Then I said, “Flitchhawk; numen of the skies, enter this place to take up a burden, for it is your burden more than mine.”
I stood waiting in the window, head down.
Nothing.
The tiny black forms in the valley were giving up in disgust. Already some of them were halfway back up the hill. Were there oubliettes, dungeons where bodies could be hidden? I thought of dragging them there, giving up the notion in the instant. One, perhaps. Not three. I thought vaguely of stabbing them all again to make it appear they had died from more serious wounds.
Then at last, when I had given up expectation—never having felt hope—the sound of wings. The window was large but scarcely large enough. His mighty talons gripped the sill, and his beak jutted in as he spoke.
“Well, Jinian Footseer. Have you summoned me for the boon I promised you?”
“No, flitchhawk. Not for a boon for myself. For you and the forest, perhaps. Here is the Dagger of Dagger-hawk.” I held it so he could look upon it, so he could see it clearly. When he saw the image of the hawk impaled upon it, something went hard and icy in his eyes.
I went on wearily, “If these bodies are found here, flitchhawk, they will come for me. And for the forest. And perhaps for you. I cannot carry them away. I cannot carry myself.”
“A boon for me indeed,” the bird whispered, a high, keening whistle that set my hair on end. “And what of you, Jinian? Do you still refuse to be dangled?”
“I will be dangled,” I whispered, hearing shouts from the courtyard below. “There is no time for anything else.”
So, I was dangled once again. Only as far as the bottom of the hill, behind a stony scarp, where we could not be seen. Then the hawk was away, the corpses of Dedrina-Lucir and her aunts tucked up beneath him in one mighty foot like bunwits in the talons of an owl. The thought did not bear following to its logical conclusion, so I thought of nothing as I hid the evil Dagger away and trudged down into the gray, thence into the green, thence along the edge of the forest to the place we had set the fire.
It was still burning, spreading into the surrounding gray, which smoked with a sullen, creeping glow, like charcoal, stinking as it smoldered. The forest had drawn its skirts, away from the fire. A tree pulled up its roots and walked back among its fellows, three bushes and a clump of silver-bells following its example.
“Perhaps it will burn forever,” I said to myself in a dull, lifeless voice, not recognizing it as my own when I heard it.
“Oh, dear child,” said the Oracle from behind me, “I shouldn’t be at all surprised if it did. What a stench. Not that one wouldn’t have done it, even knowing what a smell it would cause.” It was standing under the shelter of the trees, leaning against one of them, its fantastic face shadowed by the leaves. “Do you have news for me, dear girl? Oh, I so hope so.”
I shivered. “Yes.” There seemed no point in saying more than that. Undoubtedly the Oracle already knew. I took the thing from my tunic and displayed it, only briefly. “I will not put it into your hands. I will not tempt you with it.”
“Oh, my dear girl, how sensitive of you. But then, the heroine type would be, wouldn’t she. Better you keep it, dear child. To protect yourself with. You and your love ... if it should come to that .. .”
The voice faded back into the trees. The feeling was strong even then that I hadn’t heard the last of it, though it was some time before I saw the Oracle again.
17
The grayness burned and went on burning as though it had contained some volatile material that could not be extinguished. Though it rained in the night, on the morning the grayness continued to smoke, sending long, ugly coils of black into the air to be blown away toward the east. I thought of those in Xammer, looking to the west only to see all these smelly vapors.
I could not get near the place we had put the woodpile. There was too much smoke and ash. So while the fire burned itself farther away on either side, east and west, bunwit, tree rat, and I wandered about, doing nothing, with me sometimes spending long hours sitting at the foot of trees, believing I was thinking. Looking back, there was no thinking going on. It was a mere, mushy grayness in my head, no whit different from the plague of Chimmerdong. It surrounded me and held me in. I had not the wits to know it. Once tree rat chivied me up the ladder tree to spy upon Daggerhawk. A mounted party rode out in the mid-morning, returning late that afternoon. There seemed to be some shouting going on. Near evening, I saw Porvius Bloster come down the road from the fortress, the Pursuivant at his side. Tree rat and I went down, he headfirst, I less ebulliently. We hid in a copse and listened.
“You could not find Dedrina-Lucir while she was held captive, now you cannot find her or my sisters. Cholore, perhaps your time of service to our Demesne is at an end.”
“Oh, do not bluster so! I am no neophyte to be accused in this fashion!” The Pursuivant turned a harsh face upon Bloster, chopping the air with his hand. “I can find what is to be found, but you know as well as I that things can be hidden where no Pursuivant, no Rancelman, no finder of any kind can come upon them. Your thalan was hidden from me for a time. She and two of your sisters have
