The Outskirter's Secret (51 page)

He now sat with the rest of his band, picking
at his breakfast with little interest. He seemed to sense Rowan's
attention and looked her way. She removed her gaze an instant
before he caught it.

"Well," Bel said, "Kree's putting him back to
work today." The statement was innocent enough to permit Chess to
overhear.

The cook grunted. "He must be feeling
better," she said, and jerked her chin once in Fletcher's
direction. "First time he's done that in days, too. But he's late
today. Hope his god doesn't mind."

Rowan glanced back. Fletcher had abandoned
his food and was walking away, out between the tents, toward the
edge of camp. "Off on his prayers," Rowan said without thinking;
and it was suddenly necessary to restrain herself from clutching at
Bel to gain her attention.

Bel had noted Rowan's sudden tension. When
Chess was gone, she said quietly, "What is it?"

Rowan leaned very close. "Fletcher is
certainly no Christer."

"And?"

"Then, what's he doing, Bel? What's he doing
right now?"

Bel's wide eyes grew wider, and she clearly
wished to look back in the direction Fletcher had gone. "Not
praying," she said.

"I sincerely doubt it." They finished their
breakfast in silence, and after, with careful nonchalance, strolled
to the edge of camp.

Fletcher was nowhere in sight; it was his
habit to tuck himself behind some natural obstruction or another
when attending to his presumed devotions.

"He goes off alone, almost every single day,"
Rowan said, studying the single stand of tanglebrush that likely
provided Fletcher his present privacy. "And he has done, all the
time he's been in the Outskirts. If he's not a Christer, why would
he need to be alone?"

Bel smiled thinly. "He's doing something
other people shouldn't see."

Rowan was angry at herself for not suspecting
this peculiarity long before. "Can you get close enough to see him,
without him spotting you?"

"Yes." Bel scanned the sky, gauging the wind.
"I'll have to swing around from the north." Then she winced.
"Sometimes he's fantastically good at seeing people in hiding. And
sometimes he can't see past his own nose."

Rowan frowned in thought. "Magic," she said
at last. "When I went to talk to the seyoh of the Face People
tribe, and you and Fletcher followed me, Fletcher knew where the
watchers were hiding, even when you didn't, despite the fact that
you're a better Outskirter. But earlier—" She paused in her speech,
waiting for a pair of water-carrying mertutials to pass. "But
earlier, when Efraim's old tribe attacked us, Fletcher had no idea
at all that anyone was about."

Bel nodded, eyes narrowed in thought.

"What was the difference between those
events?" Rowan asked her.

Bel replied immediately. "The first time, you
were standing right next to him. The second time, he was hiding in
the grass, and so was I. We couldn't see each other. Whatever he
does, he only does it when no one's watching."

"And no one can see him right now." Rowan's
mouth twisted in dissatisfaction. "I don't think you'll be able to
get close to him."

"I'd like to try."

Such an attempt might be dangerous; but the
only destructive magic Rowan had ever witnessed had been loud,
visible, and required hours of preparation.

Perhaps Fletcher's abilities differed from
those of the boy Willam. But if Fletcher had access to a more
quickly acting destructive spell, he certainly would have used it
when the Face People had attacked Kammeryn's tribe. The wizard's
man had been clearly and obviously in a state of terror at that
time. Had he been able to summon magic to insure his survival, he
would have done so. The only options open to him had been to fight
by sword, or to run; he had fought.

The steerswoman drew a breath. "Do you
suppose, if he notices you by magic alone, that he'll be able to
actually recognize you?"

"Who can say?" Bel thought. "I'll put
together some excuse to be there. Practicing Efraim's Face People
techniques, perhaps, using them to play a joke on Fletcher."

But when Bel returned, she reported only
failure.

"I got to within three meters of him," Bel
told Rowan much later in Orranyn's tent; the band was on duty on
the outer circle. "All I saw was him kneeling, with his eyes closed
and his hands folded. Looking—" She searched for the proper word,
then supplied it with distaste. "—humble."

