By the Sword (39 page)

As she settled in beside him, she noticed the Companion stare at him and sigh, before turning toward the entrance of the cave in a “guard” stance. That was the last thing she saw as she fell asleep.

 

When she woke, Eldan was already awake and about; in fact, that was what had awakened her. Wisely, he did not attempt to move quietly—anything that sounded like “stealth” would have sent her lunging to her feet with a weapon in hand. She woke just enough to identify where she was, and who was with her—then enjoyed the unwonted luxury of taking her time about coming to full consciousness. There was no hurry; she certainly wasn't going anywhere....

Especially not today. Today she was one long ache, from the soles of her feet to the top of her head. Just bruises and muscle aches, of course; the cuts would be half-healed scars by now. Or, more accurately, half-Healed scars. She suspected that the wounds she had taken had been a
great
deal worse when she'd gotten them—but one of Need's attributes was that she Healed the bearer of just about anything short of a death-wound. She'd surreptitiously made certain that the sword was under her bedroll, well padded to avoid making a lump, before she'd undressed to have Eldan tend to her injuries. She didn't have to be in physical contact with it for it to Heal her; it just had to be nearby, but under her bedroll was where she liked to put it when she had hurts that needed to be dealt with.
She certainly would never have
slept with a concussion without Need's Healing.

She wondered what Eldan would make of her rapid recovery.

Eldan had set about organizing the cave into a place where they could stay comfortably for several days. Just now he was heaping bracken into a depression and covering it with a layer of grass, and after a moment, she figured out why. It was to be a bed, of course; much more comfortable than a couple of bedrolls on the cold stone floor. She watched him, blinking sleepily, as he laid her saddle and his own upside down to dry, and spread both horse blankets out to air.

“A nest, little hawk? You're far more ambitious than I am,” she said with a yawn.

He looked up, and grinned. “Here,” he said, tossing her clothing. “It's clean. I washed it all while you were asleep.”

She shrugged off the covers and ran a hand through her hair, grimacing at the feel of it. “I almost hate to get into clean clothing when I'm as dirty as I am.”

“That's easily remedied, too,” he told her. “This is a limestone cave, and that means water. There's a tiny trickle at the back of the cave. Enough to keep all of us supplied, and clean up a little, too.”

One of the things she'd stolen on her forays after food had been a bar of rough brown soap; harsh with lye, but it would get her clean. It had been in her packs; Eldan had evidently found it when he'd rummaged around looking for the medical supplies (such as they were). He handed the soap to her, with a scrap of cloth that had once been part of her shirt.
He
didn't have much, besides his bedroll and some clothing.

“Come keep me company,” she said, heading to the back of the cave and the promised water. Sure enough, there was a little stream running across the back of it, in one side and out the other, with a rounded pool worn by its motion. Cold, too. She winced as she stuck her hand in it, but cold was better at this point than dirty.

“So how did you manage to find such attractive company?” she asked, as she scrubbed ruthlessly at dirt that seemed part of her, harsh soap, cold water, and all.

“Well, I was all tied up at the time—”

“I meant the
Karsites,
loon,” she said, splashing water at him. He ducked, and grinned.

“Be careful, or you'll put out the candle,” he warned. “And I don't have many. We really ought to make do with firelight. So, you want to know how I happened to be keeping company with Karsites? I'll tell you what, you answer a question, and I'll answer one. Fair enough?”

“Well—” she said cautiously.

“I'd like to know where you got such good training in your Gift if you never told anyone about it,” he interrupted eagerly. “Your control is absolutely amazing!”

“I told one other—person,” she admitted, reluctantly, “Actually, he came to me, because I was—uh—making it hard for him to sleep at night.” She ducked her head in the cold water, more than the chill of her bath making her shiver. Years of concealing her abilities had made a habit of secrecy that was just too much a part of her to break with any comfort. The silence between them lengthened. “Look,” she said, awkwardly, her hair full of soap. “I'd rather not talk about it. It—it just doesn't seem right. I really don't use it that much, and I'd rather forget I had it.”

He sighed, but didn't insist. “I guess it's my turn, hmm? Well, it's stupid enough. Or rather, I was stupid enough. I was just across the Border, in a little village. Not spying, precisely, just picking up commonplace information, gossip, news, that kind of thing.”

She turned to stare at him. “Wearing
that?
Blessed Agnira, what kind of an idiot are you?”

“Not
that
much of an idiot!” he snapped, then said, “Sorry. I wasn't that stupid, no, I was wearing ordinary enough clothing, and I'd walked in; I'd left Ratha out in the woods, outside the village walls. I thought my disguise was perfect, and I thought my contacts were trustworthy, but obviously, something went wrong. I think someone betrayed me, but I'll probably never know for sure. Anyway, when they first hauled me outside the walls, there were only a couple of the guards and no priestess; Ratha tried to get me loose, and they got one of my saddlebags even though they couldn't catch him.”

“And when they found the uniform, they couldn't resist dressing you in it.” She rinsed out her hair, and dried herself with the rag he handed her. With a smile of amusement, she recognized the rest of her ruined shirt. “I can see their reasoning. Makes it all the more evident to the priestess that they really had caught a Herald.”

He nodded, and she pulled the clean clothing on, dripping hair and all. “So, that's it. Short and unadorned.”

But she didn't say anything, just strolled over the uneven surface of the cave floor to their fire.

“So how did
you
end up here?” he asked, handing her a roasted tuber and her water skin. “The closest fighting I know of is on the Menmellith border, and you're leagues away from there.”

“Sheer bad luck,” she told him. “The worst run of luck I could have had except for one thing—nobody's managed to kill me yet, that I know of.”

