Red Country (7 page)

I jerked myself off his shoulder and literally slapped his hands away. “How dare you! Let me go!”

He promptly did so, actually rising so I had to get myself on my feet. That made me angrier still. Twilight had closed in, but I could feel he was untouched either by concern or insult, and that enraged me most of all.

“You'd best go down,” he said, “if you can manage it. The water-road will be dark already. You might slip on the rocks.”

“No!” Chagrin made me childish. “I shall go when I'm ready and not a moment before!”

He said, “As you like.” Then he turned away, knelt down, and began to weed the grave.

I stood with my back to the rock wall, feeling an utter fool, denied the barest sketch of a riposte. He went on weeding, his hands incongruously deft and delicate amid the fragile plants, the vivid flowers.

The light had darkened to sheets of dried blood and mulberry, the zenith was quite colorless. Valinhynga pricked through, an infinitely remote white drop of fire. The silence endured, formidable, sentient. Only now I felt that it was laughing at me, as a sage laughs at a loved but temperamental child whose tantrums will be neither punished nor heeded, merely tolerated until it comes to sense.

Under that kindly amusement my anger drained away. Stupid, I told myself. You came seeking a mystery, and have found a legend. It is not superstition, belief or hearsay. He did not claim to read your thoughts, he gave you proof of it. He exists. He is an aedr. The legends are fact. Stop acting the spoilt brat, then. Use your schooling to accept the evidence, and make the most of it.

He straightened from the grave. Not even those eyes could vanquish the dusk, he was a mere featureless shape, but nothing could affect his voice.

“I'm sorry if I upset you. I don't know much about girls.”

With heroic effort I suppressed cries of “I'm a princess, not a ‘girl'!” If he would just laugh at something, anything, even me! But it was not the time for exasperation to be unpent.

“I'm sorry myself. You startled me, and I was rude.” It was time to begin the campaign. “Are you going down now?”

He looked away to the grave. The farewell was overt, as to a living friend.

He said, “Yes.” Then he paused.

Such a tiny pause, I hardly noticed, and yet it was what I had so vainly striven for, the rock's first breach. But in another instant he went on: “Are you ready to leave yourself?”

* * * * * *

We walked in silence down the slope under the brightening stars. The cleft was pitch-black. I carefully suppressed umbrage when he said, “You'd best take my hand. I know the way.” In truth I was glad of the support, as for his occasional warning of slippery slabs or unexpected drops.

We emerged into the grass bay, a width of starlight luminous after the cleft's inky depths. He whistled on the threshold of breath, I caught the sweet sweaty horse smell, saw a gray shadow drifting up to us, a darker one behind, and had just time for amazement that Vestar should come to anyone's summons, before he had the reins over her head and was saying diffidently, “Do you need help?”

“I can manage, thanks.” Grimly, I kept the tone polite.

He said, “Good,” and turned to the gray in something like relief.

I found my off-stirrup, and came sharply to my wits. In a moment he might be gone, the whole fantastic journey made for nothing, the dream's “salvation” let slip through my hands. He had vaulted onto the gray, I remember wondering why he did not use a stirrup like ordinary men, we were ready to move off. I took breath for a pretext, something, anything. He said, once more with a shade of diffidence, “I want to see your caravan master. Do you mind if we ride together?” And my “Good” came before I knew it was said.

Vestar stepped out, eager for her temporary home. His beast matched her, we were in the concealing, easing dark. I chose and rejected a dozen openings. And then I thought, Fool. If he reads minds, what need for a gambit? As little as there is for speech.

“We were born in Assharral.” He picked up the cue without so much as finding it worthy of remark. “When Beryx came, our father was captain of the palace guard.”

I stifled a gasp. He spoke of Beryx as an acquaintance, a contemporary.

“Then our family came here, so Fengthira could teach us Ruanbrarx, the aedric arts. We had the aptitude, but the skills have to be learnt. Beryx couldn't teach us. It has to go from man to woman, or women to men. So my father became warden of the roads for Hethria. When he died, we inherited the work.”

Just like Everran, I thought in disgust.

