A Journey of the Heart (35 page)

"I can take mine," I told her.

"No time now," she said. She reached out her hand. It took me a moment to understand that she wanted my bow. I gave it to her. "And the quiver." I gave her that too. She turned and walked away from me. I was confused again, until I saw that she meant for me to follow her. Then I knew how tired I was.

After we had traveled for several hours, Maara found a place for us to rest in a thicket on the side of a low hill where we had a clear view to the south, so that we would see anyone coming after us in time to elude them. The moment we stopped, my legs collapsed under me. A litter of dry leaves and twigs barely covered the stony ground, as comfortable to me as a featherbed.

Maara sat down beside me.

"Before you sleep," she said, "tell me what's happened."

How she made any sense of what I told her I don't know, but she seemed satisfied.

"We'll talk more later," she said. "Go to sleep."

I awoke in the dark. Maara's hand was on my shoulder.

"I know you're tired, but it will be safer if we travel at night."

I could just make out the silhouette of the hills against the last of the twilight. The moon was rising. We had the whole night before us.

I started to get up.

"Wait," said Maara. "Eat first." She handed me a piece of bread and a thick slice of meat. "It was good thinking, to bring food with you."

"I never would have thought of it," I told her. "Sparrow did. She made up our packs."

"Sparrow did?"

I nodded.

"You better tell me again what happened in Merin's house."

This time I had my wits about me. I told her what she already knew, that it was Vintel who sent the messenger to Tamar, to lure Maara away from the household. I told her about my conversations with Vintel, about the bargain I had made, about what Vintel had done to Merin, about Sparrow finding me in the armory and helping me escape.

"Why didn't you keep your part of the bargain?" Maara asked me.

It was the last thing I expected her to say. "Because I doubted that Vintel would keep her part of it. Where did you think her warriors were taking you? They certainly weren't taking you to Laris."

"They were taking me to my death," she said, "as they would also have taken you to yours."

That had never once occurred to me. I had been so concerned for Maara that I hadn't spared a moment to wonder what Vintel meant to do with me. Now I saw that by saving Maara's life I had saved my own, and Vintel had once again defeated her own designs. If she had persuaded me to trust her, I might have kept our pact, but her cruelty to Merin destroyed the last shred of trust I might have had in her.

A chill breeze blew, rustling the branches overhead. Clouds drifted across the moon's bright face. I shivered. Maara reached for my cloak and settled it around my shoulders.

"What are we going to do?" I asked her.

"First," she said, "we're going to keep from being caught. The minute Vintel discovered you were gone, she would have sent her people out after you. She can't afford to let you get away from her now. You have too much power to cause her serious trouble."

"Me?" I had never felt so powerless.

"Vintel has done something now that she can't undo. As long as you're alive, you are a witness to her treachery."

"Can we go to Laris?" I asked. "Will she help us, do you think?"

Maara shook her head. "We can't go south now. It's too dangerous. We can't travel through Merin's land. We'd have to go around it, through the mountains, and it's too far on to wintertime to go that way."

"Where can we go then?"

"We have no choice but to go north and find someplace to winter there."

In the north? In stories the north was a place of mystery and danger. Our enemies dwelt there, and other things I knew of from tales meant to frighten children. They frightened me, until I remembered that the north was not unknown to Maara.

We walked all night, keeping away from the well-traveled trails. At first light we made camp in a forest of young trees. The night had been chilly, and now a thick mist rose up around us. Maara chanced making a small fire. Fires were hard to see in daylight as long as they didn't smoke. The little bit of smoke our campfire made hung like the mist, invisible.

We huddled close to the small blaze and had a bite to eat. Maara was preoccupied. She stared into the fire but her eyes looked inward. I watched her as the pale daylight burned through the mist. I wasn't thinking of our situation. I was thinking how beautiful she was.

"If you hadn't come after me," she said at last, "you could have brought your mother back to Merin's house and exposed Vintel's lie."

