At last, having worried about all this for sufficient time, she slept.
Proom shook her awake at first light, and they made a quick, cold breakfast as they walked. The twittered directions came less frequently today, and more briefly. Obviously other shadowpeople went in fear of the Harpies as well. Rather than travel today in a compact group, they went well scattered among the trees, avoiding the occasional clearings and open valleys. When it was necessary to cross such places, they searched the air first, peering from the edges of the trees, then dashed across, a few at a time. Mavin judged that the Harpies were too heavy to perch at the tops of trees—and the thought made her remember the broken vine outside her window at Chamferton’s castle—but they could find suitable rest on any rock outcropping or cliff. Proom, well aware of this, kept them far from such places, and they did not see the hunters during the daylight hours.
Nor did they see Singlehorn. That night as they ate another cold meal without the comfort of fire, Mavin remembered that forlorn, bugling call the Fon-beast had sent after the Band as it marched away west. If Singlehorn were following the Band, then he might be moving ahead of them at their own speed. If that were the case, they might not catch up with him until he came to the sea, a discouraging thought. Though the shadows had little interest in him in his present shape, she wondered if the Harpies did.
At midnight she woke to the sound of that lone, hunting cry. There was an overcast, and she could not tell if there were more than one. Around her, the shadowpeople moved restlessly in their sleep.
So they went on. On the third night nothing disturbed them. Proom began to be more his usual self, full of prancing and jokes. The fourth and fifth night passed with no alarms. Mavin had convinced herself that the Harpy flight coming so close to her own path was mere coincidence. As Chamferton had said, Pantiquod had likely gone south to Bannerwell by now. Or somewhere else where her habits and appetites could be better satisfied.
They began to travel on the road which they had paralleled for many leagues. Now they came out upon it, staying close to the edge, still with some nervous scanning of the skies. They could move faster on this smooth surface, and by the time the sixth night fell, Mavin smelled the distant sea.
And on the following morning, a friendly family of shadowpeople drove Singlehorn into their camp, head hanging, coat dusty and dry, tongue swollen in a bleeding mouth. The broken strap of the halter still hung from his head, making small, dragging serpents’ trails in the dust. Mavin lifted Fon-beast’s head and looked into dull, lifeless eyes. She growled in her throat, hating herself for having wanted him gone. There were swollen sores around his ears, and remembering her own pain and the gentleness of the Healer, Mavin cursed her impatience with him. And with herself, she amended. It was not the Fon-beast himself, but her feelings about him that disturbed her. “I will forget all that,” she resolved in a fury of contrition. “I will forget all that and concentrate on taking care of him until we get to Windlow’s.”
They gave him water. She squeezed rainhat fruits into his mouth. Obviously he had not eaten well in the days he had been gone, or rather he had tried to graze on common grasses. Though he thought himself a grazing beast, the grasses had not been fooled. They had cut his mouth and tongue until both were swollen and infected. Mavin made a rich broth of some of the meat they had carried and dropped this into his mouth from a spoon while infant shadowpeople rubbed his dusty hide with bundles of aromatic leaves.
She had not noticed that Proom had left until he returned with a group of the older shadowpeople carrying bags full of herbs and growths, most of which she had never seen before. These were compounded by the tribe in accordance with some recipe well known to them all. It resulted in a thick, green goo which Proom directed be plastered around Singlehorn’s mouth and upon the open sores. Some of it trickled into the Fon-beast’s mouth as well, and Mavin was restrained from wiping it away. Finally, when everything had been done for him that anyone could think of, she covered him with her cloak and lay down beside him. After a time the smell of the herbs and the warmth of the day made them all drowsy—they had been much awake during the past nights—and they slept once more.
When they awoke in the late afternoon, the Singlehorn was on his feet, pawing at the ground with one golden hoof, nodding and nodding as though in time to music. Dried shreds of the green goo clung around his mouth and ears. Beneath this papery crust the flesh was pink and healthy-looking, the swelling reduced; and while his eyes were still tired, he did not look so hopeless. There was a pool a little distance away, and while the shadowpeople yawned and stirred, readying for travel, Mavin led him there. She let him out to the length of the new rope she had tied to his halter but did not release him. “No more running away,” she said firmly. “Whatever I may feel about this whole business, Fon-beast, however impatient it makes me, we are bound together until we reach safety.” And to herself, she said, “And when we reach Windlow’s—then we’ll see if there is a true tie between us.”
Singlehorn, rolling in the shallow water, tossing his head and drinking deep draughts of cool liquid, did not seem to care. She let him roll, unaware of the sun falling in the west, enjoying the peace of the moment. When she returned to the road, the shadowpeople were gone.
“Hello?” she cried. “Proom?”
Only silence. Perhaps a far-off twitter.
“Goodbye?” she called.
No answer. Well. They had observed and assisted while Mavin had done several interesting things. They had introduced their children to this person. They had, perhaps, made a new song or two—the Lake of Faces was surely good for at least a brief memorial—but now the shadowpeople had business of their own. Mavin had found the creature she sought, and now they might be about their own affairs. She sought the edges of the road for any sign, any trail, but saw nothing.
