By the time the ‘feast’ was done, he really did feel as if he had spent an hour working at a scorching oven, in a room full of steaming, boiling pots. Sweat was beading on his brow and trickling into the rims of his eyes, stinging.
But the king and queen seemed satisfied. They leaned back in their ornate chairs with expressions of content of their faces. The boy said nothing, but waited for them to show some sign, one way or another. At last, the king raised his heavy, lamplike gaze and murmured. “That was a very fine meal. A good and fine meal. I wonder if we ought not keep you? A good cook is hard to come by in these wild and troubled days.”
“You gave your word…” The boy had hardly said it before he stopped himself. He was in a precarious place. The two elderly creatures stared at him, silent. He licked a lower lip, cleared his throat and said, with a stammer in his voice, “I mean, sir, you did promise. It isn’t good to go back on a word given.” He glanced down at the dirt. “So I’m told.”
The king considered this for a long passing of moments before he waved one of his grubby hands. “Bleh. That I did. That I did. And you’re right. Quite right. Broken oaths can come back to haunt a person.” He smiled. “Sometimes, literally. Hrmm. Go then. Your friends are wandering in the ruins. They are quite safe. You will find each another easily enough, though they will be rather confused about the passage of time, I’m afraid. Rather confused. An effect of the magics of this place.”
The boy took a step to leave, but stopped. “Sir?”
“Yes?”
“If I may ask, do you know anything of the white ghaists? The women-shades that are in the hills. They have been chasing us. I’m sorry to ask, but you seem so knowledgeable and wise.” The king seemed like the sort of creature that might be vulnerable to a bit of flattery.
“Ah. Them. You had best move quickly, if they are after you. Those beshadowed things have come out of the north of late. Where from? I do not know. They’ve a cold, wet, icy magic in them.” He snuffed. “If they are hunting you, I do not expect they mean you well. They dare not tread in my kingdom though. Hrmm. I taught them a lesson in manners when first they tried. Blah.”
What did that mean? He wondered, but the boy kept silent. It didn’t feel sensible to keep pressing. Instead, he took his opportunity, said, “Thank you,” and exited the square with his feet scurrying.
He chose a path through one of the crumbled wall-gaps largely at random, and without any better reason other than it was probably, hopefully roughly to the north. Glancing up at the towering standing stone as he left, he now noticed for the first time that the cracks and deeper crevices in the surface seemed to have bones stuffed into them. The fragments did not look like animal bones.
“Say hello to my no-good nephew if you see him,” called the king. “You’ll know him by his crown. Old bronze and three red stones. And in thanks for a good meal: I say again, you should hurry. Best to be gone before nightfall comes. Best to be gone ere I raise my old walls of sorcery to their fullest power.”
“Thank you, sir. We will.” The boy was quickly lost amongst the ruins as he tried to find a way north. But, after a time, he heard voices calling and the clamp and step of hooves on hard dirt and old cobbles.
“Caewen!” he cried out to the air. “Dapplegrim!”
They appeared together coming down a flight of long, shallow ruined stairs.
“Child! What happened to you? One moment you were with us and then you were gone. We were searching all over this accursed place.” She had a sword drawn, which she quickly put away. “We feared the worst.”
He tried to launch into the whole story, but it seemed too much. He stopped and started again. “I met an old resident of this place. We should be moving. We’re not welcome here I think.”
“What sort of resident?” asked Caewen with an arch of one brow. It looked as if she were considering going back and finding this person or thing herself.
“Just an old dwarf. He said his tribe was, what was it? Ablach.”
“A poison-dwarghe?” Caewen seemed taken aback. “Those are a cunning and shifty people. You didn’t drink anything or take any food did you? All dwarfish folk have skills and crafts that put a little magic into what they make in their hands. Poison-dwarghe are cunning with their potions and foods. Many an impolite and reckless traveller has woken up as a goat after dining with the Ablach.”
He had to pause and think. There had been so much talk and thinking about food, he needed to think if he’d actually eaten any. “No. I didn’t eat a thing. He didn’t offer.”
She smiled faintly. “Then he must have liked you. Come on. We think the way out is over there. These ruins are weird and twisting and full of passages that turn back on themselves and blind tunnels and alleys. I could believe they were made by dwarfish hands. They’ve strange twisted minds, that lot.”
They found their way out of the maze of ruins quickly enough, now that all three of them were together again. The boy half-suspected that the walls and tunnels had shifted to show them the way out, but it was a feeling in his gut only. The three of them might simply have been lucky, and picked the right path.
As they walked away from the ruins, and up the side of the bowl-shaped valley, he cast an eye over his shoulder every few seconds. “The old dwarfie-man said something about raising up sorceries. I don’t know what he meant.”
Caewen attempted a thin smile. “We’ll keep an eye out then.”
On what must have been the tenth or eleventh time he looked back, he saw that the white colour around the base of the stone ruins had changed. He looked again, a moment later and said, “Look. Fog.” He remembered the dwarf-man’s voice, as if it were in his head: my old walls of sorcery. “We should hurry.”
By the time Caewen and Dapplegrim had turned around to look, the body of fog was about twice again as large as the area covered by the drifts of bones on the ground. It was reaching outwards, growing rapidly. All over the valley wood-grouse and little songbirds made alarm cries and took to the air. They were all flying away from the fog.
Dapplegrim said, “Time to ride.”
“Agreed. Up, up quick.”