He leaned beside me. He wore his long dark hair in a single braid, like a woman, for these days men cropped their hair short. Perhaps it had been otherwise in other times and other places, but I had never seen a man wear his hair as long as my own was. Yet none of his admirers seemed to count it against him.
'Can you see that prominence there?' I pointed to the southwest, to a hill bulging higher than the rolling land around it. 'That should be Cold Fort, if my memory of maps is correct. When we get a bit closer, we'll know for sure. There's a temple atop it, within the old earth ramparts. In ancient days it was a rort, maybe a barbarian prince's royal seat.'
He wasn't looking toward the distant hill.
'What place is that?' He indicated a manor house far to the south of us, half screened by a row of poplars. 'I smell meat cooking.'
'A lord's estate. Not a mage House, as you can see by the arrangement of chimneys.'
'Every building must have fires against the winter cold, mustn't they?'
'Cold mages kill fire. They heat their homes in the Roman way. Furnaces on the outside heat air that flows inside below a raised floor.'
'What lord lives in that fine manor?' He wrinkled his nose. 'Can we go there to beg for our supper?'
We were too far away for me to smell anything. 'One of the cousins of the Prince of Tarrant, I suppose. He'd have no reason to show hospitality to the likes of us. I'm getting cold.'
I hopped down and we set out again.
'From Mutuatonis we have a choice whether to follow the old Roman road west to where it meets the toll road. Then we would turn south and pass through Newfield before reaching Adur-nam. But if Four Moons House still has seekers and soldiers out looking, it will be easier to find us on the toll road. Otherwise, we can cut across the chalk hills and stay in the countryside.'
'They will expect you to return to Adurnam?'
'They must assume I will try to reach the Barahals. Although why I would want to see them ever again after they betrayed me…' It seemed my life had turned into an unending parade of betrayals, and while I could comprehend what had led someone like Kayleigh to play the part she had, it was awfully hard to find forgiveness in my heart for all those so willing to sacrifice me.
'Why go to Adurnam? We could leave the Deathlands. Go home.
'It is your home, maybe. It isn't mine. I don't understand the first thing about it. What would have happened to me if Andevai had not pulled me back within the wards when that…tide… swept through? Would I have died?'
'You would have changed. Maybe that is like what you call death here. You would have become something other than what you are now.'
'What am I?' I murmured. The words made me dizzy. 'Rory, do you know our father?'
'I never met him. He is not a personage you meet.'
'He must have met your mother, and my mother. In order to sire children. If it's true we were both sired by him, he would have had to have been a cat in one form… a man in another…'
You must know something more about him.'
'No. Except that one thing my mother said.'
'That he was a tomcat.'
'That he was a tomcat. And not the sort of personage you go hunting for. If he wants you, he'll call you to him.'
'That's really all you know? Aren't you curious to know more?'
'No. Should I be?'
'Do I wear a spirit mantle?'
He narrowed his eyes to look at me, then closed one eye to peer at me, opened it and closed the other, and looked, then opened it and, with both eyes on my face, made a gesture of defeat. 'I can smell it, but I see only your human flesh.'
Before I could reply, he lifted his chin, tilted his head, blinked, and brought me to a halt with a hand on my arm. 'Listen.' One moment he had been a relaxed and genial companion; now he was a predator alert to danger. 'Horses and men behind us. I smell iron and cold steel.'
I did not for one instant doubt him, although I could not sense anything amiss. The sky was flawless, its blue made brilliant by the clarity of the winter air. A breeze had been blowing out of the south all morning, just enough to set the tops of bushes swaying and to send fluttering kisses of movement across fields oi uncut grass. Beyond the open ground rose yew woods,
screened at their edge with bare-branched sapling beech and straggling bushes. Not more than a mile away rose the ridge where the ancient Celts had built Cold Fort and the Romans later raised a temple to claim the stronghold for their own gods.
'It's best if we leave the path,' I said hoarsely.
The wind died as the words left my lips. Died was not the right word. It was as if a vast bellows had been turned inside out and sucked the wind back into the lofty caverns where the tempest is born. The temperature dropped from cold to frigid; my lips tasted the fall as though I pressed ice to my mouth.
'There's a cold mage with them,' I said, barely able to voice the words because I could not find enough heat in my lungs. 'They're tracking us.'
I saw no sign of pursuit. They might not yet have come into view. But strangely, although the wind had utterly failed, an odd motion drew ripples across the clearing behind us.
Something was wrong with the light on the grass.
In Southbridge, Andevai had woven an illusion.
'They're in the field,' I gasped, heart racing so hard I heard its hammering as hooves thudding on the ground. 'Magic conceals them.'
I started to bolt, blindly, down the path, but Rory tugged me to a halt. 'Is there a crossroads?'
'I don't know.' I was becoming frantic. They would kill me if they caught me. To force its prey into a panic is exactly what the predator desires. I had to think. 'The ancient forts are built where lines of power intersect. Cold Fort lies on the highest point at the southwesternmost sweep of the ridge.'
Perhaps our stillness made our pursuers bold. Or perhaps the magister riding with them wasn't very strong or simply became tired of holding the illusion, now that we were so close. From the Held behind us, a bolt came sailing over our heads. Suddenly
I saw seven horsemen pounding toward us, six in soldier's livery carrying crossbows, with sheathed cavalry swords dangling along their flanks.
Rory said, 'Into the trees. Now.' He pushed me.
Terror grew wings on my back, and I ran, wishing I was an eru with wings that might fly me into the safety of the spirit world, if you could call that place safe.
I heard a man shout, 'I knew that jo-ba was lying. He's in league with her.'
I heard the hammer release, the sing of a bolt.
A sharp sudden scream of warning.
As I reached the edge of the underbrush, I cast a look over my shoulder to see a saber-toothed cat hurtling in among the horsemen, muscles bunching as it sprang to topple the lead horseman from the saddle. Confusion reigned as the horses bucked and sidestepped, trying to get their heads out from under the reins so they could flee the deadly beast's massive claws. Two horsemen had pulled out of the fray and were racing toward me. Branches scraped my arms as I shoved through the tangle of bushes. The fabric of my cloaks caught, dragging me to a halt, and I twisted, yanking at the cloth to free myself. Branches snapped as a rider drove his mount into the undergrowth. I plunged farther in, but once beyond the leafless fringe of deciduous trees, I entered the yew forest whose dense canopy sheltered no concealing undergrowth.
I spun as the soldier broke out of the bushes, crossbow raised as he sighted in the gloom. A bolt hissed past me; he dropped the crossbow on its leash as I untied my outer cloak. Closing, he drew his sword. I swept the cloak open and flung it over the bead of his mount. Ducking to my right, I threw myself behind a tree trunk. He grappled with the cloak, cursing as the horse shook itself into a halt under a low-lying tree limb. I lis head slammed hard into the branch, but 1 was already running. My
riding habit was cut for practicality, not fashion; the Barahals took their riding seriously. The fabric did not
