Shadow (8 page)

The brook spilled itself into a little blue lagoon a short way down. Something had stirred up the water down there, making it murky with silt. Again came the woman's free, clear laughter, echoing and filling with joy the little glen closed about her like the cupped hands of a forest meaning to protect its daughter. The air's scents promised danger and a very changed world, but here she had only mirth. The wolf whined quietly in confusion.

A green dress hung over a tree branch. Not far from it, her body lay beside the water, naked and white as a pearl, one knee languidly raised, eyes closed, legs open to the water's edge so that occasional lapping waves of it nearly splashed up against her thighs. Her skin glistened from water, beads of it running off her. She had big round scars. Across her midsection there was a hard plate, as though part of her belly had become wood or stone.

Something moved in the water before her. Something quite large, but staying deep, sent lapping waves to its edge. A dark pointed length of flesh poked above the surface, wound slowly toward the woman's feet. She sighed, licked her lips, arched her back as the coiling thing – a thick vine, it almost seemed to the wolf, though surely it was not – traced its point over her ankle, coiled about her knee, then up her thigh, toward her centre.

The wolf's confused whine was hardly louder than a breath, and certainly quieter than his enemy's moans of pleasure, which began to fill the glen.

He hesitated at the top of the small waterfall, wanting in equal parts to leap down and attack, and to leave this dangerous woman be. He was decided when, some distance away from the glistening length – a
tail?
– gently stroking her loins and provoking her sounds of pleasure, the wolf caught sight of what at first seemed a log gently bobbing to the water's surface. But no, it was a sleek head. Two eyes glimmered with power and with humour. Whatever it was, it saw him and had seen him since he'd first poked his head into the glen to look below. The woman, her eyes still closed, had not.

The wolf whimpered quietly, turned about, and ran.

THE HIDDEN VILLAGE

1

Dogs furiously barked from an apparently empty space on the plain. Siel picked up a rock and hurled it in that direction. It vanished on the throw's downward arc. There was a clattering noise as the vanished stone hit something unseen. The barking reached a fever pitch. ‘Is this kind of thing normal in your world or not?' said Eric.

‘No. Run.'

A short sprint later, looking back, there were suddenly a dozen huts visible where she'd flung the stone, houses of mud-brick and logs. Two dogs strained more playfully than angrily at the chains which held them. There were no people in sight.

Siel jogged back to where they'd stood when she threw the stone. ‘It's vanished!' she called. ‘From here, I can't see it. Can you see it still?'

‘Sure can.'

‘A spell,' she said. ‘But why does it only shield the place from our eyes when they view from this angle? I don't understand.'

They walked among the huts and called out. No one answered. The dogs were soon befriended and calmed when Eric fed them meat he found inside a hut whose door was left open.

Valuables and food lay about quite openly, indicating people had fled from imminent danger. Siel found a string for her bow but it was home-made, not military grade, and would not fire nearly as far as her old one.

They stuffed themselves full of fruit and meat found in the same home's larder, which was packed with more spoilable food surely than anyone, even a family, could eat before much of it rotted. ‘Maybe the village keeps all its food here,' said Siel, devouring some sweet potato. ‘Maybe they have a folk mage to preserve it.'

‘But how do you explain these?' said Eric, pointing at the enormous boots by the back door. ‘Everything here is too big. It's like Faul's place again. Look!' He held up a wooden spoon and bowl, both enormous. ‘The other huts aren't like this. They seem normal.'

They stuffed all the food they could carry into their packs and bathed in the rain-tank shower, complete with soap and a little stove to heat the water. ‘Did I ever tell you the story of the three bears?' Eric asked Siel as they dried themselves.

‘What's a bear?'

‘The three wolves, then.' He gave her a brief amended version of the fairy tale. ‘And that's us, I think. I'm not sure whoever left here is gone for good. But that,' he pointed at the roof, ‘is a miracle. Let's have one above us overnight for a change. Why don't we rest up here?' She began to object. ‘One fucking night, come on,' he said. ‘I'm willing to roll the dice.'

