“My name is Sandwalker. Yes, if I can.”
“They are far north of here,” said the terrible voice of the blind man. “Near the great observatory of The Eye. In the pit called The Other Eye. But my own eye is gone, and my other eye also; tell me, how stand the stars now? I must know when it is time to die.”
Sandwalker glanced up, though the racing clouds covered everything; and as he did, the blind man lunged. In an instant the Shadow children were on him like ants on carrion, and Sandwalker kicked him in the face. The other prisoners bolted.
“Will you eat this meat with us?” the Old Wise One asked when the blind man had been subdued. “As a shadowfriend you are one of us, and may eat this meat without disgrace.” He had reappeared, though he took no part in the struggle with the blind man—at least, one of the dim figures seemed to be he.
“No,” Sandwalker said. “I ate well yesterday. But will you not pursue those who fled?”
“Later. Burdened with this one, we would never retrieve them, and he would flee too—blind or not—if we were to leave him alone. It would be possible to break his legs, but there is a ghoul-bear near; we winded him before you came.”
Sandwalker nodded. “I too.”
“Would you see this one’s death?”
“I might start the trail of the others,” Sandwalker said. To himself he reflected that they would run north, downstream. Toward the pit call The Other Eye.
“That is a good thought.”
Sandwalker turned away. He had not taken ten steps before the rain came; through its drumming he heard the blind man’s death rattle.
Day came, clear and cold. By the time the sun stood a hand’s width above the horizon the last clouds were gone, leaving the sky a blue touched with black and dotted with faint stars. In the meadowmeres the reeds bent and creaked in the wind, and an occasional bird, riding the turbulent air as Sandwalker had ridden the river’s thundering waters, crossed heaven from end to end while he watched.
The trail of the three who had fled had not been difficult. The marshmen were fishers, fighters, finders of small game—but not hunters, as hunting was understood in the mountains. He had not yet seen them, but a hundred clues told him they were not far ahead: a broken herb still struggling to rise as he passed, footprints in mud still filling with water. And the signs of other men were there as well. The hunted ran now on paths that were more than game trails, and there was a presence in the land as there had not been in the empty miles at the highland’s feet, a presence cruel and detached, thinking deep thoughts, contemptuous of everything below the clouds.
At the same time he was conscious of the Shadow children behind him. In the last hours of the night he had heard their song of Many Mouths and All Full, and then The Daysleep Song; now they were quiet, but their quiet was a presence.
The three who had fled were tired—their steps, as the mud showed, stumbled and dragged. But there was nothing to be gained by overtaking them without the Shadow children, and indeed they were of no use to him at all except as a lure to bring the Shadow children deep into the wetlands where they might help him. He was exhausted himself, and finding a spot dry enough to grow a few shrubs he slept.
They took Sandwalker at twilight, a great ring of them. They had come behind him and closed from all sides, big, scarred men with ugly eyes. He ran from one part of their circle to another, from end to end, finding no escape, the marshmen always closer until they were shoulder to shoulder, he hoping for dark but caught (at last) in the dark. He fought hard and they hurt him.
For five days they held him, then all night drove him before them, and at first light, cast him into that pit which is called The Other Eye. There were four there already. They were his mother, Cedar Branches Waving; Leaves-you-can-eat; old Bloodyfinger; and the girl Sweetmouth.
“My son!” said Cedar Branches Waving, and she wept. She was very thin.
For half a day Sandwalker tried to climb the walls of The Other Eye. He made Leaves-you-can-eat and the girl Sweetmouth push him, and he persuaded old Bloodyfinger to lean against the slopingxsand while Leaves-you-can- eat climbed upon his shoulders so that he, Sandwalker, might climb upon both and so escape; but the walls of the pit called The Other Eye are of so soft a sand that they fade under the feet and hands, and the more they are pulled down, the less they can be climbed. Bloodyfinger floundered and Sandwalker fell, and they were the same as before.
At about an hour after the noon, another Sandwalker appeared at the rim of the pit, and stood a long time looking down. Sandwalker, in the pit, stared up at himself. Then men, the big men of the meadowmeres with their scars, brought a long liana, and holding one end of this woody vine flung the other down. “That one,” said the Sandwalker who stood in the high place, and he pointed to the real Sandwalker.
Sandwalker shook his head. No.
“You are not to be sacrificed—not yet. Climb up.”
“Am I to be freed?”
The other laughed.
Then if you would speak to me, Brother, you must come down.”
Eastwind looked at the men holding the liana, shrugged in a way that was half a joke, and with his hands on the vine slid down. “I wish to see you better,” he said to Sandwalker. “You have my face.”
“You are my brother,” Sandwalker said. “I have dreamed of you, and my mother told me of you. Two of us were born, and at the washing she held me and her own mother you. The marshmen came and forced your name from her mother’s mouth that they might have power over you, then killed her.”
“I know all that,” Eastwind said. “Lastvoice, my teacher, has told me.”
Sandwalker hoped for some advantage by drawing their mother into the talk, so he said, “What was her name, mother? Your mother, whom they drowned? I have forgotten.” But Cedar Branches Waving was weeping and would not answer.
“You are to be killed,” said Eastwind, “that you may carry our messages to the river, who tells the stars, who tell God. Lastvoice has warned me that there may be some danger to me in your death. We are, perhaps, but one person.”
Sandwalker shook his head and spat.
“It is an honor for you. You are a hill-boy like ten others—but in the stars you will be greater than I, who learn to read the instructions the river writes God.”
“You are really not so much like me,” Sandwalker said, “and you have no beard.” He touched his lip where the bristles were beginning to sprout. Unexpectedly the girl Sweetmouth, who had been (with Leaves-you-can-eat and old Bloodyfinger) watching them silently, began to giggle. Sandwalker looked at her angrily and she pointed at Eastwind, unable to contain her laughter.
“When I was an infant,” Eastwind said. “We bind those things tightly with a woman’s hair, and they putrefy. It is not painful, and only a few of those who will be starwalkers die. I had wished to say that Lastvoice has warned me that we are one. You will die before I, and go to the river and the stars. I am not afraid of that. In my dreams I shall float with you in places of power; I came to tell you that in your dreams you may yet walk as a living man.”
A voice from the rim of the pit hailed Eastwind. “Scholar of the Sky, there are more. Do you wish to come up?”
