He hoped the end would be quick, and not too painful.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Kerin knew what was about to happen a moment before it did; something - intuition, a sound, a movement out the corner of her eye - tipped her off—
But before she could react, her breath, her heart, her very being, was
frozen—
—then freed again.
She staggered to her left, into the mountainside, hands splayed to catch herself, and while she teetered for a moment, her fear of the sheer drop was overlaid with the memory of this sensation . . .
She took a deep breath, then another, until she was sure of herself again. Then she looked around. Sais was lying face down on the path, one arm dangling over the edge. Behind her, Damaru was sitting on the ground, whimpering to himself. Huw stood beyond Damaru, looking astonished.
‘Did you see what happened?’ asked Kerin.
‘Sais slipped and fell,’ said Huw, ‘and Damaru snatched him from the air.’ He circled his breast, then, coming to himself, called back down the line, ‘We have a fallen man here! Everyone halt!’
Kerin bent to check on Damaru, who was upset, but unhurt. She murmured a quick reassurance to him and made her way further up the path to Sais. ‘Can you hear me?’ she whispered urgently. ‘Sais, can you hear me? Are you all right?’ He didn’t react to her voice at all.
‘How far to the top?’ she called back to Huw.
‘Not far. Is he hurt?’
‘I do not believe so, though I cannot rouse him.’
‘I will come forward,’ he said, making his way carefully past Damaru. ‘We will have to carry him.’
He and Kerin were trying to work out how to lift Sais safely when a couple of drovers appeared; they had come back down from the top to find out what was going on. One man took Sais’s and Huw’s packs; the other helped Huw carry Sais, leaving Kerin free to lead Damaru to safety.
Huw had been right: it wasn’t long before the rocky steps became a wide, shallow path once again, and they soon found themselves on flat, open ground. The mist was thinner up here, though darkness was beginning to fall. They laid Sais down on one side of the path and Damaru plopped himself down beside him, all gangly limbs, like a basket of dropped sticks. He leaned forward on his elbows and stared moodily at the ground in front of his nose.
Huw and the drovers waved Kerin’s grateful thanks away. ‘The drove will camp here tonight,’ said Huw, ‘and that should give everyone time to get over the climb.’ He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder and left her to look to her charges.
Damaru was already recovering - presumably it had taken less out of him to save Sais from falling than it had to kill the reivers.
Sais, however, showed no sign of awakening. She pulled up the lids of his eyes but in the dim grey light she could not see if the whites were discoloured. He was already unconscious, so there was no way of checking the other sign that everyone recognised: the inability to stand up. Perhaps it was just a fever brought on by exhaustion and shock.
That night Kerin prayed hard. Despite her exhaustion, she slept little.
The next morning, she awakened to find Sais clawing the air. When she checked his eyes, she saw the tell-tale orange tinge.
The mist had rolled back with the dawn to reveal a strange, barren land of low brown hills under a cloud-raked sky of deepest blue. Men were transferring the contents of the sleds onto carts, great sleds on wheels pulled by muscular oxen twice the size of their cattle. Kerin had seen such things only as toys Neithion had brought home for Damaru from previous droves; had she the energy to spare for wonder, she would have been amazed.
She was trying to get Sais to drink some water when Huw came over to check on them. ‘Is he no better?’
‘No,’ Kerin said shortly.
‘Then is it—?’
‘Aye, I fear it is.’
He paused for a moment, then said, ‘I will get the priest.’
Kerin nodded reluctantly, and Huw left.
The priest arrived with Fychan in tow, as she had expected. Fychan wanted to be in on this matter of interest, and for the first time in her life Kerin was glad to see Arthen’s son. Though the priest would pray for Sais, in the end he would want to leave him behind. Her only hope of preventing this depended on Fychan.
As she stood to trace the circle she looked at the priest properly for the first time. He was older than her, and a little overweight. His heavily cleft chin and large ears were made more prominent by his hairless, blue-tattooed head. He regarded her and Sais with an odd mixture of confusion and compassion. ‘Chilwar,’ he said, surprisingly gently, ‘your, ah, mercy does you credit.’
‘Thank you, Gwas,’ she said.
