The Steerswoman's Road by Rosemary Kirstein

Author:Rosemary Kirstein [Kirstein, Rosemary]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780345461056
Google: 6lMAAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0345461053
Goodreads: 793296
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2003-07-02T07:00:00+00:00

9

Rowan awoke to heavy, musty air, the sour odor of wet fur, and the sound of rain. Shifting on her bedroll, she found that someone had replaced her sodden cloak, which she had been using as a blanket, with a heavy felt cover, thick enough to be a rug. She had been unaware of the exchange.

“Bel?” Nothing was visible in the sealed air of the tent; the grayness was just one shade above black, and the dark seemed less an absence of light than an intrinsic feature of the smell.

Rowan shoved the cover aside and cast about with one hand, searching for her pack. Someone, probably Bel, had laid her sword alongside her bedding. The steerswoman considered, then stood to strap it on, rising carefully, uncertain of the available headroom.

She paused and listened. There was no sound but hers in the tent, no breathing but her own. Outside, amid the pattering hiss, she heard movement, muffled voices. She groped her way along the tent wall and suddenly found a flap and threw it back.

Brilliant sunlight struck her with an almost physical force, and she drew back, one arm thrown up against the glare. She had been fooled by the sound: there was no rain, and every vestige of cloud and mist had vanished. The brightness was too much for her sleep-bleared eyes. Above and below the shield of her arm, she caught only glimpses of wild red ground and painful blue sky.

Someone brushed by, then turned back and abruptly fingered the loose edge of Rowan’s blouse. “This is filthy. I’ll get you another,” a female voice said, and then the woman was gone.

“Thank you,” Rowan replied in her general direction. She wiped at her tearing eyes with her sleeve and tried to see the world. Redgrass.

Down the hills and up them, over ridges and out to the edge of sight, was a single sweeping carpet of redgrass, rippling in the steady south wind. The grass had already been dried by the morning sun, and its natural brilliance had returned; colors trembled across the land as each individual blade twisted and bent, now showing a brown side, now a bright red. It was difficult to focus clearly on the shifting and flashing; the earth looked feverish, as if Rowan were delirious but unable to decide on the particular hue of her hallucination. Driven by the wind, the hollow reeds tapped against each other, rough blades rustling, setting up a rattling hiss that Rowan had mistaken for the sound of rain.

In front and beyond, hills ranged, broken by two staggered ridges, then falling faintly lower as they reached out toward the horizon. A far lake sparkled silver in the distance, edged with looming dark shapes—trees, Rowan assumed, blinking with the effort of seeing past the grass. Then she corrected herself. There were no trees in the Outskirts, and this, finally and surely, was true and pure Outskirts.

The air held a scent, like cinnamon and sour milk, over the freshness of departed rain. The tent beside Rowan wafted up a miasma of must and goat.

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