The Red Country

Sylvia Kelso

Chapter VII 

Nothing I said would dissuade them. I tried orders, pleas, threats and prophecies, I lost my temper, I wept. Karyx said, “You’ll feel better for it,” gave me a handkerchief, and went on exchanging quick, decisive sentences with the men who asserted that it was their war, claimed I was still their sovereign, had no sweethearts or families, were happy to become outlaws, paupers, knew all the perils of Hethria, would live on grubs if Zam could not feed them, would let him “blow them away” if they were superfluous, would go back now for horses, knew how to reach the first dassyk. And after that would follow me wherever I went, whether I wanted it or not.

They also brought back robes, supplies, waterskins, weapons and news that Penhazad was in uproar, Zem’s death a scandal and Kastir bent on finding me, “if he has’ta tear off every roof.” Like Karyx, all six were Stiriand veterans, light cavalrymen, old comrades, who had frequently ventured into Hethria. Their nuggety short-backed Stiriand horses were fit to travel all night, and we did, for they knew how to steer by the stars for the first dassyk.

As we rode along I wondered who else was grieving in the dark. Zam, beyond doubt. If they did not exchange mindspeech, he would use farsight to keep track of his brother. Zem might even have warned him before he died. . . . Again a physical grip seemed to constrict my heart. Gently, I put the memories aside. The time for passive mourning was past.

And if Zam knew, so might Beryx and Moriana. I grieved for their grief, sure Zem too had been like a son to them, before my mind went back to Zam. Perhaps he also was riding as well as grieving in the dark, his mind bent upon the west.

Tentatively, I thought, Zam? But there was no reply.

By the time we reached the dassyk I had the rudiments of a plan. First I told the Sathellin about Zem. Then I said to the dassyk master, “If I were you, I should pass no more westbound caravans, and send the word south to other roads as well. Somewhere or other, Kastir has Sathel spies.”

He was the usual laconic leathery desert-dweller. At this his already grim face grew positively black. Then he said, “Ah.”

“I don’t want him to know where I went,” I said. “And whatever—the other warden plans, it’s better no word reaches the west.” It gave me pause. Once I would have said “Everran” naturally. “The sooner that’s done the better.” One day saved might be little enough, but I was here, and Zam was not.

The Sathel nodded again, and made an exceptionally long speech. “None’ll hear aught of him or you,” he said, “from us.”

We nodded at each other. Then I went out to my escort, who asked nothing aloud.

“If you’re determined,” I said, “to go on with this, it’s no use wandering round Hethria hoping we might run into Zam. There’s one place that, sooner or later, I think he’ll go. It’s called Eskan Helken.” Three or four faces showed they knew its reputation. “I shall go there now. But I don’t know the way.”

They were taken aback. Then Karyx said, “Directions. Or a guide.”

The dassyk master was reluctant to supply either. “Hethox country ’tween roads. Whyn’t you wait here?”

I said, “We’re no use here. We’re extra mouths. And we’re dangerous.”

At that he said, “Can’t spare a guide. Give you a line, though. Best go at night. Use the stars.”

* * * * *

It was curiously dream-like, that journey, the long, processional rides under the stars, the continuity of landscape which travelers take for granted become a series of magic lantern appearances at dawn, the settling to sleep while others rose, the light slumber in gorge or hill shadow or by entranced waterholes or under cloaks on sticks over open sand, then rousing at sunset, to breakfast and await the stars. And most of all, perhaps, the distancing from reality that comes with grief.

I hardly believed it when the false dawn first showed a bump on the southeast horizon. It still seemed unreal when sunrise came that last morning and Eskan Helken stood before us, alexandrite towers divided by gulfs of purple, plum and amethyst, less substantial than the red wizards’ castle I had waited for.

When we rounded the last bastion into the grass bay, a little dulled by summer, by the seeds’ fall, but green enough to retain its magical effect in that waterless waste, I found I had let out a mighty sigh of silent relief. Then I realized that all the way I had been half afraid the entire thing was some aedric illusion, that I would return to find nothing but naked sand.

Yet something had changed. As we drew closer a horse whinnied, clear and sharp. Then with a low thud of hooves not one but a dozen gray horses came cantering from a grass fold, all but one of them sleek and glossy as pieces of moonlight come to life.

Catching his breath, Karyx murmured, “Just like the song.” The others glanced nervily upward. Someone said, “Fengthira,” under his breath. Moonlight. I thought he meant the horses, till it dawned on me that they too were familiar with the songs of Harran. More familiar than I. They would not have to be told whose place this had been.

I said, “She’s gone now. I’ve seen her grave.” I said it absently, intent on the gray mare whose ribs stared, whose hide was still rough with a journey’s accumulated sweat and dust. “Do you see that horse? It’s been ridden hard just lately. Zam must already be here.”

They were not much relieved. It was in a mood of nervous respect that we pitched camp out at the very valley mouth, and when I suggested we take the horses up to the spring they baulked outright. “If it’s all the same to you,” Yngis, the senior trooper, said firmly, “we’ll wait to report in.”

Karyx went to the nub of it. “You know him. We don’t.”

So I climbed the cleft alone. When I had ranged the whole pocket, drunk at the spring, inspected the cave, paid my respects, feeling both awkward and intrusive, at the grave, I still could not accept that no other living person was there. Then I thought of the gray mare again, and understood. She was Zem’s, not Zam’s. She had come home, but she had come alone.

Feeling thoroughly forlorn I went back down to the camp.

* * * * *

By the third night we had mostly adjusted, and even felt brave enough to light a tiny fire, down at the very margin of the grass. “Seeing we’re here,” as Karyx put it, “we may as well knock.”

There might still have been no warning, if we had set a guard. As it was we heard nothing. Not a whinny, a hoofbeat, a swish of grass, the merest flicker of motion to catch a night-honed eye. Just a gray horse towering over us in the fire-wash and a voice like a sliver of ice demanding, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

The men all went to jump up, and froze. When Karyx managed only a sort of deprecatory noise in his throat, I pushed my turban back, feeling my hands shake, my breath short, and got up on legs that felt shaky too.

“It’s me,” I said. I had expected to be embarrassed at this meeting, but not physically afraid. “Sellithar.”

There was a silence that made the fire’s noise crack like a whip. Then he slid down from the gray, hauling saddlebags and waterskin after him, and came, with the gait of one stiff and spent from long furious riding, up to the fire.

This time the men did rise, an instinctive gesture of respect, one or two even began a salute. He let the gear fall, not bothering where, and automatically pulled his turban down about his neck. His face was bristly, haggard, the eyes sunk deep with strain and fatigue and, I thought at first, with grief.

Then I looked again and changed my mind. The grief was in the eyes themselves. They had a peculiar fixity that went down to the very irises. The aedric motion was gone. They were bleak, and cold, and still as polar ice.

