Ash raised a hand as she passed one of the trees and touched its flak-ing and silvery trunk. These birches were part of the Sull's defenses. They were an impenetrable wall guarding a vulnerable portion of its western border, and it wasn't surprising that Lan Fallstar would not share their secret with someone who claimed to be Sull, yet neither acted nor looked like Sull.
Glancing at the Far Rider, she wondered why she hadn't told him about Ark Veinsplitter and Mal Naysayer, about the mountain pool where she had been made Sull, and about her journey east across the margins of the Want. There was still a chance that the Naysayer was tracking both of them… and she hadn't mentioned that either. Lan had not asked about how she lhad come to be in the Racklands south of the Flow, and she wondered about that also. What did he know or assume about her? She tried to think back to the moment she had given him her name. She had been so nervous, so determined to stand her ground, that she had not thought to read his reaction. Had it meant something to him? Had word of Ash March, the Reach, traveled ahead of her?
Lan Fallstar was walking beside his fine black stallion and occasionally he would raise his hand to touch the horse's neck. He was dressed in serviceable riding clothes, deerhide coat and pants, a cloak collared in marten, and stiff boar's-hide boots. If he had been wearing a hat he might have passed at distance for a ranger or hunter. His black hair, gleaming with bone oil and part braided with lead clasps, gave him away. A bluish tint flashed when the sun hit it. That, together with the lead clasps that had weathered to a color and texture not unlike the surface of the moon, pronounced him as Sull. Only when you drew closer did you see the faint goldenness of his skin and the deep triangular shadows cast by his cheekbones upon his cheeks.
He knew she was minding him, yet said nothing and did not turn. Ash wished she were the sort of person who found conversation easy, who could say the kind of interesting and clever things that left people wanting to reply. Right now she could think of nothing but trees. Trees and more trees. And as they all looked the same she could hardly say, Look at that one. Isn't it unusual?
Frowning she kicked up the mist and watched as it swirled like grease on water. She wondered why she didn't trust him.
And he didn't trust her.
"How long before we leave the birches?" she asked.
Something about his shrug made Ash think he'd had it ready and waiting. "The birch way is long and not all paths are open. We travel as we must."
Snow squelched beneath Ash's feet and she lifted the hem of her lynx fur off the ground. The Far Rider had told her nothing, and she doubted whether the subject was worth pursuing but went ahead and spoke anyway. "How long did it take you last time?"
He turned to look at her, his expression cool. It took a moment before she realized that this look was to be his only reply.
Just like her foster father. Penthero Iss seldom deigned to answer questions he judged beneath him. It was a fact she had realized early on. As a young girl she'd worked hard to ask her foster father intelligent questions. Why did the ambassador from Ille Glaive ask not to be seated next to the Whitehog at dinner? If the crop fails in the eastern bread plains where would the city buy its grain? She'd wanted to please him so badly, wanted desperately to hear those rare words of praise: Almost-daughter, you're such a good girl.
Halting memories of her foster father before they could hurt her. Ash rubbed the nose of her gelding. On a whim, she held the horse back, opening some space between herself and Lan Fallstar. Gray mist poured in to fill it.
Why did she feel the need to talk to him? And why was she disappointed when he dismissed her? She didn't understand it His coldness should be repellent, but it wasn't.
Suddenly she missed Ark and Mal very much. While she was with them she felt as if she were part of something. Included. They might have only revealed a small portion of their knowledge and secrets, but it was enough to give her hope that over time she would learn more. Ark Veinsplitter and Mal Naysayer were the reason she had become Sull. The two Far Riders were honorable and full of purpose, and she had assumed that all Sull were the same. Lan Fallstar was different. He kept her on the outside, withholding information. Keeping secrets.
She'd played this game before with Penthero Iss. Her foster father had been a master at keeping secrets. For seventeen years he'd concealed the true reason he'd adopted her as his daughter. Was something similar happening here? Did Lan know she was the Reach? Ash watched as Lan rode ahead of her into the mist If he suspected she was more than she appeared, he was doing a fine job of feigning ignorance. He treated her as if she were a lesser being; someone just pretending to be Sull, Last night when she had asked Lan to raise the small wolfskin tent he carried in one of his saddlebags, he had told her they would sleep out in the open. "If you want to lie in this mist then go ahead. " she had replied. "I'll sleep in the tent"
No," he had told her coldly. "Sull need no cover on a full moon."
It had felt like a slap in the face. If there was a custom here she was not familiar with, why could he not simply explain it? Why did he treat her with contempt? And why did she let it hurt her?
She had spent a miserable night, rolled in her cloak and drowned in vapor. When she'd woken, her hair was glistening with thousands of tiny drops of moisture. The Far Rider was sitting on his saddlebag, facing southeast. Fingers of mist were curling past his blank and open eyes. As soon as she moved he stirred. His face was pale, the skin around the jaw oddly slack. He asked her to tend to the horses while he rebuilt the fire. She had been eager to do his bidding.
By the time she'd returned from feeding, watering and brushing down the horses Lan was back to his normal self. He did not speak to her as they ate their breakfast of dried horsemeat and raw and fertilized snipe eggs.
Disappointed, Ash had looked out at the prison of trees and wondered when she would see the end of them. The first night she had met Lan Fallstar, he had warned her about the birches. What day had he said the insanity set in? She knew he had been referring to a person traveling alone and without knowledge, but she felt it anyway. He rarely spoke to her, and as she had no understanding of how the forest was laid out she was left with the dizzying sense that she was walking the same path over and over again. It was as if the birches were revolving in a great wheel around her. She had no way of gauging her progress.
Today, with the mist swirling at knee height and the clouds low and hazy, the world had been reduced to a band of stakes. She couldn't even carry out her normal job, which was to collect any stray branches that had snapped from the trees—she could not see the forest floor. From time to time, she would step on a branch, snapping it in two, and would pick it up and add it to the bundle on the gelding's rump. She had a sense that by gathering the fallen branches she was doing more than merely collecting firewood. The task had the feeling of housekeeping about it. It was as if by removing any identifiable marks, she was maintaining the birch way. When she had asked Lan about this his only reply had been "It is forbidden to cut down the birches."