IV
The priestling had begun feebly to strike his head again, although he was asleep. Jame tossed aside all the rocks within his reach, then picked up the empty food sack. At least she had guessed right there: only direct contact with the Shanir triggered that horror which she had felt in the sumac grove, as if she were being turned inside out. Like most people, she had no idea what her own soul-image was, nor did she care to, when a mere touch of it left such a foulness in her mind, like the foretaste of vomit.
You've lived in ignorance so far, she told herself. This is no time to stop.
Scattered provisions rolled about underfoot. Apples, dried fruit . . . cheese.
Blind Jorin had never had much luck hunting prey which she couldn't see, except when the Arrin-ken Immalai had helped him. She would keep these despised rinds against his return, hoping that he at least wouldn't get lost.
Their meager rations regathered, Jame sat down again on her side of the fire, took a small sewing kit from an inner pocket of her d'hen, and began awkwardly to stitch up her split gloves, while still wearing them. A quarter inch at the tips, however, she left open. Marc had suggested that once. Only an idiot would forgo any advantage now, the cost be damned.
Nonetheless, her bare nails must never touch that damn Shanir again.
Jame swore as the needle slipped, pricking her finger.
The Old Blood, she thought sourly, licking a drop of it. The God-chosen, the Shanir.
How could one hate what one oneself was? Easily. Look at Torisen—except he didn't know he was a Shanir blood-binder and far-seer. Look at this healer, then, who kept trying to hurt himself. As far back as the Cataracts, hadn't he worked himself into a coma trying to help the wounded?
Help . . . .
Sore as her face still was, she no longer felt that trace of heat which could either have been infection or Kallystine's parting gift. Could that be the healer's work? She could ask him to do more. Even now, she didn't have to be scarred for life . . . .
No. He was priest-trained and she was Priest's-bane.
"Your name is an omen in itself," Marc had once said. "Servants of God, any god, will be bad luck to you, and you to them."
True enough. She remembered Ishtier, gibbering, trying to gnaw off the hand with which he had touched the Book Bound in Pale Leather. Some people deserved all the bad luck they got.
Did this young man, though? Her brother would hardly tell her what debt he owed to another Shanir. He had let one thing slip, though: Kindrie had a Knorth grandmother. Tori hadn't asked her name. The very idea must have made his skin crawl, as it did Jame's now—not that such distant, bone-kinship could matter much. If it had, prejudice aside, Tori would have extended the protection of their house to the healer long ago.
But with Tori hiding in Kothifir, Kindrie was her problem. Left on his own, he would surely be recaptured by the priests, whom he would tell about her. Every day that folk assumed she was still hiding in Gothregor increased her chance of success at Restormir.
To travel with a priest, though, past Wilden . . .
Wha . . . ooo, said the wind, keening down the ravine, making the little fire dance. Wha . . . wha . . . oooo.
No. It wasn't those others, flame-mouthed Merikit avengers of the dead, on her trail from Tai-tastigon.
Fratricide.
No.
The wind died and the fire sank. Jame sat beside it, waiting for her heart to stop pounding. It seemed to her, though, that she could still hear fragments of sound—singing—close by. Trinity. Could their pursuers have camped almost on top of them?
Thinking that they were probably at the mouth of the ravine, just off the road, she climbed to the pine coppice above. With the stars overcast and the moon not yet risen, it was too dark under the trees even for her excellent night-vision. Oh, for Jorin's keen nose and ears, although her use of both had been limited recently. She crept forward through crusts of sheltered snow toward the rocky beak which overhung the road, then lay flat on an aromatic bed of needles at the edge of the trees to wait for her eyes to adjust.
The only sound now was the wind soughing through the branches overhead. The only light came from below. Down the New Road drifted faintly glowing forms which Jame recognized as ghost-walkers, man-shaped patches of weirding mist which were said to precede a weirdingstrom. She herself had never seen weirding before, but had heard of its strange properties. Travellers caught in it had been known to emerge hundreds of miles away, if at all. Singers claimed that the ghost-walkers were those whom the mist had trapped, doomed to wander forever in its clammy clutch like the souls of the unburnt dead.
The wind momentarily died. The ghostly procession drifted to a stop.
In that lull, Jame smelled the unmistakable reek of human sweat.
A sudden, rasping snore made her jump nearly out of her boots. It ended with a loud snort. Not a dozen feet away, a dark shape which she had taken for a boulder rose, stretched, and scratched itself. It was a large, naked Merikit, a senior of his tribe to judge by the profusion of his braids, but so smeared with charcoal as to be almost one with the night. At his bare feet was a small, ceremonial fire, set but not lit. He muttered rapidly through the chant which she had heard before, as if his unintended nap had made him lose his place, then in ringing tones addressed the final lines to the fire, which made no discernible response. Satisfied nonetheless, the big man shouldered his sack with a grunt and scrambled down to the road. The wind had picked up again, the ghost-walkers resuming their southward drift. Catching up with one, he disappeared into it.
Jame blinked. Was she dreaming? In the morning, she might think so, unless . . . . In among the fire's pale kindling was an cinder shaped like a charred, human finger bone.
Proof, she thought, and pocketed it.