“Water,” said one.
In that other language, whatever it was, they spoke to the girl; she whistled to the dog, and soon the sheep, the girl, and the men started up the slope, away from the water.
“Come. Come we!” the girl called. Dorrin took a step, then stopped. Falk had said she could be what she wanted. Did she want to be a curiosity to a herd girl and some strangers with flocks of sheep? No. She had—she knew she had—helped bring water here. She owed them no more.
She turned, gesturing another way, and began her own trek toward the unknown.
For days, Dorrin walked alone in a land apparently empty of people or their works. She had seen no one since leaving the sheep and the girl behind and for the last two days had seen no signs of familiar animals—no tracks of sheep, cattle, or horses. The hills among which she walked were covered with short grass and scrubby bushes. She had found water easily—dry as the hills looked, every hollow in them held at least a spring and a pool. In the first pool, she had looked at the reflection of her own face: there in the center of her forehead was a gleaming drop of red: Falk’s ruby. Part of her now, just like Paks’s silver ring … but it couldn’t mean the same thing. She didn’t want to think about what it could mean, but she had little else to think about. Her memory of the flight to Aare and what she had done returned, one scene after another. Her memory of Falk—she had seen Falk himself, the Falk of legend, and he himself had pressed that ruby into her forehead. She felt it: a smooth bump to her fingers, as if it had grown there all her life. And Falk had told her to think about who she was now … what life she wanted as she was now and not as she had been.
She found the walking easy enough. She went whatever way seemed most interesting and did not hurry, taking time to notice flowers and interesting stones in the clear little creeks, to listen to the birds, to watch lizards panting on a rock in the sun and interesting beetles scurrying across game trails. So many things she had not really seen before, not heard or smelled, focused as she had been on her duties. Arian had taught her about the taig, but she had still thought of everything in terms of threat or not-threat, her duty to protect.
What Falk had said about humans came back to her: what she had been—a soldier, a duke—did not determine what else she could be. Yet she did not want to forget what she had been or the people she had known. She wanted … she wanted to find another use for those skills she had already, and she wanted to try out new things, including this careful attention to what she had ignored so long, from beetles to birds.
On the eighth day, she decided to spend the hot afternoon in the shade of a clump of small trees circling a spring-fed pool rather than walk through the hot afternoon facing into the sun, at least until the sun dipped behind the shoulder of the next hill sunsetting. With no idea where she was going and no duties to perform, she need not, she decided, force herself to endure the heat. She could rest if she wanted to. She had eaten a hunk of sausage and bread when she heard the hoofbeats.
Looking out between the trees, she saw across the little valley a black horse trotting—head high and proud, mane and tail flowing like dark water. She felt an instant stab of longing. She had ridden many horses in her life—good military horses trained to war, the Marrakai-bred mare she’d taken to Kieri—but she had never ridden or even seen a horse like this. It looked like a smaller, more agile version of a Pargunese Black—nothing ponderous about it as it seemed to float two handspans above the ground.
As if the horse heard a command in her thought, it stopped short. Ears pricked, head turned to her. Then an echoing whinny, and the horse broke into a gallop, running straight toward her clump of trees. Dorrin scrambled to her feet and moved out into the open. If the horse ran at her, she could dodge … but she didn’t want to dodge.
Nearer. Nearer still … and it slowed to that same high-stepping, airy trot and finally halted just out of her reach. Nostrils flared; it uttered a sound more like a human mutter than a horse. Dorrin took a step forward. “You …” she said. Her voice sounded strange after the days of silence. “You are beautiful,” she said. “Where are you from? Whose are you?”
The horse yawned, showing a mouthful of big yellowish teeth, then walked the rest of the way to her and put its head against her chest. Her hands moved naturally to caress the cheeks, rub the poll, scratch behind those alert ears. The horse pulled its head from between her hands and reached over her shoulder, then pulled—a hug, she realized. It sighed, a big gusty horse sigh. Then it released her, walked around her, and went to drink at the pool. Dorrin followed, her mind in a whirl of confusion.