Nothing ...
Except a grayness lying quiet beneath a tree. And another superimposed in fluttering flakes upon a copse, wavering the light which passed through it so it seemed to shift and boil.
Her soul fell silent. Shadows from the tower come to haunt her once more. Not upon the road, which still prevented their presence, but nearby. Perhaps the shadowpeople had been shadow-bane, but without them the bane prevailed no longer.
There was nothing for it except to get on to the south. They must come to Tarnoch at last, or so far from the tower that the shadows would give up. Though what they would give up, or how they were here, she could hardly imagine. Was it she who drew them, or Singlehorn? Were they set to follow any who left the Dervish’s valley? And if so, until when? Until what happened? Perhaps this was only conjecture. Perhaps they had not followed at all but were everywhere, always, ubiquitous as midges.
To which an internal voice said, Nonsense. You have not seen them in your former travels because they were not in this part of the world before. Now they are, because they have followed you here from the Dervish’s valley. But follow you where they will, they did not harm you when you were with the shadowpeople, and they do not harm you if you stay upon the road.
As she walked away, leading Singlehorn, it was to the steady double beat of those words; the road, the road, the road. “On the road, the old road, a tower made of stone. In the tower hangs a bell which cannot ring alone. One, two, three, four, five ...” When she reached one thousand she began again. “Shadow bell rang in the dark, daylight bell the dawn. In the tower hung the bells, now the tower’s gone.”
Why a stone tower? Was it important? She hummed the words, thinking them in her head, then saw all at once how thickly the shadows lay, how closely to the road, how they piled and boiled as she sang.
Gamelords! Was that verse of the weird runners a summoning chant? It could be!
Sing something else. Anything. A jumprope chant. “Dodir of the Seven Hands, a mighty man was he; greatest Tragamor to live beside the Glistening Sea. Dodir raised a mountain up, broke a mountain down. See the house where Dodir lives, right here in our town. One house,
two house, three house, four house ...”
The shadows were not interested in this. They dwindled, becoming mere gray opacities, without motion beneath the softly blowing trees.
“Dodir of the Seven Hands, a mighty man to know, every tree in shadowmarch, he laid out in a row. One tree, two tree, three tree, four tree ...”
It was true. The shadows were fewer. “Well, Mavin,” she said, “Chamferton told you not to think of it, so best you not think of it. Sing yourself something old and bawdy from Danderbat Keep or old and singsongy from childhood, and keep moving upon the southern way.” She soothed herself with this, and had almost reached a comfortable frame of mind when she heard the scream, high and behind her. She spun, searching the air, seeing clearly the dark blot of Harpy wings circling upon a cloud.
Pantiquod had found her at last.
Oh, damn, and devils, and pombi-piss. And damn you, Chamferton, that you let her get away.
And damn you, Himaggery. Damn you, Fon-beast. I should raise you out of that shape and let you fight for yourself. Why must I do everything for you?
The Harpy circled lazily and turned away north. Mavin knew she would return. That had done it! There was no way she could face even one Harpy without Shifting. Being Harpy bit taught that. Even a scratch could be deadly. There being no help for it, she went on walking, singing over in her head every child’s song she remembered, every chanty learned in the sea villages, even the songs of the root-walkers she had learned in the deep chasm of the western lands across the sea, and these led her to thoughts of Beedie which led in turn to nostalgic longings to be wandering free again. She had not truly wandered free for five years, not since bringing Handbright’s babies back to her kin, and the longing to break away from the rigid edges of the road became almost hysteria by nightfall.
Off the road, beneath the trees, her mind sang, shadows piled up to your knees. Safe from shadows on the road, and you’ll feel the Harpy’s goad. She had not seen Pantiquod again, but she knew the Harpy would return in the dark, or on the day which followed, and she would not return alone.
“Now, Mavin,” she harangued herself angrily, “this hysteria does not become you. Were you nothing but Shifter all these years? Were you a Talent only, with no mind or soul to call upon except in a twist of shape? Your Shiftiness is still there, may still be used if we need it. It is not lost to us, but by all the hundred devils, at least try to figure out if we’re Shifty enough without it. So, stop this silliness, this girlish fretting and whining and use your eyes, woman. Think. Do.”
The self-castigation was only partly effective. She tried to imagine it having been administered by someone else—Windlow, perhaps. That lent more authority, and she forced herself to plan. There were narrow alternatives. If she stayed upon the road to be protected from shadows, she would be exposed to the air. However! “We came a long way from the Dervish’s valley to this road, and though the shadows swarmed all about us, we were not hurt. Use your head, woman!”
She set herself to watch the shadows instead of ignoring them. How did they lie? How did they move? She watched them for many long leagues, and it seemed to her they moved only in random ways, piling here and there, singly here and there, floating like fragments of gray glass between copses and hills. She tried to foretell where floating flakes would fell. Beneath that tree or upon that clump? Upon the other shadow, or beside it? Where that flock of birds sought seeds among the hedgerows, or beyond them? After a time, she thought she was beginning to be able to predict where the shadow would fell. There was a strange, hazy pattern, if not to their movement, at least to their disposition upon the earth.
