sleep, Mhari; the child can sleep between me and Romilly, and we'll guard your virtue."
Caryl opened his mouth; Romilly poked him in the ribs, and he subsided without speaking. She saw that he was trying not to giggle aloud. It seemed a little silly to her, but she supposed they had their rules and principles, just as the brothers of Nevarsin did. She lay down beside Caryl, and slept.
She found herself dreaming, clear vivid dreams, as if she flew, linked in mind with Preciosa, over the green, rolling hills of her own country. She woke with a lump in her throat, remembering the view of the long valley from the cliffs of Falconsward. Would she ever see her home again, or her sister or brothers? What had they to do with a wandering swordswoman? Her ears ached where they had been pierced. She missed Orain and Carlo and even the rough-tongued Alaric. As yet she had made no friends among these strange women. But she was pledged to them for a year, at least, and there was no help for it. She listened to Caryl, sleeping quietly at her side; to the breathing of the strange women in the tent. She had never felt so alone in her life, not even when she fled from Rory's mountain cabin.
Five days they rode southward, and came to the Kadarin river, traditional barrier between the lowland Domains and the foothills of the Hellers. It seemed to Romilly that they should make more of it, going into strange country, but to Janni it was just another river to be forded, and they crossed with dispatch, at a low-water ford where they hardly wetted their horses' knees. The hills here were not so high, and soon they came to a broad rolling plateau. Caryl was beaming; all the trip he had been in good spirits, and now he was ebullient. She supposed he was glad to be coming home, and glad of the long holiday that had interrupted his studies.
Yet Romilly felt uneasy without mountains surrounding her; it seemed as if she rode on the flat land, under the high skies, like some small, exposed thing, fearfully surveying the skies here as if some bird of prey would swoop down on them and carry her away with strong talons. She knew it was ridiculous, but she kept uneasily surveying the high pale skies, filled with rolling violet cloud, as if something there was watching her. At last Caryl, riding at her side, picked it up with his sensitive laran.
"What's the matter, Romy? Why do you keep looking at the sky that way?"
She really had no answer for him and tried to pass it off.
"I am uneasy without mountains around me - I have always lived in the hills and I feel bare and exposed here. . . ." she tried hard to laugh, looking up into the unfamiliar skies.
High, high, a speck hovered, at the edge of her vision. Trying to ignore it, she bent her eyes on the rough-coated grass, only lightly frosted, at her feet.
"What sort of hawking is there on these plains, do you know?"
"My father and his friends keep verrin hawks," he said, "Do you know anything of them? Do they have them across the river, or only those great ugly sentry-birds?"
"I fly a verrin hawk," Romilly said, "Once I trained one-" and she looked uneasily around again, her skin prickling.
"Did you? A girl?"
The innocent question nibbed an old wound; she snapped at him, "Why should I not? You sound like my father, as if because I was born to wear skirts about my knees I had neither sense nor spirit!"
"I did not mean to offend you, Romy," said Caryl, with a gentleness which made him seem much older than his years. "It is only that I have not known many girls, except my own sister, and she would be terrified to touch a hawk. But if you can handle a sentry-bird, and calm a banshee as we did together, then surely it would take no more trouble to train a hawk." He turned his face to her, watching with his head tilted a little to one side, something like a bird himself with his bright inquisitive eyes. "What are you afraid of, Romy?"
"Not afraid," she said, uneasy under his gaze, then, "Only - as if someone was watching me," she blurted out, not knowing she was going to say it until she heard her own words. Realizing how foolish they were, she said defensively, "Perhaps that is only because -the land is so flat - I feel - all exposed-" and again her eyes sought the sky, dazzled by the sun, where, wavering at the very edge between seen and unseen, a speck still hovered ... I am being watched!
"It is not uncommon, that," said Janni, coming up beside them, "When first I rode into the mountains, I felt as if they were closing in, as if, while I slept, they might move in and jostle my very skirts. Now I am used to them, but still, when I ride down into the plains, I feel as if a great weight has been lifted and I can breathe more easily. I think that, more than all kings or customs, divides hillman from lowlander; and I have heard Orain say as much, that whenever he was away from his mountains, he felt naked and afraid under the open sky...."
