By the time she heard Dapplegrim returning, the birds had settled down into a low murmur of peeps and whistles and lulling coos.
He approached slowly, his hooves hitting the soft turf as muffled thumps, turn by turn. Caewen looked up, blinked, smiled. It was the sort of deep, genuine smile that wells up like water out of dead dry earth. “Hello there,” she said.
But he didn’t answer. Light from the night sky sparked on his red eyes. His tail flicked and he looked left and right several times as he drew nearer. Finally, he was standing in front of Caewen, looking down, silent, his whole face and body uncharacteristically still and inexpressive.
“Dapple?” she said. “Are you alri–“
“No,” he cut her off. There was an undercurrent of anger there.
She felt shock and confusion, growing like moss around her ribs, creeping up into her throat. “Dapplegrim? I don’t understand.”
He cast a barely curious look around the grass and the dirt and rocks. Running his tongue over sharp teeth, he said “I see you survived. Hooray for you. I smell Famfuir too. He was here?” A glance at the disturbed soil. “Ah. I see. He is still here. Just not so very alive any longer. Hur. Hur, Hurm. Well and good.” With that he sat down a few feet away and pinned Caewen with a red-lit stare. “As for you,” he muttered.
“As for me, what?”
“As for you, do not ever, ever do that to me again. Never.”
“Do what?”
He shook his head. “The only reason I’m ready to forgive you is that you don’t know what you even did. When you told me to go away, you didn’t just ask me, you put a force of command into the words. There are rules that govern my kind. Being who you are–what you are becomming–you have that power, Caewen. But it is an invasion. It is painful for me. Imagine having someone else drive their will into your flesh and blood and brain, and then grab hard and twist.” He put especial emphasis into the word twist, raising his voice and drawing out the sound of it.
“Oh,” she said, voice small. “I didn’t even… I wasn’t even…”
He sighed. “I know. And, as I said: that is the only reason why I have decided to forgive you. Once. Just this once. But, now you know, and never, ever again will you do that to me. If you do, I will not be able to consider you my friend. All we’ve been through together will be naught but ash and dust behind us.”
“I see.” She found she couldn’t look him in the eyes. “I think there was a part of me that perhaps did understand, a little, that I was doing…well, something… but I really didn’t know I was using force. Not like that.”
Another brief sigh. “I know. Look. Hur. Hurm. Caewen, put it aside. I won’t say that it’s alright, what you did–it is not–but I forgive you. Leave it at that. Let it be.”
She nodded, but could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t sound trite, sentimental or dismissive. Finally, she managed to whisper, “Now what?”
His shoulders and back shivered as he looked up. Nostrils, flaring he said, “I expect that at least some of the magicians of the moots have realised that something very dangerous just happened. They won’t know what passed exactly, but the presence of Aslaug cannot have been missed by everyone. I suppose some of them will be hunting around, trying to work out if there is still a threat. Others will flee. If we are close to the midnight hour, most folk might simply scurry away and hide in their tents.” Another half-shrug. “As for us, I suggest we make our way back to Samakaratha’s tent and get some sleep. It will be midnight soon if it isn’t already, and after midnight, the festival of flames for the living becomes the festival of embers for the dead. This doesn’t strike me as a good night to be meeting ghosts.” He gave out a shiver. “Too many unpleasant shades about, I fear. Hur.”
“Sleep sounds good.” She stretched and caught herself yawning. “I could sleep for a week. I feel so tired.” She got to her feet and wavered where she stood a little. She felt as if a strong wind would knock her back onto the grass.
“You need to be more careful with magic. Hur. That working of force and power you put on me. The rose-in-the-mouth, back in Fafmuir’s tent. You’ve performed a death-spell too, haven’t you? It’s all too much to be doing all at once. Magic has to be drawn from something. Hurm. Hur. Hrmm. But all you have is your own life’s warmth. No wonder you’re looking wretched. I’m surprised you haven’t passed out from the loss of blood’s warmth. And if you keep tossing charms about, you’ll end up sucking out the last dribble of your own life, and that won’t be pleasant. Hur. Not at all.”
“Can a person die that way?”
“Not die, not exactly. You wouldn’t stay human though, and you wouldn’t be quite alive. Magicians that go that way become things. Hurm. You remember Quinnya?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, one of her jobs as an officiator of the moot is to hunt down and destroy any magician who goes that way. The community of wizardry, such as it is, cannot permit such abominations to walk the mortal world. Hur. Hurm. It would put all magicians in a bad light, wouldn’t it?”
They started walking slowly back in the direction of Samarkarantha’s tent.
“Well, I promise I’ll do my very best to not become a deranged unliving monster.”
“Hurm. I suppose that’s all one can really ask for in a friend.”
She smiled and ran a hand through Dapplegrim’s mane. “Friends is good.”
“It is. Hurm.”
They walked between the hills of offerings and then down the far slope, through thick grass that was turning dewy and cold under the night air. Somewhere far off behind them the last sound of the birdsong ebbed away. Caewen had a strong sense that the birds would be lingering about for some time yet, but their lament seemed to be done with. Maybe the hour had turned to midnight? The air did have a chill to it and there was a near-silence coming up from the encampments below. How long has she sat on the bare, rough rock, staring at dead earth and listening to songs in the darkness?
“Everything is so quiet,” she said at length. The first tents they passed were brightly lit within, and there were occasional soft curls and strokes of conversation, but no one was in evidence out in the open. “Has everyone gone back to their tents or wagons then? Are the dead out then?”
“The festival of flames is for the living is ended,” said Dapplegrim, sniffing the air, a little dully. “When the flames burn down to embers, the embers are left for the dead.”
“And the dead really visit the fires? It doesn’t seem like much of a festival.”
“Hurm.” A small soft chuckle. His sharp teeth gleamed. “Maybe the dead find silence festive? Maybe the air is full of ghosts singing forgotten songs, that the living cannot hear? The dead and the living avoid each other–most of the time, anyway–and we should most certainly avoid the festival of the embers for the dead.” He searched around, hunting the night air, the tents and the fog. Small beds of embers seemed to litter the whole of the moot, and each of them made the murk-wreathed air above them into half-golden shapes and dully throbbing shadows, glowing and cooling with the beat of the dying embers. “We should definitely be tucked up somewhere safe and warm. Much like all the other far more sensible magicians and traders and such. Hurm. Hur.”
Caewen realised that she was now feeling the cold in her fingers and toes and on every exposed bit of skin. A deeper, angrier cold seemed to be roiling about insider her too, but that was harder to focus on, and more frightening to think about. “Agreed. Samarkarantha’s tent can’t be too far away. Come on.”