Crown of Stars (Page 122)

She had certainly come back to where she started, to the very place in the land of the Ashioi where she had once dwelled. That tower had stood in ruins at the crest of a hillside which, in exile, had dropped precipitously into a vale of mist. Now the tower had been repaired, together with the wall. Fresh chalk brightened the White Road, as the Ashioi called it: the border of their land. The knife edge along which the ancient spell had cut the land of the Ashioi away from Earth.

She slid backward, careful with her gear, to let the hanging grass conceal her. If the Ashioi captured her, she would have to escape, and therefore she would have to fight. If they shot her with poisoned arrows, she might not survive a second brush with the toxin.

She would not go back.

She held out her hand, middle fingers curled in and thumb and little finger extended, and measured the horizon in the way that Da had taught her long ago. The sun stood one span above the rosy horizon. Above, much of the sky remained clear. Soon it would become night, and she could measure the stars and judge the season and, possibly, her latitude, comparing the angle and azimuth with what was stored in her city of memory. The catalog of stars written into Da’s Book of Secrets and the cunning astrolabe were lost to her, but Da had taught her well enough that she was not dependent on them; they only made things easier, and more accurate. She must walk west and north. It would be a long journey to Wendar, but she had made that journey before. She could do it again.

She sighed and closed her eyes, and perhaps because of the lazy glamour of sunlight against her face or perhaps because she was really just that exhausted, she slipped into a doze.

Woke.

Day melted into night. The sun’s rim winked gold at the horizon, caught in a notch in the distant hills and visible only because of that last spasm of light.

A person was sitting next to her, perfectly still and quiet.

She choked down a cry of surprise, and reached for the sword she no longer carried.

“It’s just me,” Eldest Uncle said.

She shrieked, and laughed as her heart pounded and her hands shook.

“Shhh!” he whispered. “We must get you out of here, Bright One.”

“How did you find me?”

He smiled. “Despite your attempt to conceal yourself, you are visible from the road. I took a walk to seek out a particularly good meadow of earth-apple that lies a morning’s walk from here. Its oil eases the ache in my joints, and the long walk does me good. Coming back, I saw you. I diverted the twilight patrol. Best we move quickly.”

She grimaced, rubbing her thighs. “Yes. What do you suggest?”

“Only the patrols walk the outer roads these days. The great armies have run west and east to combat our enemies.”

“Have the Ashioi gone to war?”

“There is much news to tell you.”

“I have my own news. What I have seen—!”

He nodded. “In time, we can discuss all this. Meanwhile, there is also a person you can help, if you wish to. As soon as it is full night, we will walk in the shroud of darkness.”

She looked up at the heavens. A high haze obscured the zenith. All that she had seen, climbing the thread of aether, was hidden to her. She could not see the fixed stars, the wandering stars, or even the moon. Only in the west did she glimpse the flash of a star in that gash along the far hills where the haze had not yet settled.

“Very well.”

That easily she trusted him, as she would trust a beloved grandfather, or a grandmother. He was related to her, after all, by the bonds of marriage. But it was not the civil contract that allowed her to sling her coiled rope over her shoulders and slide down the steep slope in his wake, to begin walking westward with him along the White Road. It was a different contract, one she could not easily explain.

She trusted him.

That was all that was necessary.

IX
ALLIES AND TRAITORS

1

AFTER Zuangua took Blessing away, Anna wept. She wept out of fear for the girl but mostly because she had failed in her duty. She had not protected Blessing from the girl’s own impulsive and immature nature.

Now the princess was gone away with the Ashioi army. It made Anna sick to think of it. What kind of barbarians allowed children to march to war? It made her cry, and cry she did. No one paid the least attention to her, who was a prisoner in the midst of prisoners. Lord Hugh’s soldiers also remained behind, corralled like cattle in a structure ringed by a strong stone palisade and a garrison of bored guards, but their situation looked very different from her own. Anna sat on a shaded porch whose roof was woven out of saplings and, as time passed, watched her companions go about their business throughout the hot and dusty days.