Chapter 7

"Where do we go from here?" Sable asked in the morning.

"Overland," he said. "Kira, there were civilizations here, in the past, no?"

"Here and on the far western coast," she agreed. "Rafael's Prysia had colonies here, to mine for copper and gold, and those colonies traded with the Western civilization where they could. The colonies failed, and the colonists moved to the more-successful colonies of the north."

"Do you suppose it was a Western city that Raphael sent Caruso to?" McAllister wondered aloud.

"When last I was on the western shore," Kira reflected, after a brief pause to scratch Yavani under the chin, "ninety years ago, there were cities founded by the Easterners there. Inland there are native cultures, some who use tools chipped from stone, and some more civilized. I have heard rumors, from the Middle-Sea men to the north, of cities of gold, and of horrible deaths for those who have tried to go through the interior. I have heard stories from the Easterners of horrible savages who fight strangers without provocation. The truth," she said, dryly, "is probably somewhere in between."

As evening fell one day somewhat later, Kira laid out the finest her home had to offer. For the meal, Sable wore Kira's darkest clothing, to minimize the contrast between her skin and the deep azure. McAllister sipped the three-hundred year-old brandy, appreciative of the art of the long-ago craftsman who'd distilled it and of the moment of calm security, one of the few he had yet had on this world. The meal itself was fishcakes and bread, with some small jellies that were preserved in tiny glass pots under paraffin. The flour to bake the bread and firm the fishcakes had come from a barrel next to the jellies and brandy — and McAllister complimented Kira on her ability to preserve.

"I go from preservation to creation, at long last. McAllister and Sable, you are forever welcome in my home." Suiting her words, Kira kissed each on the cheek.

In the morning, goodbyes were shared. "Someday," Sable promised Kira, and she understood. McAllister watched, as Sable shifted into the familiar metal equine form before his eyes. The blue gown, she kept ... somewhere.

Seeing Kira's concern, Sable assured them both "I do not tire or hunger in this form. I will need to eat much, as a human, someday, but I can go for decades as it is now."

"Do not forget her, Mother," McAllister said, almost conversationally to their patron Goddess as they left, meaning Kira. He received amusement, and then a firm acknowledgement in return.

Little had been exchanged between horse and rider, as they rode to the north and west.

McAllister consulted the copy of the star-chart and his lodestone compass. Deciding there really was nothing in the wasteland they crossed to keep them from holding course, he asked Sable if she had any internal sense of North. His reasoning was simple, the horse was made from metal, the lodestone was an ore of metal...

"No," the horse snorted.

"Do you know," McAllister noted lightly, "there's a certain brevity of your speech, the things you say, when you're in this form, compared to your other."

"Yes," the horse said. Many hours passed before the horse spoke again. McAllister endured it with a smile.

There came a point when even the spare-of-speech horse felt compelled to end the silence, to her exasperation, and McAllister's quiet satisfaction. "McAllister," she began, the slight irritation tingeing her 'words', "why haven't you asked about the similarity between you and I that Kira and I have each remarked upon?"

"I had thought it was that I am undead, that I had made this body I wear?" Surprised, McAllister had been distracted enough that the rolling terrain bounced him in his seat, further discomfiting him.

If Sable were pleased that McAllister showed surprise, she didn't let it color her response. "It is the internal fire, McAllister. Yours is of the True Fire, as is Kira's and mine." She paused for a moment, then continued with some degree of dubiousness. "I think that is what draws us to you at first, you are akin to us. No wonder the human women have no chance. McAllister, sometime on this journey, we should make time to explore this quality of yours. There are those who can affect the world without through the use of the fire within, and they are feared and respected, even by the Gods. I am a weak sorceress, but I think I can teach you."

"I suppose it's too late to avoid notice by Gods," McAllister made his reply a short while later, having digested Sable's words, "as we're now on an errand for them, and all."

"Do you see any reason to stop?"

McAllister considered. "I am not tired, and given what you have taught me, I can see in the near-dark, as can you. Very well."

Together, Horse and Man ran through the night.

The next day was hotter, the land higher, McAllister knew. The desert became more sere, drier and somehow less hospitable.

