Land of the Burning Sands (25 page)

Gereint asked, after a moment, “Do you always travel in such little state, lord mage? Just a driver, and no other servants or men-at-arms? You don’t precisely fear brigands, I gather. No doubt for any number of excellent reasons.”

“Just so,” agreed Beguchren, smiling slightly. “But, Gereint, please call me by my name.”

Gereint looked away, out the window of the carriage. Watched the scattered buildings on the outskirts of Breidechboden give way to low golden hills, the last of the morning mist burning off in the sunlight. At last he turned back at the mage, “Lord mage, why are we going north? And how far north, and where precisely? Melentser? Why did you go to such trouble to bring me—me, especially, with you? What are you doing, and what is my part in it?”

There was a long, thoughtful silence. Beguchren said eventually, “I need a maker. Not merely any maker with a reasonably strong gift. A man who has been
geas
bound for many years… I expect such a man to have gained, shall we say, certain predispositions and inclinations. Qualities that matter more than mere strength.”

Gereint said drily, “Oh, yes: a capacity for loyalty?”

To his surprise, the mage laughed. “Hardly. No. That’s a quality any man may either develop or not, I imagine, but I would hardly expect servitude to enhance it. No,” Beguchren said, seriously now, “I mean, among other qualities, endurance. An ability to smother strong emotion. I might say, self-abrogation.”

It was Gereint’s turn for silence. A slave might certainly develop all those qualities. But he was not at all certain he wished to know why the mage valued them. He asked at last, abandoning for the moment that line of inquiry, “How far north are you going?”

“We,” Beguchren said gently. “How far north are
we
going? And we are going all the way, Gereint. To the place where the country of earth gives way to the country of fire.”

“Melentser?”

“Perhaps.”

“What if I refuse? What if I get down out of your fine carriage and walk away?”

“Walk away,” suggested the mage, still gently, “and find out.”

Gereint did not move. He said, testing carefully, “I’d find you in my mind, would I, compelling my direction?”

The mage’s silver eyes glinted. “No. No, Gereint. That’s one promise I believe I may safely offer you: I won’t go into your mind again.”

Gereint considered this. As promises went, that one seemed less solidly based than some. He allowed his tone to take on more of an edge, “Do you think I should trust you, lord mage? You asked me what I owe you, but I hardly know why you asked. It’s clear enough what answer you think I should make. You believe I should do your bidding and walk at your heel like a dog.”

Beguchren, refusing to be drawn, answered only, “Do you trust me, Gereint?”

Gereint was uneasily aware that, though there was no honest reason it should be true, the answer might be “yes.” He said, “No, my lord.”

“Perhaps you will learn to.”

They had passed out of the immediate vicinity of Breidechboden. This far south, there were few woodlands, and those were cultivated as carefully as wheat fields, but for wood and game. The polite, civilized countryside rolled out endlessly green and fertile, blocked into neat fields and pastures and orchards. Sometimes beside the road and sometimes well away to the east flowed the Teschanken, riverboats running with the current down toward Breidechboden or hauled by teams of oxen back up toward Dachsichten.

More traffic passed north and south on the road: fancy high-wheeled carriages of men of property; plain coaches for ordinary travelers; riders in company or alone—everyone knew there was no risk of brigands between Breidechboden and Dachsichten. Gereint suspected there were more travelers than usual, northern folk uneasy at the new desert, trickling south in families or small groups. He remembered the patrol officer at the gates saying,
Wanenboden might be better
, and wondered if any southern city was actually going to welcome displaced or nervous northerners.

“The river runs low this year,” Beguchren murmured. “You see how all the boats are small, with short keels and shallow drafts.”

Gereint glanced at him, surprised. But the mage did not seem inclined toward further comment. When Gereint did not answer, silence fell once more.

They changed horses at a posting house along the river, trading the chestnuts for a pair of flashy bays with white feet and white faces. Beguchren permitted a short rest in the courtyard of the posting house while his driver assisted in leading the chestnuts away and then bringing up the bays to harness in their places. Beef pies appeared from the posting house, and good wine. Gereint, studying the horses, asked, “Do you
own
any plain horses, my lord?”

Beguchren appeared honestly surprised. “Why should one not enjoy beauty in everything, if possible?” he asked reasonably. “And they are fast, sturdy animals. We will trade horses once more today; I don’t intend to stop for the night until we are well on the other side of Dachsichten. I hope to reach Pamnarichtan by tomorrow night—though I realize that requires an optimistic estimate of our pace. We will see what we can do to press on a little.”

Gereint debated inwardly another moment, but finally asked, “My lord… why such haste? And why now? If the… the trouble earlier this summer created this problem, then why delay in Breidechboden while the days stretched out toward autumn?”

“We did not realize at once what we… that a problem had arisen. Then we took some time to consider what we might do.”

“We?”

“The Arobern and his brothers and I, and others. We moved swiftly enough, Gereint, once we decided what direction to take. But whether it was fortune or fate that set you in my hand at the moment I needed you, even I cannot say.”

Gereint guessed that whoever might have been involved in considering what they might do, the king and his mage had been the ones who had decided. He asked, “What do you want from me? What part do you mean for me to play?”

Beguchren gazed down at the table between his hands, so that it seemed he did not intend to answer at all. But at last he looked up, meeting Gereint’s eyes. “When we reach the country of fire, I will answer all your questions.”

Gereint stood up from the table, turned his back, and walked away.

The bays were harnessed, the remnants of the pies cleared away, the driver back on his high perch… and Beguchren had entered the carriage. Which did not move. The horses shifted restively, tossing their heads, impatient to go now that they were harnessed and ready. The driver held them. He did not look toward Gereint, who had stopped in the shade of the courtyard wall and now waited, arms crossed and jaw set, to see what Beguchren would do.

