twinge like winter sparks in a wool blanket. “Interesting,” he said, in a neutral tone. “Her ground seems to dimple away as I try to grip it.”
“Dag, have we really done it? ” Fawn said breathlessly. “Made a ground shield for farmers? ”
He sighed uncertainly. “Maybe. Enough to protect you from ordinary persuasion or beguilement, and the sort of ground-ripping I-a person can do. But a malice is much more powerful, and I don’t know how to test for that. It’s not like I’m going to set you out as bait.”
“Maybe someone”-she glanced at Barr-“could get a patrol to take a volunteer farmer out somewhere to try it. Up north, maybe, where the malices are thicker. Or at least, try it on their youngsters.”
Dag shook his head. “I’m still not sure this shield would work on Lakewalker grounds. They’re too active.”
“So, try one on Barr and find out.”
Barr gulped. “Er… all right. Makes sense.”
Fawn said, “It’s too bad we don’t have a Lakewalker child to try it on. Maybe later.”
Brightening, Dag told Arkady, “At least I’ve half solved the problem of how to turn it off. All Fawn has to do is remove the necklace, and the link to her ground will break. Thing is, she’d need me to do all that groundwork over again to link it back to her. In the ideal design, the farmer would be able to take it on and off at will. Leastways I’ve proved the principle of the thing.”
Arkady gave him a thoughtful nod. “I didn’t think you’d get this far.”
Brows tightening, he took up Fawn’s hand and stroked it with his finger again; she shivered at the prickle. “Now I hesitate to guess how far you can take this.”
Dag watched her hand intently. “That contraction seems to be a natural response, of a sort. After I was near ground-ripped by the Raintree malice, Mari said my ground was so tight nobody could get in to help me. Had to take her word for it-I was out cold. She said she’d never seen anyone look more like a corpse and still breathe.”
“Even if it doesn’t protect farmers from malices, it seems it protects them from Lakewalkers,” Fawn said. “Like Barr’s cook-pot helmets for real. It changes things. Um…” She glanced up at Barr and Arkady.
“What about-Dag’s-someone at Hickory Lake once told me that because farmers couldn’t veil their grounds, it was like they were walking around naked, to Lakewalker eyes. What is this doing for that? And don’t be polite,” she added sharply. “Tell me the truth.”
“In ground veiling”-Barr held up his hand and turned it edge on-“it’s like the Lakewalker’s ground slowly gets thinner and thinner till it vanishes. From the inside, it looks like the world’s ground does the same, like going back to being a child when you couldn’t sense at all. With this, your ground’s density is all still there, but it’s like I’m seeing it under moving water. I can’t make out the details. If you see? ”
Well, being dressed in thin cloth was better than parading around stark. Fawn nodded satisfaction. She wrapped her hand around the walnut.
What an extraordinary birthday present this is turning out to be. “Should I keep it on? ” she asked Dag.
“Yes, I want to see how long that involution will hold up. Sharing knives may last a lifetime, but lesser work fades sooner.”
“That’s going to hold awhile, I wager,” said Arkady.
Fawn slipped the walnut pendant inside her blouse. “I wonder how one would work on Calla or Indigo? Like on a farmer, or like on a Lakewalker?”
Dag’s eyes narrowed. “Huh. Good question, Spark.” His gaze strayed to her middle. “If they’re starting to trust me enough… I’ll ask them to let me try. Later. Not now. It’s going to take me some days to recover from this.”
“Talk to Calla before you offer such a shield to Sage,” advised Arkady.
“I wouldn’t want her to take it amiss. I’ve just about got her taking food from my hand, so to speak, but she’s still nervy.” He paused. “It’s been quite a while since I’ve instructed a beginner. I’ll give her this-at least she doesn’t have any bad training for me to undo.”
Dag nodded understanding. A sly smile slipped over his mouth and vanished, by which Fawn guessed he was pleased that Arkady was taking his new student seriously.
