S.A.R. Read online

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  Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust

  www.mzbworks.com

  Copyright ©1986 by Patricia Cirone

  First published in Sword and Sorceress 3, 1986

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  S.A.R.

  Patricia Cirone

  Kit inched her way diagonally up the wall, fingers and toes feeling for each crevice in the rough hewn rock.

  After an infinity of time she reached the niche the carved gryphon called home and slid her lean form within its shelter. Gratefully she pressed her soles against security, and tried to ease the cramps out of the balls of her feet. Then she took the first deep breath she'd dared in twenty minutes. She darted a glance at the silent, dark street below her, then one across to the opposite building, bathed in the cold light of the moon. No glow from lanterns softened the moon's reflection on the diamond-paned windows. Good. Carefully she eased the coiled rope off her shoulder and grasped the three-pronged hook at its end.

  With a fluid motion, she tossed the grappling hook through the air toward the roof of the opposite building. Her ears picked up a faint chink as it settled into position. Taking a deep breath, she launched herself, swinging lithely across the narrow street. The building rushed at her. Her feet scrabbled vainly to gain purchase on its smooth side. They failed and she swung to the side. Her shoulder thudded painfully against the wall and she bounced sickeningly. Scrabbling again, she managed to brace the soles of her feet against the stone and steady herself. She breathed again.

  Oh so delicately, Kit leaned back against the rope. Her muscles were cramping again; she tried to relax them. Kit gazed into the quiet street below her, checking to see if she had been spotted. She took another deep breath. Time was going on ... and she was as obvious as a fly at a feast hanging here in the moonlight.

  Regretfully, she eased herself into action, hitching herself up the remaining four feet to the window, glad she hadn't had to do the whole climb up the slippery side of this building. She wedged a thin metal bar between the casements and pushed against the latch. It snicked open. Softly she eased the windows open and slid through. She was in.

  Swiftly she swung the window shut and pulled the heavy drapes. Then she muttered an imprecation ... she couldn't see a blasted thing once the moon was shut out. Easing the drapes back open, she fumbled open her belt pouch and struck her flint, lighting the candlebox she had carried within. Then, once more, she shut out the moonlight and any curious eyes. Kit eased the curved reflective back of the candlebox against the palm of her hand, running her fingers through the grips, then closed its faceted glass front while glancing around the room. The library. She grinned. As good a place as any to start. She wiggled her shoulders, savoring the mixture of excitement and nervousness that flooded through her. It was like the high she'd always felt before a tournament. Her lips tightened and she snapped back to what she was doing. She got to work, pulling out books, looking under and behind furniture. Now where would Baldour keep his jewels?

  She moved on to the bedroom, snorting at the elaborate spread on the huge bed. She bent down. There was something under the bed. Eagerly she put down her candlebox and stretched to pull it out. A sword! Why the devil was Baldour risking imprisonment by keeping a weapon within the confines of the city? Probably for the jewels, she thought ironically, looking down at its hilt: the only booty she had found so far ... and it unusable.

  The sound of voices and laughter broke over her awareness. Baldour had come home! The bedroom door flew open; a laughing couple, suddenly sober, were framed in its embrace. Kit stood there, foolishly, exposed. Her heart and mind raced; her feet stood still, not knowing which way to run. She had to do something. An elusive thought whispered: there was something she could do—but it was gone just as quickly. She grasped the sword more firmly, wondering if she could learn how to use it in the next ten seconds. At least it was some action. Her mind blurred with the need to do something more. Then she found herself falling. Confused, she wondered how she could be falling. She was in the apartment, not still outside perched on that rope and nothingness. Before she could even complete the thought she landed on purple-veined grass, still clutching the sword.

  "OOF!"

  "Sweet Danu, it worked!” a voice behind her exclaimed with both astonishment and thankfulness.

  "Huh?” Kit turned her head and found herself facing a woman who looked tired to death. Her cropped gray hair was disheveled; her right arm and shoulder were bound in a makeshift sling. Kit stared.

