The Outskirter's Secret (13 page)

The healer had learned something of the ways
of steerswomen during Rowan's illness. "Your ban won't serve you
here. If you know I can't answer, don't ask the question. You'll
speak to the seyoh tomorrow afternoon."

Rowan found that the scene around her was
rapidly becoming more precise, though maintaining a translucent,
airy quality. Without changing, the breeze was suddenly very cool
and refreshing.

"That's good," Rowan said. "We have a lot to
say." Somewhere at the back of her mind, a part of herself was
independently reviewing the information she planned to present. She
watched it at work, with a detached pride.

The healer departed, and the food arrived:
broth and bread. It was delicious.

As she drank and ate, she began to notice the
sounds of the camp. The hiss and rattle of the veldt was unending,
but from the center of the camp wafted voices, music, and
intriguing clatters that she finally recognized as two fighters
training with metal-edged tanglewood swords.

She heard Bel sigh, and turned to her,
finding she had to move her entire body to effectively redirect her
gaze. "Is there a problem?" She was aware of a brief flurry of
thought, just below full awareness, as dozens of possibilities for
potential problems shuffled and sorted themselves.

Bel looked disgruntled. "We've been
refused."

Rowan sat very still as the shuffling
proceeded, caught the answer as it flickered by. "The seyoh. Not
the seyoh and the council."

"Yes. It takes the entire council to decide
to accept us. The seyoh can reject us alone."

T
he tent was
open on two sides; Rowan and Bel sat in cool sunlight, the seyoh
half in shadow, her loose, white hair like a streamer of cloud
hanging down her body.

"It is a fine knife," she said, turning it
over in her narrow hands, testing its edge expertly with one thin
thumb. "And worth more than the goat." She set it down on the
patterned fabric carpeting the floor and turned dark, calm eyes to
the travelers. "We will give you food for your journey, to even the
score. You may leave now."

Rowan sighed. She was still tired, and had to
remind herself to sit straight. "We had hoped," she told the seyoh,
"that we might remain with your tribe and travel in your company
for some time, if your route goes east."

The old woman shook her head; a broad,
sweeping motion, very similar to Bel's own characteristic negative.
"We don't want you. I see that you are no danger to us, and your
passing through our pastures has not cost us. But we don't need
you, especially one like you who is so unfamiliar with our
ways."

"I learn very quickly," Rowan began.

Bel spoke up. "The steerswoman has things to
say that you need to hear. Even if you still decide to have us go.
It's important."

Rowan doubted that the Guidestar and the
actions of distant wizards might be considered important to
Outskirters; she wished that Bel would not overstate their case,
however it might aid them. Nevertheless, she organized her
thoughts. "It has to do with the Guidestars," she said, "and the
fact that one of them has fallen. There are more Guidestars than
the two of you can see in the sky. We are trying to cross deep into
the Outskirts, to a place where one of the other Guidestars has
fallen—"

"I don't care where you are going. You may
not do so with my people."

"But we hope," Rowan continued, and tried to
compact her tale, to tell it quickly and compellingly, "we hope to
find out why it fell. If one Guidestar can fall—"

"And I hope you discover your reason. I wish
you well. We have cared for you while you were ill because you did
us no harm, and approached us honestly, and did not steal from our
flocks. But now we are done with you."

Rowan made to continue, but Bel gestured the
steerswoman to let her take over. She leaned forward. "This means
more than you think," she told the seyoh seriously, and Rowan
wondered at the trace of urgency in her voice. "It doesn't seem so
to you, because everything you know has stayed the same—"

Holding Bel's gaze, the seyoh lifted her chin
fractionally. The movement held some meaning for Bel; instantly,
without protest, she ceased to speak, relaxed her posture, and
waited.

The seyoh nodded an acknowledgment. "Take
what supplies you need. The knife is a good tool and weapon, and
will serve us well." She settled back, gestured. "Now leave."

Bel made to rise, but Rowan wavered,
disbelieving they were being dismissed without a full hearing. She
wanted to try again; somewhere, she was certain, were the right
words to convince this woman to take in the travelers.

