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Bryar had been imprisoned – or that’s how it felt, anyway – in the featureless room for three days, rebuilding his strength, enduring the ongoing treatment of his wounded hand. With nothing to do but pace and watch the sun’s patterns move across the bed, he had more time to think than he wanted.
He had killed Duncan. Kiril lied. Why the cocksure, obnoxious man would lie about something like that, he couldn’t work out. He had to learn to live with himself. All the songs he sang, the stories he told of great quests, conquering heroes... many of them involved bloodshed, but none of them spoke of the mental anguish afterwards, the constant awareness of what you had done, justified or not. The taking of life.
Guilt haunted him. Kiril, and the herbalist in a roundabout way, assured him that Duncan’s death should be considered a boon, not a tragedy. The blow had been struck in self-defense. The evidence made it clear that he bore no blame.
Yeah. Right. The burden of his actions weighed on him to the extent that he almost welcomed the twice-daily agony when the herbalist dowsed his fingers in alcohol before rebinding them.
His hand. He’d never play the chitarre again, or the flute. The singular grace of music was no longer his. He would never again release harmonies over the land like a benediction, reflecting the beauty of the seasons, the hills and fields...
He’d made it onto his feet on the second day, stiff from the fight and subsequent confinement, desperate for mild exercise to loosen his overtaxed muscles. Kiril turned up regularly, never saying where he’d been. He made no secret of his concern about their continuing presence in Orlan, and proved to be a master nag, keeping Bryar going as he grew stronger. Reiterating his spurious claim that the murder lay on his conscience, not Bryar’s.
On the third afternoon, as the sun dipped behind other buildings, throwing the room into shadow, Kiril told him to prepare to travel to the hills that night. “Things are getting hot, and we can’t afford to wait any longer. Leo’s arranged transport to the start of the trail. From there, we’re on our own.”
Bryar’s response required no thought at all. “Good. I’m ready to go.” Fleeing the white room, the memories... even the thought of scrambling up the steep access path one-handed wasn’t a deterrent.
“We’ll get out of range of their cops, then take it easy.”
‘Cops’ meant policemen, a word from Terra... and from Orlan. But his other concern outweighed any musings about shared vocabulary, and even the risk of arrest. “I’m strong enough. The Aura, though... the shield’s weakening more quickly. My head’s stuffed like a drinking skin overfilled with water. Joss said that’s how it felt to him on this side of the hills.”
Kiril frowned. “If it’s going to harm you, we can always unmask the cell.”
Bryar shook his head. “Once we get into the hills, I’ll be fine. If it weren’t for the effect on the Weavers, I’d have asked you to unmask it right from the beginning, to hamper Gauvain.” Asking Kiril for anything chafed, more so the realization that he controlled the power cell once again. His theft of the cell had started the chain of events that led to their current precarious situation.
No help for it – yet. Bryar’s despairing laugh came out more of a snort. “I just hope the protection weave’s weak enough for me to light fires. This hand’s useless.”
“It won’t stay that way.” Kiril swung from the bed and made for the heavy leather curtain covering the door. “See you later. Lots of things to attend to.” The curtain swayed, and he was gone.
Bryar continued pacing, reflecting. The swelling Auric energy in his head and the impending trip home told him he still wanted to live. Without the Aura, compounded by Tai’s loss... he really hadn’t been sure.
~~
KIRIL HOPED TO GOD they’d meet up with someone from the Motherhouse in the hills, because he wasn’t confident he’d be able to get Bryar back home on his own. His companion teetered on the edge of depression, putting their whole expedition at risk, although Kiril grudgingly admitted Bryar’s survival skills ranked on a par with his own. Even though he understood the root of the man’s despair, it drove him to distraction. Other people made music. It wasn’t catastrophic, like the world would end because of two maimed fingers.
Basic conflict between soldier and musician, he supposed. A musician couldn’t be expected to cultivate the kind of mental toughness that led a man to kill when he needed to.
Then again, how would he react in the same circumstances? That bar fight – another knife, an accident. He’d been little more than a kid, hadn’t even known the guy. Springing as he did from the upper management caste, the whole episode had been buried and forgotten. It bugged him that it still disturbed his dreams.
Shortly after dark they’d moved to a stable on the western fringe of Orlan, taking a circuitous route through quiet residential neighborhoods, Bryar’s hand hidden under his sheepskin vest. They hadn’t encountered any police on the way, only distrusting glares from the occasional citizen. But then everyone frowned in this place.
