by neetha Napew
Huldra turned, confused only for a moment by what she saw, then those hands came out toward Peter and I saw her mouth open, knowing very well she would cry one word and one word only. The thousand-year spell, aimed at Peter. A thousand-year death. Aimed at Peter. I lunged forward, to be between her and him when the word was spoken, slipped, fell, rolled . . .
... To look up and see the ceiling fall around her, a great basket of rock, what looked like rock.
‘------,’ Huldra cried.
I heard Peter calling, ‘No, oh, no, oh, no. . . .’
Then I smashed into the wall with my head.
When I came to myself, the others of the seven were there. Way off, somewhere, I could hear weeping. Peter. So he was alive.
Hands tried to hold me down, but I fought my way up from the place they’d put me and followed the sound of weeping. *
He was there. Knelt down, bowed down, his head on his hands, crying. Before him on the cavern floor la}’ Mavin, young looking, as though she were asleep, her t mouth slightly tilted in surprise. Mavin. Pale and hard as stone.
She had dropped upon Huldra just as the word of enchantment had been uttered. She had contained the ‘ word, received it, been ensorcelled by it. ‘
All I could do was sit there beside Peter and hold his hand. The tears ran as though they would never stop, as though they came from some inexhaustible store. After many hours, someone went away and came back with someone else. A tall woman, taller than any woman I had ever seen, with a cloud of black, black hair and eyes like jet. She placed her hand on Peter’s shoulder, closed her eyes for a time, then shook her head.
‘He is only grieving,’ she said. ‘And I cannot cure grief.’ I knew then it was Mind Healer Talley, that they had found her and raised her up at last. She gave me a long, strange look, then went away. Later they told me she had gone north, toward the Great Maze.
While I sat there, Mertyn led the Immutables into Huldra’s camp in a fury of revenge and anger. Her Gamesmen, bereft of their Talents, he placed under Game bond and then released. A few he even recruited and sent southwest, toward the ruins of the Old South Road City. More than a few he killed for reasons of his own, which may have had something to do with several of them calling him ‘Shifter kin’ in a certain tone of voice.
Riddle had found an Immutable woman to care for Bryan.
And the work of resurrection went on in the caverns while Peter wept and I sat there urging him to have a little tea, or broth, or a bit of bread, to all of which he shook his head while the tears flowed endlessly down. I didn’t cry then. Later, I cried. But not then.
When Mertyn and the seven had done everything they could at the caverns, we set out ourselves, down past the Blot toward the south, then following the coast to Hawsport, then up the Haws to Zebit, into the hills, and to the Willowater, almost the route we seven had thought of long and long ago.
We had wagons, now - enough to hold the turnips without crowding. And we had horses. Huldra had been well supplied, and we had all ber beasts and equipage. She, the Witch, had been crushed beneath Mavin’s huge body, that body which had taken the full brunt of the enchantment. There was little enough of Huldra left to bury, but we put what there was into a pit with the Basilisk. I had been too late to save Peter; but Mavin had been in time. I knew she would have done the same even if she had known what would happen. This did not comfort me. I did not mention it to Peter. It would not have comforted him.
It did comfort me, perhaps foolishly, that Mavin was in her own shape. Peter said her own shape had come upon her when Riddle arrived. I would have hated to think of her lying for some thousand years as a twisted, stony thing. Her body was in one of the wagons, close-wrapped in linen clothes. It was not possible to bury it, her. She looked too much alive, as though she might waken at any moment. I went to Murzy and Cat, begging them to undo Huldra’s spell, but they shook their heads at me.
‘We have already laid Sleep Brings a Darkening upon her, Jinian. She does not know what is happening. She is not condemned to be conscious for the thousand years which was the fate Huldra planned. She truly sleeps, without dreams. But the paralysis - that was a spell bought with lifeblood, Jinian. As was most everything Huldra did. To undo it would take the same, and not by any willing sacrifice, either, for part of the power would be lost if life were freely given. And it is the law of the art, as you know well, that causes beget causes. A thing ill done to waken Mavin would follow her like a curse afterward. As all the things Huldra did followed her to her end. It was Huldra’s fate to be killed by her own enchantments. No, child. There’s nothing we can do.’
