Huldra turned, confused only for a moment by what she saw, then those hands came out toward Peter and I saw her mouth open, knowing verv well she would cry one word and one word only. The thousand-year spell, aimed at Peter. A thousand-year death. Aimed at Peter. I lunged forward, to be between her and him when the word was spoken, slipped fell, rolled . . .
. . . To look up and see the ceiling fall around her, a great basket of rock, what looked like rock.
“——-” Huldra cried.
I heard Peter calling, “No, oh, no, oh, no. . . .”
Then I smashed into the wall with my head.
When I came to myself, the others of the seven were there. Way off, somewhere, I could hear weeping. Peter. So he was alive.
Hands tried to hold me down, but I fought my way up from the place they’d put me and followed the sound of weeping.
He was there. Knelt down, bowed down, his head on his hands, crying. Before him on the cavern floor lay Mavin, young looking, as though she were asleep, her mouth slightly tilted in surprise. Mavin. Pale and hard as stone.
She had dropped upon Huldra just as the word of enchantment had been uttered. She had contained the word, received it, been ensorcelled by it.
All I could do was sit there beside Peter and hold his hand. The tears ran as though they would never stop, as though they came from some inexhaustible store. After many hours, someone went away and came back with someone else. A tall woman, taller than any woman I had ever seen, with a cloud of black, black hair and eyes like jet. She placed her hand on Peter’s shoulder, closed her eves for a time, then shook her head.
“He is only grieving,” she said. “And I cannot cure grief.” I knew then it was Mind Healer Tallev, that they had found her and raised her up at last. She gave me a long, strange look, then went away. Later they told me she had gone north, toward the Great Maze.
While I sat there, Mertyn led the Immutables into Huldra’s camp in a fury of revenge and anger. Her Gamesmen, bereft of their Talents, he placed under Game bond and then released. A few he even recruited and sent southwest, toward the ruins of the Old South Road City. More than a few he killed for reasons of his own, which may have had something to do with several of them calling him “Shifter kin” in a certain tone of voice.
Riddle had found an Immutable woman to care for Bryan.
And the work of resurrection went on in the caverns while Peter wept and I sat there urging him to have a little tea, or broth, or a bit of bread, to all of which he shook his head while the tears flowed endlessly down.
I didn’t cry then. Later, I cried. But not then.
When Mertyn and the seven had done everything they could at the caverns, we set out ourselves, down past the Blot toward the south, then following the coast to Hawsport, then up the Haws to Zebit, into the hills, and to the Willowater, almost the route we seven had thought of long and long ago.
We had wagons, now—enough to hold the turnips without crowding. And we had horses. Huldra had been well supplied, and we had all her beasts and equipage. She, the Witch, had been crushed beneath Mavin’s huge body, that body which had taken the full brunt of the enchantment. There was little enough of Huldra left to bury, but we put what there was into a pit with the Basilisk. I had been too late to save Peter; but Mavin had been in time. I knew she would have done the same even if she had known what would happen. This did not comfort me. I did not mention it to Peter. It would not have comforted him.
It did comfort me, perhaps foolishly, that Mavin was in her own shape. Peter said her own shape had come upon her when Riddle arrived. I would have hated to think of her lying for some thousand years as a twisted, stony thing. Her body was in one of the wagons, close-wrapped in linen clothes. It was not possible to bury it, her. She looked too much alive, as though she might waken at any moment. I went to Murzy and Cat, begging them to undo Huldra’s spell, but they shook their heads at me.
“We have already laid Sleep Brings a Darkening upon her, Jinian. She does not know what is happening. She is not condemned to be conscious for the thousand years which was the fate Huldra planned. She truly sleeps, without dreams. But the paralysis—that was a spell bought with lifeblood, Jinian. As was most everything Huldra did. To undo it would take the same, and not by any willing sacrifice, either, for part of the power would be lost if life were freely given. And it is the law of the art, as you know well, that causes beget causes. A thing ill done to waken Mavin would follow her like a curse afterward. As all the things Huldra did followed her to her end. It was Huldra’s fate to be killed by her own enchantments. No, child. There’s nothing we can do.”
There was nothing we could do. Peter went several times each day to the wagon in which her body lay. As did Mertyn, weeping. As did I. As did most of us. And there
