The Door into Sunset by Diane Duane Page A

and they rode south. They were in high country, not yet mountainous but soon enough to be that way—the Southpeaks reared up in the distance, low, blue, and misty in the morning. The land about was not much good for farming. The bones of it showed through the ground, mostly slate here, giving way to granite. Ferny-looking bracken was everywhere, both last year’s dried growth and this year’s new. A fair crop of stones lay all about the amber-and-green fields. The rocks would be the despair of anyone with a plowshare and plans for it, but kine or sheep might graze here and do well enough. There were sheep on some of the nearer hills.
    Eftgan was cantering along beside Lorn, looking around her with a slightly preoccupied air. For some time Lorn said nothing to her, and after a while the mountains distracted him. They were distant, but even from here he could see the banners of cloud that streamed away from them, torn like tattered veils by the high winds. “What do you make of that?” he said finally.
    Eftgan glanced up. “Ah,” she said. “Well... the other day, Herewiss destroyed one of those mountains. You remember.” There was mockery in her tone, but it was kindly. “You don’t take away a whole mountain without changing the weather pattern that’s used to living around it. It’s going to be unsettled down in this part of the world for a while now.”
    I am consorting with gods, the back of Lorn’s mind said to him in uncomfortable echo of the morning’s conversation. And gods won’t stop at changing such as me: they’ll change the bones of the world if it suits them ....
    “That is what prompted this meeting, I think,” Eftgan said. “Various people became uncomfortable at the occurrences of the past few days. In any case, the meeting is fortuitous... if the cause is what I think.”
    She paused, as if for breath. Lorn thought at first that he understood the cause: they were climbing a steepish hill, and Blackmane was working at it, his chest heaving in and out like a bellows. Scoundrel, walking beside him, was making light work of it all as usual... but then he was carrying a load a third lighter again than Lorn’s gelding was.
    Freelorn clucked at Blackie and urged him up to the top of the hill. “So what am I supposed to look at—”
    And he saw, and the breath went out of him as they paused there on the hillcrest, waiting for the escort to catch up with them.
    The party waiting for them numbered about thirty. Their horses were small, barely more than shaggy ponies. That was what first gave away to Lorn just who it was he and Eftgan were meeting. The waiting group’s clothes confirmed the judgment. They wore no trews or breeches, but the strange long undivided shin-length garment that he had come to know since he was young—a garment that was tied up between the legs with another band of cloth when the people wearing it needed to move quickly, as in battle. The band of cloth was patterned, and wound up and around the chest and shoulders, and streamed down behind in a sort of tail, like a cape born stunted. A linen or cotton shirt under it, maybe a skin thrown over it all—and a couple of the people below had those skins, one in a spotted fur, one in something goatish and long-furred. Bows in cases hung by the sides of the horses—those terrible little horn recurve bows—and crude curved swords in rude sheaths. He could see how poor the sheaths were, barely more than tree-bark strapped together with leather thongs. He had no desire to be so close, none at all. Not three days before, he had had one of these people’s arrows a span deep in his chest.
    “What are we doing meeting with Reavers ?” he said to Eftgan, under his breath.
    She paused for a moment, then rode down the other side of the hill as the escort caught up with them. “They’re here, in my land. Anybody in my land is my business.” She eyed him, a rather challenging look: Lorn ostentatiously glanced away. “Besides...