Even so the sun had disappeared behind the cliffs sunsetting when he reached Arranha. The sky, still bright, gave light enough in the larger valley, but up in the small one, under the great pines, it seemed already dusk. Far overhead, he could just see the top of sunlit cliffs, still blazing red, but he stumbled over rocks in the gloom. At first, he could not remember exactly where the entrance lay; the tree in front of it obscured it more than he had expected. But they found it at last, and after a last drink from the rivulet outside, came in to the silence and shadeless light of the stronghold.
None of them said anything on the way back to the great hall. Luap, counting turns and hoping that he remembered them all, had neither breath nor attention to spare for his companions. He had not realized how far down the sloping passages had taken them; going back uphill he could feel the pull on his legs. At last they came to the level ways he remembered clearly, and then to the hall itself. There they paused.
Arranha sank down on the dais, breathless.
“Are you all right?” the Rosemage asked. Luap felt guilty; he had not remembered that the old man might have even more trouble with the climb than he had.
Arranha nodded, but waited a moment to speak. “I’m . . . fine. Just tired. I haven’t climbed so much in years. . . .”
“I’m sorry,” Luap said. “I was trying to remember the turns—”
Arranha chuckled. “And I’d rather you remembered the turns, lad, than worried about me and forgot them. But we must mark the route, next time, eh?” In a few minutes he was able to stand. “I would like to see more—I would like to explore every passage and room—but I think we should return to your cave, Luap. My bones crave a night’s sleep, with a blanket around me.”
“We could come back and bring food,” the Rosemage said. “And blankets. Spend a day or two here—”
“We can’t leave the horses there, untended,” Luap said. Then he and the Rosemage looked at each other, bright-eyed. “Bring them!” they both said. Luap went on. “We could explore more easily—see more—perhaps reach both ends of the valley in one day.” He wondered if a horse would fit into that inner chamber. Its head, yes, but all of it? What would happen if all the horse didn’t stand on the pattern? Surely it would all come, or all fail to come . . . not sever the beast. He shuddered. “Arranha’s right,” he said. “For now, we go back and have a night’s rest.”
Although he had not thought it took so long to go from the lower entrance to the great hall, when they emerged from the cave in Fintha, the last glow of sunlight was just fading from the sky. “I thought so,” said Arranha, with some satisfaction. Luap presumed that meant his idea about distance and time, whatever it was, made sense to him.
“I’ll feed the horses,” he said, forestalling further explanation. Once more he led the tethered horses to drink, then fed them. Even after sunset, it was much hotter and stickier here than there; he missed the clean bite of that distant air. When he climbed back to the cave entrance, the Rosemage had a fire going, and had started cooking. He gathered more fallen branches for fuel, broke a few switches of flybane and stripped the leaves from them, and went back to rub the horses with the sticky sap. Arranha peeled redroots and sliced them for the pot, quietly for once. He offered no theories about the origins of redroots, the different ways they might be peeled or sliced. . . . Luap decided the old man was really tired.
He himself was tired, he realized, after sitting to eat the stew the Rosemage had prepared. He was stiff from the climbing, and mentally tired from the excitement. He wanted to talk about everything he’d seen, check his memories against theirs, and at the same time he wanted to fall asleep right where he sat. He took the pot to the river to clean it, and came back to find Arranha already asleep and the Rosemage yawning as she piled turf on the fire. So he lay down and dreamed all night of the red castles of his future home.
The next day dawned fair and hot. Luap woke early, and went down to water the horses. He wanted to escape to that cool, crisp air of the stronghold. He imagined what dawn might look like, rising above sheer red rock walls, the first sunlight spilling over the cliffs like golden wine. Here, the air lay heavy, a moist blanket on his shoulders; he was sweating already.
“It’ll storm by nightfall,” the Rosemage said. Her shirt clung to her, already sweat-darkened. She dipped a bucket in the river upstream of the drinking horses, and put her hand in. “It’s hardly cool at all. Your country must be fierce in winter, but it’s certainly cooler in summer.”
“I know. I was wishing we could go back there today.” He backed Arranha’s mount out of the water, and fetched hers. “But we’re short of fodder for the horses; we need to move on to the meadows and let them graze.”
“They could graze there if we could get them there,” she said. “If they’d fit into that chamber . . . but then they’d come out in the great hall. That’s no place for horses.” By the wrinkle of her nose, he knew she was thinking of the mess they could make, the damage they could do. True—that hall was no stable, and they would not have the means to clean it. And if a shod hoof damaged the pattern on the dais, could they get back? Best not to risk it. But he wanted to go back, wanted to taste that cold water again, breathe that air.
Arranha woke as they came back up. He, too, commented on the moist heat of the morning, and the difference from the crisp air in “Luap’s country” as he called it. But he did not want to go back—not then. “At dawn, precisely, or sunset—yes. With a sandglass to measure the time.”
So after a cold breakfast, they saddled the horses and rode back toward Fin Panir. Just after midday, when they were too far from a village to find shelter, a violent summer storm broke over them, drenching them with rain so they rode the rest of the day with the odor of wet wool. Luap tried to fill his mind with the scent of those pines.
Raheli ran her hand along the shaft of the pike the yeoman had brought to replace one he’d broken in drill. Good seasoned wood, shaped well and rubbed smooth. She nodded her approval, and he grinned at her. He had the agility and grace of an ox, she thought, but made up for it with strength and goodwill. Now may I do as well, she thought, to amend my own faults. She had had so short a time with Gird to renew their family relationship, to feel how she might be truly an elder even without bearing . . . she still found herself mired in bitterness some days. She and Gird had not been meant to do new things, but to do old things well, she was sure. They had done new things because they must, not like those for whom this was their parrion.
Yet she did new things constantly. She had been listening to the women, since her visit to Gird, and even more since his death, noticing much she’d ignored before. She had, after all, lived in the one vill all her life until the day she still thought of as the day the war started. She had never been as far as a big market town, let alone a city; she had known nothing of how city folk lived, or peasant folk across the Honnorgat. Or even peasant folk before the magelords came. She listened to old grannies tell of their grannies’ times; she listened to women who had the life she had lost, and women who wanted the life she had as a Marshal. Even mageborn women . . . they had not all been wealthy, arrogant mageladies who delighted in beating peasants. In fact, most of them were more human than she had imagined from meeting the Autumn Rose. She had met Dorhaniya now, and listened to stories that sounded much like those she’d grown up hearing at her own hearth.