Mouse couldn't get the bit of food in the pocket of Flame's cloak out of her mind. I didn't save back anything to eat, she thought. Her cloak is beginning to get shabby. So is mine. Whenever will this torment end?
Ahead, a child's cry pierced the fog. The Witch-children stopped as one, hearts in throats. But their captors nudged them onward. They stumbled through the deep mist, barely able to see the backs of the men they followed.
“Turn a little to the left,” Bird's guardian said. They led the Witch-children, in turn following the men who walked just behind Esguir and Cricket. “Keep a sharp watch and go in the footsteps of the one that's gone before you if you know what's good for you.” He looked back at the others and grinned through the mist. “Better hope the Haglet does a good job finding where the wards have shifted. I heard Baron Esguir say if he is pleased, he'll give you hot soup tonight. If she fails—” he drew a finger across his throat in a graphic way that made Mouse shudder “—it's finish for all of us.”
Shaking so hard she could scarcely walk, Mouse tried hard to place her feet exactly in the footsteps of the man in front of her. Futilely, she attempted to brush the mists aside. It was like pushing feathers out of the air. Palpable as the mists were, they rushed in again as quickly as she cleared a space where she could see. She dared not look to either side, fearful of what might be waiting for her out there. She sensed dark shadows, wavering and dancing just beyond her vision. Or was it because she herself was moving that they seemed to mimic her progress?
Another wailing shriek like that of a doomed spirit pierced the fog, and was answered immediately by the wild yammering of the dogs. They leaped and strained at their leashes. The little girl at the head of the column cried out again.
What terrors Cricket must be enduring out there all alone, acting as their living shield! As frightened as Mouse was, she knew that what she was feeling was nothing compared to what Cricket must be going through. Grimly, not knowing how to do it, Mouse strove to send Cricket as much of her own strength as she could. She hoped the other girls were doing the same.
Because she was concentrating on where they were going and watching only the direction of the footsteps in which she had to walk, Mouse began to be aware they were veering off a straight path. And each time they turned aside, the angle of their departure was sharper than that of the correction. She thought they must be getting near a bog; a cold, wet wind made her shiver and pull her cloak tighter. The wind did nothing to lessen the thickness of the fog.
A sudden outcry from ahead made her look up, though there was nothing to be seen.
“This way!” a man shouted angrily. Esguir, from the sound.
Cricket cried out again, but this time more in annoyance than in fear or pain. “No!” Her high-pitched voice was firm and cut clearly through the muffling fog. “Let go of me! We must turn right.”
“There's nothing but ridges over there. This way's the road.”
“This way leads to the swamp. Turn, I tell you, or walk on and let the Tormen or something worse get you.”
There was a silence and Mouse could imagine the Alizonder leader pondering Cricket's words. She sounded strong enough and Mouse wondered if her efforts to help, even at a distance, had been of any use. Mouse hoped the man wouldn't hurt Cricket. He had sounded very angry.
“Very well,” Esguir said at last. “We'll turn right. Everyone! Look sharp! This Haglet is leading us off the road, so mind where you put your feet!”
With infinite caution, the line of men, horses and children started moving again. Mouse smiled to herself as she heard muffled exclamations from walkers ahead of her. The “ridges” dissolved as they approached, and presently she heard the sound of boot heels ringing on the true road. She realized they had all wandered from it unknowing, lost in the heavy fog. As they regained the road the mist gradually began to grow thinner, and soon she could make out the outlines of the men ahead and then of Esguir and Cricket at the forefront of the column.
“Well, curse me if you weren't right,” Esguir said. “It was another of your damnable traps. Good thing for all of us even the young ones can smell out your own work. Very well, get back with the rest now. We can find our way from here.” He raised his voice. “Mount up! I want to get a league between us and this cursed place before nightfall!”
The men hastened to obey. One of them snatched Cricket up and placed her on his saddlebow before she could reach the others. Flame stifled an exclamation.
“Please,” she said to the Alizonder whose saddle she shared, “may I give her the rest of her food? She didn't have time to eat and she must be very hungry.”
