The Shattered Chain (26 page)

Jaelle bit her lip, frowning, idly fingering the bandage on her cheek. She said, “I must think. Perhaps—you are in the employ of your service, under bond for a legitimate service? A Free Amazon is bound by law to fulfill any work she hires herself of her free will to do, and it could be legally said you must complete this pledge and honor your conditions of employment.” Again, she was thinking out loud. “You say you do not love him. How
do
you feel about him, then?”

“I don’t know.” Magda searched her mind; surprised herself by saying, “Protective.”

Jaelle looked at Magda with that intense, frowning stare which made Magda wonder if the girl was really reading her thoughts. She said, “Yes; I think no man has ever meant more to you than that, not yet. You have, I think, the true spirit of an Amazon, and if you had been born among us, I think you would have come to us in the end. This must have been what Rohana saw in you.”

She was silent for some time, thinking; suddenly she laughed.

“There is only one man living whom I love less than Rumal di Scarp,” she said. “I would love to cheat Rumal of his prey! And you are oath-bound to obey all lawful commands of your employer. And there is a life between us; and it is required of me that I give my oath-daughter a gift. I will come with you, Margali, to Sain Scarp!”

Magda said, again with that sense of conflicting loyalties, “Jaelle, I can never thank you for this,
but
first you should know: it will cause much trouble for you in Thendara. Lorill Hastur has forbidden anyone in the Domains to take part in this affair.”

“You do not listen very well,” Jaelle said. “I do my own thinking, not the blind will of Hastur. Like all people, I must obey the laws of the land; but the whims of Hastur are not yet the laws of Thendara, and Lorill Hastur has no right to forbid any Free Amazon, under the Charter, to accept any lawful work. Lorill Hastur is my kinsman—though the only time he saw and spoke with me he seemed not very eager to accept the relationship—but he is not the keeper of my conscience! The Free Amazons owe no allegiance to any liege lord, even if he calls himself the son of Hastur. And it seems to me that if the Terrans could give you, a woman, and born in Caer Donn, the strength and spirit to venture alone into the Hellers, and the—” She hesitated, looking away. “And at the same time, the integrity to honor an oath, even under such conditions of strain, then it seems to me that these
Terranan
might have something to teach even a Hastur, and that the Free Amazons should be their friends and allies. So I will give you leave, and I will help you, to rescue your friend.”

Magda said hastily, “It must not be known that Peter is a Terran!”

“No, indeed! Rumal would take delight in hanging him from his castle wall that same day!” She held out her hands to Magda and said, “I think I can ride tomorrow; we will ride, then, for Sain Scarp.”

Chapter

ELEVEN

Before leaving the shelter, next morning, Jaelle insisted on stripping the bodies of the dead bandits; an unpleasant task,—as they had frozen hard in the bitter cold. They dragged them away from the path. “The
kyorebni
and the scavenger wolves will do the rest,” Jaelle said cheerfully. “We could never have buried them with the ground frozen hard, so they can do our work for us.”

The day was overcast and grim as they set forth, and Magda was anxious about Jaelle; exposure to cold, with an unhealed wound, could be dangerous. Yet once the pass of Scaravel was closed, no amount of haste could bring them to Sain Scarp before midwinter-night.

They made good time for the first three days; but on the fourth day it began to snow in earnest, and Jaelle looked troubled as they began to ride upward along the road to the pass.

“If we get through before dark, there is nothing to fear; Sain Scarp is a two-day ride beyond it, and there is nothing else so high as Scaravel. But if we are delayed today, or if we have to pass Scaravel in the darkness…” She was silent, frowning, obviously worried.

Near midday they came to a little village on the mountainside, where they bought some hot soup at a food-stall, and bargained for fodder for their animals. They were about to ride on when the lashings on Magda’s pack animal suddenly gave way, and the pack slipped; the beast snorted and neighed, frightened by the bumping of the heavy pack hanging under its belly. Magda slid down and ran to free it from the swaying, bumping burden, but the frightened animal kicked and reared, and it was half an hour before, even with Jaelle’s help, Magda could quiet the creature enough to get the remaining strap unbuckled and the pack off. Then they had to find a harness-maker who could mend the strap or make a new one; and when Jaelle came back after talking at length with the harness-maker (his dialect was so thick Magda could not understand him), she looked grave. “Lady Rohana, with her escort, crossed Scaravel three days ago, on her way to Ardais,” she said, “and the pass was open then; since then, no traveler has climbed toward the pass. We may find it blocked already; if not, this storm will surely close it till spring-thaw. Come what may, we must cross Scaravel tonight, or we cannot reach Sain Scarp in time. Let us find some more of that woman’s good bean soup before we take the road; we’ll get little warm food tonight.”

Less than half a mile out of the village, Magda looked back down the trail and saw that the thickening snow had already blotted out the lights behind them. Jaelle wrapped a fold of her scarf across her bandaged cheek; her voice sounded muffled through it. “If these folk were not all living in the very shadow of Sain Scarp—and probably in their pay, or at least in fear of them—I think I would have left the horses here and tried the pass on foot. But I would not put such a strain on their honesty. There is a saying in the hills: ‘Don’t trust your bone to another man’s dog.’ “

It was less than an hour before they had to light their saddle-lanterns; the small lamps, fueled with resin, cast dim light for a few feet in every direction, but beyond that the light scattered into fog against the curtain of the falling snow. The trail was beaten deep between rocks, and Magda was glad, for the snow blotted out landmarks, and they might stray from the trail and never find it again. But when she said this to Jaelle, the other woman laughed through the muffling of the scarf.

“Just keep going up until there’s no farther you can go! Myself, I’m glad of the snow; so near to Sain Scarp, Scaravel is no pass to travel alone in good weather. I have no doubt that is how your friend was taken! But on a night like this, even a bandit would be home by his own fireside!”

