Path of Fate (27 page)

Reisil reached out her arm and Saljane climbed onto its unprotected length, careful not to dig her talons into Reisil’s flesh. Bracing her arm across her knees, Reisil brought Saljane up so that she could look into the goshawk’s eyes, her throat knotting as she searched for the right words.

~
It’s complicated for me. I have chosen to follow the path the Lady has set for me, and I don’t want to turn back. I don’t. But I miss my home, and I miss being a tark. I dread seeing Kaval. I cared so much for him—I still do. What kind of person does that make me, knowing what he’s done?

Reisil felt Saljane’s steel touch in her mind. She forced herself to relax, to let her
ahalad-kaaslane
see her memories and feel her emotions. Would her Saljane understand the knotted guilt, betrayal, joy and loss she felt?

Finally the bird withdrew.

~
This does not hurt me. You grieve for what is past. But we are
ahalad-kaaslane
now.

~
And Kaval?

~
Sometimes the egg rots in the nest, though it looks the same as the others,
was Saljane’s terse reply.

In that Reisil understood that whatever confusion and grief she felt for what she’d lost, for how stupid she’d been, for how easy she’d been to deceive, Saljane understood and forgave—even though Reisil could not yet forgive herself. Her tears began again, this time healing tears. That someone
knew
and forgave—it lent her peace. And more.

The tie forged between them would be lifelong, and whatever she’d lost—or rather, whatever she had left behind—she had gained something greater. Without her bond with Saljane, Reisil would not be here searching for Ceriba. No one would. The kidnappers would have spirited her away without hardly a trace. Sodur was right. As a tark Reisil could make a difference to a few, to Kallas. But as an
ahalad-kaaslane
and a tark, she could prevent a war. Blessed Lady willing.

Reisil sniffed and wiped her eyes, touching the gryphon pendant through the material of her shirt. Its essence was the fierce life of the animal world, Saljane’s indomitable will and strength, the heartbeat of the mountains and trees, the rivers and oceans. Blessed Amiya herself.

“Lady, lead me straight and true,” she murmured. “I will follow whatever path you set for me with all my strength and heart. And I’ll not let my feelings for Kaval stop me from what I must do.” She looked at the bird.

~
Let’s get some sleep. We’ve had a difficult journey, and tomorrow we begin again.

“
K
oijots is dead.” Reisil blinked at Glevs, unable to grasp the meaning of his blunt declaration. She glanced at Upsakes, who had sat down on a rock to tighten the laces of his boots. His weirmart crouched on her belly in the thin grass. Both men were streaked with dirt, their clothes torn, hands and faces crosshatched with scores from thorns and thistles. Upsakes had lost his horse, and Glevs’s mare hopped awkwardly along on three legs, carrying her left forefoot off the ground.

“How?” Reisil asked finally.

She had encountered Upsakes and Glevs shortly before noon, having returned to the forest and trailed around its edge. After several hours she had ridden up onto a slope, hoping that Saljane might spy something from that advantage.

The two men emerged out of the trees into the brilliant mountain sunshine a league away. She yelled and waved, but they did not see her, and instead turned away and began picking their way north. She rode after them as fast as she dared, but the pain tincture she’d swallowed that morning was swiftly wearing off and she could not bear too much jostling. Nor did she want to risk the gelding losing his footing on the rocky slope.

She overtook them as the shadows lengthened to fill the rolling space between the foothills and the forest. Glevs called a greeting to her in a glad voice, then delivered his bad news.

“Koijots is dead.”

“How?”

“Tumbled into a ravine,” Upsakes answered. “Right when that foul darkness let up. Startled him, maybe. He’d wandered up to the edge of it—he was leading us along—and then the light came back and he went down. Lucky we didn’t follow him in. Broke his back. Nothing we could do for him.”

Upsakes spoke matter-of-factly, as if discussing what to eat for breakfast. The tone chilled Reisil. She’d have felt better with a hint of the hatred she knew he felt for wizards.

“We’re without a tracker or horses. Ellini help us, for if she doesn’t, I don’t know how we’ll find Ceriba now.” Glevs sounded weary and bleak as he called upon the Patversemese deity of luck and war. Though he did not voice the words, Reisil knew what he was thinking: that they might not find Ceriba in time.

