Norina said, “I guess I should have trusted you from the beginning.”
It was like a river reversing its course by an act of will, with a new current just as inevitable and irresistible as the old. Zanja must have been staring at Norina in blank amazement, for Norina’s grim expression finally gave way to one of sardonic humor. “Now, Zanja, get yourself in hand. The ritual must be completed.”
“You acted as your duty required,” Zanja said.
“Formidable enemies can make formidable friends.”
“I’m hardly in a position to refuse–”
“Well, that’s a bit halfhearted,” Norina said.
“There’s no point in lying to you.”
“That’s true, but this little drama is for Karis, not for me.” Norina glanced at Karis.
“She’s satisfied enough.” She took Zanja’s arm, and propelled her back to the bench and to Karis, who got up and fiercely embraced them both.
Norina said, “You were going to let me leave.”
“And you were going to go.”
They examined each other rather cautiously. For the length of their friendship, Zanja thought, Norina had been reading Karis back to herself like a book read to a blind woman. Surely she must have been unnerved to look up from her reading and find the other chair empty and the door standing ajar.
Zanja said, “You’re afraid that Medric knows of Karis, even though I told him nothing?”
“She created you,” Norina said, “just like she created these blades we carry, just like she created the ravens. So she is in you, and when Medric met you, he met her as well. It may take some time for the small bit of truth he’s seen to become a whole, but if he’s the seer you say he is, then it will happen.”
“So I must find him, just as Karis says.”
“Well, I must consult with Mabin before we do anything.”
“You know that won’t work,” Karis said. “Giving birth will lay you up for a while, and you won’t even be around to consult with anyone. And if Mabin forbids us to contact him, as I’m sure she will, what then? You know that Zanja won’t stand quietly by while Mabin’s assassins hunt Medric down.“
“Good luck to them,” said Zanja. “That man has already outsmarted the smartest commanders in Shaftal. But no, I don’t owe Mabin any loyalty. Medric, however, deserves all the help I can give him.”
Norina said, “Unlike both of you, I still answer to the councilor, and will until I die. So what am I to do?”
“Go ahead and write her a letter,” Kans said. “Tell her what we’re doing, but don’t ask permission.”
“She won’t be happy. She’ll say you’re overreaching yourself, and she’ll blame me.”
Karis said, “Oh, I’m sure she will. But you can endure it.”
Chapter Twenty‑one
“Don’t send that letter!”
Awakened by Medric’s cry, Emil put an arm around him. Sometimes, when Medric became restless in his dreams, Emil could soothe him without awakening him. But Medric turned away, mumbling urgently.
The sky had clouded over. A summer shower would give relief from the dust, thought Emil. He got up to check the oilcloth that covered the trunks of books in the back of the wagon. When he returned, he found Medric sitting up in the tangle of blankets, fumbling frantically for his spectacles.
“We’re running out of time!” Medric looked around himself rather wildly.
“Are you awake? Or still asleep?”
“I’m not sure. I can’t see.”
Emil found his spectacles for him. Medric peered up at him and said, “I’m awake.”
Five days they had been traveling lazily, following the wagon down the dusty road, holding hands. It was summer, and all across Shaftal, Sainnites and Paladins were desperately killing each other. Emil knew this holiday of his could not last long, but still he asked, “What are we running out of time for?”
“Zanja is looking for me,” Medric said. “She needs us both, more urgently than she knows. But we can’t leave the books. How much further do you think we have to go?”
“Four days travel, or thereabouts. Where is she?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Medric disengaged himself from the blankets. “I’ll tell you if I can see a map.”
Emil fetched the map and lit the lantern. When he sat down, Medric leaned against him. Emil tucked him close and kissed his head.
“Maybe we can just ignore everything,” Medric suggested.
“I don’t believe that’s an option you’ll find in Way of theSeer.” Emil kissed him again, and unfolded the map. Medric pointed. Emil asked, “Strongbridge? What is she doing there?”
“Being a hinge of history.” Medric sighed. “Oh, well. The letter’s going to be sent, and nothing I can do will stop it. If I could, maybe it wouldn’t make any difference anyway.” He studied the map. “I suppose that to find me, Zanja will go to where she knows I was last, and wait for me to come to her. She’ll wait a few days, and eventually work her way to Haprin, for she knows I shipped my books there, doesn’t she? And then she’ll be able to find out that you and I left together, and perhaps even which way we headed. So she’ll guess where we’re going, because she’s been to your shepherd’s cottage before, and come after us.”
“She will,” Emil agreed, stunned by the simplicity of it. So this was how Rees Company had been systematically slaughtered, one person at a time. It was best not to think about it.
Medric rolled up the map, and blew out the lamp. “After we’ve secured the books, we’ll turn back and go to her, and meet her on the road somewhere. Now we can sleep.”
But when Emil awoke at dawn, Medric was still awake, and had spent the night pacing back and forth, watching the clouds gather and then disperse without issuing a single drop of ram.
Karis came home again to Meartown, to the furnaces and the forges and the teams of gigantic horses hauling wagonloads of ore from the nearby mines. Because Meartown was less than a day’s foot journey from Strongbridge, Norina had reluctantly let her go as she had come, alone. Norina had her own journey home to make: to her first home, the seaside village far on the southern coast, to the rambling house in which she had been born, and where her older sister now ruled, a benign matriarch by all accounts.
The region of Mear was a place of hostile, stony hillsides and occasional, straggling trees, home to many kinds of mice and the foxes and hawks that ate them, but unfarmable and, except for a few places, too barren even for sheep. In spring a few tiny flowers bloomed among the stones; in winter the snow blanketed the land and blew into drifts taller than Karis could reach. Yet, for hundreds of years Meartown had thrived in the middle of this wasteland, its fires stoked by coal mined from the same hills that the iron came from; all its other needs came in by wagon. The road to Meartown was like a heart’s artery, and there was no road better laid or maintained in all of Shaftal. All summer long the road crew wandered that road, filling potholes and replacing stones; all winter long that same crew worked the snowplows.
The barren land inspired a barren kind of love, an intellectual and passionless appreciation for its empty spaces and harsh, stony ridges. By day, the sky was brown with coal smoke, and she spent most of those days within the gray city of the forges. Hemmed in by stone and metal, she longed for green and living things. She sighed as she walked into Meartown that afternoon and waved a hand at Mardeth, who collected the gate toll from outsiders. “So you’re back,” Mardeth called. “Have you eaten today?”
Karis sat down by the town well and ate the lunch that the inn had packed for her that morning–more of those dumplings that had made Zanja cry, there by the river.
Present yet absent, Zanja moved across the countryside like a spark of light through darkness. If Karis had shut her eyes and started to walk, she would have walked directly to her side. With her whole being, she yearned to do that very thing.