  "I'm sorry, Godsend. There's no time to give you welcome and thanks. My name is Ragee. Please, come quickly; Longire's scouts will have seen the smoke from my petition fire.” The older woman lurched painfully to her feet and slung a large provision sack onto her right shoulder.

  "Please. Carry Prince Luewel. Guard him!” Kit, confusion still spinning her mind, bent over the carry sack the other had indicated. It was a baby: three, maybe four months old. Ragee picked up the sword which had been lying beside her and gripped it in her good hand. Free. Ready for use. She peered toward the left horizon with a frown, then hurried off through the knee-high purple grass. Kit followed, not feeling on top of the situation, but not knowing what else to do. She had no idea where she was, what had happened to Baldour ... or anything else. But judging from that anxious look the other had cast at the horizon, it might be healthy to follow swiftly, without questions.

  The gray-haired swordswoman headed directly for the line of tumbled hills which lay beneath the mountains ahead. Once there, she lost their track among the many ways that wound through and over the rocks. When they had worked their way far from where they'd left the plain, Ragee sank down, trembling, by an outlook. Sweat traveled down the pain lines in her face. “Thank you. Thank you, Godsend.” She stopped to draw her breath. “Thank you for coming to my aid and thank you for following me so swiftly without questioning.” Kit nodded and lowered herself down beside the other, awkwardly plunking down Baldour's blasted sword on the ground in front of her. Ragee noticed her lack of finesse. She kept staring at the sword as she said, “When I beseeched the Gods for help, I didn't expect the blessing of a warrior."

  "A warrior! I'm no warrior!"

  "Then why are you carrying a sword? ... Godsend."

  "I was just stealing it when I fell through to here."

  The other stared at her. “You were stealing it?"

  Kit nodded.

  "Leaving someone defenseless?"

  "No! I didn't. I mean he'd never need a sword to defend ... He probably doesn't even know how to use it,” Kit trailed off before the shock in the other's eyes, wondering why she felt such a need to justify her actions. They had not felt wrong before; Baldour was such a waste it had seemed a good deed to steal from him. But somehow she didn't feel that would hold weight with this gray-eyed woman.

  "But you do know how to use it,” the woman stated after a brief pause.

  "No,” Kit admitted reluctantly. “It was the jewels in the hilt..."

  Ragee just stared at her for a moment, then looked up at the sky. “I wonder which God I've offended? First I'm wounded smuggling Satur's only child out of danger and now I'm sent a thief who can't even use what she feels free to steal!” She shook her head wryly, then winced with the pain the movement had brought. “Well, whatever you are and wherever you're from, the gods have sent you, and I'll make use of you. Far be it from me to spurn an
offering of the gods.” She looked at Kit with a glance so mingled with contempt and weary resignation that Kit gritted her teeth against the vain ache to justify herself. What did this woman know about her life? About how everything she had planned had been swept away?

  Ragee reached over with her good arm and clamped Kit's wrist. Startled, Kit broke her reverie. The other was nodding toward the plain. A group of ten, mounted on horses, were milling around the remains of Ragee's small fire. Carefully, making no sound, the other scrambled onto her feet. “Come. Let's go,” she whispered.

  "Are you well enough?” Kit hissed, noting that red had started to seep through Ragee's bandages.

  The other snorted. “I'll be worse than not well enough if we stay here. I'll be Pik bird feed."