"What good would that have done? Vintel has a household full of warriors loyal to her."

"It would have been a risk, but I think one worth taking."

"Then let's go back," I said. "When Tamar brings my mother -- "

"No." She shook her head. "Don't you understand? The warrior you killed belonged to Vintel, and she will claim her right to take your blood for the blood you spilled. You can't go back now, not until you have the power to challenge Vintel with arms."

My heart fell. "When will that be? I have no warriors to command. I'm not even a warrior yet myself."

"I would dispute you about both those things," she said, "but your situation is much worse now than it might have been."

Was she scolding me? I felt the first touch of anger.

"Are you saying I should have let them kill you?"

"In all honesty, I'm glad that I still have my life, but I hate the price you paid for it."

I would have paid any price, I thought to myself. I couldn't say the words aloud. I didn't know how to speak to her, to tell her what was in my heart, that I could never have made Merin's choice. Of what use to me was my inheritance if keeping it meant losing love.

Maara took the first watch. When she woke me, the mist had burned away, and I caught a glimpse of deep blue sky through the golden canopy of leaves overhead.

I was afraid that if I sat still I would fall asleep, so I reorganized our packs, just to have something to do. Sparrow had thought of everything. She had packed a change of warm clothing for each of us, an awl and several needles, scraps of cloth for mending, bits of thick leather to make new boot soles, firestones, even a copper pot. She must have taken everything of value we owned that was light enough to carry. She had also found my knife, the one Maara gave me. I fastened it to my belt.

There was food enough to last us several weeks if we were careful -- dried meat and fruit, barley, oat flour, salt -- as well as the packages of herbs I always carried with me. The one thing I regretted was Maara's token, her mother's gift. She had a habit of playing with it when she was thinking, and more than once that morning I'd seen her reach for it.

I was doing up Maara's pack when I discovered, tucked away among her clothing, the thong that Gnith had told me was a binding spell. A love spell, Namet called it. I smiled at Gnith's cunning, but I knew no leather thong had created the feeling that now filled my heart. At best it had only encouraged it to grow, by drawing close to me the one who had been the center of my world from the moment I first saw her.

I wished I could see Maara's face, but it was covered by a fold of her cloak, to keep the daylight out of her eyes. A thought tickled the back of my mind and made me smile. When I looked at it more closely, I nearly laughed out loud. I had lost everything, my home, my family, my friends, my inheritance, my safety, almost my life, and I had never in my life been happier.

After another night's travel we were far from Merin's land. No pursuit would find us now. Now we faced new dangers, from strangers and from the weather. So far we had seen no one. It wasn't likely that we would meet other travelers as long as we traveled at night, and during the day Maara kept us well hidden. We'd had good weather too, though the early morning air had a bite that made me shiver.

We had traveled all night through open country until, just before dawn, Maara took us into a forest where we made our camp. Again we took turns watching through the day. I woke, late in the afternoon, to the smell of oat cakes. Maara had a small fire burning, and she had set the cakes to bake on a flat rock. I would have eaten them half-cooked, but she warned me away with her eyes.

"I'm starving," I protested.

"Do you want to walk all night with a stomach ache?"

I laughed. "I don't get stomach aches."

"No?"

"Never."

Maara looked up at me and smiled. Now that we weren't in danger of being caught by Vintel's warriors, worry lines no longer creased her brow, but the dark smudges under eyes blurred with weariness made me anxious for her. She had slept too little because she had let me sleep too long.

"Must we travel tonight?" I asked.

"Are you too tired?"

"No," I told her. "You are."

She sat an arm's length from me across the fire. I reached out and touched her cheek with my fingertips. "You look worn out."

She closed her eyes. "I wish you hadn't reminded me."

"Then let's both sleep through the night and go on in the morning."

She considered the idea for a moment, then nodded. "That would be wise. We have a long way to go, and we'll travel faster by daylight."

