The Eye of Night

by Pauline J. Alama

  She exhaled a slow sigh. “All right, then.” With exaggerated care, she turned out her left side pocket. “See? Only the crumbs of yesterday's meal.” Just as slowly, she turned out her right side pocket. “There's my handkerchief and some string.”

  “There's another pocket inside your shift, between your teats,” said Wilgar menacingly.

  “Wilgar,” Warfast said warningly, but without the vehemence of his earlier objections.

  “What? I've not moved to turn it out for her,” said Wilgar. “But she's gone to some trouble to hide it.”

  “Show him,” said Warfast.

  Hwyn sighed. “I suppose there's no asking you to turn modestly aside while I unlace my clothes.”

  “Take your time and arrange yourself as you need,” Warfast said. “There's no hurry.”

  Slowly, slowly, with much muttering, she unlaced her shift as far as the heart and turned out the little pouch I had made for her. As she opened her clothing, I glimpsed a rose-tipped breast and averted my eyes, but Wilgar did no such thing. “What's that you're palming behind the handkerchief?” Wilgar shouted, and lunged at her.

  “Ow! Get away, that's nothing of yours!” Hwyn shrieked, but it was no use. He pulled away from her with a wad in his hand— the handkerchief with the Eye of Night inside—and the force of his motion sent her toppling to the floor.

  I hurried to help her up, then confronted Wilgar, shouting, “That's not a gem! Drop it, for the gods' sake!”

  Holding the stolen booty in one hand, he swatted me with the other, right across the arrow-cut on my head. I sank to the floor, able to do nothing but hold my head and curse.

  Through the fog of pain I heard Trenara wail wordlessly and Hwyn appeal to Warfast, “Make him drop it. It's not what he thinks it is, nothing to sell: it's a living thing.”

  “How dare you ask my help now?” he cried. “You've begged my protection, harangued me, gone high and holy with me, and all the while lied to me! What have you been hiding from me?”

  Her answer was drowned out by Wilgar's scream. His eyes bulging, he held the Eye of Night rigidly over his head, the handkerchief now fallen to the ground at his feet. “What would you do with me?” he called out in a strange keening voice. “Stronger men have wrecked themselves upon me.”

  “Wilgar?” stammered Warfast, uncertain.

  Wilgar's mad eyes fixed on his leader. “You! Why are you here?”

  “Wilgar? Is it you speaking, or—”

  “No,” said Lok in a hoarse whisper. “It's something else.”

  “You were not always brigands!” Wilgar shouted. “What have you become? Must what began in honor end in greed? You swore your life to the gods for justice. Will you die for a handful of coins or a bright trinket?”

  “What have you done to him?” Warfast asked Hwyn.

  “I've done nothing,” she said. “It's his own grasping fingers. Make him drop it!”

  Wilgar continued, “I see a rope swinging with the weight of a man. Leave this road!”

  “Can't you—” Warfast stammered.

  “Make him drop it!” Hwyn repeated. “He's too big for me.”

  Warfast lunged at Wilgar, wrestled with him for some anxious moments, then got the bigger man's arm twisted around behind his back till the fingers spasmed and the Eye of Night rolled loose on the floor. Both men shrank from it.

  Hwyn picked it up, retrieved her handkerchief, and tucked them both away in her pockets.

  Wilgar huddled on the floor, sobbing in Warfast's arms. “Gods on the Wheel, what things I saw! What have we become?”

  “Peace, cousin,” murmured Warfast soothingly.

  “I'm sorry,” Hwyn said, crouching at Warfast's side. “I couldn't tell you. I didn't know what you might try to do with it if you knew. But you've seen now what drives us, what burned Goldifer's chapel, what tells me that change is coming. And it has spoken to you.”

  Warfast turned on her with a snarl of animal fury: “Haven't you done enough harm? Go! Go, before I make you wish the guards had killed you before you saw us. Take your magic stone and your half-wit whore and go!”

