difficult to relax. The uncertainty of the future came to me in a variety of morbid and terrifying thoughts, not the least of which was my failure to succeed. Eventually, though, I fell warily into a dream of the green veil. In it, Drachton Below stood in the center of the marketplace, surrounded by the supine forms of all the inhabitants of Wenau. All were fast asleep and their faces were covered by scraps of a green material. A yellow mist curled around him as he beckoned to me.
'Your turn, Cley,' he said, and flung a handful of sparkling dust in my direction. The cloud moved like a swarm, and I was amazed to see that it was composed of tiny metallic birds. They swept into my eyes, blinding me. I fought as best I could against the weariness that descended. As I fell to the ground, I heard the Master's voice.
'Come to me,' he said, and I could feel the veil lightly landing on my face. I panicked in my sleep within a sleep, thinking, 'I have caught the disease,' and then suddenly came awake to the sound of a dog barking.
I scrabbled out of bed, dressed quickly, and went to the door. Upon opening it, I was greeted by a most unpromising sight. The oldest, saddest-looking gray horse I had ever seen was tied up to the crank handle of my well. The beast's spine was concave, its tail was a ragged whisk broom, and it kept its head bowed as if in humiliation at the physical state its years had visited upon it. Circling nervously between the well and the tree line was an underfed black dog, whose skeletal anatomy was completely evident through a thin scrim of hide. I had seen likenesses of him in allegorical paintings by the artists of antiquity. He was often depicted with a blind beggar, and was meant to represent Want.
To round out this embarrassment of riches, I discovered a crossbow along with a quiver of twelve arrows lying next to it. A thirteenth arrow was stuck in the ground, spearing a scrap of blue paper with writing on it. I pulled the shaft from the dirt and retrieved the message.
This note gave me a clear understanding as to my neighbors' assessment of the potential success of my mission. Perhaps I should have taken this warning, given in to fear with the rest of them, and waited to see what would happen. The unkindest item in the entire inventory had to be the crossbow. How effective could it really be at a hundred yards against the charging wolf girl, Greta Sykes, or one of the Master's mechanical monstrosities?
'I might just as well spit in self-defense as fire this old log,' I thought as I leaned over and lifted the weapon. It was more firepower than I possessed, though, so I made the decision to pack it on the horse. I strapped it to the saddlebag along with the quiver, thinking that if things got too horrifying, I could at least impale myself on one of the arrows.
I went back in the house and gathered my supplies: a sack of herbs, the bone knife Ea had given me, some dried meat, a blanket, and, of course, the green veil. Before I closed the door to leave, I took one more look around my small rooms and was filled with a melancholy sense of longing that I might one day return to live out the rest of my life in peace and comfort.
Outside, I called to the dog to come. It continued moving erratically around me in wide circles, its tongue lolling, its eyes suggesting madness. Reaching into my pack, I retrieved a scrap of dried meat and held it out.
'Wood,' I called. 'Come, boy.'
The instant the creature saw the meat, it bolted out of its meandering orbit and made straight for me. I had only a second to turn to the side as it leaped into the air to snatch the morsel and nearly two of my fingers. He took his prize a few feet away and began devouring it, making all manner of unnatural noises. I approached slowly, my hand out.
'Good, boy,' I said. 'Wood, Wood, Wood,' I sang softly.
The ungrateful wretch growled and lunged for me. At the last moment, I jumped back, and as it passed, I gave it a mighty kick in the rear end. It yelped and ran away into the undergrowth.
By the time I was able to get onto the horse, which took a good measure of struggle, the sun had nearly set. There was still a mere wisp of red light on the western horizon above the treetops. It was going to be a beautiful night, warm enough but with a nice breeze beginning to blow. A few stars had already appeared in the sky directly overhead, and I prayed for a moon so it would not be too dark in the forest.
I had been on a horse maybe once or twice before in my life, and that was as a boy when I lived along the Chottle River. Now it seemed a long way to the ground from where I sat. The poor thing buckled somewhat under my weight, and it stank like death had already taken up residence in its swollen belly.
'Go,' I said, but it didn't move.
'Charge,' I said, and drove my heels into its flanks. It passed gas in a long, loud, gurgling stream and then lurched forward like a drunken man put off-balance by the planet's rotation.
My quest was begun. As we inched our way toward the tree line, the black dog came dashing out of the undergrowth in pursuit as if aware he was an allegory who could not be separated from his blind beggar. I did not consider my chances of success or the insidious ways I might die. Instead, I contemplated Below and his terrible need for control.
3
I TRAVELED ALL NIGHT ON THAT LUMBERING NAG, cowering ering at every dark form that rustled the fallen leaves or swooped low beneath the canopy overhead. Meanwhile, the black dog disappeared for a half hour at a time and then, all of a sudden, broke from the undergrowth to my right or left and ran between the slow- moving legs of my mount. Quis-mal was confused by this and immediately halted in his tracks. I tried driving my heels into his sides to get him going again, but I might as well have been kicking myself. Finally, I discovered that a few kind words whispered into his ear did the job better than any violence. 'Onward, noble steed' I said, or some such nonsense, and sure enough he lurched forward.
