The Outskirter's Secret by Rosemary Kirstein Page B

Inner Lands groups who claimed to hold honor highly:
certain cadres of soldiers, highly placed aristocrats, priests of
some sects. Nothing seemed applicable.
    Then she tried again on a simpler level, and
realized suddenly that Bel, through no fault of her own, had been
made to look a fool in front of a friend. "I don't think much of
those raiders' manners," Rowan said, spontaneously. To herself, the
comment seemed inane.
    But Bel relaxed somewhat. "And that," she
said aggrievedly, "is what you Inner Lands think Outskirters are."
The matter was closed. She turned to practical concerns. "Do you
have enough water, or should we try to find a brook to camp
by?"
    Rowan began to feel better. She elbowed her
shoulder-slung water bag, and it emitted a jolly little gurgle. "I
have enough."
    "Then let's stop here. I only wanted to put
some distance between us and that mob. They might change their
minds and turn on us."
    It seemed unlikely. "All right." Rowan
paused, and tried to scan the area. The ground had flattened again,
and was clear enough for their purposes. Only a few low bushes
sprouted in the darkness, one of them a tanglebrush clattering with
a quiet, brittle noise in the now-light breeze. The women unslung
their packs and set to flattening a section of the knee-deep
greengrass.
    As they arranged their camp, another Inner
Lands danger came to mind. "The villagers mentioned occasional
wolves," Rowan said.
    "And a fire would keep them away. Rowan, I
won't have a fire here."
    "You'd rather meet a wolf than a goblin?"
    "Of course." There was a grin in the
Outskirter's voice, and she once again became completely herself.
"I've never met a wolf." She settled her gear with a thump of her
pack at the head of her bedroll. "But just in case, we'll sleep in
shifts. You first."
     
    The Outskirts had no border.
    Despite the knowledge, Rowan had more than
half expected to be awakened to a wild endless sweep of redgrass
rolling to the limits of the horizon, cheerfully spotted with white
goats—and likely to suddenly sprout an infestation of bizarre
creatures, or a shouting horde of sword-waving barbarians.
    But the pale gray light of the cloudy morning
showed terrain no different from that of the Inner Lands. The
dewless meadow was greenly carpeted with clover and one of the
various sorts of greengrass called "panic" by common folk. The land
remained flat to the east, grew hillier to the south. North, the
forest sent a long arm eastward, and shielding her eyes against the
sun as it rose into the clouds, Rowan discerned the woods curving
south again in the distance.
    But close beside Rowan's resting place stood
the intriguing tanglebrush. She pulled herself from her cloak and
bedding to examine it.
    Rising as high as her waist, its black
branches, randomly right-angled, doubled back and forth on
themselves, creating a seemingly impenetrable mazy dome. The
outermost twigs bore flat, narrow leaves as long as her hand, gray
on one side, blue-black on the other. Each leaf stiffly presented
its dark face to the rising sun. Beneath the edge of the dome, as
if in its shelter, grew a patch of the vermin weed redgrass.
    "Do the leaves move as the sun moves?" The
leaves of some plants in the Inner Lands did so.
    Bel's mood had repaired itself in the night.
Now she was occupied with rolling her piebald cloak and securing it
to the outside of her pack; the day was already warm. "Yes. Don't
put your hand in there. There are thorns, and the sap is
poisonous."
    Rowan had been about to do exactly that, and
drew back sharply. She would have to learn to investigate more
cautiously than was her usual habit. They were going into Bel's
country, and anything unfamiliar should be checked against Bel's
knowledge.
    "Are you ready?" Bel had already shouldered
her pack.
    Rowan was dismayed. "No breakfast?"
    "Eat as you walk." She passed the steerswoman
some hardbread and cheese. "We'll take a long rest at noon, with a
fire for cooking, if you like. And you can write