“Very well,” the man said. “I suppose she's earned it.”
He nudged his horse until he was even with his companion's. Flame handed over the packet of bread and cheese. Cricket looked too exhausted to eat, but nevertheless she unwrapped the unappetizing bundle and began to suck at a crust. As it softened enough for her to swallow, a little of the pinched grayness left her face.
Mouse discovered she was riding near Lisper. The little girl had that raw, shiny-eyed look Mouse had come to know and dread.
“What is it, Lisper?” she said.
“I—I'm tho athamed,” Lisper said. She scrubbed the backs of her hands over her eyes. “When they took Cricket, I hoped Flame would thare out the bread and cheethe, and we could eat it.”
Mouse thought about this in silence, remembering her own thoughts at the time. “You mustn't be ashamed,” she said finally. “You're just hungry. We all are.”
Though he had made no mention of it and Mouse was certain that he had forgotten, Baron Esguir sent the children a hot meal that night. And though when it arrived from the Baron's camp-fire the broth was mostly water, one of the men guarding them that night added a little meat and a generous handful of barley, cooking it until it thickened. Mouse thought she had never tasted anything so wonderful and satisfying before in her life. She smiled at the man who had been so kind to them. Somehow, on him, the white-blond hair and green eyes didn't look so hideous as it did on the others.
“I wanted you to know that I don't hold with starving children,” he said a little gruffly. “I can't do much, but I'll look after you when I can. My name is Talgar.”
“I am Mouse.”
Solemnly, he took her hand and kissed it. “I am honored, Lady Mouse.”
She giggled; she couldn't help it. It was the first time anybody had ever kissed her hand or called her Lady anything.
“Eat up,” he told the other Witch-children. “You'll sleep well tonight anyway, with your bellies full for once. You'll need your strength. Tomorrow we'll give the horses their heads. We're nearly home.”
“Home,” Mouse repeated faintly. Her moment of mirth dwindled and vanished. She had never felt farther from home in her small life.
“Be of courage, child. I said I'd look after you, as much as possible.”
For the first time since the ambush Mouse felt a trace of hope. Surely there must be more like him, even in Alizon.
III
Leaving the darkness of Tor Swamp behind, they rode the next day through wind-scoured rolling plains. As Talgar said, their pace increased dramatically. Once free of the perils of Alizon Gap, the horses could scarcely be held back. They sensed their home and seemed happy to be returning. The dogs, loosed from their leashes, coursed madly back and forth, yapping and barking, quarreling among themselves.
Though the countryside was mostly barren, an occasional stand of gray-trunked trees grew in the shelters formed between one rise and another. Their lacy foliage at the tops, where the wind could reach it, was blown to tatters, leaving nothing but bare twigs with shreds of leaves still clinging to them. There were few houses within sight. Rows of thorny bush lined either side of the road, marking individual fields and meadows. Someone—or perhaps many someones—laid claim to this country, and had put their indelible mark on it. Every field was full of dirty gray sheep or, in the big meadows, herds of horses.
Talgar had found it easy to trade duty with one of the men whose lot it was to look after the children, and now he rode with Mouse on his saddlebow. “This all belongs to our mighty land-barons,” he told her. “They own everything, and rent out farms to ordinary folk. My father has a farm much like one of these, only on the far side of Alizon City.”
“I've never seen anything like those,” Mouse said, pointing to the bushes. Now that they were closer, she could see that many more types of plants made up the thorny barriers. Ivy and berry vines, just coming into bud, were nearly lost among the thorns. Here and there she recognized wild flowers and lesser weeds. And the wild tangle didn't grow directly from the ground, but seemed to spring from rows of buff-toned rocks half-hidden under the savage growth.
“The hedgerows?” Talgar said. “These are ancient. They were here when the first Alizonders came to this land.” He smiled. “The barons tried to root them out, but the hedgerows defeated them. Most of the barons hate them, say they're made up of the vermin of the plant world. But I don't mind.” His face hardened. “It keeps the barons from riding through a man's grainfields if that pleases them… .”
