A Sword From Red Ice (43 page)

Just like her foster father. Penthero Iss seldom
deigned to answer questions he judged beneath him. It was a fact she
had realized early on. As a young girl she'd worked hard to ask her
foster father intelligent questions. Why did the ambassador from Ille
Glaive ask not to be seated next to the Whitehog at dinner? If the
crop fails in the eastern bread plains where would the city buy its
grain? She'd wanted to please him so badly, wanted desperately to
hear those rare words of praise: Almost-daughter, you're such a good
girl.

Halting memories of her foster father before they
could hurt her. Ash rubbed the nose of her gelding. On a whim, she
held the horse back, opening some space between herself and Lan
Fallstar. Gray mist poured in to fill it.

Why did she feel the need to talk to him? And why
was she disappointed when he dismissed her? She didn't understand
it. His coldness should be repellent, but it wasn't.

Suddenly she missed Ark and Mal very much. While
she was with them she felt as if she were part of something.
Included. They might have only revealed a small portion of their
knowledge and secrets, but it was enough to give her hope that over
time she would learn more. Ark Veinsplitter and Mal Naysayer were the
reason she had become Sull. The two Far Riders were honorable and
full of purpose, and she had assumed that all Sull were the same. Lan
Fallstar was different. He kept her on the outside, withholding
information. Keeping secrets.

She'd played this game before with Penthero Iss.
Her foster father had been a master at keeping secrets. For seventeen
years he'd concealed the true reason he'd adopted her as his
daughter. Was something similar happening here? Did Lan know she was
the Reach? Ash watched as Lan rode ahead of her into the mist. If he
suspected she was more than she appeared, he was doing a fine job of
feigning ignorance. He treated her as if she were a lesser being;
someone just pretending to be Sull. Last night when she had asked Lan
to raise the small wolfskin tent he carried in one of his saddlebags,
he had told her they would sleep out in the open. "If you want
to lie in this mist then go ahead," she had replied. "I'll
sleep in the tent."

"No," he had told her coldly. "Sull
need no cover on a full moon."

It had felt like a slap in the face. If there was
a custom here she was not familiar with, why could he not simply
explain it? Why did he treat her with contempt? And why did she let
it hurt her?

She had spent a miserable night, rolled in her
cloak and drowned in vapor. When she'd woken, her hair was glistening
with thousands of tiny drops of moisture. The Far Rider was sitting
on his saddlebag, facing southeast. Fingers of mist were curling past
his blank and open eyes. As soon as she moved he stirred. His face
was pale, the skin around the jaw oddly slack. He asked her to tend
to the horses while he rebuilt the fire. She had been eager to do his
bidding.

By the time she'd returned from feeding, watering
and brushing down the horses Lan was back to his normal self. He did
not speak to her as they ate their breakfast of dried horsemeat and
raw and fertilized snipe eggs.

Disappointed, Ash had looked out at the prison of
trees and wondered when she would see the end of them. The first
night she had met Lan Fallstar, he had warned her about the birches.
What day had he said the insanity set in? She knew he had been
referring to a person traveling alone and without knowledge, but she
felt it anyway. He rarely spoke to her, and as she had no
understanding of how the forest was laid out she was left with the
dizzying sense that she was walking the same path over and over
again. It was as if the birches were revolving in a great wheel
around her. She had no way of gauging her progress.

Today, with the mist swirling at knee height and
the clouds low and hazy, the world had been reduced to a band of
stakes. She couldn't even carry out her normal job, which was to
collect any stray branches that had snapped from the trees—she
could not see the forest floor. From time to time, she would step on
a branch, snapping it in two, and would pick it up and add it to the
bundle on the gelding's rump. She had a sense that by gathering the
fallen branches she was doing more than merely collecting firewood.
The task had the feeling of housekeeping about it. It was as if by
removing any identifiable marks, she was maintaining the birch way.
When she had asked Lan about this his only reply had been, "It
is forbidden to cut down the birches."

