Given the way that Dapplegrim was sniffing the air and the soil as they crept along, Caewen felt almost as if she were riding a huge dog rather than something more in the shape of a horse. They wove between tents and edged along the shadowy lips of the ridges that ran around the hillside. Every now and then, there was a distant rumour of voices, and more than once Caewen heard mingled screaming and laughter. She prodded Dapplegrim on the neck the first time there was a distant pained shriek, but he just shook his head, and whispered, “Not unless you actually want to die tonight.” With a snort he added, more thoughtfully, “Besides, despite what it sounds like, the revels really are fun and games for the worshipers, or… at least until someone gets over-zealous and someone else gets thrown on a bonfire.”
They moved on, uphill and further away from the noises of the festival. At last, they came to the wide flat grassy area that spread before the gates to the maze. The stone gateway itself stood silent, blackness-choked and remote at the end of the open expanse. Caewen sat up a little higher in the saddle, and looked around. “Do you see the tent? What was it, grey and silver with lightning on it? There’s only a few tents hereabouts.”
“I see it,” said Dapplegrim, and he started forward.
The tent was not lit from within, though it had a single lamp standing outside on a crooked post stuck into the ground. Either the flame was blue or the glass was. A wide and weirdly patterned splash of turquoise light spread over the ground, moving ever so slightly as the wind touched the lantern and set it swaying.
“Hello?” tried Caewen. She got down. “Magess Quinnya?”
An irritated voice rasped from behind the grey canvas. “Go away. I’m not of night, nor day, and I want none of your nonsense.”
“Quinnya. Listen, please: it’s Caewen. Um, you probably don’t remember, or maybe you do, but I walked the maze today and–“
“Go away. I’m not of night, nor day, and I want none of your nonsense.”
“Quinnya?”
“Go away. I’m not of night, nor day, and I want none of your nonsense.”
Caewen and Dapplegrim looked at each other. “That’s odd,” said Dapple.
“Can you smell her?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Can you tell if she’s alive?”
He sniffed. “Probably alive. I guess. I mean, not definitely, but there’s no smell of blood.” A snuffle. “No viscera either.”
“Well, that’s something.” Caewen stepped forward and prodded fingertips into the tent flap. It wasn’t laced up, and she pushed it apart easily. “Quinnya? Hello?”
The voice jumped up at her as if out of the darkness. “Go away. I’m not of night, nor day, and I want none of your nonsense.”
Caewen stepped back and gave a small, surprised yelp.
She shook her head.
“It’s just a bird,” she said. “On a perch inside the tent.”
As her heart rate eased back towards a normal pulse she realised that the bird was speaking in Quinnya’s voice. The thing was sitting on a turned wooden pole with a cross-beam, tethered in place by a delicate chain on its leg. She opened the flap again and looked at it. It eyed her back, one bright red-yellow eye gleaming in the shadows. It looked something like a crow or rook, only a bit smaller and sleeker, and its feathers were pied, not black. On more careful scrutiny, the creature struck her as looking very much like it was part-way between a crow and a magpie. Glaring at her with those rich orange eyes, it was intently alert. “Just a bird,” she repeat, trying to reassure herself. “Hello? Quinnya.”
A loud holler answered her. Caewen started, and saw the old woman–wearing a night-gown and velvet slippers–running towards her with a huge spiked mace raised over her head. She was yelling at the top of her lungs in a wordless, enraged scream.
Caewen stumbled backwards again, quickly and more clumsily this time. “Stop, stop, stop! It’s just me.” She ducked in time to avoid having the side of her skull caved in. “Wait! Stop!” She managed to scramble out of the tent and into the frail shimmer of blue light outside, then ended up on the ground on her rear. “Wait!”
Quinnya stepped out after her, her rusty iron mace raised. She was panting, and her eyes were wide and angry. “You dare sneak into my tent? I’m going to mount what’s left of your head on my lamp.”
“Stop! We weren’t sneaking.”
Dapplegrim intervened himself then. He stepped between Caewen and Quinnya, and turned his skullish face and red eyes towards the dishevelled woman with her frizzed, wild grey hair and that heavy cudgel in her hands.
“Who? What?” spat Quinnya. “A horse? Don’t think I won’t bash you into hanks of tenderised meat and serve you for dinner, you, you… horse.” She squinted. “Horse. Hold a moment. You two?” She squinted at them. “So, is it murder then? Skullduggery, well?” Her voice narrowed. “A foolish prank? Or was it merely some thievery?” The mace made a slapping sound against her palm as she hefted it absently.
“None and neither,” said Caewen, exasperated. “We just need your help.”
“Help? Really? That so, is it? Funny hour for calling by.” More suspiciously, she said, “And I thought you said you weren’t night-folks.”
“We aren’t. Or,” tried Caewen, “I’m not. He sort of is.”
“But I’m not really on the team, hurrm. More of a free agent.”
“That so.” She said this flatly, and she was still idly hefting the mace. This was done with a noticeable casualness, as if it were a stick she happened to have picked up on a walk. “Maybe I ought just call down some of my lightning. Blast you both into oily stains in the dirt, well?”
“Honestly. We just need your help. Listen, please. If not for us, then for the moot, or for Letha. You didn’t hate Letha did you? She seemed nice enough.”
“Letha?” Quinnya lowered he mace a fraction. “Letha. Letha. From the sunlands? Dark complexion? Red hair? Green eyes? Little puckling drake as a pet? That Letha?”
“Yes, that Letha.”
Quinnya seemed to consider this a moment, giving Caewen a chance to get up and brush some of the dirt and old dead grass-seeds off herself.
“What of her?” said Quinnya.
“She’s in danger.”
“It is the night of the festivities celebrating Old Night and Chaos. We are all of us in danger. So what?”
“It’s nothing to do with anything like that. Let me see. Alright. I suppose it started when we first arrived. There was a caged wagon with a wurum in it–” Caewen did her best to rapidly explain, but was sure she’d left some things out by the end, and got other things completely confused.
“I don’t understand. Who did you say is killing magicians at the moot?” asked Quinnya.
“We don’t know.”
“This is nonsense. I would know. And besides, the goddess who is many, three and one…”
“Doesn’t seem to know either, or cannot stop them, or will not. Whatever the reason, we have to act.”
“Whyever should we?”
“Well,” said Caewen. “You did say that where the goddess failed to act, it would fall to you as an officiator of the moot to exact justice. What could demand justice more than this? Someone has found a way to murder magicians at the moot, and avoid the punishment of the patron goddess too. Why and how, are not clear, admittedly. But if this continues…”
The stormy haired woman thrummed in her throat. “Yes, yes, I see. Soon enough, there will be no moot. The only reason all this lot of witches and wizards are even so much as willing to gather here is the enforced peace of the goddess. If that were to fail–” A thumming note of concern. “The moot is important for keeping the peace among the various peoples of the Clay-o-the-green too, well. Too important to let it fall apart.” She looked down at her fingertips, still gripping the mace haft. Her forehead knitted into a ragtag stack of wrinkles. “The moot must continue. It is necessary for resolving complaints and salving insults. Or else there will certainly be fighting.”