Traitor's Moon

39 PATHS DIVERGING

Clouds had rolled down out of the mountains during the night, and dawn brightened slowly behind a fine veil of rain. Beka licked at a sweet drop that spattered against her cheek, grateful for a taste of fresh water.

They'd ridden steadily all night, keeping to the main road to preserve the illusion of being routine couriers. Along the way, however, they had paused long enough to steal four extra horses. When the time came to part, not too long from now, she'd take the way-station horses with her to confuse the trail.

It was a good plan—she'd carried out similar ruses often enough against the Plenimarans—but for the past hour or so Seregil had been quiet, and spent too much time staring off into the thick forest along the roadside for her liking. Alec was watching him, too, sensing trouble.

Seregil reined in again so abruptly that her horse barreled into his.

"Damn it, what is it now?" she asked, pulling her horse's head around sharply as Seregil's spirited sorrel lashed out with its back hooves.

He said nothing, just gentled his mount and scanned an overgrown byway on their left. His expression was not encouraging.

"We've missed the side road you're looking for, haven't we?" Alec asked, and Beka heard the undertone of worry in his voice. There was good reason for alarm. Seregil was their only guide here, and it had been over half a lifetime since he'd traveled these roads.

Seregil shrugged. "Maybe. Or perhaps it's been abandoned since I last saw it, given what Amali said about villages dying out here." He glanced up at the brightening sky, and his tight-lipped frown deepened. "Come on, we've got to get off the main road soon. There are other ways to the trail."

The khirnari of Akhendi woke to the sound of someone lifting the latch of his chamber door. Heart pounding, he reached for the knife beneath his pillow and flung an arm out to protect Amali, only to find the other half of the bed empty.

His steward, Glamiel, slipped in with a candle and padded softly to his bedside.

"Where is my wife?" Rhaish demanded, clutching his aching chest.

"In the garden, Khirnari. She rose a little while ago."

"Of course." Sleep visited him so seldom these days and left him muddled when he woke. "What is it, then? It's not dawn yet."

"It is, Khirnari. Amali gave orders that your rest not be disturbed, but there's been strange news this morning." Glamiel went to the tall windows and pulled back the hangings. Grey light filled the room, and the smell of rain. Looking out through the flowering boughs that framed the casement, Rhaish saw his wife sitting alone beneath an arbor. She'd wept last night, imploring him again to explain his silence and his anger. What could he have told her?

Distracted, he missed the first part of Glamiel's news and had to ask him to repeat it.

"The Skalans sent out a dispatch rider last night," the man told him.

"What of it?"

"As you say, Khirnari, no one thought anything of it, until word came in just now from the first way station that neither of the Akhendi escorts gave the usual signal, and that the Skalan rider was one the boy had never seen before. One of the escorts claimed to be Vanos i Namal, but he's still at the Skalan barracks. I've spoken with him myself. So are all the others assigned to guide the Skalans. What should we do?"

"How long ago did you get word of this?"

"Just now, Khirnari. Should Brythir i Nien be informed of this?"

"No. Not until we learn what our Skalan friends are up to." After

a moment's consideration, he added, "Send for Seregil. I wish to speak with him at once."

Alone again, Rhaish sagged back against his pillows as an image rose to his mind's eye: Seregil skillfully slitting the dead fish, extracting the ring with as much certainty as if he'd known it was there all along. And earlier, in the garden, he'd searched so intently, so efficiently. At the time it had been gratifying, astonishing. Now the memory filled him with unease.

The cold kiss of a rain-laden breeze woke Thero. Outside the colos, a morning shower pattered down on the roof tiles and voices drifted up to him from the street below. Catching Seregil's name, he sent a sighting spell that way and discovered Mirn and Steb speaking with an Akhendi man he didn't recognize.

"I haven't seen Lord Seregil yet this morning," Mirn was saying. "I'll tell him Lord Rhaish is looking for him as soon as he comes down."

"It's a matter of some urgency," the Akhendi replied.

Here we go, then, Thero thought. Hurrying down to Seregil's abandoned room, he latched the door after him. None too soon, either, as it turned out. The latch lifted, then jiggled against the lock pin.

"Seregil, you're wanted downstairs." It was Kheeta, damn the luck. A servant could be put off with a curt response. "Are you awake? Seregil? Alec?"

Thero passed his hand quickly over the bed, willing a memory, any memory, from it. The bed let out a rhythmic creaking, accompanied by a throaty masculine moan. The wizard fell back a pace, annoyed. He'd expected snoring, but supposed he should have known better.

The sounds had the desired effect, however. There was a meaningful silence on the far side of the door, then the tactful retreat of footsteps.

