Chapter Six
They took one last look around the shack.
“I’m sorry, Diri.”
With a bleak expression, Dirina shook her head as if to reject the apology. “I only wish we could take the chair and table,” she said softly. “We should have burned them for heat.” Her sister adjusted the straps that kept Pas tied to her chest, nuzzled him briefly, picked up her heavy sack, slung it over her shoulder.
At least they didn’t have much to carry.
Always leaving. Always because of her.
As they stepped outside into the frozen night, Dirina shut the door behind them. The heavy, dull sound of wood on wood echoed in Amarta’s mind, and with a light brush of foresight, she knew they would never be here again.
At least she didn’t have to worry about spring festival in this village.
Dirina was watching her, her expression a faint echo of the look the villagers sometimes gave her. Amarta felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night.
She followed Dirina past outlying houses and farms, now shut tight. Envy filled Amarta for their safe, cozy, warm houses.
As they left the village behind, snow crunching underfoot, the mountain road before them was free of footprints. No one traveled this road in winter. It was folly. She hoped her sister knew what she was doing.
But she was the one who had set them on this path.
High, thin clouds caught moonlight, casting barely enough light to show them the road as it led under tall trees and darker shadows. Pines and cedar and high maples cut black shapes against the night sky.
The thought of burning their chairs seemed so sensible now that she wondered why they hadn’t done it before. They could die out here from the cold itself, never mind the eyes in the shadows that she might have only imagined. What if this were a terrible mistake?
“We go to the river, Diri?” she asked softly.
“Did you not say we must cross the Sennant?”
“That’s what I saw,” she said apologetically.
“Then we’ll cross and go to a village a bit beyond. When the weather improves, we’ll find a way downriver.”
Somewhere new that no one had heard of them yet. Heard of her.
“Whatever is after us, maybe it only wants me.”
“No.”
“All I’m saying is that I could go to the river without you, cross and be safe, and you and Pas could go back to Botaros . . .”
“No.”
“I just think that maybe—”
“Amarta.” A sharp rebuke. “Whatever is coming, it isn’t getting you. We won’t let it.”
Amarta sobbed a little then, but quietly so that Dirina would not hear. She wiped her face with her sleeve, leaving her even colder.
The last time they had crossed the Sennant, they walked a high bridge connecting two cliffs below which the river crashed and boomed, a terror of white foam that still gave her nightmares.
“How will we cross?”
“A raft on an overhead rope with a pulley. At the end of the road. Or so I’m told,” Dirina added softly.
“I’m cold.”
“I know.”
Her mind numb, she marched behind Dirina, trying to step in her sister’s footprints. “And tired.”
“We should find a way-house between us and the river.”
A place to be out of the cold. It sounded marvelous.
As they fled yet another home. How many had they left now? Three? Four? And how many more?
Whispers mumbled behind her heavy eyes, a swirling, muddy confusion trying to answer the question she had, in foolish exhaustion, begun to ask.
Taste and texture in her mouth, chewy and sweet, nuts and fruit and spices she had never tasted before.
Blue eyes above a wide smile. A warm hand squeezing her own.
Possibilities only. Nothing certain. She pushed it away angrily. A glimpse here or there, a tantalizing hint of warmth when she was so cold, of food when she was so hungry. No use. No use at all.
Distracted, she misstepped, caught herself. Dirina gave her a worried glance, then turned back to trudge forward, head bowed over Pas in her arms.
Amarta chastised herself. She must focus on the uneven ground in front of her. A poor step, a twisted ankle—she was already costing them so much.
“Ama,” Dirina said after a time. “Do you think we could rest a bit?”
Amarta stopped, confused for a moment as to why her sister was asking her.
Because she was supposed to know. The one thing she could do to help them.
She let her sister’s question sit in her mind like a lump of fat in a hot skillet. Atop some bread, perhaps, with a fried apple, or even some scraps of meat.
