The Blue Sword (20 page)

Corlath himself strode around in his usual high-energy fashion; if any sense of ease was trying to settle on him, it was having a hard time of it, for he was no different than he ever was, although he did not seem surprised at the condition of his followers. Harry stayed out of his way, and if he noticed this, he gave no sign. Mostly he spoke to Luthe—Harry saw with interest, on the occasions she saw them together, that Corlath seemed to do far more talking than his companion—or muttered to himself. The mutterings couldn’t have been pleasant, for he was often scowling.

The two days were fine and clear; warm enough during the day to make bathing in the pool at the edge of the horses’ meadow pleasant, cool enough at night to make the blankets on the beds in the sleeping-chambers of comfort. The torches that formed a ring outside the front gates of the hall were not lit again; Luthe was willing to welcome his guests, but did not deem further illumination necessary.

On the second afternoon Harry followed the stream that spilled out of the bathing-pool, and after a certain amount of fighting with curling branches and tripping over hidden hummocks she burst out of the undergrowth to a still silver beach bordering a wide lake. The Lake of Dreams. The stream stopped its chattering as it left the edge of the woods, and slid silently over the silver sand and slipped into the waters of the lake. Harry went to the edge of it and sat down, looking at the water. There was a step at her side; she looked up and it was Luthe. “There is a path,” he said. “You should have asked.” He bent down and detached a twig from her hair, and another from the back of her tunic. Then he sat down beside her. “I will show you the way to return.”

“Do you live here alone?” Harry said, extracting a leaf from the neck of her undershift.

“No,” he replied, “but my housemates are even shyer than I am, and have a tendency to retreat into the undergrowth when visitors are anticipated. There are quite a number of visitors, now and again.”

“The oracle is a popular one,” said Harry, smiling.

Luthe smiled back, but sidelong. “Yes; I think it may be private dismay that sends my companions away at such times; they have something of
kelar
and the Sight themselves.”

He did not seem disposed to go on, so Harry said: “Does everyone who comes here behave as though they’re half asleep?”

“No again; I and my friends are generally quite sharp. But yes, most visitors find it a sleepy sort of place—a reputation I, um, encourage, as it makes their thoughts sleepy too, and thus easier to dodge.”

Harry said, “Encourage?”

Luthe said, “You are not a sleepy one, are you? The source of the Meeldtar taints all the water here; and the air that passes over the Lake of Dreams carries something of sleepiness with it. Only those bearing much
kelar
of their own do not find that faintest touch of the Water of Sight a little drowsy. Like you. And Corlath.”

Harry, at that, caught a thought just as it was streaking out, and stuffed it back behind her eyes.

“Very good,” said Luthe. “I thought you might prove apt. I didn’t catch a glimpse of that one.”

Harry smiled faintly.

“I suspect, however, that it might make you more comfortable to ask me it nonetheless,” Luthe said, looking into her face; but she turned away.

“Corlath, eh?” Luthe said gently.

Harry shook her head, not denying it, but as though she could shake herself free of her anxieties; but Luthe said no more. At last she stood up, gazing across the lake; she could not see its farther shore. “It is so large,” she said.

Luthe rose to stand beside her. “No, not so large,” he said, “but it is a private sort of lake, and hard to see. Even for me.” He was quiet a moment, looking across the water. “I think perhaps the reason I stay in this particular uninhabited valley of all the uninhabited valleys in the Hills is that it comforts me by reminding me of things I cannot do. I cannot see the farther shore of the Lake of Dreams.” He turned away. “Come; I will show you the path. Unless you prefer fighting your way through the poor trees, which are accustomed to being undisturbed.”