“We will find her without your wizard,” Upsakes declared with a haughty wave of his hand. “We likely have a better chance without him. My guess is that his spell on the boat warned them, led them right to us. So to my mind, the bastard got what he deserved. You can bet good money I won’t be stopped by tawdry wizard tricks. I am
ahalad-kaaslane
and it will take more than a bit of darkness to put
me
off the trail.”

Upsakes’s had stood up and his face had turned a mottled red, his lips twisting. He looked as he had on the boat when he’d attacked her, Reisil realized uneasily. And he was spoiling for a fight.

He got one in Glevs. The Patversemese knight moved more quickly than Reisil could have expected in his condition. In a blink he’d closed on Upsakes and slammed his fist into the other man’s jaw, knocking him back. The crack of the blow echoed against the hills. Glevs drove his other fist into Upsakes’s gut. The other man doubled over, then charged into the knight, driving his shoulder into his gut with the bellowing grunt of a bull.

Then they were rolling on the ground, pummeling each other as Upsakes’s weirmart chirped her distress, racing back and forth in the grass.

Reisil could do nothing to stop them. Shouting did no good. She doubted they even heard her. The dun snorted and tossed his head, edging away from the scrabbling men, and she let him. She wasn’t going to try to break them up. She wasn’t going to get knocked about, tearing open her stitches for such schoolboy nonsense.

She examined the surroundings, debating whether to ride on and leave them to sort themselves out. Riding alone did not worry her, though she carried no weapons and wouldn’t know how to use them if she did. She didn’t fear attacks from bandits. She had more to fear from Upsakes, she thought. He didn’t like her and was clearly capable of a rabid violence. She pitied his poor weirmart, whose plaintive cries had grown more forlorn and desperate as the pounding brawl progressed. She gritted her teeth, annoyed. If she left them, she would only have to find them again later. Time was too much a factor.

So she stood at a distance, watching. After a while their movements grew ponderous, their blows inflicting less damage. Both were blood-soaked and bruised, with swollen lips, eyes and knuckles. Glevs had broken his nose. They drew apart, eyeing each other, then closed again with grunts and curses. All this Reisil cataloged through narrowed eyes, her mouth pinched tight, her nostrils flaring. She supposed Upsakes would be wanting a tark after this. Well, he could bloody well do without!

“Let them look after themselves,” she said aloud.

“Seems they are doing just that.”

Reisil gave a glad cry and twisted about. Kebonsat, Sodur and Juhrnus had come out of the forest, no doubt drawn by the noise of the fight.

“What’s this all about?” Sodur asked, pulling his horse up beside her as he eyed the two combatants.

“Pissing contest,” Reisil said.

“Ah. Just so.”

“You are well?” Kebonsat asked, crossing his wrists over his pommel, his face ominous as he glanced from her black eye to the spectacle before them. “You have been with these rogues?”

Reisil shook her head. “I got separated.” She reached up and touched her eye. The swelling had gone down with a compress of cold river water and witch hazel. “This was just a bump in the night.”

“You wandered about alone through that mess?” Juhrnus sounded surprised and a little bit impressed. Pride surged in Reisil.

“Not alone. I had Saljane and the horse.” She patted the gelding’s golden shoulder. “The company could have been worse.”

“Indeed,” Sodur said meaningfully.

Glevs at last noticed that their audience had grown. He disentangled himself from Upsakes and turned a glad face to Kebonsat.

“Bright heavens! I am pleased to see you.” His nose angled strangely in the middle.

“So I see.”

Glevs had the grace to look shamefaced as he wiped a trickle of blood from his cheek.

“What’s this all about?” Flames tipped in blue ice burned in Kebonsat’s eyes.

“Just settling an argument,” Upsakes said, brushing dirt and grass off his clothing. Like Glevs, his knuckles and hands were bloody and bruised. His left eye was swollen shut while the other was merely a slit. He ignored his weirmart, who clung to his boot, whimpering piteously. “Nothing to trouble anyone else about.”

“Then you won’t mind if we get started after my sister?” Kebonsat said in a frigid voice. “Has anyone seen Koijots?”

