They found Bandu with blood on her mouth and a baby at her breast, sitting by the water’s edge completely naked. Criton rushed forward, anxious to see his wife and child, while Narky looked at his feet and Hunter tried very hard not to stare – with little success.
“She’s beautiful!” Criton exclaimed. “Are you all right, Bandu? What happened to your mouth?”
“I am good,” Bandu answered. “Everything is good. It’s over.”
“But the blood,” insisted Criton. “Bandu, there’s blood on your face and hands.”
She nodded. “I was hungry,” she said.
“Oh,” said Criton, sounding disgusted. “Well, she’s beautiful!”
An hour or two later, while Criton and Hunter were helping Bandu hobble along behind them, Narky said, “You know, I think that’s the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen.”
“Narky!” Phaedra huffed disapprovingly, but she secretly agreed. Baby Goodweather was undeniably hideous. Her whole body was a patchwork of skin and scales, her head was cone-shaped and bald, and her nose was too big for her tiny face. An ugly stump of cord extended from her belly, ragged at the end where Bandu had apparently bitten it off. But that didn’t matter. It was clear that her parents loved her, and it would not do to make fun of her. Besides, she wouldn’t look like this forever. She might even grow into that nose one day.
Bandu could hardly walk now, even with support. Phaedra didn’t blame her for it, of course, but there was no doubt that it slowed them down. Even as close as they were to the edge of the mountains, they only barely made it onto the plains before nightfall. Dimly lit to their north, a familiar walled city sat leaking smoke from many a chimney. Anardis. It seemed that Bestillos had not destroyed the city completely after all.
“This is no good,” Narky said, as he and Criton built the fire for their camp. “At this rate, it’ll be months before we ever reach Psander. By the time we get there, Bestillos will have sacked the place.”
“Bandu can’t walk any faster,” Criton scolded him. “You want to carry her?”
“No,” said Narky, “but we could get a cart from a farm or something. That way we can at least move at a real walk.”
“We’re out of money,” Hunter reminded him. He was sitting to one side, sharpening his sword against a stone.
Narky rolled his eyes. “I’m not talking about buying a cart, I’m talking about taking one.”
“You mean stealing,” Phaedra said.
Narky returned her gaze sternly. “This is war,” he answered her. “Or it’s basically war, anyway. Psander is probably under siege as we speak, and if she’s not, she will be soon. If we want her help freeing Salemis, we’re going to have to find a way to get to her before Bestillos puts her head on a pike.”
What could Phaedra say to that? He was right, of course. It made no sense for them to travel at Bandu’s pace, or at Phaedra’s for that matter.
“You don’t like stealing from poor farmers, is that it?” Narky asked, misconstruing her silence. “These are the same poor farmers who shut their doors to us on our way to Anardis. They don’t deserve your sympathy.”
“You’re right,” Phaedra told him. “You’re right.”
“You and I can find a cart tomorrow,” Hunter suggested. “Criton can stay here just in case, and spend some time with his daughter.”
Criton thanked him and turned to Bandu and Goodweather, smiling. Bandu smiled back, a guarded, tentative smile. Phaedra was glad to see that smile. She hoped the two of them would reconcile soon. She didn’t know how the troubles had started, but their strained relationship had been wearing at her nerves.
When Hunter and Narky returned the next day, they were driving a horse and cart piled with blankets and some meager food supplies. Hunter looked grim.
“The army of Ardis passed here two weeks ago,” he said. “They didn’t leave much for us to take. Even if this cart lets us go at the same speed they do, Psander and the others with her could easily be dead or starving by the time we get there.”
“In that case,” said Criton, “let’s go now. There’s no time to just stand here.”
They loaded Bandu and her baby onto the back of the cart, and Criton joined her there while Phaedra drove the horse. The other two walked silently alongside. Nobody but Criton and Bandu seemed to have anything to say, and they spoke only to each other. Well, to each other and to baby Goodweather.