T
he third morning dawned as bright and valiant as the two before; and still slightly bemused but cheerful, Corlath’s entourage made itself ready to follow its leader back down the mountain. Harry contrived to be the very last of the file, and she looked around her as the penultimate horse and rider left the clearing before the hall and disappeared down the close-grown trail. She had been standing where she was standing now when Corlath had stepped into the clearing before the hall, Fireheart at his heels, to bid farewell to the man he had come to see. They spoke a few words, too low for her to hear as she skulked in the background, as well as anyone on a tall bright chestnut horse with a hunting-cat at its feet could skulk; and then she saw Corlath hold out one hand, palm down and fingers spread, toward Luthe. They held each other’s eyes for a long moment, and then Luthe reached out two fingers to touch the back of Corlath’s hand. Corlath turned away and mounted, and the Riders began following him into the mouth of the trail.

Narknon was yawning hugely, leaning against one of Sungold’s forelegs. She had been grumbling to herself all morning, although she seemed to know they were leaving, since she had at last deigned to climb out of bed and follow Harry as Harry took her saddle and gear and went to fetch Sungold. Harry thought with surprise that in just two days she had grown fond of her surroundings and was sorry to leave. This place felt like home; not her home perhaps, but someone’s home, accustomed to shelter and keep and befriend its master. Its emptiness did not have the hollow ring of Corlath’s castle, for all that the proud City castle was more richly furnished. She told herself straitly that her affection for this place could too easily be only that she dreaded what the path away from this haven was leading her toward. She found Luthe standing beside her, with a hand gently laid on Sungold’s crest—a familiarity Sungold rarely permitted any stranger.

“Harry,” he said, and she blinked; no one had called her by her old nickname since that last day at the Residency, and it gave her a disconcerting flash of homesickness, for the Hillfolk could not say it as a Homelander would: Mathin called her
Hari
. “I believe all will go well with you: or at least that you will choose to stay on the best path of those you are offered, and that’s the most any mortal can hope for. But I don’t see so beautifully that I have no doubts, for you or anyone; and I am afraid for you. The darkness coming to Damar will not temper itself for a stranger. If you should need a place to come to, you may always come here. You will find it quite easily; just ride into these mountains—any Damarian mountains will do, although the nearer here the better—and say my name occasionally. I will hear you, and some guide will make itself known to you.” There was a sparkle of humor in his hooded blue eyes, but she understood that she might take his words seriously nonetheless.

“Thank you,” she said, and Sungold walked forward, into the trees. Narknon, with a last stretch and tail-lash, bounded off before. Harry did not look back, but her peripheral vision told her how the sunlight dropped back, and the trees closed in behind her, and Luthe’s clearing was only a spot of gold, a long distance away.

The road down was much easier than the road up had been, for all the uncertainty of stepping downward and downward, Sungold’s hocks collected under him, his hoofs delicately feeling the safety of the footing; but some cloud of foretelling, or chance, had been left behind them in the pleasant vagueness of the three days in Luthe’s hall. Whatever doom lay before them now, it was a definite doom of definite shape, and the swifter they rode, the more swiftly they might meet it and have done with it, for whatever result.

They camped at the edge of the foothills that night, and the army re-materialized around them; and everyone looked easier, and more relaxed, even obscurely comforted, by their few days’ break, loitering in the forested feet of the mountains, listening to the birds, and catching hares and antelope for the cooking-pots. It was not all idleness, however, for Corlath’s army on that morning after leaving Luthe had swelled by a few hundreds more.

Terim rode up beside her as they set out, and stayed near her all day; they rode at the front, with Corlath and the Riders, and Murfoth, and the few other chieftains who led more than fifty riders to Corlath’s standard. Harry saw Senay once, not many horse-lengths distant—for the riding was close—and she caught her eye and began a smile; but suddenly uncertain how the winner of the laprun trials was expected to behave to one of those defeated, and one who besides wore a sash with one’s own slash mark in it, dropped her eyes before the other had a chance to respond. In the evening, however, when Harry dismounted, she found herself staring at a bay flank she did not recognize for a moment; its rider dismounted also, and was found to be Senay. This time the two young women looked at each other directly, and both smiled.

