Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,55

see a crowd of dark-haired people working there. People her cultural ancestors had wiped out.

A pang of collective guilt struck her, and she sighed. "They were better guardians of the planet than we were."

"Not really," said Raven. "They just didn't have enough technology to do serious damage. Humans are all - "

He stopped, but it was too late.

"Children? Idiots? I'm getting tired of this attitude of yours. I'll concede that we didn't do a great job taking care of things, but we had no way to know the leys existed! And your people did nothing to help. Instead of frolicking around, pretending to be spirits and saints and things, you should have - "

"It's not our job to take care of your world." His face darkened with real anger - and maybe a hint of the same kind of guilt Kelsa had just been feeling? "You're the ones who had to half destroy this world's climate before you woke up and realized you could die too!"

"And you," Kelsa shot back, "treated this world as your ... I was going to say playground, but playpen is more like it! You'd come here and get drunk, and get worshiped - Yes, I figured out that you've been gods as well. And that any legendary artifact that mysteriously vanished was probably your doing. So you got worshiped, and got laid, and played with us like toys, and never bothered to tell us about things that you could see and we couldn't! So don't give me any carpo about how inferior humans are, you irresponsible jerk!"

They quarreled about responsibility and lies all through breakfast, and the rain that started falling as they neared the beginning of the Cassiar Highway put the cap on Kelsa's bad mood.

She turned off at the junction, then stopped to read the running neon script of the road sign: "Cassiar Hwy. repaving for magneto-electric drive. Off-road vehicles only, between Iskut and Good Hope Lake."

"Wonderful," Kelsa muttered.

"We're driving, no, you're driving an off-road vehicle," said Raven coldly. "What's the problem?"

He had been crazy enough to compare his people's failure to teach humanity about the leys to her trivial - and justified! - refusal to teach him to drive the bike. And he evidently wasn't prepared to let it go. Which was fine with Kelsa.

"You've never been on a road they're repaving, have you? It'll be a mess."

Raven shrugged. "This is the only road that runs anywhere near the ley." He sounded as if he blamed her for that too.

"All right." Kelsa sighed. "But don't say I didn't warn you."

***

The first section of the Cassiar Highway was newly paved, and it would have been gorgeous if the rain had lifted enough for them to see the mountains that surrounded them.

"Are you sure this rain wasn't sent by your enemies?" Kelsa slowed for a curve that gleamed with water, even in the dim light.

"Look at the vegetation." The words you idiot hung in the air between them. "It rains here most of the time."

It was probably true. The lush forest around her was full of moss and ferns, more like the coastal rain forests of Washington and Oregon than the dry woods of the Rockies.

They rode on and on, stopping for lunch at a pullout overlooking a lake whose water was the limpid blue of a tropical lagoon, even under cloudy skies.

Soon after they passed Iskut and started up to Gnat Pass, the drizzle began to let up, the forest grew drier ... and the road disintegrated. The smooth surface of magneto-repellant asphalt gave way to a patchwork of repaved and unpaved potholes - and even that was better than the places where the road had been taken up to lay the charge bars that would keep the surface live once they were installed. Now, stretches of rock-strewn dirt appeared every few hundred yards - usually right after a blind curve, so Kelsa didn't have time to slow down for them.

She reduced her speed to a crawl, but the bike still kicked and lurched beneath her, and Raven's arms were tight around her waist. At least he'd stopped asking to drive.

Gnat Pass, 1,241 feet according to the sign, felt like timberline back home. The scattered pines were stunted and twisted. Kelsa slowed to look at them, and when the road needed all her attention, brought the bike to a stop. There wasn't enough traffic to worry about.

"The tree plague hasn't made it this far north, has it?"

Some things were more important than offended