“How long?” I asked Murzy, for it had seemed the night spell had been done with a twist to put a very long sleep upon them.
“Until someone wins this battle,” she said flatly. “Us or the shadow. Until Lom lives or dies. If Lom dies, they are better off asleep.”
It was the first time anyone had said we were near that time. We had all known it, but it was the first time anyone had said it.
Back at the camp we met Barish-Windlow and the Gamesmen who had been with him. The linkage to the Bright Demesne was complete. “Though how it will stand up under assault, I cannot say,” Barish-Windlow commented wearily. Then he looked at me, and I knew it was Windlow seeing me, for he said in a quiet, old-sounding voice, “You know, Jinian, long ago I saw a happy future for Peter. I knew that was a true vision.” And I knew he was trying to cheer me.
That day the eye of the storm moved over us and was the last of our calm.
Toward evening two Elators arrived almost simultaneously at Dodir’s tent. Peter and I happened to be there.
“There are forms massing in the hills,” they told us. This was more ominous, in that they had come from opposite sides of the city. We were surrounded. When I questioned them, they identified what they had seen. Shadow forms, and more shadow forms. Shadows taking the forms of beasts and monsters. Shadows building themselves into siege towers. And with the shadows, those of the Oracle’s Brotherhood, hundreds of them, flapping among them in their ribbons and painted faces like great bats.
Peter and I went among the turnips. Each large one now had a train of fifty or so tiny ones at its—I was going to say heels. At its roots, I suppose one should say. The tiny ones spoke in sparrow voices, shrill and twittering, and were no less mischievous than the big ones. We surrounded the city with a thin line of them, wishing there had been more seed. They called to one another, mocking the shadow, burying themselves, then digging themselves up again to wander about and find neighbors more to their liking. Five or six times Peter and I and Little Flitch went around the lines, straightening them out, begging them to fill holes, at which they jeered and mocked, coming out of the soil to hang on my trouser bottoms and the ends of my sash, swinging madly and screaming at one another.
Then, when we had done with the turnips what we could, the seven began its work together with Himaggery and Queynt. Nine of us Wize-ards—Wizards, trying to dam a flood or block a hurricane. We set spells and protections and traps, trying to feel they would apply to shadows, though we had no idea whether shadows were subject to the art or not. We were not sanguine about our future.
Down in the city, however, Sorcerers were storing power from the Demesne linkage. It was as though new blood had run into the city. The depression lifted somewhat. The workers felt more energetic. If the city was a focus of infection (as one of the Healers said), then the Bright Demesne was a healthy body that fought that infection.
At evening we went up to the hills, all of us Wize-ards, and Peter, and all the Great Gamesmen who could take time from their tasks in the city. As darkness began to fall, came the first assault.
We saw it as a low, breaking wave upon the hills, flowing toward us, dark under the emerging stars and the light of the half-made moon overhead. Upon the wave, the Oracle’s brethren danced, ribbons fluttering, fantastic silhouettes against the sky. They howled as they came, not loudly, so that first we thought it was only our blood singing in our ears. Even the howling was mockery, war cries but in treble—ironical tones, odd words stressed. We were to have no dignity in this battle. They would mock us into the jaws of hell, and I wondered, not for the first time, what they would do with themselves when Lom was dead. I wondered if they were all as insane as the Oracle itself, busy feasting upon our deaths when our deaths meant their own, mad for destruction, avid with hate.
We had set fire spells upon the closest rim of hills, fires that blazed forth in fountains of white sparks when the shadows came near. Their structures broke before these jets of flame, broke and flowed around and reassembled again. We had set traps within the valley, triggered when the shadow came near, and these, too, were tripped when the shadow neared, broke, flowed out and around and on.
“So much for that,” murmured Murzy. “I hadn’t thought it would work, but it was worth a try.”
“Where do you think Ganver is?” Peter asked me. “Why isn’t Ganver here?”
“Because,” I said, counting the possibilities off on my fingers, “Ganver is in the Maze, recalling better times to Lom. Or Ganver has gone back to the grave, to die there. Or Ganver is meeting with others of his kind and they have reached no agreement. Or Ganver has been found by Mind Healer Talley and is being used as a guide. I am as perplexed as you are about Ganver, Peter, and oh, I wish Ganver had acted against the Oracle long and long ago.” I knew in my heart why it had not. I could not find it in me to blame the old Eesty too much, even now.
The shadow came on, tickling at us, advancing a little, then retreating, the Oracle’s followers dancing along, watching every movement, continuing their whooping and calling, yip-yip-yip, a
