Fires of Aggar (52 page)

“Not quite,” the Mistress n’Shea corrected dryly. “There was me.”

“You’re the exception.”

“You always say that.”

“Only because it’s true.”

Their banter paused as brown eyes met blue, while the Sight bound them in a wordless, cherishing touch, and Llinolae smiled. She didn’t need her Blue Gift to decipher the love these two shared. Her heart warmed, making her think of Gwyn and how it might be after a lifetime to look across a garden to find the Niachero still loving her… she rather liked the idea.

“You’ve got better things to do than sit here watching the teachers fawn over one another,” the Mistress n’Athena suddenly declared, and Llinolae sighed. The woman was right. “So, where is your Shea Hole? East or West of the Trade Road?”

“West — by two days of careful riding.”

“You’re among all those winding stream beds and gorges then?” prompted the blue-eyed n’Shea. At Llinolae’s nod, the Mistress grew more concerned. “That’s awfully close to the Terran Plateau borders, isn’t it?”

“Uncomfortably so,” Llinolae affirmed. “It’s why we’re still in camp.”

“Sitting tight ’til the scouts get discouraged and ease off their search?” The Mistress n’Athena surmised quickly. Then at her partner’s startled glance, she explained, “It’s what I’d do in Llinolae’s place. Shea Holes are infamously hard to find, well stocked with non-perishable supplies — including weapons — and strategically placed for defense.”

“Aye — I see how that makes sense.”

“And it’s especially good sense, if you’re still hoping to make some contacts in Clan Territory who might help you pursue your peace talks.”

A raised eyebrow prodded Llinolae to affirm the Mistress n’Athena’s speculation, but she could not do so. “An ally may be not quite the right word. I had indeed hoped to find one, and we did make contact. But it seems that Taysa has caused too much unrest — the Clan will not negotiate, unless they have no other choice.”

“So it seems, you must fall back on your second plan.” the Mistress n’Shea observed quietly.

“Which brings you seeking our council today.” The elder Amazon lent Llinolae a supportive, crooked grin. “What do you need, Daughter?”

“From you?” Llinolae very specifically nodded to her Mistress n’Athena. “Information on fire weapons — and on the layout of the Clan’s old Base.”

“What I know, I’ll certainly tell you. But—” she cautioned with an upraised hand, “it may do you little good. The technology and building layouts I’m familiar with will be sorely outdated.”

“I know,” Llinolae accepted, already having known it would be. “But you’ll be giving me something to start with. And that’s what I need — a basic grounding in the mechanics of such weaponry as well as what I might expect about the Base.”

“That I can give you.”

“Which brings you to me and my Sight,” the Mistress n’Shea broke in gently. Her blue eyes danced lightly across the shimmering harmon of Llinolae’s face.

“Aye — something I did while held in Clantown caused one of their weapons to… to ignite. I know that it happened because of my Sight. But I don’t know what I actually did to make it happen.”

“Hmm… not so unusual when you’re the one in the middle of the crisis….” Her brow knit, and she glanced at her student. “How long ago for you was this?”

“A little more than a ten-day.”

“Ah then, I wouldn’t worry about understanding it. It’s still very soon after the event for you. Your out-of-time Seeing is probably blurred by your own personal reactions… give it a little more time before you go back through the amarin to search the images again. With your unique style of Seeing, you shouldn’t need more than a couple of reviews to identify the elements you’re missing.”

“I can’t wait. I can’t afford to. You see, the scout who agreed to speak with us, left strict orders with her veteran scouting patrol to wait five days for her. If she’s not back by darkfall the fifth day, they’ll bring out the entire Clan’s border corps to the area they last saw their Clan Lead and her ‘abductors’. When our discussions were obviously not going to resolve anybody’s problems, she offered an informal, personal gesture of good faith; she agreed to stay at the Shea Hole camp for the full five days — no questions asked, no conditions to Marshal or Dracoon staying with her.”

“In essence,” the Mistress n’Athena mused, “she gave you permission to slip across her patrol’s section of Plateau border without hindrance. She’s condoned your attack on the armory.”

Llinolae nodded. “If I can get in and destroy the stockpile by evening of the fifth day she won’t send the patrols after me. But she’s not willing to suspend her civic duties completely. She swore to protect her folk and she’ll lose any authority to do that within the militia’s corps if she’s discredited by my actions.”