Wasting no time, Thero took out the wax balls he'd prepared the night before, pinched them man-shaped, and placed them beneath the edge of the coverlet. Weaving shapes on the air with his wand, Thero hummed tonelessly under his breath, remembering faces, limbs, the shapes of hands and feet. The wax simulacra swelled and lengthened beneath the blankets. By the time he finished they had a fair likeness of Seregil and Alec but were still stiff and expressionless. Laying a finger on Seregil's cold brow, Thero blew into his nostrils. Color suffused the pallid cheeks, and the features relaxed into something like sleep. He did the same with Alec's double, then arranged the pair into a sleeping pose. Summoning more memories from shared nights on the road, he added the steady rise and fall of breath, with the lightest of snores from Alec. With any luck and a bit of delicacy on the part of servants, this might buy them a few more precious hours.

He left the door unlatched and made his way down to the main hall, where Kheeta was making excuses to their Akhendi visitor.

"Good morning," Thero said, coming forward to greet their guest. "What brings you here at this hour?"

The man bowed. "Greetings, Thero i Procepios. Amali a Yassara wishes to examine the Akhendi charm Seregil brought her. She is feeling quite strong this morning."

The charm! Thero reached for the pouch at his belt, then frowned. Seregil had had it last; in all the confusion caused by Magyana's letter, Thero hadn't thought to get it back from him.

"You should have said so!" exclaimed Kheeta, already halfway to the stairway again. "I'm sure they won't mind being disturbed for that."

"Let me," Thero said quickly, regretting his own ruse. "I'll send him to you as soon as he's" — here he gave Kheeta a hard look— "awake."

"There; this is the one," Seregil called out happily, squinting down yet another unremarkable side road.

Beka stifled a groan. Except for the flock of kutka pecking morning grit in the tall grass, it looked just like all the other sidetracks he'd halted for this morning.

"The last one you were this sure of cost us half an hour's ride in the wrong direction," Alec pointed out, far more patiently than Beka could have managed.

"No, this is the one," he insisted. "See that boulder there?" He pointed to a large grey rock a few yards down the road on the right. "What does that look like to you?"

Beka gripped the reins more tightly. "Look, I'm hungry and I don't remember when I last slept—"

"I'm serious. What does it look like to you?" He was grinning madly now, and she wondered how long it had been since he'd had any rest himself.

Alec met her questioning look with his usual shrug, then turned his attention to the rock in question.

It was about six feet long, four high, and roughly oval in shape. The end facing them narrowed sharply into a pair of even concave depressions that made it look almost like—

"A bear?" she ventured, wondering if she was losing her mind, too. The narrowed end did have the look of a low-set head, with the smooth curve of a bear's back rising up behind it.

"I see it," chuckled Alec. "We seem to be haunted by bears. This is your landmark?"

"Yes," Seregil replied, clearly relieved. "Damn, I'd forgotten about it until I saw it just now. If you look closely, you can still make out where someone painted eyes on it. But this used to be a well-traveled route. There were several villages up in the hills, and a Dravnian trading camp beyond."

"It can't be seeing much traffic these days," Beka said, still doubtful. Foot-high saplings choked the narrow, weed-grown track.

"That's good," said Seregil. "The fewer people we run into, the better I'll like it. Thero isn't the only one who can send messages by magic, you know." He glanced up at the sun. "It's getting late. We should be further along by now."

Without dismounting, he and Alec shifted their saddles and gear to two of the stolen horses and climbed across. It took some managing, and Beka's help with the girths, but this way they left no telltale footprints for a tracker to read.

Beka fixed the reins of their cast-off mounts to her saddle with long lead ropes, letting the horses move with some independence. If anyone was tracking them, the signs would show that the "traveling companions" they'd joined up with the previous night had gone their own way while the three dispatch riders went on down the main road.

"Keep out of sight as long as you can," Seregil warned, clasping hands with her. "You can't get through the mountains without a guide, so you're trapped on this side."

"You worry about yourselves," she replied. "I'll just keep on this way as far as I can go, then strike off wherever seems best. I'll stay out another two days. After that, no matter what, I head back to Klia. The worst anyone will do if they do catch me is haul me back to Sarikali anyway. What will you do, after you've talked to Korathan?"

Seregil shrugged. "Stay with him, I expect, though it may be in chains. If I have my way, he'll set sail back to Skala directly."

"Then I'll see you both there," she said brightly, fighting back a surge of foreboding.

Alec gave her a wry smile. "Luck in the shadows, Watcher."

"And to you both." She sat her horse as they started up the. road. Seregil disappeared around the first bend without a backward glance. Alec paused to wave, then followed.

