Free C. Dale Brittain by Voima

back, or you really will have King Hadros furious with you.”
    He turned his back obediently, hearing the rustle of clothing coming off.   He considered trying to wrestle his big sister back onto her horse, tying her to the saddle and leading the animal back down to the castle.   He would seize her with his own cloak, he decided, making it hard for her to fight back while also covering up a nakedness that he startled himself by beginning to picture.
    And then he realized there was silence behind him.   He spun around to see a slim figure, wearing only riding gloves and a shift caught up above the knees, springing across a narrow place in the river course and scrambling up the far side.
    He slowly gathered up the clothes she had dropped and folded them neatly.   There were two long, blond hairs caught in the hood of her cloak.   He picked them up carefully, then pulled two of his own red hairs out with a sharp tug.   He leaned several tiny fir twigs together and laid the hairs across them, then struck a spark with the flint and steel at his belt.   The dry twigs caught at once.   The hairs twisted as though alive as they burned.
    He ground out the embers with his heel and looked up the hill.   Karin was now a small pale shape, higher than he had expected and apparently climbing easily.   He hoped his offering was acceptable to the lords of voima.
     
    4
    At first when the cool afternoon air touched Karin’s skin she shivered, but the exercise of climbing quickly warmed her again.   She wished for the sturdy boots she normally wore at home, as her toes cracked against still another stone.   She had left her elegant slippers with Valmar as worse than useless, but at least her hands were protected by her riding gloves.
    The hill was as she remembered, its lower slopes made up of stones that had long since wedged themselves firmly into position, now grown with weeds and moss.   It made for surprisingly easy climbing, with plenty of chinks for toes and fingers.   She and her brother had stopped eleven years ago because it was growing late, because their nurse, from whom they had slipped away, had finally spotted them and was shouting terrible threats, and because they were getting tired.
    She felt the strain especially in the muscles between her shoulder blades.   Every now and then there was a small tree, well-rooted among the rocks, and she allowed herself to rest for a moment within its crook, trying to stretch out the stiffness. But the sharp twigs caught at her skin and the light fabric of her shift when she moved again.
    As the afternoon advanced the sun disappeared behind the high hills and a wind began to blow, moaning softly, not quite shaping intelligible words.   Karin glanced back down into the valley, heavily shadowed now so that it was impossible to pick out detail although she could see a dark mass that must be the horses.
    Then she looked up the slope before her, becoming ever steeper.   Soon she would be out of the area where the stones were well lodged, into a region where no plant life grew because the stones were still constantly shifting.   The sky was a thin and pale blue; she did not dare rest longer if she wanted to be at the top before twilight.
    As she continued upward she startled birds nesting in crevices on the steep slope.   She thought about the Mirror-seer, wondering if his willingness to give information so openly, so freely, was all a deception, that he knew it was no easier to meet a Wanderer on Graytop than anywhere else in mortal realms.   If so, he must be having a hearty laugh at her expense, watching in his mirrors as a woman wearing nothing but a ripped shift risked death on a steep slope for no reason at all.
    Karin kept on climbing.   She had reached the gray rocks that gave the hill its bald appearance.   She was high enough that she now looked down on the little clusters of distant houses that perched on the hills above the valley, and the setting sun touched the