With effort she turned her thoughts back to the question. Was the shadow hunter close? Did they have time? A crawling sensation on her skin intensified. Warning or simply that she was freezing, she could not quite tell. “A few minutes, I think,” she whispered.
So they sat, backs against a large, towering fir.
Moments later Amarta woke, heart pounding, dread propelling her to her feet and then forward along the path. Dirina silently gathered Pas and followed.
By the time the sky began at last to pale toward dawn, Amarta’s legs felt leaden, and her eyes kept trying to close as she shuffled forward. With daylight, heavy clouds gathered across the sky and snow began to fall. At first it was a light sprinkling and then fat, wet flakes, the gray-green of snow-crusted pines the only color in a world gone white.
When Dirina stopped, Amarta plowed into her, and they caught each other, Pas objecting wordlessly between them. Dirina pulled her under a bough of thick cedar that provided a bit of shelter. They sat and ate a few bites of hard bread in oil, nearly frozen. Amarta looked back at the path.
Before them was a crossroads. To the south another road opened, leading temptingly downhill, unlike the ascending road that was their direction.
“The village south,” Amarta said softly. “Isn’t it closer?”
“The river, you said,” Dirina answered. Was that reproach in her sister’s voice?
“You and Pas could go south, and I’d go to the river. We could meet at the town of Sennant later, and—”
“No.”
“What if there isn’t really anyone after us? What if I’m wrong?”
“Ama?” Dirina’s voice cracked. “Are you—”
“I don’t know!” She swallowed the lump in her throat, looked into the woods. A winter finch fluttered to a fallen stick, pecked at it hopefully, fluttered away.
Dirina moved close and wrapped Amarta in her arms, the baby between them, and they huddled there a long moment. Then Dirina held Amarta at arm’s length.
“We will go where your visions say,” Dirina said, standing, helping Amarta up and hefting Pas in the sling at her chest. She caressed his cheek and, with a force that surprised Amarta, said: “We will not be among the fools who ignore your words.”
At that Amarta blinked away tears, brushing snow from her lashes.
They struggled their way up the incline, heads down in the falling snow. After a time, the snow lightened to flurries.
“Diri, if it keeps snowing . . .”
“Will it?”
“I can’t tell,” Amarta said miserably, too tired to think, let alone ask questions her vision might answer. “What if the way-house isn’t there? What if there raft is gone? What if the hunter—”
“What if, what if,” her sister snapped. “I’m not leaving you for him to find. Say no more of that. You understand?”
“Yes.”
A pause, the sounds of their footsteps crunching in snow.
“Ama. You must tell me when you foresee things. Even if it’s about me. I know what I said, but it’s different now. Yes?”
Suddenly Amarta felt cold inside as well as out. “Yes.”
* * *
Exhaustion forced them to stop more and more often as the short day wore on.
At another rest, leaning against Dirina, again Amarta felt herself dragged into unconsciousness, waking minutes later, gasping for breath, lurching to her feet and stumbling forward on the path. Dirina followed wordlessly.
Daylight began to fade. Dirina picked up her pace, and Amarta struggled to keep up.
Something like pain hit her abruptly. An echo of pain to come, it was. A wrenching, sick moment of tearing. “Diri,” she hissed. “Stop.”
“What?” Her sister looked around, face drawn, eyes wide.
“Something ahead. Something bad.”
Dirina took a quick step backward, eyes on the path before them.
Amarta felt the pressure of the shadow hunter behind, urging her forward, an ominous warning. But before her on the road, something sharper and sooner.
“Pull the knife, Ama.”
Reaching into the back pocket of Dirina’s sack still on her shoulders, Amarta took out their only knife, gripping it in her hand, wondering when they had last sharpened it on anything.
They both went still and silent, listening to the deep quiet of the woods. Overhead a cloudy sky darkened.
Dirina watched her. At last she whispered: “What now?”
Hunter behind, a horror in front. Overhead, a gray sky darkening with night.
“I don’t know.”
Dirina rocked Pas gently to keep him from making any noise.
