George Martin - Old Mars

He laughed. “I think you’ve been here before.”

“And you? But of course you have, with that emblem.”

“Me? I’ve been everywhere.” He put his head on one side, looking up at me from beneath the lock of hair that fell across his face. His long countenance was wry, amused, like one who anticipates a negative reply. “Do you want a companion for the night?”

“Not fussy, are you? You haven’t even seen my face.”

“As you say, I’m not fussy.”

“Unfortunately, I’ve recently taken a vow of celibacy,” I said.

He laughed again. “And you have seen my countenance. Well, I shall choose to believe you—it’s more flattering than the alternatives.”

I bowed, then headed to the tent that the priestess had told me I could use. I don’t like tents. They’re hard to secure, and I spent most of the night in a light doze with my blade over my knees, just in case. But Dair had obviously taken my refusal in good spirits: I knew that he would not have found entertainment among the tribes, who are prudish in the extreme, but he did not bother me.

In the morning, I woke to find the priestess sitting outside the tent.

“The woman you saw,” she began, without preamble. “I want to use you for a divination.”

“Very well,” I said. The sun was only just coming up. “What did you have in mind?”

“I need to take you to the scrying pool.”

“And if I prefer not to?”

“You still want safe passage to Coyine, I believe?” She glowered. “And my magic can fry any man at seven paces.”

“Good point. I’d like some tea first, though.” I wasn’t at my best first thing.

“It’s better on an empty stomach,” she said, unsmiling.

The scrying pool lay up in the woods. A narrow track that looked as though it had been made by an animal led up to it, and when we sat down by its glassy black depths, the air rose cool and dank through the ferns. Red earth, green leaves … they reminded me of Hafyre.

“What do you want me to do?”

She was lighting something in a tiny censer, held by a dangling bronze chain. A pungent smell twined out in its smoke, making me cough. It reminded me of something: one of the strong perfumes of the south that are brought forth by heat.

“Close your eyes,” she instructed. I did so, though not too trustingly. I felt a warm breath on the skin around my eyes, the only part of my face that was visible. The smoke penetrated the mask, seeping into my throat, and, against my better judgment, I felt myself grow slack and relaxed. I had a sudden vision of the long pale face of Nightwall Dair.

“No,” I heard the priestess hiss. Another image floated before me: the girl with green eyes and hair the shade of earth. The priestess gave a breath of satisfaction. “There she is. Hafyre.”

The girl’s face was downcast. She stared down at something she was holding in her lap, a crystal globe with a spark at the heart of it, like a little flame. A shaft of lamplight came over her shoulder; she wore a filmy ochre shift. Her face was as beautiful as I remembered it, all ovals and symmetry and that sudden, flaming smile. The slave brand was stamped white on her shoulder and the priestess cursed when she saw it.

“Defiled!”

I’d met her in a slave palace, after all. They’re not convents.

“This is the past,” the priestess said, with authority. “She is not there now.”

This was dangerous ground. I didn’t want the woman looking into my head and discovering that the girl was the reason I was here, that I’d been sent to bring her back. That—well, I did not want to let her in and that was an end of it.

“Is it so?” I said, deceptively dulcet.

“Try to see where she is now.” The smoke grew stronger. Against my will, I looked into the black and saw the girl. This time, she wore black leather riding gear and she was sitting beside a hearth of ashes. But she was still the same person I had known back in Cadrada, the girl who could, in an instant, throw another person into desire like the flick of a whip.

“Ahhhh,” the priestess said. “I know where she is.”

“Where?”

“Enough.” The smoke abruptly ceased and my eyes fluttered open.

“Why did you choose me for this?” I asked. I didn’t know whether she’d seen that I was a woman.

“An outsider is better, even a man.” That answered that question. “Those of the Tribes—they bring too many assumptions to it.” She stood and nodded thanks. “You can go now. You’ll have safe passage to Coyine. When you reach the next ridge, you will find a settlement on the far side. Give them this.” She handed me a token: a brass coin bearing a sigil. “They will exchange it for another. Thus, with luck, and if you do not meet too many wild beasts, you will reach Coyine alive.” There was a flicker of contempt beneath her words.

And so I mounted up and rode swiftly into the morning light. I did not see Nightwall Dair again, but before I reached the ridge, I turned the mount and headed up into the woods. I doubled back until I could see the tents. The priestess was speaking to two warriors: They saddled up topes and she swung up behind the leader. Then they were riding northwest, fast. I followed.

By the middle of the afternoon, we were high into the mountains and the air had grown an icy bite. I was quite a long way behind, but when I came up over a ridge, they had halted and were standing below. The ruin was so decrepit that at first I failed to realize what it was: another stump of a tower. I reined in my mount and watched the little pantomime enacted below. The priestess came out of the tower and waved her arms. I got the impression that she was blaming the warriors for something. There was an argument, then they all mounted up again and rode off. Greatly entertained, I waited until they had disappeared from sight and rode down to the ruin.

Inside it was as I had seen it in the vision. There was no sign of Hafyre. The ashy hearth lay undisturbed, or so I thought at first. Then I looked closer. In the ash, someone had inscribed a few symbols. To anyone unfamiliar with the secret slave signs of Cadrada, which was most people, it would have looked like the footprints of a bird, or the scratchings of vermin. To me, it was a message.

Northwest, then west again. A rock below a star .

I digested this for a moment, then made a thorough examination of the ruin. She had not been the only person here. There had been someone with her, a man, I thought from the footprints. Someone had pissed up against the wall; it was still faintly damp. I knelt and sniffed. Not a native of the south, but someone else … It wasn’t wet enough to have been one of the priestesses’ warriors—not as recent—and it was too high on the wall to have been a woman. So someone else had been here with Hafyre, someone who did not know the slave-signs.

Someone from Ithness? Or had Dair beaten me to it?

Well, that was what I intended to find out. I went back out, cautiously, climbed back on the tope, and kicked it into a gallop in a westerly direction.

For some time, I’d been getting the impression that I might be being followed. A fleeting scent on the wind, a prickle at the back of the neck, nothing more. If so, there were two obvious likely candidates: the sorcerer and Nightwall Dair. But there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. If I doubled back, my pursuer would know, and I stood little chance of losing him in this terrain; on the pale tope, I stood out like a moon in a clear sky. And the message hadn’t exactly been clear, although once I’d been riding for a bit, I saw what she’d meant. The only possible westerly passage was a funnel of rock as the mountain wall closed in, channeling me in the direction of the setting sun. And at the end of it, as we rode into dusk, a pinnacle of stone reared up over the narrow valley, wearing the Lovestar like a hat. When I saw that, I smiled under the mask and spurred the mount on and under a lip of rock. Then I dove off it, falling the ten feet from its high humped back and sprawling with a gasp in the dust. The tope, astonished, bounded away. I knew it wouldn’t go very far: it would come back eventually if it thought there was a chance of food. I lay in a twist of limbs.