Summerblood (44 page)

“I suppose we
could
continue on to War-Hold if you really want to,” Strynn told Div, as she flung herself down on the bed pad she'd just stretched across the floor of the roofless foyer in what had once been an Argen-a summer hold, a dozen shots north of War-Hold-Winter. “It's not like we don't have plenty of time. It's just that I don't think it's wise.”

Div paused where the main door had been, and turned, hands on hips, a currycomb in one hand. “I'm at least as tired as you are,” she sighed. “And I agree that we can't afford to have you recognized. But
you
have to agree that the idea of sleeping in a real bed again does have a certain charm.”

“As it does for me,” Strynn assured her. “I truly thought Ixti would've missed this place. And, to be fair, there are so many people working down there, I suspect we
could
pass without notice. In the dark, anyway. But I still wouldn't advise it.”

Div motioned toward something outside Strynn's line of sight. “At least the bathhouse is still intact.”

Strynn flopped against a wall covered with flaking fresco. “This may be the last one, though.”

Div's gaze shifted toward the horses barely visible in the forecourt beyond. The stables' stone walls were smoke-stained, but otherwise intact—as was the roof. “Maybe a roof would be good for the beasts,” she murmured absently.

As if agreeing with her, one whinnied obligingly.

Div glanced around sharply, first at the animals, then at Strynn. A scowl creased her brow as she cocked her head.

Strynn straightened where she stood. Div looked alarmed, and it took a lot to alarm her friend. “Something wrong?” she demanded, even as her hand sought a dagger.

Div shrugged, but the scowl remained. “I don't know.”

More whinnying. Div spun around and looked Strynn square in the eye. “Did you say something?”

Strynn shook her head. “What're you talking about? I—”

Another round of whinnying. Something had clearly spooked their mounts. Div vanished from the doorway. Strynn followed—with the dagger unsheathed now. More than once on their journey, and with increasing frequency as they got farther south, they'd heard tales of bands of renegade Ixtians terrorizing this small hold or that. Usually they preyed on Common Clan or clanless. But a few High Clan holds had also been hit—and one caravan. Word of their incursions had been sent to Avall, but no one knew how soon he'd respond. Would that they'd had the gem, Strynn thought. She hoped they weren't in for a fight now. Not that she couldn't take care of herself, being born to War-Hold, as she was. Div was no slouch either, and had been improving her skills steadily since joining the Royal Guard. But Strynn was also pregnant with the High King's child, and hated to put that child at risk.

Div had a hand on her horse now. The beast looked marginally more subdued, if wild-eyed, and the other seemed to be calming as well. “What's got into them, do you suppose?” Strynn asked, as she reached out to stroke a well-muscled neck.

Another shrug. “I don't know, but all of a sudden I'm hungry enough to eat—well”—Div eyed her mount wickedly— “let's just say I'm hungry. I tell you what: We'll do an early
supper here, then trek down to the hold when it's dark and see what we can learn there, but not stay long or spend the night. A little dirt in the right place, and no one would recognize us.”

“Or serve us, or pay attention to us,” Strynn retorted.

“A dagger still speaks plenty loud,” Div grinned.

Strynn started to speak, then shook her head, frowning. “That
would
be fun,” she agreed. “But much as I hate to admit it, if anyone goes, it should probably be you—alone. I—” She broke off, eyeing the horses dubiously. They still seemed fractious, but not as much as heretofore. “I'll get some sugar. Maybe that'll soothe these fellows' nerves.”

Div nodded, and Strynn ducked back inside. At first she started to retrieve sugar from the stash in her pack, but then she recalled that the hold's kitchen had looked reasonably intact, and that there might be a better supply there.

As soon as she pushed through the door, something growled.

She jumped back instantly, only to slam hard into Div, who'd come up behind her.

“Oh, Eight,” Div breathed in her ear, in a mixture of awe, fear, and irritation. “It's a cold-cursed birkit.”

