IN THE THROAT of the pass of God's Ax, Tally drew rein and rose in her stirrups for the tenth time that day, turning her head and listening. The wind keened thinly along the high stone faces of the cliffs that lined the way, whined among the boulders that strewed their feet, and roared with a soughing like the sea in the pines that formed a spiky black rampart along their brows, a hundred and twenty feet above. But when it eased for a moment the sound came again, unmistakable, and then Tally knew.
She was being followed.
Wind caught at her hair and whipped it in her eyes as she scanned the pass behind her. The earthquake that had twisted the foundations of the world six hundred years ago had changed the shape of this pass; steep and jagged now, it ran straight for barely a hundred yards at any one time, winding back and forth through the fractured bones of the Mountains of the Sun; only in the thirty years of her father's rule in Mere had it been possible for a lone rider to pass through without fear of being robbed, not once, but several times.
Worriedly she reached inside her grimy sheepskin jacket, to touch the amulet she wore.
This is the only road down to the Drowned Lands, she told herself firmly. It's logical I'd be taking it; logical they'd guess where I'd be going. The fact that they're coming doesn't mean I was betrayed.
Her horse jittered uneasily, and the spare mount, burdened with food and the leather-wrapped bundles of Jaldis' books, flicked its ears and snuffed at the wind. Tally gauged the length of this particular reach of the pass, calculated in her mind how many more miles of narrow canyon, hemmed in by unscalable cliffs, lay between her and the wet, cloud-scarved woods of the downward slopes beyond.
A burst of speed...
But no burst of speed would take her beyond the sight of the riders in the pass behind her, and the clatter of her horses' hooves would carry. Then they'd know she was there, and the amulet she wore would not hide her from their eyes.
But if that old Hand-Pricker told them to look twice at any sloppy-looking man in an old sheepskin coat, she thought, panic rising in her chest, it won't hide me anyway...
Whatever happened, she knew she must not let herself be caught. Not in flight from Erralswan. Not with Jaldis' books.
In a scattered few seconds the whole scene in the Hand-Pricker's hut returned to her, and with it the memory of the smell of the place, the reek of filth, old blood, dirty bedding, and cats. The Hand-Pricker himself had shrunk blinking from her, an emaciated man of middle age whose light-brown hair and beard had both been crusted stiff at the ends with the blood of sacrifices made years ago; bloodstains had shown up even on the faded black of his robe. He'd stammered, "T-the woman who wanted the powder," and in his watery yellow eyes was the fear that more trouble was coming to him.
"I need an amulet," Tally had said, setting down a small bag of money among the litter of herbs and sticks and crumbling fragments of half-mummified toads on the table. She'd already cropped her hair short like an urchin boy's, and wore a boy's breeches, shirt, and dirty sheepskin jacket. "An amulet that will turn aside men's eyes, make them believe that they see a man in these clothes, fat and harmless and bearded; and I need it quickly."
"Who - whom do you flee?"
In his eyes she saw that he'd already half guessed. The eyes of Agon are everywhere...
"Isn't it enough to know," she had asked softly, "that I fear for my life and the lives of those I love?"
Fumblingly, he had made the amulet, pulling at the cords that passed through his fingers and palms and earlobes until the blood came, rocking and whispering above the flat rock in the corner of his hut, stretching forth his bleeding hands to murmur the name of the familiar spirit that gave him - so the Hand-Prickers believed - his power. And Tally, sitting at the table with the Hand-Pricker's cats purring around her boots and sleeping on her lap, had strained her ears for sounds in the village back lane outside, praying that no one had yet marked her lateness in returning to her husband's house.
She had already left Kir and Brenat, in the charge of their nurse, with the local physician. That worthy had been sufficiently puzzled by Kir's symptoms - hallucinations, convulsions, and pains in the joints unaccompanied by any fever or inflammation (Kir was an enthusiastic actor but Tally had drawn the line at drugs that might do him real harm) - to recommend sending him immediately to a more skilled practitioner in Brottin, far down the mountain and, she hoped, out of harm's way. But there was always a chance that their nurse was one of Agon's spies. Or one of the grooms. Or...
Or anyone.
That was the worst, the nightmare of all this. Not knowing whom to trust.
Those who did not serve Agon through hate, like Mijac, or cynicism, like Esrex, might just as easily do the Veiled God's bidding through fear.
