The Lion of Farside

" ^ "

Varia awoke in the night needing to relieve herself. Rain still drummed on the roof, and she was reluctant to run sixty yards through it to the latrine; her dry clothes would get soaked. She decided instead to duck out the back door, wearing only her rain cape, and use the wide overhang of the shelter where the packhorses were. They wouldn't mind, and it was only seven or eight yards away.

By the time she got back, she had a plan.

She next awoke to Caerith knocking on the outside of the box stall. Rain still fell, but now it only muttered on the shingles, barely audible. Breakfast was far better than supper, and Varia wondered what Cyncaidh had said to the innkeeper, the night before. There was oatmeal without lumps, crisp side pork, cheese, bread and butter and buttermilk. By the time they finished eating, the rain had stopped. Outside, the sun shone through a broad gap in the clouds.

The soldiers were not energetic this morning, but Cyncaidh pushed them, and in half an hour the pack string was loaded, ready for the road again. Varia was ready before them, tight with nerves and purpose, keeping mostly out of sight, not wanting Cyncaidh to note the tension in her aura.

Her plan, such as it was, included only an overall purpose, a general strategy, and a first step. Mostly it was unknowns and assumptions. When you're desperate enough, she told herself, and the alternatives are unacceptable, you grab whatever opportunity you find, and hope something good happens. The odds, it seemed to her, were at least as good as she'd faced when she'd stepped out the door of the Tiger barracks a few weeks earlier, and that had worked out. More or less. To a degree.

Then Cyncaidh called to fall in and mount up. Varia and Hermiss led their horses from the stable and swung into their saddles, Varia barefoot, her still-wet boots tied to saddle rings-to get them drier, she'd told Hermiss. Cyncaidh, after looking back over the column, shouted another order, and they rode out of the inn's muddy yard.

Until they'd left Fort Ternass, Varia had always been kept in the midst of the mounted men. But since Hermiss had been added to the party, they'd been put behind the remount string, in front of the pack string, with the horse handler the only soldier behind them, back at the very end. Apparently to give them privacy if they wished to talk.

It was Varia who opened the conversation now, telling stories about Washington County and the Macurdies, recounting the funnier things she could remember. Beginning with the time that seven-year-old Curtis had tried to ride a calf and gotten bucked off into a wheelbarrow full of mucky cow manure. He'd run howling and stinking into the house, tracking manure on the linoleum, which enraged his mother. With a grip developed by years of wringing laundry by hand, she'd taken him by the ear to the windmill. It was March, still given to freezing at night, and after stripping him, she'd immersed him in the icy water of the horse tank, which set him howling even louder, then scrubbed him with a gunny sack.

Hermiss' peals of laughter brought a curious glance from Cyncaidh at the head of the column.

Next she told of one of Will's "notions," which struck him during silo filling. For years a neighbor, Deacon Stuart, had pestered Will about his non-attendance at church, hinting at hellfire. Then a skunk had taken residence under Will's barn floor, to make nighttime forays on the hen house, so Will had caught it in a Victor #1 trap. And when the deacon was up in the silo tromping down, Will had thrown the dead skunk into the silo filler. Chopped skunk, along with the content of its scent gland, had shot up the pipe and rained down on the deacon. The silo had been only about five feet short of full, and the overweight deacon, almost overcome by the stink, had clambered over the side and hung by his hands, his feet dangling some twenty feet above the ground. Then, realizing there was little relief in that-the vile smell was as much on him as in the silo-he'd tried to climb back in and couldn't. He'd hung there yelling for help, using language not suited to a deacon, and Will had gone up and rescued him. For two or three years after that, the deacon refused to trade work with Will, but he also stopped badgering him.

That story hadn't worked as well for Hermiss. She knew about corn and skunks, and was familiar with a concept not greatly dissimilar to hellfire, but Varia had had to stop at intervals to explain "deacon" and "Sunday services," "silo" and "ensilage" and "silo filler."

