sure that it wouldn’t slip off my heel. Then he and Pol went away. I shifted the cuff into a comfortable place and wondered if the dent formed in my ankle would be permanent.
The room was cool, none of its windows faced south, and by the time the magus returned to wrap my ankle in one of Pol’s shirts, I was asleep. I spent the day dozing. Sometimes I sat up to look out the window above my bed at the sunlight falling bright and hot outside. Once I saw Pol teaching Ambiades and Sophos to fence with wooden swords, but it could have been a dream; the next time I sat up they were gone.
After dinner I lay and listened to the voices in the other room. The sky grew dark, and the stars came out. I was asleep again before the moon rose and didn’t stir until Sophos told me that breakfast was waiting. There was an overfull bowl of cooked oats and another bowl of yogurt as well as bread and cheese and olives and several oranges, the small, lumpy kind that are hard topeel but juicy and sweet.
“Enjoy it,” said the magus, seeing that I was. “You won’t eat so well again for a while.”
I ate what I could and didn’t complain about anything. When the magus asked me if I could please not chew with my mouth open, as I had been doing assiduously since our first meal together, I obliged him with a visible effort. Pol worked on my wrists, pulling the stained bandages off, cleaning the blisters, and rubbing more salve into them. I didn’t try to wiggle away, and I produced only enough curses to let him know that I could have made more noise but was refraining. The sores were already much better, and I concurred when he decided to leave them exposed to the air for the day, although I could see that it didn’t matter if I concurred or not.
It was lucky that I hadn’t gotten sick in prison. If I had, it would have taken more than three days of food and fresh air to make me feel so well. While the magus directed the filling of backpacks that everyone but me would carry, I stretched my muscles, bending down to touch my toes, leaning over backward onto my hands, checking to see how much of my strength had returned after a day of rest, and wondering how much longer I had before the magus needed me fit to work. Then I sat on the stone threshold of the house and waited while the others shouldered their burdens.
In front of me the mountains began in earnest. Theylifted above their foothills with a rush, their stony slopes dotted with tenacious bushes that had found a hold in loose shale. Sticking out like the bones in ankles and knees were solid outcroppings of limestone and marble. Anyone could see that the rubble piled on top of the steep slopes made the mountains nearly unscalable, the perfect defense for Eddis, the country hidden in the valleys near their summits. There were gorges carved by water, and somewhere there were quarries, but I wasn’t sure where to look for them cut into the mountainside, because I wasn’t positive where I was myself—somewhere inland of the Seperchia was all I knew for certain.
The magus called me away from my stone threshold and led the way up the hill beside the house to a narrow crevice sliced in the side of the mountain. The trail that had been no wider than a horse the day before was no wider than a man and barely visible. We walked along an old streambed, probably dry for most of the year. When swollen with winter rains, the stream had carved its way through the shale and slate and with more difficulty but just as inevitably through the marble and granite. Where the water flowed the olives had taken root. The mountain walls rose on either side of us, sometimes in solid stone walls several hundred feet high. The red shank and green shank grew in scrubby clumps that left dry scratches on our skin as we brushed by.
When the track occasionally ended in a small cliffthat would be a waterfall for the stream in the rainy season, the magus looked for footholds on either side of the streambed and
The room was cool, none of its windows faced south, and by the time the magus returned to wrap my ankle in one of Pol’s shirts, I was asleep. I spent the day dozing. Sometimes I sat up to look out the window above my bed at the sunlight falling bright and hot outside. Once I saw Pol teaching Ambiades and Sophos to fence with wooden swords, but it could have been a dream; the next time I sat up they were gone.
After dinner I lay and listened to the voices in the other room. The sky grew dark, and the stars came out. I was asleep again before the moon rose and didn’t stir until Sophos told me that breakfast was waiting. There was an overfull bowl of cooked oats and another bowl of yogurt as well as bread and cheese and olives and several oranges, the small, lumpy kind that are hard topeel but juicy and sweet.
“Enjoy it,” said the magus, seeing that I was. “You won’t eat so well again for a while.”
I ate what I could and didn’t complain about anything. When the magus asked me if I could please not chew with my mouth open, as I had been doing assiduously since our first meal together, I obliged him with a visible effort. Pol worked on my wrists, pulling the stained bandages off, cleaning the blisters, and rubbing more salve into them. I didn’t try to wiggle away, and I produced only enough curses to let him know that I could have made more noise but was refraining. The sores were already much better, and I concurred when he decided to leave them exposed to the air for the day, although I could see that it didn’t matter if I concurred or not.
It was lucky that I hadn’t gotten sick in prison. If I had, it would have taken more than three days of food and fresh air to make me feel so well. While the magus directed the filling of backpacks that everyone but me would carry, I stretched my muscles, bending down to touch my toes, leaning over backward onto my hands, checking to see how much of my strength had returned after a day of rest, and wondering how much longer I had before the magus needed me fit to work. Then I sat on the stone threshold of the house and waited while the others shouldered their burdens.
In front of me the mountains began in earnest. Theylifted above their foothills with a rush, their stony slopes dotted with tenacious bushes that had found a hold in loose shale. Sticking out like the bones in ankles and knees were solid outcroppings of limestone and marble. Anyone could see that the rubble piled on top of the steep slopes made the mountains nearly unscalable, the perfect defense for Eddis, the country hidden in the valleys near their summits. There were gorges carved by water, and somewhere there were quarries, but I wasn’t sure where to look for them cut into the mountainside, because I wasn’t positive where I was myself—somewhere inland of the Seperchia was all I knew for certain.
The magus called me away from my stone threshold and led the way up the hill beside the house to a narrow crevice sliced in the side of the mountain. The trail that had been no wider than a horse the day before was no wider than a man and barely visible. We walked along an old streambed, probably dry for most of the year. When swollen with winter rains, the stream had carved its way through the shale and slate and with more difficulty but just as inevitably through the marble and granite. Where the water flowed the olives had taken root. The mountain walls rose on either side of us, sometimes in solid stone walls several hundred feet high. The red shank and green shank grew in scrubby clumps that left dry scratches on our skin as we brushed by.
When the track occasionally ended in a small cliffthat would be a waterfall for the stream in the rainy season, the magus looked for footholds on either side of the streambed and
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