"I know the land, even after all these years," Dynard assured her. "In two weeks' time, we will find Chapel Pryd. We'll not get lost."
"Little is the care if we do," SenWi replied. "The unknown road oft brings unexpected joys."
Her reference to Dynard's own journey brought a blush to his cheeks. "And oft brings unexpected dangers," he replied. "The land is rife with powries and goblins, so said Laird Ethelbert. Even when I left, the beasts were all about."
"I am Jhesta Tu," SenWi reminded him, the words drawing Dynard's eyes back to the ivory and silver hilt of the sword that pointed diagonally above her left shoulder.
He squeezed her hand again, and they strode off along the forested trail.
Later that same night, on a hill open to the stars above, SenWi ran her hand over the sleeping Bran's shoulder. The air was warm, but the evening breeze carried a slight chill that amplified and tingled as it moved across the perspiration that still clung to SenWi's naked body.
Bran slept soundly, his chest rising and falling in a smooth, contented rhythm. Their lovemaking had been particularly energetic that night, with Bran almost ferocious in his advances, and as urgent in the act itself as he had been in their first encounter, years before in the Walk of Clouds.
Was he trying to reaffirm his love for her to himself? SenWi had to wonder. Was his insistence of action a way for him to defy the obvious disdainful glances that he knew the two of them would face among his unworldly, even intolerant, people?
SenWi smiled the thought away, not over concerned. Had her beloved Bran Dynard felt any more at ease during his first days in Jacintha or among the xenophobic tribes in the desert of Behr? Had he not been a curiosity of sorts when first he had come to the Walk of Clouds, with his chalky skin and strange ways, his words of Blessed Abelle and magical gemstones?
SenWi understood. In making love to her that night, under the stars in the summer breeze, Bran had tried to prove to her that he loved her beyond anything else and that there could be no severing of that tie. And he had tried to prove to himself, she presumed, that the curious and doubting expressions of other people mattered not at all.
His sleep was not restless.
"My love," SenWi whispered, her words floating on the evening breeze. She bent low over Bran and kissed him, and he gave a little grumble and rolled onto his side, drawing yet another amused smile from SenWi.
She held faith in his love for her, and never doubted her own for him, and she was doubly glad of that now.
For she knew.
With her Jhesta Tu training, her senses attuned so well to the rhythms of her own body, the mystic knew.
She brought a hand down to her belly. "That is it?" SenWi asked in a halting voice. She was gaining a better command of the Honce language, for she and Dynard had been speaking that alone for the last week of traveling. She moved around the side of the rocky jut on the hillside to stand beside her husband, and followed his gaze to the distant dark shape of a formidable castle, anchored in the back by a wide, round tower.
Dynard's grin gave her the answer before he verbally confirmed, "Castle Pryd, home of Laird Pryd, who hosts my chapel." He glanced to the west, and noted the sun, now more than halfway to the horizon.
"This night only if we travel long after…bokri," SenWi answered his unasked question.
"Sunset," Dynard translated. "Bokri is sunset, as bonewl is sunrise." He extended his hand to her. "Tomorrow morning, then. I am anxious to return to my home, 'tis true, but I will miss our time alone."
SenWi took his hand and followed him and didn't disagree at all with his observation. The weather had been fine and the company better over the days since they had left the bustle of Ethelbert Holding. It had rained just once, a light sprinkle one dark night, but even in that, SenWi and Bran had huddled and laughed under the sheltering lower boughs of a thick pine, and barely a drop had touched them.
The Jhesta Tu mystic had enjoyed the journey as much as her companion. They had laughed-mostly Dynard laughing at her as she struggled to master the language-and basked in the scents and sights of the unspoiled Honce wilderness in the late summer. They had been fortunate thus far, for the only monster or dangerous animal they had encountered was a single adder that slithered into their campsite one night. Dynard had reached for a stick, but SenWi had intervened, moving low to face the serpent and swaying her hands rhythmically to calm it and entrance it. With a lightning quick strike, the Jhesta Tu had caught the adder in her grasp right behind its head, and had gently carried it far from the camp, where she then had released it.
She remembered now the image of Bran Dynard when she had returned to the camp, as he sat there, shaking his head and grinning widely and chuckling with obvious admiration. "You have learned ki-chi-kree," she had said to him. "You, too, could have calmed and caught the serpent."
To that, Dynard had laughed all the louder and had equated his own command of the Jhesta Tu understanding to that of SenWi's grasp of the language of Honce.
Since they had agreed that they need not make Castle Pryd that night, they walked leisurely and on a meandering road, with SenWi often rushing to the side to further explore some interesting sight or sound. For their camp, they chose a bare-topped hillock, and from its apex as the sunlight began to fade they could just make out the southernmost reaches of the new and expanding road, less than a mile away.
"Your world is changing," SenWi remarked as they stared down at that significant development.
"Greatly, I would guess, when these roads are connected. But for the better," Dynard added, turning a grin SenWi's way. "Better to spread the word of Abelle. Better to take the healing powers of the soul stones to the ends of the land."
"Better to move about your armies?"
"If in the pursuit of the monsters that plague the land, then yes."
SenWi nodded and let the conversation go at that. She was Jhesta Tu, and so she had studied the history of the southern lands of Behr extensively. Many times over the centuries had empires arisen, building roads and marching their armies all about. Most of those roads were lost again now, as were the empires, reclaimed by the desert sands. History moved in circles, the Jhesta Tu believed, a hundred steps forward and ninety-nine backward, so the saying went; and that understanding was based on solid evidence and a collective, often bitter, experience. How many people through the ages had thought themselves moving toward a better existence, toward paradise itself, only to be thrown back into misery at the whims of a foolish ruler or by the stomping of a conquering invader?
SenWi wondered then if the roads of other empires had crossed this land of Honce, ravaged by time and swallowed by regrown forests. She expected as much.
She fell asleep comfortably in Bran's tender embrace that evening, her vision of the stars above and thoughts of eternity taking her to a quiet and peaceful slumber. Like all Jhesta Tu, she had trained her body to remain alert to external stimuli even in the deepest sleep, and she awakened sometime near midnight to the distant sound of coarse laughter, drifting on the summer breeze.
SenWi extricated herself from her husband's arms and slowly rose to her feet, staring off to the north, toward Pryd. She saw the flicker of a torch through the trees, perhaps halfway to the firelight glow showing in the windows of Castle Pryd. The commotion and new lights were somewhere down by the end of the road, she figured.
She heard Dynard stir and crawl over beside her, where he wearily rose to his knees. "What is it?"
Some more laughter filtered through.
"A party?"