City of Sorcery (37 page)

“You think I’m not? We’d better pray that place
is
a village or settlement of some sort. I don’t think it’s what Lexie saw; it’s marked on the maps. But it looks a little too regular to be a rock formation. Anyway we’ve got to try for it. The way that sky looks, we have no choice. I don’t want to bivouac in
that
.”

“Who would?” Magda turned to descend the way they had come, but turned to look at Vanessa, who was standing at the very edge of the cliff in a way that made Magda’s arms and legs prickle with cramping apprehension.

Vanessa said in an undertone, “God, Lorne, just
look
at it. It makes the mountains of Alpha look like foothills. I was proud of collecting Montenegro Summit. I’ve never seen anything like this. No matter how this comes out, just the chance to see this - ” She broke off, and looked at Magda.

She said softly, “You don’t understand at all, do you, Lorne? To you it’s just difficulties and dangers and hard travel and rough going, and you can’t even see it, can you?”

“Not the way you do, Vanessa,” Magda confessed. “I never wanted to climb mountains for their own sake. Not for the love of it.”

Unexpectedly, Vanessa reached out and put an awkward arm around her. “That’s really something. That you keep going, like this, when it doesn’t even mean anything to you. Lorne, I’m - I’m glad we’ve got to know each other. You’re - you’re what they always said you were.” Her cold lips brushed Magda’s cheek in a shy kiss. Abruptly, she turned away.

“We’d better get back down, and tell them what we found. If anything. I’d feel damned funny to climb all the way up to that cluster of gray stuff and find it was just a bunch of rotten old square rocks!”

“Funny isn’t exactly the word for what I’d feel,” Magda agreed, “but it’s the only halfway repeatable word for it.”

Going down was easier, though they picked their way carefully to avoid a fall. As it was, Vanessa stumbled and was saved by the rope from a long fall down a debris-strewn slide; putting out her hand to save herself she wrenched her wrist painfully.

The sky was wholly clouded over now, and a cutting wind had begun to blow; Magda was shivering, and halfway down the slope they stopped, sheltering behind one of the rock buttresses to dig out the emergency rations from their pockets and suck on honey-soaked dried fruit. Magda’s face felt raw in spite of the cream she had smeared on it. As the sky darkened it was harder to place their feet. How, in heaven’s name, were they going to bring horses and chervines, not to mention the ailing Cholayna, up this way? She had no chronometer, but it could not be so late in the day as that sky presaged. Did that mean one of the blizzards, roaring down out of the impassable north?

“How far away would you say that place was?”

“A few kilometers; if we could ride, a couple of hours, no more. Climbing, God only knows,” Vanessa said. “Maybe when we get past the bad part, we can put Cholayna on a horse and lead it across, at least.” She drew the strings of her hood closer around her face.

It seemed to Magda that the wind was growing fiercer, that it held the very smell of heavy snow. She told herself not to borrow trouble; things were bad enough as they were. As they approached the spot where they had left the others, her mind was tormented with sudden fears; suppose the campsite was deserted, Jaelle and Cholayna and Camilla gone, snatched into oblivion by the hand of the sorceresses who had perhaps led Lexie and Rafaella into some doom in these mountains…

But as they picked their way carefully down the last slope they could see a flash of orange against the rock and snow, Camilla’s old riding-cape, and the gleam of a campfire. Then they stumbled into the camp and Camilla thrust mugs of boiling tea into their hands; Magda collapsed on a spread sleeping bag. Nothing, it seemed, had ever tasted so good to her burning throat.

Revived a little by the hot drink, warmed (but not enough), she asked, “How is Cholayna?”

Jaelle tilted her head to where Cholayna was sleeping between piled sleeping bags and blankets. Even from where they sat Magda could hear the rasp of her breathing. Vanessa went and bent her head to listen to the sound at close quarters.

Camilla asked, “Well?”

“Not very well at all,” said Vanessa, tight-lipped. “There’s fluid in her bronchial passages; I don’t know enough to know if it’s spread to her lungs. But we’ve got to find shelter for her before very long. Let’s just pray that what we found will
be
shelter.”

And I didn’t want Vanessa to come. What would we have done without her?

Quickly they told what they had discovered, saddled up ponies and loaded the chervines, roping them together. Cholayna, rousing quickly from her light sleep, protested that she was able to walk with the rest, but they insisted she should ride and set her on her horse. Magda took the reins, and they started upward. For the first stretch, at least, they need not be roped up.

But a few hundred feet above the spot where they had camped after the avalanche, the rocks and ice were so loose under foot that Vanessa insisted on getting out the ropes and roping them all together.

“I’m sorry, Cholayna; you’ll have to get down. I don’t trust any horse’s footing here. If you could manage to ride a chervine - “

“No need of that.” Nevertheless, Cholayna clung to the chervine’s saddle-strap to haul herself along; it was the elderly female, the most tractable of all the animals, and although it whickered uneasily, it did not protest as Cholayna held tight. The other chervines followed their leader; the horses, too, had to be trusted to pick their own way over ice and rubble. Magda knew it would be a miracle if all the animals got across undamaged. Once Camilla’s foot slipped and only the taut-stretched rope kept her from rolling down the long rocky slope; she hauled herself to her feet, swearing breathlessly in a language Magda hardly understood.

“Hurt, Camilla?”

