Stormqueen! (46 page)

Donal stopped to consider. At last he said regretfully, “I fear not, cousin. Although it would not hurt to try; some few men can receive thoughts, though they could not send them and do not think of it as
laran
.”

“
Try
, then, to reach them,” Allart instructed. “For they have every reason to believe us safe at Tramontana. They should know that this is not so. Meanwhile - ” He cast his eyes around, searching for shelter, trying to think ahead along the road to see if there was an old building of any kind, a lean-to, a deserted barn, even some inhabited dwelling where they might be given shelter.

But as far as his clairvoyance could see, there was none. The country they traveled might have been virgin to all human feet for all time, for any traces of mankind’s passing here. He had seen no print of habitation since the small stone wall near where they had eaten their midday meal.

It had been years since he had had to use his mountain-survival training; not since his third year at Nevarsin, when he had been sent forth barehanded in his monk’s cowl into the teeth of the harshest season, to bring back proof of his fitness for the next level of training. The old brother who had taught him had said, “After some deserted human dwelling, next best is a thicket of trees close-set; after that, a rock-ledge facing away from the wind and with some vegetation.” Allart wrinkled his forehead, trying to remember, searching out ahead of him, letting his
laran
have full play as he sought to spy ahead in time what lay along each of the directions they might take from here.

Is there time to return to Tramontana
? Mentally retracing his steps, he saw along that line of probability only their three dead bodies, huddled and frozen at the side of the road.

For once in his life he was grateful for his
laran
, which allowed him to see clearly ahead on every choice they might make; because on the choices they made now, their very lives would certainly depend. He saw along the road directly ahead that the path narrowed; where blinded by the ever-thickening snow, they might miss their footing, go plunging into a chasm hundreds of feet deep, their bodies never found. They must go no farther along this road. Following his clear warning, Cassandra and Donal stopped and awaited his guidance. They were now only blurred cloaked shapes in the thickening snow, and a high wind had begun to scream down from the heights.

A little way ahead of them, a pathway led up to a clustered formation of rocks, close gathered to give almost as much shelter as a building. Allart started to direct them up to it, then hesitated, searching with his
laran
along that line of probability. He flinched, in panic; the cluster of rocks was the nest of banshee-birds, the evil flightless carnivores who lived above the timberline and were drawn by an unfailing tropism to anything with the body-heat of life. They must not go
that
way!

They could not remain here; the wind was strong enough to fling them off the ledge, and the snow thick around them. Already Cassandra was shivering, the borrowed travel-cloak never intended for a serious storm. Allart and Donal, more used to mountain weather, were not cold, but Allart was beginning to be frightened. They could not go back to Tramontana. They could not climb up where the banshees nested. They could not go ahead on the road to the narrowing path over the abyss. And they could not stay here. Was there no alternative to their death then? Was it ordained by fate that they should die in this blizzard?

Holy Bearer of Burdens, strengthen me. Help me to see a way
, Allart prayed. He had almost forgotten how to pray since leaving the monastery, and fear for himself would not have done it, but Cassandra, shivering in his arms, spurred him to explore every avenue.

They could not return to Tramontana, but a little way back along the path was the stone wall. It was long abandoned and falling down, but it would provide better shelter than the open path; and behind it - he saw now with both memory and
laran
- a thick set clump of evergreens.

“We must go back to where we ate our midday meal,” he said, pitching his voice carefully above the shriek of the wind.

Slowly, holding on to one another, for the snow was wet and slippery underfoot, they retraced their steps. It was slow, hard going. Donal, who had spent all his life in these mountains, was surefooted as a mountain cat, but Allart had been years away from the crags around Nevarsin, and Cassandra was wholly unaccustomed to these roads. Once she slipped and fell full length in the snow, her thin borrowed dress soaked to the knees, her hands torn on the rocks under their coat of snow, and she lay there chilled and sobbing with pain. Allart lifted her to her feet, his face set with determination. But she had twisted knee and ankle in the fall, and Donal and Allart had almost to carry her the last few hundred steps to the rock wall, to lift her over it and help her into the thick enclosure of the clumped trees. As they were down into it, Allart’s
laran
screamed at him that this was the place of his death. He saw their three bodies, entangled, clutching one another for warmth, frozen and stark. He had to force himself down into the enclosure made by the trees.

Gnarled and old, twisted by the violence of mountain storms for half a century or more, the trees wove close, and inside their circle the wind was less, though they could hear it screaming outside, and there was a patch of ground unmarred by the heavy snow. Allart laid Cassandra down on the ground, folding her cloak so it kept the worst of the cold from her, and began to examine her injured leg.

“There is nothing broken,” she said shakily, after a moment, and he remembered that she was a trained Tower monitor, skilled at penetrating the bodies of herself and others for whatever was wrong inside. “The ankle is painful but nothing is harmed; only a tendon pulled a little… but the kneecap has been twisted out of its place.”

As Allart turned his attention to the knee he saw the kneecap wrenched to the side of the leg, the place rapidly swelling and darkening.

She said, drawing a terrified breath, “Donal, you must hold my shoulders, and you Allart, you must grasp my knee and ankle like this - ” She gestured. “No! Lower down, with that hand - and pull hard. Don’t worry about hurting me. If it is not returned to its place at once I could be lamed for life.”