She'd begun telling of a time when Charley, her father-in-law, had been hauling bundles to the corn shredder, when she saw a bridge ahead. Her guts tightened, but she continued the story until she was well out on the bridge planking. Then, with the reins and a mental command, she caused her horse to rear. Behind her, the horse handler shouted a "whoa" to halt his pack string, while Varia, as if fearing she'd be thrown, dismounted. Before anyone was aware of what she intended, she'd vaulted onto the bridge railing and leaped off.

The river was a large one, and swollen now from days and nights of rain. She knew nothing more about it. Not its name, what towns it flowed past, anything. Her assumptions were that it flowed southward to join the Big River; that it flowed fast enough for her purposes; and that there'd be boats tied to the bank here and there, hopefully with oars or a paddle. And that she could swim long enough to come to one of them.

As she plunged beneath the water, she was astonished at how powerful the flow was, how swift. The water of a normally forty-yard-wide river, now storm swollen, with flooding several feet deep on the flood plain, was pouring with a tremendous surge between bridge abutments no more than thirty yards apart. She stayed under water as she'd intended, swimming with the current to put as much distance as possible between herself and the bridge. Her hope was that the soldiers would wait to see her come up before anyone else jumped. By that time, hopefully she'd be far enough away that no one would, that the odds of reaching her would seem too poor. Maybe they'd even fail to see her, and think she'd drowned.

She was neither a skilled nor a strong swimmer, nor experienced at staying under water more than briefly. She stroked as hard she could, feeling increasingly the need for air, and fighting it. Her water-soaked breeches and tunic were like weights, hampering her movements more than she'd expected, while the water was too muddy to see in. She became desperate for breath, and realizing she didn't know how deep she was, fought to the surface, gasping, gulping air.

For just a moment she glanced back. She'd left the bridge farther behind than she'd hoped-perhaps eighty yards, thanks to the tremendous bridge surge-and was almost cut off from view by a curve. Men on horseback lined its railing, but she heard no shouts. Perhaps they hadn't spotted her!

Now she gave her attention to the banks. On the Mustoka River, in Washington County, there'd be rowboats and skiffs now and again, tied or chained to trees along the bank. But this wasn't the Mustoka in any universe, and the water was eight feet above normal. If there were any boats tied there, they'd be swamped. She kept swimming, the current carrying her swiftly. Another hundred yards and she was tiring badly. Some distance ahead and to her left, she saw an oak being swept along, its trunk submerged so that its top resembled a great floating thicket. If she could reach it-But it was traveling nearly as fast as she was. Some distance behind her and near the west shore, she saw a larger tree riding the current, a big silver maple floating higher in the water than the oak, and it seemed to her she could intercept it if she swam hard.

She struck out for it, raising her arms out of the water now in a clumsy crawl stroke, breathing hard. I'm going to make it! she thought. But when she'd almost reached it, a submerged branch struck her, snatching her under. She panicked, struggling, swallowed water, somehow pulled free and popped to the surface, strangling and splashing. And went under again, this time because she wasn't swimming anymore but simply flailing. Her natural buoyancy popped her up again, still strangling on water-and a hand grasped her tunic. Once more she went under-someone was pulling on her-and twisting, grabbed whoever it was, pulling him under, too. Then somehow, through her panic, she realized that she might drown him, might drown them both, and stopped struggling, letting herself be towed. Again her head broke the surface.

Through her choking and coughing, she recognized Cyncaidh. A bank eddy carried them into the floodplain backwater, and his feet touched bottom. Woofing for air, he towed her heavily toward the high bank behind it. A few yards farther, he reached the submerged slope of a natural levee formed by the sediments and back currents of past floods. Varia felt her own feet touch then, and the two of them crawled onto its top, to kneel half out of the water.

Lungs heaving, eyes wide, they stared at each other, tunics stuck to them, Cyncaidh's hair plastered to his skull. After a minute he spoke: "God, Varia! What a terrible thing to do! What a terrible terrible thing to do! Never do anything like that again!"

