II
The haze of the previous day lingered, turning the sky the color of thin milk with the sun a dim opal afloat in it. By the latter at her back, seen intermittently through leaves, Jame knew that they were still going north. Soon high clouds swallowed it, however, and she was no longer certain.
The forest floor had leveled off. Upper foliage and undergrowth made the mountains' contours difficult to guess. At first, Jame thought that this wouldn't present a problem: after all, they had only to turn left and keep going eventually to hit the River Road. At some point between Gothregor and Falkirr, though, the Silver bent sharply westward, and then again before Wilden. To miss either turn would set them adrift in the folds of the hills. Ganth was said to have gotten lost within a mile of Gothregor on the night of the massacre. The Tishooo had brought him the screams, but he hadn't been able to find his way home until dawn. She was much farther into the wilderness now than he had been then.
They came out of the trees at last, opposite the rock face of a cliff crowned with flowering laurel. A self-important brook chattered over stones at its foot. Jame stopped in dismay. She had expected a clear path ahead with the mountain slope falling away to the left. They must have overshot the first turn. They were lost.
Then she focussed on the cliff face opposite. Stronger sunlight would have thrown its details into greater relief, but even so she thought she could trace an image: the front of a house, so low set that it seemed half-sunken into the ground. Carved on its walls were a series of ovals with circles in them—that crude, face-like symbol of ancient power known as the imu. Serpentine forms in stone rioted up the jambs and over the lintel.
It looked exactly like the Earth Wife's lodge in Peshtar.
When Jame took a step toward it, however, its details changed with her new perspective, becoming merely those of a weathered rock face. She had been thinking about Mother Ragga only a moment ago. Her imagination must have supplied the rest. When she retreated, however, there it was again—but not exactly as it had been before: now, the rock slab of a door stood ajar.
It had been obvious in Peshtar that Mother Ragga had special talents. Beyond her far-hearing, the imu medallion which her half-feral girl had given Jame had the power to strip the skin from the face of a darkling changer and to protect her in the Anarchies. However, Jame had only thought of the Earth Wife herself as a local wise-woman. To find the image of her lodge here in the wilderness was . . . unsettling. She didn't think she would investigate that door, or wait to see what might emerge from it.
Anyway, the sight of the busy stream on its threshold had given her an idea. This world might have some odd aquatic conditions, from the great Chaos Maw, a whirlpool miles across on the edge of the Eastern Sea, to patches of dead water off the Cape of the Lost where ships sank like bricks; but one natural principle usually applied: water descends. Eventually, this brook should led them to the Silver.
They followed it well into the afternoon as it wound downhill in a series of rapids, strengthened by freshets. On its bank, Jorin surprised a woodchuck still groggy with its winter's sleep and made quick work of it. Cheese rinds, it seemed, were not enough. At last, though a break in the trees, Jame saw a sprawling mass of stone below which she at first took for a natural formation. It wasn't. They had come out above and slightly north of Falkirr, the Brandan keep.
Jame had met Brant, Lord Brandan, at a memorial feast given by her brother after the battle at the Cataracts.
"The High Council needs to see you." Tori had said, "to reassure themselves that, despite your bloodlines, you're only a pawn, not some dangerous new player entering their game of lineage and power."
Since many people believed that she had appeared on the edge of the Escarpment with a flash and a loud bang, Jame supposed that reassurances were in order. Nonetheless, the dinner had been a disaster. She'd had to sit there in that hideous pink dress, not permitted to eat, drink, or (ancestors forbid) talk, while the lords had discussed her as if she were a prize filly about to turn brood mare and Torisen's responses had grown more and more curt as he realized, apparently for the first time, what they were both in for.
He might at least have been grateful, Jame thought, that (thanks to her) Lord Caineron had been off in his tent "not quite feeling in touch with things" and that none of those present had identified her hastily procured gown as having formerly belonged to an overweight Hurlen street-walker.
About the only thing Jame had to be thankful for during that endless dinner had been Lord Brandan's consideration. Not that he had ever spoken to her directly—that would have been the height of bad manners—but his remarks to the others had shown a respect for her feelings quite startling in that context. Of course, he could intend to press his own strong claim for her first contract: thirty-four years ago, he had begun to pay the enormous price demanded by Ganth for Aerulan's contract in perpetuity.
