From Across the Clouded Range (25 page)

As if on cue, Dasen stumbled behind
her, nearly crashing into her. She grabbed his arm to keep him from
falling and spun him around to face her. He was breathing hard. His
hand was clenched tight over his forehead with his fingers on his
temples. He looked like the living dead, but after the way he had
bounced around the inside of the coach like a bean in a baby’s
rattle, it was impressive that he could move at all. As it was, he
was pushing bodily through the brush with all the grace of a
drunken blind man and leaving a trail that another blind man could
follow, but he was moving.

“
Why are we stopping?”
Dasen's eyes rose to the sensation of Teth holding his arm. He
looked around, wobbling precariously until he finally placed a hand
on a nearby tree for support.

“
I found a path.” Teth’s
voice was distorted by her intense desire to move her face as
little as possible. She motioned down the path, but he did not seem
to notice. “Besides, you look like you could use a rest.” She put
her hand beneath his chin and brought his eyes up to hers. His
pupils were as big as saucers, blank and empty.

“
Thanks, but I actually
feel better when we’re moving. It keeps things from spinning too
much.” There was great distance in his voice, but he started down
the path, watching it carefully, using each passing tree for
support, but seeming no more stable.

Teth followed, forgetting
about her own pain as she watched him. As much as she hated to
admit it, she admired his courage. It would have been easy for him
to remain lying under that bush, to send her off alone for help,
but he had made it to his feet, and now he just kept moving. He was
clearly stronger, more resilient than she could have guessed. Yet,
he allowed her to lead, did not pretend to be in charge, did not
treat her like the half-wit invalid that his great
Book of Valatarian
seemed to think women to be. She thought on that as they
walked, tried to reconcile it with her previous images of her
husband.

A short time later, they came to the
first of several landmarks for which she had been searching.
Surrounding the path on all sides were close to a hundred thin
trees with starkly white bark and large serrated leaves. The trees
grew in a radial grove that stood out from the rest of the forest.
Their white bark made them look pure and clean while the radial
pattern presented a sense of order that she always found
comforting. More importantly, the bark of these trees was the best
pain reliever in the forest. She placed a hand on Dasen’s shoulder
to signal that he should stop.

“
What’s the matter?” he
asked somewhat stronger. “I’m feeling better, but we should keep
going before the dizziness returns.” He did look more stable, but
his pupils were still dilated, and his hand was still clamped
across his forehead.

"The bark from these trees will help
your head,” she explained with all the patience she could
muster.

Dasen looked around as if noticing the
strange trees for the first time. He nodded then thought better of
it and reached out to brace himself on one of the white
trunks.

Seeing that he was stable, Teth
started working on the nearest tree with her knife. She cleaved off
a hand-sized chunk of the white bark and cut a generous piece from
it for Dasen. “Here, chew on this. It may hurt your stomach in this
form, but it’s the best thing for your head.”

He took the coin-sized piece of bark
without a word, placed it in his mouth, and started chewing. After
two chomps, he brought his hand back to his mouth and pulled out
the bark. “By the Order! This is terrible!” He held the partially
masticated bark out to her, his face twisted in a look of
disgust.

“
Well don’t chew it then!
You’re a big boy. If you want that headache more than a bad taste
in your mouth, I won’t argue with you.” She scowled at him but had
to stop because of her face and cursed under her breath
instead.

To show him up, she cut a chunk of the
bark for herself and started chewing. Unfortunately, she had only
had higg bark in teas and was not prepared for the strong taste it
had when eaten raw. She almost spit it out. The bark was acrid and
bitter to the point that it almost hurt. Her tongue started to
tingle and she dreaded swallowing, but she was not going to let
Dasen see her back down, so she forced herself to smile and was
gratified to see him put the bark back in his mouth.

