Read Timegods' World for Free Online Page B

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window, and the walls were a clean but old cream plaster.
    “There are quilts on the foot of the bed … here … and I’ll leave the door unbolted. There is still a lock, but the key will be under the rock on the right.”
    “Why?” I whispered, knowing I didn’t have to, but figuring that this invitation did not exactly have familial approval.
    “If no one knows you’re here, then they can’t say you are, and Mother always has to tell everything. This way, if there’s something wrong, you can at least have a place where you won’t freeze. I’ll see if I can find some warmer clothes and some food.”
    We both knew what she was saying. If the soldiers were not a protective detail, then anyone who helped me was in danger of losing everything as well. Even in making shelter available in a hidden fashion Allyson was risking a lot.
    It would be only a while before her father arrived home, and he certainly, knowing Jerz Davniads, would ask the soldiers what was happening.
    “I should be going …”
    “I know.”
    Neither one of us said anything as we climbed back up the old stairs to the kitchen. As I pulled on my cloak, Allyson handed me a pair of faded leather gloves.
    “You’ll need them. Bring them back when you can.”
    I nodded, still having to look up at her.
    Creaakkkk … whssllllsss …
    The wind nearly tore the kitchen door from my hands as I stepped out into the chill. The afternoon looked more like twilight. The tiny white flakes fell as thick as a summer thundershower.
    Not looking back, I plunged into the storm and down the back lawn, where the snow was almost ankle deep, nearly falling several times before I reached the trees and the narrow path that wound along the hillsides toward our house.
    Chhichiii …
    A grossjay jabbered from the evergreen branches, his call the only sound above the hissing of the snow and the whining of the wind.
    By the time I was five rods into the woods, I could not even tell, looking over my shoulder, that there was a house uphill from where I walked. The path seemed longer than usual; my ears were numb; and my toes tingled by the time I reached the gate in the old stone wall. The wooden gate itself had been removed when my father was a boy. Only a gap in the stonework remained. The wall marked the boundary between our lands and the Davniadses’, and on the other side were the
remnants of Grandfather’s orchards, mostly chyst, but some pearapple.
    A hint of an acrid odor in the air tugged at my nose, and I stopped short of the gate, knowing that to return through the wall led to more than I really wanted to handle. Edging up the gap, I studied the path, but there were no prints in the snow, no sign of anyone this far down in the orchards.
    The house was still a good hundred rods or more uphill, and the straggling remnants of the old orchards ran to within twenty rods of the back terrace.
    After I went through the wall, my steps were even more deliberate, and I left the path, walking instead from tree to tree, pausing and looking uphill. The acrid odor got stronger and stronger, but I could see nothing through the trees—not until I was almost to the top end of the orchard.
    The light from the fire lit up the entire house, and the row of soldiers formed a cordon around it. None of them were looking out into the storm, but at the burning house. All of them had weapons leveled.
    I scuttled up into the lower branches of a pearapple, trying to sort it .out, trying to keep my guts from turning inside out.
    Why were they burning the house? And who were they?
    I watched for a time, conscious of the cold creeping through me, as the flames continued to leap into the storm. Despite the fire and the cold, none of the soldiers relaxed in their scrutiny of the house.
    One figure, presumably an officer, walked the outer perimeter. The second time he passed within a few rods of the tree where I was huddled on the back side of the trunk, peering around at the destruction. That was