She circled back silently, searching for him. Somehow she had talked her way out of it if he had not imagined the whole thing, converting other voices to those he knew. 'Here,' he whispered. She ran at him and shoved a heavy bag into his hands. Together they hurried away from the camp. He knew no one would trace them in this fog, and the terrain was too rough for their traces to show later.
At the base of Muse they paused while he fished in the sack for the food he smelled. He found a wineskin and gulped greedily, squirting it into his mouth It was good, sturdy nomad beer the kind of beverage the crazies never provided. Then he got hold of a loaf of dark bread, and gnawed on it as they climbed.
The edge of his hunger assuaged, Var worried about the fog. If it let up before they reached the top, their secret would be out. Then what would they do?
But it held. With mutual relief they flopped on the mesa, panting. Then they emptied the bag on the ground and feasted.
There was bread, of course. There was roasted meat. There were baked potatoes. There were apples and nuts and even some crazy chocolate. One wineskin held milk, the other the beer.
'How,' Var demanded around a mouthful, 'did you get all this?'
Soli, not really hungry because of the porridge she had already had, experimented again with the beer. She had never had any before today, and it intriged her by its very foulness. 'I asked the Nameless One for it.'
Var choked, spewing potato crumbs out wastefully. 'How why?'
She gulped down another abrasive mouthful of beer repressing its determined urge to come up again, and she told him the story. 'And I wish they weren't enemies,' she finished. 'Sol and the Nameless One-they would like each other, otherwise. Your Master is sort of nice, even though he's terrible.'
'Yes,' Var murmured, thinking of his own intimate five year experience with the man. 'But they aren't really enemies. The Master told me once. They were friends, but they had to fight for some reason. Sol gave the Weapon to his wife, with his bracelet and all. Because she didn't want to die, and she didn't love Sol anyway.'
She looked confused through most of that speech, having top out his inflections, but she reacted immediately to the last of it. 'She did too love him!' she flared. 'She was my mother!'
Be backed away from that aspect, disturbed. 'She's a good woman,' he said after a moment. That seemed to mollify Soli, though he was thinking of the journey he had made with Sola. He could see the resemblance, now, between mother and daughter. But could Sola have loved anyone, to have done what she did? Jumping from man to man, and putting her body to secret service for Var him self? Surely the Master knew she had said he knew yet he allowed it. How could such a thing be explained?
And once more he came up against the problem of his oath to Sola: to kill the man who harmed her child. What sort of a woman Sola was, or why she should be so concerned now for a child she deserted then these things had no mitigating relevance. He had sworn. How could he fight Soli now?
'Friends,' Soli said forlornly. 'I could have told him.'
She gulped more beer and let out a nomhdlike belch. 'Var, if we fight and I kill you then the Weaponless will go away, and she will never see him. Again.' She began to cry once more.
'We can't fight,' Var said, relieved to make it official.
The fog lifted.
'They can see us!' Soli cried, jumping up. This was not true, for the ground remained shrouded, but the nether mists were thinning too. 'They'll know. The sticks!' And she fell down again.
'What's the matter?' Var asked, scrambling to help her.
She rolled her head. 'I feel funny.' Then she vomited.
'The beer!' Var said, angry with himself for not thinking what it would do to her. He had been sick himself, the first time he had been exposed to it. 'You must have drunk a quart while we talked.'
But the bag was not down nearly that much. Soli just hung on him and heaved.
Var grabbed a soft sugared roll and
