Mari and Alain had to wait until the sun was well down in the sky and the last legionary had vanished behind one of the rises before they bolted from cover, moving as quickly as they could through the snow already disturbed by the horse-drawn wagon so their own tracks would be lost in the muddle.
After going a good way down the path, they came to a trail running north and south at almost right angles to their movement and already showing signs of some traffic since the snowfall. Mari grinned for the first time that day, leading Alain southward down the trail and away from the searching legionaries. But once the sun set, traveling over the uneven, snow-covered track became more difficult. By midnight, her legs rubbery with weariness, Mari slipped and almost fell before Alain caught her. “Maybe we should stop and rest,” she murmured as if even the task of talking in a normal voice required too much effort.
Alain urged her onward. “We are out in the open, too exposed to anyone searching for us. More legionaries may come along this way. Once daylight comes again, we must be concerned about Mages searching for us.”
“You can tell when Mages are coming,” Mari grumbled.
“If the Mage rides a Roc, such a warning would come too late to be of use.”
“Do you always have to be right?” Mari complained, but settled her pack again and kept trudging alongside Alain.
It was still a while before dawn when scattered farms began appearing on either side of what had widened to become a small road. Alain kept them going, worried that the closest farms to Marandur would be obvious places for anyone to search, and though Mari obviously wanted to stop she kept walking with the same stubborn refusal to quit that she so often revealed to Alain.
The sky was beginning to shown traces of dawn’s light when Alain saw an abandoned barn off the road, its roof half fallen in and two walls sagging drunkenly. He turned Mari toward it and they staggered into the small shelter the structure still provided. Mari dropped to the floor, not even bothering to remove her pack. Alain hesitated, swaying on his feet, then managed to kneel and get Mari’s pack off as well as his own before lying down next to her and falling into exhausted sleep.
By the time he awoke, most of the day was gone. Mari made numerous tiny noises of pain as she sat up, and even Alain, toughened as he was by his years of acolyte training, wanted to wince as stiff muscles protested any further use. Mari pulled out the last of the food from Marandur. “It’s appropriate we eat this inside a ruin, I guess.”
A chill wind picked up as they left the barn late that afternoon, blowing snow over the landscape and making their journey much more miserable but also quickly concealing any signs of traffic on the road, including their own. Evening wasn’t far off when their small road intersected a larger one ambling through the plains. Mari studied the road, brushing back snow from its surface. “This road has been used a fair amount since the snowfall. Wagons, horses, mules, not many people on foot. That’s what we’d expect in farm country.”
“I see no sign of Imperial searchers,” Alain said, “but if they were small cavalry detachments I do not think their signs would stand out on this road.”
“That’s probably right,” Mari agreed. “We’re a long way away from… you- know-where. Let’s make sure from now on we act like normal citizens out for a walk. Nothing to hide, and nothing to fear from any Imperial authorities.” Mari patted the pocket in her backpack in which she kept their false Imperial identification papers.
They spent a few hours following the road to the west as the sun set. The sky was now clear of clouds, and the stars and a brilliant moon provided good light. Then the road joined with a larger highway which showed signs of even more use.
Alain guessed that it was about midnight when they reached a major, paved road, which even at this late hour had occasional traffic. An inn with a coach stop sat nearby, its lights promising food, warmth and comfort. Mari reached over and hugged Alain with one arm. “We made it, my Mage. We made it.”
“We are still far from Altis,” Alain pointed out, bringing his own arm around her.
“You didn’t need to tell me that. I’ll worry about Altis tomorrow. For tonight, all I want is a warm meal, a warm bed, and you beside me in that bed.”
“I want that, too,” Alain said. Tired as he was, he could not help noticing how good she felt as he held her with one arm.
“Good.” Mari gave him an amused look. “Watch your hand. Get it higher. Not that high. You know where my waist is. In case you’re wondering, we’re still keeping our clothes on once we get into that bed.”
“I did not mean to touch you in the wrong places,” Alain said.
“The problem, my Mage, is that they’re the right places, and your touch felt way too good. That’s why we’re keeping our clothes on.”
Mari yawned as she watched the walls of Palandur grow steadily nearer through the windows of the coach. After all the walking they had done through wind and weather she had felt justified in paying for seats on a coach, even though that was a bit of a luxury for two people on the run with no way of knowing when they would get more money or how. But she still had a decent amount of cash from what she had brought with her and from the money which General Flyn’s troops had insisted she take.
Mari still felt guilty over that last source of money, which supposedly had been in exchange for a horse. In truth the soldiers had given generously because they believed her to be the long-foretold daughter of Jules. Mari had thought the idea ridiculous, and still could not believe it.
But Alain had seen it. One of the Mage elders who was different from most of the others had told him what his vision meant: that Mari was that daughter, and that he must protect her because the world would fall into ruin if she failed.
No pressure, Mari thought for about the thousandth time.
The time they had spent in ruined, dead Marandur felt almost like a dream now, or rather like a strange nightmare which contrasted with the simple normality of the world around them. Common folk attending to routine errands and travel, a horse-drawn passenger coach, a quiet countryside unmarred by ruins, and the walls of a living city growing rapidly nearer. If not for the watertight package in her backpack containing texts of technology long forbidden by the Mechanics Guild, Mari might have questioned whether she ever had actually been in Marandur.
The coach lurched to a halt, the doors opened, and all of the passengers stumbled out, stiff from the hard, cramped seating. Waiting for them were an even half-dozen of the Empire’s internal police, seated behind a table which was obviously a regular fixture at the coach stop. The Imperial citizens lined up without question. Mari pretended to need to retie her boot laces while she watched the first few citizens get questioned. Seeing that the police weren’t searching any packages, she beckoned to Alain and they joined the line as if they, too, were used to this sort of thing even though as a Mechanic and a Mage they had never been bothered by the demands placed on common folk within the Empire.
When they finally reached the head of the line, Mari handed over the two sets of forged Imperial identification papers she had acquired months ago before going to find Alain. The Imperial officer studied the papers with a frown. “Two of you together?”
Mari nodded. “Yes. We’re students at the university in Palandur.”
“I can read,” the officer replied, pointing to Mari’s papers. “Why were university students traveling outside Palandur?”
She might not have been bothered by Imperial checkpoints in the past, but Mari had been required to answer plenty of similar questions by Senior Mechanics and other supervisors, especially when she was an apprentice. She put on the same outwardly respectful attitude as she answered. “We wanted to try hiking in the winter.”