The Book of Earth (37 page)

S
he promised him haste, and he got it. With twelve women bending their efforts to it, the provisioning was quickly accomplished. Food, a skin of wine, a new linen shirt for Erde and her old one clean. Presents, too, casually produced and packed away as if they’d been hers all along. There were warm gloves and new stockings from the fine wool of Doritt’s sheep. Rose gave her a thin rectangle of slate pierced by a thong, and a soft pointed stick that made bright letters on the gray stone. This gift Erde hung gratefully around her neck, but not before scrawling THANK YOU on it in large letters.

Hal hunted up a leather breastplate and greaves that he’d left behind on some past visit. He stowed them in the mule packs along with a borrowed supply of extra woolens. Erde touched his arm in question as he was stuffing them into an already full pouch.

“Rose says we’ll need these.” He closed the pack briskly and tied the thongs. Then he went to draw Rose aside from the women crowding around the loaded mule. He said his good-byes and Erde said hers. They were on the road before the moon had set.

Raven and Doritt came out with them as far as the oak grove. They walked arm in arm beside Hal, their mood somber. The dragon did not share their foreboding. He was as eager as if the Summoner awaited him right outside the valley. He forged off like a happy hunting dog through the tall grasses to the right and left of the track, vanishing into the darkness and then returning to report to Erde on the beauty of the night and the interesting smells to be had out in the meadow.

Meanwhile, under the steady pressure of Raven’s persuasion, Hal reconsidered his itinerary.

“Nürnburg is a week’s hard ride,” he grumbled, “Never mind what it will take with this group. The king on the road, exposed and vulnerable . . . what if Köthen’s sent men in pursuit?”

“But Erfurt’s on the way,” she reminded him. “A swing up there won’t add more than a day.”

“If all goes well.” Hal sighed as if bullied and over-matched. “Well, let’s say we do it. Four or five days to Erfurt, then I slip in quickly by night. We must still have a loyal source or two who could help me find Margit. All right. If I’m not too late, I’ll do what I can.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“No,” he admitted gloomily. “It wouldn’t.”

Raven put her arm around his waist and leaned into him gratefully. Doritt’s brisk, serious nod said she didn’t hold out too much hope, but she was relieved that he would try.

“I hope they won’t have taken her crucifix,” murmured Raven. Doritt muttered sympathetic agreement but Hal shook his head.

“Pray she’ll not endanger her soul with that.”

“Don’t be so disapproving,” Raven chided. “You know the same Church that makes such prohibitions is the Church that’s burning innocent women. Would you begrudge our Margit a quick and comfortable passing?”

“Pray there’ll be no need,” Hal repeated primly.

Raven released her arm and stood away from him. “Heinrich, are you really a man to whom the law means more than human life?”

“Not man’s law. I’d deliver the grace stroke myself, were murder the only way to save her the agony of the stake. But we’re talking here of God’s Law.” He shrugged delicately, as if embarrassed by his own obstinance. “I do truly believe it’s a sin to take one’s own life.”

“It’s men who’ve decided what God’s Law is,” Raven returned. “What if they were about to burn you?”

Erde, who’d been listening mystified, saw it all in a bright and sickening rush: some fast-acting poison from Linden’s stores of herbs and elixirs, a tiny lethal reservoir inside the crucifix. She’d heard of such things in the bard tales. It was a once remote and romantic notion that now seemed
pragmatic and humane. Surely it was not a sin to save yourself from suffering a prolonged torture? She wished the witch-woman in Tubin had had such an option. She was surprised that Hal could be dogmatic about suffering, especially when he had seen so much of it.

But on the other hand, Raven’s reply did amount to outright heresy. Every good Christian knew that God had decided God’s Laws.

The birds were just stirring in the oak trees as they reached the grove. Their early songs hung crystalline in the still air. The heady sweet scents of fern and wet leaves were like fairy voices begging Erde to stay. She knew she would, were it not for the dragon. She was probably mad, having found such a wonderful place, to be leaving it so quickly.

Hal squinted through the branches toward the lightening sky. “We’ll travel till dawn, then rest until dark. I want to get well clear of this valley in case we’re noticed.”

Raven took the late rose she’d worn in her hair and laid it on the stone cairn by the pool in the middle of the grove. “For your safety this day and those to come,” she intoned. She took Hal’s hands. “Find our Margit.” Then she kissed him and embraced Erde, turning away briskly with tears in her eyes. Erde found her own suddenly wet.

“Come, Doritt. Let them be on their way.”

“Yes, yes, soon enough.” Doritt shook hands around, finishing with a firm pat on Erde’s shoulder. “We’ve not seen the last of you, girl. Don’t fret.”

Raven was already lost in the shadows. “Is that a true notion, Doritt?” she called.

The tall woman nodded. “You can count on it.”

*   *   *

“Well, that’s encouraging,” remarked Hal as they approached the steep switchbacks leading out of the valley. “Doritt’s notions are her gift. She gets them about how things will turn out. Not like Rose’s Seeing what
is
, much vaguer and long-term. She doesn’t get them very often and she can’t call them up—they just arrive, or they don’t. But Deep Moor swears by her.”

They found the dragon at the foot of the cliff, stock-still, staring upward. When Erde asked him what he was looking at, she received his blank-mind state, the same as she did when he was being invisible. Several times, he glanced at
the base of the trail, then back at the top of the cliff, a good half-mile above.

Erde pulled out her new writing slate. HE WON’T TALK TO ME.

Hal laughed. “You know how he hates to climb. He’s wishing he had wings, like a proper dragon.”

As they stood watching the dragon stare intently upward, the first pink of dawn flushed the mountain range to the west. Hal sent the mule and the she-goat up the trail.

“We must be moving. If you go ahead, he’ll follow.”