Riding turned dreamlike, a long, unrelieved succession of strange spiky plants, dust, and rolling washes and gullies. The heat beat down, and Sable stopped occasionally, for McAllister to dismount while the horse exhaled jets of blue-hot air from her nostrils for a few minutes, stopping when the color faded through yellow to orange. The dust and sparse vegetation under those twin jets of superheated air crackled and popped, and burn away in small orange sparkles, an impressive sight at dusk.

McAllister did wonder at the apparent lack of need to sleep. "Why do you suppose that is?" he asked Sable.

"McAllister, you are undead. You consort with Gods, and Hellborn. You visit Divine planes. Why do you question this?"

Hot answer held in check, McAllister continued to wonder.

Four days later, they cantered between mountains, and down into a desert full of spiked and hardy plants, in a large valley. McAllister was glad to be riding a horse of steel, even though many of the plants had thorns that penetrated the boots Auben gave him what seemed a continent and a lifetime ago.

In the distance, McAllister saw, from time to time, roving bands of huntsmen, nearly naked, with arrows and spears. Without much communication, both Sable and he agreed they wanted no part of the locals, and steered away from them.

McAllister cursed, though softly, the phenomenon with the lodestone. It was drawn to Sable, and he had to make his readings several paces from the horse. With the local bands of huntsmen, McAllister had not wanted to stop even so long or be separated from Sable. It meant his navigation was more difficult, and as the desert became hotter, he abandoned his attempt to navigate under the stars.

Hotter still it became, and water scarcer. McAllister studied the mountains, looking for snow on them, which would mean fresh streams, but found only brown rock. The last river they crossed, the day before, was sluggish and brown, and McAllister did not wish to brave the mosquitoes to find out if the water were even safe to drink. He had no pot to boil it in though Sable could easily have provided the heat.

As high as they were in the inhospitable land and with no water for miles, they had not seen any of the native hunters. Together they stopped at the saddle of the pass between mountains they had climbed before noon. Before them was a massive valley, bright with reflected sunlight from the sandy floor, thousands of feet below. Majestically, above the haze over the desert floor, perhaps a hundred miles distant rose a range of mountains with snowy caps. "Conserve your water. We will stay up here until nightfall," Sable ordered. McAllister nodded, and they found shade under an outcrop of rock. "Sleep," Sable told him, and McAllister did.

The next day found them picking their way down the mountain toward the desert floor before the sun broke over the mountain behind them. By the third hour of the morning light, they raced across the desert, Sable venting nearly pure fire as McAllister held on grimly.

For six hours in the day's heat they cantered across the desert. McAllister guessed the ravines and gullies and stunted growth littering the desert floor slowed them to perhaps fifteen miles to the hour.

The heat of the air and Sable's breath had nearly cooked his reddened legs thoroughly when they at last reached the foothills and nearer slopes of the mountains.

Sable angled toward a pass, with a hot, dry wind whistling through and scorching them. At last, they broke over the pass, and could see the land before them fall down several thousand feet toward an ocean, a bare hint of blue on the horizon, sparkling and cool. The land here in the heights was grassy, possessing many trees, though not a forest.

"I smell water," Sable informed him, moving toward the source. A few minutes later, they found a mountain stream tumbling down the pass beside them, and McAllister fell out of the saddle while Sable plowed in. With an angry hiss, and much bubbling, a large cloud of steam evolved, obscuring the steel horse.

Moments later, the steam began to cool, and as it parted, McAllister saw, as if a vision, the dark, metallic-skinned woman step forward, with the sheen of metal in her dusky hair. His eye latched onto the modest curve of her breast, and the line of her taut stomach indented by a tiny navel, to the hint of metallic-toned hair between her thighs, to the exquisitely muscled calf rising from the water. "Come," she breathed, dark eyes glittering in her dark face, "Come and let me wash the dust from you." After she had, she tasted of him what she could.

Together they played and frolicked in the cold, clear water, after McAllister drank his fill, and they made love in the grass beside the stream until the starry sky framed her glorious hair, and the moonlight lit her body and traced it in light and shadow. McAllister felt his breath catch as she gripped him and rose over him to mount him. Together they shared the moment as together they shared the night, and together would face the dawn.

It was a pleasant and leisurely ride down out of the mountains, especially when compared against the pace of the last few days, and McAllister killed a rabbit with a stone for his noon meal. On this side of the mountains, the air was cooler, with hints of the ocean still far ahead.

