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shifting with the wind.
Listening absently as Shadith described in rapid detail her planned route,
Aleytys watched her and felt once again how little she understood of this
woman who knew her so intimately. The new body was a distraction and a
complication, but she was trying to look behind that and what frightened her
was the strangeness of the spirit inhabiting that body. She rubbed her hands
along her thighs as Shadith finished and waited expectantly for her comment.
Sounds possible. I d better have a look. She straightened her back, patted a
yawn. Dammit, I don t feel like moving.
Harskari s eyes snapped open suddenly. Tell young Shadith that a few second
thoughts and a lot less babble about things she doesn t understand would
improve her immensely. The eyes shut again. Aleytys raised her brows. Well,
she said.
What?
Harskari. Aleytys picked up the notebook and slipped it into the saddlebag,
repeating Harskari s words as she worked.
Shadith grimaced. I m just as pleased she can t pin my ears back personally.
And me in between the two of you. Aleytys shook her head. Time to fly the
hawk and forget all the rest of this. She smiled, leaned against the trunk of
the tree behind her, closed her eyes and felt about for the bird.
9
The waning night was cool with dew thick on drooping grass, dripping
disconsolately from the stiff waxy leaves of the trees. They rode through the
gray halflight, the night blackness thinned by the blaze of the stars. The
split gyori hooves whispered through the grasses and the squat wiry brush. The
land was rising, its alternate dips and climbs were each a little higher than
the ones behind. The mountains were close enough to tower over them, dark and
silent and vaguely threatening. Psi-pool, Shadith said. She was talking to
both of them, to herself and Aleytys, but more to herself as if by her words
she thought to probe into the oddities of the body she was now tied into.
There s nothing of her left, at least nothing I can find, that I can reach
now. Except echoes. Echoes. Ghosts, I suppose. Psi-pool has that kind of echo.
All the zel are in it, I think. That sounds right. Lee ...
What?
A chill just walked my spine.
Wrap that blanket around you.
Not that kind of chill.
Oh. Well?
Maybe that s a talent this brain has that s mine now precognition, hunch,
whatever. Maybe we should wait till tomorrow night. Maybe next year.
Fear and trepidation?
Definitely. She shivered. There s always the joker in the grass who never
shows up until you step on him and it s too late for second thoughts. Talking
about second thoughts, what was Harskari going on about? Never mind, I suppose
I know, she was listening when I was talking about her snits. She fell silent
again and they rode past the dripping trees, around them the smell of riveroak
and resinous woods, of wetness and dark earth, of rot and life. Around them
soft whispers of water and wind, plops of fish feeding, hum of insects, sleepy
twitters of birds.
Aleytys pulled her gyr to a stop. She looked at the mountains looming ahead,
twisted around to gaze back for a long moment at the black and silver serenity
of the Plain. I tell you, Shadi, half of me wants to listen to your chill,
turn back and spend the next six months drifting. She swung back around.
Other half says let s get going or the sun will find us still on the
mountain.
Angling away from the river they started up the long slope for the fold in the
mountainside Shadith had spotted, finding the going more difficult than either
of them had anticipated; it was one thing to plot a route over the
convolutions of the landscape through the eyes of a hawk soaring on even
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winds, it was another to crawl over those convolutions. Again and again the
creases and conformation of the mountain tried to nudge them down toward the
river and the settlement, as if the land itself had been shaped by the women
for their defense.
Below, on the relatively flat floor of the valley, the river began its
division. The light from the stars caught drifts of vine out from the hedge
and sparked off what had to be drops of dew although even the hawk s eyesight
wasn t keen enough to pick out the individual drops. The hawk flew in long
spirals over them, a day-bird forced from his natural cycle and unhappy about
it. Aleytys had to keep calling him back from the island. He was unhappy about
that too, inclined to be noisy about it so Aleytys had to keep soothing him
and choking off his cries. The wind blew the smell of damp earth and new green
into her face, blew also snatches of bird song and the sleepy muttering of
animal life. It was very quiet, very peaceful
Until Aleytys saw a second hawk climbing in slow circles above the island s
trees. She pressed her lips together, sank herself more deeply into the hawk
and sent him edging closer to the isle. Uncertain whether they d been seen or
not, uncertain about what she should do, she temporized by seeking more
information telling herself that if they were already exposed a little more
wouldn t hurt, all she was venturing was the hawk, if the Zel hadn t spotted
them, again all she was venturing was the hawk.
Clusters of trees with small open spaces, grazing beasts, garden plots, she d
seen those before. Recklessly she sent the hawk swooping low. Great swollen
trunks, holes in them dark against the pale smooth tree-skin. That answers one
question, she thought, they live in the trees. Several small zel were busy in
the pole corrals, driving the squat blocky beasts into a long lane that led to
a thatched shelter. Milkers? Probably. Aleytys dipped into dim memory, called
up an image of herd-girls bringing in brimming pans of milk not long after
sunrise. For several minutes she saw no more zel, then she stiffened. There
was a movement high in one of the boundary trees, a scraggly giant
considerably taller than the rest. As the hawk spiraled higher, she examined
the tree each time he came round facing it, snatching quick looks that showed
her a watcher, perched high, straddling a limb, leaning out away from the
trunk, face turned toward the rising bird.
She fought the hawk away from the island, swooping him out and around in a
wide arc, bringing him in low and coaxing him onto the crude perch they d
fixed on Shadith s saddlepad, soothing his protests until he sat still and
sullen on the perch. She withdrew from him, leaving only a tenuous thread to
hold him where he was, opened her eyes and looked around. They were in a
steep-sided coulee, going downhill. She frowned. Out of sight, but once again
being pushed toward the river. In a stillness broken only by the scuffling
hooves of the gyori, she heard a distant warbling whistle. Then another, an
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