There was no time to debate. We redoubled our efforts, straining every muscle to haste us out of that place. Each of us felt a mucid clutching at his shadow, a sensation we would feel in our sleep for long nights to come.
* * *
We climbed at last out of the reach of the Vale and no more of us were stricken fatally, yet none was soundly whole. Each had lost some part, though small, of his shadow and of his vis vitae.
We stored last night’s gathering quickly and then flung ourselves to the ground in silence and lay like shipwrecked men cast ashore. I felt strengthless, as after a long bout with grippe, and strength did not return to my limbs for some part of an hour.
My case was not the worst. Crossgrain lay perspiring in rivulets, staring sightlessly at the high blue sky. He heaved for breath and his teeth chattered. We rose to our feet to gaze down upon him but offered no aid, for none knew how to minister to one whose shadow had been half devoured. Squint thought to pour brandy into him, but his chattering teeth and the convulsions of his breast prevented that succor. Sneakdirk thought to allay his anguish somewhat by holding a blanket between him and the light, so that his sadly torn shadow did not lie in the sun, and this did seem to alleviate his suffering. In a while he quietened and closed his eyes in unpeaceful sleep.
Though none had stomach, we moved ourselves to eat and drink. Afterward we sat silent, looking sorrowfully at one another. In time I said what all waited to hear: “We must bring Goldenrod out of the Vale.”
“Why must we?” demanded Crossgrain. “He lives not. He has no wife nor child to mourn. His elder brother died off the coast of Clamorgra in a great tempest. There is scant reason to risk ourselves.”
“He is our friend and comrade fallen in the enterprise,” Torronio said. “This duty bears upon us.”
Crossgrain objected. “I would not call him friend. We were ill sorted.”
“It matters not,” said Squint. “It is our duty regardless.”
“Our time there would be better spent in collecting more herbage,” Crossgrain said. “We have much expense to make up for now.”
“As to that,” I said, “we shall gather no more. I spoke beforehand of the perils we might meet, but this mortality is too sorrowful. We must return to bring Goldenrod away and bury him with proper honor.”
“We have no honor—” Crossgrain began, but he was shouted down. I believe that each felt that any of us might have failed of his nerve and broken rank and suffered shadow-loss and died dreadfully in an alien place. We did not wish to live unreconciled. I pictured my lifeless corpse lying in a black hell apart from all other humanity forever, my life taken by gruesome, foul agency.
We decided to put our gatherings in order, go back after dark to the Vale, bear Goldenrod away, and depart on the morrow for the bivouac where Mutano stood abandoned.
* * *
Events did not fall in so orderly a succession.
As soon as it was securely dark we made our way back down the ridge slope, our estimation being that Goldenrod’s body would lie about halfway to the valley floor on the overgrown path. We had to steel ourselves to begin the lightless decline and our spirits were sorely battered. I tried to assure Torronio and the remaining Wreckers that our shadows would regenerate from their damaged states and, over a healing period, make themselves whole again.
I did not know if this conjecture would prove true. Shadows damaged by clumsy thieves or by accident or combat or otherwise will indeed return to their earlier conditions or near, but a shadow devoured must be lost, I thought. Yet I said naught, for it was best not to dishearten my fellows.
Nor had I been wholly truthful in the matter of Goldenrod. In a different circumstance, I might have let him lie to decompose into the evil soil of the Vale or to be eaten by whatever tenebrous scavengers ranged therein. My hidden desire was to examine the corpse, in order to determine if the manner of his dying left marks by which I might discover some method of defense against the deadly flora of the place. If I could find such a thing, a fortune lay before me.
Down the pathway we struggled, keeping close company and hearing all around us the succulous leaves rubbing one against another and feeling, more than hearing, the blind black snakes crawling about. We made ourselves silent as the night and place demanded.