If there were any sizeable living thing—any bird or small beast, the shadow would not descend upon that place but in a place near adjacent. The large the animal or bird, the more thickly the shadows would pile around it, but never upon it and never completely surrounding it. There was always a way out, a trail of light leading through the dark. She remembered the bird upon the hill. The shadow had not fallen upon it. The shadow had lain there, waiting—waiting for the bird to intrude upon the shadow. And then ...
Himaggery had intruded upon the shadow. So said the Dervish.
So had the drugged Chamferton, presumably, though in such a condition that the shadows had not recognized him as a living thing. She saw that the shadows did not seem to bother very small forms of life—beetles and worms went their way beneath the shadow undisturbed.
But larger creatures near which the shadows fell almost always chose the unshadowed way as they hopped about, even when that way was very hard to see—as when the sun was hidden behind clouds, or when the haze of dusk made all things gray and shadowlike.
So. So. One could walk, if one were careful, among the shadows. One could walk, if one were alert, safely away from the road. She stopped to get food from her pack, to feed Singlehorn, all the time keeping her eyes fixed upon patches of gray in a little meadow to the west of the road. There were gobble-mole ditches druggled through the meadow, dirt thrown up on either side in little dikes, a shower of earth flying up from time to time to mark the location of the mole as it druggled for beetles and worms and blind snakes. The tunnel wound its way among the shadows as though the mole had a map in his snout which told him where they lay.
Could the shadows be sensed in some other way than sight? Perhaps even in the dark? Did they exist in the dark? If one were unaware of the shadows, would one find a safe way among them, without even knowing it? Useless consideration, of course. She did know about them, all too well. But did Harpies—ah, yes, she thought—did Harpies know about the shadows?
Dusk came at last, but well before that she chose the place they would spend the night; a half cave beneath a stone which bulged up from moss and shrub into a curled snout. Shadows lay about it, true, but not in it, and a tiny pool of rainwater had collected at the foot of the stone. They would be comfortable enough, well fed enough, with water to drink and to wash away the dust of the road. They would be unseen from above also, and could lie quiet against the stone, invisible beneath the mixed browns and grays of Mavin’s cloak. Deep in the night she awoke to the first Harpy’s cry. Now the variety of cries was unmistakable; the Harpies had returned in force. Why they flew at night she could not tell, unless they relied upon some other sense than sight to find their quarry. Perhaps they, like the huge ogre-owl of the southern ice, cried out to frighten and then struck at the sound of things which fled. Perhaps they did it only to terrify.
“It won’t work on me, Pantiquod,” she said between gritted teeth. “Go eat a Ghoul or two and die of indigestion.” Ignoring the feet that her nails had bitten bloody holes into her palms, she forced herself to sleep. When next she opened her eyes it was day.
Dull day, overcast day, day in which nothing moved and no shadow could be seen against the general murk. She stood at the mouth of the cave, refusing to feel hopeless about the matter but tired beyond belief, wondering what path they might take back to the road. “No panic,” she grated. “No hysterics. Quiet. Sensible. You can camp here for days if need be ...”
She drew the Singlehorn close beside her, feeding him from her hand. “Fon-beast, sit here by me and keep me warm. We must take our time this morning. I have trapped us by being clever. We must spy out a path.”
Which they did, little by little, over the course of an hour, spying where moles moved in the grass, where birds hopped about, where a bunwit mother ran a set of quick diagonals, her two furry kits close behind. They stepped onto the road at last, Mavin with a feeling of relief, the Singlehorn placidly walking behind her. Twice during the afternoon Mavin thought she heard Harpies screaming, but the sound came from above the overcast, remote and terrible, making the Singlehorn flinch and shy against the halter as though he connected that cry with pain.
Toward evening the sky began to clear; and by dusk it held only a few scattered traces of cloud, tatters of wet mist upon the deeper blue. They came to the top of a rise which overlooked a league or more of roa
d, endless undulations of feathery forest, and to the west the encroaching blue of the sea. Mavin began to put landmarks together in her mental map of the area. Schlaizy Noithn lay to the east. Below them the coast began its great eastward curve, and several days to the south they would come to Hawsport, lying at the mouth of the River Haws, full of little boats and the easy bounty of the ocean. Her heart began to lift as she thought of protective roofs and solid inns, sure that the shadows could not gather thickly where there were so many men.
Her elation lasted only for a few golden moments, long enough to make one smothered cry of joy and draw the Fon-beast close to surprise him with a kiss. Then the cry came from the sky behind her, triumphant and terrifying. The Harpies once more.
Harpies. Many more than one. They would not give her time to reach Hawsport and safety. They had played with her long enough, followed her long enough, and now that she was almost within sight of safety they were readying for the kill.
The kill.
Which she might defeat, even now, by Shifting into something huge and inexorable. They were still circling, still flying to get above her. There were a few moments yet. There was time, still, to gain enough bulk for that. Tie the Fon-beast somewhere hidden. Retrieve him later. Build oneself into a wall of flesh which could gather in one Harpy, or a dozen, or a hundred if need be.
An easy, accustomed thing to do.
And then there might be no Himaggery’s child and her own.