I felt more than saw Starling shrug. 'They wouldn't tell us. They said if we went after you, we had to part company with them. They seemed to believe Burl would send soldiers after you, no matter how badly Moonseye had been hit.'
I nodded, more to myself than to her. 'He will. He's going to blame the whole raid on me. And it will be said that the raiders were actually from the Mountain Kingdom, soldiers sent to free me.' I sat up, easing away from Starling. 'And when they catch us, they'll kill you both.'
'We didn't intend that they should catch us,' Kettle observed.
'And they won't,' I promised. 'Not if we act sensibly. Pull up the horses.'
Kettle scarcely needed to stop them. They had slowed to a weary walk long ago. I tossed my blanket at Starling and went around the team. Nighteyes launched himself from the wagon and followed me curiously. 'What are you doing?' Kettle demanded as I unbuckled harness and let it fall to the snowy ground.
'Changing this over so they can be ridden. Can you ride bareback?' I was using the guard's knife to hack through the reins as I spoke. She'd have to ride bareback, whether she could or not. We had no saddles.
'I suppose I'll have to,' she observed grumpily as she clambered down from the wagon. 'But we aren't going to get very far very fast, doubled on these horses.'
'You and Starling will do fine,' I promised her. 'Just keep going.'
Starling was standing in the bed of the wagon looking down on me. I didn't need the moonlight to know there was disbelief on her face. 'You're leaving us here? After we came back for you?'
That wasn't how I'd seen it. 'You are leaving me here,' I told her firmly. 'Jhaampe is the only large settlement, once you've turned your back on Moonseye and headed toward the Mountain Kingdom. Ride steadily. Don't go directly to Jhaampe. That's what they'll expect us to do. Find one of the smaller villages and hide there for a time. Most of the Mountain folk are hospitable. If you hear no rumors of pursuit, go on to Jhaampe. But get as far as you can as fast as you can before you stop to ask for shelter or food.'
'What are you going to do?' Starling asked in a low voice.
'Nighteyes and I are going our own way. As we should have a long time ago. We travel fastest alone.'
'I came back for you,' Starling said. Her voice was close to breaking at my betrayal. 'Despite all that had happened to me. Despite … my hand … and everything else …'
'He's drawing them off our trail,' Kettle suddenly said.
'Do you need help to mount?' I asked Kettle quietly.
'We don't need any help from you!' Starling declared angrily. She shook her head. 'When I think of all I've been through, following you. And all we did to free you … You'd have burned alive in that cell back there but for me!'
'I know.' There was no time to explain all of it to her. 'Goodbye,' I said quietly. And I left them there, walking away from them into the forest. Nighteyes walked at my side. The trees closed in around us and they were soon lost to sight.
Kettle had seen quickly to the heart of my plan. As soon as Burl had the fires under control, or perhaps before, he would think of me. They'd find the old man killed by a wolf, and never believe I had perished in my cell. There would be pursuit. They'd send out riders on all the roads into the mountains, and they'd soon catch up with Kettle and Starling. Unless the hunters had another, more difficult trail to follow. One that cut cross-country, headed directly to Jhaampe. Due west.
It would not be easy. I had no specific knowledge of what lay between me and the capital city of the Mountain Kingdom. No towns, most likely, for the Mountain Kingdom was sparsely populated. The folk were mostly trappers, hunters, and nomadic herders of sheep and goats who tended to live in isolated cabins or tiny villages surrounded by ample hunting and trapping range. There would be little chance for me to beg or steal food or supplies. What worried me more was that I might find myself on the edge of an unscalable ridge or having to ford one of the many swift cold rivers that swept fiercely down the ravines and narrow valleys.
Useless to worry until we find ourselves blocked, Nighteyes pointed out. If it happens, then we must simply find a way around it. It may slow us down. But we will never get there at all if we stand still and worry.