–-
Over the next days, the swampy alligator country fell behind. Villages grew poorer and farther apart and the road surface deteriorated, with fewer bridges and worse fords. In places with softer soil, the way was beaten down into a broad track between earthen walls that rose higher than their heads. Farms were replaced by piney woods. In the growing heat, the trees breathed a delicious and oddly northern smell that made Dag smile for no reason Fawn could see, but she was glad of it nonetheless.
Local traffic thinned out. Their only company on the road became others sharing the long haul. More folks were headed north than south, what with the rivers disgorging their travelers onto the Trace at Graymouth. They passed gangs of flatboat men walking home, and were passed by speedier horse pack trains, including some Lakewalker kin carrying trade between camps. They played leapfrog with that tea caravan for days, and, when Fawn, Dag, and Barr proved conversant in river talk, ended up getting to know some of the muleteers by name.
The last village before the Barrens going north, or the first after coming south, guarded a rope-cranked ferry, a smaller version of those Fawn had seen up on the Grace. The crowd trying to cross at the riverbank held them up for half a day. On the other side, the road climbed again. The piney woods grew more ragged and sad, then thinned out into scrubland inhabited only by mice, hawks, rabbits, and wild pigs.
The shadeless stretches turned headache-hot. Roadside camping spots with both water and grazing became harder to find, as prior travelers’ beasts of burden had eaten the scanty fodder far back from the road.
Two days into the Barrens and their novelty had worn off for Fawn, to be replaced by her nausea of pregnancy. This lasted till she fled from the campfire one morning to retch in the bushes, and Arkady, with an incredibly smug smirk, produced a bottle of that Lakewalker stomach medicine from his pack. He only made Dag grovel a little for it. In the evenings Arkady took Dag aside for maker ground-projection and sensitivity drills, and Dag retaliated by making Barr and Arkady do patroller ground-veiling drills. The results of the latter left Dag frowning.
One evening, they camped with some friendly flatboat boys who knew the Clearcreeks, and exchanged much river gossip including garbled accounts of the gruesome events at Crooked Elbow, which Dag, Fawn, and Barr tried to amend. Dag treated a flatboat boy’s sore foot and seized the chance for his beginner lecture on Lakewalkers; Fawn wasn’t sure which of these left Arkady rubbing his forehead. But at least it was a thoughtful rub.
The lack of grazing proved worse than the company had anticipated, and the feed grain they’d so prudently packed along from the Tanner farm ran low, then out. But late one afternoon Ash, whose turn it was to scout ahead, came cantering back all excited. The fertile valley he described seemed too good to be true, but a few miles farther on, at a dip where a river ran between high rocky walls and around a bend, they found a broad sweep of meadow, flecked by wildflowers, that glowed like green glass in the leveling light. Dozens of dogwoods lit up the woods like white flower fountains. New leaves, Fawn realized, weren’t just pale green, but shades of bronze and copper red. Both people and animals greeted the sight with the same joyful sigh.
This bliss lasted till Sage, who had gone into the woods bordering the bluffs to gather firewood, came bolting back out waving his bloodied ax in the air and screaming, “Snakes! Hundreds of ’em! And they’re all rattlers!”
Fawn, about to unsaddle Magpie, scrambled back aboard and pulled up her toes. “What? ”
“There can’t be hundreds,” objected Finch. “Snakes don’t travel in herds, Sage. You just panicked.”
“Yeah, how many did you really see? ” said Ash. “Two? Three?” Although he prudently unshipped another long-handled ax from his pack.
“Actually…” said Dag, slowly wheeling about and scanning the rocky slopes.
Disturbed and attentive silence fell, broken only by Sage’s panting.
Everyone’s faces turned to follow Dag, like beguiled mice.
“… there are hundreds,” Dag continued. “Those ledges up there are full of snake dens. They coil up in snake balls to get through the cold times, see. They’re all just coming out of their winter sleep.”
Finch swung abruptly up onto the driver’s box next to Calla.
“You can get up to a couple of hundred rattlesnakes at a time in the bigger dens,” Dag went on blithely.
Indigo looked in longing at the rich grass. All the tired, hungry animals had their heads down tearing at it. “We could all hole up in the wagon, I guess, but-would they bite the mules and horses? ”