"Luck in the shadows," she whispered again. Leading her string of horses on up the main road, she set her face for the mountains.

The road got no better as Alec and Seregil went on, but it was open enough for them to canter single file. Several miles on, they came to the remains of the first village, and Seregil paused to make a quick circuit.

Some of the cottages had burned down; the rest were slowly falling apart. Small trees and weeds were encroaching rapidly on the broad clearing, sprouting up in disused garden plots and doorways.

Looking inside one of the houses, Alec found only a few bits of broken crockery. "Looks like the villagers picked up and left."

Seregil rode over and passed him a dripping water skin. "No trade, no livelihood. At least the well's still clear."

Alec drank, then rummaged in his pack for a strip of dried meat. "I wonder if we'll be able to find fresh horses along the way?"

"We'll manage," Seregil said, studying the clouds. "If we hurry, we can make the second village before nightfall. I'd rather spend the night under a roof, if we can manage it. It's still early enough in the year for it to be damn cold at night up here."

Just beyond the village they struck a broad outcropping, steep and treacherous with loose rock and threaded with little rivulets from a spring above it. A few cairns still marked the way to several trails that continued on from here.

They gave their horses their heads, letting them pick their way carefully up the slope. Looking back over his shoulder, Alec saw that the animal's unshod hooves left almost no marks in passing. It was going to take one fine tracker to catch them, he thought with satisfaction.

"I don't have it! I destroyed it, burned it up in the fire," Amali sobbed, cowering back against the bed. She'd started out defiant but quickly dissolved into tears. It made her seem even younger than

she was, and Rhaish hesitated, wondering if he had the resolve to strike her if it came to that.

"Don't lie to me! I must have it," he said sternly, looming over her. "If my fears are correct, you may already be found out. Why else would Seregil not have come by now?"

"Why won't, you tell me what this is about?" she sobbed, instinctively shielding her belly with both hands.

The gesture broke his heart, and he slumped down on the bed beside her. "For the sake of Akhendi, and for our child, you must give me the rest of it if you still have it. I know you too well, my love. You would never destroy another's handiwork." He fought to keep the rising desperation from his voice. "You must let me protect you, as I always have."

Amali stifled another sob as she crawled off the bed and went to a workbox on her dressing table. Opening it, she lifted out a tray of charm-making goods and reached beneath it. "Here, and may you make better use of it than I did!" She threw the woven bracelet at his feet.

Rhaish bent to pick it up, recalling a similar moment four nights earlier. He pushed the thought away with a shudder, knowing himself damned.

The knot work on this bracelet was simple but well done; some magic still lingered despite the loss of the charm, strong enough to hold both the memory of its maker, a peasant woman from one of the mountain villages, and that of the young man it had been made for. Alec i Amasa's khi had permeated the fibers as surely as his sweat.

Amali was still weeping. Ignoring her for the moment, Rhaish sat down in a chair by the bed and pressed the bracelet between his hands, speaking a spell. The bracelet throbbed against his palms. Closing his eyes, he caught a glimpse of Alec and his surroundings, saw dripping boughs close overhead, distant peaks just visible through a break in the trees. Saw Seregil riding beside him, gesturing at something—a large, oddly shaped boulder that Rhaish recognized immediately.

Realization knocked the breath from his lungs, and he fell back in his chair. They did know! Klia must know, or why else would she have sent them, of all people, for the northern coast?

Cold hands clasped his, and he looked down into Amali's tear-streaked face as she knelt before him. "You must return home, talia. Say nothing of any of this, and go home."

"I only meant to help," she whispered, picking up the fallen

bracelet and looking at it in horrified wonder. "What have I done, my love?"

"Nothing the Lightbearer has not ordained." Rhaish stroked her cheek gently, glad of her warmth against his thighs. He was cold, chilled to the bone despite the sunlight that had broken through the clouds. "Go on now, and prepare our house for my return. Your wait will not be long."

His legs shook as he stepped out into the deserted garden, heedless of how the wet grass soaked his slippers and the hem of his robe. Sitting down in Amali's arbor, he pressed the bracelet between his hands again, stealing glance after glance at the runaways as long as his strength allowed, until he'd seen enough to guess where they were headed.

Folding his hands, he rested a moment, feeling the comforting power of Sarikali seeping into him from the ground and air, replenishing him. He cupped his hands, picturing a distant village and the men he trusted there, while an orb of silvery light formed in the cage of his fingers. When he'd thought his message into it, he touched it and it whisked way, carrying what he hoped were the right words to the right ears.

Watching him from behind the window hangings, Amali dried her tears and prepared to send out a similar spell. "Aura protect us," she whispered when she finished, praying that this time she acted rightly.