Glevs explained what had happened. Kebonsat’s knuckles whitened as he clenched his reins, but he gave no other outward sign of his reaction. But Reisil knew that the two had been close, that Kebonsat had depended on the other man’s counsel and friendship. This was a hard blow, made worse by the fact that with every passing moment, Ceriba was slipping farther away.

“Lume will pick up their sent,” Sodur reassured him. “Shouldn’t be hard. They left a pretty clear trail through the forest. No reason to start hiding it here.”

“I’ve lost my horse,” Upsakes said.

“And mine isn’t worth a damn. She can’t put weight on that foreleg,” Glevs added, sounding as though he were talking through wool, an effect of his broken nose.

“Koijot’s horse?” Juhrnus asked. Reisil glanced at him in surprise. He was thinking.

“Ran off when we sprang the wizard trap,” Upsakes answered. “Probably halfway to Priede by now.”

“Then we’ll have to switch off,” Kebonsat said decisively. “Turn your mare loose, Glevs. She’ll find her way back. Pair up and spread out. Give a shout if you find the trail. Reisiltark, ride with me.”

He turned his mount in the direction of the river canyon and Reisil followed. Sodur and Juhrnus turned the opposite way, leaving Glevs and Upsakes to sort themselves out.

Kebonsat kicked his horse into an easy jog, scanning the ground as they went. He rode in silence for a while, then said, “I had hoped you were not alone in the darkness. Tell me what happened.”

So Reisil related her story to him, pausing here and there to pat the gelding’s shoulder or stroke Saljane, who had moved down to perch on the pommel of the saddle. When she was through, silence descended again, and Reisil was glad not to have to say more, concentrating instead on keeping her seat. Her wounds continued to ache.

“You are a remarkably brave woman,” Kebonsat said suddenly. Reisil experienced a thrill of pleasure at his praise. There were expectations for the
ahalad-kaaslane
: that they would be resourceful, courageous, capable and wise—otherwise why would the Blessed Lady choose them? She felt none of those things. She could cook and mend a broken arm, she could counsel a mother through the grief of losing a child, but she was not rugged, she was not at home in the field or forest, under the stars in mountains or deserts. She was useless in a fight. Still, she
had
kept going in that dreadful darkness when she might have given up; she
had
found a campsite with food and water; she
had
retraced her trail back to her companions. All but Koijots. She shivered. She had nearly walked off the edge of the bluff. A few steps more—She shivered again.

Suddenly Kebonsat pulled up and dismounted, crouching on the ground, his fingers playing over the earth.

“Got you,” he muttered.

He stood and took the hunting horn from his saddle and blew three notes to call the other four searchers back. The sound echoed down the valley. He said nothing as he put up the horn, staring up at the mountains as if demanding they draw aside and reveal his sister. His lips were pressed into a flat line.

“I’m sorry about Koijots,” Reisil said into the silence ranging from him like ripples in a deep, dark pool. He glanced at her and she saw that the flames in his eyes continued to burn with that curious blending of white-hot flames and glacial-blue ice.

“He shouldn’t have died. It’s all wrong.”

“It was an accident,” Reisil said comfortingly. “I very nearly did the same thing.”

Kebonsat made an angry chopping gesture in the air and turned to face her. She felt the intensity of his gaze like a blow and recoiled.

“You are not understanding me. He would not have walked over a cliff into a ravine because he would not have been blind in that darkness. He had wizard-sight.”

“I don’t understand. What is that—wizard-sight?”

“Wizards can see in the dark without any light at all. It’s the basic hallmark of wizardry. Supposedly a gift of the Demonlord. Even the least talented magic-wielder can see in the dark.”

“All of them?”

Kebonsat drew a breath and let it out. “It’s the way the Guild sorts out people with power from those who don’t. Every Sanctuary has a testing gate. It always leads into a lightless maze that ends somewhere in the inner sanctums. The mazes change constantly. Parents bring their children, vagrants come—” He broke off, grimacing. “Anyway, when he was a boy, Koijots was made to walk one of them. He used his sight to escape. So no, he would not have just fallen into a ravine in the dark. Something else happened.”

Reisil stared at him, jumping quickly to the obvious conclusion.

“You’re saying that Glevs or Upsakes—”