Fool's Quest - Страница 48

By day, we camped in the forest, usually well away from the road. Even in the darkest night, when snow fell and the wind blew, the teams and the riders pushed on. One of the pale folk was always at the front, and they followed her without question. A dim part of my mind speculated that they were retracing their steps, returning as they had come. I tried to wonder where they had come from, and why, but my thoughts were as thick as cold porridge.

White. There was so much white. We traveled through a world cloaked in white. Snow fell almost daily, softening and smoothing the land. When the wind blew, it sculpted the snow into flows and mounds as pale as the faces of Dwalia’s followers. Their tents were white, and many of the robes and blankets were white, and the fogs that seemed to billow and bloom around us as we traveled were white. Their horses were white and fog gray. My eyes were always weary. I had to peer to make the shapes of the people separate from the general whiteness of the icy world.

They spoke to one another, but their conversations flowed past me and made no more sense than the sound of the sleigh’s runners sliding over the snow. The language they spoke rippled and flowed, the words running into one another as their voices trilled up and down, as if they sang their words to one another. I learned a few of their names, but only by repetition. The name they gave to me was Shaysim, a whispery, shivery sort of a sound. Either few of them spoke my language or they did not think it worth trying to speak to me. They talked above me and around me as they chivvied me from the sled and into the tent and back again. They put bowls of food into my hands and then took them away. They gave me almost no privacy, though they had the decency to allow Shun and me to move away from them when the pressure of bladder or bowel had to be answered.

Since I had spoken out for Shun, they had not questioned that I wanted her beside me at all times. I chose to sleep beside her, and during the day she rode near me in the big sleigh. Sometimes Dwalia and Odessa and the fog man, Vindeliar, rode with us. Sometimes they rode horses, or one of them would sit up front next to the driver. I did not like them to be near me, yet I felt safer when they rode in the sleigh. They spoke to one another in low voices, making a harmony with the sound of the creaking harness, hooves, and shushing runners. When they were not there, the dark pressed closer. Several times I came out of my daze to realize that soldiers were riding alongside our sleigh. Some of them stared at Shun as if they were dogs circling an abandoned table, trying to decide if they dared snatch a bone left on a plate. She did not seem to see them, but they made my blood run cold. There was one with hair the color of ripe acorns; he was the one I noticed most often because once or twice he moved up to ride alone by the sleigh. The others always came in pairs or as a trio, to stare at Shun and talk and laugh in short, harsh bursts. They would stare at her for a time, or me. I would try to stare back at them, but it was hard when my thoughts were so woolly and soft. Soon their faces would soften, their mouths sometimes hanging slightly ajar, and then they would drop back to join the soldiers that rode behind us. The fog boy did that to them, I think.

We traveled through the long winter nights, in the darkest hours when most folk were asleep. Twice, as we emerged from forest toward a country road, I saw other folk riding past us. I saw them, but I did not think they saw us. Into my mind drifted the old tales, of worlds that brushed against ours but only touched for a moment. It was like that, as if a pane of misty glass separated us. It never occurred to me that I should cry out for help. This was my life now, sitting in Dwalia’s sleigh and being carried off through a snowy world. My life had been placed in a narrow track and I moved on it as surely as a hound following a scent.

Shun and I shared a corner of the big tent at night. I would have welcomed her back against mine, for even on the mounded furs and beneath the heavy robes, I felt cold. I think Shun felt at least as cold as I did, but when I once rolled against her in my sleep, she gave a short, sharp shriek that woke me, Dwalia, and Odessa. Shun did not say anything, but she moved as far away from me as she could, taking most of the furs with her. I didn’t complain. It was not a thing to question, any more than I questioned the thin, dark soup that accompanied every meal, or the way that Odessa groomed my scruff of hair and rubbed lotions into my hands and feet at dawn before we went to bed. Her hands were cold and so was the lotion, but I could not find the will to resist her. “So your skin will not crack, Shaysim,” she would say, her words soft and wet from her mouth that never quite closed. Her touch chilled me as if Death herself caressed my hands.

