Fleeing Peace by Sherwood Smith

Author:Sherwood Smith [Smith, Sherwood]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9781611380545
Publisher: Book View Cafe
Published: 2011-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-four

Next morning they rode southeast through huge mist-shrouded redwoods as cold mist grayed the world.

Senrid figured they’d been transported somehow to the northern finger of the extensive Silver Lake. How, he didn’t know. When they woke, they were still lying on rugs in a huge cavern, and the cavern looked more or less the same—though the wall paintings seemed to be stylized lizard and chameleon shapes, not birds, knotted together with what looked like wheat and wen stalks.

A good breakfast and the gift of rain-repelling, warm green dawn-singer cloaks awaited them, and from the cave they rode on two white horses who needed no guidance. And here they discovered redwoods, rather than the fir, oak, and hickory they’d been riding through before.

Liere rode alone. From the way she gazed sightlessly ahead, her body stiff and her lips moving, Senrid guessed that she was practicing whatever spells she had to perform. He also guessed that she was feeling the effect of the day before’s long ride—feeling it and determinedly ignoring what she couldn’t help. When Senrid mounted his horse, his leg muscles had protested for a short time. Despite the months of not riding, old habits made him adjust quickly.

But a glance over his shoulder at poor little Devon made it clear that she, like Liere, was no rider. Terror and pain blanched her narrow face and drew her lips into a thin, white line. Her arms were locked around Senrid’s waist again, and she clung with desperate strength.

She reminded him just a little of Ndand, his cousin. Tdanerend was a rotten guardian and a bad king, but even worse were his skills as a parent. He hadn’t quite dared to try magic experiments on Senrid, but nothing had stopped him from experimenting with magic for mind control on Ndand, which had pretty much made a mess of her. She was also the only companion Senrid had been permitted, and so he’d gotten adept at diverting desperately frightened and unhappy small girls.

“See that rock over there?” he began.

“Yes?” A quick look. “What’s wrong?” Devon’s voice was high and trembly.

“Hiding behind it I saw a toad-shaped old geezer with six purple noses—”

She gasped, and then giggled.

“—because he lost a wager with a very cranky old sorcerer, who . . .” Stories were as easy to spin out as lies—which, of course, they were. Lies had always been stories, little ones lived in briefly, in order to escape from real life if only for a short time.

And so he kept his story going as the horses paced steadily through the blue-green shadows of the woodland. They rode through the entire day, past vast ferny canopies, occasional brilliant splashes of late-season wildflowers lighting the misty green world, for this far north, autumn had set in some time ago. The air was so good that breathing it made a person feel a little drunk. After a time Devon fell asleep again, leaning against Senrid, her death-grip relaxing at last. He had to hold her spindly little wrists to keep her on the horse.

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