He scanned our circle, face after face, and I thought he must be reading their minds. But when his eyes reached me I realized it was the blank stare of sheer, congealed weariness.

“Sit down,” I said, the rest forgotten. “There’s tea still hot. Have you eaten today?”

“I don’t want to eat.” Though flat, it was not impassive. This was the cold of latent hostility. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.”

I paused for him to divine the rest. But he said in the same flat tone, “Why?”

When I stared, he repeated even more icily, “Why?”

I should have explained about Kastir, the others’ refusal to leave me, my strategy, my guess on where he would be. I found myself saying in a very small voice, “There was nowhere else.”

He frowned, a just perceptible twitch of the brows, as if even that were an extravagant waste of strength. When he did not speak, I did my best for the others. “They helped me bury Zem.”

At my side, Karyx cleared his throat. “If you’ll have us, we can help you fight Estar—sir.”

The gray eyes shifted to him, but did not change. After a moment, Karyx blurted, “We’ve gone light on your grass.”

“Grass? Estar?” He sounded flatter than ever. “You talk in riddles.” His eyes returned to me. Something showed then, a painful awakening.

“So it was you. The dark . . . even with Phathire, I couldn’t see. Next day—I didn’t know what they’d done with him.”

It broke on me in a dazzling flare. Farsight had shown him Zem lying on the midden, he had set out to ride clean across Hethria, not for revenge or even battle, simply to give his brother fitting burial. And when he looked next day, Zem had been gone. Who knew what he had imagined, how he had tortured himself? He was not just fatigued stupid, he was bemused with grief.

“It was us, yes.” I said it almost tenderly. “We buried him in Hethria. I . . . thought that was what he would want.”

Karyx added with well-meant if tactless haste, “We can show you the place.”

He drew a long breath, and then his muscles seemed to slacken from head to toe. He rubbed a hand over his face. “No.” It was just audible. “Not important. Not now.”

The hand dropped. He looked dazedly at us, his gear, the fire. Slurring the words, he said, “Can sleep now.” He brought his eyes back to us. “You . . . tomorrow.”

Karyx started forward, beginning, “Sir, if it’s sleep you want, we can watch—” and was cut short by one almost-savage stare.

“Not here.” It came quite clearly, and as clearly, with hostility. “Up there. By myself.”

* * * * *

We had finished breakfast and spent a long uncomfortable wait by the dead fire next morning, before we saw his figure emerge from the cleft and start slowly down the grass. When the gray horses converged on him he paused a moment, then came on with the horses at his heels, and guessing the others’ intent I said grimly, “Oh no, you don’t. You all wanted to come. Now you can explain why.”

First he went to one of his saddlebags, lying where they had been dropped, and unearthed a little bag of salt, from which all the horses had a lick. Then he said, “Off,” and they meekly dispersed. Only then did he look at us.

He studied each face in turn, a long, silent, expressionless stare. If anything, he looked worse than the night before, but this time I knew better than to offer help. At last he said, “Sit down. Now explain properly. What are you doing here?”

Craven as all their sex, the men promptly looked at me.

I met those gray eyes, chill, hard, immobile, and thought in exasperation, Why ask me to put it in words, when you know it’s too painful, too complex, when you’ve already understood? And knew he was at least reading my mind again when he answered, <Speak aloud. It’s their case too.>

“After they helped me bury Zem,” I said, “there was no way they could go back to Everran. They were determined to see I came to no harm. And we all want to help fight Estar. To stop this—horrible thing.”

He studied the men again, while they did their best to sustain that probing, impassive stare. Then he said, “I am not fighting Estar. I am not fighting anyone—or anything.”

“You mean you’ll let Kastir get away with murder? Foul, cold-blooded murder—your own brother’s murder!” I could not help it, I had to erupt. “He deserves to be—”

His eyes were colder than a wall of ice. “Do you imagine I would sink to that? Pollute my brother’s—my brother’s!—grave with revenge? Pah!”

“What do you mean, sink?” Three years might never have been, we had barely exchanged ten words and already he had me fit to fly at his throat. “Any honest man—any woman!—would have the honor to avenge that! If I’d known you’d refuse I’d have done it myself! And you’re an aedr! What are your powers for? Or don’t you dare tackle that—that—”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about, so have the sense to be quiet.” Three years ago he would not have lashed back at me, certainly not with that glare. “It’s clear you know nothing of aedryx. And your own morals are unfit to mention. Revenge! I’d as soon wallow with a carrion pig!”

“Oh, I’m sure Zem would love to hear that—if he could hear!”

His eyes grew so fearful that inwardly I quailed.

“My brother Zem,” he cut out each word and spat it at me, “told me with his last thought, Whatever you do, don’t let this drive you to Ammath. You wouldn’t know what that means. I do. It means evil. Hatred. Revenge. If you imagine your ravings could make me flout my brother’s last wish, reduce us both to such vileness, think again.” His eyes seared. “If you can think at all.”

“So you’ll let this go on? Put your fine moral nose in the air and sit on your rump while Kastir ruins Hethria? Destroys it forever? Your land, I thought it was! And for the sake of a few stupid—stupid—scruples! you’ll let it be wrecked before your eyes? Oh, by the Sky-lords’ faces, aedr or no aedr, I thought you were more of a man!”

Through a haze of tears I saw his eyes narrow, shimmering, perfectly white. His voice was a slap.

“I shall save Hethria. I am the only one who can save it. And I won’t do it by fighting, and I don’t need help.”

Karyx and the rest, who had been looking mortally embarrassed and not a little pugnacious, collapsed into bitter disappointment. I was so furious I could feel nothing else.

“No doubt you’ll do it by reason, or changing Kastir’s mind? Well, that won’t save anything! Kastir isn’t even a figurehead, he’s just a mask, and what’s behind him is Estar, and if you think you’ll change all those minds you’ve lost your own because by the time it’s done there’ll be nothing left of Hethria to save!”

He glared. I was too furious to stop.

“As for not fighting, just how will you manage that? Hethria’s border is wide open, it hasn’t a defense to its name except the Gebros and that’ll be gone unless you do some stopping right now, it doesn’t have an army, and if you think you can stand in the gates at Penhazad and Gebasterne and frighten back Estar’s whole army, not to mention their migrants, their engineers and their money-makers, you’d better think again. Don’t you know anything about Estar? And when these men have sacrificed their careers, their families, their country, risked their lives to come and offer you their help, you want to just turn them away! It’s because they were brave and decent enough to throw all that away that your brother was buried at all!”

When I began his eyes grew cold enough to freeze my marrow. Before I was halfway through they had that molten, shivering glare I had seen by Tirien Neth. But at my last words he went white as a sheet and leapt to his feet, I heard his breath hiss in for more than a verbal explosion—and catch.

