The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [181]
Its characteristic…
“STEPHEN,” Pale said. “Are you there?”
“Yes,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Your eyes had gone glassy, and the way down is steep. Shall I take your hand again?”
“Ah, no, thank you. I think I can manage.”
He concentrated now on the narrow trail. Earlier a cloud had come along and engulfed them, an odd experience for a boy from the low country. Now they were descending out of it into a small upland valley.
Roughly rectangular sheep pens came into view, built of piled stone. They attested to the local livelihood, as did the sheep themselves. A crooked line of smoke drifted up from the only obvious human habitation, a sod-roofed dwelling with a couple of small outbuildings.
“What’s that smell?” Stephen asked, wrinkling his nose.
“Oh, you’d better get used to that,” she said.
The shepherd was a young man with black hair, dark eyes, and long, lean limbs. He regarded Stephen with undisguised suspicion and Sister Pale with delight, clapping her in a tight hug and kissing her cheek. Stephen found he didn’t care for that at all.
He liked it even less when they started speaking in a language quite unfamiliar to him. It wasn’t the fractured dialect of Almannish he’d heard back in Demsted or likely any related language. He thought it was probably a Vhilatautan dialect, but he’d experienced those only as written languages, never spoken, and this was much changed from the millennia-old tongues he’d studied.
For the first time he found himself more annoyed than intrigued by an encounter with a speech unknown to him. What were they talking about, those two? Why was she laughing? And what was that peculiar, perhaps disdainful look the fellow was giving him?
After what seemed like far too much of that, the man finally offered Stephen his hand.
“I am Pernho,” he said. “I help you and Zemlé. Can count on me. Ah, you going where?”
Stephen stole a glance at Pale—Zemlé? In their haste to escape it was a question they had never touched upon. He tried to keep his face neutral, but clearly he wasn’t good at that sort of thing because she caught his suspicion immediately.
“I already know it’s north,” she said. “Everyone knows that. But now you have to choose: northeast, northwest, or whatever.” She nodded toward Pernho. “If you trust me, you have to trust him.”
“Yes, that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Stephen said.
Sister Pale shrugged and lifted her hands as a sign of surrender.
Stephen rolled his eyes.
“Clearly I have no choice,” he continued. With Ehan and Henne, he might have found his way across this tumult of mountains, but without them it seemed impossible.
“I love a confident man,” Sister Pale said wryly. “So where are we off to?”
“A mountain,” Stephen said. “I don’t know what it’s called now. ‘Velnoiragana’ was its name two thousand years ago. I think now it might be known as ‘eslief vendve,’ or ‘Slivendy.’ ”
“Xal Slevendy,” Pernho mused. “But we also call it Ranhan, ‘The Horn.’ That’s not so far, as the eagle goes. But way is—” He frowned and made a twisting motion with his hands. “Nhredhe. No horses. You’ll need kalboks.”
“Kalboks?” Stephen asked.
“You asked about the smell,” Sister Pale said. “You’re about to find out what makes it.”
Kalbok: As unlikely as any creature in a child’s bestiary, the kalbok seems kindred to the sheep or goat, having the same lens-shaped horizontal pupils, back-curving horns, and general woolly appearance. It stands, however, at the shoulder the size of a small horse and is muscled like one, creating an oddly massive appearance that is, however, balanced on legs that seem by comparison rather flimsy.
The inhabitants of the Bairghs favor them over horses for mountain routes, owing to their native nimbleness on rocks