The Curse of Chalion

Memory of the terrible hope in Ista's eyes unnerved him. And the reflection that tomorrow, he would mount a horse whose every stride would carry him closer to the sea.

Cazaril regretfully gave up use of the Chancellery's courier remounts when they left Valenda, in favor of secrecy. No merit in handing dy Jironal a signed record of their route and destination. Armed with Palli's letter of recommendation, they instead arranged exchanges for fresh horses at local town chapters of the Daughter's Order. At the foot of the mountains on the western frontier, they were obliged to deal with a local horse trader for the sturdy and surefooted mules to carry them over the heights.

The man had clearly been making a fine living for years skinning desperate travelers. Ferda looked over the beasts offered them, and said indignantly, "This one has heaves. And if that one isn't throwing out a splint, my lord, I'll eat your hat!" The horse trader and he fell at once into acrimonious argument.

Cazaril, leaning in exhaustion on the corral rail and thinking only of how much he didn't want to throw a leg over any animal, spavined or not, for the next thousand years, at last straightened and let himself through the gate. He walked out into the herd of milling horses and mules, stirred up by the rough-and-ready capture of their rejected comrades, spread his hands, and closed his eyes. "If it please you, Lady, give us three good mules."

At a nudge at his side, he opened them again. A curious mule, its brown eyes limpid, stared at him. Two more muscled in, their long ears waggling; the tallest one, dark brown with a creamy nose, rested its chin on his shoulder and breathed out a contented-sounding snort, spraying the environs.

"Thank you, Lady," muttered Cazaril. And more loudly, "All right. Follow me." He plodded back through the hoof-pocked muck to the gate. The three mules fell in behind, snuffling with interest.

"We'll take these three," he told the horse trader, who, along with Ferda, had fallen silent and was staring openmouthed.

The horse trader found his voice first. "But—but those are my three best animals!"

"Yes. I know." He let himself back out, leaving the horse trader to hold the gate against the three mules who still tried to follow him, shouldering up heavily against the boards and making anxious mulish noises. "Ferda, come to a price. I'm going to go lie down in that lovely straw stack. Wake me when we're saddled up..."

His mule proved healthy, steady, and bored. There was nothing better, in Cazaril's view, on these treacherous mountain trails than a bored mule. The fiery steeds Ferda favored for making time over the flats could have climbed no faster on these breath-stealing slopes, besides making a menace of themselves with their nervous sidling on the narrow places. And the mule's gentle amble didn't churn his guts. Although if the goddess granted Her saint mules, he didn't know why She didn't also give him better weather.

The dy Gura brothers stopped laughing at Cazaril's hat about halfway up the pass over the Bastard's Teeth range. He folded the fine fur flaps down over his ears and tied their strings under his chin before the sleet, driven by the tumbling updrafts, started stinging their faces. He squinted into the wind between the laid-back ears of his laboring mule at the track winding up through rocks and ice, and mentally measured out the daylight left to them.

After a time, Ferda reined back beside him. "My lord, should we take shelter from this blizzard?"

"Blizzard?" Cazaril brushed ice spicules from his beard, and blinked. Oh. Palliar's winters were mild, sodden rather than snowy, and the brothers had never been out of their province before. "If this were a blizzard, you wouldn't be able to see your mule's ears from where you sit. This isn't unsafe. Merely unpleasant."

Ferda made a face of dismay, but pulled his hood strings tighter and bent into the wind. Indeed, in a few more minutes they broke out of the squall, and visibility returned; the high vale opened out before their eyes. A few fingers of pale sunlight poked down through silvery clouds to dapple the long slopes—falling away downward.

Cazaril pointed, and shouted encouragingly, "Ibra!"

THE WEATHER MODERATED AS THEY STARTED THE long descent toward the coast, though the grunting mules shuffled no faster. The rugged border mountains gave way to less daunting hills, humped and brown, with broad valleys winding between. When they left the snow behind Cazaril reluctantly permitted Ferda to trade in their excellent mules for swifter horses. A succession of improving roads and increasingly civilized inns brought them in just two more days to the river course that ran down to Zagosur. They passed through outlying farms, and over bridges across irrigation canals swollen with the winter rains.