He fought himself then, physically, with a violence that scared me most of all, face red as it had been white, chest heaving with huge stertorous breaths. It took all my resolution not to cringe away like Karyx and the rest.

The crisis passed. He stood shaking, eyes inward bent and blind. Then he said between his teeth, “Don’t ever—ever—tell me that again.”

My anger had already vanished; I knew what a nerve I must have jabbed and was piercingly sorry for it. But there was no chance to apologize.

Still breathing hard, he turned to the others and said in a strangled voice, “I am grateful. I owe you more than anyone could repay. I know it sounded like—like—” I had never before heard him grow incoherent. “It’s not. You’ve misread the situation. You are soldiers. This won’t be a war.”

Managing to sound both determined and pacific, Karyx straightened up. “Whatever you say, sir. But if it comes to being grateful, we only helped the princess Sellithar. And if it’s not a war, could you explain just what it will be? Maybe we can still help. Somehow.”

Zam drew one last huge breath, and with it recovered his composure. Slowly, shakily, he sat down again, on the farther side of the fire.

After a moment he said, “We’ve begun at the wrong end. I’ll go back to the beginning. When we—I—became an aedr, I was taught to follow Math. Aedryx have no gods, like yours, but they do have a code. Morals, if you like. It demands that we respect reality. That-which-is. Trees, rocks, sand, birds, beasts, men. That we are careful how we alter it. We are more firmly bound to that respect than any other creatures, because we have minds, like men, but we have more power, for good or evil, than any of humankind. That obligation is our bedrock. Not to be betrayed.”

He drew a little breath. “But Math also demands that we deny evil in ourselves. It’s not enough to refrain from wantonly injuring reality. We must fight off hate and bloodlust and vengefulness, because to let the thoughts of Ammath into your mind is to corrupt your own reality. And then you betray Math as surely as if you stabbed a man in his bed.”

He looked about our faces. I was ignobly grateful that he included me.

“I could kill Kastir. I could kill him here and now, without lifting a finger. But if I do that, I am a murderer twice over. I’m worse than Kastir. I have succumbed to Ammath.”

We sat silent. He went on with less strain, but with enormous weariness.

“It was a great temptation. But you see why I refuse. For the same reason, I will not make this a war. I will not shed blood with my mind, or by the hand of anyone else. There are other ways to do the thing.” His jaw set, so for a moment he looked a much older man, a stranger, with a will of granite and that will bent immovably upon its goal.

After seeming quite over-awed, Karyx at last ventured to speak. “Yessir. But how?”

After a pause, Zam said, “The Gebros will be quite simple. I’ll raise a sandstorm and keep it up for as long as it takes them to realize they can’t pull the thing down.” Karyx’s mouth fell open with the rest. “Oh yes, I can do that. It twists reality rather far to use the weather-words for such a purpose, but this is a Must. Better to tamper with sand than kill or coerce men.”

Karyx suddenly slapped his thigh and burst out in dazzled delight, “And by the Four, you couldn’t have a better field for it! You’ll make the blighted desert fight for you—Four above, sir, no wonder you don’t need us with tricks like that!”

Zem would have laughed with him and added something witty. Zam shrugged and said, “It’s a double-edged sword. Too much will damage Hethria. But I can’t do it yet. First the hostages have to be brought out.”

Yngis said blankly, “Hostages?”

“Your families. All your families.” His eyes chilled with a sudden, appalling memory. “I’ll have no reprisals this time. Once was enough.”

None of us dared ask, When? Karyx ventured, “Ah—how?”

“I can summon them. With a Command. Sellithar’s people will be most at risk. It’s a long way from Saphar, and I’ll have to watch them every step. So it will be a while before I can start on the Gebros.” He shrugged again. “Once with the Sathellin they’ll be safe. Then I can draw all the Sathellin out of Everran, stop the caravans, and wipe away the roads. They can live at the dassyx. It might be the best place for you as well. . . .” He broke off. “I’m—not ungrateful. But as you see, there’s not much anyone can do to help.”

My voice sounded small and solitary. “At the first dassyk, I told the master to stop any more westbound caravans. And to pass the word on the other roads. Kastir said he had Sathellin spies.”

Those gray eyes were colder than ever. He said curtly, “I’ll hold a caravan at Penhazad and one at Gebasterne. The rest can stand. I’ll find the spies.” His eye turned on Karyx. “Quite easy. Read their minds.”

Karyx gaped, gasped, shivered. Zam looked nearly sardonic. “Yes, I can read yours too. Sure you want to help?”

Karyx’s recovery took him several strides ahead. With satisfaction he said, “Then we won’t need our own spies. We’ll know their plans in the egg.” He paused, grown dubious.

Zam said stiffly, “What if it does take time?”

Karyx was apologetic. “Just that you’ve a pack-load to do, sir. A week’s travel from Saphar to the Gebros to oversee, for a start. A lot of Sathellin—minds—to comb. It might hold up the sandstorm a fortnight or more. There’s four demolition crews working now, shift for shift. In a fortnight—they could move a lot of stone.”

“Beryx,” I said on impulse. “Moriana. Surely they’d help this time?”

Zam replied curtly, “There’s a murrain on Assharral. It started in Gjerven—the north—and it’s spread like a torjer fire. Sheep take fever or just die, cattle die of the bloody scours, horses get colic and then die—and humans do as well. We don’t know how it spreads among the beasts. We do know it’s infectious or contagious or both, and there is no known cure. I was in Axaira to seal the border. Nothing goes in or out of Assharral while the murrain lasts.”

“But,” I protested, “thoughts—”

“Beryx hasn’t a breath to spare. Half Gjerven ran south into Frimmor and Frimmor is firing them back or killing them or running too. The other half have caused an international incident by jumping the border into Phaxia. Tasmar started a witch hunt to kill their white minority—say they poisoned the wells. Thangar’s in trouble with looters. Rumors are flying everywhere. Beryx told me he’d keep them out of Hethria. It’s all he can do.”

“And Moriana?” I could not help this spiteful reminder that women counted too.

With a scathing look he retorted, “Do you think she’d desert him now?”

Though Karyx and company must have thought we were talking gibberish, their conclusions were plain. Zam too should have been half of a team, and he was not.

“Sir,” Karyx persisted, “are you sure you won’t need some help?”

Zam sighed. Then he said, “Your rations will last a week. I have three days’ worth. After that I must live off the land. In Hethria. You brought seven horses that all eat grass, I have twelve. This is high summer. The spring needs water. And the storms won’t fall yet. I don’t need scouts, I use farsight, I don’t need a bodyguard, I can protect myself. If someone did attack, I’d be protecting you. I don’t need soldiers. And you don’t know the Arts.”