  We snatched up our things and scrambled through the upward passage without looking back. In the utter dark, I let Hwyn lead, keeping a hand on her shoulder, with Trenara clinging to my belt. Once I tripped on a jagged edge of rock and caught myself painfully on my hands, stifling an urge to cry out. Hwyn offered me a hand and pulled me along as if our lives depended upon it; and so terrible had been Warfast's anger that I was ready to believe they did. I scarcely breathed until we were out in the night air in the Hills of Penmorrin. The moon peered through a gap in the cloud, lending just enough light to stumble forward, cursing the roots that caught at our feet, the ups and downs of the land that deceived us. We crested the hill and descended into the valley beyond it almost too fast for safety, anxious to leave our pursuers and our grudging rescuers both far behind us. Not until we stopped to rest by a pleasant brook that wound its way through the glens did we notice that in the uproar we had left our water-skins behind.

  “Sky-Raven's Bones!” swore Hwyn.

  “I'm sorry. I can't believe I forgot them,” I said.

  She dropped disconsolately to the mossy stream bank. “I forgot them, too. It was as much my fault—”

  “You had the Eye of Night to worry about. The rest should be my responsibility.”

  “You had a wound to distract you,” she observed in my defense. Then she shrugged. “Well, at any rate, I don't think either of us should go back for them.”

  Wearily, I dropped down to the bank beside her. “What should we do now?”

  “Drink our fill from the stream and move on,” she said.

  With the cool voice of the water before us and the fragrance of a linden tree over us, the glen seemed for the moment like the blissful Womb of the World. Ye t I knew she was right: we dared not linger here. We stayed long enough to drink, wash the sweat off our bodies, pull a few edible rushes Hwyn found on the bank, and drink again. Then we followed the stream to its source, up a steeper slope than the last one.

  The rocks grew rugged under our feet, and the clouds closed over the moon, blinding us. I wrenched my ankle on an unexpected drop, but continued to limp on into the gray dawn, leg throbbing, head throbbing, using hands where I must to supplement my failing feet.

  Soon after daybreak, the sky darkened again and we had the rainstorm I had wished for the previous day. It came down suddenly, a few drops and then, a heartbeat later, a torrent, soaking us almost to our bones and making the rocky slopes slick and treacherous. We labored on till we found a shallow outcropping of stone to cower under. I dug our one cooking-pot out of my pack and set it out to catch rainwater; Hwyn put out a tin cup for the same purpose. We nibbled a bit on the rushes we'd gathered, which were sharp-tasting and stringy. “Are you sure these are edible?” I asked.

  “They're better cooked,” Hwyn said, “but with this rain, it'll be a time before we can find enough dry wood for a fire.”

  “At least it will hide our trail,” I said, watching the silvery sheet of rain splash down over the lip of stone, inches from my face. The land was shrouded in gray, low clouds kissing the stones. We were safe from pursuit, if not from the blind cruelty of nature.

  Hwyn nodded. “They won't find us now. I only hope we can find our way through these highlands.”

  “We'll manage,” I said. “When the sky clears, we can get our bearings. Eastward is the Wall of Magya, the mountains too high to scale. To the north, also, the land must grow more rugged before the end of the hill country, but if we bear northwest we should be able to regain our course without crossing the worst of the highlands. At least, I expect so. I never studied inland geography very well.”

  “At least it's a plan,” said Hwyn.

  Lightning cracked somewhere nearby. We jumped, and Trenara stirred in her sleep, but that was all.

  “How's your head?” said Hwyn.

  “It wasn't a deep cut,” I said, “so I'm no
t much worried. But the skin burns under the bandage, even with the rainwater to cool it. And I can still feel the print of Wilgar's fist.”

  “Should I have a look at it?”

  “No,” I said. “What's the use? We have no clean bandages, no herbs to poultice it. Besides, I'd rather it wasn't touched.”

  “Sorry.” She stared moodily out into the rain. “It shouldn't have ended this way. Until Wilgar began badgering me, I was hoping Warfast might be about to propose guiding us for at least the next day's journey—I'm sure he knows more of these hills than we can find out any way but the hardest one. Maybe I should have told Warfast what I was carrying. But I wasn't sure I could trust him. I knew he was not like Goldifer—he longs for change—but that longing could be for good or ill: longing to set things right, or just to come out on top. I don't know whether he himself knows how to separate those two dreams. And the dream of power can do so much harm with the Eye of Night.”