Mouse kept quiet, letting Talgar talk. He told her of the nobles on horseback with their dreadful white snake-headed dogs, hunting, careless of the ruin of a poor man's crops. Thus they had dealt with Talgar's father, laughing while they destroyed the only way he had of paying his rent to one of them. And in order to keep his father from the punishment a tenant faced when he could not pay, the eldest son took service with Baron Esguir, the powerful man who was the Master of the Hounds of Alizon.
“The pay is enough so I can send enough to my father to ensure his rents,” Talgar said. “Until now, I've always had guard duty at the castle, and the life wasn't so bad. At least, most of the time. But this, what we've had to do—” He made a sound of disgust and gestured in a way that Mouse understood to mean the ambush and kidnapping. “This was not good.”
She twisted a little to look more closely at the man who held her as they rode. Like the others, he wore the blue-green uniform with the symbol of a dog's snarling head on his breast, the boots with high peaks on the outside of the leg. Mouse wished she had discovered this almost-friend among the Alizonders much earlier in their journey. Perhaps, with his help, they could have escaped, could have found their way back to Es City. Surely the Guardian would have welcomed the man who had rescued the Witch-children, would even have found him a place among her guards… .
Mouse hated the thought of their journey's end more than ever. But Talgar had been correct when he said they would soon be home—his home. Within a few days they were entering the gates of Alizon City.
The castle and the towered walls that surrounded it had been constructed from the hard buff-brown stone that everywhere pushed through the thin layer of fertile soil that was the best this part of the world afforded. Centuries ago, during some unthinkable cataclysm, an enormous knob of rock had thrust its way out of the ground. The outcrop was huge enough to cause the Alizon River to change its course and flow around the foot of the cliff. Now the river formed the sea-wall for the arrogant and mighty castle that rode the crest of the rock as if saying, “Here I am and thou shalt not pass.”
The town itself sprawled out over the plain, having overgrown its walled boundaries long ago. Still the walls formed an outer defense that was not all for show. Armed sentries paced the walkways and guarded the towers, and the enormous gates, five layers of wood thick with each layer cross-grained to the one beneath, looked fresh and strong.
It was just as well that the children had wept away all their tears; Mouse knew it would have been undignified if they had been carried wailing into an enemy city. Her throat was as dry as her cheeks as the Alizonders rode with them through the great main gatehouse. Looking up, she glimpsed the sharp teeth of a portcullis waiting to slam down between would-be invaders and the inner door, trapping them so the defenders could destroy them at their leisure. She shuddered.
They rode through the twisting streets of the town, until they reached the foot of a steeply sloping ramp. They crossed a wooden drawbridge, passed through a central tower, then across another drawbridge that led through another, even stronger, barbican and gatehouse and thence into the outer ward of the castle. Mouse's heart sank at the very thought of soldiers trying to assault such a daunting place.
Inside the gatehouse, Baron Esguir and his personal pack of Hounds dismounted. The men carrying the Witch-children swung them off the saddlebows and set them on the chill stone pavement.
“You are dismissed,” Esguir said harshly. “Go back to your regular duties.”
The Master of Hounds strode rapidly through the outer ward, arrogantly certain that his men were dragging the Witch-children in his wake. Mouse looked back over her shoulder, trying to get a last glimpse of Talgar, but he had vanished from her sight. Flushed and self-assured with his success, Esguir made straight for a large, multistoried building and ran up the outer stairs with the ease of a man thoroughly familiar with his surroundings. At the top of the stairs a door opened onto a third-floor hallway. Mouse got a jumbled impression of more doors, more rooms, more white-blond men and a few pale, lank-haired women in long, trailing dresses. Then, a last door opened and they were inside a private room, much like the one the Guardian had occupied, only more richly decorated with much bright paint on walls and ceilings. A white-haired man wearing a gold circlet with a green stone sat on a velvet-cushioned chair. He leaned on one elbow, unsurprised at the Baron's entrance.