He paused. I knew he had changed to mindspeech by the flatness of his voice.

<If you follow this road back to the last dassyk before Gebasterne, I can send the spies for you to drive into Everran. I’ll tell you when to expect them. In mindspeech. Just as you hear this.>

Before they had digested this, he added, <And if you’re going, you may as well go now.>

I opened my mouth and shut it again. Crestfallen but obedient, the men began to rise.

Zam’s eyes went round their faces. Then he added softly, “Yes, you are enlisted. If there’s more to do, you’ll hear. Be sure of that.”

Their faces cleared. They saluted him, fully and formally, and as they began to disentangle bridles he looked back, in frigid surprise, to me.

“One question,” I said. “You have three days’ rations, and my family will take a week to bring out. What will you eat for the other four?”

“I can manage.” He sounded stiff as a board.

“To be sure,” I said affably. “Just as you’ll manage to cook as well. Or does your aedric food jump in a pot and cook itself?”

“One thing more,” I swept on as he opened his mouth, “this sandstorm will be Ruanbrarx, won’t it? The same way you put out that fire?” He nodded. “And it’ll have the same effect on you?”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“Naturally. You’ll just lie in a heap on the ground until you’re strong enough to make the fire light and the kettle jump on it and the cup bring you the tea. And what happens if one of—that creature’s—tools should get up here while you’re lying about, weak as a baby, not even knowing who you are? Don’t say they won’t, because I don’t underestimate Kastir like Zem did. Any dirty trick that’s possible, he’ll try.”

And,” I squashed the next protest, “I can’t just cook and hunt and boil tea and shout if I see one coming. I know Everran’s potential to the last ounce, and most of Estar’s as well. And I know Kastir better than anyone alive. You can read his mind. I can tell you what he’ll think. He was my tutor, he schooled me. And I was married to him for three mortal years.”

His reaction to this last arrant bombast startled me. He went stiff all over and sharply averted his head.

“What’s more,” I made the most of it, “I didn’t ride all this way to be packed off to a dassyk for the rest of—whatever it is if it isn’t a war. You may be able to do it alone. But it’s my fault Zem is dead, because I called him with that fire. And I let him go to Kastir. If it weren’t for me”—my voice shook, his head jerked round, I controlled myself—“Zem would be here now. Nothing can bring him back. But I might feel more—more decent, if I could repay some of the debt.”

His voice was harsh and quick. “Zem made his own decision on his own judgment, of his own free will. You were not to blame for anything at all.”

It was time for the rear ambush. “Then let me point out something else. You owe me, if I don’t owe you. It was I who buried Zem.”

He went white with rage and before he could retaliate I changed my whole battle-line.

“Zam, please be reasonable, please. You can’t do all this by yourself, it’s too much for anyone. You know it is. I won’t quarrel with you, I promise I won’t even come near you unless you ask. But if I have to sit in some dassyk and wonder what’s happening and if some dirty brigand’s knocked your head in yet, I’ll go insane, I know I will! You didn’t see yourself after that fire. . . .”

I broke off to master my voice. Then I said rather desperately, “And I care about Hethria. You risk it, when you take stupid risks with yourself. If anything happens to you, it’s the end. We can’t stop Estar without you, Zam. You know that as well as I.”

He was biting his lip. But as I had prayed, that last argument tipped the scales.

“Stay then,” he said harshly. “Either way, it doesn’t concern me.”

* * * * *

When they had saddled up, left me most of their rations, Zam had supplied directions, and I had kissed them good luck in lieu of better thanks, I watched Karyx and his men ride away with a ridiculous lightness of heart, considering I had just contracted to renounce wealth, rank and power in favor of work as a general drudge for a master who clearly disliked the entire idea as much as he loathed me. But I was in Eskan Helken, away from Everran’s ruin. Free of Kastir, actively helping Hethria, at the heart of operations. And Zam was here. Something kept singing a silly variation on Zem’s broken promise. He’s here now, everything will be all right.

I roused to find Zam regarding me with a mixture of suspicion and distaste, and said blithely, “I shall camp down here where it won’t worry you. But I’ll come up now for water. You’d better change those clothes, if you can. If not, you’ll have to leave them down here and run about bareskin, because I shall wash them anyway.”

“Women!” he said bitterly. “They’re born in a laundry, every one.”

As he picked up his saddlebags and started for the cleft I called, “Will you come down, or shall I bring tea up?”

He stopped. “You’d best,” he said resignedly, “come up. Somehow or other, you’ll get there anyway. Give me that.” He scooped up my waterskin and strode off before I could react. 

When I emerged from the cleft he had vanished, but his clothes were strewn by the well, along with his rations and my waterskin. So I spent a messy, busy morning as I assembled all the memories I had of those caravan journeys, of my own soldiers and travel-trips, and pitched camp behind the ferns, to the disgust of the resident pair of little black and white saeveryrs, who must have made it their traditional place to nest. It was worlds away from being a princess, let alone Kastir’s consort. Given a different situation, I could have been almost happy as I contrived a cache to preserve the food from ants and wyre-sparyx, built a bed, and assaulted the washing, another thing I had never done in my life.

The robe finally approximated cleanness, but I had to admit defeat with the trousers, horse-sweat and skin-oil having left marks no amount of cold water and lusty beating on rocks would extract. Nevertheless, it was in something like triumph that I turned to constructing a fireplace, and at last put a little camp-kettle to boil.

When it wisped steam, I thought tentatively, Zam?

The answer was curt, cold and succinct. <I’ll come down tonight.>

* * * * *

He came at dusk, when the spectacle of sunset on Eskan Helken had quieted my mood to wonder mixed with awe. He looked deathly tired, too tired to move. But not too tired to say, after one glance at my camp, “Your bed will be soaked by morning. You’d best come up to the house.”

I opened my mouth. Choked back fire, and answered, “Eat this while it’s hot.”

It was dried meat boiled with a haphazard selection of herbs. Not my best friend could call me a cook, but he would probably have eaten labeled aspnor roots. He swallowed it in total silence, oblivious.

I poured the tea. He did pay that the minor compliment of a sigh. Then I asked, “Won’t Fengthira mind?”

“Fengthira? Oh. No.” He eyed the strewn gear, clearly feeling obliged to assist, and almost too tired to face it.

I said, “Never mind that. Did you—have any trouble with my family?”

“Why should I?”

“Sazan and Haskar. I thought they might not want to leave.”

“They had no choice.” He struggled to his feet. Suppressing more umbrage at that unconscious arrogance, I started to pack up.

But when I reached the house I found an old beam had been lashed between the trees with vines, a couple of boughs lopped and more vines strung to hold branches between them, making a sort of lean-to shed. I paused, staring, and felt an illogical prick of tears. He had been so tired, so unfriendly, this was his own place. Yet he had done this.

