It was the night after with the dust falling down about her face and shoulders and the second bar halfway free that the door opened. He froze and she turned frantically toward it and the light that had seemed so dim and worthless before now seemed to be pouring in from the hall with no end, the shadows thrown back.
The guard—of course not the girl, through the damning of fate—coming across the floor. Walking slowly with the keys in his hand and those keys swinging and him grinning to himself as he looked at her. Something predatory in his eyes that made her want to cross her arms over herself and she did but then put them down. For she could not let them win at anything which she controlled and she would not now and if he was looking at her that was all she had.
She stood and tried not to look up. A small sprinkle of dust falling from above. How much, how much. She stepped to the end of the chains and held out her hands. “Hurry,” she said. “Don't keep him waiting.”
The guard raised an eyebrow and then laughed. “You're telling me what to do?”
“I know he sent you.”
“I bet you do.”
She nodded as if that settled it and held out her hands. Heard a soft grinding from above. A bare foot twisting in powdered mortar atop a smooth stone. Losing purchase now with the first bar gone and the second loose, only one left to hold.
Don't fall, she thought. Damn you, don't fall.
“Got someone here wants to see you,” the guard said.
“Take me to him.”
“Just like that?” He laughed again. “Don't even want to know who it is?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Maybe makes a lot.”
The grinding again. Something falling and striking her head, perhaps a small stone. She tried not to move and didn't know if he saw it or not. Her last prayer one said as a child and long ago on her knees by a bed so large it felt as if it were a great blue sea and soft, with oil lamps around and long swaying curtains and pillows larger than her small body and all this so, so long ago and yet she found the prayer rising in her mind now. Running through those familiar words like a chant, a plea, a prayer of desperate supplication and desire.
All the time, dust moving in the light. So much more dust than had ever been in this place of mildew and water.
“He'll be angry if he has to wait.” Still holding out her hands.
The guard shook his head. Leaned in and took one hand, fitting the key into the lock. Turning it, turning it. A soft click and the release as the iron dropped open. The second hand. Everything taking ages, entire lives passing in the swirling stars as he switched to the second lock. She heard the grinding sound again and it was louder and she just knew he was going to fall and he did not and she watched the guard the whole time and then they were at the end of eternity and he unlocked the second wrist and stepped back.
The prayer still repeating, rolling through her mind like the tide, the cycles of the moon. Tumbling again and again.
“Let's go,” he said, taking her arm and pulling her toward the door.
Chapter Eight
They rode four days out from the village in this wasteland and rough terrain with the horse carrying them both and all about the mountains sloping down from the town which was in turn down from the keep and the land always growing lower as it ran to the seas. So far off it felt like a different world and perhaps one they would never see again. They rode through a frozen forest where the trees were all stark white and brittle and the branches shattered when they touched them, as the horse brushed by. Across a wide lake that was as solid as stone and as clear as glass and looking down where the snow had blown away they could see the rocks of the bottom and at one place a man in armor with a blue and frozen face and his arms outstretched and mouth and eyes open and the eyelids eaten by fish that lived and swam in the ice itself. Through a deep valley with boulders all scattered about as if giants had come and rolled them and white deer in that valley running between the boulders ahead of the horse and then climbing the shale cliffs along the edges and standing beneath their clouding breath to watch them pass.
Brack had seen much and more of the world, but this was nothing he had laid eyes on before. When he rode in front he watched the horse's steps and guided it carefully and kept an eye on its breathing and felt its lungs move in its great chest. But when he rode in back he looked all about him and drank that country and did not know what it meant that this place could exist at all.
Looking above at times for the dragon, but never finding him.
They camped the fourth night in a cave in the shadow of a short mountain and on the peak of that mountain an old lookout of tumbled stones. Brack went and stood among those ruins and could not date them but did find a knife made of stone with a chipped blade. Picked it up and looked at it and turned it in his hand and put it back down. But went in the end to the cave and lit a fire in the doorway and sat behind it in the warm glow with his hands to the flames.
“We need another horse,” Juoth said. His blistered skin bright in the firelight. Both hands sitting in his lap. The one glove still on and holding that hand very still.
“He's spent?”
“If he's not already, he will be.”
There had been no villages and no men and no tracks and no horses. They had the gold and could buy one but they had to find one to buy him and they couldn't.
They watched the fire for a time. The flames moving over the wood they'd brought from the forest, scraping it free of ice and frost with their knives and a handax. Splitting it so it burned on the edges. The flames still meager but better than none, the smoke rising thinly.
“What are you doing?” Juoth said. Just looking out over the country.
Brack regarded him for a moment. Leaning forward to set another branch in the fire and watching as the flames licked over it and trying not to think of bones among the ashes. Then he said: “I'm hunting him.”
“How long?”
“There's not a beginning to it.”
“No?”
He shook his head and settled back. Looking at this man with whom he rode. “How much did you know about my grandfather?”
“Only what he wanted me to know.”
“Then you know he watched for me.”
Juoth nodded. Nothing else needed to be said.
“I knew he'd be looking and I came to him to find out what he'd seen,” Brack said. “I've always been able to trust him in that. He saw everything. The things you miss. He saw them. Noted them. When it left the keep and I knew he was close, I went to him.”
“Don't blame yourself.”
Brack sat staring for a long moment and then bent his head and put it in his hands. Holding it and thinking of all his life was and all it had become. Not wanting to raise it again and continue on this journey but also knowing he must. As all men must do the things laid before them or perish in the doing or shirk that duty and live long and fat lives hating themselves and knowing exactly what they are.
“Who did it kill there?”
“At the keep?”
“Yes.”
Brack scowled, eyes focused on nothing and everything. “My cousins. Brother and sister.”
The other man looked at him and watched his eyes and said: “You think something.”
Brack blinked and then nodded. Smiling in a grim fashion. As a man who has seen so much death must smile if he is to smile at all. “It's following me.”