The next two weeks were brutal. For one thing, Goodweather never slept except when the bumpy motion of the cart rocked her to sleep. The rest of the time she would wail, at night waking up everyone but Hunter. At these times, when Bandu or Criton was trying in vain to rock as soothingly as a horse-drawn cart, Phaedra began to resent that enviably deep sleeper who still lay on the ground beside them. Why couldn’t Hunter be awake and miserable just like the rest of them? A childish part of her wanted to wake him up.
Goodweather also soiled herself constantly. Without any swaddling clothes for her, the mess was uncontainable. Being wet inevitably woke the girl up – screaming, of course. Bandu handled the wetness better than she handled the screaming. Eventually the baby would nurse to sleep, at which point everyone could nap fitfully until the next time the baby awoke, an hour or two later.
And it was not only baby Goodweather who made their journey difficult. The closer they got to Silent Hall, the more oppressively Psander’s fate seemed to hang upon them. Whenever Phaedra thought ahead, she imagined the smoking ruins of Silent Hall splayed across the ground just like the stones that had once been Gateway. The image filled her with dread.
The Ardisian army’s path became heavier and more noticeable the farther they went, and its trash heaps and old campfires seemed to grow fresher by the day.
“We’re catching up,” Narky said. “That’s a good sign.”
“True,” said Hunter, but he did not seem pleased. When Phaedra asked him what worried him so, he pointed out the number of fire pits in the campsite.
“The army’s been growing as they go further south,” he said. “Look at all those fires! Bestillos is pressing half the countryside into his service. I’d say he has at least two, three thousand men.”
“Well,” said Narky, “I guess that explains why they’re moving slower than we are. How long do you think it’ll take us to get there at this point? A week?”
Hunter nodded. “That sounds about right. In three days we should leave the cart and start walking. We’ll want a couple of us to scout ahead too, so we don’t walk straight into the enemy.”
They did as he suggested, abandoning the cart on the road three days later to break across the countryside. During the day, Criton and Narky scouted ahead while Hunter stayed behind to protect Phaedra, Bandu and baby Goodweather. Since Bandu’s arms were occupied, and Hunter might have to draw his sword at any moment, it fell to Phaedra to carry the elder Goodweather’s acorn. Phaedra marveled at how heavy and dead the seed felt. One would not have thought that this inanimate thing had the power to tear a hole in the world.
They took watches at night, though they did not light a fire for fear of being seen. Baby Goodweather continued to interrupt, of course. On the second night, Narky complained that she was sure to alert the Ardismen. “Can’t you keep her quiet?” he asked.
“What do you think we’ve been trying to do?” Criton snapped at him. “Do you think I like to hear her cry?”
“Well, you’d better do something,” Narky retorted. “It’s only a matter of time before we get close enough for the Ardismen to hear us.”
“If they hear her cry,” Bandu answered him, “what they think? They think somewhere is young. They don’t know it’s us. We don’t have her before.”
“That’s true enough,” Phaedra agreed. “There’s no reason for them to think that a crying baby is a sign we’re close by. If we’re lucky, no one will investigate.”
“Right,” said Narky, “because nobody will wonder what a baby’s doing right outside a besieged fortress.”
“If you have any ideas for quieting her down,” said Criton, “we’re all ears. Otherwise, shut up.”
Phaedra winced. The lack of sleep had them all on edge. It was certainly having an influence on her: she found herself snapping at Hunter the very next afternoon, for the crime of having yawned. Her attitude obviously confused him, and why shouldn’t it? She was only angry at him because he slept so peacefully.
They passed through familiar woods, sleeping under the new moon, nervous in the knowledge that Silent Hall was only a couple of days away. That night even Hunter woke up to the sound of Goodweather’s voice.
“Is this normal?” he asked, infuriatingly. “She’s so much quieter in the daytime.”
“She sleeps when I walk,” Bandu told him. She was rocking from side to side as she spoke, patting the baby’s back all the while. Phaedra thought she was being remarkably patient with Hunter, all things considered.
“I see,” Hunter said, and then, “We should travel by night.”
Criton sat up, rubbing his eyes and looking at Hunter despairingly. “I don’t have the strength to go anywhere right now,” he said.