Bel read her intent, forestalled it with a
hand on Rowan's arm. She spoke to the seyoh. "Thank you. The help
you gave us is worth more than the food we gained, and the knife we
traded." What followed seemed a formal statement. "My birth-tribe
is far east of here. Its seyoh is Serrann, Marsheson, Liev." It was
a gift. Should this tribe encounter Bel's, possession of the names
would constitute an introduction, and might prevent
hostilities.

The seyoh's eyes warmed with a smile that
worked its way past her dignity to reach her mouth. "Thank you,"
she said. "Good luck, and travel carefully."

R
owan waded
waist-deep through dry grass that clutched at her clothing and
scratched at her boots. The world was a swirl of red and brown,
shifting and shuddering, and the air was awash with sound: an
endless hissing and a patternless pattering chatter that filled her
ears completely and overflowed, taking up residence in her buzzing
skull. The blue overhead seemed unlikely, not to be trusted; she
half expected it to curl down and twist in among the reeds, to open
chasms of sky beneath her feet—

"Rowan, wait!"

She came to a stop like a ship at sea and
turned into the wind, sails luffing. She rocked against nonexistent
swells. Instinct made her plant her feet wide and shift her weight
against a wave that was a tussock that refused to move to her
expectations. Unbalanced, she fell to a seat among the grass.

Bel appeared, and hunched down beside her.
"Are you all right?"

The tall reeds defined a little room around
the two of them, and the grass sounds were intimate and
comprehensible. "Yes," Rowan said, perplexed.

"Why did you go ahead like that?"

"I'm not sure." She recalled a vague
impression that it was possible to outpace the scenery.

The Outskirter studied her, and Rowan studied
herself, both with equal suspicion. "Can you stand?" Bel asked.

"Yes." She did not much want to. Instead, she
reached out and plucked a shaft of redgrass, turned it over in her
hands. The stem was resonantly hollow, the diameter of her smallest
finger; the nodes were wide, the sheaths loosely wrapped, and the
blades emerged in a three-ranked pattern, instead of the two-ranked
that greengrass followed.

Bel became impatient. "You've seen that
already."

"A moment." A weed, nothing more; uncommon in
the Inner Lands, but not unknown. Leaves brown on one side, red on
the other. "All right." She accepted a hand up, keeping the stalk
in her other hand.

Shuddering colors all around her. Motion, to
the limit of the horizon in the north, motion breaking around a
solid line of black to the south, motion rising and falling in a
series of slopes ahead to the east. The breeze was in her face,
speeding wild lines of brown and red directly toward her; it was
sinister, threatening. The colors seemed to hover, sourceless,
ineffable.

She looked at the reed in her hand. Leaves
brown on one side, red on the other. It was just the wind. "Let's
go."

Bel said dubiously, "Stay close, and stay
behind."

The grass growth hid the shape of the land
beneath, and some of Rowan's steps jarred against sudden rises, or
dropped sickeningly into dips. Bel was having no such problem. "How
can you tell how to step?"

"Watch the grass tops."

The idea was not attractive. Rowan recalled a
similar situation, when she had been trying to teach Bel to
overcome seasickness.

"Watch the waves," she had told Bel, advising
her to act exactly opposite to instinct's inclination.

Rowan wished it would rain; wished the colors
to gray, the grass to dampen and silence. She watched the grass
tops dizzily and stumbled along behind the Outskirter.

They had been traveling for one day and the
greater part of a second. The tribe was out of sight; the tents,
people, goats—familiar visual anchors—were gone. There was only the
rolling veldt: unpredictable color shimmering across her eyes,
fragmenting her vision. Rowan had walked that day as though blind,
had slept that night as though still walking, dreaming
incomprehensible patterns of flailing light and dark, and roaring
voices. She awoke exhausted.

There was little conversation, and most was
provided by Bel, commenting on those aspects of Outskirts wildlife
that presented themselves: "This is a slugsnake. It likes to climb
things, so don't stand still." "Those tall shapes in the distance
are lichen-towers. They only grow by water." "That's a hawkbug, up
there. It won't bother you, you're too big." "If this bug lights on
you let it bite. It's harmless, and it will tell its hive that you
don't taste good. You won't be bothered again." "If this one bites
you, kill it as fast as you can. It will burrow into your flesh and
die there, and you'll have to cut it out with a knife."
Disturbingly, the two insects seemed indistinguishable. But Rowan
listened, accepting the information, accumulating facts for later
and, it was hoped, more coherent consideration.

