‘Aaah.’ For a time Terascouros did not go on, thinking to herself how marvellous and how terrible, envious of anyone who could know so much, then thinking how terrible once more as she saw the face before her, a child’s face, with the eyes of an age greater than Terascouros’s own. Pity stirred within her. ‘You do not know everything?’
‘No. Not everything. I have not the whole world inside me, only much of it. There are things hidden yet. I do not know why the name of Taniel itches at me nor why Tchent is the place we must go.’
Medlo had been listening to all this with ill concealed doubt. ‘An enigma,’ he chanted to the melody of the Summoning Chant. ‘A mystery.’
‘Hush,’ Terascouros commanded him. ‘Be careful what you do with that music! You could do more than you plan to do, more than would be comfortable. There are listeners abroad in the world.’
Medlo fell silent. Jaer and Terascouros turned away. For a time the three felt uncomfortable with one another, as though too much had been said, or too little. Kelner had perched quietly on one of the saddles during the long day, but now he fixed Jaer with an imperious yellow eye which almost seemed to spin like a wheel of fire. Jaer put out her hand, blindly, and the bird rubbed its head on her palm before clattering wings into flight. Unlike all previous times, he did not return. Jaer kept remembering the glare of those yellow eyes, the feel of feathers pressed into her palm, found herself searching the sky. But it was as empty as her heart.
The River Del led before them, the mountains loomed at their shoulders, the days went on. They grew lazy, less watchful, and Jaer did not see the swarming forms among the grasses until one had seized her pony’s leg with curved fangs and another leapt from the concealing foliage at her throat. Medlo cut it out of the air, the blade slashing before Jaer’s face, and the creature fell headless. Jaer accounted for the one which had attacked the pony, but it was too late. The poisoned fangs had done their work, and though Jaer dismounted at once to lead the beast throughout the day, by nightfall it was stumbling and blind.
‘Voasoirs,’ said Terascouros. ‘They hunt in packs in these grasslands of the east, particularly, it is said, at the edge of the Concealment.’
‘We will approach it more slowly now,’ commented Medlo, ‘with only two ponies among us. Can you sing us safe from them, Teras?’
‘If I did not need to sleep,’ she said in a dry voice. ‘But I have not found a way to do that.’
‘We will build larger fires,’ said Jaer, ‘and watch as we always do, throughout the night.’
In the morning the pony was dead, nothing left but picked bones. They had not heard the scavengers in the night, and they had uneasy thoughts about creatures so voracious and so silent.
And yet, not all creatures of the plain were prey of the hunters. As the sun rose high that morning they came upon a herd of horses, one of which came to them, whickering gently and tossing his head. It was a stallion, black hide gleaming like Kelner’s black feathers, with the same feel to it when he laid that massive head along Jaer’s face. The horse had yellow eyes, unhorselike eyes, fixed on Jaer’s own in mixed sympathy and encouragement. Jaer put her arms around the arching neck and leaned there for a moment, for that moment lost in a kind of content. The horse did not flinch when Jaer saddled him, but would not accept the bit. They went on, Jaer riding high above the shorter ponies, clutching the strange horse’s mane instead of reins, the herd neighing behind them but making no attempt to follow. ‘Who are you?’ Jaer whispered into the horse’s ear. ‘Will you tell me who you are?’ The horse only stamped a foot sharply, shook his head, and walked on.
The land sloped upward gradually, and they crossed the Del before the river banks rose to enclose it in the gorge which they would not be able to cross. Jaer fell into abstracted talk with her inhabitants, conscious of a structure which was growing within her, a twisting strangeness, as perfectly accessible as a maze garden, yet more tortuous and complex. It was growing. She could detect the pattern, could follow a lint of it here, there, but it seemed to have no edges. She followed the structure to the place it should end only to find that it went on, curving oddly as into some other place or time. ‘What?’ she asked the multitude within. There was a clamour, but she could not understand what it was they said.
That night, out of a depth of dream, Jaer saw herself in a caverned room lit with green lights. He heard the flutter and gasp of unliving things which glittered and spun. There was something he had to do, to find, but he awakened too suddenly. Something passed around them, something horrid, stealthy and huge out of the east, the air sizzling in its passage, the grasses recoiling as it thrust into the west.
He knew that both Terascouros and Medlo were awake. They listened for any sound which might signal a physical body moving in the wild, following whatever-it-was. Breath burst from lungs revelling at not breathing.
‘Ah, Teras,’ he said. ‘You were right. There are listeners in the world. Or watchers. Or both. And it comes close, far too close.’
Whatever-it-was did not seek them again, or they did not feel the search. In a few days’