“So she’ll give you five days, but then there’s no chance that anyone will believe she hadn’t glimpsed some inkling of your plan during that time.” The Mistress n’Athena saw that clearly enough. “She’d have to send the alarms out or be branded as traitor.”

“And probably be executed.” Llinolae turned back to the Mistress n’Shea, knowing that the elder’s silence was from very real concerns. What Llinolae was about to ask of her Mistress, was not an idle, safe chore.

“You need to know — and soon — how you ignited the fire weapon.” The Mistress spoke softly, saving her the pain of actually finding the words. “And you need to know if you can do it again.”

Llinolae nodded mutely.

The Mistress n’Shea took another moment to consider their risks. For any other Blue Sight asking her such a question, she wouldn’t have hesitated to reassure them. Llinolae, however, had never been much like any other Sighted in the way she embraced her Gift. And in this circumstance there was a very real danger that, in discovering what had happened, Llinolae could inadvertently ignite the two of them in the process. But the cost of life and limb in Khirlan was growing, and she understood that too. In the end, all the Mistress could do was square her shoulders, shrug her long braid of salt ’n pepper hair behind her, and agree to try.

Are you sure you are going to be comfortable enough with that tack? I mean… I know Khirla’s original tradition shuns stirrups as dishonorable tools of warfare. But do you actually prefer it?”

Llinolae chuckled. “I do.”

Gwyn still held her reservations as she eyed the light harness and saddle pad Llinolae had purloined from Sparrow’s acrobatic stocks. Calypso protested Gwyn’s concern with a snort before reassuringly nosing Llinolae’s elbow; regardless of the gear, the sturdy bay had no intentions of allowing her new friend to fall.

Gwyn grimaced. “All right, I concede. It’s just… well, this could turn into a ten-day sort of excursion.”

“If it does,” Llinolae returned sensibly, swinging herself up easily into the stirrup-less saddle, “then we’ve lost. Camdora’s patrol will follow her orders explicitly. Come darkfall of that fifth day, they’ll send a runner to Clantown announcing that we’re in the vicinity. After that…,” Llinolae shrugged.

Gwyn sighed. “After that, every scout — wobbly old veterans and green apprentices — will ride out armed with fire weapons and ambition!”

“No, not ambition — but with fervor. With the zealous, fearful conviction of a cornered animal needing to strike in the face of death.”

“Taysa will be informed as well.”

Llinolae nodded grimly. She shifted the bow bag a bit further behind her left knee and tightened the tack straps to hold it. A long sword hung to the front of her right leg as well. Light tack had not meant lightly armed. If they were going to get as deep into the Clan’s upper territories as she expected, it would be foolish to leave their defenses solely to the powers of her Sight or to the sandwolves.

“Are we ready?” Gwyn prompted, mounting Cinder with a grace that warmed Llinolae’s heart.

Abruptly distracted, Llinolae glanced upstream towards the camp. She nodded Gwyn towards that canyon’s bend. “Our packmates bring Sparrow.”

Cinder stomped, shifting restlessly, and Gwyn calmed her with a murmur. “Can you See if something is wrong in camp?”

“Nothing with Camdora or her brother, at least.”

Sparrow appeared quickly, skipping from rock to rock as she crossed the stream bed with Ril following in her footsteps. Ty gave the matter less thought and, tongue lolling happily, splashed through the creek bed undaunted.

“Good — I didn’t miss you!” Sparrow reached them. She smiled broadly and extended a small map to Gwyn. “Brit found this in her ‘obscure box.’ Thought it might do you some good. It’s the old boundaries of the original Unseen Wall that the Council had set up around the starcraft port.”

Ty bumped Llinolae’s foot playfully. The Dracoon grinned, teasing the sandwolf’s chin with her booted toe. Since Gwyn’s accident, the two of them had gotten to be fairly close.

“I hope we don’t have to go in quite that far,” Gwyn frowned. She caught Llinolae’s attention and tossed her the map tube to store among the sleeping gear on Calypso’s packs.

“But Brit is right. It will help anyway,” Llinolae allowed. “It will let us estimate how much land and erosion damage has occurred. In short, the more that is outside of that old ‘wall,’ the worse it is.”

“To estimate leagues and timelines…,” Gwyn nodded, seeing the value in that. “Aye, it will help both the Council and the Royal Family in evaluating how much land to deed the Clans in the northern ranges.”