The next morning, as she was drawing water
from a steep-banked creek, Rowan attempted to steady herself
against a crusty boulder that bulked from the water's edge over the
bank. As she leaned her hand against it, the object's surface gave
away, and her left arm sank in, to the elbow. She felt sharp lines
of scratches against her arm.

Overbalanced, she fell, instinctively
clenching her fist, grasping for some purchase. Her fingers
squelched in damp pulp, finding thin stiff things inside, like
wires—sharp. They cut; she let go, but her fingers tangled among
them. She stumbled, splashing into the shallows on her knees; her
hand twisted, found more wire, cutting her palm and fingers—

Her cries brought Bel, who appeared behind
her, steadying Rowan's body with her own, one hand bracing the
trapped arm. "Don't move, you'll make it worse."

Rowan hissed between clenched teeth, "I think
I've hurt myself." Where she had squashed it, the pulp was fluid,
drenching her cuts, stinging wildly. She made an involuntary sound
and squeezed her eyes shut. "What do I do?"

"For now, stay still. Do you have your
balance?"

Rowan adjusted her knees minutely; the shift
in position caused her hand to move in its trap, and more pain. She
hissed again, then managed to say, "I'm steady."

"Stay put." Bel moved away. Wet sounds,
crunches, tiny snaps. A sweet, greasy odor puffed into Rowan's
face, again and again. At last she felt air on her forearm, and
Bel's hands closed around her wrist. "Now stand up, but try not to
move your hand."

Using her foot, Bel had flattened the gray
surface around Rowan's hand down to the dirt of the creek bank.
Clear blue fluid puddled and ran into the water, oozing from white
pulp pierced by broken black spines. Around Rowan's hand, the
substance was untouched; a soggy mass, white above her hand, pink
below, looped throughout with glittering black.

Rowan stood, left elbow awkwardly bent as Bel
braced her hand against movement. Despite this, there was a small
shift; the steerswoman made a choked sound and beat her thigh with
her right fist, twice, then froze and gasped, "Now what?"

Bel eyed her. "Relax your hand, but don't
move."

She released Rowan, pulled out a knife,
reversed it, and used the handle to carefully push the reddened
pulp away from the coil. With thumbs and forefingers protected by
two pieces of leather cut from her leggings, she snapped the sharp
loops, one by one. Rowan watched, body tense and poorly balanced,
breathing shallowly.

She fell to her knees when her hand came
free, then cursed viciously and at length when Bel submerged it in
the creek. The water cleaned but did not soothe. Eventually Rowan
said, "Let go."

Both women were in the shallows, Bel on one
knee, Rowan half-sprawled. There was more red in the water than the
steerswoman cared to see. Her hand was an undifferentiated mass of
pain, and when she pulled it from the creek, blood and water
trailed down along her arm, dripping off her elbow. She breathed
carefully, slowly. "Was that thing poisonous?"

"Not much." Bel was watching her. "Just
enough to make it hurt worse."

Rowan uncurled her fingers carefully and
studied the damage. "Do you still have one of those bits of
leather?" Her voice was tight.

Bel did; and before Rowan could react, Bel
used it herself, reaching over and swiftly extracting one
three-inch spine that had entered Rowan's hand from the side and
extruded from the base of her palm.

The steerswoman had run out of curses. "Thank
you," she said weakly.

"Are you going to faint?"

Rowan looked around. The light was too
bright, the creek surface too distant. "I don't think so." She
blinked. "I've a needle and thread in my pack."

Rowan discovered, in the most unpleasant way
possible, that Bel was not adept at small work. The Outskirter's
hands were trained for strength, not nimbleness. Strength was what
she used, pinning Rowan's arm against a rock as she worked, forcing
it abruptly under water to clear the blood. And Rowan used her own:
spending all her energy in clutching one arm around her drawn-up
knees, trying to direct all tension away from her brutalized left
hand.