Shortly they got to their feet and waded staggering toward high ground. A few steps took them off the back of the levee, where they found she could still wade, the water to her armpits. Soon they were at the high bank, sprawling on its slope, Cyncaidh still wearing his boots. A voice reached them now. Above the highbank was a pasture, and a soldier trotted his horse along its edge, calling for his commander.

"Here!" Cyncaidh shouted hoarsely, then helped Varia to her feet and up the bank. As they stumbled out of the woods, the soldier saw them and trotted his horse over. "Thank God, General!" he said dismounting. Cyncaidh leaned on the horse for a long moment, clinging to the saddle, while Varia sank to the ground. Finally he put a foot in the stirrup and raised himself heavily onto the horse, then beckoned. "Help her," he said. The half-ylf helped Varia to her feet, then laced his fingers, making a step for her, and boosted her up behind Cyncaidh.

"I'll follow on foot, sir," he said. "It won't take me long at all."

"Thank you, Sergeant," Cyncaidh answered heavily, and nudging the horse with his heels, started for the bridge.

No one talked when they got back. Without changing into dry clothes, Cyncaidh and Varia got on their own horses, and when the soldier on foot got back, the column started west again. They didn't stop till they came to a substantial village. At the common, Cyncaidh pulled his party off into its open, parklike woods. A soldier dug his commander's gear bag from a pack, while Hermiss dug out Varia's from another. Then Caerith accompanied the two of them to the nearby chairman's house, recognizable by the pennant on its roof, and knocked at the door. Another soldier had followed, carrying the bags.

Seeing imperial uniforms, the chairman's wife let them in, got towels, and led them to rooms where they could change. When she was dressed again, Varia walked barefoot into the hall, where Cyncaidh waited alone. He put his arms around her, clasping her tightly. "Promise you won't do anything like that again," he whispered, then held her at arms length. "What have I done that you fear me so?"

"Fear you?"

"Enough to try killing yourself."

She shook her head. "I wasn't trying to kill myself."

He gawped. "What, then?"

"I was trying to get back to my husband. I thought I could find a boat. Hoped I could."

He stared, his face slack. His emotion, it seemed to her, was dismay. After a moment he shook his head. "Come," he said tiredly. "There'll be an inn here. The men need to eat."

It didn't rain for several days, and they made good time. Then they turned north again, and a few days later reached the border with the empire itself. Once again the country changed. The main roads all were graveled and ditched now, and frequent mansions showed the existence of a sizeable upper class. With the mansions were compounds, whose cabins could hardly have more than three rooms plus loft, but even they had fruit trees, and small gardens where bean and pea vines climbed frames, while gourd vines climbed the walls.

At the first military post, the quartermaster fitted Varia with a pair of field uniforms. And a female soldier, an ylvin corporal, replaced Hermiss, who'd be sent back to Fort Ternass and the colonel's daughter. Physically, Corporal Keoth could be considered gifted, but personality-wise she was stiff, a stick. She wore her hair in a military bob; its typical ylvin black shone from a good diet and much brushing.

They rested there a day, replaced worn equipment and their whole complement of horses. When the column was ready to leave, Hermiss and Varia embraced. "I don't suppose you'll write to me," Hermiss said.

"Why not?"

"Because-because you're wiser than me, and I'm not ylvin or a Sister or anything."

"I'll write if I can."

"I-hope you'll be happy. You should be. I mean, you ought to be. You deserve to be."

"Everyone deserves to be," Varia answered, then wondered. Do they, really? Does Idri? Sarkia? Corgan? What would it have taken to make Xader happy? Let him hump every good-looking woman he saw, probably, whether she wanted to or not.

"I'll write to you, Varia, I promise. And you won't have to write back unless you feel like it."

"Thank you, Hermy. I'll feel like it, but…" Varia shrugged. "Who knows what will happen when I get where they're taking me?" She paused, feeling that was a poor note to end their goodbye on. "I'll be glad to get your letters," she finished.

