We had no snow sleds with mighty hounds to drag them, nor real guide except that we knew what we sought lay to the west. But how many days’ travel now lay between us and the Valley, and what number of dangers could lie in wait there was a guess I did not care to make as a challenge to fate.
I thought I could remember the way upriver and across country to the place of the hot stream. But my father shook his head when I outlined that journey, saying that if the hot stream valley was so well known to the nomads it was better we avoid it and instead strike directly west. This was thought best even though we could not make fast time on foot, especially with Ayllia, who walked to our control but must be cared for as a mindless, if biddable, child.
So we turned our backs upon the sea, and upon that cape with the citadel black and heavy between sea and sky when I gave a last glance northward to it. Our supplies were very few, the ill-tasting meat we had brought out of the ashy world, and the jar we had found in the village. At least there was no lack of water, for there were springs and streams throughout this land, all alive now in the spring, having thrown off their winter’s coating of ice.
My father, picking up two rounded stones from the ground, fashioned an odd weapon such as I had never seen before, tying them together with a thong, and then swinging the whole about his head and letting it fly in practice at a bush. There it struck and with the weight of the stones the cord wove around and around, to strip buds from the twigs. He laughed and went to unwind it.
“I haven’t lost that skill, it seems,” he said. And a few minutes later he sent the stones winging again, not at a bush, but at an unwary grass dweller, one of the plump jumpers which are so stupid they are easily undone. Before we stopped for the night he had four such, to be roasted over a fire and eaten with the appetite which comes when one has been on sparse and distasteful rations for too long.
The warmer air of the day was gone. But after we had eaten we did not stay by the fire in spite of its comfort. My father fed it a final armload of the sticks he had gathered, and then led us to a place he had already marked for our night camp, well away from that beacon which might draw attention to our passing.
He had chosen a small copse where the winter storms had thrown down several trees, the largest landing so as to take several others with it and providing a mat of entangled limbs and trunks. In that he hacked out a nest, into which we crowded, pulling then a screen of brush down to give both roof and wall to our hiding place.
I wished we had some of the herbs from Utta’s store, but those had been so intermingled by the raiders that I could not have sorted out what was needed most. So the spell barrier they might have given us was lost.
But my mother took from her belt a piece of metal which glowed blue, very faintly, when she passed her hands caressingly up and down its length. This she planted in the earth to give us a wan light. I knew it would blaze if any of the Shadow’s kin prowled too near. But against the common beasts or perhaps even the raider and nomads, we had no defense which was not of our own eyes and ears. Thus we divided the night into three parts; I had the first watch while the others slept, so closely knit together that we touched body to body. And I grew stiff because I feared to move lest I rouse those who so badly needed their rest.
My eyes and ears were on guard and I tried to make my mind one with them, sending out short searching thoughts now and then—but only at rare intervals, since in this land such might be seized upon and used to our undoing. There were many sounds in the night, whimperings, stirrings. And at some my blood raced faster and I tensed, yet always did it come to me at testing that these were from creatures normal to the night, or the winds . . .
And all the time I strove to battle down and away the desire to think of Hilarion and wonder what he did at this hour in that deserted pile which had once been the heart of his rulership. Was he still lost in his memories of a past time which he could never see again? Or had he risen above that blow, and drew now on his talents—to do what? He would not chance the gate again, of that I was sure: his long bondage to Zandur had decided that.
Zandur . . . I turned eagerly, defensively, from those dangerous thoughts of Hilarion, to wondering what had chanced with Zandur. Had our ripping forth from his place of Power put far more strain on his machines than Hilarion believed, perhaps crippling his stronghold? We had expected him to follow us; he had not. Suppose he was left so weakened that the next time the tower people struck they would put an end to his underground refuge, finishing the immemorial war that had caused a world of ashes and death.
But Zandur memory, too, might be an opening wedge for a searching by Hilarion, so I must put it from me. There remained the farther past, the Green Valley, Kyllan, Kemoc—I had been months out of Escore. Was the war still a stalemate there? Or were those I cared for locked in some death struggle? I had regained my mind search in part—enough to reach them?
Excitement grew in me, so much so that I forgot where I was and what duty lay upon me. I closed my eyes, my ears, bowed my head upon my hands. Kemoc! In my mind I built his face, thin, gaunt, but strong. There—yes, it was there! And having it to hold, I reached beyond and beyond with my questing call.
“Kemoc!” Into that summons I put all the force I could build. “Kemoc!”
And—and there was an answer! Incredulous at first, then growing stronger. He heard—he was there! My faith had been right: no death wall stood between us.
“Where? Where?” his question beat into my mind until my head rolled back and forth and I strove to hold it steady in my hands.
“East—east—” I would have made more of that, but my head was not moving now with the struggle to mind send; it was shaking with a shaking of my whole body. Hands on my shoulders were so moving me, breaking by that contact my mind touch so that I opened my eyes with a cry of anger.
“Stupid!” My mother’s voice was a cold whisper. I could not see her as more than a black bulk, but her punishing hold was still on me. “What have you done, girl?”
“Kemoc! I spoke with Kemoc!” And my anger was as hot as hers.
“Shouting out for any who listens,” she returned. “Such seeking can bring the Shadow upon us. Because we have not sniffed out its traces here does not mean this land is clean. Have you not already told us so?”
She was right. Yet, I thought, I was right also, for with Kemoc knowing that I lived aid might come to us. And if some gathering of evil stood between us and the Valley we would be warned by those wishing us well. As I marshaled my reasons, she loosed the hold on me.
“Perhaps and perhaps,” she said aloud. “But enough is enough. When you would do this again, speak to me, and together we may do more.”
In that, too, she spoke what was right. But I could not put from me the exultation which had come with Kemoc’s reply. For in the past, ever since I had shared in Dinzil’s defeat, I had been severed from that which made one of three. As I had painfully relearned my skills from Utta it had been working alone. But to be again as I was—