There was nothing we could do. Peter went several times each day to the wagon in which her body lay. As did Mertyn, weeping. As did I. As did most of us. And there was nothing we could do.
Fourteen
Old South Road City
We came to the southern height above the Old South Road City at the end of a journey full of threats and hesitations, much of it through dead forests and across bare, ashen slopes that looked like lands long abandoned by life. Just finding food for ourselves had been a great problem. There were other groups than ours traveling the desolation. Refugees from one place or another clotted the roads and got in one another’s way, some moving west toward the sea, others moving inland away from the sea’s threat. There was talk of monsters from the deep; there were many dead from the yellow crystals; we were attacked several times and and had to use the art.
Sometimes we had surprised great globs of shadow lying in hollows. Sometimes we found a way around; sometimes the shadows rose like a monstrous flight of vicious birds to hover above us while we cowered in the wagons. Once there was no other way for the wagons to go, and the shadow-eaters jigged on their root hairs to the edges of the patch, sucking the dark monsters up with their roots, moving inward as they went, until at last the high-piled central shadows lifted and went away, a sinuous dark line upon the sky, as though going off to report what had happened.
We lost two watchmen. Though we heard nothing in the night, we woke to one gone the first night, one gone the second. The third night we began to sleep close together, a thick line of the shadow-eaters outside the watchmen’s posts, and after that we lost no more.
Despite all this, we lost very little time, coming to the heights north of Old South Road City in a season that should have been bright and pleasant but was, in fact, chill and dismal beneath a leaden sky. I looked down into the city itself with a cry of dismay. Only after staring at it for some time could I see it had not actually suffered since I had visited it as a child. Then it had been tumbled but almost covered with a greenery that made it appear relatively whole. Now it was uncovered, all its shattered parts, its fractures and splinters, laid bare. Gamesmen sent from the caverns swarmed along its streets and among the piled stone, working beside pawns as though there were no difference between them.
Actually, much work had been done. I began to see it as we rode down the hill. Stones had been assembled in orderly stacks near the buildings they were to go into. Walls were being rebuilt. Pawns heaved at pulleys while Tragamors heaved with Talent, and the stones slid home. The street we reached at the bottom of the hill was virtually clear for much of its length, and the fagades of the buildings on either side looked largely finished. A weary-looking Tragamor came toward us, holding out a hand to Mertyn.
‘Dodir, Tragamor,’ he said. ‘Called Dodir of the Seven Hands. And I wish it were true!’
‘Mertyn, King,’ Peter’s thalan said, introducing all the rest of us in our turn. ‘There is a large troop behind us to bring you assistance, Dodir. And we bring something more valuable even than that - shadow-eaters.’ He pointed to the turnips, thronging in their wagons. ‘Can we have a council to tell us your situation?’
‘Well, as to that,’ replied Dodir, staring curiously at the turnips, ‘I can tell you our situation in few words. We’ve made some progress, as you can see, but the heart has gone out of the Gamesmen. Often the Tale
nt fails. There are times even the power fails. The Wizard Himaggery arrived....”
‘Himaggery! Here already,’ exclaimed Peter in a voice of hurt urgency. I knew what he was thinking. Himaggery didn’t know about Mavin yet, and it would be Peter’s place to tell him.
‘He arrived two days ago, and he is attempting to set up a relay of power from the Bright Demesne, which he says may help our situation.’
‘He did that at least once before,’ said Peter. ‘Long ago. At Bannerwell.’
‘Well, we wish good luck to him. Unless he succeeds, I don’t know what will put heart into the workers. We start each day with a plan in mind, but by noon we have drifted into despair once more. It’s the shadows. Everyone says so. They lie around us like leeches, sucking up our hope.’
I thought of Mind Healer Talley, wondering if she had found some key to the Maze, some clue to Lom’s mind, anything that would relieve this depression. Seemingly not. I could feel it trying to swallow me, and Dodir was obviously fighting it, for he breathed heavily as he went on.
‘Additionally, we’ve had some trouble with the blind runners. They didn’t want to give up their city, and we’ve had to run them off by force. They keep coming back. We’re trying not to hurt any of them, but it’s getting difficult as they’re getting more frantic with each passing day.