  Kit nodded and reached for the provision sack before the other could. She'd show this woman she was no shirker. She threaded her arms through the straps and hoisted it onto her back, then bent and picked up the baby and Baldour's sword. Ragee gave a moue of disgust but acknowledged her weakness by not protesting. She started off, Kit following. Ragee stuck to rocky ledges and boulder strewn paths, reluctantly following dirt paths through the scrub only when necessary, so as not to leave a trail. She soon had to secure her sword in the scabbard; she needed her hand to pull herself up some of the waist-high boulders. She would turn to help Kit, burdened with the baby, scramble up behind, but always silently. As if she couldn't be bothered to talk with the type of person she judged fat to be. In the silence, Kit watched their progress by the pain lines that etched their way deeper into Ragee's face; by the increasing size of the stain on her bandages and by the deepening set of her mouth as she forged steadily on. Even Kit's well-toned muscles began to protest, from the hike as well as from carrying both baby and sword, neither of which she was accustomed to. Yet Ragee's pace never varied. Her grim determination echoed, for Kit, her own struggle for perfection as a gymnast. Years of practice, of trying again and again, of ignoring paid, of persisting in the face of minor injuries, all for nothing. Judged second rate; unfit for professional tours; finally too old to audition again.

  Kit closed her mind to the bitter reflections and wondered instead how she had gotten here. And how she was going to get back. Eventually this paled, too, and she just walked doggedly on, re-achieving that blankness she had lived in so often since that final audition failure.

  It was dusk before they stopped. The Prince had been crying fretfully for some time; Ragee looked gray with exhaustion. Kit ignored her own tiredness and started a small fire concealed in the outcropping of rocks where they sheltered. She sensed approval from the other. Even the silence had, recently, seemed more a product of tiredness than of deliberation. When the fire was going, she looked over and saw Ragee fumbling with the baby, trying to change him one handed. Kit moved to help.

  "Thanks. I've never had much to do with babes and this doesn't help any,” Ragee said wryly, nodding with her chin toward her shoulder.

  "That's all right. I'm not a mother, but I've watched my sisters’ children from time to time.” Kit was glad the silence was broken. She glanced up and found Ragee's penetrating gaze fixed on her.

  "What's your name?"

  "Kit."

  "Why were you stealing?"

  "The danger. Something to do,” Kit replied off-handedly, resenting the other questioning her, even if she did seem less disapproving, now. She busied herself with warming a skin of milk for the royal bundle.

  "Danger! Why don't you learn to use that sword you're carting around? That would give you both danger and plenty to do. And you seem to have enough physical endurance for it. A good sword wielder can always find employment."

  "Not on my world."

  "You going back?"

  "I don't know. I don't know how I got here."

  "Hmmm. My petition fire stirred things up and the smoke blew the wrong way, huh? Sorry, but I was desperate, and I always thought godsends knew what they were doing."

  "Somehow I can't picture myself as a gift from any god,” Kit replied, with a reluctant smile. “Especially not the way I've been acting lately. More likely they wanted to get rid of me somehow."

  Ragee gave a commiserative snort of laughter. “Well, don't cut yourself up. Despite everything, you have been a godsend today. I'd never have made it this far, with the babe as well as everything else."

  "I'm glad I could help.” Kit hesitated then continued, not looking at Ragee as she busied herself sorting through the provisions sack for some dried meat. “It feels good to be of some use. I was training for something, but it didn't work out. I'd trained for it all my life, and since I was turned down, well, I haven't felt much good at anything. Not even living with myself."

  Ragee leaned forward and silently gripped Kit's wrist for a moment then, noting Kit's determined silence, changed the subject and began discussing their route for the next day.

  "So one more day should do it, then we'll have to get through the town in the pass and down into Gellis's lands,” she concluded. “He's Satur's brother, and will guard the prince well until Longire's men are routed.” Kit nodded, not knowing what the war was about and not really caring. It was enough, for now, to be doing something. To have a goal, rather than seeing life stretching aimlessly ahead.

  "Can I help you rebandage that?” Kit asked, looking at the other's shoulder.

  Ragee grimaced. “I wonder if it wouldn't be better to leave it alone until I can get to a medcrafter."

  Kit eyed the roughly wound, red-stained bandages uncertainly. “You sure?"

  "I suppose not,” Ragee sighed. “Put it down to a warrior's reluctance to mess with wounds. You never really get used to them: you have to believe you won't get them. You have any medcrafting experience?"

