Out again, Rossamund saw a brazen statue set proudly on the projecting keystone of the arch and standing guard above the entrance of the tunnel. As tall as three tall men, dressed in flowing robes, lower legs metal- armored, the figure clutched a mighty sword to her bosom; this was the southern sister, green-streaked with rainwashed corrosion. The likeness of a windswept veil was fashioned with great cunning as if blowing across her face, yet her fixed expression of wild defiance was unmistakeable.With a shiver, Rossamund realized this was the image of one of those very ouranin sisters upon which the Lapinduce spoke, ancient rossamunderling defenders of Brandenbrass. Twisting in his seat, he stared at the effigy like some long-gone kin and smiled grimly at how quickly this majestic protector would be torn down should the citizens of this city discover her true monstrous nature.
Beyond the twin gates the city yet lingered, the last of the high-houses and dormitories clinging like children to the outward hem of Brandenbrass' pristine wall. Then, all too quickly, it gave way to a more bucolic scene. One moment they were in a Brandenard street, the next running by wicket-fenced fields where stupidly dignified goats with great, flopping ears and fat, overlong noses stared at them solemnly. A wide fertile plain spread out before them-the Milchfold, lively with cows and goats and laborers. Reached by long tree-lined lanes that crossed and recrossed the whole plain, the homes of dairy herds and landholders stood like martial towers. A handful of miles to the west the land rose to a blunt escarpment, becoming the feet of dark crouching hills, the Brandenfells.
The red lamps and paved stone of the Hardwick gave over to the lightless, packed clay of the Athy Road, going northwest by lush flat fields of peas, cow pastures, goat-breaks and barren saltpeter farms where moilers masked in vented scarves tilled in the brimstone stink.
In a blur, Darter Brown joined them, fluttering up to land on Rossamund's knuckle as it rested on the sash.
'Good morning, my shadow,' the young factotum murmured genially to his feathered friend.
It twittered at him urgently, as if trying to communicate something more complex, but Rossamund could not decipher its meaning.
'My, my! He doth speak with the animals!' Europe declared. 'Perhaps you could call in a bird each for us, little man; then we could start a menagerie, charge a subscription for people to come and see, and cease this violent life for good.'
Rossamund knew the fulgar was jesting, but he blushed anyway.
The fulgar cocked her head to scrutinize the sparrow with a raised brow. 'I cannot say that when I first submitted myself to the hands of Sinster's sectifers I anticipated taking on the services of a bird to hunt the monster-and a rather scrawny one at that.'
To this the watchful sparrow gave an irritable tweet!
'And saucy too,' the fulgar continued with an amused sniff. 'My, what a collective I have gathered about me. I doubt any other teratologist could boast such peculiar staff.'
The ground rose gradually to the bluffs reaching around from the northeast, bending gradually southwest to disappear from sight behind themselves. Farther south Rossamund could see mounts of black tumbling east to the coast: the Siltmounds, great dunes of swarthy sand hemming the city's southern walls. At a crossing of minor drives with the main way stood several lofty poles, thick like trees, buried deep in the compacted soil and topped with overlarge cartwheels. Daws, magpies and crows hovered, squabbling over several of these mucky and blackened platforms, yet leaving one to the mastery of a single bald-headed assvogel. Startled, Darter Brown took wing and vanished among the stalks of wide hilly pastures.
A dread chill flushed from Rossamund's innards to his crown.
Catharine wheels…These were the infamous mechanisms of torture and execution for murderers, traitors and… sedorners. Thick-growing briars were twined and pinned about the lower portions of the mast to prevent rescue. From one roses were blooming, declaring to all the world-so tradition held-that the judged soul rotting on high was a sedorner through and through.
Pulling his sight free, Rossamund refused to gaze any closer as they passed beneath this grisly stand.
'Pay no mind to these wicked coldbeams, Rossamund,' Fransitart called doggedly over his shoulder.
There, bizarrely, standing under them, was a reddleman with his many dyes in a square handcart, smock and skin stained by his products. As they rattled by, Rossamund could hear the fellow singing, as happy as you like, cawing along with the carrion birds:
Hey, ho, what's the time? Hang my smallclothes on the line. If they tear, I don't care, I'll just dye another pair.