‘And as for what’s been done, well, look around you. We’ve found almost all the Bell. The pieces were more or less in one place, under the ruined Tower. Most of the stones are sorted out - many of them by plain muscle when Talent wouldn’t work - and as soon as we can get the power situation worked out, we should move very rapidly.’
‘The Tower,’ I breathed. ‘The stones for the Tower of the Daylight Bell? You found them?’
Dodir nodded. ‘Found them. Yes. Broken, many of them. We’ll need stone cutters to replace them.’
‘They fell from a great height,’ said Peter in a dull voice. It was unlike him. He had been unlike himself since the thing had happened to Mavin. He had not even looked at me, not touched me. It was as though he had shut me away, and it had gone on far too long. I had let him alone, respecting his grief, but this was too much.
‘Did you find a lamp?’ I asked. ‘It would have been under the ruined tower. A silver lamp? And a book?’ I was, quite frankly, thinking of the prophecy I had heard long since. ‘The Wizard holds the book, the Bell, the light. ...” Which Wizard it might be, I couldn’t guess. I wasn’t even sure it was the right book and light, though the Bell part seemed self-evident.
Dodir shook his head. ‘Such things would have been crushed flat. However, we’ve not entirely cleared the place, and it may yet turn up.’
‘Where would we find Himaggery?’ I asked. If telling Himaggery what had happened was part of what was eating at Peter, better have it over with.
Dodir pointed the way, through the city and up the slope at the other side toward what had been a grassy hill. ‘There’s a stream there, lady, and Himaggery’s made camp, but he may be off to the east somewhere, overseeing that power system of his. He says the area around Lake Yost is yet untouched by the world’s malady. I hope he is right.’
We started to ride away, and he called after us, ‘And if these things of yours do indeed eat shadows, we will need them tonight.’
‘You have shadow down in the city here?’
‘From dusk to dawn. As though scouting for someone. Shadow, and strange shapes upon the hills, like nothing I have seen before. Things with painted faces and ribbons.’
I’m sure he could read in our faces that this was evil news. Somehow we had hoped, senselessly perhaps, that the Oracle and all its followers were back in the Maze, kept busy by Ganver and its kin, and that we would not have to confront them. Now it seemed that hope was false, and it was with a sense of fatalistic despair that I nodded at Dodir and took the reins from Peter’s hands.
‘I’ll send someone to show you where the shadows come,’ he called behind us. I waved but did not answer.
As for Peter, he was slumped beside me as though he did not hear or see, looking into bis folded hands as though he held everything there, everything that mattered. Or perhaps he looked on an emptiness in which nothing mattered. We went on through the ruined city. the other wagons following behind, Mertyn standing tall on the wagon seat to see that all of them were there. Behind us we heard Dodir call out, ‘All right. Enough of this lying about. Let’s have the first crew over here!’ Then a crash of rock, an aching screech, as heavy stones shifted into place.
The farther we went, the more obvious the progress. They had started at the south side of the city. They had not even begun on the Tower, however. I looked down the avenue where it should have stood to see only piles of crumbled stone. Peter was right; it had fallen from a great height.
We cams up to Himaggery’s camp. Someone had called him. He came rushing out, full of wide smiles, grasping me by the hand, Peter by the hand, rushing on to meet Mertyn, not stopping to look, to see. I saw Peter’s fingers, wet with tears again.
Enough of it. I had had enough of it. Chimmerdong had taught me that one cannot lie about in these moods, not even in grief. One must go on. I went to Himaggery and demanded he come with me into his tent, telling him I must speak to him privately. Mertyn shook his head at me warningly, but I ignored him, tugging Himaggery back as he had come, he half-irritated, half-jocular. When I had him inside, I said baldly, without any attempt at tact, ‘Mavin saved Peter’s life, Himaggery. She died. I’m sorry.. . .’ And all the old gods knew I was.
He was angry. He accused me of making a bad joke. He accused me of pretending for some Wizardly purpose of my own. When he had said all the unforgettably forgivable things people do say in these circumstances, when he had said them several times over, he apologized to me, came down to his own feelings, and cried out her name very loudly two or three times as though his heart were broken.