  “I wouldn't have trusted him,” I said, surprising myself with my vehemence.

  “Why?” said Hwyn. “Because he's a highwayman?”

  “Isn't that enough?”

  “Perhaps. But he did protect us, after all, and it seemed he might have done more if I'd been more careful of his feelings. I was so clumsy!”

  “What made you want to take him with you?” I said.

  “I wouldn't exactly say want,” said Hwyn. “I had a strange feeling that he ought to travel with us. As if, perhaps, the Eye of Night wanted him.”

  “Did you have that feeling when you met me?” I said, and instantly wanted to stuff the words back into my mouth and swallow them.

  Hwyn squinted at me curiously. “If I were any other woman, I might think you were jealous,” she said. “I don't know, Jereth. It was more complex with you. You see,” she looked off into the rain again, “I wanted you to come with me from the first. I thought you'd be—well—good company, everything Trenara was not. It seemed right, somehow, but I couldn't know whether there were any truesight about it or just my own wishes, my longing for a friend to come with me.”

  At first I did not know what to say, so I took her hand and held it a while in silence, feeling her cool fingers tighten around my warmer ones. At last I said, “I confess I was afraid that if Warfast came with you, you wouldn't need me anymore.”

  “Don't be ridiculous,” she said. “I would have needed you twice as much. He would have been an awkward comrade, especially if his men came with him. He would have wanted to lead, and I would have quarreled with him from here to the north end of nowhere, for if I follow anything but the vision that was given to me, I might as well have stayed in St. Fiern's Town, safe until the Troubles came to meet me. I would have needed your clear eye for the truth—and your friendship—to survive such a partnership. But all the same, I felt he was meant to come with us— more for his sake than for ours.” She laughed. “Is that not presumptuous? Can you imagine what he would say if he could hear me?”

  “If you wanted to say something to change his mind, those are not the words you're looking for,” I said.

  “Nonetheless, they're true,” Hwyn said. “All I said of him was true. If I had any doubts when I said it, I have none left. He raged at the things I said of him, but refuted none of them, as if he could not find one fact to fling in my face against my words. He's at an impasse, and he must know it: he can do no good where he is, nor can he turn back. We could have broken that impasse for him. But it would have meant giving up all his years of struggle as lost.”

  “That would be hard,” I said. “I remember when I left the Tar-von Order: if the time hadn't come when they asked me to take vows, I can well imagine I might have stayed on, always delaying the decision to leave. But there are no final vows for failed insurrectionists, no moment of truth when you must either go forward or take another road. I can feel for him.”

  “You see, then, why I kept trying to open the door for him?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I suppose you were right. He seemed a decent sort—for an outlaw. He was fair to his enemies, almost to the point of losing his life. And he seemed, in his odd way, drawn to you, for all his anger. He rose to the bait a little too quickly when Wilgar taunted him with being in love with you.”

  “Do you think so? Strange notion,” said Hwyn. “Still, I guess he never saw me by daylight.”

  “Not so very strange,” I said. “What could be more natural than to love someone who offers you the key to your prison?”

  “He might also resent them for proving he couldn't find it himself,” she mused. “He might fear the power they might have over him.”

  “Then he made the coward's choice,” I said passionately. “Let him find his own way out of the impasse: he has underprized you, and we are better without him.”

  Hwyn gave me one of those crooked smiles of hers, and it was well worth huddling on a windy mountain ledge, chewing inedible rushes in the rain, to see it.

  7

  THE HILLS OF PENMORRIN

  We waited out the storm, Hwyn and Trenara napping in the cliff's shelter while I tried vainly to ease the pain in my head. By the time the rain had abated, I felt my very eyesight had been affected by it: there seemed to be a shadow in the corner of my left eye, narrowing my field of vision. When Hwyn woke, even she could see the problem: “Jereth, the whole side of your head is swollen.”

  “I know,” I said. “I wonder—did they fear us enough to poison their arrows?”

