After noon the road fell into slow curves behind them and they walked more often in shade, half asleep except for the four guardians, man, woman, and hounds. A sudden horror of sound woke them, and Jaer found Thewson’s hand clamped firmly across his mouth as he tried to say ‘What…’ A frantic ululation screamed along the canyon walls, bounding in echo upon echo in a seemingly endless tumult of agony.
Thewson and Leona hurried them toward the walls, thrust them into the nearest crack like naked crabs thrust into a borrowed shell. Thewson’s body stoppered the entrance, spear before him. They waited, half suffocated, until the sounds died and the canyon was quiet before Thewson crept silently down the road to crouch at the curve and peer around it, face close to the sheltering stone. When he beckoned them to come, they found signs of struggle and death. An iron wagon lay like an overturned tortoise at the river’s edge, wheels upward, harness empty. There was no sign of the horses. In the dust lay a naked figure, half covered by a black robe. Jaer’s startled gaze fixed there and then turned away, sickened.
‘Why would they do that to him? Why would anyone …?’
Medlo replied bleakly, ‘Look again, Jaer. Much of that was not done just now. See, there, and there. Healed. Or as healed as it will ever be. I have seen this before. It is what they do to themselves, these acolytes. Or have done to them.’
‘Why?’ Jaer repeated. ‘Why would they …?’
Leona drew the robes to cover the Body. ‘With this they are said to purchase a strange gift,’ she said harshly, and moved down the road to lead them away. As they went forward, a dull thumping came from the wagon. It came again, and still again.
Thewson was already studying the thick chain which held the doors of the cage shut. He thrust the shaft of his spear between two links and twisted it, the muscles bulging on his shoulders. The chain broke with a screeching twang, the doors falling open. Stench poured out at them, and an apparition crawled into the light, an old woman in a filthy gown, hair in grey tangles. Without looking at them, she struggled over the edge of the cage and into the river, beating their hands away.
The trembling old woman wakened a quick memory of Ephraim in Jaer, and he moved forward to help, colliding with Jasmine at the river’s edge. The crone solved the problem for them by tumbling into the water and submerging, only to reappear spouting water like a whale and scrubbing at herself with both hands. ‘For the love of Our Lady, girl, do you have a clean bit of cloth? Soap? Young fellow, go with your companions there and show me your back. The time is long past when Terascouros would flaunt her body….’ Then she began crying, all at once, and Jaer left her to Jasmine’s ministrations, so overcome by nostalgia he could not speak for a time.
Leona and Thewson were facing the rock wall of the canyon, alert for any movement on the cliffs. Thewson rumbled to himself about the possible identity of those who had taken the horses. ‘They go with those horses up into those rocks, and they eat the animals. They are hungry people, it may be, but they do not eat that one which is dead. He is r’muova – a dead thing, is it?’
‘Carrion,’ offered Medlo absently.
‘Yes. That is so. That one is carrion, and they do not eat it. They would eat the old woman, or us.’
‘Let us hope they have enough horse to fill their bellies and will leave us alone,’ Medlo answered. Dust shifting from the canyon rim held their attention while Jasmine helped the old woman with soap and clothes, a form of assistance which had stopped the weeping, or at least the louder expressions of it. When the old one stumbled from the water she was clad in Jasmine’s orbansa. She gazed at them, and as each returned the gaze each wondered what they would do with her or for her. Medlo, as was his habit, became irritable and defensive at his own pitying thoughts.
‘I suppose we should welcome you with trust, old woman, if for no other reason than that you were the captive of those who would probably have made captives of us. Still, forgive my discourtesy in asking who you are and where they were taking you?’
The old woman answered him in a dry, cracked voice which trembled with exhaustion. ‘My name is Terascouros. Those black-robed beasts of Gahl learned I am able to see visions. Those who have such skills are taken by them to the city of Murgin. There they are given drugs to dream on, until in the end they see no more – only death.’
‘That tells us little,’ Medlo complained.
‘It answers the questions you asked,’ the old woman answered with some asperity.
Jasmine snapped at him. ‘Medlo, what would you do? Leave her here for the cannibals to eat? Wait and argue until they come to feast on all of us? There is death enough here already, and evil. Leave it!’ She stalked away down the road, Thewson following her with a half-hidden smile, the old woman staggering after. The others fell in behind, Jaer and Leona last in the file.
After a time of silence, Leona began to tell Jaer of Anisfale, of the Aresfales and Norfale, of a woman who had lived there, a young woman, one Leona had known well. She spoke of shearing, and of weaving. To Jaer it sounded not unlike caring for the goats of the Outer Island, and he drowsed in the circle of her voice, hearing it and yet not hearing it. Leona talked of Fabla, and Jaer plodded beside her as she talked, seeing the purple mists of the moorland and feeling the damp on his skin. ‘You are like her,’
