Snare by Katharine Kerr

Author:Katharine Kerr [Kerr, Katharine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780007387229
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-06-30T23:02:22+00:00

Before they left Leen, Ammadin insisted they take their horses to a blacksmith to have them freshly shod. Neither of them knew what the roads ahead were like. The road that ran north from Leen was bad enough, an ancient, dead-straight stripe of crumbling grey sponge through the fields and villages. No one actually travelled on it; on each side ran lanes of hard-packed dirt, where the farmers drove their wagons and travellers rode their horses or walked, pulling goods behind them in two-wheeled wicker carts.

By then the summer season had arrived, hot and parched, when the pale sun turned merciless and fended off all rain. Out in the fields water gleamed in irrigation ditches. Whenever they crossed a bridge, Zayn saw a variety of contraptions – wheels lined with buckets, wooden sluices, pumps – sucking or lifting the precious water out of the river below and delivering it to the gold and scarlet fields. Ammadin insisted on stopping often to rest and water the horses. Zayn never objected, even though he knew that Warkannan was gaining ground, that he would be pushing his men and mounts both now that he knew one of the Chosen was heading for Jezro Khan.

During that ride north Zayn took his love affair with Ammadin like a drug. His feeling for her – his honest affection, his gratitude, the sexual pleasure they shared – drowned his thoughts and changed his memories of the Chosen, of Kazrajistan, even of his days in the border cavalry, into stories he’d once heard someone tell. Those events no longer mattered, as long as he and Ammadin could ride together during the sun-drenched days and lie down together at night.

But all too soon they crossed the border into the Canton of Dordan, and another day’s ride brought them to the little town of Lasko, a scatter of white houses tucked among the gaudy fields and shaded by ancient oaks. There was no hohte, but they did find a wine shop, a pleasant place with a true-wood floor, tables and chairs woven from maroon rushes, and a long bar, also of true-wood, that stood before a wall covered with pottery jars and glass bottles, all tipped onto their sides in elaborate wicker racks. The proprietor, a stout woman wearing a heavy white apron over her smock and trousers, told them that she had a small barn out in back.

‘You can sleep in the hay loft for a couple of vrans,’ she said. ‘Not much hay up there, though, and don’t you go starting any fires.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Zayn said. ‘It’s too hot for that.’

‘You’re right, aren’t you? Go get your horses in out of the sun.’

Zayn tended the horses while Ammadin disappeared round back of the barn – scanning, he assumed – and when she returned she confirmed his assumption.

‘Warkannan is right at the edge of my crystal’s range,’ she said. ‘That means he’s a good long way ahead.’

‘Well, not much I can do about that,’ Zayn said.

‘I know. You don’t look particularly worried.

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