Again and again Amarta tried to summon a clear thought, a way to vision. Her thoughts felt stuffed with hay, sluggish with cold.
If they went forward, then—what?
The strange musky smell of wet animal. Pas’s terrified wailing. Amarta tried to get to him but she could not seem to move. Pas’s wail abruptly ceased.
Softly Dirina breathed out, “We have to go somewhere, Ama.”
Amarta turned around slowly in the dimming light, looking for what, she didn’t know. A tree, a rock—anything that might connect her confusing vision to direction. She took a small step off the road in one direction, then another, but nothing changed. Then forward again on the road. Was it still there?
The ground was hard and cold beneath her, Pas’s broken, lifeless body just out of reach.
Amarta exhaled sharply, a soundless cry, and doubled over, fingers on the frozen ground.
“Ama?” Alarm in her sister’s voice.
Struggling back aright, she stepped close, reached out to touch Pas’s face where he curled in Dirina’s arms. At this he opened his brown eyes, smiled. She put her lips to his forehead gratefully.
They must move. Where? Swallowing hard, she again took a step forward on the road.
It was suddenly free of disaster.
“We can go forward now,” Amarta said.
“What? But why?”
“I don’t know.”
“But—are you sure?”
Another step. No warnings. “Yes.” she said. Her visions were sure, anyway.
They went forward, hesitantly, Amarta in the lead, holding the no-doubt-useless knife in front of her.
They rounded a curve, the land sloping up on one side and down on the other, then rounded another curve. With every step Amarta listened for warning, heart pounding in her ears.
When at last they came to the place, there was barely enough light to see the broad, dark stains in the snow, the large animal pads where something had walked, the gouges where a body had been dragged away after a struggle.
Something had died here. Minutes ago. Instead of the three of them.
As they passed, they gave wide berth to the blood-soaked snow and bits of fur.
Darkness fell around them as the cold settled hard. Dirina took Amarta’s hand and led her forward as if she knew where they were going, but of course she could not possibly.
Another flash of vision, and Amarta squeezed Dirina’s hand, leading them by feel to the side of the road, then on a short path to a tiny cabin. The waystation, the dimmest of outlines. They felt their way inside blindly, finding the room empty and small enough that they could both barely stretch out on the wood floor.
But it kept out the wind, and the door bolted.
She woke her sister at dawn, feeling the pressure of pursuit.
By early afternoon they could see down the steep embankment to the river valley below. From this distance the Sennant was a thick gray and white rush, the sound a distant roar.
“You see,” Dirina said, her tone one of relief as she pointed out a small square of brown at a wide, slow area on the other side of the river where the road continued from the rocky banks. “The raft. It’s attached to a rope, strung between those two huge cedars. We’ll be able to draw it back over to our side and take it across.”
As they hiked down the switchbacked road to the river, the roaring was a welcome sound. Amarta felt her spirits rise. Underfoot, snow gave way to rockier land and patches of dirt.
Once they found the town, what then? They were out of food, had no more coin, knew no one there. A woman, a girl, a baby—how much generosity could they hope for in winter, when strangers were even less welcome?
It would not take long for the talk in Botaros to follow them. The first thaw’s trade wagons would see to that.
“We won’t be welcome in Sennant, will we.”
A pause. “We’ll see when we get there.”
Beggars. That’s what they were. As welcome as mice in a granary.
Mice who knew things they shouldn’t.
They reached the riverbank, their feet crunching over rocks. On either side the tall rises were edged with snow-tipped firs and pines that rose to points against the flat, gray sky.
At last they reached the short wooden dock where a pole for the raft was waiting. Dirina handed Pas to Amarta while she set to pulling the dangling rope. On the other side, the raft jerked and began to move toward them.
Pas was restless, so she let him down to the dock, where he he tried to stand, bouncing up and down, almost hopping. He looked up at her and smiled. Her fear eased. Dirina was right. She worried too much.
Then she looked back at the hills. At the high point of the road was a dark-clad horse and rider.
“Diri.”
