Free The Golden Sword by Janet Morris Page B

kept Guanden even with the others.
    I might have then made for the northeast, upon the fastest of the Nemarsi threx. If I could outdistance them, I might go free. Chaldless, but free. And Hael would have the helsar. I sighed and tried to find a comfortable position. My knees and thighs were rubbed raw from the constant friction against the leathers. I spent a time adjusting the straps so I might get some purchase from their loops, which afforded me a better seat but gave my raw skin another surface to chafe against. It had somehow become full morning. I looked around me at how the summer sat upon the northern Parset Lands. It was not as forbidding a sight as the dead sea bottom in the desert, but was precious little green. Even the sky had to it a yellow tinge. In back of us the jiasks gave up upon forming, and led their charges single file toward home. Mount Opir was , mist-enshrouded to the west.
    There was only the snort and thud, creak and jingle of loping threx under saddle. Nothing else. Neither Chayin nor Hael spoke. The cahndor was again abstracted, sunk somewhere within, loose and easy upon his mount. He and Saer were long familiar, and it almost seemed that as he gave more and more of his attention to his thoughts, just that much more care did Saer use in seeking out the smoothest and safest route. The reins flapped untouched from the sa.ddlegrip, and Saer judged the way, nose in the dust.
    I was shaking. My mouth was dry and my heart struggled to free itself of my confining chest. During the battle, I had been only cold, and in a very slow time. It had been as if I watched myself, and the sound was so far away. Not now. I could yet see the bodies back there upon the sand. Nemarsi take no prisoners. They have no word for “prison.” Their only word for captive is “crell.” They were careless of life, these people, more careless than I found seemly. And I thought of Chayin, and his affliction, and Hael’s astounding statement that his “charge” (a strong word he used for it, with meaning near to “commitment”) was to keep the Nemarsi safe from their cahndor. And I had killed a man, for the first time in my life, with my own hand. A part of me raged, a portion wept, and somewhere else deep in me was a strong thing that had grown stronger.
    Sparse grass was under the threx’s hooves. Mountains rose high and impassable to the west and east. We rode in silence.
    My mind, drifting free, found Sereth crill Tyris. I sorted for a way that would lead me to him. The probabilities fanned out before me; scenes from time not yet realized, only a handful I could use. I chose among them and set my will in motion, that my choice and no other’s manifest in real time. Thus does one hest the time-coming-to-be and make it one’s own. I sensed the helsar again. It was interested in my choosing. There was death upon that altered path thus opened before me, but in such a harmonic position that I felt it not discordant. There had been death upon all the usable futures. It was only a matter of proximity. At that time, I thought it all so simple.
    Simple to take that which might be and alter its balance? Estrazi once said to me of hesting that the weakness is always in the conception, never in the power. But one cannot hear without ears.
    Feeling confident that events would turn to my advantage, I began to consider the intricate relationship between Tar-Kesa and the yris-tera. I raised my head and spied, above Guanden’s bobbing bristled head, the Nemarsi appreida, its banners breeze-rippled on the horizon. And from that direction was a dust cloud fast approaching.
    I leaned over and touched Chayin on the arm. He jumped. I pointed, and he nodded, grinning. Hael had also seen.
    When their individual forms were discernible to us, Chayin reined up and waited.
    Hael queried him as to this.
    “I would not meet Besha too close to the web-weavers’ appreis,” he said solemnly, rubbing the back of his neck with a dust-powdered