He had never sung with her before.
It was as sensual as touching her. More. It was like making love. He knew this, understood it, and set it aside, refusing to think of it, even as his voice went on and on. The music had its own logic, just as lovemaking did. Its own logic and its own imperatives. It wasn’t necessary to think or explain. The thing was of itself, a perfection.
The mules began to move forward on their own. Don and Jamieson followed, their mouths open. Jamieson was stunned at what he was hearing. He had sung with Clarin, but it had not been like this.
Clarin’s voice had almost a baritone-contralto range, as softly mellow in the lower ranges as an organ pipe, as pure in the higher ones as a wooden flute. Tasmin’s range was smaller, lower, the quality of his voice richer, more velvety. The two blended as though they were one.
When they reached the end of the initial melody, Clarin raised the key and began a variation.
Tasmin followed her, effortlessly.
Beneath them the Ogre’s Stair was motionless.
They reached the top on a soaring, endless chord that drifted away into the sky, becoming nothing. The Stair was behind them. As they left it, it sang to them, three tones of enormous interrogation.
Tasmin and Clarin rode on, not noticing, not hearing, oblivious to the world around them.
Don did not have her translator working.
‘Good Lord,’ she breathed, looking toward Jamieson, astonished to find him pale and shivering, tears in his eyes.
‘Jamieson,’ she murmured. Clarin and Tasmin were riding on, not looking at one another, silent. ‘Jamieson?’
‘Just once,’ he mumbled to her. ‘Just once. If I could …’
She nodded, understanding. There was nothing she could say. Poor Jamieson. Too much propinquity. She squeezed his shoulder sympathetically. He loved the girl, and she loved Tasmin, and Tasmin loved – what? Celcy? Jubal?
By the time they reached the bottom of the slope, Clarin was herself once more. She had dug a package of sweet stores out of her pocket and now offered them around.
‘The people tracking us know we’re headed south. And since the only thing you did to stir up suspicion was to come up with the Enigma score, they may realize we’re headed that way.’
Don agreed. ‘When they get out of that valley we left, they’ll hit a major east-west shipping route, with virtually no problems on the way.’
‘We’ll simply have to get there first,’ Tasmin said, lifting a mule foot and staring at it as though fascinated. He was still lost in the music, still finding it hard to connect with reality. ‘We’ve lost a little time dealing with the Ogre, but as I read the charts, I think we can make a fairly short traverse of the Blinders, just east of us, and come into one of the main east-west routes ourselves.’
‘The one that comes through Deepsoil Two, Six, Eight, and Nine?’ Jamieson asked in a fairly normal voice. ‘That’s an easy run. I know every Password on that route.’
‘Good for you, Reb. And Nine is just through the Mystic Range from Harmony.’ He thumped the mule and tightened the cinch, then took a candy from Clarin and sat down beside her. ‘We need to move fast. Justin’s got the interior shut off, and he wouldn’t have done that unless he expected the CHASE Commission to arrive momentarily. As soon as he gets their verdict, he’ll send word to the troops, and anything we have to say will come much too late.’
Jamieson nodded. ‘What do you think we have, at best? A few days? A few weeks? That, at most, if we’re going to show them anything while they’re here. We’ve got to collect our evidence and then get back to the Deepsoil Coast at a dead run.’
With the situation thus delineated, unaccountably they all felt better. The situation was fully as bad as they had thought it was and they were all agreed on it, which relieved each of them of having to worry it out individually. Don even managed a quirky smile at the sight of Clarin trying to replace her lost crystal mouse by baiting a new and elusive beast with candy. It evaded capture, and they mounted once more, setting out at a good pace toward the Blinders.
After that, they did not seem to pause, not for days. Sleep came and went in brief periods of exhausted slumber, forgotten all too soon, along with snatched meals and hasty relief stops. Jamieson fought them through the Blinders, finding an amazing strength from somewhere, this time leaving them with mouths open. They left the last of the crystal towers in the evening when the refracted light from the setting sun made it almost impossible to see anything in any direction and found themselves on the open trail to Deepsoil Two with only easy Passwords between themselves and the dirt town. In Two, Tasmin requisitioned four additional mules from the citadel, letting their own animals trail along unburdened for most of the following day as they caught up with and joined a caravan headed east and stayed with it all the way into Deepsoil Six. The caravan rested for eight hours, but Tasmin and company slept only five, rising in the dark to continue on the way, timing their departure to let them come to the first intervening Presences at dawn.
Clarin caught a crystal mouse in the ’lings above Deepsoil Eight.
She had it half tamed by the time they reached Nine, feeding it crumbs and singing repetitive melodies to it, to which the others dreamed as they rode.
Jamieson sang them through the Startles, above Harmony to the west, and they planned to sleep that night in the caravansery. There was no citadel in Harmony, but the caravansery manager put himself out to be as useful as possible, fetching food and towels and assorted oddments to a running commentary.
‘Nice to have a group
