I spoke with Ameno that night, asking if she knew of any carters going north that might give us a lift. She told me where to go. Early in the morning I routed sleepy Melle out. Ameno sent us off with a packet of food and took the silver piece I offered her. "Luck be with you, go with Ennu," she said, and gave Melle a long, grave embrace. We went off through the foggy dawn to a yard on the far edge of town where carters met to make up their loads and sometimes find passengers, and there we found a ride as far as a place called Tertudi, which the carter said was halfway to the river. I had no clear map of this part of Bendile in my mind, and had to rely on what people told me, knowing only that the river was north of us, and Mesun across it and well to the east.
It took our carter's slow horses all day to get to Tertudi, a small, poor town with no inn. I didn't want to stay there and be noticed. I hoped to break any connection with the inn at Rami, to leave no traceable path behind us. We spoke to no one in Tertudi, but simply walked away from it for a couple of miles into the hay-fields that surrounded it, and made ourselves a camp by a little stream for the night. Crickets sang all about us in the warm evening, near and far. Melle ate with a good appetite and said she wasn't tired. She wanted me to tell her a story she knew. That was her request: "Tell me a story I know." I told her the beginning of the Chamhan. She listened, intent, never moving, till at last she began to blink and yawn. She fell asleep curled up in her poncho, holding the little cat figure at the base of her throat.
I lay listening to the crickets and looking out for the first stars. I slipped into sleep peacefully, but woke in the dark. There was a man in the hayfield, standing watching us. I knew him, I knew his face, the scar that split his eyebrow. I tried to get up but I was paralyzed as I had been paralyzed by Dorod's drugs, I could not move and my heart pounded and pounded ... It was deep night, the stars blazing. Most of the crickets had fallen silent but one still trilled nearby. No one was there. But I could not sleep again.
It grieved me that blind hate and rancor should be my last link to Arcamand. I could think now of the people of that house with gratitude for what they had given me—kindness, security, learning, love. I could never think that Sotur or Yaven had or would have betrayed my love. I was able to see, in part at least, why the Mother and Father had betrayed my trust. The master lives in the same trap as the slave, and may find it even harder to see beyond it. But Torm and his slave-double Hoby never wanted to look beyond it; they valued nothing but power, the most brutal control of other people. My escape, if he heard of it, would have rankled Torm bitterly. As for Hoby, always seething with envious hatred, the knowledge that I was going about as a free man would goad him to rageful, vengeful pursuit. I had no doubt that he was on my trail. And I was deeply afraid of him. By myself I was no match for him, and now I had my little, helpless hostage with me. She would awaken all his cruelty. I knew that cruelty.
I roused Melle well before dawn and we set off. All I knew to do was walk, walk on, get away.
We walked all day through rolling, open country; we passed a couple of villages at a distance, and avoided the few farms with their barking dogs. Mostly it was grazing land, cattle scattered out across the grasslands. We met up with a cowboy who waited for us and walked his horse along with us to talk. Melle was afraid of him, shrinking away from him, and I was none too glad of his company. But he had no curiosity about where we came from or where we were going. He was lonesome and wanted somebody to talk to. He got off his horse