Then we could not ascertain the spot where Goldenrod must lie. The track had overgrown notably during the brief time we had come away from it. There was an abrupt steepness of the slope where our comrade had fallen, but he was not near it.
“I misremember it being so close-knit here,” Sneakdirk whispered, and we assented silently as we scattered out to search.
We were sufficiently diligent, I am sure, to have turned him up, but that tall, lanky body was nowhere to be found. He seemed to have melted into the surrounding Nature as a pinch of salt will melt in a pail of water. Squint unblinkered our light more times than was safe, but naught was to be seen.
“Come away, lads,” I said. “There are mysteries in this place we lack resource to comprehend. Our friend is gone from us, taken by peril, as I forewarned you.”
They agreed readily, except for Sneakdirk, who averred that Goldenrod had owed him some small amount he wished to reclaim from the corpus. His objection was swept away.
The starry midnight had passed by the time we returned to camp. We composed ourselves for sleep and lay in our places, keeping well away from the pallet where Goldenrod had lain. My sleep was uneasy with nervy dreams and, to judge by the muttering and restlessness, so was that of all.
* * *
In the morning we were brisker, boiling up tea and munching the biscuits and salt beef we had found in Mutano’s store of victual. We spent a goodish deal of time putting our samples in order to travel, and it was then that my bagful of a dozen or so of the black serpents disclosed itself as a clutch of inert vines or roots.
They had been snakes when I thrust them into the leathern bag—slime-sheathed, offal-smelling, writhing, and blindly striking. But when I brought them out into the light to place them in a wicker basket, they had changed into solid, woody lengths, so stiff as to be almost rigid. Except for the general shape, there was little to recall their former serpentine nature. An indentation here might suggest a mouth or some lichenous mottling elsewhere might recall scales, but these details seemed but accidental as the early sunlight fell upon them.
The others gathered round to gaze and wonder, but only Torronio supplied a useful thought. “Your adders,” he said, “must share something of the nature of the Vale’s flora. We have guarded the health of our plants by hiding them away from the light. Try if darkness will restore them to serpents.”
I placed the lengths of root and vine in the bag, but no change transpired.
“Perhaps,” he said, “a momentary darkness is insufficient. It may be that the deep nighttime only will reveal what they are.”
“Perhaps,” I said, shaking my head over this conundrum that but added to our store of ignorance.
We finished our preparations and departed the place of this mount that walled off the Dark Vale from the rest of the world.
* * *
I had anticipated encountering Mutano at the place where Torronio and the Wreckers had abandoned him. He did not know of my connection with his situation and of my small but sweet retribution for his overly strenuous methods of training me in the shadow trade. I had pictured myself riding into his bivouac with Torronio at the head of our band of makeshift plants-men, exhibiting with dramatic flourish the specimens we had obtained, and flaunting my triumph with pretended nonchalance.
We made good time on the journey back and our spirits lightened as we came farther away from the Vale. No rain had fallen in recent days and we could follow backward our track with ease for a long while. Then at one point in our trace that seemed most familiar, all evidence of our passing disappeared. Our surroundings seemed less well known here, and I wondered if we had strayed. I spoke my misgiving to Torronio.
“There
was one spacious width in this road I am sure I would recognize,” he said. “It cannot be far ahead.”
I reflected then that Mutano had been keeping a solitary watch for three days and nights and might have devised a way to recover his losses from the Wreckers, if he expected them to pass this way again.
We trudged around a slow bend and Torronio pointed and said, “There we made our camp. I recall how wide the space was and what refreshment that hospitable canopy of leaves offered. Yet there is no sign of our encampment. That man—Mutano, you call him?—must have moved along to where he came from, trusting to fortune for shelter and direction.”
“He is not one to joy in a long journey afoot,” I replied. “Something is amiss. Let us keep keen watch for trickery.”