Her sister looked and inhaled sharply.
The rider was trotting toward them.
Amarta let Pas’s hand go to help Dirina pull on the rope. Pas sat heavily on the dock and began to whine.
The two of them put everything they had into retrieving the raft. A glance back showed the rider halfway down the hills, now moving even faster.
No point in looking at him. She pulled harder, not thinking; grab and tug, grab and tug.
The raft bumped the dock on their side.
“Get on,” Dirina said.
Amarta snatched up Pas and stepped onto the raft.
Now the horse was past the switchbacks and on the bank of the river.
“Diri?”
“Downstream,” Dirina said curtly. She pulled the knife and began sawing at the ropes that held the raft to the pulley. “Not to Sennant town. He’ll follow there. Understand?”
“Yes, but—”
“He’ll track you along the shore,” Dirina said, strands of the thick rope parting as she cut fiercely. “It’s rocky, so you can go faster than he can ride, but stay to the other side.”
“Diri. Get on.”
The rocky bank slowed the horse, but not much. The sound of hooves grew louder.
The cut rope gave way. Dirina held tight to the end that held the raft. She turned on Amarta. “Take Pas. Hide. Pretend to be someone else. Find someone to take care of you. Use your visions, Ama. Use them!”
“Diri!”
“I’ll stop him. You go.”
With that, her sister released the rope. At the same moment, Amarta grabbed her arm with the hand not holding Pas. The raft struggled in the current, held only by Amarta’s tight grasp on her sister.
“You have to come,” she said, struggling to hold both Pas and Dirina at once. A seeing haze came over her, a warning. They had to leave, and now. If Dirina stayed . . .
The horse and rider were nearly on them.
“You won’t slow him down,” Amarta cried desperately. “Not enough.”
Uncertainty flickered across her sister’s face.
Amarta’s visions were howling at her, one thing and one thing only: the shadow hunter was coming, and if he got her, she would not get away. Closer each heartbeat.
“I’m sure,” she lied firmly. “Get on.”
Dirina hesitated, a precious moment they didn’t have. Amarta jerked her onto the raft, and she didn’t resist, taking up the pole. With it she gave a hard push, propelling them away from the dock.
He was close enough now that she could make out details. He was well-wrapped against the cold, his chestnut-brown horse’s hooves finding traction on the ground to come alongside them.
Amarta knelt down on the raft, holding Pas, keeping the two of them steady. As the raft wobbled, Dirina took a wide stance, poling into the water, pushing them farther away from shore.
Now the rider held reins in one hand and in the other a bow and arrow.
“Down,” her sister shouted. Amarta went prone on the wooden raft, curling around Pas, who made frightened sounds. She whispered in his ear to comfort him, but he only cried louder. She went silent, letting him cry for the both of them.
Maybe there was no escaping the future. Maybe all you could do was trade one bad happenstance for another. She shut her eyes, not wanting to see what would happen next. But in the next moment she opened them, craning her head around to see him, this hunter.
Every part of the man was covered, gloves to high boots, a snug hood, only his eyes showing. He dropped the reins, but the horse continued forward as if nothing had changed. He took the bow in both hands.
“Diri!”
Amarta sat up, grabbed her sister by the arm, and tugged her down. Dirina dropped by her side, still managing to hold the pole. Around Pas they hugged each other.
A hard thunk on the raft. An arrow stuck upward, a scant foot from Dirina’s back.
At that, fury overcame her. He was supposed to be coming after her, not Dirina. She was on her feet, struggling for balance. “Stop it!” she yelled at him. “Go away!”
The distance between the raft and the horse was widening slowly. Too slowly.
“Ama, get down!” Dirina shouted, grabbing at her hand. She shook off Dirina’s grasp and turned to face her pursuer.
He lifted his bow again, aimed at her.
She felt oddly calm, as though she had all the time in the world. She considered how he had almost hit Dirina with his last shot. From a moving horse. Aiming at a moving raft. He was very good at this.