So several more days passed, and Corlath’s little force made a glorious and frightening thunder when it galloped; and even as Harry thought that her Outlanders did not guess there were so many in all the Hills, she thought too of what each of the Hillfolk knew: of the Northerners there were many more. Harry rode now with Terim and Senay on her either side, and the three of them ate together. Harry noticed that while the Riders as a group stayed in the same area, all seemed to have friends or blood kin from the army outside who came closer to stand by them, as Terim and Senay, for whatever reason, had chosen to stand by her. Corlath’s small force would fight shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend; it was a little comforting.

Mathin found her once, head against Sungold’s neck and brush hanging limply in one hand. “Hari—” he said, and she started and snapped upright, and began to brush Sungold’s shoulder. “Hari,” he said again, “it is only your old teacher, and there is no shame to your thoughts. We all have them; but it is the worst for you, and for all those riding with us fresh from the trials, but worst of all for you as laprun-minta and bearer of the Blue Sword. Do not be too hard on yourself.”

Harry said, “I am not too hard on myself.”

Mathin smiled grimly. “I don’t believe you. Even young Terim, who worships the ground you walk on—” Harry snorted—“has spent the past three years riding the borders, under his father’s wise and watchful eye, that he might strike his first angry blow and draw his first blood with his newly earned sword before the great battle of the Bledfi Gap. You do not have three years. It is not your fault.”

“It does not matter that it is not my fault, does it?” Harry tried to smile, but Mathin’s dark face was too worried, and she gave it up. “Thank you, my old teacher; I will try to remember what you say.”

Mathin said softly, “You are still the keeper of my honor, Harimad-sol, and I have faith in you, whatever happens. If you forget all else, do not forget that.”

“I will not,” Harry said.

They had left the slight shelter of the mountains now, and rode northwest across the plain to come to the great gap in the northern range as soon as they might, where the Northern invaders would pour through. They rode quickly but without driving, for the horses and their riders needed to have the strength to engage the other army; and Corlath further hoped to arrive enough in advance of their enemy that he might choose the ground where they would meet. They had ridden over little true desert; soon after they left the foothills’ border the scrub fringe of desert began turning green, and they passed the occasional carefully irrigated small holding, now silent and empty.

In three days’ time they would arrive at the Gate of the North, the Bledfi Gap, and Corlath called a meeting again of his Riders and the chieftains. Terim and Senay waited outside the zotar by a little fire, guarding Harry’s saddle and baggage, and Harry went to hear what her king would have to say; and she remembered Luthe’s words to her: “You could do worse than to believe in him.”

They counted themselves. There were some foot soldiers who would meet them at the end of their ride, but only a few; there were few of the Hills who did not feel better, more useful, more real, on horseback. Barring them, they were full strength. Few of the Hillfolk came from any farther west, for the taint of the Outlanders was oppressive to them. Harry stared at her hands, burned a cinnamon-brown as dark as any Hillman’s. Aerin’s hair was red, she thought, and pushed back her hood; and I am a Rider.

The muster came to a little shy of two thousand; and there was silence as everyone considered the Hills black with Northerners, and the width of the mountain pass. Corlath, without making any face-saving remarks about its not being as bad as it looked—For Hillfolk, thought Harry, don’t seem to like that sort of thing: what would poor Sir Charles do here?—began to describe their options; but Harry, to her horror, found her mind wandering. She yanked it back, pointed it at Corlath, and it promptly ducked out again. Is this the first symptom of failure of nerve? she thought, feeling cold and clammy in spite of the dry heat.

Various of the new men had questions or comments; and then the meeting broke up; and while Riders’ councils always ended quietly, there was a subdued feeling to the air in the king’s tent that was not pleasant. Only a few people were left when Harry stood up and faced Corlath and said, tiredly, as if she couldn’t help herself: “Why do you persist in ignoring the northwest pass? I cannot believe the Northerners may not give us an unwelcome surprise by its use.”