Allart steeled himself to follow her instructions. She was braced and tense, but despite her courage, a shriek was forced between her teeth as he gripped the dislocation and twisted it, hard, back into its place, feeling the grating as the kneecap slid back into its socket. She fell back in Donal’s arms and for a moment it seemed she had fainted, but she had closed her eyes and was again monitoring to see what had happened.

“Not quite. You must turn my foot to one side - I cannot move it myself - so it will fall back into place. Yes,” she said, between clenched teeth, as Allart obeyed her. “That will do. Now tear my under-petticoat and bandage it tightly,” she said. Tears came to her eyes again, not only of pain, but of embarrassment as Allart lifted her to remove her under-garment, although Donal modestly turned away.

When the hurt knee had been tightly bandaged in strips of cloth, and Cassandra, white and shivering, had been wrapped in her cloak, and was resting on the ground, Allart soberly took stock of their chances here. Outside, the storm had not nearly reached its height, and night, as he imagined, was not far away, though already it was dark, a thick, heavy twilight that had nothing to do with the actual hour. They had with them only the remnants of their picnic lunch, enough for a couple of sparse meals. These storms sometimes lasted for two or three days, or more. Under ordinary conditions, any of them could have gone without a few meals, but not if the cold should become really severe.

They could probably manage for two or three days. But if the storm should last much longer than that, or if the roads should become impassable, their chances were not good. Alone, Allart would have wrapped himself tightly in his cloak, found the most sheltered spot possible, and let himself sink into the tranced sleep he had learned at Nevarsin, slowing his heartbeat, lowering his body temperature, all the requirements of his body - food, sleep, warmth - in abeyance. But he was responsible for his wife, and for young Donal, and they had not had his training. He was the oldest and the most skilled.

“Your cloak is the thinnest, Cassandra, and the least useful to us for warmth. Spread it on the ground like this, here, so it will keep the cold of the earth from rising,” he directed. “Now, our two cloaks over the three of us. Cassandra is the least accustomed to the cold of the mountains, so we will put her between us.” When they were all three huddled together, back to front, he could feel Cassandra’s shivering subside somewhat.

“Now,” he said gently, “the best thing to do is to sleep if we can: above all, not to waste energy in talking.”

Outside the shelter where they lay, the wind howled, snow coming down endlessly in streaks white against the black night. Inside, only random flurries blew through the tightly laced branches. Allart let himself drift into a light trance, holding Cassandra close in his arms so that he would know if she stirred or had any need of him. At last he knew that Donal, at least, slept; but Cassandra, though she lay quiet in his arms, did not sleep. He was aware of the sharp pain in her injured leg, keeping her concentration at bay. At last she turned in his arms to face him, and he clasped her tight.

She whispered, “Allart, are we going to die here?”

Reassurance would have been easy - and false. No matter what, there must be truth between them, as there had been from the first moment they met. He fumbled in the dark for her slender fingers and said, “I don’t know,
preciosa
. I hope not.”

His
laran
showed him only darkness ahead. Through the touch of her hands he could feel the pain stabbing at her. She tried carefully to shift her weight without disturbing Donal, who was curled close against her body. Allart half rose, kneeling and lifted her, changing her position. “Is that easier?”

“A little.” But there was not much he could do in their cramped shelter. This had been the worst of all mischances; even if there were a break in the weather, they could not now seek better shelter, for Cassandra would probably not be able to walk for several days. Tended, put at once into a hot bath, given massage and treatment by a matrix-trained
leronis
to halt the swelling and bleeding within the joint, it might not have been very serious; but long exposure to cold and immobilization did not promise well for swift healing. Even if conditions had been right, Allart had but small training in those skills. Rough and ready first aid he could give, indeed, but nothing more complicated.

“I should have left you safe at Hali,” he groaned, and she touched his face in the darkness.

“There was no safety for me there, my husband. Not with your brother at my door.”

“Still, if I have led you to your death - “

“It might equally have been my death to stay there,” she said, and amazingly, even in this extremity, he caught a flicker of laughter in her voice. “Had Damon-Rafael sought to take me unwilling, he would have found no submissive woman in his bed. I have a knife and I know how - and where - to use it.” He heard her voice tighten. “I doubt he would have let me live to spread the tale of that humiliation.”

“I do not think he would have had to use force,” Allart said bleakly. “More like, you would have been drugged into submission, without will to resist”

“Ah, no,” she said, and her voice thrilled with an emotion he could not read. “In that case, my husband, I would have known where to turn the knife ere they brought me to
that
.”

Allart felt such a thickening in his throat that he could not force an answer. What had he done to deserve this woman? Had he ever believed her timid, childlike, fearful? He caught her tightly against him, but aloud he only said, “Try to sleep, my love. Rest your weight against me, if it is easier. Are you too cold now?”

“No, not really, not close to you this way,” she said, and was still, breathing long, calm breaths in and out.

But have I given her freedom or only a choice of deaths?

The night crawled by, an eternity. When day broke it was only a little lessening of the darkness, and for the three in the hollow, cramped and restless, it was torment. Allart cautioned Donal, crawling outside for a call of nature, not to go more than a step or two from the thicket, and when he staggered back inside, battered and already snow covered, he said that outside the wind was so heavy he could hardly stand. Allart had to carry Cassandra in his arms; she could not set her foot to the ground. Later he meted out most of the food from the day before. The snow showed no sign of abating; as far as Allart could tell, the world outside their tree-cluster ended an arm’s length away in a white blur of snowy nothingness.