By her appearance she was not of Dalesblood; perhaps her talent therefore was the stronger. Yet her tie with Jervon was very close and easy, acceptable to both. Jervon, though he was plainly of keep-kin, had no visible taint of the Old Ones—and I did not believe he was one who bore my own curse. Together they traveled without many words between them, but I was more and more aware that theirs was so strong a bond that at times it seemed as if one could read the mind of the other.
It was Jervon who interested me the most. All Dalespeople accepted Wisewomen—after a fashion. Those are born of our own blood with a talent they enlarge by learning. A girl with such a gift apprenticed herself early to one well practiced in herb lore, in minor Power control. She was thus set apart from childhood, knowing thereafter no kin-tie, even among those of her birth family, making no marriage, rearing no child, unless she in turn took an apprentice. Her knowledge was her whole life.
A Wisewoman’s arts are of healing and peace. None goes armed, none speaks of battle as Elys had made mention of skirmishes and alerts, inquiring of me how went Imgry’s training of the new forces. She was two things—each opposed to the other. How could this be?
Also, how could Jervon, who lacked any pretense of talent, accept her so wholly, feeling none of the aversion that was bred into all Dalesmen—that wariness, the latent fear of the unknown raised by the constant awareness that we dwelt in a land which was not truly our own?
This alliance of theirs—my thoughts returned ever to the strangeness of it—was by Dale standards unexplainable. Jervon was neither servant nor guard, that I had learned early during this endless ride west. They were equals in spite of their differences. Could one take two such opposing people—as one would take two different metals—and forge from their uniting a third stronger, more powerful than either alone?
Jervon accepted Elys for what she was. Could anyone so accept—me, in the same fashion?
They both spoke of Joisan, not as if they wished to add to my burden, but naturally, as if she had been brought into that shared companionship of theirs. There came a time (did my face so reveal my inner struggles) that Elys broke the silence in which I rode with an abrupt comment.
“She wished for more.”
Anger touched me, and then bewilderment. More of what? Lands? Heritage? For both of us those had been swept away by the fortunes of the war. I had given her her full freedom—I held her by no promise. What then was “more”?
If this clear-eyed warrior woman could indeed reach into the turmoil of my thoughts, did she not realize that I knew Joisan was something apart, precious—something I could not bind to me. Being what I was I would ask nothing. Not all were as accepting as she—as Jervon . . .
“Men fear that which has no substance, better they should look with clear eyes, open minds,” Elys continued. “Joisan told me of your heritage, that you deemed it a dire thing you cannot escape. But have you not already faced it in part—faced and defeated it?”
“I did not defeat it, Lady,” I flared up in answer. “What I wrought was against enemies—enemies who had taken my lady to bend to their will. Nor did I alone do that thing. There was another Power that took a hand—which used me as one uses a sword. Am I then to be commended? Because I am what I am, I was only a doorway . . .”
Memory moved. Who—what—had I been at that moment when a Power that certainly I had not summoned had turned against Rogear and my mother? I had not been Kerovan then, but another—another who was greater, stronger, whole in spirit—everything I was not, as I knew when he had withdrawn, and had never been nor could hope to be.
“Be not so swift to deny,” she countered. “There are often skills that lie sleeping within one until destiny—and need—awakens and draws them forth. You think meanly of yourself and”—there was a note in her tone that brought a flush to my cheek, a hot retort to my lips though I did not so interrupt her—“perhaps you find that to so think is a protection, a ward against doing what you were born to do. One cannot stand in the end against one’s fate.”
To that I made no answer seeing that if I spoke now what I deemed to be the truth she might only say again that I hid behind an excuse, as she had just accused me of doing. Nor did I find that I liked either of these two the more (for I brooded upon my conviction that they found in me perhaps not the monster the Dales would name me, but someone so poor-spirited that I was not of the breed to have honestly earned Joisan’s regard). Perhaps I should have been glad of that verdict, seeing that it would afford me an added excuse to hold aloof—when and if my lady was safely found. Only, contrarily, its affect upon me now was to arouse a determination to prove that I was not less than Jervon in my ability to accept. Though the acceptance would never be mine—it was Joisan’s.
On the second day the country began to change—even as desert had given way earlier to grassland—though the hills still seemed farther away. While we did not see again any such silent and thick wood as the Wereriders’ sanctuary, there were more trees. Also, we forded one good-sized river, making our way across on the remains of a stone bridge, enough of which still stood above water to give us dry footing.
Hereabouts were signs that this land had once been under cultivation, perhaps very fertile. There were fallow fields walled with stones set skillfully in place, and twice we sighted towers standing as watch points. We made no attempt to explore these, for their surroundings suggested that they had been long abandoned, and there was a fever burning, in me at least, to keep pushing on.
In midafternoon of the second day we came near a third such tower, only this was surrounded by a clump of dark trees (most of which were unseasonably bare of leaf, but with branches so matted and entwined as to form another kind of defense). The baud on my wrist warmed. I pulled back my mail sleeve to see it emitting blue sparks, visible even in the sunlight. Elys reined up, watched that tower as one looked upon a defended enemy position. She had caught her lower lip between her teeth and a frown of concentration drew her brows closer together.
“Swing out!” she ordered, emphasizing that with a gesture to her left. “Can you not also feel it?”
Perhaps because I had been for so many hours wrapped in my own thoughts, I had not been too much aware of what was round about. Now her command startled me into attention. I hunched my shoulders, tightened grip on the reins so that the mare sidled under me. It was as if an unexpected blow had struck out of the very air—one I had no means of countering.
The only words I can find to describe what chanced are that in that moment I had been attacked by a wave of pure evil. Evil is the only name for the foulness of it. Cold it was, wholly inimical to my kind of life, or at least to that part of me that could claim kinship with humanity. I sensed a subtle movement in my mind, a feeble assault, as if what had launched that blow (perhaps intending invasion) had been drained through centuries until its force was only a faint shadow of what it had once been. Something coiled out there behind the dark of the trees, the tumble of stone, something full of poison against the soul, as an adder is full of poison to discharge against living flesh.
We rode on, making a wide circle around that ill-inhabited place. However, we had not gone far (though the pressure I had felt had faded entirely away) when there came the sound of wild screeching. Coiling up from the tower, in the form of a giant serpent rearing to strike, came a spiral of birds.
Once aloft they wheeled, to fly directly at us. I saw, as they drew near, that they were of the same breed as those foul scavengers I had found at the desert oasis. Their raw red heads, armed with those murderous curved beaks, were stretched forward like spears, aimed at us.