She could almost hear him say it, in that gentle, half-teasing tone. She still missed Orain, his easy companionship, it seemed she was like a fish in a tree among all these woman! Their very voices grated on her, and it seemed to her sometimes that in spite of their skill with sword and horsemanship, they were far too much like her sister Mallina, silly and narrow-minded. Only Janni seemed free of the pettiness she had always found in women. But was that only because Janni was like Orain, and so less like a woman? She did not know and felt too sore to think much about it. .
Yet, she thought with annoyance at herself, forty days ago I was thinking that I liked the company of men even less than that of women. Am I content nowhere? Why can't I be satisfied with what I have? If I am going to be always discontented, I might as well have stayed home and married Dom Garris and been discontented in comfort among familiar things!
She felt the gentle, inquiring touch of the boy's laran on her mind; as if he asked her what was the matter. She sighed and smiled at him, and asked, "Shall we race across this meadow? Our horses are well-matched, so it win only be a matter of which is the better horseman," and they set off side by side, so rapidly that it took all her attention not to tumble off headlong, and she had to stop thinking about what troubled her. She reached the appointed goal a full length ahead of him, but Janni, coming up more slowly, scolded them both impartially - they did not know the terrain, they might have lamed their horses on some unseen rock or small animal's burrow in the grass!
But that night, as they were making camp - the days were lengthening now perceptibly, it was still light when they had eaten supper - she had again the sharp sense that she was being watched, as if she were some small animal, prey huddling before the sharp eyes of a hovering hawk - she scanned the darkening sky, but could see nothing. Then, incredulous, a familiar sense of wildness, flight, contact, rapport - hardly knowing what she did, Romilly thrust up her hand, felt the familiar rush of wings, the grip of talons.
"Preciosa!" she sobbed aloud, feeling the claws close on her bare wrist. She opened her eyes to look at the bluish-black sheen of wings, the sharp eyes, and the old sense of closeness enveloped her. Against all hope, beyond belief, Preciosa had somehow marked her when she came out of the glacier country, had trailed her even through these unfamiliar hills and plains.
She was in good condition, sleek and trim and well-fed. Of course. There was better hunting on these plains than even in the Kilghard Hills where she was fledged. Wordless satisfaction flowed between them for a long space as she sat motionless, the hawk on her hand.
"Well, will you look at that!" the voice of one of the girls broke through the mutual absorption, "Where did the hawk come from? She is bewitched!"
Romilly drew a long breath. She said to Caryl, who was watching silently, rapt, "It is my hawk. Somehow she has followed me here, so far from home, so far-" and broke off because she was crying too hard to speak. Troubled by the emotion, Preciosa bated, trying to balance on Romilly's fist; flapped her wings and flew to the branches of a nearby tree, where she sat looking down at them without any sign of fear.
Mhari demanded, "Is it your own hawk - the one you trained?" and Janni said in a quiet voice, "You told me your father took her from you, and gave her to your brother."
With an effort, Romilly controlled her voi
ce. She said, "I think Darren found out that Preciosa was not my father's to give." She looked up through her tears to the tree branch where Preciosa sat, motionless as a painted hawk on a painted tree, and again the thread of rapport touched her mind. Here, among strange women in a strange country, with all she had ever known behind her and past the border of a strange river, as she looked at the hawk and felt the familiar touch on her mind, she knew that she was no longer alone.
CHAPTER TWO
Three days more they rode, and came into a warm country, green, rolling hills and the air soft, without the faintest breath of frost. To the end of her life Romilly remembered that first ride across the Plains of Valeron - for so Caryl told her they were called - green and fertile, with crops blooming in the field and trees without even snow-pods for their night-blossoms. Along the roadside, flowers bloomed, red and blue and silver-golden, and the red sun, warm and huge in these southern skies, cast purple shadows along the road. The very air seemed sweet, euphoric.
