A Gathering Of Stones

10

Two weeks slid past. Korimenei rode and walked, walked and rode, nibbled at trailbars and apples during the day, usually while the ponies grazed, cooked up stew and panbread When she camped for the night, washing these down with strong tea and a bowl of the rough red wine she’d picked up in Kapi Yuntipek. Water wasn’t a problem, there were wells and troughs at intervals along the road. The sky stayed clear, there wasn’t any frost in the morning, the air was too dry, but even long after the sun came up, the days were crackling cold. Despite that, she passed up the Waystop Inns as she came to them, riding on to camp at one of the wells. As if he were trying to make up for a fault he wasn’t about to admit, Tre came each night with a weather report and stayed to chat a little, mostly about what had been happening to Korimenei, he said it was because he was sealed in crystal, stuck in the cave; since nothing was happening to him, there was nothing to talk about unless they went over and over past times which he didn’t want to do. She grew easier in her mind; she wanted to believe that the closeness they’d shared was still there, waiting to be resumed when he was free.

In the third week she left behind the last sparse clumps of Ternu grass and moved into the foothills of the Dhia Dautas. The waves of land had a flat wispy ground cover, gray-brown, limp; there seemed to be no vigor in it, but the ponies relished it when she let them graze. The thorn-studded brush had small leaves that a series of hard frosts had turned into stiff rounds of maroon leather, and copper-colored crooked branches that wove in and out of each other to form a dense prickly ball that only changed size as it aged, not conformation. It grew in tangled clumps in and around dumps of boulders like the droppings of some immense and incontinent beast.

In the fourth week she was on the lower slopes of the mountains winding upward toward the first LowPass, moving through thick stands of trees and a different ground cover, broad-leafed vines that were crimson and gold, crawling across red earth that crumbled into a fine dust which settled on every surface and worked its way into every crevice. The slopes were steeper, the air thinner and colder.

It cut her throat like knives when she was winded near the top of a rise and breathing through her mouth. She saw deer and fiarru herds, wolves trotting in ragged lines, sangas and mountain cats sunning on boulders or in trees, squirrels and rabbits and other small scuttlers, birds hopping along the ground, feeding on seeds and insects. There was a sense of waiting in the air, a feeling that the season was changing, but not yet. Not quite yet. Most mornings there were only a few wisps of cloud scrawled across the sky; as each day wore on, though, the clouds thickened and darkened, the light took on a pewter tinge, colors were darker, richer. She saw no one, the road was open, empty, but she was aware several times of eyes watching her. She ignored them. Let them watch.

At the end of the week she ran into rain and black ice.

When she crawled from her blankets the sky was clear and cold as the water in the stream, the world was a glitter of ice and frost flowers. Her skin tingled, she was intensely alive; when she started along the Road again she wore seven league boots and could stride across the mountains like a giant.

A patch of black ice reminded her she was merely mortal. Her feet slid from under her and she landed on hands and knees hard enough to jar her back teeth. She got painfully to her feet and inspected her hands; the palms were scraped raw, smeared with dirt. With slow stiff movements she rubbed them on her jacket; when the dirt was off, shepulled her gloves from her pocket and put them on. She made a face at Ailiki who was being Sessa again, sitting plump and sedate on the saddle, smirking at her. “Laugh and I start thinking Liki stew.”

On the far side of the ridge, was a long narrow valley, smoky with steam from hotsprings, steam that wove in and out of dark ominous conifers and went trickling up to a white-blue sky bare of clouds. About a half mile from the Road, she saw a huddled village; there were no people visible, no stock in sight; the harvest was already in, the fields were mud and stubble. A ghost drifted across the mud, circled her, then fled without saying anything. She could sense hostile eyes watching her and had a strong feeling she’d better not stay around for any length of time.

Half an hour later, she came on a small scraggly meadow; she stopped there, fed the ponies the last of the feedcake and let them graze.

When Ailiki brought them in, they were mud to the belly. Korimenei swore, dug out a stiff brush and went over their legs and feet, cleaning away the mud and the small round leeches they’d collected off infested brush. She worked up a sweat that damped her underclothes and ripened her smell until even she was aware she stank. She knocked the brush against the trunk of a conifer and straightened. “Lili, if it takes till midnight, we keep going until we reach an Inn.”

They plodded on, winding up the next ridge in long slow loops that gained height with the tempered speed of a slug in winter, passing other xenophobic settlements nested on small mountain flats, blank-walled, secret places that turned their shoulders to the Road and refused to acknowledge its existence. By late afternoon more clouds were blowing off the peaks, blocking what small warmth the pallid sun had been providing; a chill, dank wind rolled down the Road. She pushed on, riding and walking, walking and riding. The day grew darker and darker. The sun finally sneaked down, no display of color this night, only an imperceptible hardening of the dark. Finally, near midnight, she reached the Waystop Inn at the throat of HighPass.

The doors were barred, the windows shuttered, the Inn was dark and silent. Korimenei was in no mood to tolerate obstacles or delicately weigh consequences. She sent the bar flying from its brackets, kicked the door open and went stalking in. She crafted a will-o, hung it by the thick ceiling beams and stood waiting in the eerie, bluish light, Ailiki on her shoulder, the ponies huddled close outside the gaping door. “Hey the house,” she shouted. “You have clients_ Stir your stumps or I’ll turn this dikkhush into kindling.”

The Host came down the stairs, his nightshirt tucked into trousers pulled hastily on, the lacings untied, ends dangling, He carried a lamp, set it on the counter when he saw the will-o and Korimenei standing under it. “It’s late,” he said. “We closed for the night.”

“Looks like I just opened you. I want a hot bath, a hot meal, and a bed. And stabling for my ponies. We can debate the metaphysics of open and closed all you want come the morning. Right now I’m tired and I haven’t a lot of patience.”

“Sorceror.” It wasn’t a compliment the way he said it. He shrugged. “Bath’s no problem, we’re sitting on a hotspring. Meal, that’ll take some time and it’ll cost. M’ wife works hard and she needs her sleep, you’re not the only one tired this night. Ponies, take ‘em round yourself, get ‘em settled. You had no trouble getting in here, do the same to the stables if you can’t wake the boy up. I’d take it kindly if you didn’t scare a year’s growth out of him. He’s m’ wife’s cousin and worth hot spit on a summer day, but kin’s kin.”

She laughed. “You’re a clever man, Hram. You could milk the poison from a reared-back cobra. I expect to pay, but control your appetite, Hram Host; double is enough, more than that is sin and punishable by wart, eh?” She listened. “It’s starting to rain, I’d better get the ponies under cover.” She beckoned the will-o to her. “And let you shut your door so all the heat doesn’t leak away.”