Jaran

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was very still, as if all the animals had fled, only the whispering lilt of a distant stream like a muted counterpoint to the undertone of his ragged breathing. Branches clicked together in a rustle of wind. He sat against a slim tree trunk, eyes shut, face ashen. She collapsed to her knees beside him.

"Ilya?" Her voice shook.

For a long moment, as the vibration of her spoken word disappeared into the stillness, he did not move. Finally, he pulled his trouser leg out of his boots and probed his knee, his fingers as careful as an artist's. The blood drained from his face. He was so obviously on the edge of agony that it hurt her to watch him. His breath shuddered, stopped, and began again with forced evenness, but he finished and at last lifted his hands away and opened his eyes. They had a vacant, unseeing cast.

"Not broken." Each syllable was distinct, as though it were hard for him to form them.

"Oh, Lord." It came out of her like a sigh.

Abruptly his gaze sharpened on her. "Can't you do anything?"

He might as well have slapped her. She stood up, spun away from him, and walked, hands clenched, over to the dead hunter.

The hunter could have been asleep on his side except for the spray of blood that spread out from his neck, soaking into dirt and moss. A tiny black bug crawled across one of his open eyes. She pressed the heels of her palms across her eyes. Bile rose in her throat.

She picked up all his weapons-bow, arrows, dagger-and set them down beside Bakhtiian. Took in a full breath and walked back to the hunter. First she stripped him of what clothing was not too drenched in blood to be unusable. Then she grabbed his ankles-almost dropped them because they were still warm, the skin soft, yielding under her fingers. She gagged, clenched her lips together. His toes were white; hair grew below the first joint, but the nails were reddish-brown and dirty, as if they were already decaying.

She dragged him downslope over the rough ground and into a dense thicket. Branches stung her back and head and arms. She shoved him down an incline, and he rolled farther into the vegetation, twigs snapping under his weight. Retreating, she did what she could to cover his path, picking up dead branches and sweeping the trail the body had left until she came back to the congealing blood and scattered clothes at the beginning. Dirt stuck to the soles of her boots. The heavy scent of blood permeated the air. She put her hand to her throat, swallowed once, and turned and ran upslope, sound scattering out from her feet, until she was out of earshot. Then she dropped to her knees and was sick.

The stream murmured nearby. Its gentle chorus brought her back to herself, and she rose, still trembling, and explored until she found it. The shock of bitterly cold water on her face made her think again.

She ran back to the clearing.

Bakhtiian had not moved. She gathered up the dead man's trousers and two tunics, shook them off, and went over to Bakhtiian.

"Ilya. Put these on."

He looked up at her. Only a thin line of iris gave color to his eyes. His gaze strayed past her to the clearing. "He's gone."

"Yes. What happened to your knee?"

His gaze did not light on any one thing. "It went backward. I went forward."

"Hyperextended, probably." She offered him the clothing. "Do you need help?"

"I have clothes on."

"Damn it! You have to stay warm. Over yours." She tossed the clothing in his lap. "Let me see what I can do about your knee."

Just beyond the path of blood that stained the center of the clearing lay the dead hunter's sandals and heavy leggings. A yellowing undershirt lay draped across them, half covering a small, hollowed-out animal horn tied to a thong, the last of his possessions. She grabbed the undershirt and walked back to the stream.

It was like encasing her fingers in ice, but she grimly soaked the cloth and ran back to Bakhtiian. He had gotten both tunics on and was cleaning his saber on the hunter's trousers, slowly and with a kind of desperate concentration.

"I told you to put those on." She crouched next to him. If he heard her, he gave no reply. "Ice the injury," she said, feeling as if she were talking to herself. "Isn't that what you're supposed to do first?" She pulled up his trouser leg, and winced. Already the knee was swollen. Discoloration mottled the skin. He paused in cleaning the blade, and his eyes shifted to her. In a swift, careful move, she wrapped the cold cloth around his knee.