“We don’t have to,” Hunter told him. “We just need to stay awake now, and sleep tomorrow during the day. Then we can start traveling again tomorrow night.”
“What good will that do us?” asked Narky. “Besides making us fall behind by another day, that is?”
“At night,” said Hunter, “an army has no scouts. They just have watchmen who stand at the edges of the camp with torches. They’ll be much easier to spot at night than we are. We won’t be in any danger of walking into them by mistake.”
That decided it. They stayed up together that night, and took their watches during the day instead. The change was not easy. Only Goodweather seemed to adjust well to it. For Phaedra, stumbling through the night on her uneven legs, it was torture.
Yet for all that, it worked. When they came upon Magor’s army, it stood illuminated by a hundred fires, visible from miles away. The army lay all in a ring around the dark patch of land where Silent Hall stood invisible.
Phaedra heaved a sigh of relief. “Psander’s still alive,” she said.
“Right,” agreed Criton. “If she wasn’t, her wards would have fallen. We’d see the fortress from here.”
“Plus the army wouldn’t be sticking around,” Narky pointed out. “But how do we get in there?”
“I don’t know,” said Phaedra, “but we have to find a way. Otherwise, no place will be safe for us.”
“We’ll find a way,” Criton said. “We have to manage somehow, or the prophecy won’t come true. Since the prophecy’s about us, we can’t fail, can we?”
Phaedra sighed. “I thought I explained this earlier. Prophecies don’t always come true. A prophecy is just a message. Sometimes it’s not much more than a boast. Gods can promise Their servants success, but if They change Their minds or lose some conflict, none if it will come true. We’re as mortal as anyone else, no matter what a prophecy says.”
She did not have to see their faces clearly to know that they were crestfallen.
“Great,” said Narky. “Now I definitely feel ready to walk through the Ardisian army. Thanks, Phaedra.”
“We go now,” Bandu said. “I ask wind to keep us quiet, but I don’t know if it does, so you be quiet too.”
“Fine,” Narky sighed. “No use putting it off. If we die, we die.”
Without a word, Hunter unclasped his belt and began removing his armor. The scales fell to the ground with a clank. He stood there for a moment, his face blank, and then grimly refastened the belt.
Phaedra stared. Hunter had always worn that armor. It had been shocking when the elves took it from him, and even then Bandu and Criton had recognized its importance enough to bring it with them during their escape. The armor had been a part of him. He had worn it in the heat and in the cold, in the mountains and on the sea. Of course he could never have worn it through the enemy camp, but it almost hurt thinking how much this journey was costing him.
Goodweather was still sleeping when they arrived at the edge of the Ardismen’s camp. They stopped just beyond the reach of the firelight, trying in vain to prepare themselves for the danger that they were about to step into. The watchman to their left looked half asleep, blinking slowly underneath his raised torch. To the right, another soldier vigilantly scanned the darkness, firmly clutching his spear. The gap in between them was wide, but was it wide enough? The islanders looked silently at each other, their eyes questioning. Hunter gave a curt nod.
They stole forward, keeping slightly to the left and walking carefully, toe-to-heel, to avoid making noise. Phaedra did her best to copy the others, but she was highly conscious of the way her legs stumped along more loudly than those of her friends.
The soldier swayed, then suddenly started. He had almost dropped his torch. The islanders stopped in their tracks, holding their breath. The watchman’s eyes darted first away from them, then straight ahead…
He sighed and looked down at his feet. “Idiot,” Phaedra heard him mumble to himself.
They crept on as silently as they could. A few more paces, and they were in the camp.
“Gods,” Narky muttered. “I think I almost pissed myself there.”
“Is that you, Kinar?” the guard called out to him. “Magor be thanked. I’m falling asleep here.”
They hurried away. In the dark of the camp, they could move more freely. They rushed past horses and tents, making their way as quickly as they could toward the second ring of torches. Here again they had to stop, ducking behind a tent.