I told him while he wept. ‘Huldra had the spell ready, Himaggery. She had to utter only one word. She turned on Peter. I doubt that Mavin even knew what was about to happen. She had gained bulk from somewhere - there were some stores in the room, back behind the pillars - and then climbed across the ceiling of the room to get above the Witch. Huldra had taken time to mock us. She had taken too long at it, enjoying it. Mavin simply dropped over Huldra like some great basket. Mavin had been doing that a lot lately, basketing Bryan, basketing the Oracles outside the Bright Demesne. She caught the spell as it was uttered. It turned her to stone. The stone crushed Huldra. Then, when Riddle came, the stony form fell away and she lay there in her own shape, still as ice. .. .’
Sometime during this tale, Peter came in. They hugged each other awkwardly, the way men do who have not been accustomed to showing affection. Then they went out to see her, leaving me there. Murzy came in with a glass of something very warming, which half untied the cold knots of my heart. ‘What is it?’ I asked, pointing at the cup.
‘Bitter Tears Falling,’ she said. ‘We cannot cure grief, but we can postpone it and must. There is too much to do.’
When I had drunk the wize-art brew, I let her lead me away to the place our own tents were being pitched.
‘They’ll not be thinking of anything tonight, child, and someone must. I’ve been asking about, and the shadows are coming through here and there, picking off a Gamesman or two every night. It’s not contributing to morale.’
I sighed from weariness. ‘Dodir said he’d send someone who knows where they come from. Has he done so, Murzy?’
She pointed over her shoulder at a meek-looking little Elator, all neat thin bones and slim small feet with a narrow bird face at the top of it all. ‘They call me Litle Flitch, ma’am.’ He bowed. ‘Dodir put me to scouting out the shadow routes, and I’ll venture I’ve spotted most of them.’
Which I think he had. I got three or four of the men to drive the wagon with me, and we went around the city sunwise, left to right, up and over, while he showed us every pass over the surrounding hills a
nd hole through the stone escarpments while the turnips became almost hysterical with anticipation. The last two we had left were Big-blue and Molly-my-dear, and these two planted themselves at a saddle of the hills after several sexy little minuets and suggestive remarks. Little Flitch was very taken with the whole group; he said he’d flick among them in the dark hours, keeping them apprised of what happened.
And after that, I really couldn’t stay awake. I thought of Peter and Himaggery, probably drinking themselves silly beside the fire, and couldn’t find it in me to go to them or try to help them. I couldn’t. I had hardly known Mavin, and yet every time I thought of it, it made me want to die from sorrow and shame.
Why? because . . . because if anyone understood the true meaning of the star-eye, it had probably been Mavin. How did I know? I simply knew. It was in her face. If anyone had been free, it had been she. If anyone had followed their own unerring choice as to the reality of what was good, it had been Mavin. She had had her sorrows, too, and her joys, but she had never blamed anyone else for either. She had not been sentimental. I had envied her. I thought of me drudging
away there in Chimmerdong, doing my blasted duty for all I was worth, and I envied Mavin. I was still doing my duty and still envying her. She shouldn’t have done it.
But then, if she hadn’t, Peter would be lying in her place now. And perhaps that was most grievous of all, that tiny chill of joy that it had not been Peter.
And perhaps that is what was bothering him, too. Perhaps he, too, had that tiny joyful pulse that it had not been he. Oh, grievous indeed.
Sighing, I left my bed and went to find them. They were drunkenly telling Mavin stories beside the fire. I sat and drank with them until the fire went out, then wrapped Himaggery and Peter warmly in blankets against the cold and staggered back to my own bed. ‘Mavin,’ I whispered to the night. ‘I’m still doing my duty, lady. And those you loved are safe. At least for now,’
Morning came. Little Flitch made the rounds of the turnips and came back to say they had grown during the night. I went to see for myself. When I had first met Big-blue and Molly-my-dear, they had been about the size of my head. They had grown some on the trip, not a lot, for we were constantly moving and there was little time to root and feed. This morning they looked doubled in size, quirkier than ever, full of volatile good humor that could turn in a moment into malicious games.