Suddenly, his hands relaxed their grip on his saber, his lips parted slightly. He shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the tree. Tess finished cleaning his saber with two smooth strokes. Then she set to work again. She found a walking stick and two straight branches for a splint, then eased off his boot-already it was tight at the top as the swelling increased-and bound his calf in the leggings. The blood that lay like rust on the rocks and lichen in the middle of the clearing could be disguised for the time by spreading it out with branches, sprinkling dirt over it, ripping up long swatches of moss and draping them across stained rock. She broke up this activity with trips to the stream, to resoak the shirt and bind his knee. Last, she threw the little animal horn into the same thicket that held the body. Like a grave offering, she thought, hearing the light thud as it struck dirt. Then there was only silence. It was almost as if the hunter had never existed. Almost.

"Can you walk yet?" she asked, going back to Ilya.

His eyes were still shut. "Yes."

"We've got the hunter's belt and some rope from the quiver, for the splint."

He opened his eyes. "Very well."

After a time they managed something marginally effective. He grasped the heavy walking stick with one hand, bent his good leg under him, and pushed off. Halfway up his bad leg shifted, pressing into the ground. He gasped. Before he could fall, Tess grabbed him by the waist and pulled him up. He swayed. When she let him go, he staggered back a step. His free arm circled the tree he had been sitting against. He rested his head against the bark. All was quiet, except for the tik tik of an insect and the uneven flow of his breathing. Finally he opened his eyes and thrust himself away from the tree. Without a word, Tess slung all the extra gear over her shoulders, waiting for him to set the pace.

Watching Bakhtiian as he hobbled back along the valley toward the horses was a lesson in something; Tess wasn't sure what. After every ten steps, he halted. After the space of time to take ten steps had elapsed, he started again. His eyes, his whole face, were glazed with pain. Sometimes Tess spoke, to break the silence. He never answered. Once, when she made a bad joke, she thought he smiled slightly.

Finally, seeing that his progress was slowing perceptibly, she redirected their course toward the hills, hoping to find and follow a stream back to the end of the valley. When she heard the soft rush of water nearby, she left Bakhtiian where he had halted yet again and went ahead with the undershirt.

The stream pooled just below a ridge of rock over which Tess could see the slope of the nearest hill. After slipping down five shale steps, it trailed back into the forest. She knelt, plunging the shirt into the water, gasping from the cold.

A note rose high on the breeze, low and trembling. At first she thought it was an animal, but as the sound arced to a peak and cut off she knew suddenly that it was close by, far too close, and that it was a horn. She looked up. Froze, hands still in the water.

The man stood not twenty paces from her. He stared, as surprised as she was. He raised a hand, taking in her scarlet jaran shirt, her saber, and-she could see it by the widening of his eyes-her feminine form and face. She kept her hands below the surface of the water, terrified all at once that he would see his dead companion's shirt. How could she have forgotten? No one hunted alone.

He drew an arrow and nocked it, but he did not immediately let fly. Instead, he stared. She lifted her right hand from the water. It ached with cold. It hurt to curl her fingers around the hilt of her Chapalii knife, but she did so, watching him. He grinned and said something, foreign words. She drew the dagger. He raised the bow and said something more, clearly a threat. What had Garii said? Thumb over the third and second lights. The world slowed. She slid her thumb along the smooth hilt. The hunter drew the bowstring back and aimed and spoke-Light streaked out. A flush of heat. He fell. She gasped audibly, jumped to her feet, and ran to him. He lay motionless on the ground. He stank, but it was an honest smell: dirt and onions and too many months without washing. He was still breathing.

For a long moment she simply gaped. How could he not be dead? One side of his face was flushed red. Daring much, she bent to touch it-it was warm, unnaturally so, but not burned. Stunned, not dead.

She lifted a hand to wipe at her face. She had broken out in a sweat. She felt hot under her clothes though the autumn air had a chill snap to it. Stunned not dead! Garii had given her a knife set to stun. So it couldn't be used against him? Against any Chapalii?

What the hell did it matter anyway? She ran back to the pool and fished out the wet shirt, wrung it out, swore, and ran back to the hunter and took all his weapons. Raced into the woods, stopping before she reached Bakhtiian. How could she explain these weapons? Her saber was not even bloodied. She ought to go back and kill the hunter while he was unconscious, but she knew she could never do it. She sawed the bowstring into thirds and then dumped the weapons into the densest clump of undergrowth she could find, and ran on.