They hugged again. Corporal Keoth stood waiting with a scowl of disapproval. Varia couldn't be sure whether it was for the merely human Hermiss or the evil Sister. Both, she decided. She turned, went to her horse, and climbed into the saddle; Cyncaidh gave the command, and the column moved out. As they turned onto the road, Varia looked back. Hermiss still waved, and briefly Varia waved back before looking ahead.

So much for not knowing how to relate, she told herself. And wondered briefly whether she'd ever see either of her remaining children again. Curtis's children. Or know them if she did. Or whether they'd care; they'd probably scorn her for deserting the Sisterhood. Idri would make sure they knew.

Idri. Now she knew who Corporal Keoth reminded her of.

Cyncaidh stayed away from her, but she was aware that he watched her now and then, as if to see how she was doing. Keoth wasn't overtly rude, but clearly she disapproved of Varia. Cyncaidh noticed too. After three days, he left the corporal off at a district seat, at the office of the imperial representative, with a written order to have her returned to her base. And again it was Caerith who rode beside Varia.

They traveled till she was tired of riding and inns and an unchanging countryside. Tired even of Caerith, for they'd run out of things they were willing to talk about. But after ten days the country began to change. Forest increased while farmland diminished. From time to time they passed open bogs, often with a small lake in the middle. Lakes were conspicuous in the landscape, and some of the trees were unfamiliar, evergreens of several kinds, some dark and pointed. The golden-barked birches she'd come to know so well in the mountains, returned, joined by much smaller birches whose bark was white as chalk.

After some days of this, with the forest more and more evergreen, they entered a district of large hills ahead. Not mountains, but hills higher than she'd seen since Cyncaidh had brought her out of the Granite Range.

They spent three days crossing them, then came out on level land again, with forests of a pine taller and more graceful than she'd ever seen. And sometimes of other pines, much smaller and with no blue to their greenness, their stands often very dense, with slender trunks and narrow crowns. She wouldn't have thought to find such level land so beautiful. Here too they passed bogs again, moss bogs, Cyncaidh said, though she could see grasses and sedges growing thickly in them, and often knee-high bushes. Even the bogs were aesthetic in their way, though she might not have thought so if the mosquitoes and horse flies and deer flies could have penetrated the spells that she and the others cast against them.

One of the inns they stopped at faced a lovely lake, with a view framed by exceptional pines, thick-boled as old tuliptrees, and even taller. When she'd finished supper, Varia crossed the trail and sat down on a fallen tree to admire the sight. Shortly, Cyncaidh came and sat by her.

"You like this part of the world, I think," he said smiling.

"I do. It's very beautiful."

"It-suits you nicely. I'm glad I could show you to each other."

She smiled back at him. "You're a nice man, Cyncaidh. If I have to be someone's prisoner, I'm fortunate it's you."

He wanted to smile back, and suppressed it. Guilty conscience, she thought. It occurred to her then that she might have erred, in the stable in the rain storm, erred in thinking he was taking her north simply because he wanted her. That the interrogation he'd spoken of was only an excuse, that he'd never help her to Ferny Cove after she'd been questioned. Perhaps he would. Perhaps.

Half turning, she faced him. "It's true, you know. You are nice. You've never exercised your advantage over me. You were as gentle as you could have been, back in the Rude Lands, even when I attacked you." She paused, looking back in time. "You provided me with Hermiss when I needed someone like her." Again she paused, this time to laugh. "And rid me of Corporal Keoth without my asking."

She lay her hand on his arm. "You even saved my life."

He stood up, and she stood with him. "I couldn't not have," he said, suddenly flustered. "You-are important to me. Personally. You've known since that night in the stable." He paused. "And you've never exercised your advantage over me, either. You're not the only one who's vulnerable, you know."

Then he turned and strode away, straight-backed but embarrassed, Varia watching him go.

Four days brought them to hills again, high and rocky. The forest here was varied, but with none of the familiar, more southerly trees. The large pines were present in scattered groups, among various smaller evergreens and white-barked birches, and other pale-barked trees whose leaves fluttered prettily in the faintest breeze. As they approached a rock outcrop, she saw a jaguar lying on it, gazing fearlessly at them. As far as she could tell, Cyncaidh cast no protective spell, so she withheld her own.