Thank you, I thought impulsively, with a glance toward the cave, which was now his only logical retreat. Of course there was no reply.

* * * * *

At breakfast I asked no questions. I merely thought, appalled, that if twenty-four hours spy-weeding and refugee-warding had such an effect then the sandstorm would slay him dead.

He shot me a prickly look and retorted, <This is nothing. Do you think aedryx are made of milk?> Then he retreated to his den.

I spent the day on tenterhooks, and he left me there till dark. When he emerged at twilight I took one look and said flatly, “You’ll sleep tonight or I’ll put yeldtar syrup in your tea. I don’t want to bury you both.”

I had looked for a scorching denial, but to my astonishment he sighed and said, muzzily but meekly, “I suppose I must.”

That night the moon was near the full, so I lay in my cloak and smelt the luxury of dew on live grass, listening to the deep silence of Eskan Helken, a silence growing hourly more dear to me, watching the rocks turn from blurry shadows to dramatic black and silver bastions, and quietly giggling as I pictured my mother’s reaction to the news that I was living in scandalous proximity with a young man for whom she contemplated the matrimonial snare. I was sure Karyx would tell her the moment they met, and quite sure the meeting would occur. The only question was, how soon? And where?

My eyes drifted shut. All but asleep, still smiling, I heard Zam scream.

A man’s scream is perfectly appalling. I flew out of my cloak and over the vines without a thought of Fengthira and went full tilt into Zam as he charged out of the cave. I clutched his arm, he howled, “Zem, Zem, I’m coming—” and hurled me broadside into the vinery with one violent backhander and a resounding crash. The noise spun him round instantly, snarling, “Who’s that?”

He sounded wide-awake and freezingly dangerous. Gasping, quite winded, I found breath enough to cry, “Me! Sellithar!”

While I scrambled from the creepers he stood shaking, gasping, striking at his eyes with the back of a hand. The moon showed me the sweat on his face, its pallor, his frantic expression. Instinctively I grabbed his arm again and spoke as to a panicking horse. “Steady, Zam, steady. It’s all right. It’s all right.”

He plunged away. Caught himself. Then glared at me, literally showing the whites of his eyes.

“Zem. . . . It was Zem . . . I thought—I dreamt—”

He stopped on a shattering sob, ice, hostility, composure itself in tatters, and his distress wrung my own heart.

“I know,” I said. “I know. But you’re awake now. Come to the fire.”

Shock actually made him docile. I shook up the coals, put on the tiny kettle, willed it to boil. He huddled over it with hands in his armpits to resist their trembling, staring blindly into the flames.

After a moment he said, “If I’d not been in Axaira—” There was more than anguish in his voice.

Afraid to touch him, still more afraid to hurt him further, I tried to make my tone soften the bitter truth.

“He made his own decision. You told me that. If I’m not to blame, neither are you.”

This cold comfort, or the hot tea, seemed to rally him a little. As he took the second cup, he said, sounding infinitely remote, “Beryx used to have nightmares. We’d wake up and see him. With my mother. Just like this.”

I left my curiosity silent, where it need not be satisfied.

“In Stirsselian. The big swamp.” He stared into the cup. “Moriana—wrecked Assharral. Trying to make him come out. He wouldn’t move. He had nightmares instead. I didn’t think it happened once you’d—lost.”

The banal, futile platitudes dried in my throat. Death, I thought, is the bitterest, most unacceptable fact. And the most inescapable.

He looked up. Then he put the cup down, climbed to his feet and said with a resignation that pierced me all over again, “Yes. It is.”

Next morning I did not vex him with such well-meant inanities as, Are you all right now? His face made it obvious he was not. I was exercising my mind on the problem of war fought with a one-man army which bade fair to collapse before it entered combat, when he said in a voice that positively dripped icicles, “Thank you, if you confine yourself to grooming and feeding me, that will be quite enough.”

So we parted with high speed and extreme dudgeon on both sides. At sunset he was still icy and I was still furious, and when he retired I thought, damn you, so far as I’m concerned you can kill yourself as soon as you like.

* * * * *

After that we settled into a routine of worry, sparks, more worry, and work. Apart from the general concerns, I was anxious over the small but vital detail of food. I had no intention of gaily squandering dry rations until they ran out, leaving no reserves, and that meant living off the land. I went so far as to tramp out into the desert, assess the well’s visitors, recall what I knew of Hethox food and the construction of a snare. Then I stubbed a toe on stone while tidying my bed, swore, groped to hurl it away, and found it thick, round, heavy, indented and somehow familiar. I prized it up. It was a saddle quern.

I was mulling it over while I made breakfast, when Zam appeared, white, hollow-eyed and blinking, to announce, “Your family is safe.”

“Safe!” I clapped my hands, shedding precious flour in the fire. “Oh, Four be thanked!”

He went on blinking, but his tone was almost pleasant when he responded, “Yes. Yes, they are.”

It was such a relief I could not help turning breakfast into a celebration, if you could so term a meal with no dainties but some dried cheese and a couple of wild figs, no wine, and the only other participant both absent-minded and too tired to speak. However, I made the most of the mood to say, “I found a saddle quern in the vines. If only we had wheat I could grind my own flour.”

“Fengthira’s.” He glanced aside at it. “I must have spent hours over that thing. Tha, boy, if tha’rt so much above thaself, canst work off tha fidgets in the mill.”

Uncannily, his voice had become crisp, acerbic, and utterly feminine. Aedryx do not mimic, they re-create. Ignoring my expression, he went on, “You can do without wheat. The Hethox use grass seeds, seed pods, yam fiber, anything that will grind.”

“Oh.” Somewhat deflated, I said, “I thought I’d go hunting soon.”

“No need. Let me know, I can use Wreve-lan’x. Bring you a lydyr or two.”

“Bring me. . . .”

“Call them up for you.”

“But—that’s revolting! It’s not fair! You might at least give them a chance!”

“Chance? If most lydyrx had one, you’d miss it. Unless you can throw better than most women, that is. And this is food, not sport.” He gave me a snappish glance. “Aedryx are like langu. Unpleasant, but real.”

I clenched my teeth, thought grimly of my rescued family, and recalled another longstanding question. “What was Fengthira like?”

He gave me an eye corner. But relief must have freshened him too, for next moment he turned full face to me and ordered, “Look here.”

Mouth open to snap, “I am looking,” I left it open. For his eyes had dilated. Then the gray began to weave in swift, barely visible motion, his pupils flared wide open and the gray vanished in solid black. It cleared like a calming pool that became a crystal where tiny, perfect figures in a tiny, perfect landscape began to move.

