But she flinched away from his touch, as she had flinched away from him on a balcony half a year ago, and he saw the stricken look come into her clear amber eyes, followed by yearning and despair; and then she turned away from him, and sprang down from the dais, and ran to the broken doors; and the long ribbon of lion-dogs uncoiled itself and ran after her. The way opened for her, like a silvery line of Moonbeam; but behind her it closed in again, like shadows. But more solid than shadows, for when he reached after her, bodies blocked him, as there was a rush for the dais from his courtiers, to catch the foreign king as he fell.
She had a long start on him, for he would not force his way through the shocked, bewildered crowd at the risk of hurting anyone, and it was some minutes before he won his way to the gaping doors. And he knew how swiftly she could go. But he refused to lose her again, and he set his teeth, and thought, agonized and hopeful, that she must be weary to heart and bone; she could not go far without rest. Not even to escape him. When she had fled from him the night of the ball it had been too dark to see clearly; but today he had seen her face, lit by her own light, and he had seen the yearning and the stricken look. He would not let her escape, and he thought he understood now how he might hold her-or he knew how he might try, and then hope and agony blinded him. If he had not needed to pursue her at once, he would have killed her father with his bare hands, he who offered a prayer that his shaft or blade might fly straight to the heart of every beast he caught hunting, to spare it pain and fear, and thanked its spirit after its death for giving him meat for his people. He could have killed this other human being with his bare hands.
In the stir of people talking, of people discovering that they could still talk, and move, he could hear nothing of her soft-footed flight; but when he reached the door and said to Longsword, "Which way?" Longsword pointed without a word of query. Ossin ran on, aware of the slow heavy sound of his own footsteps. He thought he could guess that she would head out across the fields behind the kennels, through the little stand of wood beyond, and toward the crossroads where the Happy Man stood. It was a longer way out of the city's environs than through the Redvine Gate, but he believed that she would prefer the way that would give her bare earth under her feet, rather than the shorter way through the city streets.
He needed to catch her before she went beyond the crossroads, however, for the land began to turn emptier then, with farms biting chunks from the emptiness, but doing little to disturb the vast secrecy of the wilder hunting-lands; and for the first time he cursed his own and his people's fondness for the life his dogs were bred to, that wild land should lie so near the king's city.
He was running out of breath, and a fine fool he must look, every unaccustomed step jarring his body, used as it was to riding not running. He bolted down the back streets of his city, mostly deserted on account of the grand doings at the king's house, where the front courtyard and the wide street that led to it were jammed so close that no one could easily move from the tiny foot-sized space of land where each stood. He could hear the babble of the crowd, and fancied he felt the reverberation of so many hearts beating in the air, or in the ground under his running feet. He spun in his tracks at the sound of hoofbeats, and saw some small farmer, dressed carefully in his best clothes, dismounting from his young cob, and looking cautiously around him. "Sir!" cried the prince. "If I may borrow your horse!"
It did not occur to Ossin that one of his subjects might not recognize him, and fortunately this man had seen the prince at hunting more than once; though Ossin's court clothes-which in fact this particular prince spent most of his life avoiding-might well have suggested to this farmer that he would do best to say yes to this request, whether he recognized his supplicant or not. As Ossin swung into the saddle-damning those same court clothes for their awkwardness for running or riding-his mind was frantically trying to calculate if he saved more time in commandeering a farmer's idea of a riding horse, or if he would have done better to have taken the long detour to the royal stables for one of his own horses. How much longer was the longer way through the fields after all? Might he have done better to follow the way she would have gone and hoped to catch sight of her? He convinced the cob, who was young enough to have retained a sense of adventure, that, unlike its master, he really did want to gallop. The cob put its ears forward and galloped.
But there were still people and alleys and obstacles; he even lost his way, once, in the labyrinthine, ancient backside of the Gold House, by not paying enough attention to the immediate three-dimensional twists and turns before him; and that made him all the more frantic.
He changed his mind halfway and ducked out a small side-gate, down a lane, and into some of the waste land below the city walls that was left unused as a buffer between city and farm. His heart sank, for no matter how he strained his hunting vision, accustomed to sighting the smallest indicative shivers in grass and leaf, he saw no sign of Lissar. But he set out across the field as if the crossroads were his certain target. The cob, though rough-gaited, was sound, and willing, and kept a good pace, but with every stride Ossin cried out silently at the slowness of it, and thought longingly of Greywing, standing idle in her stall. And then the cluster of buildings that heralded the crossroads loomed up before him, and still no sign of Lissar or her seven dogs.
But instead there was a figure riding out in such a direction as obviously intending to meet with him; and as he drew up, resenting the pause but hoping for news, he recognized Lilac, who, as soon as she saw him draw rein, dismounted, and held out her own reins. Lilac had lost what little fear she had had of him as the prince and king's heir after seeing him once or twice in the early morning after a long night with Lissar's puppies, months ago; and they respected each other, cautiously, without thinking about it, because each knew the other stood as a good friend to Lissar.
"Take mine," she said now. "He is one of Skyracer's get, and runs in his stall if he is not given enough running outside it. Lissar went that way"-she said, and pointed, her hand a little unsteady, like her tongue on the new name-"but a few minutes ago. I lost her in the trees, but she cannot yet have gone far."
"My thanks," said Ossin, meaning it, accepting the reins she held out to him; she said no word further, but her face was a little less drawn than he felt his own to be.
He would have said one word more to comfort her, could he have thought of one.
But he could not, and he settled into the saddle and gave the horse his head. Trust Lilac to have persuaded Redthorn to let her take one of the most promising young horses in the king's stables on a page's errand. The colt seized the bit and flew.