Which he did, but with a puzzled, distracted air. Erde sent him a wistful image of himself with sleek reptilian wings, soaring toward the cliff top. His response was the closest thing to a chuckle she’d heard out of him yet: a vision of himself with his tongue lolling ridiculously. It was her first clue that he knew what humor was.

—
You thought I was making a joke?

He returned assent and a new image: himself decked out with giant bird wings, flapping and panting, but unable to lift his massive body off the ground. Then he showed her how wings large enough to lift his weight would be too cumbersome to carry around on the ground. Erde thought this was unimaginative thinking for a mythic creature such as a dragon. She wrote out the conversation laboriously for Hal on her slate.

“Dragons,” he offered seriously, “er . . . 
winged
dragons are said to have hollow bones made of magical substances that cause them to weigh nothing at all.”

Erde made a face. NOT THIS DRAGON.

“No,” the knight mourned. “Apparently not.”

Earth had more to say on the subject of travel. He’d been thinking about it a lot, but the results were hard to express in visual images. He’d become convinced that knowledge of an easier way lurked just beyond the edges of his memory. Because she knew how miserable and inadequate he felt when his memory failed him, Erde concentrated on soothing his frustration, simply to keep him going up the hill. She asked about the Summoner. Earth told her the voice came and went. It was not as constant in his waking existence as it was in the dream, but he was confident he would hear it soon again, and know which way
to go. Erde hoped it would be in the direction of Erfurt and Nürnburg.

The air cooled noticeably as they climbed. Erde recalled the torn but heavy layers of clothing that Lily had arrived in, and the woolens that Rose had made Hal bring along. She thought of the mud and chill of her journey from Tor Alte, and stole many backward yearning glances at the receding valley. She’d hoped to stay a while, to sleep in a warm soft bed again and wake rested to the sound of birdsong and the comfortable chatter of women.

When they gained the top of the cliff after an hour’s hard climbing, it was like walking out of a warm house into winter. A stiff cold wind rushed down off the mountains, as lung-searing as a torrent of ice water. Just past dawn and the sky already glowered with dark and shifting layers of cloud. Panting from his climb, Earth perched on the edge, his snout raised to the gusts as if the wind itself might bring a message.

Hal had not looked back once since starting the ascent, but now he settled on a rock to catch his breath and faced the valley, his red-leathered back to the gale. “Rose swears it’s a coincidence of geography that keeps Deep Moor so temperate when the rest of the world’s halfway to winter. It’s like a place set apart, where the usual rules just don’t apply, where the society is humane, and nature’s always in balance. A religious man would say it’s God’s grace. A superstitious one would call it sorcery. I don’t know what I believe. But of all the places I go, Deep Moor is the only place I ever really
want
to be. I just . . . my life . . . well . . .” He shrugged, gave up, and rose from his rock. “We’ll unpack those woolens now. Put ’em on soon as the sweat dries. Damn unseasonable weather.”

They retraced their steps up through the gray army of standing stones, where the she-goat had nearly met her end, and back across the barren ridges that hid the valley from the world of men. The wind stayed gusty and biting. The summer foliage was black and slimy with frost. Along the way, Hal covered their tracks obsessively, searching for any sign that Lily might have left in her panicked homeward flight. Finally he had to admit how astonishingly careful she’d been for an injured fugitive at the very end of her strength.

“Somehow, they always keep it hidden. You ask around at the nearest market town? People never know where Esther comes from. It’s as if they never think to ask. Yet there she is, with vegetables twice the size of theirs, and crockery and weaving that bring the farmwives from all around. Remarkable, these Deep Moor women. Remarkable, every one of them.”

Witches
, thought Erde,
real ones
, and knew it to be true.

*   *   *

They camped at noon deep in the woods on the downward slope. The animals lay down as soon as Hal called a halt. Even the dragon, despite his eagerness to be following his Voice, recognized limits to a day’s travel that the knight seemed to have forgotten. Hal’s impatience made him restive. He talked of the king as they set up camp, told stories of their better days together. He insisted on a rigorous sword practice before their meal and bed.

“Twice a day now. You’re strong enough. Just at the point where you can start actually learning something. Here.” He tossed her the practice stick. Erde snatched it out of the air with one hand and did not fumble it. “See? Now, present your weapon.”

Erde took her stance, gripped her stick, and held it out in front of her. Hal turned to face her, his own stick laid across hers for the first time. Erde felt a twinge of nervousness, but it was performance anxiety, not fear. She had been looking forward to the moment of actual engagement, to see if all this effort would amount to any real skill.

“Now, watch. This third move we’ve been practicing becomes a right cross-parry. Try it. It’s a standard parry for swordsmen who can’t count on superior strength. Good. Now use it when I come at you like this. One and two and . . .”

He came at her slowly, in the speed and rhythm of their usual practice routine. Erde cocked her wrists, straightened the appropriate arm, and his stick slid neatly off hers toward the ground. She knew he had relaxed into the parry, but the move still felt right and it gave her a most unwholesome sort of satisfaction. She grinned wickedly. Hal grinned back, winked, and sobered. “Now, again! Faster! One and two and . . .”

*   *   *

They rested, and awoke at dusk to move along again. The terrain became rocky and broken beneath stands of young trees thick with thorny undergrowth. The going was slow. Even the goat and the surefooted mule found it treacherous.

“I know I’ll be breaking my own rules of safety,” Hal said on the second night out, “but a little north of here, we’ll come up on the road west toward Erfurt. I’d like to chance it for a while, till we get free of these hills.” He daubed at the raw scrapes and scratches on Erde’s palms with a salve Linden had sent along. “We’ve made maybe eight to ten miles a day this way. It’s too slow. On the road, we could make twelve to fifteen, and turn five or six days to Erfurt into four. What do you think?”