegetable garden, and Pen dared to stop and beg a drink of water and word of any prior passers-by. She scowled at him in alarm but then, at her second glance, smiled unwilled. The water was forthcoming, but no news; she’d been working inside earlier. Pen cast her a blessing, which made her blink, but then wave back.
He watered the horse when the creek crossed the road, after an argument about whether it was going to try to flop down and roll him off among the rocks. He was only sorry he couldn’t give it to Arisaydia. The two deserved each other.
XIV
Adelis, Nikys thought, was champing at the bit far more than their sluggish horses. Pressing their guide for more speed had only won them grudging brisk trots. He was excessively tender toward his employer’s beasts, she thought, till they arrived well-timed to stop at what proved a cousin’s farmhouse, and an offer of a purchased meal. Adelis whispered, in a furious undervoice more than half serious, that it would be faster to run the man through and steal his horses after all, but yielded to a chance for food that they only did not have thanks to leaving Master—Learned—whatever-he-was Penric behind.
The broad, smiling cousin set them out a lunch at a shady table by the stream, in what would have been an idyllic setting and interlude under any other circumstances. As it was, it gave Nikys her first private chance to pick up their argument from back at the livery.
“I still think we were wrong to leave Learned Penric behind. If not tactically, although that too, morally. What if something happens to him?”
Adelis made an exasperated noise through his chewing. “He’s a sorcerer. And a spy. He’ll land on his feet. Like a cat.”
“That’s not actually true of cats.” Or sorcerers? “And last time, he landed in a bottle dungeon.”
“If it’s true he was tossed into one, it’s also true he escaped. Which is… let’s just say unprecedented. He can make his way back to Adria faster and safer without us. That he’s an Adriac agent is the one part of his jumble of tales that I certainly believe to be real.”
Nikys swallowed watered wine and drummed her fingers on the boards. “I watched him, and talked to him a little, during those first days when you were too lost in pain and syrup of poppies to track much. Whatever else was going through his mind, he cared passionately about what he was trying to do for your eyes.”
“Which says only that the man had a conscience, which I will not argue about, and that it was guilty. Whether because what he told us was true, or for some other secret up his sleeve, I can’t guess. That he was still trying to the last to persuade me to Adria, after all our disasters, that he expended such heroic effort on healing me, suggests that his duke must want me far more than seems reasonable, and I have to wonder why. Nikys, we had only his word for his whole fantastical story. He only claimed to be a Temple sorcerer, and all the rest. We don’t know.”
“All his actions so far were not proof enough for you?”
Adelis shook his head. “I swear, you swallowed down everything the man said without choking because, what, you liked his blue eyes?”
“You don’t deny he’s a sorcerer, you can’t deny he’s an extraordinary physician—what he told me in the temple last night—”
“He told,” Adelis put in. “Again.”
She waved this off. “Well, that was in confidence anyway. As for the other… he thinks better of people than he should. Better than is safe for him. That says more learned divine than spy to me. He thinks differently.”
“He and his invisible twelve-headed demon, yes, very differently.” A wry grimace as he leaned back.
She still boggled trying to imagine what must be going on inside Learned Penric’s overcrowded head. All the time. Whatever else was happening, his mind had to be very, very full. The wonder was not that he was mad but that he wasn’t.
“Anyway, we can move faster now,” said Adelis.
“Not at present,” Nikys noted.
“Aye.” He shoved the rest of his bread in his mouth and rose, still chewing. “I’ll go prod that groom. And see if I can secure a water bottle. And some food. We’ll want them, going over these hills.” He went off into the old stone farmhouse.
Nikys thought her greatest want was going to be human, and demonic. Would she ever see the strange sorcerer again? Would he really be all right, as Adelis insisted? His last time—first time, she also gathered—wandering about Cedonia on his own had included some horrifying turns. She hadn’t felt this sick with helpless worry since, well, Kymis. And then Adelis, until Penric had appeared. And now Penric. Her chain of alarming men was getting longer, but no better.
Would there ever be any way to find out if he’d made it home safely? She didn’t know a soul in Lodi, had barely met a few Adriac merchants. She supposed one such might carry a letter, but to whom?
But wait, Learned Penric was a Temple-man. If he truly was all he’d said, an inquiry sent in care of the archdivine of Adria might well find him. The ill-fates of recent letters to and from Adria were daunting, but should she and Adelis arrive safely at last in Orbas, she abruptly determined to dare.
There, a plan. Better than crying limply under a persimmon tree any day. As Adelis emerged from the farmhouse, more-or-less strong-arming the groom, she rubbed her eyes and hurried to the horses.
XV
As the light leveled toward evening, the woods dwindled to scrub, the farmsteads gave way to shepherd’s huts, and the road narrowed to a winding, stony track. At a bend, Pen encountered a rider leading two saddled horses back the other way.
The rider stopped to stare in surprise. “Five gods, man, someone rented you Pighead? And you’re still atop?”
That alone was enough to identify the man as the small livery’s groom-and-guide. “Is that its name? Very fitting. We’ve had some debates along the way, but I’ve won so far. Tell me, were you escorting a man and his wife, traveling? Where did they go?”
“Oh, aye. I told them they’d never get over the pass before nightfall, better to find shelter and continue in the morning, but they were having none of my advice, so I suppose they deserve what they find. I took them as far up as the horses could get, where they insisted I leave them off.”
Pen was still on the right track, five gods be praised. “How much farther? I need to catch up to them.”
“Maybe a mile?”
Pen nodded relieved thanks. “Oh, I should warn you—there’s a troop of soldiers behind me that are conscripting horses for the army. If you don’t want to end up walking home, you’d probably best get your beasts off the road and find a place to hide them till they pass on.”
“Oh!” The man looked startled, but he swallowed down the lie. “Thanks!”