  Hwyn washed the wound again, but if washing had failed to clean out the poison when the wound was still bleeding, I doubted it could help a closed, day-old sore. Besides, every touch made me clench my teeth against the pain. I waved away Trenara, who seemed to want to help with the rebandaging, and gingerly bound it myself.

  “Are you well enough to travel?” Hwyn asked.

  “No point in staying here,” I said. And so, slower than before, I followed the easiest of all the hard paths the mountain presented to us, trying to wend our way toward the north side. I set my feet carefully, wary of stones made slick by rainwater, going on hands and knees when footing seemed too perilous and staying behind my companions on upward slopes lest I fall and bring them down with me. From time to time, Hwyn would stoop to examine the little plants squeezing through cracks in the stone or growing on brushy ridges, in hopes of recognizing one with healing properties. Many of them were strange to her; one smelled a bit like heal-all, she said, but not enough like it to be trusted. Nonetheless, she found some wild currants and edible greens that made a far better meal than uncooked rushes. Fueled by these finds, we carried on through the long summer day.

  The greenery of the hills was not ours alone: birds wheeled down to seize the berries we also sought, and one stand of blackberry bushes had been savaged, branches broken here and there, with bear tracks in the mud. Unarmed as we were, we took care to avoid the path those paw-prints had taken.

  Nor would the bear have had to confine itself to fruit: once when we pushed our way into a thicket, a mountain deer sprang away from us in panic and sped out of sight; and from time to time, flocks of wild goats mocked our slow progress, skipping up rocky passages we could never attempt. Once a great crowd of them blocked our path, forcing us to sit on a rock and rest till they had gone by. Watching the parade of slim-legged nimble creatures amble past us, I noticed something odd about a white one nibbling a shrub nearby: “They're not all wild. That one has a notch in its ear that it couldn't have gotten by chance.”

  “Who would live in this hard land?” Hwyn said.

  “Goatherds, apparently. But the hills are so vast, we may never meet them.”

  As we journeyed onward through the day, the air cleared till I could see a long stretch of land behind us—and often, a frightening depth of canyon below us. What I could not see was any end to the mountain above us. It was higher than I had reckoned; I wondered whether we had strayed farther east toward the Wall of Magya than we ever intended. I tried to lead us westward and downward when possible,
but the land itself chose our path as often as not, throwing impossible gaps or sheer walls of rock or thickets of thorns in our way, forcing us to turn east or climb upward against our will, then struggle to regain what we had lost. When we found ourselves near water, rarely could we follow the stream, for it cut channels treacherous to our feet.

  As the sun angled low in the west, we came upon some wind-twisted little mulberry trees, spilling their bounty prodigally on a high meadow. We ate as many as we could gather ripe from the branches and even some from the ground, for our climb had left us hungry and tired. Then we collapsed to the grassy slope to rest as the sun vanished behind the mountain. There was no talk of traveling by night now, with our pursuers safely behind us and the very earth under our feet chancy and treacherous. Hard as the day's climb had been, I could have thanked the mountain for its harshness and the night for its darkness, so glad was I not to have to pretend I had strength to walk any longer.

  I awoke at daybreak, scarcely less weary than I had been at evening. My head seemed to weigh more than all the gold Warfast's band had ever taken. “Hwyn, I'm not sure I can go anywhere,” I said. By now my injury caricatured her own, my face lopsided, one eye swollen shut.

  “I'll look again for herbs,” she said. “There must be something to help you.” The search was laborious for her with her dim eyesight. I watched her in the morning mist, poring over the meadow pace by pace, dropping often to hands and knees to look more closely at leaf or flower. Trenara drifted after her as if bound to her by invisible threads. When they disappeared into a thicket, I closed my one good eye again and rested my burning head on the dewy grass.

  They returned without herbs but with fresh mulberries heaped up in Hwyn's threadbare skirt. I ate a few, slowly, and pretended they made me feel better. The crimson juice on our hands and Hwyn's skirt looked so much like blood that it almost turned my stomach. When my gorge rose at the thought of another berry, I forced a smile, said I was full, and wearily rose with the others to press onward.