Be that as it may, the dip of his banner told her that Brandan hadn't yet returned from Kothifir.
Then too, she and his sister Brenwyr had parted damning each other.
Cursed be and cast out . . . .
She was out of Gothregor, all right, but cast how far? Under that kind of a malison, did one ever stop running?
No. She wouldn't think about that now. She would not.
They started down toward the Silver, quickly losing sight of Falkirr behind trees. The brook, now a tumultuous young river, tumbled beside them over stone ledges and around large, flat slabs. Curiously, when the latter diverted the water's course, the direct route was marked across their white surfaces as though some giant had flicked them with dripping hair. Along the wet lines, cracks had formed.
A scurfy little pine was using these fissures to cross the rock, its gnarled roots probing blindly ahead with the concentration of a mountaineer negotiating a sheer cliff-face. It looked like the desperate sort of shrub that finds itself seeded in shade, on the thinnest of soil, which now was using the first chance offered to escape. At the rock's edge it paused, roots like many jointed, arthritic toes flexing stiffly in the air; then it toppled over into the stream and was swept away, tumbling crown over root.
It occurred to Jame that she had just witnessed her first case of arboreal drift.
"Wha," said a voice behind her, barely audible above the water's roar. "Wha . . . wha . . . "
For a moment, Jame froze. Then she hastily withdrew into the south bank trees, pulling Jorin with her.
No, it wasn't the Burning Ones of her dream but something almost as bad. Two men had emerged upstream on the water's far side—a Randir officer and a priest. The latter, very upset, was yapping questions at the former. The words carried imperfectly to the hidden listeners:
Why had the randon allowed . . . to escape? Did he realize where they were? . . . Brandan . . . trespassing . . . What would . . . say? Where were the dogs? Wha . . . wha . . . wha . . .
Jame shrank back. They must be hunting her. But how in Perimal's name had they known she was no longer at Gothregor, much less anywhere near here?
"Woo! Woo!"—baying now, deep-throated, bone-rattling.
Jorin began to growl, his fur rising in her grip.
Three hounds had come out of the trees opposite, straining on their leashes. Two were tall, black-coated lymers—loosely muzzled tracking dogs which seemed already to have caught the scent. Dwarfing them was the third, a steel-gray Molocar bitch, four feet high at the shoulder, of a battle breed whose jaws could shatter tempered spear-shafts. It was she who bayed, like a great bell tolling war. Hindered by the lymers and unhelped by the rest of the company (which kept well clear), the handler awkwardly tried to strap an iron muzzle on her. The Molocar flung it away and, with a contemptuous, sideways snap, crushed his skull. Baying, she plunged across the stream in a storm of spray, pursued by the freed lymers and Randirs' alarmed shouts.
Jorin bolted, with Jame a step behind. They cut westward through the trees, hoping to drown their scent in shallows downstream; but when they emerged below on a rocky overhang, the current beneath ran too fierce to risk. Damnation. They would have to make for Falkirr. From what the priest had said, the Brandan garrison wouldn't welcome Randir hunters on their land—but neither would they let her go her way after the intruders had been chased off.
As she hesitated, loath even now to give up her freedom, movement caught her eye. Down the rapids came a tall, golden willow.
At first, remembering the scrub pine, Jame thought that this much larger tree had also been swept away by the spring runoff. Then she saw that, ever so cautiously, it was walking down the steps. The bulk of its roots formed a fibrous mass which cushioned its descent. Pulling it along were its long fringe roots. The caps of the latter glistened with some kind of secretion which ate into whatever it touched, giving the tree innumerable toeholds. Its crown swayed with each step. Wands and narrow, shining leaves undulated like curtains of gold in the last direct sunlight of the day.
Something came crashing through the woods toward her. To her surprise, out of the undergrowth burst not one of the dogs but a young man.
He stopped short, panting, staring at her with wild, pale eyes set in a thin, white face. His hair was also white: A Shanir, wearing the brown robe of an acolyte.
"Highlord?" he whispered.
"No!" said Jame, remembering even as she spoke how on the battlefield at the Cataracts she had been repeatedly mistaken for her brother.
