“Nor do I,” Kieri said.
“I ate one,” Falki said. “It tasted like the leaf.”
Kieri glanced at Lieth again. She spread her hands. “Before I could catch him. Just grabbed it and put it in his mouth. Luckily, one of the smooth ones, not the hairy ones.”
“We should go inside now,” Kieri said. The twins looked at each other, then at him.
“No more, hens,” Tilla said to the line of chickens. “Da says no more. You have to find your own.”
“We’ll go in through the scullery and get some of that mud off you,” Lieth said to them.
“How were they?” Kieri asked quietly when the children ran ahead.
“Fine, I think. Though Tilla said something about Falki being afraid and holding—I think that was the word—his fear so he could sleep.”
“That’s … not supposed to be possible,” Kieri said. Then he laughed. “But with these two, who really knows?”
Chapter Thirty-eight
Dorrin came to herself again lying on fragrant but prickly herbs, the midday sun beating down on her. She pushed herself up. The land around looked nothing like anything she had seen in Aare. She was on the slope of a hill, and beyond another hill she could see a straight line of darker blue against light blue sky. It must be the sea. But which sea, and which direction should she go? She wore the sea-stained and torn clothes she’d had on under the white gown the Guardians insisted on; she had nothing else. No water and nothing to put water in. No food.
She had not expected to wake at all. She had seen dragonfire coming toward her and … and nothing. She felt no pain; she had no blisters. Was this a dream to ease her dying? Or had the dragon been a dream before?
A shadow passed over her; she glanced up. Not a dragon. A bird—another bird—circling lower. Corpse eaters that must have wondered if she was dead. “HAI!” she yelled at them, waving her arms … the lowest tipped a wing, caught air from the hillside, and rose back up and away. Surely a dream would not include such birds behaving so naturally like birds.
Hilltops gave better views. Dorrin turned to climb upward and only then realized her boots were still wet enough to squelch and the left had a long gash down the side; the upper flopped over. She felt at her belt. No dagger. Her hair—she found the leather thong still entangled in it, worked it free, and tied the boot to her shin with it. Her hair blew into her face. She ignored that and climbed.
From the top of the hill, she saw more of the water—blue, sparkling, stretching out on either hand—but the coast itself was hidden by the lower hills except in the hazy distance, where a headland of some sort jutted out. Between her hill and the next one seaward she saw nothing but low scrub and patches of grass. Off to her sword-side, an island poked out of the sea, mountainous, cone-shaped.
She looked all around. More hills, and in the distance away from the sea, a suggestion of higher ground. She squinted. Farther—right at the edge to her heart-side—dim purple shapes against the lighter blue. Mountains. But which mountains? Mountains she had seen before or mountains in some land where she had never been? If this was Aarenis, for instance, the sea would be to the south and those mountains in the west.
The hill had a grassy top, showing gray-white stone between the clumps; the sea side, where she’d woken, was patched with more of the fragrant plant she’d been lying on. She didn’t know the name, but she knew it grew in southern Aarenis. Was she in southern Aarenis? She had no way to be sure. The far side of the hill, down at the crease between it and the next hill, had a line of scrubby trees. The slope down was a little steeper than the slope she had climbed. A faint game trail led downward in zigzags.
With a last look around, Dorrin decided that the game trail and trees offered the best chance of water. She started down, watching her footing carefully. The trail, scarcely a foot’s width, twisted and turned around clumps of tough grass and mounds of aromatic scrub. She came to a steeper part and braced one hand on a rock outcrop to edge around it.
And found herself face to face with a man a little below her height. She straightened up and stared. He stood scarce an armspan away … a man who might have been her height had he stood straight, but he was a little stooped. Rough-cut hair, mostly gray … brown eyes … a scar across his face from some blow that had misshapen his nose. He wore a brown tunic over brown trews, and his feet were bare, brown as his trews. He looked back at her and smiled, goodwill radiating from him like the sun’s heat from the rocks.
“Well met, Daughter,” he said. “I am glad to find you so far advanced.”