The cat seemed definitely larger than the jaguars she'd once seen in a menagerie. The horses rolled their eyes and quick-stepped nervously, while their ylvin masters soothed them.

The whole column slowed, watching the animal. When they were past, Varia quickened her horse's pace, pulling up beside Cyncaidh. "It was beautiful," she said. "In the south, I doubt you'd ever see one so close."

He grinned. He'd been smiling more lately; she'd decided he must be getting close to home. "Wait till you see one in winter," he said. "Their coat gets longer, soft and thick, and turns almost white. A pale ice blue, actually, with blue-gray rosettes."

See one in winter? The words triggered anxiety. "How will I come to see one in winter?" she asked.

He hadn't noticed the change in her aura. That required attention, and his was on his thoughts. "We have a place, my family, where we-" He stopped. "You may not have the word for them in the Rude Lands. We fasten long slender boards on our feet, and run on them across the snow. Which up here covers the ground for about half the year."

"They have them on Farside," Varia said. "In my husband's language they're called skis."

His smiled faded. "Well, then," he said, "you know what I mean." He continued with less enthusiasm. "There are several of them there, the Great Cats, and we've developed a sort of mutual trust. We track one or another of them sometimes, to observe them, and sometimes they track us. They neither flee nor offer to attack, though ambush is their favored hunting strategy."

She couldn't tell him she'd love to see one. He might infer an interest in staying. Introverted, she said something vague and dropped back to where Caerith rode. She knew what had killed Cyncaidh's enthusiasm: she'd referred to her husband. While her wonder over the jaguar had died when he'd implied she'd still be with him in the winter. We need to thrash this out, she thought. But not yet. She wouldn't be able to stand it if he said she couldn't go back. Or even if he equivocated.

The next afternoon they topped a final ridge that looked across forest to the Great Northern Sea. Cyncaidh stopped, the rest of the party stopping too, and Varia rode up to sit beside him. She liked his grin; it made him look boyish. "That's it," he said pointing. "I've sailed it-including by ice sloop-and skied and skated on it. Everything but swim in it."

"You haven't swum in it?"

He shook his head. "It's too cold. You wouldn't last a minute. Well maybe a minute, but certainly not ten. Probably not five." He pointed northwestward. "My home is off there. Aaerodh Manor. We'll stay in Cyncaidh Harbor tonight, at an inn, and be home about midday tomorrow.

"I love it there. When I speak of home, that's where I mean. That was home even during my twelve years at Duinarog. Though it was about three weeks away by ship, up rivers and across both the Middle and Northern Seas."

The Middle Sea. I never even heard of it before, she thought. Nor of Duinarog or the Northern Sea, until Caerith mentioned them. Varia realized again how limited the teaching was at the Cloister. She knew far more about the geography of Farside than about her own world, or even her own continent.

Cyncaidh grinned down at her. "You'll love it too," he said. "It's made for you. It's beautiful."

The inn was a surprise to Varia. When Cyncaidh got down from his horse, a stable boy, a middle-aged human, took the reins grinning. "Good to see you again, Your Excellency," he said. His voice was respectful, but not at all obsequious. Cyncaidh had the man's name ready to his tongue: "It's good to see you, Joleth," he answered. It occurred to Varia then that the inn might be owned by Cyncaidh's family.

It seemed to bustle when they entered. The house staff, mostly ylvin, treated Cyncaidh like royalty. From their auras, they were honestly pleased to see him, and Cyncaidh, in his turn, was friendly-not overly familiar but not at all aloof. The place was almost crowded; the manager told Cyncaidh that a cruise ship had arrived that day.

A small dining room, reserved for special parties, was set up for him and his soldiers. At supper he seated Varia beside him, and the ylvin potboy's treatment of her went almost beyond courtesy, despite her road-worn uniform. In fact, the entire staff was friendly, and seemed to have been expecting her. It introverted her a bit.