With a moan, the Shanir fell to his knees and began to beat his head against the stone. For a moment, Jame simply stared. She had never before seen someone deliberately try to brain himself. Then realization dawned.
"You're the one they're after!" she exclaimed. "Here, now: stop that!"
When he didn't, she seized his shoulders and forced him back on his heels. He swayed in her grasp, blinking blood out of unfocused eyes.
"You owe me no debt," he mumbled, "if you aren't willing to pay."
Sweet Trinity, now what? She ought to run, to leave this fugitive priestling to his own people—if he survived the dogs.
"Give me your robe," she snapped.
When he only gaped at her, she seized the shoulders of his garment and hauled it off over his head. He sprawled forward as it came free. For a moment she stared down at his emaciated back, the prominent ribs crisscrossed with welts. Then she jerked him to his feet and shoved him toward the curtain of golden leaves swaying past the cliff's edge.
"Get aboard. Try to find a dead branch to hang onto and watch out for those wands. It may not care for passengers. Move!"
Some of the glaze left his eyes and the corner of his mouth twitched. "Yes, sir."
"You too," said Jame to Jorin. "Go."
The hounds were in the woods, the two lymers perforce running silent, the Molocar bell-mouthed on the Shanir's trail. Jame backtracked some fifty feet, then darted off at a right angle due south, dragging the robe. Plunging down a steep slope with stones turning underfoot, clutching at bushes to slow her descent, she looked back to see Jorin bounding over shrubbery after her. Try telling a cat to do anything . . . !
At that moment, still looking backward, she collided with someone, hard, and fell. They rolled down the slope, tangled blind in the gown, bouncing over rocks and grappling ineffectually with each other. At the bottom, she kicked free. The garment floundered back, seeming to wrestle with itself, and produced a tousled blond head, apparently without a body.
"Right," Jame breathed to herself.
She should have guessed what had frightened the birds along the River Road the previous day, passing by unseen. At least the blade which the young assassin waved nervously in her face was steel, not ivory. His whistled summons wobbling shrilly, again and again; but if the Guild Master heard, he didn't respond. After all, this was still supposed to be a ritual blooding.
"Right," said Jame again, louder.
"P-please," the boy stammered in accented Kens. "Please!"
Don't let me fail, he was really begging. Let me make this kill.
Journeyman thief stared at apprentice assassin. "Please? Please? You want it, you earn it!"
The boy lunged, desperate, inept. Hindered by Aerulan's banner slung across her back and the food sack on her hip, she still caught his blade with ease in her d'hen's full, reinforced sleeve and whipped it away. A water-flowing move sent him head over heels after it, into a cloud-of-thorn bush. There he floundered, mere cloth ripping on barbs sharper than the blade after which he frantically groped, pale skin turning red.
"Dammit!" said Jame, exasperated. "Didn't your precious master teach you anything?"
Jorin had been slinking around them, chirping anxiously at the copper smell of blood. When a muzzled lymer erupted from the undergrowth behind him, he rose on his toes and bounced into the hound's face through sheer fright. The beast retreated, trying to shake him off, uttering muffled yelps as feline claws raked his eyes.
Down the slope charged the second lymer, the Molocar bitch roaring on his heels like an avalanche.
With a cry to Jorin to follow, Jame bolted toward the stream. She heard the assassin thrash panic-stricken in the thorns, where he hadn't the sense to lie still, then his scream cut short by the crunch of jaws.
She burst out on a cliff's lip. The river curved beneath in a gorge, its northward course obscured by an opposite rock spur crowned with undergrowth.
Where was that willow? The air had thickened with twilight, all edges blurring, all colors melting in a molten haze. Downstream to the west, nothing. How fast could the damn thing travel, anyway? When she turned again to look eastward, the tree loomed over her like a shimmering hillock. An upper branch swooped over her head. Its trailing leafage swung into her. She found herself tangled up in it, off her feet, off the cliff. Golden leaves flattened against her eyes; supple wands fumbled about her throat.
Something crashed though them, knocking her free. Jorin. Falling, she grabbed for the ounce but caught a bough instead and clung to it for a moment, breathless. Then she scrambled inward to throw her arms around the trunk as to a mast, just out of the wands' hissing reach, as the tree swayed again like a ship in stormy seas. Looking down, she saw that the pale Shanir clung to a section of trunk well below her while Jorin balanced on a branch near him, wailing. Below, the burnished bole plunged down to the writhing serpent's knot of its roots.
