Samarkar would have extended her illusions to wrap horses and men, too, but as she came up she saw him lolling in the saddle, liver-red with fever and dewed with sharp sweat. She hesitated. By his clothes and the shape of his nose and eyes, she guessed him one of the Quersnyk plainsmen, though his complexion was very dark. Just the horses would have been sufficient evidence, in light of what Songtsan had told her about the fall of Qarash and the likelihood of refugees.
Plague? A pestilence could have come in with the refugees, if refugees there were.…
But no. No plague could have silenced an entire city so quickly that no one fled it—and left no bodies lying in the fields. And Samarkar was wizard enough now to recognize the signs of influenza. A serious illness, one to fear—but one she was trained in caring for. She reached out to take the bay mare’s sagging reins.
The plainsman lashed out—more at random than at her—sweeping with his knife. She jumped back, deflecting the blow with air, and watched him slide out of the saddle with slow inevitability. She would have tried to grab him, to cushion his fall or keep him from impaling himself, but even when she would have helped him, he warded her back with the knife.
He fell with a thump, boneless as a sack of wet laundry. The bay mare turned her head dully, swaying; the gray one managed a back step, a head shake, and a snort.
“Sir,” Samarkar said in his language. “I am the wizard Samarkar of Rasa. You have come through the”—she searched for a moment for the Quersnyk words—“the Range of Ghosts. You are ill and your horses are exhausted. I wish to help.”
She crouched, feeling the flex of bare toes, ready to spring away at any moment.
The plainsman drew his right hand to his chest, the knife pointed down along his sternum. It was the spasm of fever; as Samarkar watched, a great ague shook him. He mumbled something; the word she heard was ghosts.
“You’ve come through,” she said. “You’ve come through the mountains. Let me help you.”
Maybe her words reached him; maybe it was the concerned nosings of the bay mare. But the plainsman managed to relax his hand, and the curved horn hilt of his dagger slipped between his fingers.
“Good,” Samarkar said. She glanced left and right, uphill and down, but there was no sign of anyone else. She was slightly stunned to realize how close she’d come to the outskirts of Qeshqer. She could smell the blossoms on the fruit trees in walled gardens, and the lowest tiers of buildings were no more than a stone’s throw away.
“Can you stand? We have to hurry—”
He nodded. He found the knife again with groping fingers, this time managing to sheath it on the second try. “Temur,” he said, which she thought was a name, because she couldn’t imagine why he’d be calling for iron now. And half the men of his people in his age range must have been named for the Great Khagan. “Ride—”
Samarkar looked dubiously up at the bay mare, who was still whuffing at the sick man’s hair while the gray waited anxiously at the limit of her lead line. She couldn’t drag this plainsman five li back up the hill to where Tsering waited. And while she could walk—or run—it was obvious he couldn’t. It would have to be the ponies, then.
“I’ll help,” she said, and bent down to lift him to his feet.
He wasn’t a big man, and she thanked her luck for that. And she thanked her ancestors that she was a big woman, broad-hipped and broad-shouldered, with strength in her arms and thighs. He was wasted with sickness and hard travel, as well, and so she managed to stand him up to where he could grab the bay mare’s saddle, then help him heave himself back into it. The mare stood like a statue, her master slumped forward over the waist-high pommel, and Samarkar steeled herself to approach the nervy gray.
She stepped up to her gently, holding an aura of calm and still, and extended the palm of her hand. She wished she had a sweet or a piece of fruit. In her experience, horses bribed well.
But the mare watched, ears pricked rather than back, and let her approach. She might be cautious, then, rather than fearful. Samarkar could make friends with a cautious horse.
But could she do it with the blank windows of the empty city staring at her back? She knew by the hammering of her heart that her posture was not calm, and the idea that anything at all could come pouring down the hill from Qeshqer left her sweating cold and shaking.
Calm, she told herself. You are a wizard of Tsarepheth. Where is your serenity?
Here, at her core. With the warmth and the strength and the shadowless flame of her magic, bright and still. She must be calm for the horse. She must be loose and relaxed without being saggy.