Rowan made a dissatisfied sound. "He knew you
were there." She gave herself to thought. Very little was known
about the functioning of magic spells in general, and less of
magical means of perception in particular. She considered, instead,
natural perception, and animals with particularly sharp senses:
cats with their vision; dogs with hearing, smell; frogs, which
could capture small, rapidly moving insects . . .

"Perhaps," she ventured, "he sensed you
approaching."

Bel caught the idea. "Then tomorrow, he
won't. Because I'll already be in place, waiting for him."

The next morning, Rowan was awakened at dawn
by hands shaking her. She flailed out in startlement. "What?"

"Get up," Jann told her urgently. "Get your
clothes, and your sword, and get outside!" And the warrior was
gone.

The tent was already empty. Rowan threw
herself into her clothing and hurried outside.

War bands were congregating by the dead fire
pit; Kammeryn was in place, with relays nearby. Rowan read the
reports as they came in, all of them the same, single gesture:
negative, negative, negative . . .

She looked about for Bel; the Outskirter was
nowhere in sight. The rest of Kree's band stood near Kammeryn, all
of them seeming intent and prepared. Among them was Fletcher, his
face as grim and determined as his comrades', standing with his
muscles twitching, like a frightened horse.

Rowan found Jann and sidled over to her
unobtrusively. "What's going on?"

But it was another warrior who replied.
"Fletcher says he saw someone, hiding. He says"—the woman was
dubious—"that the stranger is inside the inner circle."

Now Jann spoke. "I don't believe it. Our
people are too good for that. It can't happen." Her eyes were not
on her chief, or on her seyoh; she watched Fletcher.

Orranyn thumped her on the arm. "Pay
attention, you!" Rowan knew from the tone it was not a sudden anger
but exasperation of long standing.

"Orranyn, it can't happen—"

"Fletcher's been too right too often for us
to ignore him. If you can't bear to lose a little sleep for
safety's sake, then think about crossing over." The war band stood
shocked by the statement. Orranyn pretended indifference to their
reaction; he was reaching the limit of his indulgence of Jann's
obsession.

But Jann was not the only person watching
Kree's band. "Where's Bel?" Jaffry asked, and as he spoke, Rowan
watched Kree, across the fire pit, put the same question to each of
her warriors. When the question reached Fletcher, he reacted with
surprise so extreme that he seemed to have been struck. Then he
spoke to Kree, pleadingly; she interrupted him, sternly, clearly
indicating that he should be most concerned with the duties
immediately at hand. When Kree turned away, Fletcher's eyes sought
and found Rowan, and he looked at her in seeming distress,
spreading his hands in a gesture intended to communicate
helplessness. It was very eloquent, and very clever, and Rowan
hated him far worse than she ever had yet.

Rowan might easily have been too conservative
in her estimation of Fletcher's power. Bel might already be dead,
by magic; she might be cast to sleep forever under an evil spell;
she might have been transformed into some strange creature; she
might be crouched in hiding out in the pastures, unable to move for
fear of attracting attack, with all Kammeryn's tribe convinced that
she was an enemy, and Fletcher's magic insuring that all eyes would
see her as one.

"What's happening?"

The steerswoman spun, dropped her weapon, and
threw her arms about Bel, pulling the small woman completely off
the ground in an embrace of utter relief.

The Outskirter pretended amazement at the
reception, extracted herself, and repeated the question.

"Where were you?" Jaffry demanded.

Bel regarded him with fists on hips. "Can't a
warrior visit the cessfield without the tribe falling apart behind
her back?"

But as she left to join her war band, she
quickly pulled Rowan aside and forced the steerswoman down to hiss
in her ear, "I'm never doing that again!"

It was not until much later, after the guards
had determined that Fletcher had been mistaken, after Kree's band
had served their rotation on the outer circle, after evening meal,
that the two women could meet, alone at the edge of camp.

"Well, for what it's worth, I did see
something," Bel said.

Rowan found herself almost indifferent; it
was far more important that Bel was unharmed. "What was it?" she
managed to ask.

Bel thought, then shook her head in
confusion. "I'm not sure . . . perhaps you can make sense of
it.