When Bakhtiian saw her, he sheathed his saber. "How many?''

"One." She wrapped the wet shirt around his knee, which was by now so swollen that she couldn't even make out the shape of the patella.

"Did he see you?"

"Yes." She hesitated. He held onto a low-hanging branch and waited. "We just have to move fast. I'd suggest trying to follow the stream."

"We'll leave a clear trail."

"He has no weapons. He'll have to go back and get help.

If we follow the stream, we can keep the swelling down." She tied the shirt at his knee into knots, securing it to the splint. "And hope they don't find the dead man until tomorrow."

"That's the only thing that helps," he said.

"Besides your stubbornness."

There was silence, except for a few birds calling and the distant spill of water. "You'd better go. Find the jahar."

She slung the gear onto her back and handed him the walking stick. "Come on."

"Did you mention stubbornness?" He pushed himself away from the tree. "I mistakenly thought you referred to me."

She angled their path to avoid the pool. This time they made it all the way to the stream before he had to stop. While he rested, she wrapped his knee again, then scouted ahead a ways, but she heard nothing, saw nothing. Shadows stretched out around them. The bottom rim of the sun touched the blurred line of trees at the height of the hills, casting a deep red glow like blood against the low advance of clouds. Bakhtiian coughed, and she glanced over at him. The last of the sunlight cast gold across his face. It highlighted his cheekbones so that the skin seemed taut across them, in sharp relief like the face of a man who is starving or near death.

Eyes shut, he said, "Don't be an idiot. Go on without me."

"Bakhtiian, did it ever occur to you that I probably can't find the horses, much less the jahar, by myself?"

He was silent.

"By God. Now that's a compliment."

One corner of his mouth tugged upward. He opened his eyes. "You're right." He coughed again, but it was a trembling sound. "I don't know how I could have thought that." They both laughed.

And, eyes meeting, cut off their laughter abruptly. Silence. A bird sang in the distance, a little five-note figure over and over. Bakhtiian grasped his walking stick and pushed himself up. He winced, took a step, winced, took another. They went on.

His pace was so slow that night made no difference to their progress. Animals accompanied their retreat: noises fading out into the brush, drawing closer when they halted, a snuffling once, that skittered away when she threw a rock in its direction.

Each time they halted he counted. Each time, he reached a higher number before he rose and struggled on. Now and then she had to help him over a fallen log, through a thick scattering of rocks, past a screen of branches. Wet vegetation slapped her face. Vines caught at her legs or brushed, slippery and damp, across her hand. Once she fell asleep balanced on a log, but when Ilya rose the log shifted under her and she woke, startled. Dawn came before they reached the end of the valley. It was another hour at least before they staggered into the copse where the horses were tethered.

Ilya sank down onto the ground. Deep circles smudged his eyes. "I can't go on right now." He covered his face with his hands and slumped forward.

"You have to eat." She brought him food from their bags.

He took the food but did nothing with it. "You should sleep," he said. "I'll wake you."

"You should sleep."

"I can't sleep. I'll watch." He shut his eyes again and leaned back, resting against a tree trunk.

Tess rubbed her face. She checked the horses, forced herself to eat, forced herself to refill the water flasks before she allowed herself the luxury of lying down on her cloak three meters behind Bakhtiian, facing the high screen of bushes. Here, in the close wood, the leaves were the brightest green at the tops of the bushes, lit by the sun, shading down to a dark green near the earth, where shadows obscured most of the ground. Encased in gloves, her hands felt almost warm. She fell asleep.***

The palace in Jeds looked out over the sea, over the wide mouth of the bay, out toward the islands littering the horizon like so much flotsam cast back to drift. Marco Burckhardt stood alone on the sea wall, watching the waves slide in along the strand and murmur through the hedge of rocks scattered at the base of the wall. Spray lifted in the wind and misted his face. To his left lay the crowded harbor, sailing ships anchored out in the bay, galleys and boats moored to the docks; beyond it, crawling up and down the hills, the fetid sprawl of Jeds itself. And to his right, set a little away from the city in the midst of neat fields, the university, established at least a century ago but transplanted to its new grounds twenty years past by the first prince of the new line in Jeds.

