A solar lantern brightened the usually dim entryway. The rest of Esmelda’s huge house lay dark and silent, except for the faint, almost secretive creaking as it surrendered its warmth to the night. Just inside the door, beside the table piled with notebooks and correspondence, a travel pack sat on the floor. It was made of soft, oiled leather, with buckled outer pockets and felt-padded shoulder straps. Alongside lay a woolen cloak, neatly folded, and Terricel’s best pair of boots.
Leaving the front door to swing closed behind him, Terricel knelt in amazement beside the pack and clothing. When he’d stormed out of the house, he had no idea he’d have any need for travel gear. But someone else had known: Lys, who’d tried in her own way to be the mother Esmelda never was.
o0o
At first he couldn’t believe that Esmelda refused to take action, even for her own daughter. He’d pleaded with her, “How could you turn the Ranger away? Couldn’t you at least say you’d think about it?”
“Why give her false hope?”
“It’s because of Montborne, isn’t it?” he cried with a strange, savage desperation. “You’re afraid that whatever you do, he’ll find out.”
Age lines deepened in Esmelda’s face, foreshadowing her death mask. “I can’t afford to give him a single...” She paused, as if searching for the right word. “...a single weapon to use against me.”
“I don’t understand. Montborne’s ambitious, certainly, but there’s no question about his loyalty to Laurea. You could do worse than to bargain with him.”
“I have no choice in the matter. As long as Pateros was alive, he kept Montborne in check, but now...Montborne may be a Laurean patriot, but I have to think on a larger scale. He could well be a destabilizing force for all of Harth.” She lifted one hand, a fluttery gesture so unlike her that it startled Terricel into silence.
“I’ve already said more than is safe for either of us,” she said, twisting the ring with the dotted circle on her finger. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
o0o
Terricel had roamed the streets for what seemed like hours, too flaming angry to think what else to do. He thought of seeking out Etch at The Elk Pass, as he had a number of times since that first night, but he wanted something more than a few hours of drunken oblivion and another fight with Esmelda the next morning.
By some miracle, he’d found the woman Ranger, Kardith, on her knees in front of Pateros’s grave like some kind of pilgrim. She’d turned her back on him, all but laughed at his offer of help. After all, why should she believe him? Why should she have anything to do with him?
He’d stood there in the plaza after Kardith left. Above him a formless darkness hovered, and at his feet lay pale smooth pavement. An ice-edged wind lashed across the open space, turning his skin as chill and lifeless if he had turned into the marble figure of Gaylinn’s painting.
Gaylinn... Terricel’s throat ached until it turned numb. The wind howled her name as it scoured away flesh and bones, leaving nothing of him but words. His University masters’ words, Montborne’s words, Esmelda’s words — all patched together to make something that walked and talked and looked like a man. The years of working and waiting and secret imagining — nothing but words.
Now other words unexpectedly boiled out of him, words he’d never even whispered aloud before, words that made all common obscenities pale and safe. No one knew what they meant anymore, except maybe the most highly placed gaea-priests.
Finally he paused for breath, his throat half-frozen, and noticed the people gathered around Pateros’s tree. No one said anything to him. Their expressions were unreadable in the eerie Starhall light — disapproving perhaps, sympathetic, maybe even grateful he was doing their cursing for them.
As he wandered from the plaza, a feeling began in him, condensing with the sharp-edged clearness of an ice crystal, a feeling that out of all the horrors of the past week — the assassination, the funeral, the planning and scheming, the riot, the blood — there was only one thing that touched him or moved him beyond his old life.
Everything else was to be endured and survived, like the thing beneath the Starhall. He could feel it even now, as if it had become a permanent part of him, and suddenly the taint of it became more than he could bear.
Aviyya needed help. Terricel clung to the thought as the single reality in his life. He couldn’t do a damned thing for Pateros. Or for Gaylinn, either. His academic career was a bad joke. As for being Esmelda’s heir, he was nothing more than a convenient secretary. If only there were some place he could go where no one had ever heard of Esmelda of Laurea or the Inner Council or even the University.