The men who watched Silent Hall stood much closer together, and they did not sleep. The wizard’s castle was still invisible, but the soldiers nonetheless remained focused on the clearing where it stood. Phaedra could see all of them from here, those who stood nearby with their backs to the islanders and those who stood far distant, keeping watch from the other side of the unseen fortress.
“How do we get past them?” Phaedra whispered.
Nobody answered her. That shouldn’t have surprised her, she thought. It wasn’t possible. It simply wasn’t possible.
In the stillness, Goodweather began to stir.
They stood, helpless, silently pleading with the little one to fall back asleep. She did not. Her cry pierced the air and the watchmen spun around, searching the dark camp for the sound’s origin. The tent that hid the islanders from their view moved slightly, as whoever lay inside it woke up and started moving about. Hunter drew his sword.
He leapt out of the shadows and charged the guards, uttering no battle cry. The others followed him, running with all their might, too fast for Phaedra to keep up. She stumbled along behind, her terror growing with each footfall.
“Who’s there?” called one of the soldiers, just before Hunter drove a sword through his belly. The man let out a horrified cry, dropping his spear and torch in confusion. In an instant, Hunter had spun away from him and rushed the next soldier, while Narky, Criton and Bandu charged past the dying man into the empty field where Silent Hall surely lay. They were all too fast for Phaedra. Her feet plodded dumbly beneath her, so slowly that she hardly seemed to be moving at all. They would catch her! At this pace, even the men awakening in the camp behind her would have the chance to catch up.
Hunter dispatched his second opponent and glanced despairingly in her direction. He knew she would not make it. She could see it in his eyes.
He did not have the time to help her. Soon another two soldiers were upon him, their torches burning on the ground while their spears lunged out at him. Phaedra shut her eyes and ran.
A hand caught her ankle and she fell to the hard dirt, a startled shriek escaping from her lips. Goodweather’s acorn dug into her stomach where it had fallen beneath her, and she gasped for breath. The hand would not let go. The first man Hunter had impaled stared up at her. He was mouthing words she could not recognize, and his face flickered in the light of his fallen torch, the unseeing face of a man about to die.
She kicked him. She kicked him with her free leg, slamming her foot wildly into his nose and mouth over and over until he finally let go. Then she scrambled away, her foot wet and numb, crawling until she could once more rise and hobble into the darkness.
Silent Hall loomed ahead. “Help!” she cried. “Psander, help! Hunter!”
“I’m right here,” he panted, appearing behind her out of the night. “Keep going. I’ll be right behind you.”
The gate was open before her. She ran, as best she could. By the time she reached it, she could hear the thudding of boots behind her as the enemy closed in. Then she was inside, and Hunter was leaping through the gate behind her. It shut with a slam.
There was light in the courtyard up ahead. Phaedra turned back, searching the near darkness for Hunter. He had not risen to his feet yet, and that worried her.
She found him still on the floor, his back heaving. “Hunter!” she cried, falling to her knees beside him. “Are you all right?”
He did not answer her. His whole body was shaking. Phaedra groped in the dark, trying to find an injury. “Where are you hurt?” she asked.
He shook his head, still face down on the ground. There were footsteps behind her.
“Phaedra? Hunter? Are you there?”
“We’re both here,” Phaedra answered. “We made it. But something’s wrong with Hunter!”
Criton rushed over to them, and helped Hunter to his feet. “I’m all right,” Hunter protested, finally speaking. “I’m not hurt.”
“Let’s get you into the light,” Criton said, “and we can decide then.”
They stumbled out of the darkness together, into the light of the courtyard. There, Phaedra could finally see what was wrong with Hunter. He had a nasty cut stretching from his cheek to his ear, dripping blood down his jaw – but it was his puffy, bloodshot eyes that told Phaedra what she needed to know. She caught her breath, softly. He had been crying.
“Ouch,” said Narky, inspecting Hunter’s gash. “That was a close one. He almost went in through your eye.”
“I’m fine,” Hunter insisted, turning away. “It’ll heal.”
The tower door opened, and Psander hurried out to meet them. “You are here,” she said. “Why have you come back?”