Higher and higher they rode, and Magda began to feel the dull, internal ache in ears and sinuses, born of the high altitude, which no amount of yawning or pressing her fingertips against her ears could completely dispel. The cold was bitter, and they began to feel the wind of the heights, which set the thick snow streaming almost sidewise against their faces and heaped it under their feet till they sank knee-deep in drifts and they had to dismount and lead their protesting horses. They moved slowly against the wind, each woman isolated in her own cocoon of darkness and silence. To Magda the world had shrunk to a circle less than ten feet wide, containing herself, the front half of her horse, the tail of Jaelle’s saddle-horse just ahead and the soft crunching of the antlered pack beast that plodded along on his broad hooves after her lantern. Outside this narrow circle was nothing; only darkness and a wind that screeched like all the demons of Zandru’s legendary ninth hell. Up, and again up, with the protest of knee muscles with every step, and her breath short. She wrapped her thick scarf heavily over her chin, and felt the wind freezing it, from the moisture of her breath, to an ice-mask.

She felt herself bump into something hard and soft at once, recoiled from the intrusion of something else into her private cocoon, and discovered it was Jaelle, who had turned her horse somewhat so it stood side-wise of the trail to block it. She put her head close to Magda’s and shouted, “Let’s stop for some food; it seems hours since we ate, and higher up it’s dangerous to stop!”

They formed the animals into a triangle, nose to tail, and stood at the center of this crude windbreak, chewing on some dried-meat bars and fruit, which were the first things Magda could find at the top of the saddlebags. The world had shrunk so small that Magda found herself staring at the small pattern of blue birds knitted into the back of Jaelle’s woolen mittens, and wondering if Jaelle had knitted them herself.

Then above them, sweeping down from the heights and even drowning out the shrieking wind, came a shrill, eerie cry; a long, paralyzing howl that made Magda’s ears ring and almost physically paralyzed her. She gasped with the sound, then knew what it must be, even before Jaelle said: “Banshee. I was afraid of that; let’s just hope the wind distorts its sense of direction. And remember it would rather have the horses than us, so keep in their shelter.”

Magda had heard about—but never actually
heard
the shattering, paralyzing scream of the great flightless carnivores who lived above the snowline and were attracted by the warmth and movement of their prey. Again the ghastly screech came, and it seemed to her that the meat-bar she was chewing had turned to leather in her mouth.

Jaelle was trying to make herself heard above the howl of the wind again. “What, Jaelle?”

“This is where we have to decide. I’m not an expert on Scaravel, but I
have
been over it in daylight, and I gather you haven’t. Above here the trail narrows, so we can’t turn around, and there’s not even a level spot to spend the night. Beyond here, we’re committed, because there’s no stopping till we’re on the other side. But it seems to be open now. It’s a risk either way, but it’s
your
risk, and your neck. Try it in the dark, or wait here? It’s not a particularly good trail even by daylight.” Magda thought of the narrowing trail, the terrible carnivores of the heights, her own aching legs and wind-burned face. And Jaelle, beside her, was not really well enough to travel.
Its not Jaelle’s mission at all. If I lead her to her death…

“What would you advise?” Magda asked.

“I wouldn’t advise; I’d try not to get into such a spot. But being in it, I’d probably go on. Just the same, I didn’t want you to go at it thinking it’s easy or safe, because it’s not. This is your last chance to lose your nerve.”

And this was the last chance. If they did not make it across Scaravel tonight, and it proved to be blocked by daylight after the night’s snow … She said, “But what about you, Jaelle? You’re still not strong—”

“There’s almost as much risk to turn around here and go down,” Jaelle said, “and if we stay here, we might freeze. I can make it if you can.”

Magda was not so sure; but having come so far, she was unwilling to retreat or give up. She swallowed the last of the dried meat, and said, “All right, then, we’ll try. Want me to break trail? You’ve been doing it this far.”

“From here on we don’t break trail; we let the horses do it,” said Jaelle, “and we stay between them, in case any banshee is prowling around looking for a midnight lunch!”

The trail was really steep now, but between the two saddle horses, crowded together on the narrow path, the howling of the wind reached them less fiercely. The snow crunched hard underfoot, and they clung to the saddles on the horses to keep their footing. The trail twisted and turned between great rocks that gave some slight shelter from the wind, but now and then Magda caught, between the horses’ legs or over their backs, a faraway and eerie glimpse of great chasms and cliffs, of dizzy gulfs of space dropping away from the trail; and, hastily turning her eyes back into the enclosing world—the horses on either side, Jaelle pressed close against her elbow—she was glad of the darkness that concealed the giddy heights to either side. They struggled along side-by-side, so close that Magda could hear the other woman’s labored breathing; again and again, from the heights above them, they could hear the eerie, demoralizing banshee cry. The horses stirred and stamped; Magda’s horse tossed its head, and she hauled on the bridle, trying to calm and quiet the frightened animal.

“Won’t the saddle-lanterns attract the banshees, too?”

“No, they’re blind,” Jaelle said. “They sense warmth and movement, that’s all. I remember—”

Magda never heard what she remembered. In the next moment there was another high, chilling banshee scream—this one almost on top of them—and a screech from the pack animal behind them, and Magda’s horse reared, struggling, at the very edge of the cliff. The pack beast went down, screaming, plunging, kicking in the snow, and over its struggling body Magda caught a blurred glimpse of a huge, naked, buzzard-like head, an enormous ungainly body, the beak plunging into the pack animal’s soft underbelly and rearing up, dripping gore. Magda pulled out her knife, backing away, waiting for the moment to strike. The naked head whipped around in her direction, weaving, darting, and Jaelle caught her wrist and dragged her back.