Pilgrim. Sara Douglass
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man will be able to carry enough on his horse to provide them both with shade, and yet not have it prove too heavy a burden.”
They walked in silence for a while as they moved back towards the campsite. Leagh, as so many “Plains-Dwellers” before her, was overawed by the forest, especially by the sense of light and space and music within it.
“I do not envy you your trek,” Layon eventually said softly. She did not look at Leagh.
“I fear it,” Leagh admitted, equally as softly. “Not only the march west, but what we will find on the plains, and in Carlon itself. I, as Zared and every man with us who has a family and loved ones left behind, worry each moment we are awake about their fate. And at night our dreams …”
Layon looked about her, lifting her eyes to study the forest canopy so far overhead.
“The forest remains a haven,” she said. “But for how long? The Demons grow stronger each day … and even when relatively weak they still managed the murder of Shra.”
Leagh’s eyes filled with tears at the grief in Layon’s voice. “We will prevail —”
Layon turned to her, anger in her face and voice. “We will what? Prevail? And at what expense? This Drago tells us that we must watch Tencendor be turned into a complete wasteland. What does that mean? The destruction of the forest?” Layon waved a hand about her. “That this should burn? I cannot believe that!”
“We must all endure —” Leagh began.
But Layon now let the Avar’s well-tended harvest of bitterness swell to the surface and would not let Leagh finish. “You Acharites know nothing of endurance,” she said. “Nothing.”
After that there was not much to be said. They walked in silence back to the camp, and then separated, Layon to one of the groups of Acharite men under the instruction of an Avar weaver, Leagh back to her husband.
Zared was standing in their personal camp, a bridle hanging from his hands. His face was set in a frown as his fingers struggled with a particularly stiff buckle, and he cursed and dropped the bridle as his fingers slipped one more time.
“You are too impatient,” Leagh said, and bent to retrieve the bridle. “Look, work it gently, so, and … lo! The strap slips through easily.”
Zared grinned wryly, and then noticed Leagh’s face. “What’s wrong?”
She hesitated, then threw the bridle down on top of a pile of tack and stepped into the protective circle of his arms. “I am afraid.”
“So am I,” he said. “Leagh?”
“Yes?”
“I want you to stay within the forest. Who knows what we will encounter —”
“No.”
“Leagh —”
“No!” She raised her face to his. “Twice no, Zared. First a no because I refuse to let my husband ride off without me — and you know what will happen if you do that.”
Zared grimaced, remembering how he’d left Leagh in charge of Carlon, only to have her ride off to Caelum’s camp.
“And a no because, as you taught me, I have a duty to my people. I am not only Leagh. I am Queen Leagh, and I, as you, have a people to put before my personal desires and wants.”
Zared grinned down into her face, unable to be cross with her. “I shall remind you of that next time you start to whisper your personal desires and wants into my ear late at night.”
She returned his smile, then leaned in close against him, resting her cheek against his chest.
“But, for my sake,” he whispered into her hair, “keep safe. Keep safe.”
“And you,” she said. “And you.”
They stood and held each other, both silent.
Once the fibrous bark of the goat tree had been stripped, separated and then combed — a process that took the best part of a week — then every man was given the task of weaving his own shelter.
Some took to the work better than others. Many among the army were sons of craftsmen, or were craftsmen themselves, and they quickly sat down to the job, whistling as the fine fibres spun through their fingers.
Others needed persuasion … and much instruction. The Avar women, now numbering almost fifty, moved among the army, bending over shoulders, laughing and scolding, and correcting fumbling fingers. Zared, Herme and Theod sat in a circle, with Leagh hovering on the outer amused that the highest nobility of Achar could use man-welded weapons to destroy with ease, and yet could not use the fingers they’d been born with to create.
“I wish I had a court painter with me now!” she said, amongst her laughter, “so he could record this scene for posterity.”
All three men looked up from the knotted and uneven weave in their laps and scowled at her, but their eyes danced with merriment also.
“One day,” Zared said, “I am going to see how well you wield a sword.”
“Oh, my dear,” she said, and winked at him. “Not half as well as you do, I am sure.”
All three men laughed, and Zared shook his head slightly as he looked back to where he’d managed to knot his left thumb between four strands of fibre.
Still others, although few in number, bent to the task of weaving their shade with deep resentment. Of them all, Askam harboured the deepest bitterness. Even if every man within the camp, commanders and nobles among them, were, like he, bent to the task of weaving, it did not help Askam’s sense of self-worth. He’d effectively lost all he had ever commanded, and the man who had stolen it from him, now had him sitting cross-legged in a forest assisting to weave a damned shade-cloth!
“Wait,” he murmured so that none about him could hear.
“Wait.”
D uring the mid-afternoon of their third day out of the Silent Woman Woods, Zenith and StarDrifter stopped to exchange news for malfari bread and honeyed malayam fruit with a band of Avar, then flew until the dusk penetrated the forest canpoy and flight was no longer enjoyable, let alone safe.
“How far do you think we have come?” Zenith asked StarDrifter as they cleared a space beneath a whalebone tree and sat down.
He glanced about him, wincing as a twig stabbed into his back, and readjusting his position slightly to accommodate it. Then he pointed to a shrub huddling close to the small stream that ran eastwards.
“See that kianet shrub? They only grow near the Bogle Marsh. So we have not done badly for three days’ journey.”
Zenith nodded, and handed StarDrifter his share of the honeyed malayam on a thick slice of malfari. A fair distance indeed, but if they’d been able to fly direct to the Minaret Peaks they would only have another day’s travel, if that. Forced to keep to the sheltering forests, they were swinging in a great arc to the east. Tomorrow, perhaps, they could swing back west.
“I have a hankering to spend tomorrow night in Arcen,” StarDrifter said as he broke away some of the fruit and ate it.
Zenith glanced at him sharply. “Why? We can overfly it and continue straight on. There’s no point —”
“Zenith, what difference will a half-day make?” StarDrifter said around his mouthful. “That’s all we’d lose, and I confess myself tired of these beds of pine needles and sharp-elbowed twigs.”
Zenith grinned and tore herself off a slice of malfari. Aha! StarDrifter was missing his comforts! It seemed an age since they’d been on the Island of Mist and Memory. StarDrifter