Ash wished she knew more about the Sull. Her lack
of knowledge made her vulnerable. Right now she existed at Lan's
mercy, and she did not know enough about men and Sull to judge
whether this made her safe or unsafe. She did not know her own worth.

She knew he watched sometimes; when she slipped
off her cloak and dress to wash and sleep, when she rubbed grease
into her arms and legs, and loosened her hair. During her final year
in Mask Fortress, she had grown accustomed to frank attention from
men. Some had told her she was beautiful, others had whistled as she
rode across the quad. She had not disliked the attention. Sometimes
she had even invited more of it. It gave her an intoxicating little
thrill of power.

Whenever she caught Lan watching her she made a
point of prolonging whatever action she had been doing. She was not
fully Sull and he disdained her for that fact; but here was something
that she had that he desired. There was more to it than that, though.
That was the confusing thing. She felt attraction toward him too.

Whenever they shared the small wolfskin tent she
found herself thinking about him. The tent was raised on a frame of
hollow canes and the skins had been expertly cut and stitched to fit
it snugly and seal out rain and wind. When you were inside you felt
closed off from the world. Light coming in through the skins was
amber and golden and strangely shaped; the skins acted like stained
glass. The sleeping space was small, perhaps eight feet by six, and
when they were both lying within it, Ash became herself acutely
self-aware. Roll over just half a foot and she would touch him. The
thought disturbed and excited her, and two nights back when they had
last shared the tent she had spent several hours awake, resisting the
urge to push herself closer. Even through the thickness of her
blankets and furs she could feel his warmth. Or imagined she felt it.
She also imagined that he was in the same state of awareness that she
herself was. There was a false evenness to his breaths, not unlike
her own, and a stillness to his body that seemed too controlled for
someone who slept.

When Ash awoke in the morning she saw that the
half-foot of space separating them from each other had been expertly
maintained.

They had not shared a tent since then, but even
this morning as she washed her face and neck with snow he had watched
her through the flames of the fire. Later as he helped her saddle the
gelding he had leant in toward her as she leant toward the horse and
she had felt his hand touch her hip. It could have been an innocent
miscalculation, but Lan Fallstar did not strike her as the kind of
person who would mistake what he did with his body.

The touch had left her in a queer state of shock
and restlessness. She was beginning to think the birches were getting
to her. Nothing was making any sense. If Lan had wanted to touch her
why hadn't he just come out and done it openly? And why had he
treated her with contempt since then, answering her questions with
the shortest possible responses and sometimes not even answering at
all?

Ash ran her hands down her long blonde hair,
wringing it free of mist. The gap between her and Lan Fallstar had
widened and she found herself not anxious to close it. It had to be
close to midday now yet the sun remained a distant and shadowy
presence keeping pace with them through the trees, and the mist
continued to thrive. She was only just beginning to comprehend how
little she knew of anything in the world beyond Mask Fortress. Her
maid Katia had coupled with dozens of men—and she had been a
year younger than Ash. Katia would have known what to make of Lan
Fallstar's behavior. She would have taken charge of things and turned
the situation to her best advantage. Ash paused to think about that.
No, Katia wouldn't have really acted that coldly. She had enjoyed
coupling with men. "Sweet and delicious as peaches," she'd
told Ash once. "You should try it when you get the chance."

Flustered, Ash set aside the subject. She glared
at the trees. She was beginning to hate them. The ground was spongy
here. It was strange to crunch through hard snow and then feel the
earth spring back. Perhaps that was one way Lan navigated, the
texture of the earth beneath his feet.

Deciding she'd had enough walking, Ash stilled the
gelding and mounted. The sound of leather snapping and metal striking
metal broke the silence like a series of small explosive charges. She
had not realized how quiet the forest was until that moment. Birds
weren't even calling.

"Stay where you are." Lan Fallstar's
voice came from a white and hazy point in the distance.

