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Anna saw the old aze and shook his head in a warning She closed herwhether it was God, or the Enemy, who had answered her
After all, it was God’s work
She knew better than to ask questions, but that night they sat beside a ca on freshly roasted rabbit and a stringy haunch of very old and unidentifiable er
"Where are we going?" she asked "My lady"
"West," said the one as lant The lady, Liathano, was a sorcerer, no more human than her Ashioi co than she found this woh she did not knohy
Ai, Lady and Son! This woht and noair visible on a cold night when breath is exhaled
"I knohat happened to Princess Blessing, h the woman had not asked She was neither kind nor cruel; in truth, she seelanced at her, and fixed on her face a false and chilling sone But that she lives was beyond e, before I came here To know that she survived must sustain me"
No one had told Anna how the lady had come to Ashioi country, or why she had left the prince, her husband She dared not ask She ate, and she drank a little, and she even slept, although the dusty grounda dozen ti along the road, faces set to the west It was a clear day, a faint haze lightening the sky to a blue-white pallor The earth baked around therass rattled when the wind gusted Off to their left, the sea shone like polished crystal, a dense lapis field cut off by the southern horizon
In the heat of the day they rested under the shade of an awning tied up between stunted juniper trees Thethe men flirted with the lady in that wayquite serious while the two young woOnly, that being so, why had they bothered to bring her along, to rescue her froh’s soldiers?
As they broke camp in oing to Aosta, my lady? To follow the army? All the others, the soldiers, they said the Ashioi ar to Novomo"
The lady s, Anna tried asking the old man, but he could not understand Wendish and, because no one spoke to her, she had learned ale in the h the remainder of the hot afternoon On occasion, they sipped a nasty brew that made her whole face pucker but which quenched her thirst each ti streamers of rich red cloud In the east, a full-faced moon slipped heavenward, cloaked at intervals by stripes of haze and other tihtly down upon them Still they walked, because where the ht and reflected that light
When the moon had walked a third of the way up into the sky, they paused to rest where an arrangement of flat rocks made pleasant benches Anna drank, and chewed on one of the tasteless, tough flatbreads they carried for journey bread
The lady lay on her back on one of the rocks, with an arain,those stars she could see She spoke under her breath; Anna saw her lipsEldest Uncle crouched beside the lady on the ground with his head tilted back A tiny lizard scuttled within a crack in the stone Anna shuddered, re a boy had told her that such creatures were beloved of the Enemy
Eldest Uncle rose and came to her, unrolled a blanket, and draped it over her shoulders She smiled, because she didn’t kno to tell him that she wasn’t cold
The old an the fa a last sip ofthe ropes on the baskets they carried before slinging theot to her feet The lady stood In the ht, Anna saw tears on the other wo at?" Anna whispered