A miniature Eskan Helken, the grass bay, a blue-robed, black-turbaned figure on a cantering gray horse. The horse halted. The rider doffed his turban. Beneath a crop of silvery hair, from a face whose structural arrogance dwarfed Beryx’s, looked a pair of gray eyes, deep in crowsfeet, almost rectangular, limpid as rainwater between black fringes of lash, so penetrating they seemed to read my very soul. That crisp, resonant, acerbic voice remarked, “Art come then. I’ll warrant t’will be long before tha leaves.”

As I pulled away the tiny world vanished. Zam’s pupils contracted, and the swiftly woven gray irises subsided to the slow, easy motion so apparent in Beryx’s eyes.

He said, “Phathire. Past-sight.” He suddenly looked tireder than ever. “We both have gray eyes, but we were not kin. Her line was Havos. Mine is Stiriand.” He might as well have said he came from the moon. Rising abruptly, he flung over his shoulder, “And how I wish she was still here.”

* * * * *

He had enraged me often enough. It was the first time he had wounded me. It took the shine off the day, my grass-seed harvest, mostly foiled by the grays, who trampled every thick patch as they circled with charming but maddening persistence, sure I must eventually produce salt, then the wild yams found in a seepage corner, the small lizard that foolishly posed too long on a rock so I was able to pounce and batter it into unconsciousness. He can damn well skin it, I was thinking as I trudged up the pocket. That’ll fetch his nose out of the air. . . .

It was late, already sunset; in a moment he would emerge, doubtless with another sneer at my poor management, and this time I was going to fire back. I mixed and boiled and prodded with every hackle ready, but he did not appear.

Twilight faded. It would soon be full dark. Crossly, I called, Zam?

No reply. We might as well be married, I grumbled, stalking up to the cave, we quarrel so well already. . . . I yelled, “Are you eating or not?”

There was no reply.

Ill-humor and belligerence shed together, I shot back to the fire, snatched two half-burnt sticks, and dived into the cave.

Shelves tumbled with junk, saddlebags and clothes strewn in true male confusion, a bough-bed on the floor, it all remained vague impressions. My attention was for Zam, sprawled out among it in very nearly the same position in which I had last seen Zem.

I snatched a wrist. Gasped in relief. Slapped his arm, his face. Scurried for a cupful of water to douse his head. Another. He coughed, groaned and squirmed. I stuck the sticks in a convenient cranny and struggled to sit him up.

Nothing is so heavy as an unconscious human, and a solid-built man is the heaviest. I was still puffing and heaving when he got a hand under him, then said in faint but determined mindspeech, <I can manage.>

“Oh, certainly! You just felt like a doze. You benighted idiot!” Relief made me savage, his weight on my shoulder had me intensely conscious of our proximity, knowledge of his empathy made me twitchier than the greenest girl. “What in the Four’s name have you been doing?”

He said still more faintly, <Sandstorm. . . .> And I felt my temper go.

“Of all the numbskulls that ever went two-legged! You might have had the sense to eat something first, to say what you were up to, to wait till you’d rested, you—”

A stick flared and showed his face. Downbent, exhausted, forming to numb endurance before the fresh storm about to break.

I stopped dead. “Lean on this.” I hauled up indiscriminate debris. “I’ll bring your dinner in. Tea first.”

He did not argue. He did not resist, even when I held the first cupful to his lips, and when he said, at the second, “I can hold it,” it was with quite unwonted docility.

“Lamp,” he added. “Over there.”

“Over there” was half-buried on a shelf, beside a jar of Everran hethel oil. The clearer, brighter light showed enough of the cave to make my fingers positively itch with housewifely zeal, but I sternly repressed it. Or so I thought, until I glanced round to see him with a hand over one ear and his head pulled away, like a sick man tortured by some hideously loud and endless noise.

“Oh, Four!” I said, realizing that my thoughts were to him the equivalent of an unbroken tirade, and with that skill once learnt in Hethria completely emptied my mind.

In the curious half-awareness of that state I saw him look up at me, incredulous. His mouth opened. Some expression crossed his face, too fleeting to decipher. Then he averted his eyes and spoke with such awkwardness it could only have been concealed gratitude.

“Thank you. But there’s no need.”

Unleashing my mind, I asked quickly, “Did the sandstorm work?” If questions forced him to answer, they also focused my mind to pay attention, which at the moment seemed the kinder thing.

“Mm. The hostages are all safe, and the Sathellin are out. So I wiped off the roads with it first. Hethria is sealed. And no one touched the Gebros today.”

“Good,” I said. “How much had they done?”

“After you left they began at Gebasterne too. Between them, they’ve leveled a good forty miles.” I exclaimed in horror. “But they haven’t shifted the blocks. I used Fengthir on some agitators and arranged a carter’s strike.” He took the copper bowl I used as a plate. “It won’t tell Kastir anything he doesn’t know. My hand was clear from the moment I expelled those spies.”

My elation faltered. He did not help with the somber comment, “I don’t know how long I can hold the sandstorm. Once it starts, I can sit back till the wind drops, but there’s a limit. I can’t blow all Hethria away.”

“Four!” I exclaimed. “Just start a westerly in Everran and blow it back!”

He finished the food and drank another cup of tea before he said, and to my utter amazement it came with a wry smile, “I never thought of that.” 

“No one can think of everything.” I tried to hide smugness, aware it was unsuccessful, and the lamp showed me the shimmer of laughter in his eyes.

“I’m not proud. You can say, I told you so.”

Hastily, I avoided a quarrel in embryo by collecting the plate. With unnerving insight he said, “You needn’t go so soon. This isn’t a shrine.”

I tried to turn it off with a laugh. “I’m likely to offend you by thinking what I think of it if I stay.”

“Your fingers rightfully itch. Fengthira would box my ears.” He surveyed the chaos, while I tried and failed to suppress the giggle such an image provoked. “I can tidy up tomorrow.”

“Oh, no, you won’t.” I abandoned tact. “Tomorrow you’ll go down there under the finlythes and sleep.”

The shimmer was back in his eyes, somewhat drier now. “You sound more like Fengthira every day.”

“That”—I seized the cup—“is more than enough to make me go.” But his last words followed me out, low, tentative, yet unmistakable.

“Thank you—Sellithar.”

* * * * *

He did sleep most of the next two days, without nightmares, and with only one minor clash, when he found me at work on the saddle quern and said promptly, “I’ll do that.” I retorted, “Since when have I needed a scullion?” He snapped, “Since when have you run the camp?” I fired back, “Since you decided to stop Estar by yourself!”

At which, to my wonder, he stopped dead. Compressed his lips, then said with forced politeness, “Very well. You thought of blowing back the sand. Now may I, please, take a turn on that?” Which disarmed me beyond defense.

