There was less in their measured counter and riposte of battle than of dance. Kethry held her breath, transfixed by more than the power of the mist. She was caught by the deadly beauty of the weaving blades, caught and held entranced, drawn out of her hiding place to stand in the open.
Tarma did not even notice she was there -- but the other did.
He stepped back, breaking the pattern, and motioned slightly with his left hand. Tarma instantly broke off her advance, and seemed to wake just as instantly from her trance, staring at Kethry with the startled eyes of a wild thing broken from hiding.
The other turned, for his back had been to Kethry. He saluted the sorceress in slow, deliberate ceremony with his own blade. Then he winked slowly and gravely over his veil, and -- vanished, taking the power in the magic fog with him.
Released from her entrancement, Kethry stared at her partner, not certain whether to be frightened, angry or both.
'What -- was -- that -- ' she managed at last.
'My trainer; my guide,' Tarma replied sheepishly. 'One of them, anyway.' She sheathed her sword and stood, to all appearances feeling awkward and at a curious loss for words. 'I... never told you about them before, because I wasn't sure it was permitted. They train me every night we aren't within walls... one of them takes my watch to see you safe. I... I guess they decided I was taking too long to tell you about them; I suppose they figured it was time you knew about them.'
'You said your people didn't use magic -- but he -- he was alive with it! Only your Goddess -- '
'He's Hers. In life, was Kal'enedral; and now -- ' she lifted up her hand, ' -- as you saw. His magic is Hers -- '
'What do you mean, 'in life'?' Kethry asked, an edge of hysteria in her voice.
'You mean -- you couldn't tell?'
'Tell what?'
'He's a spirit. He's been dead at least a hundred years, like all the rest of my teachers.'
It took Tarma the better part of an hour to calm her partner down.
* * *
They broke out of the trees, as Tarma had promised, just past midafternoon.
Kethry stared; Tarma sat easily in Kessira's saddle, and grinned happily. 'Well?' she asked, finally.
Kethry sought for words, and failed to find them.
They had come out on the edge of a sheer dropoff; the mighty trees grew to the very edge of it, save for the narrow path on which they stood. Below them, furlongs, it seemed, lay the Dhorisha Plains.
Kethry had pictured acres of grassland, a sea of green, as featureless as the sea itself, and as flat.
Instead she saw beneath her a rolling country of gentle, swelling rises; like waves. Green grass there was in plenty -- as many shades of green as Kethry had ever seen, and more -- and golden grass, and a faint heathered purple. And flowers -- it must have been flowers that splashed the green with irregular pools of bright blue and red, white and sunny yellow, orange and pink. Kethry took an experimental sniff and yes, the breeze rising up the cliff carried with it the commingled scents of growing grass and a hundred thousand spring blossoms.
There were dark masses, like clouds come to earth, running in lines along the bottoms of some of the swells. After a long moment Kethry realized that they must be trees, far-off trees, lining the watercourses.
'How -- ' she turned to Tarma with wonder in her eyes, 'how could you ever bear to leave this?'
'It wasn't easy, she'enedra,' Tarma sighed, deep and abiding hunger stirring beneath the smooth surface of the mask she habitually wore. 'Ah, but you're seeing it at its best. The Plains have their hard moments, and more of them than the soft.
Winter -- aye, that's the coldest face of all, with all you see out there sere and brown, and so barren all the life but the Clans and the herds sleeps beneath the surface in safe burrows. High summer is nearly as cruel, when the sun burns everything, when the watercourses shrink to tiny trickles, when you long for a handsbreadth of shade, and there is none to be found. But spring -- oh, the Plains are lovely then, as lovely as She is when She is Maiden -- and as welcoming.'
Tarma gazed out at the blowing grasslands with a faint smile beginning to touch her thin lips.