Next time he probably wouldn’t miss.
Especially if she were standing.
Or maybe it would be easier for everyone if he shot her now, killed her dead, and got it over with. Then, perhaps, Dirina and Pas would be safe.
“Ama!” Dirina screamed.
Still she watched him. She needed to see him, see this next moment. With every step his horse was losing ground as their raft was caught in the downstream current, but his bow was still pointed directly at her.
Now everything was moving: the raft, the horse, the banks on either side. It seemed to Amarta that the place where the bow in his hand crossed his arrow was the only thing in the world that did not move.
“What do you want?” she yelled at him. “What?”
“Ama,” her sister hissed. “Don’t.”
As if in answer, he lowered the bow. His horse slowed, still following along the riverbank but falling farther behind.
Amarta sat heavily next to her sister. A half-hearted attempt to foresee only gained her a tangled, misty sense of fading danger as the man on the horse, still following along the shore, receded into the distance. At last they could no longer see him.
One thing she had seen clearly, though, was that she would meet him again.
Amarta began to tremble. Dirina held her, spoke soothing words, but she was shaking as well.
In time Pas calmed down enough to want to be fed and changed. Swapping one patch of moss for another, Dirina handed the pole to Amarta while she fed him. Amarta stood on the raft, keeping them at the center of the wide river. She glanced at the bank behind.
Would he follow?
Of course he would.
The skies cleared and the shadows lengthened. It was colder on the water than she thought it could possibly be without being frozen solid. They huddled together.
“We’ll stop soon,” Dirina said, bundling Pas in her arms. “When we find a road. We’ll go—” She broke off, then started again. “We’ll go—”
“Diri?”
Her sister was silent, inhaling raggedly, as tired and worn as Amarta. She had never seen her sister so shaken.
“We’ll find a road on the other side,” Amarta continued. “Go inland.”
Dirina nodded as Pas reached for her hair. She kissed his forehead. “We will need to get off the river,” Dirina said. “Find food and shelter.”
But they would stand out wherever they went.
“Diri, if we cut my hair, could I seem a boy instead?”
Dirina gave her an assessing look. “Maybe. With a little change to how you move and what you say.”
Amarta pulled out their knife, grabbed her shoulder-length hair around front in a fist, and began to saw through it as Dirina had with the rope.
“Here, let me,” Dirina said, arranging Pas and herself closer. Then, after a time: “It will do for now.”
Amarta held a handful of the cut hair, some of her tresses nearly a foot long. About to toss them into the river, she hesitated, recalling the eyes of the hunter. The strands might float downstream, tangling with fallen leaves and branches. He might find them.
She tried to foresee. The future was cold and swirling and uncertain like the water around them. She put the strands in her pocket.
“Look,” Dirina was whispering to Pas, pointing to the moon in the deepening azure sky, “a shard of the first stone from which the world was born. And those lights? Those are stars, the children of the sun.”
Dark banks passed to either side, thick forests, an occasional campfire.
Lamps from houses in small villages. Amarta envied them their warm houses, their families, their food. What would it be like to live in a place with the confidence you would still be there tomorrow and the next day? The next season? A year hence?
“There,” Dirina said, pointing.
A road along the bank. Dirina stood, poked the pole into the water, maneuvered them to the shore. Amarta stepped off into the frigid water. Together they dragged the raft partly up onto the bank. Good enough. Or was it?
Dirina on the ground, blood oozing wetly from an arrow in her leg. Amarta turning to see him atop his horse.
Dirina held Pas and the rest of their belongings.
“Diri, the raft. He’s seen it.”
For a moment her sister looked confused. Then she nodded. “We’ll send it downriver.”
They launched it with as much force as they could, and off it went downstream.
“Travel far, travel true,” Dirina whispered.
Amarta didn’t try to foresee the path of the raft. It would have to be good enough.
They stood by a tree at the edge of a fallow field, Pas deep in exhausted sleep against Dirina’s chest, and stared at the lights of a farmhouse.