“We found Salemis,” Criton told her. “We need your help.”
“You need my help?” Psander asked incredulously. “Have you seen the army outside my door? Magor may pierce my wards at any moment, boy. He hasn’t found me yet, but He’s looking. Have you brought me anything to help with that problem?”
“Yes,” said Narky. “That’s what we need your help with.”
Phaedra presented Goodweather’s acorn. “We brought you a seed from the fairy world, from the plant monster that world is made of.”
“The Yarek,” Criton added. “Salemis said that if we infuse it with a God’s power–”
“Who is this Salemis?” asked Psander, interrupting him. “The name sounds familiar.”
It took until dawn for them to explain the situation properly, and to tell her all that they had seen and learned. Psander’s eyes widened when she heard of their plan to cause a breach in the mesh. “Escape from the Gods forever,” she mused.
“It’s horrible there,” Phaedra warned her. “We think they killed all the wizards of Gateway.”
“They know you come to them soon,” Bandu added. “They try to eat you.”
“But,” said Narky, “it’s less of a sure thing than dying here.”
Psander nodded. “Most anything is.”
“So,” said Criton, “do you think you can do it? Find some way to put a God’s power in the seed?”
“There has to be a way,” Psander answered, sounding more desperate than confidant. Now that day had dawned, Phaedra could see how skinny the wizard had become, and notice the dark shadows under her eyes that did not retreat in the light of day.
Psander reached for the acorn. “Here, give me that. Go sleep upstairs, and leave me to my library. My wards will warn me if the Ardismen attack.”
Phaedra obeyed, while Narky glanced about the quiet courtyard. “Hey,” he said, “what happened to all the villagers?”
“They are indoors,” Psander answered him, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “They do not awake at dawn anymore. We have eaten all the roosters, for one thing.”
“And for another?” Narky asked, seeing through her evasion.
“And for another… they have all been ill.”
“Ill?”
She nodded. “Yes. The blueglow mushrooms you gave me haven’t agreed with them.”
Phaedra gasped. Her mind immediately went back to the farmer ants, and to the pile of corpses where the mushrooms had grown.
“What you do to them?” Bandu demanded. “You kill them?”
“No, of course I haven’t killed them,” the wizard answered. “I told you, they’ve just all grown sick. I used the mushrooms and the calardium that you brought me to make charms for each of them to wear. They ought to be harmless, those charms. All they do is siphon off the unused magical potential each person possesses so that I can use it to defend us. I’ve had to tap it out to keep Magor from breaking through my wards, but as I say, it ought to be harmless.”
“It ought to be,” said Narky. “It just isn’t.”
Psander shrugged unhappily. “Right.”
They stared at her, but she only turned and opened the tower door again. “Go to sleep,” she said. “Or visit them, if you like. I don’t care. Just don’t disturb me while I’m in the library.”
They did not visit the poor farmers in their houses, much to Phaedra’s shame. Instead, they stumbled up the stairs to their rooms and fell instantly asleep. When Phaedra awoke, light was pouring in through her window. It seemed to be midday, which confused her. Had she slept for only a few hours, or for over a day?
The hall was quiet. Even Criton and Bandu’s room was completely silent, which gave her pause. She tapped gently on their door, and then finally opened it. There was no one inside. Narky’s room was empty too. Only Hunter was still in bed, and he awoke when she opened his door. He rose quickly, embarrassed despite having slept fully clothed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Do you know where the others are?”
He blinked at her. No, of course he didn’t know.
“What happened last night?” she asked him. “By the gate?”
Hunter’s face took on a troubled look. “We almost didn’t make it,” he said. “I thought I might have to leave you out there.”
“But you didn’t,” she said. “You stayed.”
“I stayed,” he repeated. “And we almost didn’t make it.”
“So it was relief, then.”
He shook his head noncommittally. “Call it what you will,” he said.
She stood there for a time, looking at him. He was so noble, so serious. She couldn’t remember having ever seen him smile. It was strange: his brother Kataras always had a smile on his face. Hunter really wasn’t like his brother at all.
