Cybele's Secret (28 page)

Duarte peered up between the trees, looking doubtful. He began to say something, then closed his mouth, perhaps remembering he had promised not to make dismissive remarks. “All right,” he said, “for want of anything better, we’ll try it.”

A little later we headed off up the mountain, the vista of open sea behind us rapidly disappearing as we entered a realm of damp, dark forest. The small boat would be taken back out to the
Esperança,
which would sail into the neighboring bay and wait for our return. They would row around to look for us the day after tomorrow, and then every day until we reappeared.

The men carried packs. I had offered to bear my own supplies, but Stoyan would have none of it. My blanket, water bottle, and share of the rations were stowed away with his. We all had weapons. Stoyan had given me one of his to put in my belt: a small, very sharp knife in a leather sheath. I could not imagine using it and was not at all sure it made me feel safer. Duarte carried an extra burden. In his pack, liberated from its box and tied up instead in many layers of soft cloth, traveled Cybele’s Gift.

It was already late in the day. I knew the most important thing was to get as far as we could while it was still light, then find a place of shelter. We wasted no breath in talking. We climbed, keeping the pace as steady as we could, and for a long time the track went straight up and the terrain remained the same: a dense forest of conifers mixed with broad-leaved oaks and beeches, floored with mud, leaf litter, and, here and there, stony outcrops that were a test for my short legs. Many small streams gushed down the hillside, evidence of heavy spring rains. Each time we stopped to check our progress and catch our breath, Duarte stared at me in apparent amazement.

“Don’t look so surprised,” I said eventually. “I was born and bred on slopes like these, just as Stoyan was.”

“I’m grateful you’re not slowing us down,” said Duarte. He spoke to Pero in rapid Portuguese, then turned back to us. “If we can reach that big outcrop before the light fades too much further, we may be able to see whether this track meets the one we wanted. No point in going up if we can’t get over the—”

He had gone suddenly still, staring up to the rocks he had mentioned, an odd formation that looked a little like a cat’s head.

“What?” I asked. “Did you see something?”

Duarte frowned. “I thought—no, it’s not there now. Something fluttering, like a flag, up above the rocks. I must have been mistaken.”

“What color?” I asked. “Black?”

He gave me a searching look. “Why?”

“Nothing.” I had not forgotten the way he dismissed my visions as those of an impressionable young girl. He would learn, I thought. Tati was probably up there even now, beckoning us onward. I hoped very much that she did not expect us to traverse this hillside at night. Very soon the only light would be the moon, and it would be deathly cold.

“You’re shivering.” Stoyan was by my side, taking my hands between his and massaging them to warm them up. We both wore sheepskin gloves. Mine were several sizes too big, and I could not wear them on the steepest pitches, where I needed to slip my fingers between the rocks to haul myself up.

“I’m all right.” Our breath was making clouds before our lips. A thin mist was rising up the slopes, insinuating itself between the trees to wrap around our ankles. “We should move on.”

By the time we reached the outcrop, it was clear we would have to camp there for the night. The light was going and with it the last traces of warmth from the air. We halted at the foot of the massive rock formation. Pero and Duarte went off to climb up and assess the wider terrain while they still could. Stoyan and I looked for a place of shelter and found a shallow cave with a patch of open ground in front. He gathered fallen wood for a fire, finding some dryish branches under the natural cover of protruding rocks. I undid the pack and got out our blankets and rations. I found a flint and dry tinder, neatly wrapped in oiled cloth.

“Stoyan, I suppose it is all right for us to make a fire? What about that other ship?”

“Without it, we freeze.” Stoyan dragged a larger log across toward the stack he had made. “Your Portuguese friend may be obsessed with his quest, but I do not think he is a fool.”

“It may not matter anyway,” I said, thinking aloud. “We’re well ahead of the Mufti’s men, and perhaps it’s not so very far to this place.” I wouldn’t even think about plague. “Maybe the two tracks meet at the top, and we can still go over the pass as Duarte originally intended.”

We had the fire crackling by the time the others returned. I saw Duarte’s face and spoke before he could. “I know someone might see it. We weighed that against the possibility of dying of cold or being too cramped to go on in the morning. This is our decision.” He raised his eyebrows but said nothing. “Duarte, what could you see from up there?”

“Nothing conclusive. We should go on up at first light. This track must lead somewhere, and it seems the only possible option for reaching this village, if we cannot use the path from the plague settlement. It’s just that…”

My heart sank still further. “What?” I asked.