‘Kindly arrange to leave what supplies you can spare in case the Mothers see fit to allow him to live through the fire’s purge. I, ah, I will pray over him until it is time to go.’
Kerin took a deep breath. ‘Gwas, I will not leave him.’
‘What?’ For the first time in her life, Kerin saw a priest looking confounded. After a few moments he said, ‘Chilwar, you cannot stay here.’
‘I will not leave this man. If he cannot go with the drove, I will remain with him.’
‘You do realise,’ said the priest, ‘that most likely he will die, and you with him?’
‘If you do not permit us to travel with the drove, then that may well be our fate. It is my choice.’ Or rather, it was a gambit such as she made when playing gem, putting forward a brown to sacrifice in order to draw out an opponent’s red.
‘Then,’ the priest said, looking perplexed, ‘so be it. He must stay, and if you, ah, choose to stay with him, then I will pray for you too.’ From the tone of his voice Kerin suspected he had only just avoided adding,
you stupid woman
.
‘Gwas,’ said Fychan, ‘please permit me to talk to her.’
Kerin kept her eyes downcast, her expression fixed.
‘If you think it will help,’ said the priest. ‘I will wait with the skyfool.’ He walked off to where Damaru was pacing, staring alternately up at the sky and back at Kerin. Damaru ignored him.
‘What in the name of the Abyss do you think you are doing?’ squeaked Fychan as soon as the priest was out of earshot.
Kerin found it easy to be calm in the face of the boy’s barely concealed panic. ‘It is as I have said. I will not leave Sais.’
‘What about Damaru?’
‘He will do as he wishes, of course.’
‘Which might be to stay with you!’ Fychan slashed at the air with his hand.
‘It may well be, aye.’
‘You - then you must give me the bogwood bark. Now! Make a drink to calm him, and—’
‘No, I will not drug my son to make your life easier. He will do as he chooses.’
Fychan started to raise his hand, and for a moment Kerin thought he might strike her. Then he dropped it again. ‘I order you to give me the bogwood bark!’ he shouted, and when Kerin shook her head, he screamed, ‘You stupid old hag!’
Kerin said nothing. Gwellys had called her far worse.
Fychan said, ‘You might not respect my authority, woman, but you would not refuse a priest’s command!’
‘So you are going to ask the priest to tell me to give you the means to drug my son?’ asked Kerin innocently.
Fychan stared at her.
One of the many things Kerin had considered on this journey was why Fychan was so unpleasant. She had decided it came from living his life in the shadow of his father and older brother, with the fearful spectre of his dead grandfather in the background. He had never known his mother, and his grandmother alternately bullied and cosseted him. Now his father had finally given him a chance to prove himself - and Kerin was putting him in a position where he would have to expose his inadequacies to a priest, of all people, by admitting he could not control one wayward woman.
When she continued to silently meet his gaze, Fychan’s shoulders sagged. ‘No. I will not ask that,’ he said.
Kerin said gently, ‘Perhaps if you tell the gwas the nature of our companion, he might allow Sais to ride on one of the carts. I will take full responsibility for him, of course.’
‘You had better,’ said Fychan, and stalked off.
Kerin had won the first battle.
While Fychan spoke to the priest, Kerin murmured a prayer to the Weaver that fate continue to smile on her. She was relying on the priest not wanting to let a skyfool - who mattered far more than any number of disobedient widows - remain behind . . . and that assumed Damaru would stay, and not let his desire to experience the pattern of the world overcome his sometimes vague and inconstant love for her. If that happened, she would be faced with a terrible choice: to see her son walk away, leaving her alone with Sais in this bleak, lifeless place, or to abandon Sais and crawl back to Fychan with a grovelling apology. But in the end nothing in Creation would stop Damaru going to his fate; Sais, if he lived, might stay with her.
Fychan and the priest conferred for some time. Damaru wandered off and Kerin found herself watching him, swallowing hard every few moments.
When Fychan came back he did not look happy, but he said, ‘Gwas Einon agrees; he will speak to the carter who carries Dangwern’s trade gear. But Sais’s care is your problem!’ Then he strode away.