“I ignore it because it does not require my attention,” said Corlath, and while his voice was a low rumble, there was as yet no lash of anger in it.

“But—”

“You know nothing of it.”

The flatness of his tone goaded her and she said: “The Outlanders make maps none so ill, and I have seen the maps of that area—and I can read maps too! And they tell me that a force, not so small as to be ignored, could slip down the northwest pass very easily, and follow the mountains east, and catch us on the plain from behind, and then your earthworks will be mounts to fall on when we are set on from our backs!”

“Enough!” roared Corlath. “You I will place in a hollow in the side of the hill, so you may see from all directions, and I advise you to look overhead as well, for eagles that might be carrying rocks!”

Harry turned and ran out. She noticed, without registering it, that Innath and Faran and Mathin stood listening; and she did not see the troubled looks they sent after her.

The night air was cool with the sudden coolness of the desert when darkness falls, and she took a few deep breaths. Then she went to her fire, and sat down, and tried to make her face calm; and if her mind had been calm, she might have thought it strange that Senay and Terim asked her no questions; but she was relieved at their silence and wrestled as best she could with her own demons. Mathin came and sat near her also, and he too was silent, and she did not notice how he looked at her.

The fires burned down, and everyone lay down to sleep. Harry chose not to sleep in the zotar that night; and Mathin stayed by her little fire as well, though he still said nothing. Harry turned on her back and stared at the sky. She let the stars swing above her for a time, and then she stood up quietly, and picked up her bedding and her saddlebag, and made her way to the horses; and she remembered what Mathin had taught her of stealth. Narknon made none of her usual protest at being disturbed, and meekly followed her. Sungold rubbed his head against her but made no sound, for war-horses are trained to silence; and she mounted him and jogged away slowly. She had a terrible headache; it had been building all evening, and now it seemed to stand out around her like a cloud. Perhaps it was a cloud indeed, for no one challenged her as she set Sungold’s head west.

They covered many miles before morning, for Sungold was of the best of the Hill horses, and the speed the army traveled was to him slow. Harry remembered a little spur of hills running down to the central plain that she should meet before morning broke too clearly for watching eyes to see a lone chestnut horse with a Hillman on his back working his way quickly west. She hoped, because the hills had looked overgrown on the Outlander map, and because Dedham himself had ridden so far and drawn the chart himself, that she would be able to lose herself in them; and she hoped that the stream that flowed through them would be easy to find.

She was tired by the time she felt the sun on her back, and she knew Sungold was weary too, although his stride was as long and elastic as it had been hours ago. Narknon loped along beside them, keeping pace. But the hills were at hand: rough outcroppings of grey and rust-red rock, with little but lichen to meet the traveler’s first look; but as Sungold picked his way around a tall grey standing stone, suddenly grass appeared before them, and Sungold’s feet struck good dark earth, and then they heard the stream. Narknon reached it first; she had none of most cats’ aversion to water, and leaped in, sending water in all directions, and splashing Harry playfully when she followed. “I should not have let you come with me,” Harry said to her; “but I don’t suppose there’s any way I could have prevented you. Thank the gods.” Sungold was laying his ears back in mock anger and striking with his forefeet as Narknon splashed him too. “And besides, I daresay Sungold would miss you, and I had to bring him.”

It was after they had all soggily climbed out of the water again that she heard the hoofbeats; and she whirled around to face them. The faces of her four-footed companions remained undisturbed, and Sungold turned his head mildly to look over his shoulder at whoever approached, but this was no comfort, for they did not understand the awfulness of what she had done, or that the friends who had followed her were friends no longer.

It was Senay and Terim. Their horses showed the pace they had kept worse than Sungold; but they were well mannered and stood quietly, waiting hopefully for their riders to tell them they might stop and rest, and drink and graze, as their brother was doing already.

“Why did you follow me?” said Harry. “Did Corlath send you? I—I won’t come back. If you take Sungold away from me, I’ll go on foot.”