“It made me peevish,” she said with her typically Mavinish under-statement. “They were so silly looking; so much a travesty of humanity. Making a parody of us in order to mock us; waving and weaving their points to make the shadows flow first here, then there. Well, those two will not mock again.”
She told us later what she did to the Eesties, leaving the tent empty. “For the mystification of the guardsmen. Mystification is always good for guardsmen,” she remarked. “It makes them watchful.”
She returned to the Demesne in time to supervise Bryan’s supper and bedtime. She did not bother to tell Himaggery what she had done until afterward, by which time he had already noticed great rents and vacancies in the shadow. The fluttering menace seemed no longer organized by malicious will; though dangerous still, it was patchy rather than ubiquitous. Waiting for a propitious conformation, Himaggery and Barish made a sortie in force from the main gates, shadow or no shadow. Good fortune may have had something to do with it. They were not shadow eaten, and they left very little of the besiegers for the were-owls.
“We will go after Peter,” Himaggery announced, furiously ordering horses and wagons and equipage fir the road while the Gamesmen ran hither and thither and Barish gave similar orders to his own men.
“No,” said Mavin. “You must go to the Old South Road City,” and she told them why. She says they were very stubborn about it, almost disbelieving. It was only when she threatened to turn Bryan loose on them that they began to listen seriously to her. And, at last, she had her way—and mine. Himaggery, Barish, and all but a small garrison of the inhabitants of the Bright Demesne set out for Old South Road City, while Mavin, somewhat slowed by being burdened by Bryan, came after me. Often I wonder what might have happened had she gone with Himaggery instead. Often now I wish she had done so.
11
JINIAN’S STORY: THE CAVERNS
Murzy had been right. By moving swiftly, calmly—and by trading the barrows for a farm wagon on the third day of our trek—we managed to reach the Ice Caverns before Huldra did. The old codger living at the edge of the marches had not been at all willing to let his only wagon go, but between Cat’s talking and Margaret’s Beguiling, he couldn’t hold out against us. He was well paid for the wagon, and we left half a dozen of the shadow-eaters with him as lagniappe. When we left him, he had begun telling them the story of his life, and one of the turnips had a sprout out its top that looked suspiciously like a flower head to me.
“They’ll seed, you know,” said the Gardener in his gloomy, uninflected voice. “Soon they’ll be all over everything.”
“I can think of worse things,” said Sarah. “Wildthorns, for example. Or purple briar. Or shadow.”
“True,” murmured the Gardener. “Except that wildthorn extract cures heaves in wateroxen. And split purple briar makes the best sieves in the world.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Cat, showing immediate interest. “What else are they good for?”
He told her, for the better part of a day. Everyone else walked away from the wagon, tiring of his voice, but Cat sat up there on the seat, taking it all in, and the turnips babbled to one another about every cloud in the sky and every new flower or stone along the way. I was beginning to see differences among them, differences in their markings and the locations of their eyes. I named them to myself; Bulgy and Flop-top and Big-blue, who had the widest, bluest belt. Pasty, all white with yellowish leaves; Fringes, who had at least ten or twelve root legs; Molly-my-dear, slender—relatively speaking—and coy, with an almost supersonic giggle. They had no names for themselves and were delighted when I began to name them, after a time beginning to think up titles for themselves, some of which made them collapse into the bottom of the wagon, full of mysterious, vegetable mirth. I could understand the words well enough, but not what they really meant. It was not a humor I could share, though that fact seemed to frustrate no one but me.
The Gardener had been right. More than a few of them were sending up flower stalks and casting meaningful looks at one another. I had not thought of pollination as an erotic exercise before, but these hybrid creatures did not regard it as routine, so much was obvious. They were full of devious, volatile pranks, reminding me rather of the deep dwell-ers I had summoned up in Fangel. Devious or not, they were more interesting than the Gardener. I had yet to see him display any interest in anything whatsoever.
All of which was a mere distraction, to keep my mind off Peter. When I thought of him, I thought of him being tortured, maimed, savaged by Huldra’s wanton evil or Dedrina’s casual brutality. Once or twice I had fallen into shivering fits, and Cat or Murzy had had to recall me to myself with an utterance of names. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering whose names we uttered and why they made any difference. Who, or what, was Eutras? Who, or what, was Favian?
At any rate, we came down Cagihiggy Creek at some speed. The way is level along there, not precisely a road but without major impediments to travel. As we neared the place where we thought the caverns were, we made camp while Murzy, Cat, and Bets sent up some kind of Wize-ardly signal, a tall, blue smoke with sparkly bits in it. They went on making it for some hours. Along about dusk, it was answered by a cautious call from behind some rocks, then by a tall, serious-faced man, who stepped out and approached us with visible trepidation.
I went to him, showing my