"Admiring your handiwork?" Cara Hierakis came up beside him and slipped a hand into the crook of his elbow. The wind blew the curls of her black hair away from her face.

"My great masterpiece." Marco grinned.

"I hate to remind you, my dear, but the new buildings were actually built after you died and Charles inherited."

"I meant my death. I think I engineered it very well, dedicating the grounds and then being crushed under stones in that horrible accident."

"Yes, you do like coming close to death, don't you?"

"It's how I know I'm alive. Although an engineered accident does lack something, especially that frisson of risk. The best part of it was getting to become a new man afterward, with a new face and a new name."

"Marco, have you ever considered psychoanalysis?"

"Isn't that outdated?"

"Of all the inhabited planets you could spend your time on, which do you choose? It's only fitting."

They stood awhile in silence, watching Jeds.

"I love this city," said Marco at last. "Because I found it. And don't tell me the Jedans already knew it was here. You know what I mean."

"Yes, it was convenient of old Prince Casimund to be on his deathbed and with no immediate heirs but nephews whose mothers had married lords in the other city-states. You never told me how you convinced him you were one of those nephews and the true heir to the princedom."

"And I never will. You wouldn't approve. I only did it for Charles, my love." Cara laughed. Marco looked offended. "You know very well that I didn't want the position for myself. But we had to get a toehold on the planet somehow. I grasped the opportunity where I found it."

"It's true it chafed you soon enough, all that responsibility."

"Your flattery is boundless, Dr. Hierakis. As well as your cynicism."

"A good scientist must be skeptical. It isn't the same."

The tide was coming in, swelling up under the distant docks. Men worked, tiny figures loading and unloading the ships and the galleys, tying Jeds in to the greater world of Rhui and feeding out goods and knowledge brought forth in the renaissance that gripped Jeds under the rule of Prince Charles the Second, "son" of the late and lamented Charles the First, whose reign had been short but merry.

"A message came in," said Cara. "That's what I came out to tell you. Charles got a bullet from Suzanne, from Paladia Major. The Oshaki put in at Paladia Minor and hasn't stirred for a month. She found no indication that Tess disembarked at Minor."

"Could she still be onboard the Oshaki? Where do you think she is?"

"I think Charles expects her to be like him, but she isn't. You can't make silk out of a sow's ear. Which is not to compare Tess to a sow's ear, though pigs are certainly my favorite domestic animals. But I think you grasp the analogy."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I don't have enough evidence to make a guess. Where is Tess? Why is a high-ranking merchant of the obscenely wealthy Keinaba house loitering on Odys, frittering away his valuable time in endless discussions about the hypothetical worth of Dao Cee's resources-and in Anglais at that? Why did that shuttle flight follow a most inefficient path? And I will not bore you with the number of questions I have about the human population on this planet, such as, why are they homo sapiens, how did they come to have better health than the humans of Earth's ancient past, and, if I can solve the antigen problem, can we interbreed?"

Marco stared out at the gray water and the white flash of sun on the distant isles. "We already know that we can interbreed." His hands curled, gripping hard on the stone.

"I know, Marco," she said gently. "I meant, without endangering the pregnant woman's life. But at least the baby lived. She would have, too, if I could have got to her in time."

"Sweet Goddess, it was an easy enough delivery."

"Marco, there was nothing you could have done. You didn't know about the reaction that set in."

"I damn well could have not gotten her pregnant!"

"Yes, you could have. One can take this going native business too far."

"Thank you, Cara. Your sympathy overwhelms me."

"My sympathy rests with that poor girl. Where do you think Tess is?"

"I think she's on Rhui. Just a feeling I have."

"Then why didn't she come here? Where could she possibly be? Marco, can you imagine the kind of danger she could be in, if that's the case?''

Marco smiled, but mockingly, without any humor at all. "Yes, in fact, I can."

The horns woke Tess. She started awake, standing abruptly. A white rump flashed, an animal bounding away into the trees. Twigs snapped. A bird shrieked.

Bakhtiian woke just before she reached him, one hand on his saber hilt, the other open, out in front of him as if he were confused. Tess halted out of range of his saber.

