I drained the bowl and returned it to the monk. “We dare not wait. Tell Kol I’ll return here as soon as may be.”
We took our leave within the hour. Now I’d had a little rest and food, the cold did not bother me so much, but we bundled my thick hose, winter tunic, belt, boots, and pureblood cloak with Picus’s dried fish, a skin of his ale, a clay bowl, and the remainder of his bread. Picus insisted Saverian keep the blanket he had lent her. “Best I not inhale the scent of a woman lest my dreams illustrate the sins I’ve banished from head and heart.”
I bowed deeply, crossing my clenched fists over my heart—Gillarine Abbey’s signing speech for farewell and a reminder to remain staunch in one’s vows and devotions. Picus, eyes bright, returned the gesture solemnly. “I shall sincerely try to hold fast to my tottering virtue, Brother Halfbreed. But if a word as to the meaning of this haste should fall upon mine ear at thy return, I do not think Iero would grudge it.”
“When I can, Brother. When I can.” I grinned and waved as we headed into the chill autumn night.
At every step of those first hours, Saverian and I worked at cross purposes, my long gait unaccommodating to her quick, careful steps, my inclination to go over obstacles while she preferred under or around. And though I could not see well in the thick dark of the woodland, I could rely on my bent. She could see nothing at all. After she stumbled for a third time, near breaking her skull, I took her arm to steer her between the bare limbs and woody underbrush that snagged her cloak and skirts. That only made our disparities more awkward.
Before long, she sputtered and shook off my hand. Waving me to go on ahead, she snatched up a dry limb and set it gleaming with yellow light that had naught to do with fire. “I’ll see to my own feet, thank you. By the Mother, how ever does a blind person manage without going mad?” She dogged my steps, tight-lipped save when urging me to go faster.
Happily, we soon emerged into the open, gently rolling country to the south. I knelt and sought a route to the Sentinel Oak, the only way I knew to get us back to the human plane. As in the garden meadow, the landscape took shape upon my mind’s canvas in a single grand leap of understanding, rather than the slow building of the past. A confusion of tracks sprawled before us—migrations of great herds of elk and wild horses, footpaths of deer and Danae folk, and a great blight of blood in some past epoch—but no settled roads. And, unfortunately, the oak lay hundreds of quellae to the southwest, beyond expansive forests, a sizable rise in elevation, and at least two major river crossings. To travel the distance afoot would take us more than a month.
“But you’ve learned to journey as Kol does,” said Saverian, when I announced this unhappy news. Like a fine hunting hound, she seemed poised to charge off in whatever direction I pointed.
“Only once,” I said, sitting back on my heels and scratching my head. “And yes, I ended up in approximately the correct location. But I’ve too little familiarity with Aeginea to know many landmarks to use for shifting. Danae wanderkins are supposed to explore for years to learn the landforms and plants and trees and such.”
Snowflakes flurried from overburdened clouds, melting quickly on our cloaks. A frost wind from the south had whipped the woman’s deep-hued cheeks to a rosy brown. I’d been so sure I could get us home. Cocky wanderkin, Kol would say. Recognize thy limits.
Saverian was not so easily discouraged. “Osriel says that human lands and Aeginea are actually the same; we just experience different aspects of them in the two planes. You’ve traveled all over. You know Navronne.”
“But no Navron cities exist in Aeginea, no roads, no houses. The trees and forests are all grown up differently…”
Yet she was right. The terrain should be the same. Since I had walked into Aeginea, I had seen the chasm of the River Kay, the familiar climb from the valley of the Kay toward the mountains, and the rock of Fortress Groult, even though the fortress itself did not exist in this plane.
“Come on.” I made for the top of a rocky little knob half a quellae ahead, stopping only when I reached its crest. Squinting and puzzling at the landforms, I reached up to clear the melted droplets from my lashes, only to see a sickly thread of pale blue snaking about my fingers and up my arm into my sleeve. Laughter welled up from deep inside.
“The humor in this situation entirely escapes me,” said Saverian, heaving and gasping as she finished the sharp little climb and halted beside me. Her magelight had paled to the color of cream, and breath plumes wreathed her head. Her vehemence triggered a bout of coughing, aborted by a great sneeze.
“Are you all right?” I said. Her flushed cheeks flared brighter than her magical light.
“Well enough, considering I’m hiking into nowhere with a man whose walking pace is a modest gallop. Is that the joke?”
“I knew you’d wish no coddling,” I said, shoving my bundle of clothes and provisions into her hands. “You should have yelled at me to slow down.”
I unlaced my braies and shirt. She stared as if I were a lunatic. Which I believed I was. “Indeed, physician, I am the great joke. Here I’ve been so preoccupied with Danae secrets, princely deviltry, Kol, Elene, and what in Iero’s name will happen to the lighthouse, not to mention this confounded route finding and the nature of Aeginea, that I’ve completely forgotten my lessons. If you’ll pardon my boldness, I am going to remove my clothes just now and attempt to do as you suggest—see if I can make some use of this motley collection of strangeness that is my body. Yell at me if you see anyone coming.”
She held out her hand to take my shirt, a smile tweaking the thin lips into something altogether more pleasant than their usual sardonic set. She waved her hand at my disrobing. “Please. Do whatever you must to get me home.”
I grinned and left the rest of my garb in her custody. For certain she was no wilting ninny.
Sitting cross-legged atop the little knob, I listened for the voices of stone. It seemed to take quite a while—or rather I managed it only after setting aside all fretful sense of time. Once I had rediscovered that quiet place where only a few faint declarations of Forever and Grind intruded, I allowed my Danae senses free rein and used the cascade of sensation to expand and deepen my Cartamandua seeing.
The cool dry air of summers past, along with the sharp blasts of past winters, teased my skin. The rich scents of soil and the buried roots filled my nostrils. I experienced not only the sounds and smells of wild Aeginea, but those of human habitation as welclass="underline" sod houses, flocks of grazing sheep, the sharp bite of axes and tools. The blight of human blood and death near choked me. I explored deeper. Farther.
Were we walking the lands of Navronne, I would declare our location to be the upland moors of far northeastern Ardra, a long-settled expanse of sheeplands, grouse, and heather, whose streams and springs fed the riverlands of Morian. Indeed I had marched through those very moors with King Eodward’s legions, camped and foraged on that land—this very land—fought a great bloody battle here with the Dasseur, the barbarians who had stripped the Aurellian Empire of its northwest territories. Eodward had triumphed in that battle, making his stand on a dimpled fell that was the highest point of the region. Even then the barren mound, shaped so like a young girl’s breast, had reminded me of Mon Viel in the hills of southern Ardra, a region as familiar as my hand.
Carefully I shuffled through the cascade of impressions like a gem merchant through a bag of rocks, choosing only those that came through my eyes, while silencing all the rest. Then I stood up and peered again into the night.
As had happened on that strange night of my nivat madness, when Osriel and Voushanti and I had tracked Gildas’s flight from Gillarine, the landscape gleamed of its own pale light. The route my Cartamandua bent had prescribed stretched south and west across this luminous terrain as if a giant had unrolled a spool of gray floss and left it behind to guide us. But it was the landforms I examined.