“I wonder if I could Beguile them,” said Trandilar from my side. “Beguile the shadow?”
Cat shook her head. “No. There is nothing there to be Beguiled, great Queen. Can one Beguile nothingness?”
Then they reached the line of turnips. Now, for the first time, they were slowed by something. The shadow-eaters began to suck them up, making a keening noise as they did so. The Oracles leaped and danced, calling words of encouragement to the shadow, piling it higher, higher and higher. . . .
“By the old gods,” Murzv gasped, “the shadow’s burying the creatures.”
It was true. The shadow piled around them, over them, making great lumps and protrusions of black over which the further shadow flowed as over some hilly road. We stood below them now, and nothing stood between them and us.
Then the bell sound.
For a moment I thought it truly was the Bell. For a moment I forgot we had not cast the Daylight Bell. For a moment I believed in miracles. Then I saw it was Peter, Peter Shifted into a great, brazen shape and donging out the sound, so near to the real sound I could not tell the difference.
And the shadow fled, fled away from the shadow-eaters, away from the dancing Oracles, leaving them upon the hillside still prancing, still leaping, under the pale cold light of the growing moon. And another sound under the bell sound.
Laughter.
The Oracle, high upon the hillside, laughing.
“Oh, very pretty, “ it called to us in a voice of whetted steel. “Very clever, little Shifter man. And it will work, once. Perhaps even twice. But not more than that.
“And we will be back, loves. We will be back!”
* * * *
We stumbled down into the camp, exhausted. Behind us the line of shadow-eaters lifted a shrill complaint into the dark.
“We can’t hold them away from the city,” said Dodir.
“No,” Murzy agreed. “We can’t hold them. The shadows left when Peter made the bell sound, but only because it suited the Oracles to let them leave. The Oracles are playing with us.”
In the foundry the furnace glowed red, a strong, ruddy glow that brought us toward it like bait, as though we hungered for honest fire. “How long?” asked Himaggery.
“We’ll pour at dawn,” said the foundryman, his eyes distant and possessed of some vision. I knew at once he was right. The Daylight Bell must be cast at dawn. Beside him the great cauldron seethed, ruddy now, lightening as it grew hotter. “We found all but the one piece, but some of the metal will stick to the sides of the crucible. There won’t be enough to fill the mold. We have to have more metal.”
Trandilar took off her bracelets, dropping them into the crucible. Murzy looked long upon the glowing metal, then she took the pool fragment from her locket and dropped it in. The others did the same. Except for me.
I stood there, hypnotized, drawn into the glowing surface of the metal. It wanted something else, more. Pool fragments, yes. Bracelets, yes.
I reached into the neck of my blouse and drew out the star-eye pendant Tess Tinder-my-hand had given me all those years ago. The most precious thing I had, really. Next to life and Peter. With death so close, precious things could not be kept. I dropped it onto the surface of the molten metal and it lay there, shining with a light brighter than the sun. I had to shut my eyes. When I opened them again, it had vanished, melted.
“For luck,” I said, and the foundryman smiled, taking note of the level of the metal.
“Enough,” he whispered. “Barely enough.”
“The star-eye held a power you might have used,” said Cat, not belligerently but matter-of-fact.
I shook my head at her. “I have not understood the lessons Ganver tried to teach me, Cat. If I had understood those lessons, I could have used their power without the amulet. In the cavern of the giants, the Oracle mocked me, saying the star-eye was only a sign, a symbol. In saying that about the pendant, it was right. The true meaning of it is more than that, but I do not understand it any more than the Oracle did.”
It was warm there. The others wandered away. Peter still stood by me in the light of the furnace. After a time he led me back into the ruined Tower, against the wall which the furnace had warmed from the other side. There was no one else there. From beyond the wall we could hear the muffled voices of the workers pumping the bellows and putting fuel onto the fire. Across the pool, Mavin’s profile stared upward at the moon. In that strange light, she appeared to be smiling. Peter was wearing a great, heavy cloak, and he spread it on the smooth floor against the warm wall near the pedestal with the lamp. We lay down upon it, covering ourselves with my own cloak, and he turned my face toward him for a kiss.
Before he kissed me I would have said we were too weary for feeling. After he kissed me there was nothing else but feeling.
Peter came to his skin much more easily than I. He merely Shifted the clothing away. I, bound about by laces and thongs and ties and belts, came to it more gradually. Still, it was not long until we lay skin to skin between the warm cloaks, forgetting where we were, not hearing the workmen from behind the wall, not seeing the cold moon staring from the sky top. My oath was over, that day or some previous day, but over.
But I did not think of that. Nor of the shadows. Those thoughts teased at the edges of my mind, but Peter drove them away. There were his hands upon me, gentle and inexorable. His strong, velvet-skinned legs moving against mine. A sweetness between us, down the whole length of us, like a pouring of honey, and him sliding into me as though a
