14
OLD SOUTH ROAD CITY
We came to the southern height above the Old South Road City at the end of a journey full of threats and hesitations, much of it through dead forests and across bare, ashen slopes that looked like lands long abandoned by life. Just finding food for ourselves had been a great problem. There were other groups than ours traveling the desolation. Refugees from one place or another clotted the roads and got in one another’s way, some moving west toward the sea, others moving inland away from the sea’s threat. There was talk of monsters from the deep; there were many dead from the yellow crystals; we were attacked several times and had to use the art.
Sometimes we had surprised great globs of shadow lying in hollows. Sometimes we found a way around; sometimes the shadows rose like a monstrous flight of vicious birds to hover above us while we cowered in the wagons. Once there was no other way for the wagons to go, and the shadow-eaters jigged on their root hairs to the edges of the patch, sucking the dark monsters up with their roots, moving inward as they went, until at last the high-piled central shadows lifted and went away, a sinuous dark line upon the sky, as though going off to report what had happened.
We lost two watchmen. Though we heard nothing in the night, we woke to one gone the first night, one gone the second. The third night we began to sleep close together, a thick line of the shadow-eaters outside the watchmen’s posts, and after that we lost no more.
Despite all this, we lost very little time, coming to the heights north of Old South Road City in a season that should have been bright and pleasant but was, in fact, chill and dismal beneath a leaden sky. I looked down into the city itself with a cry of dismay. Only after staring at it for some time could I see it had not actually suffered since I had visited it as a child. Then it had been tumbled but almost covered with a greenery that made it appear relatively whole. Now it was uncovered, all its shattered parts, its fractures and splinters, laid bare. Gamesmen sent from the caverns swarmed along its streets and among the piled stone, working beside pawns as though there were no difference between them.
Actually, much work had been done. I began to see it as we rode down the hill. Stones had been assembled in orderly stacks near the buildings they were to go into. Walls were being rebuilt. Pawns heaved at pulleys while Tragamors heaved with Talent, and the stones slid home. The street we reached at the bottom of the hill was virtually clear for much of its length, and the facades of the buildings on either side looked largely finished. A weary-looking Tragamor came toward us, holding out a hand to Mertyn.
“Dodir, Tragamor,” he said. “Called Dodir of the Seven Hands. And I wish it were true!”
“Mertyn, King,” Peter’s thalan said, introducing all the rest of us in our turn. “There is a large troop behind us to bring you assistance, Dodir. And we bring something more valuable even than that—shadow-eaters.” He pointed to the turnips, thronging in their wagons. “Can we have a council to tell us your situation?”
“Well, as to that,” replied Dodir, staring curiously at the turnips, “I can tell you our situation in few words. We’ve made some progress, as you can see, but the heart has gone out of the Gamesmen. Often the Talent fails. There are times even the power fails. The Wizard Himaggery arrived. . . .”
“Himaggery! Here already,” exclaimed Peter in a voice of hurt urgency. I knew what he was thinking. Himaggery didn’t know about Mavin yet, and it would be Peter’s place to tell him.
“He arrived two days ago, and he is attempting to set up a relay of power from the Bright Demesne, which he says may help our situation.”
“He did that at least once before,” said Peter. “Long ago. At Bannerwell.”
“Well, we wish good luck to him. Unless he succeeds, I don’t know what will put heart into the workers. We start each day with a plan in mind, but by noon we have drifted into despair once more. It’s the shadows. Everyone says so. They lie around us like leeches, sucking up our hope.”
I thought of Mind Healer Talley, wondering if she had found some key to the Maze, some clue to Lom’s mind, anything that would relieve this depression. Seemingly not. I could feel it trying to swallow me, and Dodir was obviously fighting it, for he breathed heavily as he went on.
“Additionally, we’ve had some trouble with the blind runners. They didn’t want to give up their city, and we’ve had to run them off by force. They keep coming back. We’re trying not to hurt any of them, but it’s getting difficult as they’re getting more frantic with each passing day.
“And as for what’s been done, well, look around you. We’ve found almost all the Bell. The pieces were more or less in one place, under the ruined Tower. Most of the stones are sorted out—many of them by plain muscle when Talent wouldn’t work—and as soon as we can get the power situation worked out, we should move very rapidly.”
“The Tower,” I breathed. “The stones for the Tower of the Daylight Bell? You found them?”
Dodir nodded. “Found them. Yes. Broken, many of them. We’ll need stone cutters to replace them.”
“They fell from a great height,” said Peter in a dull voice. It was unlike him. He had been unlike himself since the thing had happened to Mavin. He had not even looked at me, not touched me. It was as though he had shut me away, and it had gone on far too long. I had let him alone, respecting his grief, but this was too much.
“Did