“Sir,” Esguir said. He inclined his body from the waist and the men with him bowed even more deeply. Mouse and the other children just stared, wide-eyed, too frightened to move.
The man in the chair acknowledged the Hound-Master's greeting with a languid wave of his hand. “You are very timely, Esguir,” he said. “We are pleased.”
When she dared look at her surroundings, Mouse discovered there were several more men in the room. Most were the silver-blond Alizonders she had grown accustomed to seeing, but one was not. This one was a very strange-looking individual indeed. Mouse had thought she would never see anything she hated more than the green eyes and silver-white hair of their captors until she caught sight of this man. With the same kind of instinct that makes one draw back in horror from a snake or scorpion even if one has never seen one before, she loathed him on sight. Around her, the other girls drew in their breath audibly and moved closer together.
The stranger wore a gray robe belted at his middle, and a gray cap on his head. Then Mouse understood her error. Though she had thought him a man at first, she realized it was because he happened to have a man-like shape. In reality, he didn't look like any kind of man Mouse had ever seen before. He had a wide, flat face and a narrow chin that was almost no chin at all. All the Alizonders had proud, hooked noses; this one had a little sliver in the middle of his face with pinched slits in place of nostrils. He glided toward the velvet chair, bent forward a little and began to make a series of peculiar noises Mouse thought might have been an attempt at speech.
“Oh, talk so everyone can understand,” the man in the chair said irritably. “That gets on my nerves, if you must know.”
The man inclined his head. “As you wish, Baron Mallandor.” His words were heavily accented, and the clicking and whistling of his native language made its way through the common tongue. “I was saying, they will do. They will do.”
He moved closer to the Witch-children, staring at them out of yellowish eyes until Mouse wished she were her namesake so she could run away and hide. Shakily, she reached out and caught Bird's hand, discovering that Bird was trembling as well.
“Yes. They will do.” Abruptly he pointed an inhumanly long finger at Flame. “We will start right away. With that one.”
“No!” Shock jolted the word out of the Witch-children's throats, Flame's denial most vehement of all. But it was to no avail. The man who had escorted her to this dreadful place now held her firmly while the oth
er girls’ guardians began dragging them away.
“Take them to the upper tower room,” Mallandor said.
“It will be done, Sir,” Esguir said. “I will set the guards myself.”
To Mouse's shame and dismay she discovered she had not cried away all her tears after all. Though she hated showing any weakness before this Mallandor and his horrible minions, she couldn't help it. She wailed aloud and the other four likewise had wet cheeks.
Flame did not weep. Mouse struggled to free herself of the guard's grip, wanting to run back to Flame, to comfort her, to save her—
But they were just children, small girls in the grip of large and strong men. Effortlessly, the Hounds picked up their charges and carried them off. More corridors, some narrow circular stairs, another door, another even narrower winding stairway. One by one, the men flung the children down into the straw on the floor. Then they hurried out, and shut and locked the door behind them.
Slowly, the children stirred, stretching cramped limbs, rubbing chafed wrists, trying to get their bearings again in this latest of their new surroundings. Lisper lay in a corner, racked with hard, shuddering sobs. Star and Cricket went to tend her as best they could. Mouse was trembling as well, though not as convulsively as Lisper.
“Are you all right?” Bird said.
Wordlessly, Mouse nodded. But she couldn't get the picture of Flame's stricken, tearless face out of her mind. She had looked so little and so lost, in the Alizonder guard's grasp. And the strange man-creature in the gray robe was stretching out his oddly shaped hand to touch her on the cheek.
Seven
I
Girvan, Weldyn and Yareth paused frequently to confer over the trail they were following. Though they lost the horses’ prints on those stretches of road that were still intact and had not been scoured of a layer of soil by the wind, somehow they always managed to find them again. Girvan never wavered, confident of the route the kidnappers had taken. Now, they had entered the area of magical protection; they stopped to rest a moment before going on. They all dismounted, to give the horses a breather as well.