Land of the Burning Sands (34 page)

“Um,” Gereint said noncommittally. He half wanted to challenge this as an evasion, but he feared he understood the mage all too well. But he also feared Beguchren was simply wrong about what was and was not possible to make. Or remake. The idea of recasting a maker into a mage seemed perfectly demented. He lifted his own hands, studied them as he opened and closed his fingers. He could feel his own gift in his hands, solid and familiar. He had no idea what it would feel like to
pull on the world
or
balance opposing forces
or whatever Beguchren had said mages did.

Even if Gereint was willing to try, and found this “remaking of the self ” possible, it was hard to believe it would make any substantial difference to any contest between Beguchren and the griffins’ mage—and if he understood what Beguchren was not quite saying, that was what the cold mage expected. Or what he was aiming to provoke.

But he also felt, obscurely but with conviction, that it would be wrong to turn aside before he and Beguchren reached the edge of the griffins’ desert and at least looked out upon that country of fire. After coming so far, after the cold mage had expended such effort, arguing over this last step of the journey seemed simply wrong. Whether the mage offered compulsion or merely asked for Gereint’s cooperation.

He said, in a deliberately casual tone, “You’d never reach the desert alone, would you? So I suppose I must go at least so far.”

Beguchren inclined his head in quiet thanks, exactly as though he had merely asked for cooperation and never thought of compelling anything at all.

Metichteran and Tashen had grown up from simple villages at nearly the same time, once the constant warfare between Casmantium and Meridanium had finally given way to the peace created by the decisive victory of Casmantium. Tashen had grown into the largest city of the north: a small bastion of, to Gereint’s mind, rather self-conscious culture. Metichteran, Tashen’s gateway to the south, had cheerfully settled for becoming a comfortable town of farmers and tradesmen. Gereint much preferred Metichteran, though Perech Fellesteden had generally lingered only in Tashen during his occasional journeys from Melentser to the southern cities or back.

The road between the two towns was quite good, if worn and weather beaten. The edges of the stones had been rounded by time. Some of them had cracked right across during the long northern winters; mosses grew in those cracks and along the edges of the road. But not a single stone was so broken it needed to be replaced, nor did the mosses grow far enough out from the cracks to make the road slippery. The builder’s magic that had been set deeply into this road did more than cause the stones to resist weathering. The horses’ hooves sounded just a little muffled on the close-fitted stones, for the builders had set sure-footedness upon their road to protect horses from slips and falls.

North of Metichteran, the forest thinned out to pretty woodlands, and then to fields and pastures that spread off to the east and north. The land gradually shifted from gently rolling to frankly hilly, with scrub woodland left to occupy the steeper slopes. Enormous trees spread out their broad branches to shade old farmhouses that had probably been built before the conquest of Meridanium. Here and there, a small apple orchard was tucked close to a house. The scent of apples was sweet on the breeze.

Low stone walls delineated the edges of the farms and pastures. The hardy little northern cattle grazed in the pastures; in the fields, wheat and barley, already going golden with autumn, glowed with a color that would have looked rich if Gereint had not compared it to the colors of griffins. He looked for griffins now, keeping a wary eye on the sky. But he saw nothing besides a single vulture, its wings slanted upward in the characteristic angle, gliding in its slow circle on the high thermals.

“Are you doing something to keep the griffins away?” he asked Beguchren, breaking the silence that had grown up between them. It was not a tense silence, more a sign of a mutual abstraction. They both had a good many things to think about, Gereint supposed. He wondered if the mage’s thoughts were as circular and uncomfortable as his own.

Beguchren glanced up. He had seemed much stronger this morning, much more himself, but now his gaze was blank and unfocused. Gereint was momentarily alarmed; he had not realized the mage was so weak—he leaned forward, ready to try to catch the small man if he slumped out of the saddle—but then Beguchren blinked and Gereint settled again, warily, as awareness seeped back into the mage’s expression.

Beguchren moved his shoulders, not quite a shrug, answering the question Gereint had, in that moment of alarm, almost forgotten he’d asked. “Not precisely. Not now. I’m drawing the deep magic of earth after us as we ride; it is set so deeply in this road, it takes only a touch to wake it. Roads
are
boundaries; they can easily be persuaded to, ah, bound. That hardly counts as ‘doing’ anything.”

“Ah.”

“Mostly I’m simply… listening. But I hear nothing. There are no incursions out of the desert, not this morning. I think the griffins are become cautious, now they know I am here.”

“Um.”

Beguchren smiled. “They do know, I assure you. And they know I am coming to them. I think they will wait. They will not wish to challenge me while I am in the country of earth. Certainly not while I have such an old and powerful road under me.”

“They’re afraid of you.” Gereint didn’t quite let this turn into a question.

“I hope they are.”

“Um.” Gereint hoped that, too.

The silence fell again, but now Beguchren seemed more inclined to remain aware of the road and the countryside. He glanced after the flash of a redbird in the woodlands, gazed admiringly at a huge chestnut tree standing by the road, raised an eyebrow at a stocky black dog that stood alertly near a small herd of tawny cattle to watch them pass. The mage was, Gereint realized, enjoying the ride. Only it was more than that. Beguchren looked about himself with exactly the air of an elderly man who, traveling, suspects that he is on the last journey of his life: as though he had set himself to enjoy the countryside as much as possible. As though he were making his farewells to the world through which he traveled.