Someone had scored the golden bark at eye-level—to mark this tree for spring harvest? Such resilient wood must be much prized. It would probably long since have been cut if the Riverland weren't so stripped of workers. Small wonder, then, that when the sap had begun to run, so had the tree, hell-bent on escape. The creek bed must simply have provided the easiest route.
The willow's draperies swung forward, then back, far enough to give Jame a glimpse ahead. She saw the Silver a bare sixty feet away and something else, much closer.
"Oh, my God," she breathed, and then shouted in warning to those beneath her, "Low bridge!"
The willow swayed forward again, more violently, gaining momentum. Its upper wands cracked against the water's surface like whips. It reared back, trunk groaning, foliage a golden blur, over and down.
The second forward swing had nearly dislodged Jame, who had only kept her grip by wrapping her legs around the trunk and sinking her nails into its sensitive bark. When the upper boughs crashed over backward, she was pinned beneath them, under water whose coldness shocked out her breath.
The trunk quivered against her like a bent bow, its water-laden foliage keeping its crown submerged. The bridge which spanned the creek's mouth, carrying the River Road on its back, must be overhead by now. Yes. Here came the swift current of the Silver, striking her from the right, nearly plucking her loose. Above, the water glowed with the molten light of the sky, willow wands streaming black against it. Below, leaves shone gold against the pebbled darkness of the river bed.
Don't panic! she told herself, fighting the desperate compulsion to breathe. It can't stay bent like this for long . . . !
Under those pebbles seemed to be a pattern as if of overlapping shields. A trick of light and water? They couldn't be rising and falling as though with some monstrous, slow respiration.
Then suddenly she was flying upward, through water, through leaves, through air, flung by the tree's recoil across the river—straight into the boughs of a giant white cedar which leaned out from the opposite bank.
Her impression afterward was that the evergreen had carefully rolled her from branch to branch down to the ground. At least, that was where she found herself an unguessed-at time later, sitting on a bed of pine needles, looking at her hands. Half-frozen fingers stung as sensation returned to them and the nails ached. The stitching at the gloves' tips had been ripped out.
A slope of feathery ferns stretched from the river's edge up to a band of sumac, a wide swath of churned earth cut through it by the willow's passage. Something was coming down toward her under the fronds. Jorin's head popped up, all long neck, pricked ears, and wide, anxious eyes. The moment she saw him, he gave an excited bleat and bounded down to her. She hugged him, noting that his silver-gilt fur was barely damp. Presumably, the lower section of the willow's trunk had remained in an arch above the water. Her own god might not give a damn about her, but something in the universe apparently looked after cats and idiots.
Speaking of the latter, where was that pale, young man?
They found him a few minutes later, in some difficulty. Dismounting from the willow, he had stepped into its muddy wake and was now being slowly carried off by the sumac as it took advantage of the disturbed earth to seek sunnier slopes.
"I had no idea that the Riverland could be so lively," said Jame, regarding him across the crawling belt of trees. "Not taking root, are you?"
"I-it's more a case of the roots taking me. I sank in a-and they wrapped around my ankles."
He tottered, waving thin arms to keep his balance, a half-naked scarecrow all bones and pale skin with a preternaturally white thatch of hair.
A Shanir. A priestling. She ought to let him drift on with the arboreal tide until his own people fished him out—but if she had understood correctly, what debt could her brother owe such flotsam as this which he hadn't been willing to pay?
Jame sighed. "Hold on a minute."
The hillside was studded with large rocks, some of which had been thrust aside by the willow and were now slowly sinking in its wake. The sumacs' runners snaked around them. Jame began to thread her way through the maze of slender trunks, jumping from stone to stone. Forgetting Aerulan's extra width on her back, she became wedged between close-set trees and freed herself by pricking their thin bark. As they recoiled, the runners of the whole clump writhed like serpents in the earth. The Shanir bit back a cry of pain.
"I'd come to think," said Jame sourly, "that my house had first claim to any situation this absurd. Who are you, priest-bait, to trespass?"
The pale young man flushed.
"Kindrie," he blurted out defiantly. "My name is Kindrie."