"Bakhtiian?"

He pulled his hands in and looked up at the sky. His eyes followed the invisible trail of the sun to the rim of the western hills where clouds, a low gray sheet stretching halfway back across the sky, obscured its face. Shadows drew long lines across the meadow. "It's late."

"I'll go saddle the horses." She turned away.

"Tess." She turned back. "You'll have to ride Kriye. I can't handle him with one leg."

"Who?"

There was color in his cheeks, but that might only have been from his afternoon's rest. "My black," he said in a constrained voice.

Tess almost started laughing. "Kriye. That's what you call a very young boy. 'Little one,' but masculine?" He said nothing. "You must admit, Ilya, it's hardly what one would expect you to name a horse." Still he did not reply. "I don't think there's anything wrong with it," she added hastily. "I think it's sweet. But what if you can't ride at all?"

A withering leaf, blown up by an eddy of wind, rolled across his knees. He grabbed it, flinging it to one side. "I can ride."

"Fine. What do I do with an unconscious man?"

"I don't faint."

"Just like you don't sleep?" Then, seeing his face, she realized she had gone too far, and she quickly left.

Kriye remained placid for Tess. In the level valley, forced to a slow walk by the dusk and the trees, and with the stirrup adjusted to hold his splinted leg pretty much in place, Bakhtiian managed Myshla, who was more amiable than the tarpan remounts. But they had barely started up the trail, Tess riding behind, when Myshla broke into a trot, and Bakhtiian acted instinctively to slow her. It was his curse more than any movement that alerted Tess; in the darkness she could see only shapes. She urged Kriye up beside him. He gripped the saddle in both hands, reins slack in his fingers. Tess pulled the reins from him and kept going.

Clouds scudded across the farther reaches of sky. The hooves of the horses rang like the echo of a bell on the hard trail. When the clouds reached the far horizon and covered the moon, she had to dismount and lead the horses.

The wind struck when she reached the crest. Her hair streamed back, caught in the flow. In the darkness, she felt as if she were on the edge of an abyss, the world falling away before and behind her. Dark masses of rock loomed around her, the suggestion of ages. She felt very old, knowing that as she stood here, with the wind's pull like the rush of the planet's rotation, she was as much a part of the scene as the wind itself.

Myshla shifted. Glancing back, she saw Bakhtiian sway in the saddle. She shook him. Finally he blinked and stared at her. His look of complete confusion frightened her.

"You can faint when we get to shelter," she snapped. "I could hold out longer than that. I could hold out twice as long."

"I doubt it," he whispered, but he pushed himself up.

The wind tore at her clothes as if it was trying to scatter her off the heights. She tugged the horses forward, stumbling down the path. Her boots slipped on pebbles. Kriye's breath warmed her neck. Her hands stiffened into a tight grip on the reins. Her toes ached with cold.

When the trail gave out on a broad ledge that angled up into a deep overhang, she realized that in the dark she had missed the switchback and taken an offshoot. As she moved forward she no longer felt the wind, only a still presence over her head. She halted and untied the blankets from Kriye's saddle.

"Where are we?"

"Shelter. For the rest of the night." She laid out the blankets by the far wall.

She had to help him off the horse. He slumped against her. She let him down very carefully onto the blankets and knelt beside him. She was shivering.

"Ilya?" There was no answer, no movement at all. "Oh Lord." She rested a hand on his chest. His breathing was regular and even. She sat back with a sigh. She cared for the horses first; afterward, taking two strips of meat, she settled down at the far edge of the overhang. Darkness surrounded her. Soon, she dozed.

A rush of sound startled her awake. It was raining. She sank back against the wall, tucking her hands under her cloak. For a time the rain kept her awake. Later, despite the cold, it lulled her to sleep.

She woke abruptly at dawn, chilled and shivering. Her cheeks and forehead felt warm. No wind penetrated the overhang, a shallow cave eroded from the hill by a millennia of storms. Outside the rain had stopped. Surely such rain would cover their tracks.