“Zem watches the north, I take the south.” A deep affection entered his voice. “We look after Eskan Helken too. Nobody else would dare go up there, even now. Fengthira didn't like humans. She scared off the Hethox”—I knew he meant the Hethrian nomads—“and the Sathellin respected her. They still do. That's why no one would tell you anything about the place.”

You are being answered, I told myself, your unformulated questions divined as you expected. It is a fact. Accept it as such.

“I didn't know you were there. To tell truth, I never knew you were in Hethria, let alone who you were, until we met. I thought it was chance. But you had a dream of some kind?”

Automatically I replied aloud. “I dreamt of Beryx saying he would come here—‘first'?”

“He came here to become an aedr. Fengthira taught him too. After the dragon, he came back.”

One riddle solved. When he did not continue, I went on myself.

“The Phathos said the dream meant I should look for help in the east. For Everran. You know what's happening there?”

“I do now.”

Subduing the shock, I thought,
Then you know the rest.
And then embarrassment swamped me as my mind, with thought's unruly speed, replayed my calculations as we mounted, my jibes to the Phathos—fight a war with Sathellin? Bury the Confederacy in sand? And I knew he shared the recollection and I could not stop it. It is impossible to think any way but candidly, and thoughts cannot be masked like speech.

“Don't mind that,” he said. It could have been approval. “You're managing far better than most people. When they first meet an aedr they're usually too panicked to think, let alone plan to make some use of us.”

“And,” he went on, “you were quite right about Hethria. Sathellin couldn't fight a war.”

I stared into the dark. Only as it crumbled did I see what a tower I had built on the promise of a dream, on the foundation of vague, irrational hopes.

“I think,” he said beside me, “that I should send you on to Assharral. They have the numbers and the army and the experience for this. And Beryx would never deny a ruler in your situation. Especially a ruler of Everran. It's still very dear to him.”

The campfires opened ahead of us, low red stars under the heavens' stars. A little wind sighed over the desert, cold through the hairs that had risen, prickling, bristling, on my scalp.

“You mean—he's alive?”

“Beryx?” At last I had produced a reaction. “Of course. Beryx is the Assharran emperor.”

When I found myself clinging to the saddle pommel with the mare halted and his arm upholding me, my first words were pure mortification, impossible to suppress. “I
never
do this, ever, ever! And that makes twice in the one night!”

“It's rather much when Once-upon-a-time suddenly turns into Now.”

This time his stolidity was a relief. I took slow deep breaths and waited for the swimming in my head to stop.

Just as I decided I could retrieve the reins, he removed his arm, and I never bothered to say, “Thank you, I can manage now.”

As the horses moved forward, he returned to the point. “Indeed, I think I'd best take you to Assharral—” He broke off. Then showed symptoms of awkwardness at last. “I mean—I do know the roads. You could do it alone, but it would be slower, and riskier. And a caravan's much too slow.”

I took breath. Bit back outrage, refutation, assertions of independence and adequacy, furious cries of “I'm not a child, nor a useless female!” Yells of “I can look after myself!” Thought in despair that it was pointless to bridle my tongue with an aedr, who could read my thoughts, who knew I was thinking this. . . . “Oh, Four take it!” I cried, and began to laugh in sheer exasperation. “This is ridiculous!”

“I'm sorry.” In default of laughter, he did sound a shade contrite. “If it consoles you at all, I can't help myself. We had empathy, we could read our parents' thoughts in our cradles. It was how Beryx found us. Most aedryx only use thought-reading, Scarthe, when they want. We have no choice.”

Such is the speed of thought, our horses could not have gone five strides before I had passed from, Four, how unfair life is, why was I denied that gift, what would any ruler give for it, to, But imagine the fear and distrust and calculation with which everyone must react to him, the same way you did, and he's aware of it all, to, And think what is in people's minds, imagine being exposed to all the greed, hate, lies, pettiness, having it pushed at you whether you want it or not, to, Four, the poor devil, to, Who am I calling poor—I snapped that off and opened my mouth.

“Thank you,” he said politely. “But I'm used to it. Just try to carry on as if it doesn't happen. That's the kindest thing you could do.”