“The map is incomplete, so I must rely on the long-ago account of my shipmate for clues to the way. I have not visited this place before. There seemed no point in that unless I had found Cybele’s Gift. I did not think to learn the terrain here, to anticipate difficulties. I should have planned more carefully.”

“You couldn’t have foreseen plague,” I pointed out. “Nor that you would have us with you. What did your shipmate tell you?”

“He did not mention a second path. Indeed, I could swear he said the village was so isolated there was only one track in and out.”

“Then why are you suggesting we go on in the morning?” asked Stoyan, frowning. “What is the point of that if you believe this track will not take us to our destination?”

“Wait a bit.” I was thinking hard as I held my hands up to the fire, trying to get some feeling back into my fingers. “Perhaps Mustafa wouldn’t have told you. Perhaps this path is secret, a way that would only reveal itself to the person who brought back Cybele’s Gift.” As soon as I said this, I felt instinctively that it was true. “You saw that tree down at the bottom,” I added. “Gifts for a deity of some kind, a nature god or goddess—that’s the kind of place where folk leave them, an old tree by a spring. A spot where earth meets water. Cybele’s path.”

“That is more leap of imagination than logical deduction,” Duarte said, but he was gazing into the fire as if giving the idea serious consideration.

“No, Duarte,” I said. “It’s a mixture of scholarship and intuition. And experience, but I am not going to discuss that part of it with you, since you more or less called me a liar last time I mentioned it. I know about this kind of thing. This is the right path. We just have to keep going up and following the signs.”

“Signs?”

“Trust me,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “Now, are we going to try cooking, or is supper to be strips of dried meat eaten cold?”

I’d been worrying about our sleeping arrangements. It was one thing to have Stoyan lying on guard across the outer doorway at the han, or in the next-door cabin on the
Esperança
listening for intruders. It was quite another for me, at seventeen, to have to share a small cave with three adult men and to be obliged to lie close to at least one of them to keep even tolerably warm. Now that it was time to bed down for the night, I found myself suddenly bereft of all social confidence. I stood shivering by the fire, wishing I was back home again.

“Here.” Pero spoke in halting Greek from within the cave, where he had been quietly laying out bedding. “
Senhora
Paula, Stoyan, Pero, Duarte. Senhora near fire. Good for sleep. Yes?”

“Thank you, Pero,” I said. “That arrangement sounds extremely sensible.”

Pero grinned at me, showing several gaps in his teeth. “I am father of seven children, senhora. Seven children, two beds. Is the same, yes?”

“Not quite,” observed Duarte. “Still, it would take a man with more fortitude than mine to consider getting up to any tricks when it’s as cold as this. Sweet dreams, my friends.”

Before he rolled himself into his blanket next to Pero, he set Cybele’s Gift in the cave, safely to one side where nobody could harm it with a sudden movement. Within its shroud of wrappings, it cast an odd shadow on the cave wall, round and bulging.
Make me whole.
Tomorrow, perhaps we would do just that.

Even with the fire in front of me and the solid form of Stoyan at my back, I was almost too cold to sleep. I kept dropping off, then waking with a start to the deep silence of the nighttime forest, punctuated by the cries of birds and by vague squeakings and rustlings. The first time I did this, Stoyan adjusted his blanket so it was over the two of us. The second time he murmured something that sounded like poetry as I gradually fell asleep again. The tone was soothing, though I could not understand the language. The third time I woke, trembling with cold, his arm came around me, moving me closer against him, and the chill began to retreat from my body. “Thank you,” I whispered. I felt his breath warm against my hair, but now he said nothing at all.

I awoke in the morning groggy with tiredness and sore from lying on the ground, but certainly not cold. As I sat up and rubbed my eyes, I realized that I had four blankets and someone’s cloak over me, with a folded jacket under my head. The cave was empty; all the others were up. The fire had been quenched, and Duarte was busy covering the ashes with soil. Pero was stuffing items into a pack.

“I was about to wake you,” Stoyan said. He was sitting on the rocks near me with a cup in his hands. “Please drink this. You need something in your stomach before we move on.”

I drank. It was a hideous brew of dried meat and stale bread soaked in water; I hoped I would never have to sample it again. Still, it was food and it was warm. They must have only just put out the fire. The sun wasn’t even up yet.

“We’re heading on straightaway,” said Duarte as Pero gathered the blankets, folding and stowing them each in turn. “With luck we’ll reach the mountain village while the sun is high and have shelter tonight. I don’t want you sleeping out in the open again if it can be avoided.”