“I don’t hear Goodweather,” he said, rising. “Where did you say they went?”
She followed him downstairs to the dining hall, where they found the others portioning out a single bowlful of oat gruel. The quiet grating of the spoon against the bowl seemed to mock the grand enormity of the room.
“This is all we found to make,” Narky told them. “I hope Psander has another store of food somewhere. There aren’t any animals – we checked already.”
“We should visit the sick,” Phaedra said. “They might need help.”
Narky looked horrified at the suggestion, but the others agreed readily enough. They finished their meager breakfast and went out into the courtyard where the displaced village lay. The first thing that struck Phaedra, now that she was not running for her life, was the stench. The air was thick with the smell of so much rotting offal, and flies buzzed through the air with unmolested zeal. The trash heap that attracted them was hidden from sight by a pair of houses, but its size and location were unmistakable.
Only two villagers could be seen outside, even late as it was. They were both standing by the well, haggard and bent. When she approached, Phaedra saw that they were not nearly as old as she had assumed. The woman was probably twenty, the man not much older than that. They were pulling on the chain together, too weak for either to raise the bucket on his or her own. Their continental faces were pale and drawn, and both were losing their hair: patches of baldness dotted their heads. The silver chains hung around their necks like stones.
“Do you need help?” Hunter asked redundantly.
As if in response, the man’s fingers slipped and the bucket went plunging downward again, nearly taking the woman with it. She let go at the last moment and placed her hands on the well’s edge, reeling. Hunter caught her by the arm to steady her. “Thh,” she muttered.
Criton stepped forward and pulled up the bucket with ease. He poured the water into the two clay vessels by his feet, then dropped the bucket down again and lifted the vessels.
“Where are these going?” he asked.
They spent the rest of the day tending to the villagers. At first, only Hunter was brave enough to touch the sick townsfolk with his hands, but soon they were all helping however they could. There did turn out to be more food than Narky had found for breakfast, but it was more of the same, and had to be rationed out carefully. This much, at least, was easy. The villagers hardly ate a thing.
Phaedra asked once about old Garan, the woman who had first spoken to her of Psander and the Gallant Ones. The man she had asked shook his head weakly.
“Dead,” he mumbled. “Weeks ago.”
Phaedra was not sure why this shocked her so, but it did. She kept thinking of the old woman, and of her belief that nothing good could come of joining the wizard in ‘his’ castle. She had said that it was too dangerous, trusting in wizards. How right she had been.
The villagers could barely get out of bed to eat, and the sickest ones had mysterious lesions all over their necks and chests. They had opened spontaneously over the last few days, the strong ones said. Still, it was hard to miss the fact that the lesions all seemed to be radiating outward from those calardium pendants. The sight horrified Phaedra, and followed her even when she closed her eyes. Few besides Garan had died so far, but she doubted it would stay that way for long.
The siege went on. The Ardismen did not approach the walls again, content so far to starve the inhabitants out. Hunter and Narky climbed up to the parapets the next morning and reported that the earth around the walls was black and scorched. Apparently, Psander’s wards were good for more than hiding.
On the third day, the wizard finally emerged from her library. Evening was falling, and the islanders had just finished their portions of oat porridge with one of the sick families in their house. They were on their way back to the tower when Psander appeared at the door and ushered them inside. She looked as though she hadn’t slept since they had last seen her.
“I found a solution,” she told them, her eyes wide and manic. “But you’re not going to like it.”
Phaedra’s stomach growled. “Tell us,” said Criton.
“Two Gods will have to suffice,” the wizard said. “From what I can tell, Eramia has already blessed the seed, so that leaves just one.”
“Well,” said Narky, “out with it.”
Psander ignored his impatience. She spoke in cold, measured tones that seemed meant to compensate for her wild appearance. “I’m going to need you to get me something,” she said. “I need tears from a man cursed by the Gods. Cursed personally, mind you, and the tears must be fresh, so you’ll have to bring me the man himself. Alive. The good news is, I know where you can find him."
“Where?” Hunter asked.
“On Tarphae,” the wizard said.