And so it was. A very fine specimen, too: female and fairly young, to judge by its size, but still plenty large enough to make short work of either Strynn or Div—alone—never mind a pair of tethered horses. Yet this beast showed no sign of pressing either of those options, seeming content simply to sit atop the wood box beneath the shattered window by which it had probably entered. It regarded them briefly with calm green eyes, then bent down and began to groom itself with a length of gray-pink tongue.

“Friend of yours?” Strynn muttered to Div, between gritted teeth.

“Maybe—in theory,” Div replied. “It could be one of those that shadowed Kylin and me to Tir-Eron. I never saw them after we reached the gorge. If they intended to maintain contact with me, it could easily have taken this long to locate our trail, what with having to cross the Ri, and all.”

Strynn regarded the predator skeptically. “Then it knows about the pact?”

“Let's hope so.”

Strynn eased forward experimentally. “I hunt,” she said aloud, because it was all she could remember to say. That was the bond they shared. That which had kept this beast's kin from killing Avall, Rann, and Div back in the winter.

No reply formed in her mind, but she did feel a sort of … crowding, as though a second set of thoughts sought to lodge there. With it came an odd, unheard buzz, like a fly let loose inside her skull. At which point she had no doubt the beast was trying to communicate.

“Div?” she dared. “Is it … ? Are you … ?”

“Trying. But I'm not getting anything except that I think it's trying to talk to us. It'd be nice if we had a gem right now—or had used one recently. The residue seems to stay in the body for a while. That's what lets us talk to them.”

Strynn indicated the birkit, which was looking at them again, front legs extended, but with its tail curled around its haunches. “Do you suppose it wants something?”

“Besides fresh horse?” Div snorted. “A year ago I'd have said no. Then again, a year ago I'd have an arrow in that nice pelt by now. Today, I'd say we have to consider the possibility. The question is, ‘
What
does it want?’ ”

“I don't know,” Strynn murmured. “But I'm pretty sure it's hungry. I was picking up that much.”

Div rolled her eyes. “We've got some beef that's a little ripe,” she sighed. “We can get more at the hold.”

“I guess that decides it,” Strynn agreed. “If we don't want to be dinner ourselves.”

The birkit made the next move—which was the best approach with birkits. After seeing to the horses one last time and making sure they were sufficiently well hobbled that they wouldn't panic and bolt, Div and Strynn treated them with mouthfuls of
sweets and reassuring pats, then left them where they were and returned to their nominal camp—where they discovered that the birkit had claimed a spot in the waning sunshine, which also happened to be atop Strynn's bed pad. She resisted an urge to tell it to move or prod it with a toe.

Yet to her surprise, she caught what might've been a reply. Certainly
something
that could've been an affirmation flashed through her consciousness. Coupled with that, the big predator did move. Exactly enough to make room for her.

“Bury me deep,” she told Div, who was staring at her aghast. And with that, she—very slowly—sank down in the space provided.

A huge paw promptly flopped into her lap. And remained there, to all appearances content, while Div finished supper. “I haven't forgotten it was your turn tonight,” Div warned as she sliced up tubers. “Still, I suppose birkits think they're High Clan, so I guess we'd best leave you to entertain.”

Strynn chuckled at that, taking no offense from what had long since become a game.

Div promptly flung a chunk of smoked meat in her direction, which landed perilously near their pack. The odor of ripeness, if not true rottenness filled the air. Strynn wrinkled her nose.

The birkit didn't. A moment later, there was no sign of the meat but a greasy spot on the floor.

“You know,” Strynn yawned, “I'm getting sleepy, and it's way too early for that. I wonder if I'm picking up this lady's desires.”

Div tasted the stew again and puffed her cheeks. “Could be. We know strong desires are easier to pick up than otherwise. And birkits prefer to hunt at night. If this one's been following us—well, think how you'd feel if you'd had to walk all night for as long as we've been on the road.”