She stamped her feet and rubbed her hands together to try to bring some warmth into them. Turning, she caught Bakhtiian looking abruptly away from her. He was already sitting up. Dark circles set off his eyes. A smudge of dirt mottled one cheek. The night had tangled his hair and trapped a tiny yellow leaf in his beard. Unbelted, the tunics bunched and wrinkled at his waist. One sleeve of his red shirt, showing at a wrist, had twisted at the cuff.

"This is all very foolish," he said.

"You don't still think I should go on ahead, do you?" She offered him water and food.

"It's cold," he said.

She felt her heart race with fear. If he was getting ill from the shock-

"No," he said, reading her expression. "I'm not-I'm well enough. But the air. Can't you feel it? It's the ayakhov, the wind from the peaks. It brings the storms. This shelter can't possibly protect us." He halted, just breathing for a while, as if the effort of speaking so much had exhausted him.

"Can you go on? I'll saddle the horses."

He shook his head, a gesture compounded half of answer, half of pain. "No." She waited. "If we're caught in the open- These storms last days sometimes. You'll have to scout for better shelter. Even a deeper overhang where we can set up the tent…"He trailed off.

"Yes," she said, not wanting to remind him that they had no tent with them. "I'll go now." She saddled Myshla and left. She rode down into the canyon and half up the other side before tethering Myshla and exploring. By the time she found a good cave, the wind had indeed blown up, cold enough that all her exertion did not keep her warm. She gathered all the brush she could find, arranging the softest into a couch set against the steep-sloping cave wall, and gathered scraps, everything she could find for fodder for the horses, and piled rocks for a corral in the dark recesses of the shelter.

He was asleep when she returned. She unsaddled Myshla and took all four horses out on a long lead, letting them graze and water behind her as she hiked up to the crest. As she had hoped, the rain had swept all traces of their passage from the rock-littered trail. At the height she tried to recapture that timelessness she had felt the night before. But the rocks looked drab, worn away by the weather and the years, and there were too many windblown plants clinging to their surface, a few wilted leaves holding tenuously to branches.

It was cold. Wind whipped the ends of her cloak around her knees. No one was following them. Surely the khaja had given up their search. Turning away, she saw a mass of thick clouds tipped with darkness, sweeping down, almost on her where she stood high and exposed on the ridge. Alarmed, she mounted Myshla bareback and rode back to the overhang.

She found Bakhtiian standing at the entrance, hands clutching his walking stick, staring at her as she dismounted and led the horses under the rock. If he could have looked anything but haggard, pained, and tired, she would have said he looked glad to see her. He had made some effort to tidy himself up. His face was clean, his hair combed, the hunter's tunics straight and neatly belted.

She chuckled, because the incongruity-of their desperate situation, of the approaching storm, of his appearance-was simply too much.

"Where were you?" he demanded.

"Scouting. I found shelter." She began immediately to saddle Kriye and Myshla. "The storm is coming."

"Why didn't we leave sooner?"

His bad temper irritated her. "You were asleep. And I must say you needed it."

"I am aware," said Bakhtiian slowly, "that I am not looking my best."

Tess laughed and stooped to pick up the blankets he had already rolled up and readied. "Do you know why I like you, Ilya?"

"I can't imagine."

She knew she should stop now, but the storm, the danger, his whole attitude, made her reckless. "Because you're vain."

He limped across to Myshla. "At least," he said, tying the blankets to the saddle with hard, efficient jerks, "I am not uncivil."

"No." Her whole face burned, with excitement, with fever, with anger-she could not be sure. "That fault will never tarnish your reputation." She turned back to Kriye and tightened the cinch of his saddle. "Do you need help to mount?''

He cursed, a phrase she did not recognize, and she started around to see that he had already mounted. He clutched the pommel, eyes shut. "Forgive me." Though his voice was scarcely more than a whisper, she knew he was in earnest. "My language."

Immediately she felt guilty. "No, I'm sorry. I have a terrible temper.'' When he did not reply, she judged it prudent simply to go.

She led the horses out. Drops of ice-tipped rain stung her face. She tucked her braid beneath her cloak and pulled her hood up over her head.