I choked down further outrage and confined myself to noting, with relief, that we were almost into camp.

It was a malicious pleasure to watch his effect on the Sathellin, not to mention the change in their attitude towards me. They were not obsequious, no Sathel could manage it. But for the first and only time someone held Vestar while I dismounted, the caravan master came in person to ask Zam to his fire, carefully widening the invitation to me, and the whole camp buzzed with what you could only call nervous respect. Small wonder, I thought, as I sipped my mint-tea and listened to the caravan master walking on verbal eggs. How do you cheat a warden who can read your very mind?

Yet he seemed just enough. He made conversation, however superfluous, about the trip, the loading, the weather further west, prospects for the season ahead. If there was no kindness, no merriment, nor was there any hint of oppression or exploitation. A fair ruler, I decided, if a stern one. One you might not love, but could probably trust.

His reputation came in useful, too. Rising from the fire, he said casually, “I shall go on ahead of you. Escorting the princess Sellithar.” And though the caravan master shot me a boggle-eyed glance, I knew neither he nor any other soul in the caravan would breathe a word of scandal; would indeed rigorously keep themselves from the slightest thought of it.

* * * * * *

We left at dawn, which revealed why he had not used a stirrup the previous night. His gray was a young dry mare, and he rode not merely bareback but bridleless.

He did not have to see me looking, of course. Leading the way out of camp, he said over his shoulder, “Wreve-lan'x. Beast-mastery. Another art.” He glanced briefly at the caravan, uncoiling its sluggish snake of pack-beasts and black turbans and thin red dust, thence out to the sand-dunes and up at Eskan Helken, robed in the lilacs and hyacinths of Hethria at dawn. Then his eye moved to Vestar.

All my touchy pride reviving, I broke out, “She'll keep up with yours perfectly well!”

He said, “We'll go, then,” and clicked a canter from the gray.

How I wished, before sunset, to have left that unsaid! It is one thing to hurry at your own pace, or to dawdle with a caravan. It is quite another to match someone moving at their speed, with a better horse, used to the country and—no, I have to admit it, it was a fact—with better endurance than yours.

By noon my legs felt like wet string. By mid-afternoon I would have died sooner than ask for a halt, but I was ignobly praying—again I must admit it—that he would read my mind, favor my weakness, however galling its admission, and call a stop.

An hour later I was convinced he meant me to work out the proof of my false bravado to the end, that he was cruel, vindictive, the most odious man I ever had the misfortune to come across, that I would sooner die than ride another day with him, that I would go on alone and let Hethria kill me and Everran take its chance.

Vestar was flagging, I could feel the sogginess grow in her responses, compounded by the flop of my tired weight. All around Hethria glared at us, treeless, waterless, dust-red undulations of rock and sand cavorting under the heat haze and the mirage and the pitiless, draining sun. In late afternoon, when the sun itself had lost its sting, the heat remained, pouring back out of the oven-heated ground.

Though she too was dark with sweat, the gray mare showed no sign of distress. Curse you, I thought to her rider's obdurately upright back, if I had a knife I'd stick it into you. . . . He glanced round. Then swung from the road into the untrodden desert to its south.

Autumn storms had made a temporary oasis in a claypan, already fringed by quick-responding grass and every kind of herbage, even a couple of desert figs in flower. Flights of brilliant gweldryx were mirrored on teal-blue water as they fled irately from our advance; a furry lydyr shot under an istarel bush, a big wyresparyx lizard scuttled on crocodile legs, tail throwing spurts of sand. I was past attention. I did not argue, let alone attempt to help when he watered the horses, unsaddled Vestar, slung down the saddlebags, collected firewood, and set a tiny traveler's kettle to boil.

I was still flat in the sand when he brought a cup of steaming-hot mint tea. Shamefully, I could not produce so much as a token denial of its need.

He had not spoken all day, and silence endured when I was fit to join the routine of making camp: gather more wood, pool our food, choose bed spots and unroll the cloaks a desert night demands. Our silence melted us into the greater silence of Hethria, making its hush oddly companionable.