Or so it seemed to Gereint. He didn’t like it. But neither could he think of a way to comment. At last, simply to break a silence he, if not the mage, now found a little too fraught, he asked, “Will we stop in Tashen?”

Beguchren glanced up, mildly surprised. “No, no. No, we’ll go straight through and continue on north. We may yet find the desert’s edge today.”

The mage sounded neither dismayed nor enthused about the prospect. Gereint knew which reaction seemed more natural to
him
. He half wanted to ask about magecraft and the maker’s gift and what it meant to
remake the self
. But he also wanted, much more strongly, to ignore the whole question. He said nothing. Beguchren ran his hand absently over his mare’s neck and watched a covey of quail dart along the edge of a pasture where a dozen ponies grazed.

They reached Tashen midmorning and, as Beguchren had said, barely halted. The streets seemed abnormally quiet, the courtyard of the governor’s mansion abnormally crowded. Gereint suspected, uneasily, that he knew the reason for both aberrations. No matter how the people of Tashen prided themselves on their refined sophistication, he was afraid they had seen things over the past days that had pressed them beyond their ability to pretend nonchalance.

They paused only long enough to buy half a dozen meat pastries from an ornate stall in the beautifully laid out open market near the northern edge of the city. Gereint asked the pastry vendor about griffins, and then found it hard to get away again because the woman was so eager to talk. Griffins thick as sparrows, to hear her tell it; and the past three dawns with a sun that came up huge and hot-gold, and dusks where it only sank late and with seeming reluctance behind blood-red hills. “And there’s a nasty red dust in the air, gets into everything,” she told Gereint earnestly. “Hard to roll out pastry with dust mixed right in with the flour on the board! You’re all right, though, honored sir: Today is better than yesterday or the day before. Those should be good pastries. Everyone knows I make the best ones in Tashen.”

Gereint nodded gravely. “Then we’ll take a couple extra.” He added a bag of apples to his purchase for good measure.

“You watch yourselves!” the vendor called after them. “Stands to reason it’s worse the farther north you go, and besides, my cousin brings me these apples from a northern estate out that way and he says there’s worse than dust out that way. The governor should do something about it, that’s what I say!”

She did not suggest anything the governor might do, but perhaps, Gereint reflected, it was comforting just to tell herself that someone might be able to “do something” if he only decided to trouble himself.

It still lacked an hour or more to noon when they left Tashen behind and headed out on the much more narrow road that ran north, parallel to the river but far to the east of it, into the hills. Gereint passed a share of the apples to Beguchren. They ate them as they rode and fed the cores to the horses. Neither of them mentioned red dust or crimson sunsets.

Barely two hours after noon, they came around a slow curve in the road and found themselves riding toward a large sprawling house at the base of low hills, with wheat tawny in the fields and apples ripening in the orchards.

Gereint took a long breath and let it out again. He only hoped, fervently, that at least one of Tehre’s letters had made it to this house far in advance of his own arrival in company with the king’s mage.

D
achsichten was an important town; really a small city. It served as a waystation for nearly all the traffic flowing from south to north or back again, and it linked the river traffic with the first of the great roads that led out into the great plains of southern Casmantium. So it was an important town, and likely to grow more important still if the Arobern’s plans to increase trade with Feierabiand came to fruition. Any goods that came down from the north would certainly pass through Dachsichten on their way south and west.

Tehre had traveled through Dachsichten many times, but she had never liked the town. It seemed too conscious of its own mercantile importance, too inclined toward bustle and business at the expense of grace and artistry. Its buildings were mostly of brick, because bricks could be made cheaply from the lowland clay deposited over the ages all along the wandering path of the river. Perhaps using bricks rather than stone or timber made sense. But the color of the clay was an unpleasant harsh yellow. And the buildings were steep roofed and sharp cornered, a style Tehre had never liked; and they were too tall and too crowded along the streets even in the wealthiest part of the city. Dachsichten was simply, inarguably, ugly.

“It is very different from Breidechboden, is it not?” said Lord Bertaud.

“‘Haste in building always leads to regrets,’” Tehre quoted, and added, “Aesthetic regrets, if not regrets because of unsound construction. There was no
need
to crowd Dachsichten like this, and I’m sure even this brick could be made more attractive with better design. The northern towns are far more beautiful, Lord Bertaud. Especially Tashen.”

“Your family lives there?”

“Near there. I shall be pleased to show my home to you, Lord Bertaud.”

“Honored lady, I shall look forward to it,” the lord answered with automatic grace, but the smile had faded. He still gazed out at Dachsichten, but Tehre supposed his thoughts had gone back to something else, something difficult.

“But we’ll stay the night here?” Meierin asked hopefully. She leaned forward, peering out at the narrow streets and ugly yellow buildings. “Can’t we, honored lady? It’s almost late enough we ought to stop, and wouldn’t you like to sit in the inn’s common room and watch the people? Look, those ladies have such interesting embroidery on their bodices—”

Tehre was not very interested in embroidery, but suspected from the abbreviation of the bodices in question that the ladies in question might not be, well, ladies. Though obviously they were wealthy. But she smiled at Meierin. “We do, usually. There’s an inn at the northern edge of town where we normally stop. As you say, it’s almost late enough we ought to stop, anyway.”

The inn was large, clean, and well appointed. Tehre had stayed in it several times and expected all this. Its common room was pleasant enough, she supposed. Its ceiling had interesting beam architecture.