The voices of crickets in the breeze became conspiratorial whispers. Even the full moon, which I had been so happy at the start to have as a companion for the journey, began to take on a sinister aspect. We broke into a clearing, and I looked up to stare its milky brilliance full in the face. The features of its physiognomy were exceptionally clear and struck me as closely resembling Below's. I thought about the Master, standing atop a high tower, spinning on the heels of his boots to take in the entirety of the puny lives of Wenau. It would have been no surprise to see a giant thumb descending to squash me.
I breathed deeply in an attempt to suppress my fugitive imagination, and it was then that the scents of the forest broke through to calm my fears. From that one inhalation, I was able to distill the aromas of trailing serpent vine, fantail blossom, and the oozing root of tarasthis fern. These were all familiar to me from my daily forays into the woods to search for medicines. Each of them, when dried and ground, was a cure for a different illness—gout, river blindness, acute melancholy— and now just their fragrances were enough to cure me.
I kept to the trail that had been forged in recent years by merchants from Latrobia, but with the first light of morning, I coaxed Quismal into the underbrush, and we headed northwest for the fields of Harakun. I hadn't seen or heard Wood for over two hours before changing direction and was resigned to the fact that he had most likely found a rabbit to torment instead of myself.
By the time the sun was high in the sky, I was exhausted from having traveled all night. Quismal was damp with perspiration, spluttering and frothing from both ends, and obviously as much in need of rest as myself. When we finally broke clear of the forest and forged the creek that defined the southern boundary of the plain, I found a huge, spreading Shemel tree overhanging the water. It was here that I decided to stop for a spell. I tied the horse to a low-hanging branch where he would have access to both water and grass. Retrieving the crossbow and quiver of arrows from the saddle, I chose a spot in the shade for myself and sat down.
I was saddle sore, bleary-eyed, and altogether overjoyed once again to touch down on solid ground. The day was warm, and the ever-present breeze of the plains moved around me, lulling me into a temporary amnesia. I had wanted to try the crossbow at least once before reaching the city, but instead, I lay back and stared up at the sunbeams that found their way through the swaying clusters of star-shaped leaves. The thought of sleep still frightened me, considering the fact that I might have carried the disease away from Weanu with me, but I finally closed my eyes.
I woke sometime later to the sound of barking, and even in my half cognizance felt a surge of disappointment to think that the dog had found me. Sitting up quickly, I turned around to check on the horse. The faithful Quismal was still where I had docked him, munching grass and swatting jade flies. I cleared my eyes and turned around, trying to get a bead on where the dog was. When I finally spotted him, he had crossed the creek and was standing on the bank some twenty yards away from me, shaking water from his coat. With nose wrinkled back and teeth exposed, he crouched down in front while the hair along the ridge of his back spiked up. His curled tail straightened as he began growling.
If he had seemed mad before, he now looked positively deranged. I reached slowly down next to me and grabbed the crossbow. 'Good boy' I called to him. He continued growling and barking. Fd had quite enough of the benefit of his presence. He would be nothing but a liability to me when I tried stealthily to navigate the ruins of the city. My hands shaking, I lifted the bow and then grabbed an arrow from the quiver. Continuously speaking to him in as soothing a voice possible, I tried to pull the weapon's cord back. I moved the string about three inches and it would go no farther. My knowledge of the operation of crossbows was less than shallow, and having lived a life of relative ease, I didn't posses half the arm strength of a well-trained soldier. Quickly improvising, I brought my feet up to hold the cross of the bow in place and then, still gripping the string, leaned back. With this technique, I barely managed to hook the cord up over the firing mechanism.
Then Quismal whinnied and snorted, and I looked up to see Wood charging, his teeth bared, his tongue lolling, his eyes fierce. 'Harrow's hindquarters,' I yelled, and reached for an arrow. I had half a mind to forget the ancient weapon and scramble up a tree. He was five feet from me as I fitted the shaft into place along the barrel of the bow. I curled my finger around the trigger, lifted the stock to my shoulder, but as I aimed, I could see that he had already leaped. I gave a very unsoldierlike yelp of fear and, instead of firing, dropped the weapon and fell facefirst to the ground, covering my head with my hands. To my astonishment, he sailed right over me, snarling like some demonic creature of the Beyond. Before I could grab the bow and spin around, I heard another beastly voice join his with a sharp cry of pain.
In seconds, I was on my feet, the bow up against my shoulder, aiming at two forms that struggled on the ground only a few feet from me. Before I could clearly see what it was Wood had by the neck, I smelled the depraved bile scent of the Latrobian werewolf. Then the silver-gray coat, the half-human haunches and claws came clear to me. Gathering its strength, it stood on its hind legs, lifting Wood with it. With a cry of agony, it spun ferociously back and forth, whipping the dog free of