They fed the dogs again, barred the door and lay in a bed big enough for five people.

2

Eric was awake, staring at the ceiling.

He was pondering the part inside him which had gone numb as though to protect itself. He peeled off its shell and looked inside it. He saw that he had come to completely understand: this was no game, no adventure, no dream or comic book; he was not going home. Ever. Everyone he knew by now was as dead to him as the war mage he'd shot in the head, high up on the city wall, to watch Tormentors flock to its falling corpse. And to the old world, he was just as dead. Case, if still alive, was the only link to who Eric used to be, aside from the shoes on his feet. (Kiown's face flashed through his mind with mocking laughter.)

Link. Levaal means link,
someone had told him.
Link which protects.
Protects what?

Would they have had a funeral back home, with no body to bury? He could see it all very clearly, his mother crying (the picture brought tears bubbling up in his own eyes); his father grim-faced, showing his usual level of emotion – not a whit, unless it was anger steaming out of him. He wondered what songs they'd have played, what old forgotten friends would have turned up to say goodbye.

Siel's arm was slung over his chest, using him and offering herself as warmth. He gently clutched at her forearm and tried to switch off his mind before the numb part filled with feeling again, but found her touch had the opposite effect. His body trembled with sobs.

One of Siel's eyes slid open. Across her face at first was annoyance at being woken, but she watched him for a moment as he wiped his eyes and tried to calm himself. She moved closer to him. ‘Shh,' she said. ‘You're here now. And you will make a difference here. There is a war for us to win. But only if you're strong.'

She stroked his hair until he felt sleep coming. He didn't know if hers was the empathy of someone who cared or if it was the touch of a mechanic fixing a machine so it would function better. But he felt that either would have been much the same.

Their sleep was broken by daylight, the feel of blades at their throats, and a slow, heavy voice saying: ‘I can tell you didn't do it. But someone did. And maybe you know who.'

3

Eric had had a very strange dream, which his mind held with perfect clarity:

He was someone else, seeing through someone else's eyes. He'd been wandering in the night with clumsy steps, through the very fields in which this village lay. The strange sky to the south had piqued his curiosity. He would go across sooner or later, but there were gods hanging around, and he had seen what happened to the Nightmare cultists.

He could make it across the boundary, probably – he could move much faster than them. But for now there were other things of interest to look at. Like that piece of half-broken magic lingering over the village, there. A deceptively simple bit of trickery. How had it been done, covering the village like a big glass bowl? The eye just glanced off it! But the foreign airs had disturbed the disguise, the glass bowl had been cracked.

There, two bodies bundled up. Their warmth made pulsing red-yellow splotches on his vision. The girl, the fellow, dreaming away. As were those two dogs, similarly curled together on the ends of their chains. And there was that other, hidden away in the square hut yonder, a lone man it seemed, working into the night on some project over a bench, muttering to himself. Time for a closer look.

Closer. That was easy. Here to there, very fast, the ground rushing away like the world had tilted sideways to drop him down its sheer face, then righted itself again, all in a second. Easier than walking. One of the dogs stirred at his scent.

These dogs. Funny bodies, fur, teeth and paws. How were these things actually alive? It seemed a miracle, very peculiar. What was inside those funny bodies? More fur, bundles of it packed into that doggy shape?

That unpleasant mystery solved (no noise – he was fast) he went to the fellow, the girl. Cuddling up, a little human fireplace of warmth. Was anyone who wished to allowed to warm himself here? Could he lie here with them? Was permission needed? How was it obtained? He stood gazing at their peaceful sleeping faces. A touch of beauty about them not found in those awake. He'd not yet been so close to this pair. To others, yes. But these two were … different.

He reached a hand down to do he knew not what – maybe nothing, maybe something bad – when the woman stirred, rolled sideways, surprising him. The sheet came away from her left breast, exposing a dark nipple erect with cold. He peered at it, patted his own chest, wondering at the difference. She was still asleep. What was inside her body? Was it like the dogs'? Would enquiry put out the pleasant little fireplace of warmth, or just extinguish half of it?