“I’m an equal member of the expedition, remember?” I said, trying for a smile. “No special privileges, no concessions. Not that I’ll refuse a warmer bed if it’s offered. Excuse me, I need to go off into the forest for a little.”

I was squatting under a tree, making sure none of the men could see me, when a black-robed woman manifested in the shadows nearby: not Tati this time but an old crone, peering at me with her sunken dark eyes, her face as pale and crumpled as worn parchment. She could have been a sister of the ancient juniper down at the water’s edge, a thing of old earth, a survivor of many lifetimes of men. I had never felt more exposed or more vulnerable.

“It’s time,” she said, and once again I did not know what language she spoke, only that I understood it from instinct. “Sharpen your wits. You will have sore need of them before this day is out. Tighten your courage. And watch your balance.”

I nodded, wondering if I could ask questions or whether she might vanish if I spoke.

“Remember,” she said. “Remember what once seemed the most important thing of all. And learn. Learn wisdom. Go safely, Paula.” And she was gone, not fading away, not stumping off into the forest, not disappearing in a flash and a bang, just…gone.

I didn’t say anything when I got back to the outcrop, though Duarte observed that I was looking paler than usual and whistled the first line of
Paula, de brancura singela
in a thoughtful sort of way. The men already had their packs on their backs, and we set off up the mountain as the sun appeared above the horizon, veiled by clouds. The first part was steep. We scaled the side of the outcrop to pause on a level patch and gaze out at the view Stoyan and I had missed yesterday: a broad vista over the Black Sea, with headlands to both sides. The mist was rapidly clearing from the tree-clad slopes below us. We could see the
Esperança
at anchor in the next inlet, her sails furled, and several little islands not far from shore. There was a coastal settlement in the distance, a long way farther to the east. And moored in the cove from which we had begun our assault on the mountain, small as a toy on the sheltered water, there floated a stately three-master with sails of an unmistakable russet red.

The pursuers must have sailed by night to catch us. It was possible they’d reached the cove in darkness and begun to climb while we were still asleep. The ascent became a race, and I gritted my teeth and got on with it, determined not to hold the men back. Mountain-bred I might be, but my legs were shorter than everyone else’s, and my hands were soon bleeding with the effort of clinging on and hauling myself up.

The men weren’t saying much, and nor was I. I tried not to think too hard about what would happen if the pursuers caught up with us. I remembered the Janissary guards at the han, big, well-armed men with purposeful faces. We were only four; who knew how many of them might be climbing after us?

To distract myself, I thought about what the crone had said to me. It seemed I had a job to do and that it was possible for me to succeed at it, provided I followed her instructions. Wits: Yes, I was not short of those. Courage: If I failed there, Stoyan had enough for two. Balance: It depended, I thought as I clambered up a rock face, stretching for an impossible grip, on what kind of balance was meant. Pero reached down from above, seized my wrists, and pulled me bodily up. I gasped a thank-you before tackling the next climb.

Remember what once seemed the most important thing of all.
What could that be? My family? My home? The Other Kingdom? I hoped I would understand what the old woman had meant before it was too late. As for
Learn wisdom,
I was a scholar, wasn’t I? I’d been trying to make myself wiser for years. I pictured the crone stopping the people who were on our trail and giving them the same advice she had offered me. Under the sweat that now coated my body, I felt cold. Perhaps it was a game for her, like chess, black against white, and the four of us a team of king, queen, knight, rook, playing it out on the mountain as if on an inlaid board. Maybe the old woman didn’t care who won. Maybe we were just entertainment.

We paused high on the flank of the mountain, beside a field of loose scree. One false step would mean a rapid, sliding descent back to the tree line.

“I can’t see a path from this point,” Duarte said. “We’ll have to find some sort of goat track around those cliffs. But I don’t see how that could lead to the place we want; there would have to be a—” He stopped short.

“A what?” I asked, wishing we had not stopped to confer, for the moment I ceased walking, my body began to remind me that it hurt all over and needed a good rest.

“A bridge,” Duarte muttered, his eyes distant. “Mustafa mentioned a bridge. Something about taxes and trade.”

“It seems unlikely,” Stoyan said. “How could trade affect such an out-of-the-way place? There must be nothing up here but the most isolated villages. Imagine it in winter.”

“Maybe there is a back way in,” I said. “There is a bigger settlement along the coast to the east; we saw it. If that has an anchorage for trading vessels and tax is payable there before the goods are sent off with caravans inland, this could be a way to sneak things by.”

