“Azkant,” Ruzt said.
I hoped that was indeed the word for “to learn.” It was recognizable as a verb, at least; but I had on previous occasions thought I was asking for one word, only to discover later that Ruzt, misunderstanding, had supplied me with a different one. “I learn about … mews. And other animals.” I had not realized before now that I had no general word for “dragons.” There were none in the Sanctuary save the mews and the Draconeans themselves. The next time I had an opportunity to draw, I would sketch a variety of other breeds—rock-wyrms, desert drakes, queztalcoatls—and see whether Ruzt had a word that encompassed them all. She might well not. Her ancient ancestors might have created enough breeds to need such a term, but here in the Sanctuary, such a thing would fall into disuse and be forgotten.
Ruzt was clearly still confused. “As you herd yaks,” I said. “I learn about animals. It is what I do.”
My sentences were clear; my calling was not. There were no universities in the Sanctuary, no intellectual societies of scientists who pursued knowledge regardless of practical use, any more than there were in Hlamtse Rong or Keonga or Mouleen. I might as well have said it was my profession to load myself into a cannon and shoot myself to the moon: that would have been equally beyond her ken. And I had neither the will nor the words to try and explain. We bedded down without carrying the thought further, and did our best to sleep.
*
When I woke the next morning, the only thing that persuaded me to leave my blanket was the knowledge that I would be warmer if I moved around. Ruzt was sluggish as well, and we, by unspoken agreement, left our belongings where they lay. If the next night was anything like the previous, we would need the cave’s shelter again. If it were not … then we would be glad of a more comfortable night we did not have to walk very far to obtain.
Once outside, we separated and began to search. The terrain there was not so fierce as to pose a danger to either of us; if it were, the yaks would not have been as likely to venture into onto Anshakkar’s flanks. Unfortunately for us, it was a sighting the previous day that had led us here, not tracks, and so all we could do was quarter the area in the hope of stumbling upon some further hint of their presence.
Had the night not been so bitter, I suspect Ruzt would have sent me in the opposite direction from the one she chose—but her brain was not working as swiftly as usual.
I headed up a small ridge, thinking it would give me a good vantage point from which to survey the area. It is a mark of what effect the Mrtyahaima has on a person that I thought of the ridge as “small”; at home it would have been a good stiff hike. I shambled up it like an automaton, hunched in on myself against the cold, until I neared the ridge’s crest. There the morning sunlight found me, and I opened up like a timid flower, uncurling the tiniest bit to see if it was safe.
Earlier in this text I said that my awareness of how my Draconean companions suffered in the cold was one of the things that kept me from sinking entirely into my own misery and self-pity. The sight that greeted me atop that ridge was another.
Throughout the Mrtyahaima there are stories of a secluded mountain paradise. The nature of this paradise varies from place to place; in some regions it is the abode of the gods, in others it is the afterlife, and in some—though I did not know this until later—it is the bastion of some lost, idyllic civilization. I will not claim the Sanctuary was a paradise in the true sense of the word, and certainly it was neither divine nor idyllic … but its beauty I cannot deny. And from my vantage point I could take it in, from the encircling ring of mountains to the peak of Anshakkar towering above me, from the stony cliffs to the river that vanished into a steep-sided gorge, from the snow-coated trees to the flatter areas I suspected would be fields after the thaw. It was a wonderland of ice and snow, and so sublime was the vista that I forgot, for a few blessed moments, how cold I was.
What recalled me to myself was the realization that I was standing like some kind of brave explorer posing for her portrait—and that, in so doing, I had made myself quite visible atop that ridge. Even if there were no Draconeans nearby save Ruzt, this was not the wisest thing I could have done, and I hastily crouched to reduce my profile.
The shift in posture made me notice something else. The way up to the ridge had been a real scramble in places, but that was because I had chosen to take the most direct route to its top, rather than circling around to come at it from a lower point. Had I done so, the way would have been remarkably easy: the crest of the ridge was broad enough for at least five people to walk abreast, and quite flat.
Suspiciously so. It was too heavily shrouded in snow for me to examine its surface, but the manner in which it rose from the valley floor looked a great deal like a road.
And a road, of course, must lead somewhere.
As if I were a puppet and Curiosity herself pulling my strings, I turned to look in the other direction, up the slopes of Anshakkar.
There could be no doubt. It was a road, rising along a ramp either natural or Draconean-made; and although I could not properly see its end, something about the shape of the mountainside up ahead struck me as less than entirely natural.
I cast a quick glance about. Ruzt was not in sight, having gone in the other direction around that particular flank of Anshakkar; in the distance I could see smoke from one of the villages we had passed, but no one moving about. Inconveniently, no yaks had made their way up the road, which might have given me an excuse—
—but there were some yaks grazing not far off, on the other side of the road.
Wrestling one of the cows away from her herd and up the road was not so easily done, but I persevered. I knew, of course, that I should likely not be climbing Anshakkar to see what was there. If Ruzt wanted me to know, she would have brought me there herself. But the joy of discovery was my sustenance, when everything else in my life had been taken from me; and I did not have it in me to turn around and walk away. This way, at least, if anyone asked why I had gone there, I could say truthfully (if incompletely) that I was following a yak.