No wonder Aviyya had run as fast and as far as she could.
“Half of what’s wrong with you,” Gaylinn once said, “is that you’ve grown up with just Esmelda and her off most of the time saving the world. The other half is that you’ve never done anything to change it.”
“There was Lys,” he’d said.
And Avi... Part sister, part mother, who was she now?
Suddenly the darkened city streets faded before his eyes. He saw Aviyya, her face pale under streaks of blood, her black hair tangled with mud and leaves. She was struggling up a mist-cloaked embankment. She paused, breathing hard, her breath coming in puffs of vapor. Then her gray eyes went cloudy, as if she somehow sensed his presence. Abruptly, the image vanished.
The Ranger woman, Kardith, she’d been out there on Kratera Ridge with Aviyya. Avi was important to her, too, in some desperate way he could only guess. What lay between them, bound them together, went beyond simple comradeship. It had taken the threat of mutilation to bring Kardith to Esmelda, and she wasn’t the kind who found begging easy.
She had no reason to help him, and he would have to find some way to convince her. He needed directions, maps, woodscraft. There was nothing he could do that she couldn’t do a hundred times better. But he had one overwhelming advantage, if he could find the courage to use it — he didn’t take orders from Montborne.
o0o
Back in the entryway to Esmelda’s house, Terricel sat down, pulled on the boots, and inspected the contents of the traveling pack. The pockets were filled with packages of concentrated food bars, a generously stocked money belt and a selection of his own clothes, the most warm and durable he owned.
A shadow caught his eye — Annelys, clutching her robe around her thin shoulders. She stood, bleached and squinting, in the lantern’s glare.
“Did my mother put these here?” Terricel indicated the pack.
The old steward shook her head.
“But does she know? Lys, is this her idea? Because if it is — ”
“You’ll what? Stay here just to spite her? Listen to me. I brought up her tisane and she said to me, ‘I’ve lost him. I’ve lost them both.’ You think she doesn’t know what she’s done? To Avi and now to you? She knows what she did to her daughter all right, forcing her into secrets that were none of her own choosing. And she knows what it did to you to keep those same secrets from you. That’s why she’s lying upstairs right now, waiting for you to leave.”
Unable to reply, Terricel clambered to his feet. Annelys scooped up the pack and cloak. She shoved them into his arms.
“Now here is something she doesn’t know. You want a life of your own, that’s your chance. You go out there and find your sister, do you hear me? But don’t you bring her back. You keep right on going! This family’s suffered enough from Esme’s secrets.”
“Lys!” He took her in his arms. She hugged him back with unexpected ferocity, as if she never expected to see him again.
“Enough with good-byes! I’ve served Esme for thirty years and never once have I faced her in tears!”
There was nothing else Terricel could say to her. He backed out the door and paused for a moment on the steps, listening and knowing he would hear nothing.
He looked out across the city that had been his world. Here the solar-stored light burned all night long and kept the shadows from growing too deep or too cold. Here the people lay safe and dreaming in their beds. What had they to fear? Montborne would keep the northers at bay, and if they no longer had Pateros to guide them, they still had Esmelda.
o0o
When Terricel arrived at the Blue Star Stables, he found the house dark and silent. A flickering lantern hung crookedly from the railing, but a second, stronger light streamed through the partly opened barn door. As he approached it, Terricel heard the sounds of animals chewing fodder.
Inside the barn, the horse smell was thicker, mixed with a sweet, musty odor. Bits of straw littered the hard-packed dirt of the central aisle. A large lantern, in better shape than the one outside, swung from the rafters. A half-dozen horses, their sizes and colors shadowed, poked their heads over the stall doors, ears pricked and nostrils twitching. From the far end came a man’s voice, low and indistinct.
“Hello?” Terricel called. “Hello, Etch?”