“Only shaken up.” She was favoring one foot, but there was nothing to be done about it here. Slowly, they forced their way up the long slope, under the lowering sky, pregnant with undelivered clouds of snow. It was deliberate, hard going; Magda, who had covered this upward route already once today, felt her knees would hardly hold her up; she heard her own breath deepen and roughen, whistling loudly in and out. Her head throbbed and her ears ached, but there was no longer any feeling in her face. She drew up her scarf over her nose in a rude mask, but the warm breath condensed and froze so that her face was soon covered in an ice-mask.

Her world reduced itself to this; one step, then another. Yet outside the little circle described by the sound of her own breathing, she was aware somehow of her companions, could feel the stab of pain in Jaelle’s bruised leg, the knife-edge of pain through Camilla’s foot every time she set it down, knew that the ankle Vanessa had hurt early in the trip was still paining her in this cold, felt the dull pain in Cholayna’s chest. She fought to shut it out, knowing that she could do nothing for the others except to hoard her own strength so that she needed no help from them. She knew that Vanessa was crying softly with weariness and pain. She too had climbed this route once already today.

Just one step and then another. Nothing outside this.

It was a long nightmare. They had been climbing forever and they would go on climbing forever.
I will take ten more steps
, she bargained with herself,
and then I will give up
. And at the end of ten steps;
I will take ten more steps, only ten more, I will not think any farther than that
. She could just manage, breaking it up into these little segments, carefully not thinking farther than this,
seven, eight, nine, ten steps, then I will lie down and never get up again
…

“Magda,” it was Vanessa’s voice, very soft. “Can you help Cholayna?” Looking up, outside the circle of her own preoccupation, she found that Cholayna had let go the chervine’s rein and sunk down in the snow. Vanessa was struggling with one of the horses, fighting to lead it over the rubble, and with one part of her brain Magda wondered why she bothered, while a small detached part of herself knew that if they lost any more horses they would never make it to that village they had seen.

She made her way to Cholayna’s side, bent and took the woman by the arm.

“I’ll help you. Lean on me.”

Cholayna’s face was a mottled mess of cream and half-frozen pale patches against her dark skin, her eyes reddened and sunken in her face. Ice clung to loose strands of her hair. Her voice was only a harsh whisper.

“I’m never going to make it. I’m only holding you back. You others go on. Leave me here. No reason the rest of you shouldn’t get across. But I’m done, finished.”

Magda could
feel
, inside her own mind, the depth of Cholayna’s weary despair, and fought against making it part of herself.

“You’re only tired. Lean on me.” She bent to slip her arm under Cholayna’s shoulders. Part of her was angry, she had barely strength enough for herself, but the other part knew that this was a final struggle. “Look, we’re only a little way from the summit, you can ride from there.”

“Magda, I can’t… I can’t. I think I’m dying… “

And for a moment Magda, looking at Cholayna, believed it; she half released Cholayna’s hand… then something, anger, a final spurt of adrenalin, flooded her with rage.

“Damn it, don’t you
dare
pull that on me! You bullied us into letting you come when I
told
you you couldn’t make it, I
told
you you couldn’t travel past Nevarsin, you wouldn’t let us send you back from there! Now you haul your stubborn old rear end up out of that snow, or I’ll kick you to the top myself! You’ve got to do it, I haven’t the strength to carry you, and the others are worse off than I am! Get
up
, damn you!” She heard herself, half incredulous. But the anger was flooding her to the point where she actually raised her arm to strike Cholayna.

Cholayna’s breathing rasped in and out for a moment, then she stirred, wearily. Magda held out a hand and Cholayna dragged herself upright, clinging to the outstretched arm for a moment. She said between her teeth, “If I had the strength I’d - ” but the words evaporated in a spasm of heavy coughing. Magda put an arm round her.

“Here. Lean on me.”

“I can manage,” said Cholayna, forcing herself to stand without Magda’s support, glaring at her with her teeth bared like an animal. She took an unsteady step, another. But at least she was walking. Magda put her arm around her again, and this time Cholayna did not draw away from the offered support.

Jaelle was in the lead; Vanessa struggling with the horses just behind her. Camilla had caught up with the roped chervines, and was clinging to a saddle-strap as Cholayna had done for so long, and Magda longed to go to her; yet she knew Camilla could, if she must, manage without her help, and Cholayna needed her.

Somewhere below them there was the thunder of an avalanche and the mountain shook. Magda gasped and Cholayna clutched at her; but it was far below, and subsided after a few moments.

We’ve got to get across this stretch; it could all go, any minute!

“Look,” Jaelle called wildly from a few dozen steps above them. “Look, Vanessa! Across the slope, up there! Do you see? Lights! Lights, over there! It’s the settlement marked on the map! It’s really there, and we’ve found it!”

Magda drew in a breath of relief. It hurt her dry throat, and the icy air burned in her lungs, but it had come just at the right time. Now they could go on. It did not even matter that it was starting to snow. With Cholayna clinging to her arm, they struggled up the last steps to the peak, and they all clustered there, staring at the faint glimmer of lights across the valley. From here it was downhill, and at least part of the way, they could ride.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Partway down the slope, it began to snow; they rode through the deepening dusk as the snow thickened, Cholayna and Camilla riding, Jaella leading on foot with Magda and Vanessa behind her. The extra horses and the chervines came after, jostling on the narrow downhill trail. From the position of the lights, Magda could tell that they were well above the valley’s floor, and she hoped there would be a road or trail upward. She did not know how Cholayna would fare on another mountain path.