‘Not here, lad,' said a nervous-sounding voice. ‘This way. More to show you, over here. You didn't like the mess outside, this will just make another, and worse, oh aye. Come! I'll show you things better than that. Way up high, if you can follow me. Wager you can't, lad. Way up, up we go…'

Where was this hidden person, brashly interrupting his thoughts, speaking so loud in his ear? That way! Away he went, the world tilting again, till he was off in the trees, near where there was a brook burbling, and a woman's laughter, and – ah, something else …

4

Eric rubbed his eyes, shifted an inch or two away from the blade at his throat. The three bears, he thought, almost amused to find the old tale was now based on a true story.

The half-giant said ponderously, ‘I come back to feed my dogs. Should have told a couple of dolls to do it, no doubt. But the dolls don't always obey or do it properly anyway.' The dolls remark was self-explanatory, for what held blades to their throats were little people made from oval blocks of sand-coloured wood, hardly taller than the mattress. Their flat oval faces had no features but a cut line for a mouth and two roughly gouged eye holes. They were still as statues, but for the faintest tremble in their knife arms.

As for the half-giant, he was not as big or loud as Faul had been. In dirt-brown overalls, adorned here and there with grass as though he'd rolled around in it, he sat on a thick wooden chest at the end of the bed, fists pressed into his knees. From reddened eyes tears streaked down his fat cheeks.

Siel did not enjoy having a knife held to her and, whether she'd broken into someone's home or not, it was not what she wanted to see first thing in the morning. Picking her moment, she lashed an elbow sideways, breaking the doll's thin arm. It popped out of its shoulder socket and clattered against the wall. The doll ran about in a small circle as though it were in pain.

‘Easy now! Don't break em, they're hard to make. They won't hurt you.'

‘Knives to the throat are a strange way to express that, with all due respect,' said Eric, relieved his own doll didn't react to Siel's attack with a pre-emptive strike of its own.

‘Dead dogs are a strange way to say thanks for the food and the bed,' said the half-giant. ‘Don't mind the dolls, I'm training em to guard the village. They don't learn easy. Outside now, you bunch of useless twigs. Out!' The little wooden men lurched out the bedroom door, clattering into the door frame and into each other as they went. The broken arm remained behind. ‘My name's Gorb. Now then. Who killed my dogs?'

‘First I've heard of it,' said Siel, covering herself with the sheet. Under its cover she reached for the curved knife, which she'd kept under the pillow.

‘You didn't do it, I know that. But he knows something,' said Gorb, nodding at Eric. ‘Humans don't keep secrets real good.'

Eric said, ‘I don't know anything. But in a dream last night—' he sifted through the murky fevered images his memory had held ‘—I saw someone killing dogs. Your dogs, I think.'

The half-giant peered at him as though reading a story in his features. Eric almost felt manhandled by the two big amber eyes. Gorb said, ‘There's a trail outside, leads in here. Whatever killed my dogs thought about killing you too. For some reason, it didn't.' Gorb peered into Siel's face. ‘You got a secret too. Better share it before I get angry. That little sharp pricker won't do more'n make me mad if you use it.'

‘Someone was following us,' she said. She told him about the distant stranger they'd twice spotted. The half-giant listened without comment.

‘Did the villagers flee because of the Wall?' said Siel to fill the rather awkward silence.

Gorb grunted. ‘Oh, no. We don't care about
that.
Everyone's at that new tower. They say a mighty wizard lives inside it. They're all still over there, can't believe their eyes yet.' Gorb sighed. ‘I came back to feed my little dogs. They would've been barking loud, like they only ever do when they get hungry. They never minded strangers. Good souls they were.' The half-giant's body leaned further forward on the creaking wooden chest. He stuffed two palms over his eyes and from behind them poured a flood of tears.

Moved by sympathy (and to Siel's amazement at his surely suicidal stupidity), Eric went to the half-giant and reached to pat his shoulder in consolation.