In answer came a squeal and a bellowed curse. Terricel hurried to the large box stall at the opposite end of the barn and peered over the wooden door. Etch stood behind a speckled-white horse, his shoulder tucked under the tail at an improbable angle. The horse’s legs splayed out, its rounded sides heaving. Blood streaked its hind legs and matted the straw bedding.
The horse squealed again and began thrashing its head, which was tied by a stout rope to a ring in the wall.
“What the hell?” Etch shouted. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me. Terricel.”
“Harth’s sweet ass, boy, don’t just stand there! Grab her head, quiet her down. The foal’s crosswise and if I can’t turn it, we’ll lose both of them.”
Terricel dropped his pack and managed to unlatch the stall door. Circling around Etch, he got a good look at the laboring mare. He’d ridden horses a few times over the years, but he’d never needed to actually handle them. He was always surprised how big they were, how earthy and vivid. Now he saw that Etch had the better part of one arm inside of the mare’s body. Both of them were sweating hard, straining. The veins on Etch’s forehead stood out sharply.
The mare’s bony head was as long as Terricel’s forearm. She snorted, spraying his chest with foam, and pulled her head away as he took hold of the halter. The straps were fever-hot and sodden with sweat. Blood crusted her jawbone where the buckles had torn her skin.
Suddenly her whole body tensed. Her eyes rolled, showing crescents of white. She gave a wheezing cry and staggered, as if her feet had suddenly slipped out from under her. The leather straps jerked through Terricel’s fingers.
“Stinking hell!” yelled Etch. “Hold her still! I’ve almost got it!”
Terricel tightened his grip on the halter. “Hey, you!” he said to the mare. “Take it easy...” Horses, he’d been told, responded to tone of voice rather than actual words.
“Hey,” he repeated, trying to make his voice as soothing as he could, “hey, Mama Horse, it’s going to be all right.”
Heat streamed from the mare’s body in waves. Murmuring nonsense syllables, Terricel pulled down on the halter. He was surprised when she sighed and lowered her head. Her nose whiskers tickled his hands.
“It’s all right, you’re a good horse, a Brave Lady,” he repeated. He thought he saw a flicker of awareness in the dark pupils. “Everything’s going to be fine. We’re here, we’ll help you. It’s all right...”
In a rippling wave, the mare’s sides hardened again. The muscles in her neck and shoulders bunched. She began to pant, making grunting noises.
Terricel kept his grip on either side of the halter, talking all the while, although his own muscles tensed reflexively. He forced himself to breathe slowly and steadily, just as he had during all those meetings in the Starhall. Then he had kept silent, but now his voice droned on like a gaea-priest’s chanting. It didn’t matter what he said, he told himself. The only thing that mattered was the continuous flow of sound, the emotional tone of comfort.
For a moment the mare stopped breathing, her body rigid with effort. Etch started yelling, but Terricel couldn’t understand him. He took his eyes from the mare’s head long enough to see something dark and wet slide out from beneath her tail to the floor.
“That’s it!” Etch whooped. “Let her go!”
Terricel yanked the end of the knotted halter rope. It came loose, but the mare made no effort to turn to her newborn. Her head sagged, her eyes gone suddenly dull and unfocused. Her knees buckled forward and her breath came in deep gulps.
“Throw me that other towel,” Etch called. Terricel grabbed the length of cloth looped over the railing and handed it to him. The older man pulled the foal, all wet hair and stick legs, across his lap and began rubbing it vigorously.
“Breathe!” Etch cried. “Damn you, breathe!”
Terricel crouched down beside Etch. He’d never watched a birth before. The hatching of the occasional egg laid by the house-snakes didn’t count, especially since they ate their young whenever they could. But the mare had worked so hard and suffered so much. Etch had worked so hard. It wasn’t fair for the foal to die now.