So the harsh days quickly became routine. Captivity dazed me. I did not ask questions or speak to my captors. I rode in silence, too full of confusion to object to being stolen. We would halt, and I would be left in the sleigh while Dwalia’s helpers scurried around us like ants. Fires were built and tents erected. Ellik’s raiders had their own tents and their own camp a short distance from ours. Dwalia’s people cooked and took food to them in a three-legged pot, but the soldiers and the pale folk never ate together. I wondered vaguely if Captain Ellik kept them separate from us or if Dwalia insisted on it. When the food was ready, I was summoned from the sleigh. They fed me, we all slept during the short winter day, and as each evening deepened, we rose, ate again, and journeyed on.

On a snowy dawn several days into our journey, I finished the food in my bowl. I did not want the thin brown brew they gave me to drink but it was warm and I was thirsty. I drank it, and almost as soon as I swallowed the last of it I felt my stomach protest. I rose and followed Shun, who evidently had the same mission. She led me some small distance from the camp to an area of bushes cloaked in snow. I squatted behind them to relieve myself when she suddenly spoke to me from close by. “You have to be more careful. They think you are a boy.”

“What?” I was as startled that she finally spoke as at her words.

“Sshh! Speak softly. When you come with me to piss. You should stand for a time and fumble at your trousers as if you are pissing, then walk a short way and squat to do the real thing. They all believe you are a boy, someone’s lost son. That’s the only thing that saved you, I think.”

“Saved me?”

“From what happened to me.” She bit off each word savagely. “From the raping and beating. If they find out you are not a boy, not the lost son, they’ll do it to you, too. Before they kill us both.”

My heart pounded high up in my chest and throat. I felt as if I could not get a breath.

“I know what you are thinking, but you’re wrong. You are not too young for it to happen to you. I saw one of them chasing one of the kitchen girls after they came out of whatever place they had hidden in. I heard her scream.”

“Who?” I pushed the word out on the small puff of air left in me.

“I don’t know their names,” she spat at me, as if I’d insulted her by insinuating she might know the names of servants. “And what does it matter now? It happened to her. It happened to me. They came into my room. One seized my jewelry box. Two others came after me. I threw things at them and screamed and hit them. My maid fought, but only for a moment. Then she stood like a cow and watched when they attacked me. She didn’t make a sound when they pushed her down on the floor and took her. It took two of them to hold me down. I fought them.” A tiny bit of pride in those words, and then it became ash as she choked. “But they laughed while they did it to me. Mocked me because they were stronger. Afterward, they dragged me out to be with the others. The only reason it didn’t happen to you was because they think you’re a boy and special somehow.” She looked away from me. How angry she was at me, that they had not hurt me as they had hurt her! She stood slowly, letting her skirts fall around her. “You probably think I should thank you for saving me. Well, I’m not sure you did. Maybe that last man would have left me alive, and at least I’d still be at home. Now, when they find out you’re female, I think we’ll both face a lot worse.”

“Can we get away?”

“How? Look. That woman stands and watches where we’ve gone. If we don’t come back soon, she’ll send someone after us. And when else can we slip away?”

My belly did not like their food, but there was nothing to wipe myself with. I braced myself, took a handful of snow, and cleaned my bottom with that before pulling my leggings back up. Shun watched me dispassionately with no regard for my privacy. “It’s that brown soup,” she said.

“What?”

“Can you say something besides ‘what’ or ‘who’? The brown soup they give us. It goes right through you. I started pretending to drink it yesterday. Then I didn’t fall asleep right away. It has something in it to make you sleep so they can rest during the day and not have to watch us.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Training,” she said tersely. “Before I came to live with you, I had some training. Lord Chade saw to that. He sent this awful old woman named Quiver to teach me all sorts of things. How to throw a knife. Where to hit someone who grabs you. Chade said she was preparing me to be an assassin. I don’t think she did very well at it, but I do know how to protect myself.” She stopped speaking and her face sagged. “A little,” she amended.