  "You mean like a doctor? No. But I have some aid experience. I grew up among broken bones and strained muscles.” Kit moved over and carefully unwrapped Ragee's shoulder. She didn't attempt to deep clean the wound; they hadn't sufficient clean water. Besides, she was afraid of doing more damage. Instead she washed the edges, packed some fresh baby cloths hard against the wound and strapped Ragee as if she had a dislocated shoulder. Ragee's tight-lipped expression relaxed when Kit finished jostling the area.

  "Thanks,” she said briefly. A few moments later she smiled more warmly: “Thanks, Kit. That does feel better, now that things have calmed down a bit there."

  Kit nodded, finished putting everything away in the travel bag and settled down for the night. After Ragee had fallen asleep. Kit lay there, her thoughts wandering: what the devil had happened to her? Had Ragee's gods really plucked her from her own world and hurled her here? She had always wanted to do something ... oh ... well, in her dreams, heroic. But reality had to be faced. There wasn't much scope for heroics, at least not in her world. So her dreams had led her to try for the fame of a professional gymnast. But even her “real” goal had been denied her. Maybe this sudden transformation was an answer to her childhood wishes. But those fantasies of desperate deeds and swords and nursery-myth worlds hadn't been as true to life as this place seemed to be. Oh, there was excitement—if you liked the itchy feeling she'd had in her back since seeing the swords those scouts had worn so easily. But what about the crystal clean beauty of the myth worlds painted in her children's books? Kit's mind laughed wryly. Hardly. She had never been so dirty and dusty and sweaty in her life, even when practicing for a tournament. And sore and tired, she thought with a wince. Kit sighed. She wondered if she'd ever get her life in order. Even if she somehow flipped back home, what could she do? She'd have to start over, train for something new. And not the thievery she had so defiantly taken up. That had been childish. Oh, what was the use? She was dead-ended. Washed up and useless at the grand age of twenty-five. She turned over. The pulsing glow of the fire's embers outlined a tired peace on Ragee's face. Kit felt better.

  The next morning the cliffs began their slow curve inward and up: toward the pass. The two women could see their destination lying in the dis
tance before them. Torta. The city of the pass. It sprawled in an ungainly V down the sides of the pass, pressing against their restricting sides, petering out toward the valley floor. They both stopped to look at it, Ragee with an assessing grimace. Kit with dismay.

  "There's no way around it!"

  "No,” Ragee agreed. “We'll work up close to the sides, staying as high as we can, but eventually we'll have to go down and through the town streets. The sheer cliffs that front the mountains are impassable unless you climb with ropes and scaling shoes. And lots of experience."

  "Will there be problems getting through the town?"

  Ragee shrugged. “Depends on how thoroughly entrenched Longire's troops are. We didn't have word when I left the castle with Luewel. But even if they don't have the town completely secure, there'll be scouts out looking. For me, for other swordwielders loyal to Satur."

  "Then what will we do? Disguise ourselves?"

  "I doubt it would work. Not with my arm in a sling, both of us carrying swords and my hair in a warrior's cut. Besides,” she added with a wolfish grin, “my face has become well known to them over the years."

  "Great. So we just go in there and hope we make it through?"

  "No other way,” Ragee replied, looking pleased at the thought. Kit was amazed that she could seem excited by the thought of danger, incapacitated as she was. But Ragee had been moving easier today. She had the quick healing ability born of determination and a warrior's disregard for hurts others would think major. But for all her love of action, she was practical as well. She led Kit along the edges of the cliffs, passing through clefts and up screes Kit would have thought impassable, just to delay the inevitable descent into the town. When they had gone about as far as they could, Ragee hunkered down in a sheltered spot and signaled they'd wait until nightfall. Kit settled down to tend to the small prince, who was getting more and more restless at being cooped up in a restrictive carry sack. Kit was glad he was as young as he was; his weight wasn't much burden and his restlessness stemmed from missing a familiar routine, rather than ambitions to crawl and explore. A few months older and a trek such as this would have been unbearable. Kit divided the somewhat aging milk in two, to stretch it. Ragee handed her a small vial.