What was fair about anything? Pateros got knifed down. Gaylinn was dead, along with half a dozen other innocent people. Terricel himself was probably going to die in the half-frozen middle of nowhere trying to find a sister who was already past help. Why should one baby horse make any difference?
Etch kept rubbing and cursing, cursing and rubbing, long after Terricel thought there was any hope left. Suddenly the foal gave a thready bleat and began thrashing. Something hot and bright shot through Terricel’s chest. His eyes stung and he wanted to shout aloud.
Just then, the mare fell over with a crash and lay on her side, sides heaving. Still cursing, Etch heaved the towel-wrapped foal into Terricel’s lap.
“Keep rubbing, keep it breathing.” He knelt by the mare’s head. “I told him she was too old to breed again. Gods-damned greed, that’s what it is. Come on, girl, up you get, hup! hup!”
Terricel, watching Etch struggling with the mare, almost lost hold of the foal, a filly, when she lashed out with her long legs. Awkwardly he wrapped one arm around her neck and rubbed the towel across her sides with the other. As he rubbed, he crooned to her, much as he had to the mare. She sneezed and shook her head but stopped thrashing. Gently he stroked her neck, her short fluff of mane, her tiny curved ears.
With a snort and a grunt of effort, with Etch pulling and pushing and shouting encouragement, the mare heaved herself to her feet. Immediately, the filly began struggling again. Terricel let her go. He expected her to be able to stand because he’d been told that newborn horses could, but it was still miraculous to see her, a squarish body on impossibly thin legs, shivering and quavering toward her mother.
She was a pretty thing, black except for four perfectly matched white socks. The mare dipped her head and sniffed as if to make sure this was indeed her offspring. The filly, her balance precarious at best, staggered but stayed on her feet.
Etch chuckled. “The best thing for both of them is a good nurse,” he said, and proceeded to position the filly facing the mare’s udder. A few moments later the newborn was gulping greedily.
“That’s not milk, you understand, not yet,” Etch told Terricel as he brought in a pitchfork and began shoving the soiled straw into a pile near the door. “It’s colostrum. But when the foal sucks, it makes the mare’s womb clamp down, do you see, and then she bleeds less.”
“That was a close call, wasn’t it?”
Etch leaned heavily on the pitchfork. “Damned right it was. She lost the last one, before the bastard who owns this place brought her here. He’s got no business breeding her and I told him so, but would he listen to me? If it weren’t for her suffering for it, I’d make him clean up here himself.”
“He’ll breed her again because you got her through this time.”
“Damned fool’ll keep doing it until I lose her.” Etch’s voice cracked a little. “There’s nothing I can do about that now. Come on up to the house for a wash and a drink.”
o0o
Terricel carried his pack and cloak up to the stairs and across the wood-plank porch. The house was cold and stale-smelling after the stable.
Etch raised the lights in the kitchen and stripped off his shirt. Throwing it in the sink, he ran a damp sponge over his arms and body. Without his upper clothing, his skin was pale and smooth, unlike his tanned face and forearms. “I’ll be up with that mare for what’s left of the night,” he said as he pulled on fresh, rumpled clothing. He took a bottle and two chipped mugs from a shelf and began rattling pans around in the kitchen.
Terricel remembered the last time he sat in this kitchen. “What’s this you’re concocting for me? More horse tonic?”
“Better than that last round of ale the other night. I swear the barkeep added bittersalt to keep his customers thirsty.” Etch shoved a mug at Terricel. “You did fine with the mare.”
Terricel took a big gulp of the coffee. It was cold and laced with brandy. “Right now what I need is help, not compliments.”
Etch reversed the other chair, straddled it, and took a swig from his own mug. “What kind of help?”
“A horse, for one thing, a decent horse. There’s nobody else I’d trust to buy one from. And trail gear. I have — I have to find someone, and I’ve only been out of the city a few times in my whole life.”
“You gonna tell me about it?”