The third day the easterly died, and had to be renewed. Next day I was contemplating two lizards and a handful of yams when he came quickly out of the cave, saying, “You were right. He’s clever, that man.”

“What’s he done?” I cried.

“Offered the demolition crews double pay, found them Sathel headcloths, begun tunneling to undermine the wall. And had himself hypnotized again.” Absently, he took up the knife I used for kitchen work and gutted a lizard with one deft stroke. “You said you know him. What will he have in mind?”

My heart jumped into my throat and stuck. A boast is one thing. It is another to issue predictions which may decide the outcome of an entire war.

Playing for time, I asked, “Couldn’t you get rid of the hypnotist?”

“He could find another. Estar has plenty of people. You told me so.”

Rather wildly, I said, “Another agitator might assassinate him. . . .” And reneged in a hurry at his look. “No, I know you can’t do that. Math and all the rest of it.” He tossed one lizard in the pan and took another, while I forced myself to think.

“Aloud,” he said. “Formulate it. You’re jumping too fast.”

“Kastir has no scruples,” I said slowly. “He’s studied the lore on aedryx. He knows about you. He probably knows the sandstorm’s not natural.” Zam nodded. “He always told me, ‘Never mind effects, erase the cause.’ And . . . he favors pre-emptive strikes.”

“So we can look for raiders here.”

“Not here, surely?” His uncannily quick deduction stampeded me past a functional response.

“He has the spies. They know of Eskan Helken, he must connect us. They could steer by the stars.”

Fiercely I longed for Karyx and his men to act as sentries, however fallible.

“The horses will see them, if I don’t. There’s a sandstorm too.” The second lizard landed in the pan. “And there are a hundred things I could do if they came. Zem would have loved it. He could have shown them illusions, run them in circles, teased them crazy.”

A sharp pang of loss restored Zem saying, “I’d have teased you to perdition.”

Zam glanced at me and away. “I don’t have a sense of humor, but I’ll manage. What worries me is what he may be doing elsewhere.”

“He has plenty of support,” I said slowly. “And he is very stubborn.”

Zam rejoined bleakly, “I know.”

* * * * *

When the wind dropped again Zam turned it westerly, which brought on another fainting spell. But next morning he emerged looking perfectly haggard, to announce, “Kastir has moved. While the wind was down he sent a cavalry squadron with a Sathel guide to make a dash for the first dassyk on Phallstir Ven. The northern road.”

“Oh Four!” I leapt up, tumbling flourcakes broadcast. “They mustn’t get there, they’ll—what have they planned? Occupy it?” He nodded. “Stop them! The sandstorm, a Command—anything!”

“It isn’t so simple.” He sounded grim. “I can misdirect them, reverse them, stop them in their tracks. But whatever I do now, they’ll ride into the sandstorm. Then they’re finished. And it’s no pleasant way to die.”

“But if they make the dassyk there’ll be fighting, they’ll kill Sathellin, some of the refugees might be—send them back!”

His eyes were frigid. “That is your advice?”

“My ad—Four above, no general would need it. His men or ours, our dassyk, we can stop them—What are you waiting for?”

“I am waiting,” he spoke with the adamance of granite, “because I am not a general. And to kill men is against Math.”

“Math! A deadly dangerous scout-raid going on under your nose, and you muddle about like some granddad trying to kill a spider, any half-cured lieutenant could solve it—but you burble about Math! This is real life!”

His mouth was set rigid. “I know it is. Their lives.”

“Oh, you—you bird-brain—! What do principles matter here? It’s strategy, it’s imperative! It’s pure commonsense! You’re in a stick-fork already—they’ll be killed whatever you do. But if it’s at the dassyk they’ll take our people with them—people on your side, people who trust you, people you’re claiming to protect!”

He stood up, colder and more forbidding than ever, and said icily, “Since you can offer nothing constructive and your mind is stuck in its political cesspit, I’ll do the thing myself. My way. Thank you, I don’t want breakfast.” And he fairly stormed back to the cave.

I raged about my morning tasks, in arms against him, myself, the suspense, the risk. I invoked every argument Kastir or any other strategist had ever shown me, I raved at the lunacy of his wretched principles, I foamed at the idea of renouncing logic and frothed at the mere thought of admitting defeat.

It was no good. Whatever the facts were in the desert, a closer fact stared me in the face. Sensible or not, Zam believed in Math.

Finally I surrendered. I made a pot of mint-tea, bore it up to the cave, and called meekly, “Zam?”

He appeared like a jack-in-a-box, and I said my piece before some fresh lunacy could make it miscarry.

“All right, you believe in Math and that’s all there is to it. I’m sorry I yelled at you. Would you like some tea, and will you tell me what’s going on?”

For a moment he seemed frozen. Only the light flashed at incredible speed in those gray eyes.

Then he said jerkily, “I’m sorry myself. You have your own principles—I should have—I mean, you weren’t to—at least, it was commonsense.” He abandoned the unequal struggle for both tact and truth. “Will you come in? The tea—I’d like some, yes.”

In unimproved chaos and shaky amity we sat drinking it on the floor, both afraid that any speech would start us off again. Finally he said, “I turned them round. I can send them south round the storm and back to Gebasterne. It means shepherd-work all the way, but it’s better than—the rest.”

“Oh!” I cried. “Why couldn’t you have—I mean—oh, Four, you know what I mean.” All of it, my exasperation that he had not thought of it before, my anxiety that saying so would re-start the war, my awareness that he was aware of all that, even of my awareness that he was aware. . . . “This is like a funnel,” I said in despair. “You just go round and down and in and round and down and in—”

“Until you disappear up your own backside and settle everything.”

He said it spontaneously. Then he stared at my shriek of laughter, and looked first astounded, then incredulous, then ludicrously pleased with himself.

“I think,” he said, “I made a joke.”

“You did. Oh, you did!” My ribs ached. Not that the joke was particularly funny. It was the over-reaction to tension, and his own response. “Kastir will never know what a wonder he produced.”

“No,” Zam agreed, with the faintest shimmer of that aedric smile in his eyes. “He won’t.”

* * * * *

After that he was so busy “shepherding” that he only appeared to eat. However, the thing seemed to be going well. Until he stamped out of the cave at dawn, face white, whiter eyes flaring like a heat-hazed sky, so after one look I leapt out of my cloak and cried, “What’s he done?”

“That—” He cut it off, an almost canine rumble in his throat. “I turned the wind southwest so they could get back safe. When they came into Gebasterne, he sentenced them as deserters. Then he hung them over the gate.”

“Oh—Zam!”

He took three furious strides away from me, over the fireplace and back. He was breathing hard, each breath exploded from his nostrils in a horse-like snort.