While they ate dessert, Cyncaidh leaned toward her. "Stay near me after supper," he murmured.

Afterward the soldiers dispersed, some to sit in a common room for drinks and conversation, while others left to walk around. Apparently none had been in Cyncaidh Harbor before. After speaking briefly with the manager, Cyncaidh took Varia's arm, and together they climbed a flight of interior stairs to a hall, then down it to a large room with a fireplace and upholstered chairs. And a bed, which sent a brief twinge of unease through her.

Her glance moved to the flames dancing in the fireplace, then to the balcony. She walked past Cyncaidh and out onto it. It was flanked by what he'd told her on the trail were spruces, and seemed higher than a second story because the inn was built on a low rocky bluff. Before her lay a bay, with a rocky point on the west that extended well into the lake. Not a lake, she told herself. A sea. A blue, sweet-water sea. There were docks and a trio of schooners, one of them a long four-master, sleek and clean, painted a strong sky blue. The cruise ship, she supposed.

Cyncaidh stepped out beside her, and their arms touched. She was very conscious of his nearness and size. "Do you find it beautiful?" he asked. He wasn't smiling now, she knew without looking.

He's hung his boyish mood in the closet, she thought. It was a mood she liked, when he showed it, but in her experience it was fragile. She wondered what he'd be serious about this evening. "Very beautiful," she said.

"It seems to me you've been happy these last days."

"I have. More than any time since I was kidnapped and brought back to Yuulith."

As she said it, she remembered the day of her arrival at the new Cloister. She'd bathed, eaten with clone mates, and spent the evening walking and talking with Liiset. It had been a beautiful half day, half a day of blind and foolish optimism.

"I'm glad it pleases you," Cyncaidh said. "I love you, you know."

"I thought perhaps you did." She turned to him, to say more, to tell him that she loved Curtis Macurdy, but his arms slipped around her, and his lips lowered to hers. His kiss was not forceful but gentle, lingering. She was passive, neither returning nor resisting. He stepped back, hands on her arms, his face sober, his aura showing not arousal but love.

"I've wanted to do that-and tell you that-almost since we rescued you. If rescue is the word. And told myself I mustn't; that it wouldn't be fair. Perhaps it isn't now, either, but it seemed necessary that you know."

She stared at him, her fingertips on the lips he'd kissed.

"Tomorrow we'll be at Aaerodh Manor," he went on, "and you'll learn things there. You needed to know this first, know it with certainty." He took a deep breath and half turned, offering his arm. "Let me take you to the steward. You haven't seen your room yet."

He left her with the steward, a robust ylf whose face and aura reflected an even-tempered competence. Instead of assigning a page to guide her, he took her up himself, let her in, then gave her the key and left. The room was a duplicate of the other, with its own balcony facing the lake, and its own fireplace. A fire had been set and lit for her, and her bag lay on a high bench next to the bed. A robe and nightgown hung from a rod. There was a basket on the table, with cheese and bread, and a knife for slicing. A bottle of wine stood beside it.

The sun was low, its light golden on the trees along the water's edge. She stood on the balcony watching it set, saying nothing, almost thinking nothing. Then turned back the covers on her bed, donned the nightgown, and lay down. Thoughts came to her, of being kissed by Cyncaidh, and in them he didn't step away from her, but kept kissing her, murmuring his love while they undressed each other and lay down together.

With a mental jerk, she pushed the images away and stared dismayed at the ceiling. What are you doing? she asked herself. And answered that it was only fantasy. Dangerous fantasy, she replied. This man loves you, wants you. Controls you. If you weaken, he'll have you. You'll never get away.

"Then dream of Curtis," she murmured aloud. "Of sweet Curtis, who was so good, so-innocent." She chuckled. "And had such marvelous staying power."

But this far from Ferny Cove or Oz, to daydream of Curtis was to abrade old wounds. She drank half the wine before she slept.

15: Mariil