She could not see him, even with the extra height
of the horse. With an expert adjustment of the reins she turned the
gelding in the direction she hoped was east. Away from Lan Fallstar.
The sturdy little horse seemed up for a trot and struck a path
through the mist. The crowns of the birches were so high that hitting
branches wasn't a problem, and the birches themselves were spaced
well enough apart that a way through could be navigated at a trot. It
felt good to ride away. She had agreed to become Sull at an
unknowable cost to herself and Raif Sevrance. She had not agreed to
trot behind a Sull Far Rider like a [missing].

She was Ash March, foundling, left outside
Vaingate to die. That had not drained away with her blood. She was
almost-daughter to a surlord, and that had not changed either.

Ark Veinsplitter and Mal Naysayer had treated her
with respect. Daughter, Ark had called her. Lan Fallstar didn't even
use her name. So why was she so anxious to please him?

It was all very confusing. Like the birch way.
Glancing around, Ash realized she had no way of telling how far she
and the gelding had come. Every tree looked like the one she had just
passed. A stirring of wind had made the mist choppy, and clouds
sprayed up in loose waves. Slowing the gelding to walk she breathed
it in and tried to calm herself.

She could hear no sound of pursuit. Now that the
heat was leaving her she felt foolish and a bit afraid. Would it be
possible to retrace her steps? A look over her shoulder revealed a
landscape of haunted trees. If Lan Fallstar stood amongst them he was
hidden by the mist.

The stubborn part of her wanted to continue on her
path, just carry on going and somehow muscle her way out, but the
practical part warned her to go back now while she was still pretty
certain how far she had come. This was Sull land, she reminded
herself. She could not be entirely sure that the mystery of the
birches was purely physical. Strange sorceries might be woven between
the trunks. Ark had told her about the Sull maygi and necromancers,
men and women who birthed ancient magics by the dark of moon and
lived apart in high sea caves and open towers. It would be only
natural that such powers be used in defending the one thing they
cared about above all others: defending their borders. What if she
could never escape?

"Come on, boy," she said, kicking her
heels into the gelding's belly and making the creature turn. This
wasn't going to be pretty, having to return to Lan Fallstar with her
tail between her legs, but it would be a lot less pretty if she
turned insane and started loving the trees.

It took her over an hour to find him. Lan Fallstar
was leaning against a birch, peeling an apple with her sickle knife.
The knife's weighted chain swung lazily between his legs as he cut a
continuous strip from the fruit. He studied Ash as she approached but
did not speak. Ash pressed her lips together and made herself busy
dismounting the gelding, removing its bit, and loosening its belly
cinch. "This Sull hopes you enjoyed your ride." Ash had
been in the process of unfastening the saddle straps and she had her
back toward the Far Rider. She paused, fingers on the brass buckles,
and thought of several ways to reply. None of them friendly. He had
known she would come back. This annoyed her. She was annoyed also by
the fact that he was using the knife that had been given to her as a
gift by Ark Veinsplitter.

As she turned to give him a piece of her mind, he
held the peeled apple and the knife out toward her and said, "They
are yours." His sharply beautiful face was hard to read. "Take
them."

Ash came forward and stopped a few feet before
him, suddenly awkward. He pushed himself off the tree and took the
remaining steps to meet her. Holding out his palms he offered her the
apple and the knife. The exposed meat of the apple was starting to
brown. If there was a trap here she could not discern what it might
be. Quickly she took the items from him. Their hands and wrists
touched briefly, and the contact and the whole situation felt so
confusing she had to turn away.

"You can give the apple to the horse. This
Sull will not be offended."

Surprised by the humor in his voice, she looked
over her shoulder. Lan Fallstar was smiling, and it was such a warm
and unexpected sight that she smiled right back at him. She was aware
of an immense sense of relief, but hardly knew why.

"When two people are parted in the birch way
it is best if one stays close to the original point. That way it
becomes possible for the second person to find her way back."

Ash nodded softly. After days of short and
impatient replies, his explanation seemed like a kindness. Now it was
she who had nothing to say to him, and she wrapped the chain
carefully around the sickle blade's handle and went to feed the apple
to the gelding.