The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [75]
The soldiers, they searched for many a year. They ripped down the mountains and tore up the trees, But never they found what they never could hear, That dashing young man on the wind-bearing skis.
“Dashing Young Man”
Sarronnese—Anonymous
XLII
FROM BENEATH THE overhang, Creslin studies the unnaturally clear sky to the south. There, a pair of vulcrows circle, spiraling outward from where the wizards’ road drills its way through the Easthorns.
From where did he receive the strength and the courage to swim the torrent that carried him from the White road guards? Did the healer’s hands help break the block on his memories? Or was it someone or something else? Whatever the cause, he has escaped the White Wizards for now. He will not escape again, not alive, and that means he cannot be caught again.
Toward the east circles yet another pair of the sharp-eyed predators. And he has felt the disruptions of the winds and the skies, the storms being shunted to the east and west. With an indrawn breath, he rests under the rocks, his eyes taking in the thin line of rushing water: another stream that may lead him eastward.
Inside his skull, memories twist like the winds, for he is two people at the same time—silver-top and Creslin—and each remembers a different yesterday. One remembers the road crew; the other remembers the glittering white stones of Fairhaven and a guitarist who could barely reach the silver notes, and only in a well-shielded tavern.
Music . . . why don’t they like it? The questions are all too many, the answers too few. So who are you?
He is a man. A man who can sense the music, and the order behind the music. A man who can wield bow and blade better than all but a few. A man who can grasp the winds and bend them to his wishes. A man who knows little of life apart from the Roof of the World, and even less of women, for all that he has been raised around them. A man who has no idea of his destiny.
Unbidden, another set of words drops into his thoughts: “You can run to your destiny, but not from it.”
But what is his destiny? Neither musician, nor soldier, nor student—what is his role? Why do white birds and vulcrows circle above, searching for him? Such questions will not help him to escape from the wizards. Or to find food.
In the cloudless sky, the vulcrows have begun to circle farther to the north, closer to his cover. His heel twinges, but outside of keeping the sore clean, he does not know what else he can do. Yet, besides tending to the infection, the healer had touched the soreness and somehow hastened the healing. Creslin recalls her hands on his foot, and then on his forehead.
But . . . who? Why? Someone else opposes the White Wizards, enough to help him without saying why and to give him a set of directions, even though such actions could have been exceedingly dangerous. Yet the healer is not the shadowy Megaera.
He slumps back under the overhang, trying to sort out his confusion and to plan his next moves. At least the weather is bearable. There will be little enough to glean from this land, even though it is nearing harvest in Certis and Sarronnyn, and he has not even a knife, only a sleeveless tunic, faded trousers, and road boots. Not even a belt.
How can he escape the White Wizards? Any attempt to seize the winds will draw them to him. He studies the rocky slope below, the scattered pines and the scrub oak, then laughs harshly.
Patience. That is all he needs, that and the willingness to eat anything that is edible as he makes his way through the coming nights toward the plains of Certis. One way or another, he must find his way to Montgren.
He takes a deep breath, then another, and tries to relax until darkness comes, the time when the vulcrows cannot see quite so well.
XLIII
THE STOOPED FIGURE trudges, shuffles, and occasionally hobbles along the farm road. The rags that cover him are relatively clean. A cloth patch covers one eye, and a stout, if bent, walking stick rests in one square-fingered hand. Creslin asks himself again why it is taking so much longer to cross the plains