“Whether your theory is correct or not,” said Duarte, “we must try the cliffs or retreat and meet the pursuer on his way up. No choice, in my view. I hope you have a good head for heights.” He glanced at me, not altogether joking.

“Come,” said Stoyan. “If we must negotiate a cliff path, let us do so while the Mufti’s men are well behind.”

“Of course,” I felt obliged to say, “if there is a bridge, it would be more logical for it to connect with a path down to that eastern settlement, not to a village on the other side of the mountains.”

“So,” Duarte said, hands on hips, “what is your advice?”

“Logic tells me this path doesn’t go where we need it to. Instinct tells me it’s the right path. Make of that what you will.” A bird had alighted on the rocks just ahead of us as I spoke, a large black crow. Its wings had a tattered look, its eyes a bright wildness, intent, unsettling. “In fact, I’m absolutely sure this is the way,” I added.
Follow the crow,
I nearly said, but stopped myself. I didn’t want Duarte to think me completely mad.

There was a path around the cliffs. It was so narrow I did not dare look down. The rock surface was pitted and crumbling. My limbs shook. My mind went numb with terror. I could not imagine any goat in its right mind choosing to go this way.

Duarte went first, with me next. I kept forgetting to breathe. Stoyan came after me, once or twice reaching out an arm to steady me or offering calm, quiet instructions. Pero was at the end, dogged and silent. I did have the advantage of being smaller and lighter than any of them, but the boots I’d been lent on the
Esperança
were not a good fit, and I was never more relieved than the moment I stepped off the tiny ledge onto more solid ground, to be enveloped in an embrace by Duarte before seeing the others in turn reach the safety of the broad, treed hollow where we stood.

“You’re a brave girl, Paula,” the pirate said. He still had me folded to his chest and seemed in no hurry to let go. My heart was beating fast, whether through terror, relief, or something quite different I was not sure. “I’m proud of you,” Duarte added in a murmur.

“It’s the thought of doing it all again on the way back that really bothers me,” I said with a shaky smile, and stepped away from his embrace.

“If we can find another way, we will,” he said. “Trust me on that. Now—”

There was a whir and a thump, and Pero gave a strangled gasp before collapsing to his knees by our side. My eyes went wide with horror. Something was sticking out of his calf, and he moaned as he clutched at it. Blood ran down his trouser leg and onto his boot. I had just time to identify the thing as a crossbow bolt; then Stoyan grabbed me and shoved me back under the cover of some straggly bushes. The crow, with a derisive caw, settled on a branch above me.

I stayed where I’d been put, watching Duarte and Stoyan as they moved like a team, keeping their voices low. Neither looked back along the cliff path. To lean out was to put oneself in the path of a second missile. I did not hear any sounds of pursuit, falling stones, or voices, but I knew we did not have long. Stoyan picked Pero up without apparent effort and shifted him to a more sheltered position. Duarte hunted items out of his pack. The two of them crouched beside the stricken man, busying themselves. I could see blood on Pero’s face; he had sunk his teeth into his lip to stop himself from crying out. I wasn’t prepared to stay crouching in cover while they worked, so I came out and held things for them as Stoyan set his hands to the bolt and drew it out with an unpleasant sucking noise. Duarte applied pressure to the wound. Pero endured the operation without a sound. Stoyan ripped lengths off his own shirt to improvise a dressing.

“Where are they?” I whispered as the last knot was tied. Fresh blood was already seeping through the linen. “How far behind us?”

“Too close,” muttered Duarte. “They must have been climbing in the dark, or they’d never have caught up. They must be right at the other end of the cliff path, probably waiting for us to move on. They’ll be vulnerable once they start to come along that ledge. We must go now. Pero…” He addressed his friend in Portuguese, his tone confident and warm. Pero’s face was an unlikely shade of gray. He was trying to smile. I looked at Stoyan and he looked at me. He was transferring items from Pero’s pack to his own.

“I can carry it,” I said. “You’ve got too much already.”

“I’ll take it, Paula. Pero’s going to need help. I want you to go ahead and find the path.”

Duarte indicated agreement with a jerk of his head. Perhaps the grim, weary look on his face was reflected on mine; I could not tell. I knew that forcing Pero to go on went against all rules for the care of the seriously injured. But now that our pursuers had shown their true colors, we had no choice.

“And, Paula,” said Stoyan as the two of them helped Pero to rise, supporting him between them, “if you need to use that knife I gave you, don’t hesitate. Promise me.”