Caryl was ecstatic, pointing out landmarks as he rode beside Romilly. "I had not expected to be home before mid-summer after this! Oh, I am so glad to be coming home."
"And your father sent you from this warm and welcoming country into the snows of Nevarsin? He must indeed be a good cristoforo."
Caryl shook his head, and in that moment his face looked distant, closed-in, almost adult. He said quietly, "I serve the Lord of Light, as fits a Hastur best."
Then why - Romilly almost burst out with the question, but she had learned not to speak any question of his father to the boy. But he picked up the question in her mind.
"The cristoforos at Nevarsin are learned men, and good men," he said at last "Since the Hundred Kingdoms were made, there has been war and chaos in the lowlands, and such learning as can be gotten is small indeed; my father wished me to learn in peace, away from the wars and safe from the feuds that beset the Hastur-kinfolk. He does not share the worship of the Brotherhood, but respected their religion and the knowledge that they are men of peace."
He fell silent, and Romilly, respecting that silence - what scenes of war and pillage had that child seen, far from the sheltering hills which kept men safe in their own fortressed homes? - rode on, thoughtfully. She had heard tales of war, far away in her own peaceful mountains. She called to mind the battles by which this green and peaceful country had been laid waste. It now seemed, to her hypersensitive consciousness, bestrewn with the black of blood under the crimson sun, all dark, the very ground crying out with the slaughter of innocents and the horrors of armies treading the crops into the soil from which they sprung. She shuddered, and abruptly the whole scene winked out and Romilly knew she had been sharing the child's consciousness.
Indeed his father did well to send his son to safety among the cold and untroubled crags of the City of Snows; a time of rest, a time to heal the wounds of a child with laran, sensitive and aware of all the horrors of war. With sudden passionate homesickness, Romilly was grateful for her childhood of peace and for the stubbornness that had kept The MacAran his own man, taking no part in the factions that swept the land with their lust to conquer. What was his watchword? To their own God Zandru's deepest forges with both their households.
Oh, Father, will I ever see you again?
She looked up at Caryl but he rode silent beside her, unseeing, and she knew he rode enclosed in his own pain, unable to see hers, or at least blinded with the effort to block it away from himself. Have I come to this, then, that 1 would turn to a child of twelve, a baby no older than my little brother, for comfort when I cannot suffer my own lot, which I chose for myself? She rode among strangers, and wondered for a moment if each of the women around her rode like this, each closed in with her own weary weight, each bearing her share of the burdens laid upon mankind. Is this why men call upon the Bearer of Burdens as if he were not only a great teacher of wisdom, but also a God - that we may have Gods to bear our burdens because otherwise they are too heavy for mankind to bear?
She could not endure the sorrow in Caryl's small face. She at least was a woman grown and could bear her own burden, but he was a child and should not have to. She broke in upon him, gently, asking, "Shall I call Preciosa from the sky to ride with you? I think she is lonely-" and as she whistled to the hawk, and set her upon Caryl's saddle she was rewarded by seeing the unchildlike weight disappear from the childish face, so that he was only a boy again, gleefully watching a hawk fly to his hand.
"When this war is over, Romy, and the land is at peace again, shall I have you for my hawkmaster, and will you teach me all about training hawks? Or no, a girl cannot be a hawkmaster, can you? You will then be hawkmistress to me, one day?"
She said gently, "I do not know where any of us will be when this war is over, Caryl. It would be a pleasure to teach you what I know about hawks. But remember that much of what I know cannot be taught. You must find it somewhere within you, your heart and your laran-" and at the edge of her consciousness she realized that now she felt quite comfortable with that alien word-"to know the birds and to love them and to be aware of their ways."
And she found it easy to believe that this small wise boy, with his sensitive awareness of men and beasts, the gravity of the monks among whom he had been reared and the charm of the Hastur-kin, would perhaps one day be king. It seemed for a moment that she could see the luminous glimmer of a corona about his reddish curls - and then she shut away the unwanted sight. She was learning fast, she reflected, to handle the Gift given to her, or to shut it away.
