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.Last night, these were stowed away in another set of cupboards in a different stable.”Saddling up her horse, Magda found herself next to Vanessa.She asked in an undertone, “What doyou think? Is Cholayna fit for travel?”“Who can tell? But I checked her as best I could; her lips are a healthy color and her lungs seem tobe clear; that ghastly cough is just throat irritation from the dry air and wind at these heights.All we cando is to hope for the best.”They hoisted loads on to the backs of chervines, and in whispers settled their order of march.Jaelle,who knew the city well, was leading; Camilla, who knew it almost as well, bringing up the rear.Magdadelayed at the end to help Camilla shove the heavy stable door together and brace it; but they could notbolt it from the inside, and finally Camilla whispered, “Wait, Margali, I will be with you in a moment.”She slipped back inside; Magda heard the heavy bolt slide.She waited in the street so long that she hadbegun to wonder if Camilla had been captured by one of Acquilara’s spies in the house.We should haveleft the door alone , she thought, but just as she was about to try and follow Camilla inside, the tallemmasca reappeared from a window.She slid down, turned briefly to blow a kiss, then hurried downthe street after Jaelle.Magda ran after her.“Camilla, what—”“My gambling friend.Let’s not waste any more time; I heard the monastery bell.Let’s go.” But shesnickered as she hurried after Jaelle.“I wonder what they’ll think when they find us gone and the stable still locked from the inside?”There was no way to silence the hooves of the horses and chervines on the cobbled streets, butleading them was quieter than riding.Still they struck hard, the metal shoes of the horses drawing flintysparks in the cold.It was icy and clear; stars blinked above the darkened city, and high above, the onlyfaint lights were from the dimmed windows of Saint Valentine’s monastery.Bells rang loud in thepredawn stillness.As they climbed the rocky streets, the stars paled above them, and the sky began to flush with thedawn.Magda could see her own breath, the breath of her companions and of the animals, as little whiteclouds before her.Her hands were already cold inside her warm gloves, and her feet chilly in her boots,and she thought, regretfully, of that breakfast Jaelle had ordered and never intended them to eat.Upward and upward, the streets growing steeper and steeper; but Magda had been on the road solong now that she was hardly short of breath at the top of the steepest hills, and even Cholayna wasstriding along at the quick pace Jaelle set.The northern gate was at the very top of the city, and the road beyond led over the very summit ofNevarsin Pass.At the gates were two men, cristoforos by their somber clothing, though not monks, whoopened the wide gates to let them through.“You are abroad early, my sisters,” one of them said as he stepped back to let their animals passthrough.“We follow two of our sisters who came this way the morning before last,” said Camilla in theexceptionally pure casta of a mountain-bred woman.“Did you perhaps let them out this very gate twomornings ago, as early as this, my brother?”The cristoforo guard blew on his bare knuckles to warm them.His breath too was a cloud and hespoke through it, scowling disapprovingly at the emmasca.“Aye, it was I.One of them—a tall woman, darkhaired, a soldier like you, mestra , with a rryl slungover her shoulder—was she your sister?”“My Guild-sister; have you news of her, brother, in the name of him who bears the burdens of theworld?”He scowled again, his disapproval of emmasca and Renunciate contradicting the inborn freemasonryamong soldiers, cristoforo or no.And there was no halfway polite way to refuse a request in the veryname of the cristoforo saint.“Aye.She had another woman with her, so small I thought for a moment she was travelin’ with herdaughter like a proper woman.A little thing, wrapped up so I couldn’t see much of her but the big blueeyes.”Lexie.So they were still together and Lexie safe and well as recently as two days ago.Magda heardCholayna’s soft sigh of relief.They might even overtake them somewhere in the pass.“She asked me—the tall one, your sister—if it was a bad year for banshees.I had to tell her, yes, aterrible one; we heard one howling right outside this gate a tenday ago in the last storm.Go carefully,sisters, try to get over the high part before the sun’s down again,” he warned them.“And saints ride withyou.Aye, you’ll need them if you take this road by night.” He stepped back to let them through, closedthe heavy city gate behind them.Ahead the road led upward, stony and steep, ankle-deep in snow, with heavy drifts to right and toleft.Jaelle mounted and signaled to the others to do likewise, and they climbed into their saddles.Fromthe heights far above, like a warning, they heard the shrill distant cry of a banshee.“Never mind,” said Jaelle, “the sun will be up long before we reach the pass, and they’re nocturnal.Let’s go.”CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE«^»Three days later, Magda sat on a packsaddle looking at a dried-meat bar in her hand.She was almosttoo weary to think about eating it; the effort necessary to chew and swallow seemed more than shecould imagine.The harsh winds of Nevarsin summit had blown away such extraneous fears as the thought ofsorceresses or psychic attack; none of them had had a moment to think about anything but the rawmechanics of survival.Narrow ledges, a snowstorm which blew away their last remaining tent and leftthem to huddle in a hastily scooped hole in the snow, fierce winds which stripped away the last pretenseof courage or fortitude, and always in the night the terrible paralyzing cries of the lurking banshee.Camilla put a cup of tea into her hand.How could Camilla, at her age, remain so strong andundamaged? Her eyes looked red and wind-burned, and the tip of her nose had a raw patch of frostbite,but the few hours of sleep they had managed in the snow had revived her.She sat down on anotherpackload, and slurped her own tea, into which she had crumbled the dried meat and bread, but she didn’t say anything.At this altitude there was no breath for extraneous words.“Is Cholayna all right this morning?”“Seems to be.But if we don’t get down to a lower height, I wouldn’t like to guess what mighthappen.She was coughing all night long.” But not even Cholayna’s coughing could have kept Magdaawake last night, after the nightmare of the descent from the pass after dark, by moonlight on the surfaceof the snow: kyorebni looming suddenly from the dizzy gaps of space almost at their feet, wheeling andscreaming and then disappearing again: washed-out patches of trail where even the chervines balked andhad to be coaxed to step across, and the horses had to be dragged or manhandled, fighting backward,their eyes rolling with terror at the smell of banshee in the crags.Jaelle had brought them all across, undamaged, without losing a horse or a pack animal or even aload; unhurt.Magda looked at the familiar slight form of her freemate, slumped across a packload, ahandful of raisins halfway to her mouth [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]