As soon as I spoke, that cooling canopy of leaves came falling down upon us, covering us over, men and beasts, with a coarse, tatterdemalion netting of rope and rags and thongs all interlaced with foliage. It offered an obstruction that the five of us ought to have made short work of, but I think our wits as well as our bodies had been weakened by our recent struggles. Boxes and baggage went tumbling; my comrades swore and wrestled against the tatty netting, even as it grew tighter around us.
And then there was Mutano, of course, with a short staff in his left hand and a rope that served as drawstring for the netting in his right. With the rope he pulled the reticulate mass close about our ankles; with the staff he poked and belabored us in every undefendable place our carcasses presented. All the while, he was howling in the way that cats do, with a wailing that sounds like angry grief to men but signifies ardency of erotic joy to the claw-foot race. As soon as I saw the happy smirk on his face, I knew that Mutano had understood that not only was I involved in the waylaying of him but that indeed I must have planned the whole business. My surmise was confirmed by the severe drubbing his staff laid upon my ribs.
We were too pressed upon one another to unlimber our blades, but Sneakdirk managed to squirm a small dagger from inside his doublet. He began sawing at a joint knot, but Mutano spied him and with a sharp stroke broke the blade and, to judge by the outcry, one of Sneakdirk’s fingers into the bargain. Then, with expressive motions of his hands and contortions of his features, he made known that we were to divest ourselves of iron and push all weapons onto the ground outside our leafy cage. He encouraged us heartily with licks and pokes and as a matter of course I received the most and the heartiest.
Further expressive pantomime indicated that we were to thrust our hands through the netting, and when we did so he bound our wrists and set us free one by one. He stood us in a line and stalked back and forth before us, purring like any fat house puss sated with cream. Now and again he paused and with a knock or two brought our stances to more erect, military postures.
Here was another sad moment for poor Falco. Pleased with myself as we had come back along the track, I had been spinning fancies of the commendations I would receive from Maestro Astolfo, of the coin I would collect from my herbalizing, and of the trinkets and cates and amorous companionship I would purchase. But now again I was under Mutano’s thumb, or beneath his heel, and must bow to his will.
Forward and back again he strode, looking us over severely, taking close views of Torronio and Squint. Myself he hardly deigned to notice, until with a smart rap to a shinbone he directed me to follow him apart. He seated me on the scabby butt of a fallen plane tree. Pointing with his staff, he indicated which boxes, bags, and canvas-wrapped vials he desired Squint to bring forth and place on the ground before me.
Then commenced the most awkward and intense lesson in grammar a backward schoolboy could ever have endured. I had gathered some smattering of Mutano’s feline dialect over time, but now I was to learn in earnest what the different growls and half growls, the purrings hoarse or mellifluous, the quiet or importuning meowings intended to convey.
He thumped a box of stoppered vials with his staff, a stout green length of ash with a few leafy twigs dangling, and uttered what was unmistakably a question: “Mrowwwr-mirr?”
When I shook my head uncomprehendingly, he boxed my ears. His notion seemed to be that I understood him well enough but pretended not to. I was accustomed to such blows from Mutano. What vexed me more was the laughter it drew from the Wreckers where they stood all in line by the fallen netting. It was good to note, though, that Torronio did not join in.
In fact, I did perceive what my shadow-trade colleague wished to find out, but the situation confused me. Did he expect me to answer him in the cat language? A slap to my forehead brought me around.
Yet I could not return answers I did not have. “These plants we gathered in dark of deepest night in the darkest of valleys,” I said. “We worked quickly and crudely, more by sense of touch than by sight. We only gathered in the mass and have had no opportunity to examine our findings.”
“Mrr mrr-mrr mrrieu?”
“Yes, I believe them to be of sound value,” I said, after puzzling for long moments. “I could not set a price. In a sense, they are beyond price, for our man Goldenrod gave up his life to find them.”
Mutano’s eyebrows rose and his expression grew pensive. This was something he could not have known.
“He was forewarned,” I said.
He touched one of the oblong boxes with his green staff. “Murr rr.”
