emotions are so strong she can't altogether hide them. Her passions surge with the power of ocean waves, Fost. They practically swamp me.' Fost was grateful he didn't possess Ziore's sensitivity.
'I can't get past them to her thoughts. But some of the passions are clear. Pride. Ambition. Rage. Longing. So great they'd tear apart a lesser psyche.' 'And Rann?' he asked. 'Have you tried reading Rann?'
'He's got some manner of protection, or perhaps he is just good at shielding his thoughts.' 'But no emotions? I imagine he's as cold as fresh caught cod.' Ziore's vaporous eyebrows rose and turned pinker.
'Not at all. He's almost as passionate as she. But I cannot define his passions as well as hers. Pride, great pride. Longing and rage, I think. And…' She paused as if afraid he'd ridicule her for saying the next. 'And fear, I think.'
His impulse was to laugh, and he held it down. A frown formed on his face as he rode. The nun was most likely wrong. She admitted that Rann's warped passions were harder for her to make out than his cousin's.
But what if she weren't wrong? What would it take to frighten a man like Rann?
Fost spent the rest of the day trying to push that thought from his mind.
The sun had passed its zenith when Synalon picked out the low dome of fog that squatted endlessly above the Great Crater Lake. When they made camp that evening, Fost judged they would reach the Ethereals' settlement early the next morning.
The three of them shared conversation over the small campfire. The first day Fost and Ziore had kept to themselves, wary of speaking to Synalon and frankly unsure of the reception they'd get if they tried. Slowly the ice had thawed and the two began to talk guardedly about the sorceress-queen. They still feared her, and Fost was a long way from liking her, but there was something about the empty immensity of the Steppes that made humans seek each other's company. Their differences all became trivial in the face of the lonely spaces and distant skies that dwarfed and mocked human fears and aspirations alike. Even Ziore, who was to all intents immortal, confessed to being made to feel ephemeral by the changeless waste.
Fost did most of the talking. To his surprise he had found Synalon a good listener. She sat across the crackling fire, her cloak casually open as if to let the moonlight shine on breasts barely contained by her low, silken blouse. Her eyes were big and seemingly self-luminous, and always on him.
He spoke of his childhood in High Medurim, as he had to Moriana a year before when they journeyed to Athalau. Synalon encouraged him with questions, with attitudes of head and body implying receptive interest. She had a lively mind, he reflected, to have learned as much as she had of the difficult magical lore. His experiences as a slum child in Medurim must be as alien to the highborn sorceress as any work of demonomancy.
At times like this, with both moons high and waxing in the sky, Ziore was mostly silent, too. Fost almost lost awareness of his audience; he talked to the moon, himself, the restless wind, the insects that sang beneath the canopy of stars. He even found himself speaking of what he and Moriana had undergone together, after their flight from the very woman who sat watching him with such rapt intentness. He told of the journey south, the encounter with the Ethereals, the attack by Rann and his men at the foot of the Ramparts and what befell him and Moriana after they were separated. He told of Athalau, lost and splendid, and what he had found within. He told of how he had died and been revived and gone looking for the woman who had slain him. And he told of what he had gone through to find her. All this to the person who, for the past year, had personified evil in his thoughts. And she nodded in appreciation of the things he told her, even when what he spoke of was how he and the woman he loved had smashed the plans of this other.
It was lonely on the Steppe. The sound of his own voice was comforting.
After the need for speaking had burned itself out, he sat with his knees drawn up before him and his arms around them, staring into the slowly dying campfire. In a detached way, he was aware of Synalon scrutinizing him. Perhaps it was to the wind and stars he had spoken and not to her.
With a rustle of grass and fine cloth, she rose and stepped to his side. Her touch was both cool and hot upon his cheek. 'You're quite a man, Sir Longstrider.'
He sat dead still. He had dreaded this moment – and yet he felt ambivalent. He had seen the looks she gave him as they rode from Tolviroth Acerte. If nothing else, he had piqued her interest by thwarting her consistently across a year; and she was beautiful, heart-stoppingly beautiful. The double moonlight fell as soft as a caress on her skin. He tensed, fearing her, fearing that within him which longed to respond to her.
But her fingers were soon withdrawn – too soon? – and she walked grand and serene back to her side of the fire. Trying not to betray the confusion he felt, he said a quick goodnight and stretched out on the ground, with his saddle beneath his head and Ziore at his side. He glanced from the silver and black of Synalon's form into the blank darkness of the Steppe where hunting beasts cried down the moons. In time he felt Ziore's touch upon his mind, soothing, lulling. He slept.
A timeless interval. Sleep departed. He was awake at once, sword in hand. A touch on his arm aroused him. His senses strained. 'Who is it?' he asked softly.
I, Fost. Ziore's feathery thoughts brushed across his mind. Something's amiss.
Aware of the strange stillness, he twisted about, studying the Steppes. The pink moon Astrith was gone and blue Raychan prepared to dip into the Golden Sea. Dark shapes huddled off across the flatness and movement flirted at the corners of his vision. He was wise to the wild and knew his brain created the motion. Whatever was going on, it wasn't happening in that direction.
Keeping his breath as regular as if he still slept, he shifted and murmured to himself, preparing to roll onto his other side. Ziore sent him no further thoughts. The Athalar spirits never needed sleep, and he had been content to fall asleep himself without caring whether Synalon stayed awake or not. Ziore was a better sentry than either of them, and could be trusted. It would have been like Erimenes, before his apparent change of heart, to let some toothy horror out of the Ramparts creep up almost within distance to make its final savage leap before rousing Fost.
He made another sleepy sound and rolled. At the same time, he moved up one arm as if to pillow his head. He used the motion to lessen the chance of firelight glinting off an eyeball and betraying his wakefulness.
The fire had been tended since he'd dropped off to sleep. It flickered low but not as low as he'd last seen. Synalon sat beyond it so that the yellow tendrils of light barely reached her. Her head was nodding, one slim hand tracing elegant figures in the air in front of her. With a shock, Fost realized she was not alone.
Her companion sat farther from the fire than she. With the black mountains at its back, Fost couldn't limn it by the stars it blocked. But by the faint glimmer from above he saw – or thought he saw – a Dwarf.
That's odd, he thought to Ziore. The creature had a Dwarf's outsized head and stumpy limbs yet it appeared taller than Synalon.
I'm frightened. He felt a contact on his arm and twitched, barely stifling a yelp of surprise. I need to touch something – somebody.
He knew of Ziore's illusory touch from Moriana; Oracle had known the same trick though he'd never used it to hold hands as the genie was doing. It's all right, he thought back. But what is that thing? Synalon glanced his way. He quickly shut his eyes.
/ don't know. But it scares me. It broadcasts no emotions that I can detect. Fost, I… I fear to probe it. He squeezed her hand.
Then don't. I don't think it'd be wise to fool with that thing, whatever it is. Are we betrayed?
He felt his muscles winding tighter. The question lay like a lump of lead in his mind. We can't assume anything. Wait and see.
He opened his eyes. Synalon sat alone. Her chin was sunk to her breastbone. Asleep or not, she showed no sign of movement.
Fost rolled over again. Even with Ziore's help, he was a long time finding sleep. And when he did, it was filled with dreams of Dwarves and twisted faces and roses as black as death.
CHAPTER TEN
Tendrils of fog reached for Fost's face, making him think he rode through cotton. He could scarcely see the alert, upright ears of his dog a few feet in front of his face. The padding of his dog's footfalls came as though from far away. Behind, Synalon's dog existed only as rhythmic sounds even more remote.