“This one, or do we go on?” Dirina asked, tone flat.
They had been careful, walking on rocks, considering every step. No broken branches. No stray hairs.
Tired, cold, hungry. Would whoever lived in this farmhouse take them in, at least until tomorrow?
Beggars in the night.
Amarta looked at the farmhouse again, trying to foresee. She felt empty. “Maybe,” she said.
“Maybe?” Dirina said, her voice cracking. “Yes or no?”
They were both so tired that it was hard to say anything, let alone anything nice. Amarta squinted at the farmhouse. If they knocked on the door, could it lead to being warm?
The smell of hay. A place to lie down.
There was a way.
“Yes,” she said, too tired to explain.
They walked the rutted path to the house. It stretched back and away from the road under a leafless oak, a barn nearby.
Dirina took a breath, and knocked.
A woman opened the door, gray at her temples, a frown on her face. “What do you want?”
“We are travelers,” Dirina said, trying to sound hopeful and pitiful all at once. “Begging your mercy. With nowhere to go this wretched night. All we ask—”
“You’re letting in cold.” She scowled. “Get in.”
They did so, pulling the door shut behind. A fire in a large wood stove breathed heat into the room. Two men, young enough to be the woman’s adult sons, sat at a table and turned to look.
The smell of meat and spices hung in the air. They had food. They were eating. For a moment Amarta could think of nothing else.
“We were orphaned, ma’am,” Dirina said, moving the blanket a bit so that they could all see Pas in her arms. “Our parents fell off a mountainside and died. Our uncle took everything we had. We’re not beggars,” she said. “We can clean and mend and care for children . . .” She glanced at the young men and faltered. There were no children here.
Dirina ducked her head, eyes wide. It was the look she got when they were most down on their luck. “We can cook and fetch water and collect wood and pick wildflowers and—”
Flowers? Dirina must be beyond tired. Her sister stuttered to a stop, only now seeming to realize what she had just said.
“Anything, really,” Dirina finished softly.
The woman, clearly reluctant, shrugged. “The barn has hay. Be gone in the morning. The donkey is mean and will bite, so don’t bother him.”
But the last thing Amarta wanted was to leave this warm room to share space with an unpleasant animal in a cold barn. More than anything, she wanted to stay right here and eat whatever they were eating.
They would share what they had, if they wanted to. How to convince them?
The woman didn’t trust them, Amarta could see that in her hard expression. What would it take to change her mind?
So tired. Too tired to look ahead.
Just a little ways ahead, then. Heartbeats in the future. A hint of what could be.
She caught it then, barely a whiff. A taste of stew from a future that might yet be.
“No,” she said to the woman. “I mean—” She glanced at Dirina, who gave her a dismayed look. “That’s not all of it.”
“Not all of what, girl?” the woman asked, moving to the door to open it. “Loham, take them out to the barn.” One of the young men stood and approached.
“It’s true we’re orphans,” Amarta said, talking quickly, “but there’s more. There’s a man after us. I think he means to kill us.” She spoke calmly. That was the thing, she realized, not to try to look ragged and pathetic. Dirina’s approach had worked before, many times, but it wouldn’t work now.
The woman gave them both a long look. “Why?”
“We don’t know,” Amarta continued. “But we have nowhere to go. We haven’t eaten today because we have no food or money. But we’re trustworthy, and we’ll work hard for you as long as you’ll have us.”
“Not the king’s men,” the woman said. “We don’t need that kind of trouble.”
“No, not that,” Dirina said.
The woman nodded slowly. Then, to Dirina: “Next time you let her speak.”
Dirina looked down, face reddening.
“Cafir,” the woman called to the other man, “put some blankets in the corner by the fire. Loham, ladle out two more bowls. You two, take off your packs, and—” she stepped toward Dirina. “Here, woman, give me that baby before you drop him.”
Dirina hesitated a moment, then handed her Pas.
Amarta took off her pack and looked around the room, feeling dazed as the future she had glimpsed moments ago became the present.