Zorsha sighed. "You know how long we've been friends, Halun; practically since the first moment I arrived here."
Halun nodded. "The Unholy Trinity, we called you—Zorsha, Kasha, and Teo. We never saw one of you without the other two somewhere about." He shook his head with a reminiscent chuckle. "You children!"
"We aren't children anymore," Zorsha said glumly. "And—I would like to have more from Kasha than to just be a friend. And she's not interested."
"Why?" Halun replied in amazement. "Hladyr bless, I thought every young woman wanted—well—" He coughed. "Well, a marriage and a family, anyway."
"Not Kasha, at least not from me—and the worst part of it is, I have to agree with her reasons." Zorsha looked as forlorn as a lost spaniel puppy. "She says that if she—favored me that way, Teo would be hurt. And if she favored Teo, I'd be hurt. And no matter which of us she favored, we'd never be the same kind of friends again, afterward. So she isn't going to favor either of us."
Halun was totally dumbfounded. "Hladyr bless. I didn't think there was a young person in the world capable of thinking past his cr—ahem. Past his primal urges. She could be right, you know. At least for now."
"Oh, she is." Zorsha's thin face grew longer. "That doesn't mean I have to like it. I know very well that if I knew she and Teo were lovers, I'd—I'd—well, I'd be angry, and pretty hurt. And it would take an awfully long time to get over that hurt. And even if I could, well—they'd always be two, and I'd be on the outside. We'd never be three again. And the same would be true if the positions were reversed for me and Teo, only worse, because Teo would be terribly hurt and try not to show it. He'd probably just sink into his books like Master Diermud and we'd never see him again except at meals. But—" He colored. "—sometimes I can't help but wish he'd fall in love with somebody else, or—have a religious conversion or—or—something—"
Halun nodded sympathetically, and put one paternal hand on the boy's—or rather, young man's—shoulder. So my Ancas imp is grown up enough to think beyond the moment. I shall have to cease thinking of him as a boy. "Well, never having been afflicted with your problem, I can't very well advise you. I fear I never was that attracted to anyone, inside or outside the Order. But you have my sympathy, if nothing else."
"Thank you." Zorsha smiled wanly. "At least if you'll let me wear your ears down about it, now and again—?"
"Of course."
"Well, that'll help."
"But the cost to you, young man—" Halun wagged an admonishing finger at him "—is that you are going to have to keep me informed. While I can understand Felaras not wanting every bird-brained flitter-head in the Order to go flying off on tangents because of a little bad news, I rather resent that she feels she needn't tell those of us who are levelheaded until she's ready for us to hear things."
Zorsha grinned. "Well, I kind of tend to agree with you there. No fear, Master Halun. What I know, you'll know. But right now, I'm afraid I've got brush-cutting detail, so I'd better get to it."
Halun stood up with a scraping of chair legs across the wooden floor to let him out, and thought with some little satisfaction that Felaras hardly reckoned on his having an ear in her camp.
Yes indeed, my dear rival, he thought, shutting the door behind his former pupil, I know very well you've been getting information on the Seekers from Zorsha. But this time you have forgotten something. A window like Zorsha can let you see out into the -Seekers—but he can also let me see in—to your plans. And I just may be able to turn those plans to uses you never imagined.
Young Vredai riders showed off their horsemanship and high spirits, yipping and catcalling each other as they milled in an eddy of barely controlled chaos with Jegrai in the center. The raiders were all of them Jegrai's age and younger, but tough, and far from inexperienced.
The pity of it was that there weren't any inexperienced fighters over the age of fifteen in the Vredai. Not anymore.
Jegrai raised his fist high over his head, and the riders reined their mounts in with instantaneous obedience. Quiet hung in the air like the dust they'd stirred up. Now there were only the camp-sounds, the clink of harness, the occasional stamping of an impatient hoof.
Then, when he thought he'd held them long enough—
"Hai ya!" Jegrai shouted, bringing his fist down, and digging his heels into his own mount's sides.
The entire party swirled out of the encampment in a tangle of tails and legs and dust, with Jegrai in the lead on his tough little roan gelding.
Jegrai had taken charge of this raiding party himself with two purposes in mind. The first—well, his people required frequent reminders that their Khene was also a warrior. His father had led raiding parties—
—yai-ah, and it was a raiding party that killed him—
But that was a thought Jegrai would not dwell on for long. There had been other reasons for the failure of that raid, and none of them applied here and now. This was a different set of circumstances, and a different sort of raid.
The fact was that the Khene of Vredai had best be prepared to prove himself on a regular basis, and it had again come time for Jegrai to do just that.
The other reason for leading this raid was more personal. Jegrai was hoping, in his deepest heart, that in the excitement of the raid he might forget the spectre of Yuchai moaning in pain and delirium in the Shaman's tent. At least for a time.
But at first there was little to distract him. There was no one and nothing at the first few farms they came upon, only the fields and deserted buildings. It was a good land they rode across, and Jegrai felt a twinge of guilt at driving the land-folk from it. Rich black soil, well watered, but now going to grass and weeds; windbreaks of strange, tall evergreen trees with pungent needles. And all of it deserted, forlorn in the morning sun.
Still, that was hardly surprising; the scouts had been reporting for days that the land-folk were packing up and fleeing—westward somewhere. Some—few—had gone over that far pass guarded by the wizards.
Ah, but the rest had just disappeared, as if the ground of the western mountains ate them, their goods, their livestock. They simply vanished, leaving neither trace nor track. It was a mystery. It was one Jegrai did not care to have solved, particularly. He would just as soon not slaughter defenseless farmers; such a slaughter had no honor in it, and bought Vredai nothing but the possibly dangerous ill will of the land-folk that remained.
And it felt too much like the time the Talchai had ridden through the camp, slaying combatants and noncombatants indiscriminately. Riding down children. No, Jegrai wanted no such stain on his hands.
He shook off the dark thoughts and listened instead to the jokes and jibes of his followers. They rode in sun-gilded high spirits for most of the morning, without seeing a single thing worth stopping for. As morning turned toward noon, they penetrated deeper into the valley—much deeper than any Vredai party had ever passed before. And as they topped a rise, they found themselves riding into the yard of a dwelling-place that bore the unmistakable signs of having been abandoned mere hours ago.
Possessions had been dropped on the roadway, strewn as if kicked out of the way, and discarded by those in too much haste to bend to retrieve them; a thin tendril of smoke still curled up from the chimney of the house.
With the wariness of long habit, the raiders scattered and took cover. But when there were no sounds of life, they crept from shelter and began prowling the abandoned buildings.