He smiled at that, and she described the rout, the flight, the dive into the river, and her continued flight deeper and deeper into enemy lands.

“—so I ended up here,” she finished. “Like I said, sheer bad luck.”

“Not for me,” he pointed out.

She snorted. “Well, if your chosen deity brought me all this way to save your hide, it's going to cost you double. I may not be able to collect from a god, but I can certainly collect from you!”

He laughed. “If any outside forces had any part in bringing you up here, it wasn't at my request,” he protested. “I mean, not that I wasn't praying for rescue, but they
caught
me only yesterday, and you've been on the run for—what? Weeks?”

“At least,” she said glumly. “Seems like months. Sometimes I think I'm never going to make it back home alive.”

“You will,” he replied, softly.

She just shrugged. “So, are you going to introduce me to your friend? It hardly seems polite to keep acting like he's no brighter than Hellsbane.”

Eldan bnghtened. “You mean, you—”

“My weaponsmaster told me about Companions,” she said, cutting him off. “They‘re—s—s—”

And suddenly, she was tongue-tied. She literally could not say the word, “spirit.”

“Special,” she got out, sweating with the effort. “Absolutely the intellectual equals of you and me. Right?”

“Exactly.” He beamed. “Ratha, this is Kerowyn. Kerowyn, Companion Ratha.”

“Zha‘hai'allav‘a,
Ratha,” she said politely, as the Companion left his self-appointed watch post at the entrance and paced gracefully toward her. “That's Shin'a‘in, the greeting of my adopted Clan,” she told both Ratha and his Herald. “It means, 'wind beneath your wings.‘ My Clan's the Tale'sedrin, the Children of the Hawk.”

She didn't know
why
the Shin‘a'in greeting seemed appropriate; it just fit. Ratha nodded to her with grave courtesy; Eldan's eyes widened.

“Shin‘a'in?” he exclaimed, and turned to look at Hellsbane, dozing over her heap of fresh-pulled grass. “Then—surely that's not—”

“She's a warsteed, all right,” Kero said with pride. “And probably the only one you'll ever see off the Plains. Her name's Hellsbane. Smart as a cat, obedient as a dog, and death on four hooves if I ask it of her.”

“That much I saw.” He got up and walked over to the mare, who woke when he moved, and watched him cautiously.

“Hellsbane,” Kero called, catching the mare's attention.
“Kathal, dester‘edre.”

Hellsbane relaxed, and permitted herself to be examined minutely. Eldan looked her over with all the care of a born horseman. Finally he left her to return to her doze and seated himself back by the fire. “Amazing,” he said in wonder. “Ugliest horse I've ever seen, but under that hide—if I were going to build a riding beast for warfare, starting from the bone out, that's exactly what I'd build.”

“My weaponsmaster claims that's what the Clans
did
do,” Kero said. “The gods alone know how they did it, or even if they did it, but that's what she claims.”

“Amazing,” he repeated, shaking his head. Then he raised it. “So, tell me about this weaponsmaster of yours. And how in the Havens did you manage to get adopted into a Clan?”

She smiled. “It's a long story. Are you comfortable?”

 

They were both a lot wearier than either of them thought. He told her to start at the beginning and she took him at his word. She told him about the “ride”—and to her embarrassment, discovered that the song had made it as far as Valdemar. Once past the decision to leave home and beg some kind of instructions from her grandmother, she caught him yawning.

“I'm not—oh—that boring, am I?” she asked, finding the yawns contagious.

“No,” he said, “It's just that I can't keep my eyes open.”

“Well, I don't think any Karsites are going to creep up on us in the dark,” she admitted, “And it's well after sundown. I never once noticed anyone moving around after dark except army patrols. And even they wouldn't go off the roads.” She did not mention the strange and frightening instances when she'd felt as if she was being hunted; she had no proof, and anyway, nothing had ever come of it.

She got up and went to the tangled heap of blankets, intending to throw them over that invitingly thick bed of bracken he'd made. Eldan joined her in the task, still yawning.

“They seem to think that demons travel by night,” he said, shaking out his blanket. “It seems that people vanish out of their houses by night—whole families, sometimes—and are never seen again. And not surprisingly, the ones that vanish are the ones that are the least devout, or have asked uncomfortable questions, or have shown some other signs of rebellion.”

She thought about the army patrols she'd seen moving about at night, and was perfectly capable of putting the two together. “Hmm. Demons on horseback, do you suppose? In uniform, perhaps?”

“A good guess,” he acknowledged.

“Makes me very grateful I wasn't born in Karse.”

Eldan spread the last of the blankets over the improvised bed, and tilted his head to one side. “Not all the ‘vanished' end up dead, my lady,” he said. “Some of them end up in the priesthood.”

“Not a chance!” she exclaimed.

“I hadn't finished. They retain their skills—but they've forgotten everything about their old life.
Everything;
it happened to someone I was watching as a possible contact. She had a Gift of Mindspeech, one that was just developing. When I next saw her, she didn't recognize anyone she had known before. Her mind was a complete blank—and her devotion to the Sunlord was total.” He nodded as she felt the blood drain from her face.

“You mean—everybody with these ‘Gifts' winds up in the priesthood—and someone in the priesthood strips their minds?” The idea was horrible, more horrifying than rape and torture, somehow. Rape and torture still left you with your own mind, your own thoughts.

“Someone in the priesthood wipes their minds
clean.
Everything that made them what they are is gone. I've been able to trigger old memories in someone suffering from forgetfulness after a head injury—” (She filed that away for future reference.) “—but I have
never
been able to do so in one of the priestesses.” He sighed. “Some would say that they are still better off that way than dead, but I don't know.”