The cliff path had taken us below the level of the scree, and we now entered another area of trees, where a broader, easier way opened out. We kept up a reasonable pace thanks to the combined strength of Stoyan and Duarte, who helped Pero as we went, but before long the path began to climb again, winding uphill between rocks overhung with creeping thorn bushes. The crow was still with us, flying ahead to land and wait, gazing at us with its impenetrable eyes.

I paused on top of a rise, turning to look back, and caught a flash of something between the trees lower down: a color that did not belong in the grays and browns and greens of the forested hillside, a movement I thought was human. “I can see them,” I muttered as Stoyan came up beside me. “I don’t think we can keep ahead much longer.”

“Where’s the bird?”

“You noticed? Still following this path. So I suppose all we can do is go on and hope.” Now I could see more of them, five, six men, moving purposefully up the hill a few hundred yards behind us. My heart felt like a cold stone in my chest.

“Keep going, Paula,” Stoyan said. “If the ground levels out up there, run.”

Duarte was helping Pero up the rise; Stoyan reached out a strong hand and hauled the injured man up beside us. Pero said something in Portuguese and made a gesture indicating that he could walk and that we should go on and stop worrying about him. The bandage on his leg was stained red.

“Quickly,” Duarte said. “Go.”

The ground leveled, and I ran. The path, such as it was, went around a bluff, then cut between high rock walls where mountain plants grew in crevices, their tiny flower faces turned up toward the cloud-veiled sun. The crow flew ahead, not crying out now but winging with intent along the narrow way. My legs ached; my head was dizzy; my breath rasped in my chest. I knew, deep inside me, that even with Stoyan on our side, we could not hope to prevail against so many attackers. Crossbows were probably only the first step. It was very possible we were all about to die. Wits, courage, balance. How could I employ any of them when I was so frightened I couldn’t think straight?

The rock walls opened out. I halted so abruptly that Duarte, who was next in line, almost crashed into me. We were standing on the very lip of a deep, narrow rift in the mountainside. I made myself look down and saw a thread of pale blue: a waterway far below us. Birds were wheeling in space above the river, mere dots against the gray of rock, the dark green of forest. It was a fearsome drop. A short distance along the path that skirted this ravine was a little hut and beside it a fire with smoke rising in a lazy plume up the side of the gorge. And there was a bridge: a ramshackle suspended construction of ropes and wooden slats, with a single knotted line as a handhold. It spanned the gap, a tenuous link to the other side, where the path began again, winding across a bare expanse of hillside to a great wall of rock. Dark foliage in a band screened the foot of that cliff. An odd formation of low cloud, like a localized mist, clung to its top, blotting out the view of the mountain behind. In and out of this haze flew waves of dark birds. I heard their screaming cries, like warnings to come no closer. It seemed to me a place of magic, strange and mysterious. Gazing at it, I felt an odd sense of recognition. The crow took wing and headed across the divide; it needed no bridge.

“Over there,” I said as Pero came up beside us. Stoyan had not yet appeared. “Where those cliffs are, that’s the place we must go.” After that first glance, I tried not to look at the bridge.

Duarte muttered something in Portuguese, and we headed along the path. We had taken only a few steps when a commanding voice shouted in Turkish, “Halt!” From inside the little hut appeared a man with a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. He wore a soldier’s gear, protective leather over garments of padded cotton. “What is your business here? No passing!” At least that was how I interpreted his words.

Duarte began an explanation in fluent Turkish, accompanied by much eloquent waving of hands. The guard shook his head, pointing back the way we had come. A moment later a second man, then a third, emerged from the small hut. All were heavily armed; each wore the same implacable expression. Duarte began again, and this time the first guard cut him off with a single, snapped word.

“What is he saying? Tell them we must get over!” I said, wondering why there was no sign of Stoyan. Could he be back there fighting off the pursuers all by himself? “Tell them we’re being followed by men with crossbows!”

“They say nobody can pass without the authority of the local administrator,” Duarte said. “Something about taxes and contraband. They suggested a thorough search of our packs and our persons might be in order.”

“There’s no time!” I thought I could hear noises back along the path, the sound of many booted feet. I tried my basic Turkish. “Please let us pass!”

The first guard glared at me. “The bridge is closed!” he barked.

An impasse. We would stand here arguing until the enemy came up and killed us. It would be all too easy on the edge of a precipice. These guards would probably stand by their little fire drinking tea and watching it happen.

“Go back,” the first guard said. “Leave this place.”