Kerin let go a long hard breath and looked around. The priest - Einon - was walking across to the carts. She went to find Huw to help carry Sais.
The carter carrying the trade goods from the three villages was unenthusiastic about the arrangements, but he insisted on re-arranging his load himself to make space for Sais to lie down. Kerin dismantled Sais’s pack to form a pillow and spread out his bedroll over him.
The drove continued to head steadily upwards. Though the path was not hard, Kerin’s head felt as though she wore a band of metal around her temples, and her chest heaved at the slightest exertion.
Damaru was alternately entranced and perplexed by the novelty of this spare, unformed land. He would lope off, then stop and stare up at the sky, breathing hard, while the drovers filed past him.
Yet there was life here too. Kerin spotted grey-green rosettes no larger than the palm of her hand, the fat, fleshy leaves covered in fine white hairs. Tiny black beetles nestled in the stunted plants, hunted by lizards the size of a little finger, their colour exactly matched to their surroundings, so she saw them only when they pounced on their prey.
Sais was burning up, with high spots of colour on his ashen cheeks and his hands grasping and clawing over his chest. She managed, with some difficulty, to get him to suck some water from a wet cloth.
When they stopped in the evening Damaru carried on. Kerin ran after him, feeling as though she was running through mud. Ahead, Fychan also started to run. For a moment her heart skipped, as she half-expected him to try and grab for Damaru. Instead he drew level with the boy and called out to him. Damaru, distracted by the interruption, slowed, giving Kerin the chance to catch up a few moments later. By the time she had caught her breath and persuaded Damaru to return to the camp, Fychan had gone.
The carts had left caches of water and wood on their way up, and brought fresh food with them from the lowlands - barley-bread and herbed cheese, and succulent part-dried brown fruits Kerin had not tasted before. They lit a fire and ate well that night. After the meal Cadmael passed around a small flask of cloudberry liqueur against the night’s chill. Were it not for her anxiety over Sais and the relentless cold, the camp might have been the most pleasant yet. As the songs started, Kerin came up behind Fychan and asked if she could talk to him. After a moment’s hesitation and a quick look around to check no one was looking their way he agreed. They left the circle of firelight and walked away into the freezing night. ‘I wanted to thank you,’ said Kerin, ‘for showing mercy this morning, and also for earlier this evening, when you helped me with Damaru.’
He shrugged, a surprisingly shy gesture.
‘And I wondered,’ she continued, keeping her eyes down and her voice deferential, ‘whether you would be willing to try and help look after Damaru while I am tending Sais?’
‘I will keep an eye on him,’ Fychan said, his voice a little husky. ‘It is my duty as his guardian.’
She pressed a small packet into his hand. ‘If he becomes too difficult and I am busy with Sais, mix a pinch with water; you will need to get him to eat something too, to disguise the taste.’
‘You give me this now?’ Between the firelight and the bright-blazing sky Kerin clearly saw Fychan’s expression of irritated disbelief. ‘Mothers give me strength!’ he said, and walked off.
Kerin asked Huw to accompany her on a visit to the other campfires, where she asked people about their experiences of the falling fire. One man said his sister had recovered fully after five days; another told her how his cousin had hung on for ten full days, then appeared to rally before dying in the night. None of them had any advice on how to help, save to pray.
When Kerin came back to the cart where she had left Sais nestled under his bedding, she found this remedy already being given: Einon knelt by the cart, arms outstretched and face upturned; by his feet was a strangely wrought lantern that shone with a clear white light. Kerin knelt herself, a little way off, though she did not spread her arms; hugging herself was the only way to stop herself shivering.
Einon finished his prayers, picked up his lantern and left.
She made the circle as he passed and murmured, ‘Thank you, Gwas.’ He acknowledged her with a nod.
Sais remained much the same the next day, and the one after that: fevered, quietly moaning, with bouts of hand spasms followed by periods of deep unconsciousness. Einon prayed over him nightly, as did Kerin. The sky was always clear up here, and with the moons down to a sliver and nothing, the stars shone brighter than ever. This was as it should be, given they were closer to Heaven, yet the wondrous sky looked cold and unfeeling to her eyes, and her prayers sounded weak in the thin, chill air.