She started hauling out bundles of folded material and handing them round, a blanket each and another bundle. These last were surprisingly heavy, but when I took my sodden leather gloves off I felt the curious texture. It was like a medium-weight burlap, a finer weave than I had expected, but it smelled of something that wasn't cloth. I sniffed.
"Beeswax," said Jamie, grinning. "Waxed cloth, by the Lady! Mistress Rella, I beg your forgiveness, and grant you mine despite the fact that I'm frozen to the bone." He stripped off his sodden tunic, wrapped himself in a dry blanket, put the waxed cloth over all and settied down with his back to a wall. "Blessings upon the Silent Service, I'll never curse them again without good cause," he said, and Rella laughed.
"Why doesn't the wax break when the cloth bends?" I asked, copying Jamie. The dry blanket was the first real warmth I'd felt since we got soaked through two nights since, and though the waxed cloth wasn't warm in itself it kept the heat in and I began to thaw a little. Varien sat beside me and wrapped the two of us in his cloth. He was, as always, nearly hot to the touch, bless him.
"None of your business," said Rella smugly. "Why do you think we're called the Silent Service?"
"How far are we from the Kai, do you think?" I asked. I had tried not to ask that every night for the past week. I was losing the battle.
To my delight Jamie said, "I am not certain of these roads, but unless I am far out of my reckoning we should strike the river in the next day or so."
Rella raised an eyebrow in approval. "Not bad for one who's been on a farm for a quarter of a century. I expect to reach Kaibar tomorrow," she said.
"Where we will find an inn, with a large fireplace and a real bed and hot food and cold beer," said Jamie. "I don't care if every assassin ever spawned is after our blood, I am going to sleep in a bed tomorrow night."
"Hear, hear," I said. "If I could get warm enough and stay warm, maybe I could shake this blasted cold."
"You won't get any argument from me," said Rella. "My back is killing me. I've been ignoring it something shocking ever since we started out."
I tended to forget about Rella's crooked back. She had exaggerated it when I first met her, to appear helpless and crippled in the presence of my father Marik, but it was not a disguise she could do off. I hadn't known how it bothered her until we started travelling together. She was made of stern stuff, but the cold and the wet got into her bones and every now and then she'd swear at the ache. Varien had taken to sitting back-to-back with her when we had our meagre meals, for she said the heat was a great relief. Still, that very morning she had not been able to contain the groan when she mounted her horse.
She wasn't the only one. My long back was starting to bother me too, and to add insult to injury I had a growing sense of discomfort below the waist. I had taken to running alongside the horses as often as I could stand it. It wasn't that I was getting fat, really, but I felt the way I did each moon just before my blood time. I was concerned, because I was a week past that time, and still my fingers were swollen, and my belly, and I had to wear a breast band to keep the soreness at bay. My bloods had been much lighter and shorter of late as well. I felt decidedly peculiar below the waist, and I could seldom eat much. Half of what went down came back up again later, but I tried to keep that as secret as I could. I put all down to short rations, too much cold and too much riding. The idea of a night in an inn—or two if I could convince the others—sounded like heaven. A chance to clean my clothing, my hair, my grubby self—blessed Lady, what a delight! And perhaps, I said in my inner thoughts, a good long visit with a Healer.
As we began to relax and to warm ourselves, I asked sleepily, "So, we are near to the South Kingdom at last. I have never been there. What is it like, Jamie?"
"Much like anywhere else," he grumped, but his heart wasn't in it, for he let out a muffled laugh. "Now, mere's a thing. I never thought."
"What?"
"That's where the little dragons live."
"What!" I asked again, more sharply now, and I could feel Varien beside me sit straight up.
"You're right, Jamie. I'd forgotten. Well, you almost never see them, do you?" said Rella. "Shy creatures they are. I have only seen a few in my travels, though that's not so surprising, they don't go where they know there are men." Her voice softened in the darkness. "They are quite beautiful, really."
"The Lesser Kindred, kadreshi," said Varien in true-speech, as excited as exhaustion would allow. "It is well. Perhaps we shall find them a little more easily, you and I."
We slept sitting up in that tiny way station, drier than we had been but still damp around the edges and not really warm enough, and dreamed of the simplest of pleasures. Being warm and dry may not sound like much, but it is the very stuff of heaven if you can't get it. As I drifted off to sleep, trying to ignore the voices that were now muttering constantly just below hearing, I almost smiled. For years I had wanted to see the wide world and move out of the four confining walls that I felt were drawing in around me. I had heard that all things come full circle at the last, Lanen, but surely this is a bit quick even for you, I thought sleepily to myself.
It was only just over the half of a year since I had first set out from my home.
That thought was nearly enough to keep me awake. Nearly.
I waited until they were all asleep. It did not take long. Indeed, the most difficult part was to remain wakeful myself, for I was weary and the dry blanket was a blessing. Still, it had been far too long. I missed my people.
I drew my soulgem in its circlet from my pack and put it on.
The moment my soulgem touched my skin I felt Shikrar's presence. I knew that feeling: it was as if he called me without words. We did so often, he and I, when troubled or lonely.
"Hadreshikrar, my brother, I hear you. What weighs so weary on your heart? "
"Akhor!" he cried, and I found myself in the centre of a wild storm of emotion that overpowered words. I feared at first that something had happened to Kedra, but I swiftly bespoke him and was answered.
"Lord Akhor! Blessed be the Winds! My father is in need ofyou."
"Kedra, what is it? You sound almost as bad! Shikrar, soulfriend, I beseech you tell me what wrings your heart so. I hear your pain, my heart aches with it, yet Kedra is well. This is—" I stopped, stunned. "Shikrar, how—what hath befallen thee? I know this sadness of thine from of old, from my youth, yet it bleedeth like a new wound. It cannot be—"
To my intense relief, I began to hear at least the slightest hint of recovery in his reply. "Akhor, soulfriend, thy voice is balm to my shattered soul. Alas, Akhorishaan! It was the Kin-Summoning—it has only just come to an end. Akhor—/ could not stop her. Yrais—Yrais—she spoke through me, she spoke to Kedra with her blessings for young Sherok. I heard her voice, her words, felt the touch of her soul—ah, my heart. Akhor, Akhor, it was Yrais."
I bowed, so far away as I was and despite the pain in my head that was growing steadily worse. Shikrar had been mated for so short a time before Yrais was taken from us. Their love had been remarkable among a passionate people, and Shikrar's grief had been deep as the sea and nearly as boundless. "/ have no words, heart's friend, soulfriend. Is there aught to be done?"
"No, Akhor, do not fear for me. I begin to recover. But oh, alas for that wound that will never heal!"
I would have been shocked at his anguish had I not known how deep was Shikrar's love and how long grief had claimed him after her death. I could only call his name, sending my friendship without words to comfort him. It was a blessing that he had the ordeal of the Kin-Summoning behind him, for as soon as the worst of his grieving was past, as soon as he felt my mind-touch and that of his son and felt our love and friendship surround him, he was taken gently and irresistibly by sleep.