So we hiked the night away, Nighteyes and I. When we came to clearings, I studied the stars, and tried to travel as close to due west as I could. The terrain proved every bit as challenging as I had expected it to be. Deliberately I chose routes kinder to a man and wolf afoot than to men on horseback. We left our trail up brushy hillsides and through tangled thickets in narrow gorges. I comforted myself as I forged through such places by imagining Starling and Kettle making good time on the roads. I tried not to think that Burl would send out enough trackers to follow more than one trail. No. I had to get a good lead on them and then lure Burl to send them after me in full force.
The only way I could think of to do that was to represent myself as a threat to Regal. One that must be dealt with immediately.
I lifted my eyes to the top of a ridge. Three immense cedars stood together in a clump. I would stop there, build a tiny fire, and try to Skill. I had no elfbark, I reminded myself, so I would have to make provisions to rest well afterward.
I will watch over you, Nighteyes assured me.
The cedars were huge, their reaching branches interweaving overhead so thickly that the ground beneath was bare of snow. The soil was thickly carpeted with fragrant bits of cedar frond that had fallen over time. I scraped myself up a couch of them to keep my body off the cold earth and then gathered a good supply of firewood. For the first time, I looked inside the pouch I had stolen. There was a fire flint. Also five or six coins, some dice, a broken bracelet, and folded up in a scrap of fabric, a lock of fine hair. It summarized too neatly a soldier's life. I scraped away a bit of earth and buried the hair, the dice, and the bracelet together. I tried not to wonder if it was a child or a lover that she had left behind. Her death was none of my doing, I reminded myself. Still, a chill voice whispered the word 'catalyst' in the back of my mind. But for me, she would be alive still. For a moment, I felt old and weary and sick. Then I forced myself to set both the soldier and my own life aside. I kindled the fire and fed it up well. I stacked the rest of my firewood close to hand. I wrapped myself in my cloak and lay back on my cedar- frond bed. I took a breath, closed my eyes and Skilled.
It was as if I had tumbled into a swift river. I had not been prepared to succeed so easily, and was nearly swept away. Somehow the Skill river seemed deeper and wilder and stronger here. I did not know if it was a waxing of my own abilities or something else. I found and centered myself and resolutely firmed my will against the temptations of the Skill. I refused to consider that from here I might fling my thoughts to Molly and our child, might see as with my own eyes how she was growing and how they both fared. Nor would I reach for Verity, much as I longed to. The strength of this Skilling was such I had no doubt I could find him. But that was not what I was here for. I was here to taunt an enemy and must be on my guard. I set every ward I could that would not seal me off from the Skill, and turned my will toward Burl.
I extended myself, feeling for him cautiously. I was ready to fling up my walls in an instant if attacked. I found him easily and was almost startled at how unaware of my touch he was.
Then his pain jolted through me.
I drew back, faster than a startled sea anemone in a tide pool. I shocked myself by opening my eyes and staring up into cedar boughs burdened with snow. Sweat slicked my face and back.
What was that? Nighteyes demanded.
You know as much as I do, I told him.
It had been purest pain. Pain independent of an injury to the body, pain that was not sorrow or fear. Total pain, as if every part of the body, inside and out, were immersed in fire.
Regal and Will were causing it.
I lay shaking in the aftermath, not of the Skilling, but Burl's pain. It was a monstrosity larger than my mind could grasp. I tried to sort out all I had sensed in that brief moment. Will, and perhaps some shadow of Carrod's Skill, immobilizing Burl for this punishment. From Carrod there had been poorly masked horror and distaste for this task. Perhaps he feared it would someday be turned upon him again. Will's strongest emotion had been wrath that Burl had had me in his power and somehow let me slip away. But beneath the wrath was a sort of fascination with what Regal was doing to Burl. Will did not take any pleasure in it. Not yet.
But Regal did.
There had been a time when I had known Regal. Never well, it was true. Once he had been simply the younger of my uncles, the one who did not like me at all. He had vented it boyishly, in shoves and clandestine