Was this how her father had learned to survive, outside a Tower, she wondered, by closing away all the laran he could not use in his work of training horses? And could she stand to shut away all this new part of herself? Could she bear to have it - or not to have it, now? It was a terrifying gift and bore its own penalties. No wonder, now, that there were old tales in the mountains of men driven mad when their laran came upon them....
And how could Caryl be a king? His father was no king but sworn liegeman to Dom Rakhal, and whether Rakhal won this war, or Carolin, Lyondri Hastur was no king. Or would he prove false to Rakhal as he had been false to Carolin, in the ambition to form a dynasty of his own blood?
"Romilly-Romy! Are you asleep riding there?" Caryl's merry voice broke in on her thoughts. "May I see if Preciosa will fly for me? We should have some birds for supper - should we not?"
She smiled at the boy.
"If she will fly for you, you shall fly her," she agreed, "though I cannot promise that she will fly for anyone but me. But you must ask Dame Jandria if we have need of birds for supper; she, not I, is in charge of this company."
"I am sorry," Caryl said, unrepentant, the words mere formality, "But it is hard to remember that she is a noblewoman, and it does not come naturally to me to remember to ask her, while when I am with you I am always aware that you are one of the Hastur-kind."
"But I am not," said Romilly, "and Janni is Lord Orain's own cousin, if you did not know, so her blood is as good as mine."
Suddenly Caryl looked scared. "I wish you had not told me that," he blurted out, "for that makes her one of my father's greatest enemies and I do not want him to hate her. . . ." Romilly berated herself; he looked stricken. She said quickly, "Rank has no meaning among the Sisterhood, and Jandria has renounced the privileges brought with noble both. And so have I, Caryl." And she realized that he looked relieved, though she was not sure why.
"I will ask Jandria if we have need of game for the pot," she said quickly, "and you shall fly Preciosa if she will fly at your command; surely Jandria could not object if you want to get a bird for your own supper, unless you try to make one of us pluck and cook it for you."
"I can do that myself," Caryl said proudly, then grinned, lowering his eyes. "If you will tell me how," he said in a small voice, and Romilly giggled, Caryl giggling with her.
"I will help you cook the bird for a share of it - is that a bargain, then?"
Three nights later they began to ride along
the shore of a lake, lying in the fold of the hills, and Caryl pointed to a great house, not quite a castle, situated at the head of the long valley.
"There lies Mali, and my father's castle."
Romilly thought it looked more like a palace than a fortress, but she said nothing. Caryl said, "I shall be glad to see Father again, and my mother," and Romilly wondered; how glad would his father be, to see a son held hostage by his worst enemy's men, and taken from the safety of Nevarsin whence he had sent him? But she said nothing of this. Only that morning, flying through Preciosa's eyes, she had seen out over the whole vast expanse of the Plains of Valeron, armies massing and moving on the borders. The war would soon be upon the green lowlands again.
And all that day they rode through a country scoured clean by war; farmsteads lay in ruins, great stone towers with not one stone left upon another, only scattered rubble as if some monstrous disruption like an earthquake had shaken them from their very foundations; what army, what dreadful weapon had done that? Once they had to turn aside, for as they came to the top of the rise, they saw in the valley before them a ruined village. A strange silence hung over the land, though houses stood undamaged, serene and peaceful, no smoke rose from the chimneys, no sound of horses stamping, children playing, hammers beating on anvils or the work-songs of women weaving or waulking their cloth. Dread silence lay over the village, and now Romilly could see a faint greenish flickering as if the houses were bathed in some dreadful miasma, an almost tangible fog of doom. They lay, pulsing faintly greenish, and she knew suddenly that when night fell the street and houses would glow with an uncanny luminescence in the dark.
And even as she looked, she saw the lean, starved figure of a predator slinking silently through the streets; and while they looked, it moved more slowly, subsided, lay down in its tracks, still stirring feebly, without a cry.