The next of the sights for which Teth
had been searching appeared a few hundred paces down the trail. The
small green plant was growing against the base of an ancient oak
well off the path. Enough branches grabbed her arms on the way to
it that she was close to tears by the time she reached her goal,
but the prize was worth the effort. She started ripping the
bright-green spikes of the dellum plant from the base of the tree.
Those tendrils were as thick as two fingers at its base and a foot
or more in length. They were soft to the touch and cone-shaped with
a watery sap inside. She squeezed that sap onto her arms, using
tendril after tendril until they were soaked. The sap felt cool and
soothing as it oozed thick and moist over her arms, quenching her
burns almost immediately. She reveled in the relief and smelled the
earthy fragrance covering her. It reminded her of everything that
nature should be, reminded her of all the ways the Order looked
after those trapped in its wild game.

She smeared one more tendril’s sap on
her face, selected two more for Dasen, and made her way back to the
trail. Dasen was standing in exactly the spot she had left him. He
looked haggard, but he was not wavering, the hand had come down
from his forehead, and his pupils were closer to normal.

“
You’re looking better,”
she said as she began to rub the sap on his face. "This will help
with the burns.”

“
Thanks.” His voice was
the strongest it had been since the crash. “I am feeling better.
That bark is some of the worst stuff I have ever tasted, but it has
certainly helped my head.” He paused as Teth rubbed the sap over
his lips. “How do you know so much about all these
plants?”

"My aunt is the herbalist and healing
woman in Randor’s Pass.” Teth was almost flattered that he had
noticed. “She taught me almost everything I know about the
forest.”

“
I know you don’t want to
talk about it,” Dasen started, “But I’m sorry for what happened in
the village. I promise my conversation with the villagers was
innocent – they gave me the jug and made a joke about you thinking
I was a drunk, nothing more – but I should have known what they
were up to. I can’t defend my driver, but you should know that
neither of them spoke for me. I . . . I would never . . . could
never do the things you said. I never told the villagers, my
driver, or anyone else that I would. I would never even speak of
you that way. And when we return, I will tell every one of them
exactly that. I hope you can believe me. I know you are wary, and I
understand that. I know that this must be very difficult for you,
but I cannot stand to have you think I would . . . .”

“
Shut up,” Teth breathed
and put a hand over his mouth. “I know. I should have always known.
We both made mistakes. Now let’s just forget about it and get back
to the village. Agreed?”

Dasen nodded, looking as if someone
had just lifted a boulder off his shoulders. She finished rubbing
the sap on his face and allowed her hand to linger there. She
studied her husband and decided that he could be considered
handsome in the right light. He was obviously an idiot, but she
could not believe that he would hurt her on purpose. He still had a
lot to answer for – that accursed book for one – but she was having
a harder and harder time lumping him in with the other men she had
known. She moved her fingers around his chin and realized how
doe-eyed she must look. She snapped her hand away, cleared her
throat, and reached into her pocket. She pulled out another piece
of bark. "Here eat this,” she demanded as she turned and stomped
down the trail.

Chapter 12

“
Hurry up! We're almost
there,” Tethina called in hushed tones.

Dasen looked up and realized that the
words had come from far ahead, nearly out of sight around a bend in
the trail. With a sigh, he pulled himself from his thoughts and
concentrated on closing the distance. The task was not easy. With
the aid of Tethina’s medicines, his headache and other miseries had
abated, but even in perfect health he would not be able to keep up
with her on these forest trails. His feet had never strode on
anything more uneven than cobblestones, and even then not far.
Here, he risked falling with every step. He had to watch each one,
feel it out, then move cautiously to keep himself from the ground.
Tethina had no such trepidation. She walked across the rough path –
strewn with roots, rocks, leaves, and mud – as if it were the most
natural thing in the world. Which, for her, he realized to his
dismay, it probably was.

