Their way led upward, along dim aisles of trees so lofty and full that no sunlight fell between, the forest floor carpeted only with generations of leaves. By late afternoon the ends of the forest halls were hidden in fog, and even Thewson’s steps had begun to slow. The gryphon panted strangely. They were lost in greyness, in chill. The end of the light came suddenly, and Thewson turned to them.
‘Off that way a little is a cave. I smell the fern and the water. We can go no farther now.’ He led them aside from their path into the darkness and mist until all of them could hear the music of water dropping slowly into cavern pools. It was a sound like hollowed wood struck randomly in an aimless melody. There were beds of dry sand beside the pool within the cavern, and dead trees lay at the entrance in a tumble of broken branches.
Their fire lit the cavern, but it barely touched the wings of the gryphon where it lay deep against the rock, eyes closed and beak gaping across a taloned foot. Jaer’s wounds had bled again, and Jasmine poulticed them with the last of her herbs. They slumped beside the fire, too weary to eat, unable to sleep, for Jaer’s shallow breaths had long, agonizing pauses between them during which each of them believed that she would not breathe again.
Medlo’s fingers caressed the neck of his jangle. The endless music of the falling water fell into him with an obdurate sadness. He knew Jaer would die. He wished, prayed that Jaer would die so that he could stop screaming within himself for Jaer to live, to breathe again, and again. He saw in Jasmine’s eyes the shadow of his own panic and fear.
Terascouros, also, knew Jaer would die, but wondered why those in Murgin had let her live this long. She would not die at once. No. This had been done so that Jaer would die after a time, after waking. Terascouros thought of that waking and prayed that Jaer would die before that could happen.
At length they slept. Outside the cavern the mist moved past in endless companies of shifting forms; it gathered in battalions at the cavern’s entrance and waited there. Inside, the travelers woke to Jaer’s screaming.
It was not a loud screaming. It had rather the sound of a small animal which had been caught in a trap and had been there through days and nights without water or food or hope. It was not a cry for help or a scream of surprised pain; it was the cry of a body which can make no other sound and is too agonized to remain silent. It is the sound the torturers wait for, knowing that there will be no more after this sound has ended. It was not Jaer’s voice, nor any human voice.
‘It is too far,’ said Terascouros. ‘We will not reach the Sisterhood while she lives.’
‘We will go on,’ said Thewson. ‘If she dies, we will bury her.’ His face was dark and inscrutable.
‘There are certain roots,’ said Jasmine hopelessly. ‘Ease-root is one. It grows in meadows – can stop pain. I have none. This is not the country to find it.’
Terascouros shook her head. ‘Sunny meadows. No, she will go on like that until she dies. It will not come soon enough.’
‘We will go on,’ said Thewson.
They went on, out into the darkness before dawn and away to the north once more. Behind them the battalions of mist seemed focused upon the firelight within the cavern. The travellers passed out of the fog and into the clear starlight of early morning. On the hills there had been frost during the night which made their feet squeak a shrill protest over the cropped grasses. Ahead was open land interspersed with groves of white-trunked trees, and far ahead the bulk of Gerenhodh blocked out the light of the stars. Thewson pointed it out, and Terascouros nodded. ‘Yes. The Sisterhood is just south of that, in a long, twisting valley. It’s been fifteen years. I may not be able to find it.’
As they crossed one of the chain of meadows, both the gryphon and Jasmine cried out at once. To the left the gryphon wandered away toward a distant gleam of pooled water, and on the right Jasmine knelt beside a frost-blackened stem. ‘Easeroot,’ she said. ‘I’m almost sure. Who would have thought to find it here, so far from the lowlands?’ She was digging frantically with her fingers, and Medlo came to offer his dagger, wincing as she blunted it on a buried stone. The roots which came into her hand were the size of men’s fingers, a long sausagelike row of them connected by dry, fibrous netting.
Thewson put his burden down and stood flexing shoulders and thighs as he watched the sky lighten to the east. At his feet the constant moaning went on, scarcely louder than a low wind sound at night, and yet as rasping upon the nerves as a knife blade across jangle strings. The gryphon had disappeared behind a clump of trees. Terascouros fell to her knees.
‘Is it the root you know?’ she asked.
Jasmine nodded. ‘Nothing else resembles it. It is a kind of sleep drug which deadens pain. It is not often used, because it sometimes kills. Still…’
‘Don’t worry yourself with words, child. Use it. If she dies she can be no worse off than now. Better, perhaps.’
Jasmine flushed. ‘I feel so guilty to think such things.’
‘Only fools insist upon life at any cost.’ Terascouros sighed. ‘Others would say that life may be laid down when