In Merin's house we had filled oat cakes with bits of dried fruit and nuts and drizzled honey over them, but none had ever tasted as good to me as those plain, unsweetened cakes roasted by the fire. We washed them down with icy water from a stream. When our hunger was satisfied, Maara built up the small cooking fire into a blaze big enough to ward off the chill of the night air.

"Do you have any idea where we're going?" I asked her.

"If the good weather lasts, I think we can reach a forest I know of," she said. "It marks the boundary between the lands of the northern tribes and the place where I lived before I came to Merin's house. Because it's a boundary, people seldom go there."

"We're going to live in a forest?"

She nodded.

"How will we find enough to eat?"

"We'll hunt and fish and set snares. There are edible roots to dig. And nuts and acorns. Not even the squirrels can carry them all away."

I still had my doubts. "Where will we find shelter in a forest?"

"Where the people sheltered who used to live there."

People who lived in a forest? Those who lived by farming didn't live in forests. There was only one people I knew of who lived in forests. A shiver of excitement went through me.

"The old ones," I whispered.

"The old ones, yes. And people who have nowhere else to go. Outlaws."

"Outlaws?"

Maara heard the fear in my voice. "Yes," she said. She didn't try to hide her smile. "Like us."

"Oh."

Maara was quietly laughing. I didn't see the humor in it. Outlaws were people to be feared. They belonged to no one. No one could take them to task about their misbehavior. They could do anything they pleased.

When I lived at home, we never traveled alone in the wild places, for fear of outlaws. Were we now the people to be feared?

Maara saw that I didn't share her amusement. "Did it never occur to you that it is possible to change places with anyone?"

Her question baffled me.

"With me?" she said.

"You were an outlaw?"

I saw the answer in her eyes.

"And you lived in the forest?"

"Yes, and I could have lived there very well, if I had not been hunted."

She meant to reassure me that we would be able to survive in the forest, but I felt her loneliness and fear as if they were my own, though the danger was long past.

"Hunted?" I said. "Why were you hunted?"

Maara shook her head. "I lived another life then, a life I've almost forgotten."

Was she asking me to allow her to forget? I didn't want her to forget. That life had led to this one, and I wanted to know her as she had been then. I wanted her to give me the gift of her past, so that I would no longer be shut out from any part of her life.

Then I saw that I was jealous -- of the time she had spent apart from me, of the people who had shared that time with her, of any time or place or person that had known her in a way I had not.

"I would like to hear about the life you lived then," I told her.

"Someday," she said, "but not tonight. Tonight we need to sleep."

We made a bed of leaves. With her cloak beneath us and mine tucked close around us, I snuggled against her back and listened for her breathing to tell me she was asleep.

I wasn't sleepy. I had too much to think about. In all the time I'd known her, Maara had told me very little of her life before she came to Merin's house. At first I didn't like to trespass on something she kept private. Later, out of habit, I never thought to ask her. Now my curiosity was mixed with the desire to know each hurt she'd ever suffered and to comfort it.

I thought about the things she had told me, about losing her mother and living for years as best she could among people who didn't care for her. Then she had been taken into a household of warriors. Sold or given, she had said. Either way, she had been someone's possession.

How old was she then? How long had she lived there before she came to Merin's house? If that's where she was made a warrior, she must have been there for many years. About that time I knew nothing.

A strange forest at nighttime isn't the best place for clear thinking, and my imagination began to supply images of what that time might have been like for her. My imagination may have been too pessimistic. My heart ached as I thought of all the painful things she must have endured. That she said so little about it was proof enough that it had been a difficult time.

She murmured in her sleep. I stroked her back to quiet her, touching her more tenderly than I had ever touched her, as if I could give her now what she had needed then, as if mine could be the touch she had once longed for, a touch that never came. I wanted to take into my own heart all the pain, the loneliness, the heartache she had known, not to take it from her, but to bear it with her.