Strynn didn't reply, because, quite suddenly, she was asleep.

She was at Weaver-Hold, Strynn discovered: the same room she'd occupied as a girl, facing the same loom, trying to learn the subtleties of tapestry. She had it threaded right, with the large warp threads running up and down. And she'd started to lay in the weft. She'd decided to do a map of the world—a common enough project for beginners, besides which it honed one's knowledge of geography. And she'd already completed the area south of Ixti, as much as was known—forest, mostly, but less every day, as the Ixtians burned their once-countless trees for fuel.

So she set her shuttle there and wove, back and forth, building a mountain of linen thread, following a stream of sylk, raising a city of fine-spun gold. And slowly, oh so slowly, Ixti grew before her. But this was boring work. It needed something, needed
life
, is what it needed. Perhaps, when it came time to weave the Flat, she would weave a portrait of someone into the sand. She'd be very subtle about it, so that no one would notice it if they weren't looking.

But whose face would she weave?

Merryn's of course. And so she began: chin, mouth, nose, finally eyes. But there was something wrong. She could see Merryn's face woven into the sands of the desert, but it wasn't the face she'd intended: the laughing, happy face of her bondsister. This face was frightened, ridged by the thick warp threads that were almost like prison bars. And then she
was
looking at Merryn's face through prison bars, and Merryn was screaming—“Help me! Help me! Help me!”

Strynn tried. She pushed at the fiber bars and discovered they were now bars of steel. She ripped at them, first with her fingers, then with her shears, until her fingers bled.

And still Merryn stared at her, no longer screaming, but crying—on and on and on. Endlessly.

And Merryn
never
cried.

That was what unnerved her, what startled Strynn back to consciousness only to find Div ladling stew into bowls.

“What?” Div asked, offhand.

“N-nothing,” Strynn managed shakily. “I was … only dreaming.”

“And I'm staying here tonight,” Div replied pointedly.

“Nobody's seen her,” Div announced the next morning, in reply to the scowl that Strynn tried to direct at her through a yawn. Strynn didn't know whether to be angry or relieved, since it was obvious that the “her” that her companion had referenced was Merryn. For all her well-considered arguments, she
had
wanted to go down to War-Hold; That was fact.
Why
she'd wanted to go, she didn't know. Perhaps because she was simply in need of more companionship than Div could provide— better that than admitting that she was human enough to want to gaze on disaster firsthand.

Well, she could do that anyway—from afar. And to judge by the way Div was staring at her, coupled with the way the birkit was starting to pace, she supposed that wouldn't be as long as she'd like, if rest and a leisurely breakfast were her priorities.

“She's not the only one no one's seen,” Div continued quickly, by her relieved expression assuming she'd been forgiven her journey—though Strynn hadn't yet decided.

“Who?” Strynn asked absently, as she unwound herself from the blankets, which—perhaps at the birkit's urging— seem to have tried to swallow her in the night.

Div was poking through the breakfast supplies—which required she relinquish a small jug she was carrying. Strynn noted it for the first time, just as she caught a familiar aroma. “Is that what I think it is?”

Div nodded. “Fresh cauf, from a vendor in camp. I've got some hot sweet buns as well. Also some smoked fish for tonight. And many other things.”

“All of which I appreciate,” Strynn yawned, finally on her feet and starting to stretch. Her stomach growled and she patted it, remembering the child within. “Down, hellion,” she
murmured, stumbling over to where Div was filling her cauf mug without asking.
“Who?”
she repeated.

“Krynneth,” Div said, passing her the mug without bothering to look up. “He disappeared from here shortly after Merryn left Tir-Eron. No one's seen him since, or had time to look for him, though the consensus is that he's gone west. He was apparently sane as he could be one day, and the next he was babbling about the ‘burners’ to anyone who would listen. Quite wildeyed, they said. And then one day he simply wasn't there.”