“Best not to unseal the baggage here. Sunlight has a deleterious effect upon this flora of the darkness. We have already lost several fine specimens.”
“Mir?” He gave me a skeptical look but let the matter go. He brought from an inner pocket of his doublet a square of soiled vellum and thrust it at me. It was the map he had made from study of the old books, the map that had brought him here by a toilsome, hindrous journey.
I shrugged and he pushed it into my face. Then he flung it down and held out his hand, demanding my more helpful map to take him back to Tardocco.
Here was a point requiring careful judgment. If I handed over the false map immediately, he might suspect something amiss, knock me over, and ransack my clothing. If I held back for long, I would be inviting bruises purple and yellow. I decided to chance three blows before pretending to give in and present the deceptive document. But Mutano was no tyro in the skill of tendering punishment, and one solid thwack upon my shoulders sealed my decision.
Groaning and swearing, I brought out the counterfeit, with all its elaborate notations and whimsical instructions. Mutano examined it front and back, then turned about for the advantage of better light and pored it over. I retained all confidence in this map wherein I had mingled the true and the misleading with judicious balance. Many of the features he would know from his travel or by hearsay; others were in plausible relations with those he knew; still others were but mere brain-wisps and shared likeness with no place on the round earth.
After long study, he tucked it inside his doublet. Then he turned his attention to the Wreckers. His grin broadened as he surveyed them, and I surmised that he was proud to have caught the five of us in the same trap we had laid for him, dropping from the trees. At length he tapped Crossgrain on each of his shoulders, like a prince knighting a worthy squire, and motioned him forth, always keeping his staffless hand near his sword hilt. Under his direction, Crossgrain began gathering up the containers and loading them on the mounts and mules. Goaded by the staff, Squint aided in the task.
Mutano looked at the sky to ascertain that a half day’s light remained, then mounted Defender and departed, taking with him not only our herbal treasures but all our weapons and almost all the food we had robbed him of.
We watched him out of sight, then all eyes turned upon Falco.
“Now, Stalwart,” said Torronio, “Thou’st brought us to a pretty pass. Are we to starve in this wilderness or have you another lame-witted scheme to bring us to destruction?”
“Be of better cheer,” I said. “Let us find our former camping ground; it cannot be far down this pathway. You will recall that we made a cache of provisions there t
o replenish us homeward.”
This sentence struck a more pleasant note, but Sneakdirk reminded me that now we had no horse.
“After we find our provisions, we shall have but a five-day march to Tardocco.”
“Why go we there?” he asked. “The noose awaits us, and this Mutano will anticipate our coming.”
“If my cartographic skills stand good, we shall arrive before Mutano by some hours if not days. Then I shall make arrangements.”
“Arrangements?”
“Let us stir along,” I said. “I shall enlighten you as we go.”
* * *
We did arrive before Mutano’s advent and I brought my companions directly to our town villa.
When I introduced Torronio to Maestro Astolfo, the shadow master looked him over side to side, bottom to top. Then he spoke in his calm voice: “I know the set of these features. Are you not of the family Binnoto? There is a certain length of jawline—”
“My name is Torronio. That is all the world need know.”
Astolfo’s gaze rested on him still, those mild gray eyes never roving from his face. “There was a story of one of them who fell into disfavor with the clan and fared into the forest to live as a celibate hermit and ponder the ills of life.”
Torronio sighed. “Celibate I am, and for a long while. But the ills of life thrive stoutly without my thinking on ’em.”
Astolfo nodded. “And you are confederate with Falco in this scheme to gull his friend and cohort, my man Mutano?”
“If Stalwart be Falco, then I am bound with him. As for gulling, are we not the parties injured? We have not the herbal treasures we labored after and this Mutano, wherever he may be, enjoys their possession. I am no coney to cheat and delude; if I rob, I rob forthrightly, in order to keep spirit and corpus united.”