Tarashana Rachel Neumeier (top 10 motivational books TXT) 📖

“I’ll try to think how to explain.” But Lalani did not try at once. She exclaimed instead, “Oh, I wish we’d found the others already! This walking is ridiculous. Why can’t the gods just shift the land to bring us all to the right place?”

I said in taksu, “If the gods were able to shift the world so that we stood in the correct place, they would likely have done so long since.”

“Yes,” Iro said. From his fervent tone, he had been thinking about that for some time. He went on, speaking now to Lalani. “Plainly the gods favor us above the Saa’arii. I hardly see how we could be mistaken to think so. Yet, consider, when an avalanche begins, the gods may turn it aside if that is their wish. But they cannot put the snow back where it was and cause the avalanche not to have happened. When war comes, the gods may hamper the ferocity of those who are enemies if it pleases them to do so, as they did long ago when they set the Little Knife into the world. But if one country overpowers another so that the border shifts far south or far north, the gods cannot set the border back where once it lay. Perhaps the Saa’arii tide is like that.”

What Iro had said seemed right to me. If the Saa'arii tide were such a working as could cast a shadow across the sky and the earth and all the places below the earth, then their power must be truly extraordinary.

I said, “I agree that we must have the favor of the gods. They have shown that many times. I think they are trying to stop the Saa’arii from destroying the Tarashana and taking the starlit lands. I think the gods do not want that to happen.” I paused. It seemed a remarkable thing to hope that a small Tarashana woman might undo a calamity beyond the gods’ power to rectify; that the gods themselves might set their hope on Inhejeriel.

I could not help but wonder what might happen to us if she came to the peak of Talal Sabero and we were not there. Even if she worked her sorcery to bring her own people back to the land of the living, even if she fulfilled every hope, perhaps that sorcery would not reach so far as to find us.

That was not a thought to share. I said, “If we can travel a little faster, that might be better. Iro, do you still feel sick from the lack of water?”

He flicked a dismissive hand to say that if he did, this was unimportant.

“Good. Were you injured at all in the battle with the Saa’arii?” I did not say Tell me the truth, but I gave him a direct look that meant the same thing.

He met that look. “I am perfectly well, Ryo.”

I assumed he was not perfectly well, but he was moving better now that he was suffering less from thirst. I said, “You will take my sword. I am wounded, not seriously, but enough to perhaps cause some difficulty in a hard fight.” The pain of my injuries was worse now than it had been. I feared the wounds might have become fevered, but there was no reason to look because there was nothing to be done. A man who cannot set injury and pain aside when he must fight is waiting to die, but plainly Iro would be the stronger in battle now. I took my sheathed sword and gave this to him.

Without expression, Iro slung my sword into place at his back. “I was careless to lose my sword. I will endeavor not to lose yours.”

“I would prefer to have it back,” I agreed. “But it was luck that let me keep it in my hands. I lost hold of other things that mattered more.” I glanced at Tano, who flushed and dropped his gaze.

We were now traveling more steeply uphill, we Ugaro jogging while Lalani only lengthened her stride. Once again the stone to either side had fallen away so that we followed a ridge. This one was narrow, but not so narrow that we had to walk single-file. This high, all the mountains around us seemed to glow with moonlight; light ran across the pale stone like water and set every streak of ice ablaze with liquid fire, so luminous that I found myself wondering whether, if I melted a palmful of ice in my hand, I might find moonlight spilling up from my fingers rather than water spilling down.

The wide indigo sky was scattered with uncountable brilliant stars, save near the Moon, where her bright radiance hid their light. The Dawn Sisters had vanished. They were probably very close to the Moon now, their light hidden within hers. Silver mist formed a halo around her face. We Ugaro say that this means the Moon has come near to the earth. I had no doubt of that at this moment. The wind had died away. The world seemed to have fallen into a great waiting stillness, as though the earth and the heavens waited for a storm to break.

Iro halted. I took one more step before I realized and almost had to set a hand against Lalani’s back to steady myself. Only then did I realize how distracted I had been, by the light, the air, the ice, and most likely by a little fever. I had permitted myself to become disgracefully inattentive. I breathed deeply now, making myself aware of the world, as I should have been all this time.

It was obvious why we had stopped. Before us, the stone ran out into a narrow span of pure ice, no broader than two handbreadths. This swept in a smooth curve down from the mountainside, down almost to the mist that drifted below