Part 18 (2/2)
”Not likely. The old inn burned three years ago.”
”We'll stop for a little rest,” Anna said. ”But we might as well push on. There's no point in having arms- men sit in the rain and get wet so I can stay dry.”
”I thought you might say that.” Jecks laughed. ”Just like Alasia.”
”We're similar, but not exactly alike.” Anna wasn't sure she wanted to be thought of as Jecks' daughter.
”For one, I'm a little older. And I'm not... She broke off the sentence with a rueful laugh. ”Let's leave it at that.” She didn't want to state blatantly that she had no intention of being treated as his daughter.
”No, you're not,” Jecks answered with a grin. ”As your actions often declare.”
Alvar struggled to keep a straight face. So did Anna, almost forgetting the rain that misted around her and the column of armsmen and wagons that followed.
22.
ENCORA, RANUAK.
The two women stand at the edge of the crowd in the wind-swirled square. Behind them rises a canvas banner that flaps in the wind, proclaiming in bright blue lettering, SouthWomen; For Eternal Harmony!
”Mother warned you, Veria,” says the slender brunette.
”She only said that it was unwise to distrust someone in accord with the greatest of the harmonies. This sorceress is nothing more than another power-hungry woman of the north who will turn on anyone at the first need or opportunity. She also supports a man's claim to rule Defalk. She will not even rule in her own fight. There is nothing worse than a woman serving as a stalking goat for men. Better an honest man than a deceitful woman.” Veria's words are low, but intense. ”Mother or Matriarch, she did not say one word against my joining the SouthWomen.”
”Not in so many words, but it was a warning.”
”Why are you here, Alya? To act as Mother's spy?”
”Mother didn't send me.” Alya coughs twice, then continues. ”I'm here because you've always heard what you wanted to hear and seen what you wanted to see.”
”She has you spying on me.”
Alya laughs. ”She knows what you're doing. She needs no spies. She has let us choose our own way. This way is wrong, and in time, you will pay dearly for it.
”Then let me pay in my own coin. Why should you care?”
”You are my sister, and you will suffer.”
”You've never cared that much before. Why now?”
”Because Mother and Father care, and when you suffer, they will suffer.”
”You really believe that rubbish about the harmonies? That a power-hungry woman from the mist worlds really cares about anything we hold dear? How could you?”
”It's very simple, Veria. Very simple. Simple enough for you to see.., if you would. Let me ask you this-on the important events, has Mother ever been wrong? Have she and Father ever been wrong about what has happened?”
”They did not foresee the very sorceress they caution against opposing.”
”Then see as you will.” Alya shakes her head. ”Do as you will. Only recall that I have tried to caution you. Those blades you will buy-if you have not already- will cut you more dearly than any of you would wish.”
The noise of the crowd rises as a tall woman steps onto the platform below the banner. Alya's eyes flicker toward the speaker as the crowd subsides. When she looks back beside herself, Veria has slipped away.
23.
Anna stretched surrept.i.tiously in the saddle, then s.h.i.+fted her weight to ease the continual soreness in her posterior, a posterior far more slender than it had been a year earlier. Her stomach grumbled slightly, reminding her to take another of the hard biscuits from the cloth pouch tied to the front saddle ring.
The road followed the ridge west of the Falche River, and the higher tilled fields between the mad and riverbank already showed signs of green. It was barely past dawn. and the lower fields were still clothed in ground fog. The green sprouts in the higher fields, though, she could clearly see, unlike those outside of Falcor pointed out by Hanfor days earlier.
”Not too much farther to go,” said Alvar.
”Do you think Arkad knows we're coming?”
”If be has seers, he could see us on the road.” The captain straightened his burly frame and turned in the saddle as if to check on whether someone watched.
”But he wouldn't know where we're headed. Not yet.”
”Not yet,” added Jecks.
Anna peered through the morning mist toward the river, toward the buildings rising out of the white ground-fog beyond the stone bridge that arched over the Falche and into Cheor itself.
Supposedly, Synfal-Arkad's liedburg-lay farther north of Cheor on a low hill that overlooked both the Falche and the Synor Rivers. That meant crossing the river and then riding back north.
”How much farther to Cheor?” Jimbob asked from Anna's right. As it neared the river town, the road had widened enough for Anna's force to ride four abreast-if no one happened to be headed north out of Cheor.
Anna smiled again. Definitely, some things remained constant with human nature, like the impatience of the young, although Anna had to admit that Jimbob hadn't asked that question until after the second day, unlike Mario, who had asked it ten minutes after the car left the house.
Within two deks, the ridge the road had followed began to slope into bottomland, dark rich soil tilled recently and filled with green sprouts. The ground fog began to dissipate with the growing warmth of the spring sun.
Anna gestured toward the fields that seemed to stretch westward from the river for deks and deks, looking at Jecks.
”Corn and maize here-even some sorghum, about the only place in Defalk. We grow more barley.
Heartier stuff.”
”Barley is better for beer,” offered Alvar.
Anna hadn't seen that much beer in Defalk, and she glanced at Jecks. ”Do you brew much beer at Elheld?”
”Some. More in recent years. We lost many of the old vines.”
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