“Brit’s thought exactly,” Sparrow echoed. Then she looked to each of them. Ril pushed under her hand for a farewell pat. “May the Mother ride your winds, my Sisters.”

Llinolae smiled. Gwyn nodded. They were going to need the Mother’s blessings.

Gwyn straightened from her crouch, tossing aside the handful of pebbly grit she had been studying. Even in the moons’ dimmed light, the abandoned fields were a pitiful sight. Rocks the size of cobblestones were littered about. The land was craggy and sparsely grassed. There were scattered bracken hedges and twisted skeletons of nearly dead saplings; poor attempts at windbreaks, Gwyn realized.

She brushed her hands off on her breeches and squinted at the abandoned structures on the northern horizons. The wind stirred up and rushed past her, blowing her hair loose from her short braid. Cinder nosed her shoulder with a grunt, black mane whipping back to mesh with Gwyn’s own red silk.

The Amazon leaned into the mare’s warmth, pressing their cheeks together as she scratched the ruddy hide behind an ear. It wasn’t that she was cold. The wind was dry. It smelt faintly of dust. Despite the recent rains, the countryside had the barren feeling of a wasteland.

“Aye,” Ril came to lean into Gwyn’s thigh. The curled coat felt reassuringly real beneath Gwyn’s hand. “This is a coldness of the soul — not the weather that we’re feeling.”

The wind rose with another swirl and passed. The utter stillness its absence left was almost as disturbing.

“Come, it’s time we rejoined Ty and Llinolae,” Gwyn spoke aloud to break the emptiness of the place. “We’ve seen enough to know Camdora spoke only the truth about this wasted land.”

She swung into the saddle and sent Cinder off in a canter, Ril close behind. In truth, they had seen enough.

The winds mourned of ghosts and loss as they crossed the Plateau and passed the camp. The three canvas walls had been angled and slanted to resemble something of a truncated pyramid, and they deflected the worst of the wailing forces over or around them. The design left the travelers open to a sky of starry velvet. But within, the sloping walls hid the small group and their fire amazingly well.

And tonight the fire was a welcomed light to circle around. The midnight moon had set, and the darkness amidst these winds seemed to linger endlessly with no hint of dawn.

The mares moved restlessly, shifting to stay close for warmth, but avoiding contact with the chilly tarp wall. On the far side of the fire’s defiant little circle, the sandwolves nestled in between gear, canvas and women. They lay nose to nose, their furry bodies half-curled around Gwyn and Llinolae who sat murmuring in low voices.

None of the small crew were thinking of sleep yet.

“This isn’t working,” Gwyn muttered, struggling to rearrange the blanket she shared and yet stay careful not to pinch a stray paw in her squirming.

“Are you stealing the covers already, n’Athena? At least let me get in closer here…”

Gwyn glanced at her partner with a feeble smile and opened an arm obediently to pull Llinolae in beneath a blanket. She waited then, until they were settled to ask. “Your harmon found the village then — what was there?”

“The fear and desperation Camdora spoke of.” Weariness sang in her sigh as Llinolae leaned a bit against Gwyn’s shoulder. “They have some food and shelter of sorts, but these winds have been as unforgiving to their clay brick and timber structures as it has been to their land. Their milkdeer are the sturdiest stock I have ever seen, with woolly hides wrapped thick from the perpetual chill—”

“Again from these winds,” Gwyn saw quickly.

“And they seemed prepared to eat anything short of petrified wood. All of which might bode well for adapting to the north….”

“But — ?”

“They had but one house in the whole village — perhaps in this whole district! — which had anything remotely resembling a bookshelf. Gardens are scraps of roots and weeds…. Everywhere eyes were dull with need — or bright with fear if the horizon road to the old Base Port swirled dust for a moment.”

“Those Taysa would trust to fetch weapons would probably not be the kindest among the scouts militia,” Gwyn noted.

Llinolae shook her head, sadly agreeing. “And these folks struggle so for such a dismal survival. They’ve a single millstone with bins that store everything from the community’s grains to salted meats. But salt seems to be about the only thing they have got plenty of!”

“Nothing’s safely accessible.”

“As for their farming — I’d always suspected things were bad, Gwyn, but I’d never really grasped the concept of ‘barren’ before this wasteland. These folks have been losing more and more land, faster and faster as they approach the Plateau’s edge.”