At least his apology seemed to have
been accepted. In the moment after, Tethina had seemed to warm to
him, had touched him gently, looked into his eyes with what could
have been fondness. Dasen had thought they were making progress
until she snapped her hand away and marched down the path like a
drill sergeant. And like a drill sergeant, she watched him close
their current gap. Her eyes were hard and disapproving, but at
least she held back her insults. It was clear that patience was not
one of her virtues, but through that, Dasen almost thought he saw a
hint of fondness in her scowls. The very fact that she waited
seemed a great concession. It was all quite unladylike, but he was
in no place to complain – if he’d had a proper lady for a wife,
they’d both be dead right now.

Dasen closed the final few
steps to where Tethina waited at the edge of a clearing. She
watched and nodded with what might have been approval. The forest
was not so kind. A hidden root caught his toe and sent him lurching
forward. He crashed into Tethina and expected them both to end up
on the ground. As it was, she caught him and spun him into a nearby
tree where he could arrest his momentum without falling on her. It
was such a smooth, graceful move that Dasen was left stunned. He
had been certain that they would be in a pile on the ground then he
was standing, nearly hugging a tree and she was watching him with
the smallest quirk of a smile.
Is she
somehow enjoying this?

“
Be careful,” she said,
smile fading to a scowl. She held her cheeks, obviously feeling her
burns again. “We have to be quiet. We are almost to the village.
The bandits are probably long gone, but I have a bad feeling.
Everything is too still. We should be able to hear the celebration
from the green. The birds should be heading that way to pick at the
scraps, but the ones I have seen are flying away.”

"Is that where Randor’s Pass is supposed to
be?" Dasen asked. His attention had been drawn to the opposite side
of the clearing where he had an unobstructed view of the treetops
to the west. Rising above those trees was black smoke.

Tethina turned. Her face blanched
despite her burns. Her mouth hung open. "That is exactly where
Randor is supposed to be.” Stunned, she scanned the trees. “This is
bad. Can you follow me?” She stared at Dasen. Her tone told him the
question was not rhetorical.

He only nodded, shocked by her sudden
intensity.

“
Okay but you need to be
quiet. I mean silent. Not a word, not a scuffle, not a squeak. Do
you understand?”

Dasen nodded again then gulped as he
watched her dart off the trail and bound through the
trees.

The forest this close to the village
was much less wild than it had been where the coach had crashed.
The trees were reasonably spaced – stumps marked where they had
been thinned by the villagers. Only sparse underbrush grew between
the remaining trees so their way was clear, but the heavy rains had
transformed the ground into a seething maze of roots, rocks, and
mud that made the trail look like well-laid cobblestones. Somehow,
Tethina floated across that uneven mess as if it were cobblestones.
The sight was so amazing that Dasen could only watch for several
seconds before he managed to pop his jaw back into place and
follow. What had he been thinking? He had no chance of making it
across that mess without any sound. But he’d told Tethina he could,
so he took a deep breath and planned his path.

As he took his first steps, amazement
turned to awe. The forest did not appear to have a single flat
spot, so he loped from one poorly controlled tripping fall to the
next, always a hair’s breadth from disaster. The dangers the rough
ground presented were exacerbated by his need to watch the elusive
shadow that was his wife. She was soon so far ahead that he was
lucky to catch an occasional glimpse of her flitting between the
trees. The way she moved suggested a desire for stealth, but Dasen
found it hard enough to keep her in sight – adding stealth to his
run would have been too much for his overtaxed body and mind to
manage.

Soon Tethina was further obscured by
the first tendrils of smoke drifting through the trees. The smoke
was dirty grey and clung to the forest like fog. It burned his eyes
and had the caustic smell of green pine and tar. The same tar that
had sealed the wooden shingles on the villagers' roofs, Dasen
thought as he ran. That realization along with the sheer volume of
the smoke confirmed his suspicion that this was not an accidental
or celebratory fire. The entire village must be burning. How was
that possible? With every villager already gathered, they should
have had no problem controlling a fire. How could it have gotten
that far out of control? Unless . . . unless the thieves from the
road had started it, had kept the villagers from fighting
it.