A gust of wind scattered leaves across the trail. Kriye whickered and tossed his head, and Tess moved her grip up closer to his mouth. The wind dragged at her, pulling her hood back off her head, so cold that it stiffened her joints even as she moved. The trail veered down around a boulder. Tess slipped on a damp stone; only Kriye's pulling back kept her from falling. Rain spattered her face. All color faded suddenly. She looked up to see the entire sky darken, curling down like a black glove from invisible heights.

"We've got to go faster!" she yelled. "Can you hold on?"

He was hunched so far over Myshla's neck that his hood had not been blown back. "Yes." The word vanished on the wind.

She mounted Kriye. He sidestepped, taking her into a bush. Branches scraped her leg. She jerked him back onto the trail, driving him ahead. Myshla came forward, and the tarpans, nervous, hesitated and then followed the drag of their lead-lines. The wind swelled. Rain broke over them, hard as pellets, sounding like thunder on the rocks around them. Her head was soaked in an instant. Water blurred her vision.

Finally, finally, they reached the valley floor. She slowed to negotiate a litter of rocks. Water streamed away in little runnels between them. A leaf blew into her face, attaching itself like a damp tentacle. She flinched back, jerked the reins. Kriye shied. For an instant she had all that she could do to control him. A thick gust of rain drove into her from the side. A large branch tore loose from a tree behind them and crashed down onto the path. Myshla bolted.

The mare stumbled on the rough ground and fell, flipping over sideways. She pushed back up to her feet and then, unaccountably, she calmed.

"Ilya!" Tess scrambled down off Kriye, throwing the reins over the black's head. Rain drowned the landscape in gray. Bakhtiian lay half in a ditch at the side of the trail. Water eddied over his boots. She grabbed him under his arms and tugged him up onto the trail, and knelt by him, pulling him up into her arms. "Ilya!"

His eyelids wavered, opened. He had a cut below one eye, thin and jagged. The brown tunic was ripped. Blood welled up from a scrape on his palm. He mouthed something. She had to lean down. Rain drenched her neck, slipping under her cloak to run down the curve of her spine. She shuddered.

"Go on." He shut his eyes.

She eased him down on the trail. With both hands she smoothed his hood back away from his face. Then she took off one of her gloves and slapped him as hard as she could. He sat up. Rain and blood painted a broad red line down his cut cheek. He lifted a hand to his face. Blood dripped from his palm.

"Stand up, damn you!" She got behind him and lifted. He got his good leg under him and came up with such strength that she had to take a step backward to balance. He pushed her away with one arm and hobbled over to Myshla. Blood leaked from a gouge midway down Myshla's left foreleg.

"Oh, hell." Tears burned her eyes. "Ilya, you'll have to ride Kriye." He did not reply, but with a movement half extraordinary and half ungainly, he got himself on the stallion. Tess mounted her remount bareback, tying Myshla to Kriye's saddle. They went on.

Partway up the far slope, with wind and rain pouring against them, she had to dismount. Bakhtiian lay bent, almost hugging Kriye's neck. She tied her mount on behind, put her head down, and led them forward. Water gushed down the path in fresh trails. The hard surface had dissolved into mud. The rain soaked through her gloves, through her trousers. Rivulets trailed down her calves to pool in the toes of her boots.

The pile of stone marking the approach to the cave was half obliterated. Beyond it, rock fell in slick ledges down toward the bottom of the canyon that lay, dim and obscure, far below. Rain pelted at the low bushes, stripping them of their last leaves. Tess got a tighter hold on Kriye, up at his mouth, and started across.

That Kriye was surefooted was the best of her luck. In this direction, the wind whipped her cloak open. Rain drenched the front of her shirt. Convulsive shivers shook her every few steps. She picked her way across the pathless slope of loose rock, slipping once, knee jarring on stone, one hand plunged to above the wrist in a sink of icy water. Kriye held steady. Tess pushed herself up, slipping again, clutching the reins. A steep slope, its carpet of lichen torn into strips by the storm, a rubble-strewn ledge, and at last the broad entry and narrow doorway of the cave.

"The gates of paradise." Bakhtiian's voice, faint and far off behind her. Kriye nosed against her, recognizing shelter, and suddenly the rain no longer pounded furiously on her head.