The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [79]
“Are you worried about the road guards finding us?” asks the woman with him. In the early morning chill that will soon be replaced by the warmth of the harvest season, she wears a faded green cloak thrown back over her shoulders. Her mount is a light-gray mare.
“No.”
“Are you still worried about his escape?”
“It’s not his escape. It’s that.” He points toward the storm on the horizon. “Do you know how high that has to be for us to see it? Do you have any idea of how much power he has? There’s likely to be cold rain over most of Certis and Montgren for days yet.”
“I said he was bright.”
“Lydya, do you have any idea . . .” His tone is gentle.
“Klerris, you’re going to have to stop taking the weight of the world on your shoulders. I can tell you that Creslin doesn’t like playing with his abilities. If he created that storm, then he had a real need for it.”
“That’s only part of the worry. Not only could he destroy half of the world’s climate, but none of the Whites will believe an untrained and unknown Black wields that kind of power.”
“So?” She urges the horse forward alongside the Black Wizard.
“So Jenred will blame it on us, as well as blame us for Creslin’s escape.”
“That’s why you put the road guards to sleep and burned the house. You told me that already. Jenred wants to blame you for something anyway.”
“Too bad we had to use oil.” Klerris shrugs as he looks northward again. “Better they think it’s our doing than a Black conspiracy. Jenred would like nothing more than to have an excuse to turn on all the Blacks.”
“Isn’t that coming?”
“Sooner or later, but we really don’t have any good defenses.”
“Creslin does, clearly.”
Klerris snorts. “He doesn’t even know he’s a Black, and he’s tied to a Gray who thinks she’s a White.”
“Are you sure about that lifelink?”
“You told me.”
They ride silently for a time.
“What next?” the healer asks.
“I’ll have to do what I can with Creslin. You . . . Westwind, I think.”
She shivers. “I hate the cold.”
“I’m not exactly enthused about dealing with Creslin and Megaera. Do you want to try that?”
“I’ll take the Marshall, thank you.” She adds, “Cold or no cold.”
XLVIII
CRESLIN SHOULD NOT be up, but he is tired of lying in the small cottage. Healing the sheep had been a mistake, with himself scarcely healed and certainly not knowing what he was doing.
Slowly he swings his feet off the cot and sits up, looking toward the half-open window opposite the fireplace. The clear blue-green of the sky indicates that it is mid-afternoon, or later. He pulls on the shapeless trousers and heavy woolen shirt he has borrowed from the herder. Making his way outside, he heads to the fence that keeps the sheep out of the gardens.
He rests his right foot on the lower rail of the fence and crosses his arms on the topmost rail. His eyes take in the damp and heavy grass of the fall, grass with more than mere traces of brown, and the cream-colored, black-faced sheep that graze without noticing him.
To the west—beyond the rolling hills, beyond the fertile fields of Certis and the rivers that flood them before running to the Northern Ocean—lie the Easthorns, and the wizard’s road that will allow the High Wizard to rule all of Candar, or at least all of Candar that lies east of the Westhorns.
“Your honor . . .”
Creslin wishes that the herders would not accord him rank. Certainly he has never claimed it, and he has only done what he could to help out while recovering from his travels and travails. In his weakened state, that has been little enough: sensing a diseased sheep or two, and actually healing one. That had been a mistake, since he had collapsed on the spot and had awakened back in the cottage.
“Yes, Mathilde?”
“There is a lady here to see you.”
“What?” He turns from the fence to look past the barns, past the hilltop cottage with its heavy, gray-thatched roof, to where nearly a dozen armed soldiers sit astride chargers.
Overhead, he sees, briefly, a glittering