"When he settled down, he had his back to me.
I was disappointed, because I thought I might not see anything . .
. I shouldn't have worried. Because, all of a sudden, there were
things in the air."

Rowan was taken aback. "Overhead? Someone
would have seen them."

"No, not up. Just in front of him. Floating
things, like they were trapped in a trawler's shoot—but flat." She
held her hands before her, delimiting an invisible vertical
surface. "They went no higher than the grass tops, and all the way
down to the ground. The things were small, like insects, bright
colors. But they didn't move, they just hung. And they glowed."

Rowan had not expected anything quite so
dramatic. "Glowed? Like fire? Was there any heat?" There could not
have been, or the grass would have caught—

"No. More like stars: cold light. Blue, red,
yellow, all colors. It was strange. The colors were bright, but the
light didn't seem to be . . . It's hard to describe."

"Just spots of light, hanging in the air in
front of him?" Rowan tried to imagine it, but failed. "Not . . .
scenes from far away, or writing, or a pentagram?"

"Some of them might have been arranged in
something like a pentagram . . . it's hard to say, I didn't get to
look for long. Fletcher sat down, the lights appeared; then he
shouted, the lights vanished, he jumped up, drew his sword and
turned around—" Bel leaned closer, spoke more quietly and more
intensely. "—and he came straight at me!"

"He knew you were there."

"He knew
exactly
where I was."

The magic lights had somehow told him. "What
did you do?" Rowan was aghast.

The Outskirter leaned back, tilting her head.
"I moved. And he went for exactly where I used to be."

Fletcher's magical perceptions were limited
to the moments when the spell itself was active.

"I tried to stay put after that," Bel
continued, "but he started flailing around in the grass, at random,
and I had to dodge. Then he stopped and signaled to six; a reply, I
think. He must have been seen carrying on. He told six that there
was an intruder in the inner circle, and then he took to his heels,
back to camp."

"Was there any indication that he knew it was
you?"

Bel shook her head broadly. "But I don't dare
try it again. So that's all we're going to learn about Fletcher's
prayers."

Rowan's mouth twitched in dissatisfaction.
"We have to wait," she said grimly, "for him to do something more
obvious."

They did not wait long.

It happened over breakfast. Fletcher was late
from his prayers.

And then Rowan heard someone calling his
name, wondered why, then saw him enter the center of the camp at a
flat run, ignoring the voices that asked why he ran.

Bel's eyes narrowed. "What's he up to?"

Rowan rose slowly. "I don't know."

Fletcher stopped and stood by the fire, arms
splayed out as if he had forgotten them. He was glancing about,
wide-eyed, as though desperate, and blind to everything but what he
sought. "Where's Kammeryn?" he called out.

All were now watching his performance. "In
his tent," someone supplied. Fletcher rushed to Kammeryn's tent as
the seyoh was emerging. "Seyoh, the tribe has to move."

Kammeryn was bemused. "What?"

"We have to move," Fletcher insisted. "We
have to go east. We need to do it now!"

Kammeryn put a hand on his shoulder and
studied his wild eyes. "Calm down. What are you trying to tell
me?"

"I had—" Fletcher drew a great breath. "I had
a vision. We have to move. We have to go east."

Someone had fetched Kree; she came up to
them, all confusion. "Fletcher, what is wrong?"

He turned to her, saw her, dismissed her. "A
vision," he repeated to Kammeryn.

"What sort of vision?"

The wizard's man seemed to find no
appropriate words, settled for vague ones. "Something terrible is
going to happen. It's coming here. I don't know what, a tempest, a
monster—
something
. We have to go
away."

Kree made to protest; but Kammeryn gestured
her silent. He paused long. "Perhaps . . ." he began, and he was
watching Fletcher's pleading face closely. "Perhaps we ought to do
it. But I'll send scouts around first, have them report what they
find—"

"No! We won't have the time." In his urgent
act, Fletcher dropped all form, all deference to the seyoh. "Send a
scout ahead of us if you like, but let's start moving
now
."

The Outskirters were stirring with discomfort
at hearing their seyoh spoken to in this fashion by a mere warrior.
Rowan and Bel stood among them, quiet, intent.