5

Her recent long ordeal on camels, Inos decided, had given her a very sentimental view of horses. Camels’ gait was a sickening sway, and her joints grew stiff with the unnatural posture. Camels were stupid and bad-tempered and smelly.

But after three days on a mule she discovered she was looking back on both camels and horses with nostalgia. Mules bounced. They raised blisters in unmentionable places. They were stupid and bad-tempered and smelly. The absurd Zarkian robe she wore had never been designed for riding, while her primitive saddle had been stuffed with flints.

After three nights on the bare ground at ever-greater altitudes, she remembered the tents in the desert with much greater affection than she had expected, but a lady never complained, as her aunt had taught her, and if poor old Kade was managing to look on the bright side—and she stubbornly was—then her much younger niece must strive to do much better. Azak expected courage in royalty. So Inos smiled and smiled, and cracked jokes, and once in a while actually deceived herself, as well. This was, after all, a great adventure. All the rest of her life she would be able to silence a whole dinner table with the simple words, “When I was in Thume . . .”

The escape seemed to be working. Elkarath had not appeared in their path with a roar of thunder. The brigands of Tall Cranes had not come in pursuit, seeking vengeance. Perhaps they believed their own stories of uncanny horrors preying upon travelers rash enough to venture into Thume, but those horrors had not materialized, either.

The scenery was remarkable, she told herself firmly through chattering teeth.

The gloom-filled forest was redolent with arboreal mystery. Or something. Big trees, anyway. Creepy, haunted.

The ruins had been spectacular—vast tumbled towers and walls of unthinkable antiquity, hidden in forest, beetling over chasms, half buried in silt in the tree-choked valleys. What cities had these been? Who were their brave warriors and fair queens? How long since children had laughed in the deserted courts or horses had plied the empty streets? Now only the wind moved, in blank doorways and crazy staring windows, whispering forgotten names in tongues unknown.

And she was with Azak. Azak was a problem, but he was also a superb protector, and in his strange guise of lover, he had turned out to be extremely good company. Very rarely now did he send shivers of distaste down her spine as he had done sometimes in Arakkaran when he raged at the princes. He was courteous and considerate, and at times even fun. He had a quite astonishing sense of humor, although it was unpredictable, as if it were something he had suppressed in his childhood as unworthy and was now trying to rediscover. And to be wooed by a giant young sultan was certainly a powerful aid to a girl’s selfesteem.

Azak as traveling companion—fine. As defender in the wilds—also fine. But Azak in Krasnegar? Azak as husband? Could this really be the love the God had promised Inos? She must trust in love, They had said. She was inclined to believe now that Azak was, incredibly, truly in love with her. He certainly displayed all the symptoms. She must trust the God, then. She must not listen to the insidious tremors of doubt she felt when she tried to think of Azak ruling the prosaic merchants of Krasnegar.

She tried not to think of Krasnegar at all, especially in the gloomy dark of night. She slept badly, missing Elkarath’s sleep spell, and even missing the straw pallets of caravan life. Those had seemed very uncomfortable at first, but a single blanket on bare ground was much worse. So her nights were filled with restless turnings and gloomy thoughts.

Krasnegar, more than likely, had no further need of her now. The wardens would have settled the matter somehow, and there had never been anything Inos could have done to honor the promise she had given her father. So what now, Inosolan?

Had the God been telling her she was destined to love a barbarian and live as sultana of Arakkaran?

The idea of a sultana riding out to hunt in Arakkaran was almost as difficult to grasp as the idea of Azak contentedly spearing white bears in a polar night . . . Well, she must trust in love, as the God had directed.

And trust Azak.

At times the mountain road was a paved highway, snaking through the eerily deserted valleys, its ancient blocks heaved and moved by roots and landslides. At other times there was no visible path at all, and then progress became unbearably slow.

But the third day brought the explorers to the barren crest of the pass, a gravelly desert scrolled with strange patterns of rocks and overlooked by magnificent ice-sheathed mountains. Inos thought she would remember the wind there, more than anything.

Late that third day they began descending along a made road, old and battered but still mostly passable, twisting steeply down a dark and gloomy gorge into the unknown lands of Thume.

Where are you roaming:

O mistress mine! where are you roaming?
Oh stay and hear; your true love’s coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.

Shakespeare, Twelfth Night