"I'm sorry to have brought this upon you," she said, reaching out to take the dirty little bolus of wax, blood, sticks, and feathers that the wizard held out to her in his sticky hands. "But truly, even if I hadn't come here, trouble would come upon you. The men who hate magic are moving - the men who seek to remove magic from the world, so that no one may challenge their power or see their doings and expose them for the lies they are."
"But I - I'm not one of the great ones, you know," the mage had whispered. "I stay out of the way - I don't make trouble - the Lord of Erralswan has never..."
"The Lord of Erralswan has never thought of you one way or the other," Tally said sadly. "And now people are making him think. If you can use a scrying crystal to see the movements of armies - if you can cast a spell of darkness, confusion, or illness against an enemy's troops - if you have the slightest ability to read the winds or the signs of the bones that would tell of treachery and ambush - people will make the Lord of Erralswan think that you are his enemy, you are a traitor, you are not deserving of even a hearing because you are who and what you are. It needs no magic to cast an illusion like that."
The man had only looked at her, holding his big gray cat in his arms, his eyes stupid with fear and the hope that she wasn't right.
Tally looped the amulet's cord about her neck and slipped the blob of gritty wax into her jacket. "Flee, if you can," she said, her voice quiet and her eyes holding his. "The Lady of the Drowned Lands is garnering mages on her islands; you will be safe there. She needs the help of everyone who can do magic, everyone who was born with that seed in his blood..."
"Is that where you are going?"
She hesitated, but knew the man would guess it; then nodded.
He'd swallowed hard, his thin fingers, pierced through with bits of twine and string for the small blood-sacrifices of his system of power, stroking the soft, thick fur of his cat's head while the animal rubbed its cheek against the tattered black sleeve. "I - I've lived here all my life," he'd said uncertainly. "The people here know me..."
But as Tally turned to go he'd stepped quickly forward, to touch her sleeve.
"That amulet..." he said. "It won't... My power, the power of my blood, of my familiar spirits, isn't - isn't great. The amulet will keep you cloaked from the eyes of your foes, only as long as you don't draw attention to yourself. If they know you're there, if they've noticed you, or are looking for you, it won't help you. You must keep still."
You must keep still.
Rhion had said something of the kind to her, also, when he'd given her similar talismans to keep the neighbors from seeing her, all that long summer she'd first known him, when he and Jaldis had been living in the Lower Town. But listening to the jingle of harness, the strike of hooves, clear and sharp now in the stony pass behind her, she knew that if these riders had visited the Hand-Pricker in Yekkan and had forced from him that the woman they sought was going disguised as a man, the amulet would do her no good.
Even as the scene had returned to her - whole and complete in seconds - she had been scanning the pass, seeking cover in the rocks, looking for anything, a stand of trees, a boulder large enough to conceal a woman and two horses...
But there was nothing, only a few scrubby knots of mountain laurel halfway up the gray-yellow shale of the cliffs, a low-growing tangle of heather among the rocks...
Her gloved hands, aching from the unaccustomed work of making and striking camp, of caring for the horses, and loading the packs, felt cold on the reins. She must either sit in full sight of the riders when they came into view and pray that the Hand-Pricker hadn't told them who to look for... or flee.
If she fled they would certainly see her. And she wasn't at all sure she could outrun riders in the rocky tangle of the pass.
Panic pounded at her, flapping like a bird against the cage of her ribs. Every second lost made it increasingly unlikely she could escape if she bolted.
It would be a long way down the damp gray forests of the north side of the mountains, misty country among the clouds, and then the rainy lower slopes leading down to the Drowned Lands below. She could never do it with the riders of Esrex' household, the riders of the White Bragenmeres, on her heels. Not traveling alone.
What it came to, she thought, was trust. Trust in that scabby, frightened man in Yekkan; trust in his not-very-strong amulet; trust in the strength of his heart against the fear of the Veiled God. She drew her horse a little out of the main road and bowed her head, feeling as if she were drawing in upon herself, making herself invisible in spirit and hoping that Shilmarglinda, Goddess of Beasts, Fruit, and Birth, would keep the horses from snorting or neighing.
And waited.
From the misty shadows of the pass the masked riders of Agon appeared, anonymous, dark-clothed, empty-eyed, and at least thirty strong, and swept down the road beside which she sat, their hoofbeats ringing in the narrow way.