The answer appeared to be: nothing. The carriage waited. The posting house gate stayed open. The driver held the horses in place, though they mouthed the bits and showed something of a desire to jig sideways. Beguchren did not even look out the carriage window.

Not letting himself think about what he was doing, not letting himself consider whether he was making a decision or merely a test, Gereint swung about and walked away from the posting house, heading west. He clambered straight over a rail fence and strode across the pasture that bordered the road, ignoring the cattle that grazed in the distance. It didn’t occur to him that there might be a bull until he was across the fence and then he would have looked foolish if he’d turned back. So he went on. The bright sunlit day seemed to close around him like walls, for all he could see the wide spaces of the pasture.

He needed to understand the king’s mage. Just as Tehre tested the limits of structures in order to understand them, Gereint thought, a sharp defiance of Beguchren’s intentions might reveal far more than quiet compliance ever could.

Even so, Gereint felt a strangely powerful sense of guilt as he lengthened his stride.
What do you owe me?
the silver-eyed mage had asked him, but neither of them had answered that question. Gereint was answering it now: nothing. But he knew that answer was false—

—the rough ground under his feet slid sideways. He staggered, took a quick step to catch his balance; his foot came down on the packed earth of the road rather than on the pasture grasses. The sun had abruptly shifted its place in the sky, shadows lay out at an odd angle; his head swam with the confusion of direction and place. The gates of the posting house stood near at hand, and by the gates, the fancy carriage with its matched bays. The driver was staring at him. The posting house staff had left their tasks and clustered by the gate, also staring.

But there was no movement at the carriage window. Having brought Gereint back to the posting house, Beguchren seemed perfectly content to wait all day for him to come back to the carriage.

If Beguchren wanted to compel obedience, why take away the
geas
? And if there was all this need for haste, why was he so patient now? Why not twist the world about and drop Gereint directly into his carriage? Or the both of them straight into place at the edge of the desert?

“Earth and ice,” Gereint muttered. The philosopher Beremnan Anweierchen had written,
Obedience is a quality a man imposes on himself; if it is imposed from without, it is not obedience, but compulsion.
Anweierchen, Gereint concluded, hadn’t known what he was talking about. All this pressing to get on, fresh horses waiting at posting houses and this
Pamnarichtan by tomorrow night
haste. And now Beguchren was willing to simply sit all afternoon in that quiet carriage?

Finally, Gereint crossed to the carriage with long, impatient strides, jerked the door open, stepped up to the bench, and flung himself onto the seat. But when Beguchren looked at him, he glanced down with a slave’s bland, submissive deference and murmured, “I beg you will forgive the delay, my lord.”

A trace of color actually rose in Beguchren’s face. “Gereint…” the mage began, then stopped and instead leaned forward to tap the back of the driver’s seat. The driver eased the reins, and the horses, glad to be moving at last, leaped forward in a canter rather than the customary collected trot.

Beguchren tried to catch himself against the jolt, but he was flung first hard backward and then forward by the lunging start of the horses. Gereint had no such difficulty; he put a foot against the opposite wall, closed a hand on the edge of the window, and, without thinking, put out his other arm and first caught the smaller man and then braced him until the motion of the carriage steadied. Then, embarrassed at both the familiarity and the very automaticity of the response, he let go and drew away to the farthest extent of the carriage.

The mage might also have been embarrassed. He straightened his sleeve fussily, concentrating on that. He said, not quite glancing up, “Thank you, Gereint.”

Gereint barely looked at him, but answered in his most colorless tone, “Of course, lord mage.”

Beguchren hesitated, began to speak, stopped, and finally said nothing. Silence stretched uncomfortably between them. Gereint could not decide whether he was satisfied or ashamed to have achieved this silence. He hoped the mage felt as uncomfortable with it as he did.

And perhaps he did, for he began at last, “Gereint…”

Gereint refused to look at him.

Beguchren sighed. He asked, “Should I have left you bound? Would you have been more comfortable under the compulsion of the
geas
? I might have left you bound right to the last. But I wished you to choose freely to come with me.”

“As long as I don’t choose freely to go my own way?”

“Just so.”

Gereint shook his head, baffled. He should have been angry as well as baffled, but anger seemed to run out of him like water from a cracked fountain; he could not hold to it. “When you won’t permit me to use the freedom you gave me, you can’t expect an avowal of gratitude!”

“I don’t.”

“What do you
want
from me?” Gereint demanded.

Beguchren sighed. Nodded out the window. “At the moment, only your company on a pleasant, if long, day’s journey.”

Gereint set his jaw… then laughed suddenly. The argument seemed too ridiculous to keep up, when the mage continually slid sideways and left Gereint arguing alone. He said, “One day’s journey and another, and soon enough we
will
be looking out into the country of fire. And you’ll tell me then.”

“I will.”

Gereint only shook his head.

They traded the bays for young, energetic dappled grays at the next posting house, this time with less of a pause. As promised, they reached Dachsichten before dark and passed through the bustling town without stopping. Even the grays were long past any desire to run; the driver let them fall into a steady walk. Gereint asked no questions about when they might stop.

An hour north of Dachsichten, as dusk silvered the sky and the earliest stars glimmered into view, the carriage slowed, turned off the road, bumped gently across a grassy verge, and came to a halt beside a large pavilion of blue and ivory cloth, with orange and gold ribbons braided down its front, and more ribbons, bound to its roof, rippling in the breeze that came off the river. A fire leaped cheerfully before the pavilion; round white lanterns hung from poles on either side of its door. By their light, Gereint could make out half a dozen smaller tents around and behind the pavilion, blue and pink and flame yellow.