His head down, the young factotum watched Europe fixedly from the corner of his vision. The fulgar stared ahead, glancing occasionally at the foul devices, undaunted. Catching her factotum's unease, she laid her hand lightly on Rossamund's clenched fist until they were past, her simple-seeming yet uncommon kindness touching him so profoundly it banished his alarm.
The sun was shining as the landaulet climbed, yet mile upon mile away south a dark churning horizon sparked elegant lightning straight to the ground-kinked electrical charges miles long, arcing against the black. An arrowed formation of silent ibis winged high above, driven over the hills by the freshening winds that brought delayed levin grumbles.
'The pipistrelle turns dirty,' Fransitart said of the distant thunder, Rossamund recognizing the vinegaroon name for the light winds of the Grume. 'The spring glooms have come. Ye'll be needin' a bolt-hole to keep yer pretty pate dry, m'lady, afore the day is out.'
'For you such turns of weather might be dirty, Master Vinegar,' Europe replied, 'but a levining sky is a happy roof for a thermistor.'
Climbing beside a rocky winding stream made rapid by the slope, the Athy Road took them steadily higher into the drab hills of the Brandenfells. Even from this distant vantage, Brandenbrass looked enormous, her many rings of fortification clear, her long pale harbor with its countless berths and piers squashed with vessels, a poisonous haze hanging low over the seaside milling districts.The lofty towers of the countinghouses and the great many fortified gates thrust high above the great spreading mass. Highest and sturdiest of all in its midst stood the Brandendirk, seat of the ducal line, and a little north in the city's very center brooded the dark smudge of the Moldwood, unguessed, untroubled and unchallenged; two powers opposed, with Brandentown pinched between.
Ahead, myrtles and bent pines sprouted in ones and twos like thinning hair on the near-bald crowns of the Brandenfells, thickening into woods down in the convoluted valleys twisting steeply back through many spurs and folds.
While the four travelers supped on prunes, cold beef clumsy smeared with soft Pondsley cheese and claret, the sky grew louring dark and heavy with water.
With a suppressed rumble, rain arrived, large dollops that had an uncomfortable knack of landing on exposed skin: the back of the neck, the wrist at the cuff… Sorry for his old masters left out in the wet, Rossamund extended the bonnet-like canopy as Craumpalin struggled on his oiled pallmain.
Some miles ahead, upon the summit of a distant spur, Rossamund spied a single orange glimmer, lit perhaps against the growing gloom, the only evidence of a dwelling.
'Wood Hole,' Europe explained. 'Pleasant enough for a hill town, though it is not our goal. There is a wayhouse in a dell about a mile from here.We shall shelter there.'
The road veered behind the lee side of the hills, descending to loop about the folds of land, the mossy stones of its foundation reaching down to the bubbling creek only a few yards below. A tenuous threwd dwelt here, as if the stream brought the watchfulness from more haunted heights. But for the dripping trickle of rain-wash and runnel, and the uneven viscous clops of hoofs, the world was reverentially silent. Trees grew densely along the verge: dark olive, age-twisted pine and pale laurel. Between their trunks Rossamund thought he could see a light ahead, the corona of cool clean seltzer light, a welcome pilot in the sodden obscurity. The shadows slowly parted to reveal a great-lamp on the right of the way, lifted on a black post above a solid gate in a high stone wall. Nestled in a cleft beyond this gate was a house half excavated into the hillside beside a brimming, chattering weir.
There was no sign, just this single signal flare.
'Welcome to the Guiding Star,' said Europe. 'We shall abide here for now.'
With no small relief they entered the foreyard and got out of the rain. The foul weather had blown itself out overnight and now, in the still cool, a lustrous blond sky joyfully declared the new day. Cooing encouragements to the horses and sipping one of Craumpalin's restorative draughts from a biggin, Fransitart guided the landaulet away from the wayhouse. No one spoke as they wended through woodland din, the gray bosky half-light whispering with
