When she went back to her bedroll, she was tempted to cry herself to sleep—but she was so tired that despite her aches, she fell right asleep before she could squeeze out a single tear.
She wasn’t the first one awake the next morning, so she wasn’t the one who had to fetch bags and baskets of breakfast from the Foothold Gate—that had fallen to Ivar and a couple of the younger mages. But as soon as she was up, washed and changed, and fed, Jonaton came looking for her as the mages packed up their things in preparation to go through the horse Gate once he’d tuned and opened it.
He found her finishing the last of a bacon roll, and tugged her to her feet. “Come along,” he said. “I need you to come anchor this thing, like you did with the Foothold Gate.”
“Why?” she asked this time, though she did get to her feet and follow him to the two uprights that formed what would be the horse Gate. “Why not Ivar or Alberdina? They don’t have magic either.”
“Because Alberdina is going to be looking after me, and Ivar and Bay are going to be guarding us. Remember, there are bears.” He grinned as she shivered. “Don’t worry. If a bear shows up, Ivar’s already got plans and a bear-trap in place. I promise you a bear-steak and a bearskin for your bed.”
That only made her think about where that bed was going to be. In the middle of winter. In the wilderness. Would it be in the dubious shelter of this ruined tower? Or in a tent? In the snow?
Had Jonaton even thought about any of this? Or was he just concentrating on the tasks at hand? Hakkon probably wouldn’t mind beds on cold, hard ground, but surely Jonaton would be as miserable as she was going to be!
And what about the Circle? They were all old men—
But they seemed made of whipcord and tanned sinew, and surely they already knew how awful this was going to be, and they didn’t seem to care. They even seemed to be happier, as if going from an easy life in a manor to swatting waterbugs in a wilderness, until they finished mummifying, was an invigorating playtime! Even their endless banter, swatting at each other, and quibbling, had tilted lately into increasingly absurd accusations of behavior she was probably too young to know about.
The mages—who still looked exhausted—lined up on their packs in front of what would be the horse Gate. She sat behind the Gate uprights where Jonaton put her and worried over it all without paying any attention to what Jonaton was doing. Besides, it wasn’t as if this was the cellar, where the whole place was alight with glowing diagrams and sigils. This was out in the open and broad daylight, and frankly it just looked like Jonaton was doing some sort of absurd dance. Her mind just kept going around and around in an endless, bleak play of how horrible it was all going to be, and how she couldn’t do anything about it.
She only looked up when the waiting mages broke out into weary applause, picked up their packs, and started filing through the Gate in groups of two and three, because there was plenty of room for that between those uprights. It was . . . unsettling, to watch them walking toward her, then suddenly disappearing.
Finally there was no one left on the round peninsula but her, Jonaton, and Alberdina. Jonaton staggered a little; Alberdina jumped to her feet and caught him. She handed him a leather bottle, and he drank everything in it down in several long gulps.
“Better?” she asked.
He nodded, as strangers suddenly started appearing between the Gate uprights, laden with all manner of boxes, bundles, and packs. They headed straight for the ruins as if they knew exactly what they were doing—which they probably did. There was a plan, after all. Just because she didn’t know what was in it, it didn’t follow that Isla had neglected to attend to the least little detail.
“Mornin’,” said one in a floppy straw hat to Alberdina. “Nice day fer fishin’, ain’t it?” And he gave a little gulp of a laugh. Well, that seemed to make sense, since aside from his pack, he had a huge bundle of fishing poles on one shoulder. He was followed by a blacksmith, and a confused-appearing man, probably some kind of herbalist or grower, with a string of garlic hanging from his belt.
Evidently Alberdina knew the fisherman, because she gave him a little tap on his shoulder as he headed for the ruins.
Several dogs came through; there were two mastiffs, and several dogs that seemed to be part of a hunting pack, because they kept together and hard at the heels of the man she assumed was their master.
“I think I’m—” Jonaton began.
“You’re eating first,” Alberdina contradicted him, and gestured to Delia to come too. Some of what the newcomers had been carrying were foodstuffs, so at least she was not going to have to fetch more baskets and bundles from the Foothold Gate. Delia ate glumly; Jonaton ate gluttonously. Alberdina was too busy directing all the new people as to where everything was to pay any attention to either of them.
And still more people poured in through the Gate, a regular procession of them. Then something she had never seen before—small logs strung on bits of rope, each end of which was attached to a longer rope, so that the whole thing looked like a rope ladder made for someone who was too obtuse to realize that the rungs were going to roll under his feet. It passed through the Gate, and she couldn’t see the other end.
But then she realized what it was, as boxes and bundles and other large containers were shoved across the Gate, riding freely on those rolling logs. Some of the men started gathering them up and taking them to the ruins. It was all so organized! She could hardly believe her eyes.
And then the procession of containers stopped, the rollers were neatly stowed aside, and a flock of traumatized sheep blundered through, preceded and followed by herd dogs. A squad of woodsmen and builders came through, bearing backpacks laden with more weight in tools than a team of horses could hope to move. They moved up the hill as one unit, without even waiting for directions.
“Kristoff! Has anyone sent that coracle across?” Jonaton bellowed to someone over in the ruins.
“Right here!” shouted the fellow who’d had all the fishing poles, bringing over something she’d taken to be a very big basket, which was, in fact, a round thing of woven willow, with a tarred canvas cover sewn tightly over it. There was a board across the middle of it.
He put it in the water behind the two water-Gate uprights and gestured to her, and to horror, she realized that this was how she was supposed to get “behind” the water-Gate.
A Tow-Beast came through the land-Gate, led by one of the Valdemar stableboys. It was at this point that it truly dawned on her that the land-Gate could not possibly be linked to the Foothold Gate in the cellar.
The man with the round boat-thing gestured to her again, impatiently, and with great reluctance she went to him. “Yer t’ git down in this here coracle, milady,” he said, sitting on the bank and holding the contraption “steady” with both hands. “Jest sit down here on bank, next ter me. Tha’s right. Now put yer feet in ’er—”