‘Oh ho, this doesn’t look like a cheerful group,’ Yvane whispered.
Varryn swept by them.
‘We go now,’ he said.
Ess’yr paused a moment longer, her expression unreadable.
‘We are hunted still,’ she said. ‘There is another man, with a hound.’ She gestured back towards the great rise of the Car Criagar.
‘Let’s hunt him, then,’ said Rothe fiercely. ‘There must be a hundred warriors in the camp. We can…’
Ess’yr only shook her head and followed after her brother.
Anyara glanced at the knot of Kyrinin who now silently faced them. She felt, for the first time, a sense of threat.
‘Come along, then,’ Yvane said, and set off back the way they had come.
Orisian and Anyara hurried to catch up with her, Rothe lingering for a moment to ensure the Fox did not come after them.
‘No point in digging our heels in once they’ve made up their minds,’ said Yvane. ‘They’ll not want to get involved in arguments amongst Huanin. Probably blame us for bringing outsiders to their doorstep, as well. All in all, we have outstayed our welcome, I think.’
Orisian found the Vale of Tears a very different place to his own homeland. The valley was scattered with ramshackle farmsteads. They were smaller and more crudely built than those in the Glas valley, and stood amongst unkempt fields. The soil was heavy and wet; there were many little marshes and beds of rushes. The cattle that grazed the floodplain looked listless and morose.
Time and again, as they made their steady way down towards the sea, they passed by the ruins of abandoned farm buildings. Most were little more than rubble but now and again they would come across the full shell of a house, overgrown by moss and trailing plants. There had been more people here once, Orisian thought, a great many more.
Occasionally they spotted a lone herdsman following along behind his cattle, tapping at their hindquarters with a switch. A hunter crossed their path once, leading a pony that bore the gutted corpse of a deer. He came into sight a hundred or so paces ahead of them, and paused to gaze in their direction for a moment. He was a strange, burly figure almost lost beneath the thick furs he wore. Rothe raised a hand in greeting, but the man did not respond and continued on his way towards a distant shack further out by the river.
They camped by a small grove of trees. Varryn found some kindling, and they soon had a fire alight. Ess’yr lowered herself to the ground with care. For the first few hours after leaving the vo’an she had moved well, almost recapturing the lithe grace that had been hers before she was injured. Her stride had shortened and stiffened as the day wore on.
Yvane emerged from amongst the trees, clutching odd, globe-shaped objects in her grubby hands. She smiled at the puzzled expression on Orisian and Anyara’s faces.
‘Earth mutton,’ she said. ‘Never seen it before?’
Anyara and Orisian shook their heads, but Rothe grunted softly.
‘Mushroom from underground. Used to be much sought after, that, when I was a child in Targlas,’ he said. ‘My father took me searching for it. Don’t think anyone goes hunting for it nowadays, though.’
‘Well, it’s still good food in these parts,’ Yvane said. ‘The Fox think it something of a delicacy. You should consider yourselves fortunate to be served with such food.’
She and Varryn sliced the fungus into thin strips, turning each one briefly over the fire before passing it out. The flavour was good, with a meaty hint beneath the taste of soil.
As they went on down towards Koldihrve, Orisian asked Yvane about the ruined farmhouses that dotted the landscape.
‘There were more people here once, and they made a better living from the land,’ she said.
‘That much I’d guessed,’ said Orisian pointedly.
The na’kyrim shot him a wry glance.
‘Losing a little of that great gentleness of yours?’ she enquired. ‘Might not be such a bad thing, so long as you don’t get carried away. Anyway, this was Aygll land before the War of the Tainted. Went wild in the Storm Years after the Kingship fell, and never got over it.’
They passed a dozen Kyrinin who were perhaps making for the vo’an on the lakeshore. Varryn exchanged a few soft words with them. From the direction of their glances, it seemed that Ess’yr was the subject of their discussion. One of the travellers produced a small packet from inside his tunic and unwrapped a bound bundle of twigs. Varryn accepted it with a nod of his head and the other Kyrinin went on their way.
When they rested for a time in the early afternoon, Varryn heated some water over a small fire. He dropped the twigs in and let them stew. A sharp, almost acrid, scent rose from the pot. Ess’yr drank the infusion down and afterwards a little of the paleness was gone from her cheeks and she walked with an easier stride.
That evening, when they bedded down a short way from the track, Orisian went and sat beside her. No one else seemed to be paying them any attention. He spoke to her quietly.
‘How are your ribs?’
She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I live still.’
Her tattoos were still livid, not yet settled into her skin. They were much less dense than those upon her brother’s face. A spiral swung around the swell of her cheek; fronds of dye cupped the corners of her eyes. It was almost beautiful. Only the first kin’thyn, Orisian supposed. More would come if she killed again.
‘Inurian always seemed to have a cure for any ill,’ Orisian said. ‘The same medicines you use, I suppose. He learned them from you? From the Fox, I mean?’
Ess’yr only nodded at that. She was looking at him now, with those still, strong eyes.
‘You sent your sister to me,’ she said. ‘That was well done.’
Orisian knew what she meant: the cord of Inurian’s life.
‘It was Yvane’s idea. It seemed right.’
‘You feel more clearly than most of your kind,’ she said and there was the slightest, gentlest of smiles on her delicate lips.
Orisian felt a breath of heat rising in his face. For the first time in many days, he had a glimpse of that Ess’yr he had seen before they reached Anduran: the one who looked at him as if he was Orisian, not just some Huanin. Her hand lay only the shortest of reaches from his own, her fingers pressed softly into the yielding moss.
‘You buried it in a dyn ham?’ Orisian asked.
There was only a fleeting pause. Anyone watching her less carefully than Orisian would have missed the momentary tightening at the corner of her eyes. He wanted to touch her in that instant—to offer comfort—but he did not.
‘No,’ she said. ‘He was na’kyrim. Only half of him was of the true people. But I found a place. I cut a good willow staff. It will leaf when the winter is over.’
‘Did you . . . How long did you know him for?’ Orisian asked her.
She thought for a moment, and he feared she was not going to reply; that, as so often when he asked a question she did not wish to answer, she would not hear it. She did, though.
‘Five summers ago. He visited my a’an. I saw him, but I did not speak with him until the next summer. He came back.’
‘And . . .’ Orisian had to suppress the urge to cough, ‘you loved him then?’
‘Well enough,’ was all Ess’yr said, as if he had asked how she liked their campsite. Orisian could not tell whether the question had offended her.
‘He was very kind to me,’ he said. ‘Always. I would have been very lonely if he had not been there . . . after the Fever. He was always there to talk to, about anything. I will miss him.’