“The wind dropped today, so I can see what else he’s done. He’s been firing raiding parties into that hell-fog for five mortal days, just firing them off like stones and trusting that if he sent enough, one of them must hit a dassyk.” His jawbone showed under a line of whitened skin. “All over the Hethmel there are men and horses dying. Dying! They went round in circles, they were caught in sandhills, they couldn’t even see the stars. They died of smothering. Or thirst.”

Tears filled my eyes. Not merely for the dead, but for the cold-blooded waste, and the pain it was causing now. I dared not say, “It’s not your fault!”

He swung back to me, fists clenched now too. “One troop did find a dassyk. They were at their limits. Most crawling. Some delirious, I should think. The Sathellin massacred the lot.”

I cried out, some meaningless sound. Bad enough that the enemy should practice inhumanity. It was too much that the same pitilessness should stain our side as well.

He was striding up and down, fists clenched, jaw rigid, eyes flaming from a papery face. Frenziedly I sought some word of comfort, anything, however banal, to soothe rather than exacerbate the wound. There was nothing. In desperation I snatched the kindling always left ready and clawed about for flint and tinder to start the fire.

At my elbow came a flash and a ripping crack. As I spun round the heap of sticks and kindling burst into climactic flame.

“There is,” he said behind me, “something I can do.”

He was still throttling the words down in his throat. The fire crescendoed, roaring skyward in a perfect pillar of flame, far greater than was physically possible with the scanty fuel, ripping into the air like a saw, the heat grew intolerable, the woodheap beside the fireplace suddenly ignited as well, I found my hands over my eyes, I backed away, crying unthinkingly, “Zam!”

The fiery pillar collapsed. The woodheap sank to a couple of small perimeter flames. He stamped them out with cold, judicious care, took the kettle, and with the same exaggerated concern positioned it on the stones. He did not speak, and after one glance at his thunderous profile I kept quiet.

The kettle boiled. I made tea. He took the cup. I began the breakfast flourcakes. A westerly drift woke sunlit glints in the finlythes’ mass of cardinal green foliage, the morrethans on Fengthira’s grave bowed and sprang like knots of vegetable fire. The world is beautiful, I thought miserably. All beautiful, except for us.

Zam looked round and said harshly, “We are real too.”

I could find no reply.

“It’s in all of us. We can’t get rid of it.”

He stood up. Some instinct deeper than reason made me say in a rush, “Let be for today. You won’t punish the Sathellin—” Already it seemed a fact of nature “—and it will be worthwhile to see what Estar makes of this. There may be a scandal, they hate this sort of botch-up. It looks bad in the news and loses them face with the Confederacy. They may get rid of him. They may even cancel the whole thing. Wait till we see. I—meant to go hunting today.”

For a long moment he probed me with those gray eyes that now seemed more penetrating than Fengthira’s own. Then he gave an abrupt shrug. “We can pretend, at least.”

* * * * *

While he shepherded, I had combined half my girth lace and a piece of waterskin to fashion a sling. The stone-bag was simple, Karyx’s salt pouch slung over a shoulder. Having watched me arm myself, Zam said, “We’ll take this too,” and gathered a newly washed shirt from a branch nearby.

Down in the grass bay, he added suddenly, “We may as well ride. Never mind a bridle, I’ll give you one of mine. Be easy. She’ll do what you say.”

Protests forestalled, I stood helplessly as the grays circled up, he fixed his eye on first one and then another mare, and they walked over, docile as pets. “This one,” he said, and cupped his hand to leg me up.

His heave all but threw me clear over the offside. I clutched for mane, expecting the mare to lose her head, but she stood like a child’s pony, merely turning to give me one quizzical, mildly astonished glance. “Use leg aids,” Zam instructed. “Say, Whoa, to stop. Do as she tells you, Fenglis.” And he turned to vault on his own horse.

In great trepidation I gave Fenglis a timid squeeze with my calves. She moved off instantly, docile and responsive, while I struggled to overcome the precarious absence of reins in my hands, stirrups to support my feet, anything at all between me and her rippling back. Lack of a saddle exaggerated her motion so I feared she would edge me forward, shoulder by shoulder, onto her neck, and my balance was quite lost, I clung with knee and thigh so the unfortunate mare must have felt she had a langu round her ribs.

Zam walked his own mare sedately ahead. Though he did not look back, I was sure he was using farsight as Zem had said, to see behind him as well.

Hethria opened round us, falsely soft and glamorous in the early sun, with the heat-haze only a gentle mist, and he quartered the landscape with a hunter’s farsighted stare. I looked too, in hopes that a lydyr or two might yet be abroad. But next moment he had checked his mare, slid to earth, and started grubbing at the ground.

“Kerrothar.” Two or three tubers landed on the clean shirt in a shower of soil. “And that’s an emsparyx hole.” He dug enthusiastically with something I recognized as my carefully smoothed, hardened and sharpened cake-mixing stick, said, “Ha,” and pounced while I was still stifling howls of, “Not with that!” He glanced up. “Come down, Sellithar. There are vaxy bulbs here too.”

We excavated the sweet onion bulbs, we pulled fat nullik pods and wild keva fruit from shrubs, felled a locust with a thrown stick, dug up grubs and honey ants, and having diligently harvested fifty square feet of ground, moved off into the south. “Hethox would circle,” he said, “but they’re nomads. We’ll leave something close to home.”

By noon we were back, the unlucky shirt abulge with anything from grasshoppers to long-podded ningu-seed, and my sling blooded on a three-foot wyresparyx that had scuttled from our path. Zam said urgently, “Get it, quick!” I cried, “I won’t eat that!” He exploded, “That or a lizard, what’s the difference? Imsar Math! Can you shoot or not?”

I clawed for a stone. The range was too long, automatically I clapped heels into Fenglis, she shot forward, I whirled the sling and hoped my childhood games would pay off. The wyresparyx cart-wheeled, I cried “Whoa!” Zam said, astounded, “You can shoot straight!” and I found sweet revenge in returning dulcetly, “I told you so.”

He did skin the thing, and showed me how to cook it too. Then we retired to the finlythes’ shade, and like all desert-dwellers took our well-earned midday sleep.

It was early evening when I woke. A light breeze dappled the finlythe shadows and sighed in the grass. The air had cooled, and Eskan Helken was entering its golden-red sunset range. Hethria stretched out below us, copper or old gold splashed with shadows of purplish indigo, sharp-edged on sand or stone, blurred among tree or bush, miles of silent, self-sufficient emptiness. Zam lay on his back, hands under head, watching it, and as I glanced at his profile, calm now, indeed relaxed, I thought that Hethria, the cruel, the unkindly, had nevertheless been a comforter to him.

© 2008 Sylvia Kelso

First published by FiveStar Books

http://members.iinet.net.au/~sakelso

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