dead. For Sranc, the Mop was a kind of paradise: perpetually dark with easy earth rich in grubs. It provided for all but their most dread appetites.
That is, until the coming of Men.
– | Xonghis had led them down from the mountains into the foothills at a northwest tangent, so nearly a week passed before the expedition entered the Mop. The plan was to skirt the forest's edges and march to Fatwall, ancient Maimor, with the hope of resupplying. Mimara fairly clung to the Wizard during this time, sometimes actually leaned against him, even though she possessed no real wounds of consequence. Her mother had done the same, years before in the First Holy War, and the memories would have struck Achamian deep-pain deep-had not the pandemonium of the previous days been so complete. He could scarce blink without glimpsing some shredded glimpse of their ordeal.
When he asked her what happened at the bottom of the Great Medial Screw, she never answered, at least not satisfactorily. According to her, the Wight-in-the-Mountain had been driven away by her Chorae and that was that. When he reminded her that the Captain also carried a Chorae, one that apparently made no difference, she would simply shrug as if to say, 'Well, I'm not the Captain, am I?' Time and again, Achamian found himself circling back to the issue. He could not do otherwise. Even when he ignored her, he could sense her Chorae against her breast, like a whiff of oblivion, or the scratch of some otherworldly burr.
The School of Mandate had long eschewed the Daimotic Arts: Seswatha had believed Ciphrang too capricious to be yoked to human intent. Still, Achamian had some understanding of the metaphysics involved. He knew that some agencies could be summoned shorn of the Outside, plucked whole as it were, while others bore their realities with them, swamping the World with porous madness. The shade of Gin'yursis, Achamian knew, had been one of the latter.
Chorae only negated violations of the Real; they returned the world to its fundamental frame. But Gin'yursis had come as figure and frame — a symbol wedded to the very Hell that gave it meaning…
Mimara's Chorae should have been useless.
'Please, girl. Indulge an old man's confusion.'
It involved the Judging Eye… somehow. He knew it in his bones.
'Enough. It was madness, I told you. I don't know what happened!'
'More. There has to be something more!'
She fixed him with her damning glare. 'What an old hypocrite you are…'
She was right, of course. As hard as he pressed her about what had happened, she pressed him harder for details of the Judging Eye-and he was even more evasive. A part of him suspected that she refused to answer out of some peevish desire for retribution.
What does one say to the doomed? What could knowing provide other than the air of an executioner's vigil? To know one's doom was to know futility, to walk with a darkened, deadened heart.
To forget hope.
The old Wizard knew this as much from his Dreams as from his life. Of all the lessons he had learned at life's uncaring knee, perhaps this was the most hard won. So when she pestered him with questions-gazing at him with Esmenet's eyes and airs-he would bristle. 'The Judging Eye is the stuff of witches lore and old wives' tales! I have no knowledge to share, only rumours and misapprehensions!'
'Then tell me those!'
'Bah! Leave me in peace!'
He was sparing her, he told himself. Of course his refusal to answer simply stoked her fears, but fearing and knowing were two different things. There is mercy in ignorance; Men are born appreciating this. Scarce a day passes when we do not save others from things-small and great-they would be worse for knowing.
The old Wizard wasn't the only one to suffer Mimara's rancour. Somandutta drew abreast of them one morning, his manner at once pensive and breezy with false good humour. He began by asking her questions, then plied her with various inane observations when she refused to reply. He was trying, the old Wizard knew, to rekindle something of their old banter, perhaps hoping to find unspoken forgiveness in the resumption of old ways and manners. His approach was at once cowardly and eminently male: he was literally asking her to pretend that he had not abandoned her in Cil-Aujas. And she was having none of it.
'Mimara… please,' he finally hazarded. 'I know… I know I wronged you… down… down there. But everything happened so… so quickly.'
'But that's the way it is with fools, isn't it?' she said, her tone so light it could only be scathing. 'The world is quick and they are slow.'
Perhaps she had happened upon an old and profound fear of his. Perhaps she had simply shocked him with the summary ease of her condemnation. Either way, the young Nilnameshi caste-noble came to an abrupt stop, stood dumbfounded as the others trudged past. He ducked away from Galian and his teasing attempt to pinch his cheek.
Afterward Achamian joined him on the trail, moved more by the memory of Esmenet and the similarities of her pique than by real pity. 'Give her time,' he said. 'She's fierce in her feelings, but her heart is forgiving…' He trailed, realizing this wasn't quite true. 'She's too quick not to appreciate the… difficulties,' he added.
'Difficulties?'
Achamian frowned at the petulance of the young man's tone. The fact was he agreed with Mimara: He did think Soma was a fool-but a well-meaning one. 'Have you ever heard the saying, 'Courage for men is fodder for dragons?''
'No,' the fulsome lips admitted. 'What does it mean?'
'That courage is more complicated than simple souls credit… Mimara may be many things, Soma, but simple isn't one of them. We all need time to build fences about what… what happened.'
The wide brown eyes studied him for a moment. Even after everything they had endured, the same affable light illuminated his gaze. 'Give her time…' Soma repeated in the tone of a young man taking heart.
'Time,' the old Wizard said, resuming his march.
Afterward he found himself hoping the daft fool didn't confuse his advice for paternal permission. The thought of the man wooing Mimara made him bristle as if he really were her father. The question of why he felt this way plagued him for a good portion of the afternoon. For all her capricious strength, something about Anasurimbor Mimara demanded protection, a frailty so at odds with the tenor of her declarations that it could only seem tragic… beautiful. The air of things too extraordinary to long survive the world's rigour.
This realization, if anything, made her company more irritating.
'The woman saved your life,' Pokwas told him one evening, when the to-and-fro of men milling found them side by side. 'That means deep things in my country.'
'She saved all our lives,' Achamian said.
'I know,' the towering Sword-dancer replied with a solemn nod. 'But yours in particular, Wizard. Several times.' A look of wonder crept into his face.
'What?' Achamian could feel the old scowl building, the one that had aged into his expression.
'You're so old,' Pokwas said with a shrug. 'Who risks everything to pluck an empty wineskin from a raging river? Who?'
Achamian snorted in laughter, wondered how long it had been since he had laughed. 'An empty wineskin's daughter,' he replied. And even as a part of him flinched from the lie-for it seemed sacrilegious to deceive men with whom he had shared utter and abject hardship-another part of him slumped backward in a kind of marvelling anxiousness.
Maybe this lie had also come true.
She watches the Wizard by moonlight, reviews his features the way a mother reviews her children: the counting of things beloved. The eyebrows like moustaches, the white hermit beard, the hand that clutches his breast. Night after night she watches.
Before, Drusas Achamian had been a riddle, a maddening puzzle. She could scarce look at him without railing in anger. So stingy! So miserly! There he sat, warm and fat with knowledge, while she haunted his stoop, begging, starving… Starving! Of all the sins between people, few are so unforgivable as being needed.
But now.
He looks every bit as wild as before, hung in wolf-pelts, stooped with years. Despite bathing in the chill blast