Terricel stared back at Etch. What did he know about the man, really? That he made a fine drinking partner, that he could fight, that he loved horses and wouldn’t let one die through someone else’s stupidity if he could save her, that he’d lost a family he loved. He debated asking Etch to come with him, partly because he wanted the solid comfort of his new friend, partly because Etch had said more than once how he hated his life in the city.
“My sister,” he said slowly. “She’s a Ranger out on Kratera Ridge and she’s missing. One of her — another Ranger came to my family for help, but the only thing — the only one is me. I’ve got to find this other Ranger before she leaves at dawn.”
“You don’t start with the easy ones, do you?”
“If it were easy, I wouldn’t be here.”
Etch ran one hand over his face, wrinkling the weathered skin. “This Ranger, the one who came for help, would be it a woman with yellow eyes who carries a long-knife and rides a Borderbred gray?”
“You know Kardith?”
“Kardith... So that’s her name. I’d hate to have the kind of trouble she can’t handle on her own.” The stableman grinned again, his eyes twinkling. “I can tell you where to catch up with her, all right. But first, let’s get you a horse and gear. You can ride, I hope?”
Terricel let out his breath. “Some. The rest,” he added wryly, “I’ll have to learn as I go.”
o0o
After checking on the speckled mare, who was resting quietly, Etch led out a big sorrel gelding, tied him crosswise in the center aisle of the barn and began brushing him, sending billows of straw-flecked dust into the air. The gelding, unimpressed with these proceedings, lipped a few stray oats from the floor and lifted each saucer-shaped foot in turn for Etch to pick clean. To Terricel he looked like just another horse, tall and ugly with his floppy ears and down-curved nose.
Terricel, combing out the horse’s mane on Etch’s instructions, asked why he’d picked this one for him.
“To begin with, he’s old enough to have sense and young enough to have stamina. He’s trail-smart, so pay attention if he gets real nervy or doesn’t want to go somewhere. His instincts are a hell of a lot better than yours. He’s also a little lazy, which is good because he won’t work any harder than he has to. He’ll take good care of you as long as you let him.”
Terricel stroked the silky muzzle as Etch selected a saddle and padded blanket and explained how to put them on the horse properly. “What’s his name?”
“Harth’s sweet tits, boy, I gave up naming horses years ago. Call him whatever you like.”
Pink light tinted the eastern sky as Terricel led his new acquisition into the yard. The travel pack was securely tied behind the saddle, along with a sleeping roll and other trail supplies that Etch had sold him. There was a compact cook kit, bandages and water disinfectant, a lightweight tarp, even a small supply of grain for the horse.
“Thanks for all your help,” Terricel said. As long as Etch had been managing things, his spirits had lifted, his confidence strengthened. Now the morning seemed unexpectedly cold, even with his wool-lined cloak. “I wish you were coming with me.”
Etch ducked his head, his eyes hidden. He took a breath and let it out as a sigh. He patted the gelding’s shoulder and said, a little awkwardly, “You may be feeling pretty puny right now, but what you’ve set yourself to do, that’s not a puny thing. You want one last piece of advice, here it is. You let that thing take hold of you. Let it run you instead of the other way around.”
He handed Terricel the loop of reins, thick braided leather. Terricel slipped one foot through a stirrup and boosted himself up. The next moment he was sitting on the gelding’s back, looking down at a stretch of glossy red-brown shoulder and neatly combed mane. One curved ear pricked back toward him. The sky seemed nearer, brighter and darker at the same time.
“I’d better get out of here or Kardith will be long gone.”
“Ranger or no, nobody gets out of Laureal City at dawn. Besides, there’s only one road north.” Etch slapped the gelding’s rump. “Harth bless you, lad.”
The gelding stepped out of the yard at a brisk pace. Terricel swiveled in the saddle as far as he dared for a last look at the stableman. He held on to the pommel with one hand and waved with the other. “Thanks again...”
But Etch, his head tucked as if against a pelting storm, had already started back toward the barn.