'Not yet.'
With the wind rising steadily like a beast slowly curling out of slumber, we walked for at least another hour. Rounding a corner and stumping to the top of a gentle rise, we reached a crossroads stone, a squat pillar more chipped at than shaped and no taller than my head.
The wind had changed timbre and smell. It blew into our faces from the south-one might almost say out of the stone- and it might even have been said to possess the memory of warmth, something once known and mostly forgotten. This change kindled in me a strange emotion, in the way one imagines the breath of a mother on a cold, frightening night calms her restless babe. I waited until Kayleigh had poured a few offering drops at the base of the stone, and then I went forward myself and let fall the last drops from the first of the two leather bottles Duvai had given me. It was a vinegary drink, tart and bitter, but in the instant of offering, I smelled as through the stone itself a sweeter, summery scent like flowers in bloom. I blinked, wondering if the shadows of the landscape beyond the stone had altered, but after all they had not. In moonlight, I saw the path ahead of me, and the empty hills, and very, very far away and below us in elevation a tiny burr of light marking a town's watch fire. Was it possible we might reach Lemanis, the first leg of our journey, tomorrow? Sooner than I had dared hope?
The stars lay half hidden beneath a gauze of moonlight. My eyes warmed with tears, although I did not understand why I should wish to weep.
'Ah!' said Kayleigh.
I turned at her gasp.
Riders approached us on the path, hooves and harness muffled. She grabbed my arm, wrenching me sideways, and at first I thought she was trying to pull us out of sight, so I went with the drag of her weight. Then she kicked out my legs from under me, and not expecting this assault, I crumpled as the riders closed. She threw herself on top of me as I thrashed and shoved and got my left hand free. I punched her hard enough that she grunted, and with a burst of furious terror, I heaved her off me and scrambled to my feet as the rider in front pounded up and resolved into Andevai.
His mouth set in a grim line, he drew a sword. Its cold-steel blade gleamed where moonlight kissed it. His mouth was set in a grim line. The wind died, and the air grew so cold so fast I shuddered convulsively. I fumbled at the twisted mess of my garments and belt, knot king my bundle of provisions aside as I groped for my sword's hilt.
'Are you all right, Kayleigh?' he demanded.
She struggled up and limped over to him. 'Of course. Did you have any trouble following me?'
'None at all.' He clasped one of her hands, then let her go, still looking at me as if he expected me to vanish. 'You laid a bright trail.'
His companion, wearing the livery of a House servant, pulled up a length behind him, mounted and leading another horse. He was no villager.
'You betrayed me,' I said hoarsely as I grasped the hilt.
Kayleigh looked at me across the gap between us. 'I bear you no ill will. It's only that he is my brother, son of the same mother, and I would do anything for him.'
'You would go willingly to the mansa's bed?' I cried with all the scorn I could muster. 'To bear the mansa's bastard children who may be taken away at any moment to be raised in the House and not by you?'
'If I must, and if it will aid Vai, then I will do that,' she said with no tremor in her voice.
I could not fault her loyalty.
All I could do was draw my sword.
Because I expected him to come at me on the horse, using weight and height against me, I glanced to either side, trying to gauge where the land was most rugged, where I had the most chance to bolt while the horse would have trouble following in the half-light. As if he guessed my intent, he dismounted and strode forward so quickly I scarcely managed to wrestle the bundle from my back and fling it at him. He danced aside as the bundle sailed past him to smack on the dirt. I skipped back to place the stone between me and him.
He attacked.
He thrust. I parried. He cut; I caught his blade on mine, the steel singing where it met. Twisting away, I slashed back; he ducked left out from under the blade, which sliced across his right shoulder deep enough to catch in fabric, penetrate flesh, and cut free.
With a harsh curse, he stepped back to catch his balance. I grinned, too wildly, I am sure, for in a battle for one's life, one learns to treasure each reprieve and indeed each breath. The standing stone covered my back, but being at my back, it also limited my movement. I leaped sideways, onto the path, and he charged after me.
I was lighter and quicker and my technique was cleaner, heritage of a childhood spent training with the sword, but he was bigger and stronger, and he had reach. All he needed was reach. Cold steel in the hands of a cold mage needs only to draw blood
in mortal flesh to cut spirit from body. How easily he could kill me!
Because I was left-handed, I backed around, keeping the stone to my right shoulder. While he had the grace of a man who knows how to dance, he did not have my fine-tuned control or, evidently, my ability to read in his body his next move. I made sure the stone got in his way more than it got in mine. I thrust, prodded, and slashed; he parried too easily, for I was already tired, and he had ridden while I had walked and was therefore fresher. If I ran, he would catch me. All I could do was fight for my life.
I shifted preparatory to a more desperate attack, but he fell back to test his right shoulder where my blade had cut. A thread of blood seeped through. I'd taken first blood, much good it would do me: Cold steel in my hand did not sever spirit from flesh with first blood. Yet because he was right-handed, the injury might give me an opening. I measured his stance for an opening.
'Look out!' shouted Kayleigh.
Blessed Tank, I was wearying fast. The old trick caught me: I glanced toward her. His blade flashed forward. Instinct carried me; I slammed right, my shoulder meeting stone, trapping me. My blade shivered against his, my strength not enough to hold him off as he pressed forward. He halted as our hilts caught, so close I could have kissed his lips, which were slightly parted with intense concentration as he stared into my face. My trembling arms and exhausted body were about to fail me.
'Blessed Tank,' I murmured, 'accept your daughter's spirit with love.'
His expression changed, flooding with an emotion I could not name.
'No,' he said, not to me. He jerked back, pulling his sword out from the tangle between us. Giving way. (living up.
Somehow in the breath of his retreat, the edge of his cold steel caught under my chin and parted my skin as gently as a summer's breeze parts the petals of a blooming rose with the merest flutter as it passes.
Such a weakness of limb and heart assailed me that I sagged against the stone.
He gasped, eyes widening with an expression I could not possibly interpret or comprehend as he leaped out of range.
Languid, I raised my right hand and with its back brushed my glove against the curve of my jaw. When I lowered the glove, a moist line glittered on the smooth leather.
'Catherine,' he cried. 'Your blood'
'Am I not falling dead quickly enough?' I cried. A spark of such fury roused me that I was determined to drive him back until I stuck him through and pierced his selfish, vain heart.
Blood dripped from my jawline to spatter on my glove. Without meaning to, I flinched, and so the next drops falling split the air with the heat and life that abides in the blood of all living things. They fell like raindrops onto the base of the stone against which I still leaned, and when the drops splashed, too faint to be seen and yet thundering like a storm across the heights, the stone turned to mist against my shoulder and I fell through.
23
Into summer.
I broke into a sweat. Birds warbled and chirped and shrilled around me in a melodic uproar, and a huge crow fluttered down to earth a sword's length from me. It tilted its head to peruse me first out of one eye and then the
