He had more than half expected her to object to leaving Elspeth on her own-after all, he was supposed to be looking after her, wasn't he? He was supposed to be her bodyguard, and he was supposed to keep her from getting into too much trouble.
'Elspeth's quite capable of taking care of herself, Chosen, as she has remindedyou more than once.' This time the tone was teasing, lighthearted.
But she quickly sobered. 'There is no way that Ancar can get to her here-even if he could learn where she was. She's got to go her own way now, you know that. You know she's going to have to deal with things you can't even guess at. whatever trouble she's likely to get into, I don't think it's going to be anything a couple of arrows or knives would fix.' Skif ducked out of the way of a branch stretching over the path, and sighed. That, no matter how his pride felt about it, was only the truth.
She was a mage now, under the protection and tutelage of mages. He would be as out of his element as if he tried to teach a candlemaking class.
And I don't have any of this Mage-Gift, whatever it is,' he added.
'Probably I'd only be in the way. Probably I'd get myself in trouble without ever helping Elspeth.'
'Probably,' Cymry agreed. 'Nyara, now-that's something you can do something about. I think you should. If nothing else, when you find her, you'll discover for yourself if there can be-or ever was-anything between you two.
And you'll finally stop worrying about her.' While her words were practical, the tone of her mind-voice was unexpectedly sympathetic.
She was his best friend, barring no one else. She knew all of his secrets, even the ugly ones. He stared at the trail ahead and at Wintermoon's back for a while, thinking about that, thinking about how close they were. 'Cymry, were you ever in love?' he asked abruptly.
'Bright Havens, what a question!' she exclaimed. 'Me? In love? Why Do you want to know?' After all these years, he'd managed to surprise her. 'Because-I don't know if I'm in love or not-or if I was ever in love with anyone.' Silence fell between them for a heartbeat. 'I thought if you were ever in love, you'd be able to tell if I was. Am. Whatever.' They reached the barrier-shield at the end of the Vale at that moment; the tingling of energies as they crossed it distracted Skif from his question.
When they emerged into slightly cooler air on the other side, Cymry shook her head, and shivered her skin as if she was shaking off flies.
'Skif, yes, I do know something of emotional involvement. that doesn't simplify matters any. You weren't in love with Elspeth, I can tell you that much,' she said, slowly. 'That was a combination of a lot of things, including, my dear Chosen, the fact that you finally saw her as a very attractive woman for the first time and had a predictable reaction.' He choked; turned it into a cough when Wintermoon looked back at him in inquiry. Cymry wasn't usually so frank with him.
Or blunt. 'You made matters worse, I'm afraid, by acting far too strongly
upon those feelings.'
'I'd kind of figured that part out,' he replied wryly. 'But now, this time?' She shook her head. 'I honestly don't know. You have some very strong feelings, but I can't sort them out any better than you can.' Well, at least the Companions didn't know everything. Sometimes he wondered about that. They certainly didn't go out of their way to dispel the idea that they did.
Skif turned his attention to the woods surrounding the trail; trying to get used to these new forests, so that he could learn to identify what was a sign of danger and what wasn't. He did the only thing he could do; he assumed that this area was safe, and studied it. Anything that differed from this might be dangerous.
Most of his experience outside of towns consisted of the single circuit he'd made with Dirk when he first got his Whites, and his occasional duty as courier and messenger. At neither time had he really had to deal with wilderness; with places where people simply did not live. He had traveled roads, not game-trails; spent nights in way-stations, not in a tent, or a blanket roll under the open sky. Even on the journey here, the first time he had encountered true wilderness was when they descended into the Dhorisha Plains.
There, on that trackless expanse of grassland, there had been no real sign of the hand of man. Perhaps that was why the Plains intimidated him so much. Never had he felt so completely out of his element.
Maybe that had been why he had persisted in clinging to Elspeth... Well, here was wilderness again; once outside the Vale, there were no tracks of any kind, for the Tayledras went to great lengths to avoid making them. The only creatures making trails of any sort were wild ones: deer, bear, boar. Even the dyheli did their best to avoid making trails, for trails meant places they could be ambushed. Skif couldn't help wondering if the only reason Wintermoon rode the dyheli stag now was to keep from leaving human footprints.
The signs of fall were everywhere; in the dying, drying grasses, in the leaves of the bushes which were just starting to turn, in the peculiar scent to the air that only frost-touched leaves made. This wasn't a comfortable time of the year to be traipsing about in wild country.
On the other hand, it would be harder for anything hostile to hide, once the leaves started falling in earnest. If there was anything noisier for a skulker than a carpet of crisp, freshly-fallen dry leaves, Skif had yet to run into it; even in his days as a thief and a street brat, he'd known that, and stayed clear of rich folks' gardens in the fall. And he was not looking forward to camping out in the cold, riding through chill autumn rains...On the other hand, it probably wouldn't get horribly cold this far south, at least, not for a while yet. Game would be plentiful at this time of year, a lot of it birds and animals in their first year-inexperienced, or just plain stupid, which to a hunter translated as 'easy to catch.' Darkwind had quoted a Shin'a'in saying about that, one day when Vree brought back a rabbit that couldn't have been more than two months old: 'If it gets caught, it deserves to be eaten.' On the whole, Skif agreed. With fresh meals volunteering their lives to their owls, arrows, and snares, they might not even need to resort to their traveling rations much. Maybe this wasn't going to be so bad after all.
Cymry's ears flicked, the way they did when she was Mindspeaking, and he caught the barest edges of something in the back of his mind.
But he couldn't make anything out; just a mental 'sound.' It was as if he was several rooms away from two people having a conversation; no matter how hard he strained, all he could hear was a kind of murmur in the distance.
'Who are you talking to?' he asked her, puzzled. He hadn't thought Cymry could Mindspeak with anyone except himself and another Companion.