"We are being watched," Sable told McAllister in the silent way, shortly after leaving the fire where McAllister had his lunch.

"More, we are being followed," McAllister agreed in the same manner, watching the dark forms flit from tree trunk to tree trunk.

"They are not very good at concealment, and they seem somewhat under-tall to me," Sable replied. "But keep your wits about you, they could still surprise us when we leave the tree line."

At the tree line, those following gave up any pretense of concealment, and instead formed a small company of perhaps six, who trotted behind them. At least one ran ahead, for when McAllister and Sable found a road, a mounted party of twelve waited for them.

The original half dozen melted back into the trees, and the riding party fell in behind them as they cantered, unhindered, down the road.

As night fell, there were murmurs behind them when it became apparent McAllister and Sable would continue into the dark. Both McAllister and Sable were comfortable in the strange light they could see, brightened by Sable's fiery breath, though their escort could not see on the cloudy night, and was not comfortable with the darkened ride.

When the cloud passed and the moon shone, a rider pelted past the Man and Horse, riding hard for an objective up the road. Soon, McAllister and Sable found another party waiting for them, another dozen, to replace the original.

Still, McAllister and Sable rode through the night, and the road became paved with gravel, with neat fences on the sides, and the occasional village they thudded through, thirteen horses and thirteen riders.

"I wonder if they know I am restraining my stride?" Sable asked McAllister, about the fifth hour of the night.

"I think they suspect."

By dawn's light, the sky rosy behind the mountains they'd left the day before, McAllister could see they rode in urbanized farmland — well-ordered plots of land, with many homes about. The people in the land were shorter, with a decidedly sallow tint to their skin, and he found himself thinking of Chinamen from his own world.

Up close, when they overtook a farmer and his oxen-drawn cart, McAllister decided he was right, the fold of the eye and the look of the face were exactly as he remembered on the few Chinamen he'd seen sailing on His Majesty's Ships.

"Do you have an idea of where we want to be?" Sable asked, as they approached an ornate lacquered gate, all reds and golds on black.

"None. Perhaps we should ask our escort?" Sable snorted hot amusement at that, jets of air visibly glowing even in daylight.

McAllister gave a subtle rearward shift to his weight, and Sable stopped. He looked over his shoulder at the man with the most ornate decoration on his leather clothing, and made a crooked-finger 'come here' gesture.

"Can you understand me?" McAllister asked.

"Do you speak Han, a civilized language?" was the other man's reply.

"This is a civilized language," McAllister responded, and the man showed surprise at hearing McAllister speak a language he knew. McAllister shrugged. "Where would you want me to go in this city?"

Now the other seemed taken aback. "We had assumed that you knew where you were going. Seldom does any but a savage come from over those mountains. We were watching you as a curiosity, if you will."

"As a precaution, aye," McAllister said. "But knowing now that I have no immediate aim, but a longer-term purpose, where would you see me willingly lead you?"

The other regarded him steadily. "You are a military man, are you not?"

"I was. Now, I ... the King I once served is on another world." McAllister could not say why he told the man the truth, other than that lying was not overmuch in his nature.

"If I and another were to accompany you to the palace, would that satisfy your honor?" The other expressed no surprise at McAllister's casual reference to other worlds.

"My need for honor? Certainly. I would give you my word that you should need no more than yourself and one other ... Lieutenant?" McAllister guessed at the rank.

"Sub-Lieutenant. Very well, then, I shall dismiss these others."

True to his word, a quick conversation with the others, and they turned their horses about, all save one, who stayed with the Captain.

Sable 'said', quietly, to McAllister, "I do not understand their language when they are not speaking to us, McAllister. This is strange, and a little worrisome."

Without moving, he answered, "As you hear it more, you will understand. I don't fully understand how this gift from the Mother works, but in this I feel confident, for I remember it as being so when we first were riding through Troyer."

"I hope you are right, McAllister."

They were not given time to wonder more of it, as the Sub-Lieutenant of Horse, as McAllister styled the man, rode beside them, his horse little shorter than Sable, the man's head level with McAllister's shoulder. Behind McAllister followed the sub-lieutenant's small troop of horse. As they traveled, McAllister had the chance to study the other man's gear.