But he persisted. “You can’t keep me from coming if I want to,” he said. “Please, Silas. I know you don’t think much of me, but you owe it to my father.”
“I’ll put it to the others,” Silas promised, “and let you know.”
One of the meetings drew another visitor: Avila Kap, of the Order of Shanta the Healer. It was a clear, warm evening, but she nonetheless wore a nondescript flannel shirt and cotton slacks in place of her usual clerical robes. “I would like to go,” she said.
Silas could see that Chaka and Quait, as startled by her appearance as he, were now equally discomfited by the proposal. Avila was, after all, bound by the rules of her calling, and could not simply wander off on her own into the wilderness. “Mentor,” he said, “we have filled our roster.”
She was a tall woman, almost six feet, and she moved with grace. Her dark eyes caught the light, and there was a glint of desperation in them. “Nevertheless,” she said, “I will go, if you will permit it.” She looked at each of them in turn. “We are required to spend several weeks each year in the wilderness, to maintain communication with the Goddess. I’m adept at survival skills, and I can assure you I will not be a burden.”
“I’m sure you would not.” Silas thought about Flojian, and for that matter about himself. If there was going to be a burden on this trip, he knew it would not be this very competent-looking woman. “Have you permission to travel with us?”
“Surely that is my concern.”
An uncomfortable silence followed. “May I ask why you wish to come?”
She took a long, deep breath. “Because,” she said, “I would like my life to count for something.”
Silas was feted by the Imperium, given a scroll attesting to his efforts to expand the boundaries of human knowledge, and sent off with a blast of horns.
Flojian turned his business over to his executive assistant, who promptly unnerved him by promising to explore new avenues for profit. “Don’t change anything,” said Flojian. “Or I’ll have your elbows removed when I get back.”
On February 16, the twentieth day after they had made their decision, and the eighty-third after Karik’s death, Silas, Chaka, Quait, and Avila rode at sunup to Flojian’s villa, where a dozen packhorses and a barnload of supplies had been gathered. Silas had said good-bye to his friends and relatives, who had, in the tradition of the time, wished him that the wind should block his way, and the rivers afford no crossings. (It was thought this would allay the jealousy of the gods.) He had updated his will, and turned his small house over to a trusted student until his return. “Or until news comes, and my testament takes effect.”
Avila arrived in forest green shirt and leggings, having discarded both her sacred raiment and her sacred orders. Her superiors were somewhat stirred up at the Temple, even though her action could not have come entirely as a surprise. Nevertheless, they were unhappy with her, and her life in Illyria would henceforth be that of an outcast.
Flojian hid an ample supply of gold coins in his saddlebags. He didn’t like the idea of traveling with a lot of money, but he knew that gold opens all kinds of doors, and he suspected they would have use for it before they were done.
Chaka half expected that Raney would come at the last minute. While her companions carried out the final details of
getting organized, loading the packhorses, running down checklists, ensuring they had the means of reshodding the animals, she kept looking around, hoping to see him ride in on his big chestnut stallion.
Several dozen well-wishers arrived and shook their hands. The company mounted their horses, waved, and, in brilliant sunlight, moved out of the villa grounds. They climbed to River Road and turned north. It would have been an exaggeration to say that crowds lined the route. However, there were individuals and small groups gathered along the way, watching, waving as they went by.
But there was no chestnut stallion.
8
River Road ran along the Mississippi to Argon, the northernmost outpost of the League, about ten days’ travel upriver. The road was all-weather construction: In most areas it had a pebble bed and good drainage. It plunged through thick forests of silver maple, bitternut hickory, pecan, and cypress. It passed farms and ranches, navigated among heaps of broken cement and patches of grassland. Concrete causeways carried it through swamps, and wooden bridges across streams and gullies. It hesitated before sites of historical interest: Pandar’s Glade, where the Illyrian hero had turned the tide of war against the Argonites; a restored Baranji fort from the days when the Mississippi marked the western frontier of empire; a statue of a Roadmaker military figure, right arm broken off, with the inscription: HE STOOD LIKE A STONE WALL.
Chaka was glad to get clear of the well-wishers, to move into the silences of the forest. She had been to Argon several times, although the most recent trip had been almost six years before, a hunting expedition with her family. Those earlier excursions had seemed like journeys to the end of the world. It was hard to realize that this time the outpost city would be little more than a jump-off point.
She was displeased with herself for agreeing to allow Flojian to join the expedition. The little man rode up front with Silas in his finicky, self-important way, and it irritated her that the two seemed to find much to talk about. She predicted to Quait that a few nights on the road would change his mind, and he would return home.
Silas bounced along on a horse that was too big for him. He’d borrowed a new animal from the Imperium for the expedition; his usual mount was, he knew, too old for the kind of effort that would be required. Chaka thought that Silas looked cold and uncomfortable. But he hung on, trying to give the appearance of a man at home in the wilderness, even raising himself in the saddle on occasion to get a better look at the river, or a eucalyptus, or whatever happened to catch his attention.
“He’ll be all right,” said Quait. “He just needs a little time to get used to the road.”
She was grateful to Quait, not only because he’d been instrumental in launching the expedition, but also because he obviously liked her and she needed that right now. Raney’s defection had damaged her more than she was willing to admit, and she traveled throughout that first day expecting to hear him ride up behind them. She played the scene over and over in her mind, Raney apologetic and trying to shrug it all away; she cool and formal, allowing him to sweat. “You’ll have to ask Silas,” she would tell him. “It’s not up to me.”
“This is the high point of Silas’s life,” Quait told her. “It’s what he’s always wanted to do.”
“Hard to believe,” she said. “He doesn’t look as if he’s enjoying himself.”
“He’s not used to riding for long periods.”
“I can see that. What’s he been doing for the last forty years?”
“Trying to understand what fuels the sun. The places he would like to go, people can’t get to.”
Chaka wasn’t sure she understood that, but she let it pass. She was suspicious of Avila. The woman was friendly enough, but it was hard to overlook the fact that she had abandoned her vows. Chaka was a believer to the extent that she didn’t like people to ask hard questions, and tried not to think too deeply about the assorted doctrines she’d accepted. Play it safe, respect the gods, and maybe it would pay off. Who knew? There had been a time, a generation back, when breaking with the Order would have meant keeping out of public sight for the balance of one’s life. But with the advent of the Republic, the ecclesiastical laws had been liberalized. Avila would be free to live as she wished, although most people would feel as Chaka did, that she was somehow remiss and morally suspect.
Avila was, however, the only member of the company who had been north of Argon. “We have a retreat about two days’ ride above the city,” she said. “It’s on a ridge, in deep woods. A good place for prayer and contemplation.”
“Didn’t you worry about the Tuks?” asked Chaka.
“At first. But no one else seemed very concerned. At least no one who’d been around for a while. The Tuks turned out to be friendly enough.”
“What did you contemplate?”
“Beg pardon?”
“You said you went up there to contemplate. What did you think about?”