Leo arrived, short-tempered, in the depths of the night. He hitched the lone horse – a beast that for some reason fascinated Bryar – to a ramshackle cart, holding the nag’s head while they climbed into the hay-filled bed. Kiril felt Bryar’s involuntary recoil when his left hand accidentally brushed against the side wall of the cart. “Suck it up,” he muttered.
“Go to hell,” Bryar hissed. Good. If they annoyed each other, they were more likely to keep going. More likely to get home safely.
Assuming they made it to the hills. Leo’s state of high alert did nothing for his own nerves. Kiril touched the knife strapped to his ankle, one he’d stolen months ago from some little hamlet west of Stanstead.
“Did I tell you?” he said conversationally as he tucked a blanket, then hay, around Bryar’s legs. “Seems they found a body in a bad part of town, prostitutes and drug dealers. Pretty sure it was that friend of Gauvain’s. Douglas?”
“Duncan.” A quick gesture with Bryar’s good hand told Kiril he’d caught on to the casual deception.
“Yeah, that’s right. They’re assuming a sale of a whore gone wrong. Damned aristocrats.”
Bryar snorted.
Kiril swung aboard and nudged Leo, who set the horse moving at a slow clop.
Once they passed the last of the town’s outlying buildings, Leo stood to look up and down the road. Obviously relieved to find no one following them, he drove the horse at a faster pace, jostling the men in the back enough to preclude conversation beyond the occasional curse. The rhythm of the animal’s feet and the faint rustle of a mild breeze crossing the fields filled the otherwise still night.
Leo got them to the trailhead at daybreak. Unlike the approach from the Midland, on this side the hills rose directly from the plain. The access trail snaked up from a weed-choked clearing. Steep, rocky, and largely barren, supporting only occasional stunted conifers, the abrupt ascent marked a forbidding contrast to the dry brown earth of the plains, punctuated only by patches of green where weeds dared establish themselves.
Kiril jumped to the ground and stretched before lifting down their packs. Bryar clambered down without assistance and wandered around the clearing, rolling his shoulders. Leo secured the horse to a leafless bush, then circled the cart and extended a hand; Kiril shook it.
“I’ll stay here awhile before returning,” Leo said. “There are always plants to be harvested if you know where to look. Some are at their best when very young, and they provide an effective decoy. Everybody knows I collect herbs.” He turned to the looming hills. “It looks to be a hard climb. Be patient, and be careful with the bandage. Don’t overtax yourselves.”
“I’m aware of all that.” Kiril shoved aside a pang of annoyance when he realized the old man was fussing because it mattered.
A new feeling, that. To be the object of caring.
Bryar walked over to Leo. “Goodbye, and thank you. We wouldn’t have succeeded without your help.”
“The world will be better,” Leo said. “Gauvain... he is not evil, but his lust for power overrides his judgment. Having met the two of you and Willow, I trust your Motherhouse to deal with the cell appropriately. Travel safely. And should you see Miss Willow, please give her my best wishes.”
“Sure.” Kiril suppressed a grimace at the assumption he had any association with the Motherhouse. He helped Bryar with his pack and donned his own. “Take care of yourself,” he said with a final nod to Leo, and turned toward the trail.
“You have the cell?” Bryar asked from behind him.
Kiril didn’t answer, but shot a contemptuous glance over his shoulder.
“I’d prefer to carry it myself.”
“You’re not strong enough.”
“When I am.”
Bryar managed the climb better than Kiril had expected, but by the end of an hour of relatively slow progress they were forced to rest. Looking out over the plain, he saw Leo’s cart making its way toward the city. The tower loomed in the distance, a black menace against the brown dirt and red brick of Orlan.
Bryar settled on the ground behind a boulder, out of sight of Borgonne. “I’m grateful for your support,” he said. “But so help me, if you try to abscond with that thing again, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”
“You couldn’t kill a fly.” Kiril lounged against the boulder, enjoying the break.
“When you’ve done it once, what’s one more? When your land and your way of life are at stake?” Bryar’s voice was hard as nails. He meant every word.
“How many times do I have to say it? You didn’t kill him.”
“Much though I appreciate your trying to shield the truth from the poor, weak minstrel, it won’t work.”
He heard the underlying bitterness in Bryar’s voice, but chose to ignore it. “Believe what you want.”
“That isn’t what I want.” Bryar turned away and took a long pull from his flask. Then he sat up straighter, his head cocked.
“Hear something?”
He smiled, grimly, for the first time since they entered the hills from the Midland two weeks ago. “Yeah. Quinn. She’s coming.”