They were less wary, now that they’d seen the boggart turn and go. As they went, they merely spoke quietly rather than whispering. The boy said, “There was a dream, while I was asleep. There were things in the dream. I don’t know… a shadow that was slinking around. I think it wasn’t really a dream at all. I saw the master of the white ghaists, though not clearly.”
“You’re a strange one,” said Fleat. You look like nothing much–sorry to say, but its true–and yet, and then it turns out you see things in dreams, and spells do not work properly on you, and you’ve survived hobbe-shot: which is all pretty uncommonly strange, you ask me. I wondered why Caewen even had you for a travelling companion. Now I wonder if she’s seen more in you than even you know?”
“Maybe.” He shrugged, noncommittally, a bit embarrassed. “How did Caewen get the poison out? You said she used a charm?”
Fleat waved a hand, dismissive. “Oh aye, but she cast the spell on herself not on you. She worked a magic so that she would draw poison out of anything she touched. Then she laid a hand on your wound. She drew out the poison, into herself. It hurt her badly, but she was able to get rid of it from her blood using some other spell. So, I guess she survived the poison too–though I don’t think she was changed by it. Maybe it wasn’t in her blood long enough?” They slowed a little. The ashy embers of the fire were just visible now through scrub and leaf. Fleat shook his head. “Can’t say any of the spell-working was good for her. It’s left her looking all quite, hrm, chalky-faced.”
“I hope she’s recovered.”
“She’ll be fine for now, but you know it will kill her eventually. Mortal-folk can’t work magic without something to draw on, be it the power of a demon or elemental, or some artefact of great potency, or a place of magic, ancestral spirits even. Your Caewen though, she is drawing on her own life’s blood to work her magic. She’ll kill herself with it soon. Dapple-me-horse is right about that. And he’s right to be afraid. For her, for us.”
The boy stopped. “Why for us?”
Fleat fixed him with an unhappy stare. “Mortal folks who over-spend their life with magic: they come back. They come back as something most unpleasant. If Caewen oversteps the boundaries of the art, we must burn her corpse–hot–all the way down to ash. Not a bone can be left. Or else…” He looked around, into the night. “Not good for her. Not good for anyone else, neither. I’m told there are warrior-wizards who do nothing but hunt down and destroy such revenants.”
The boy had nothing to say to that. He felt a chill, at the thought of Caewen turning into some ghostly thing, but also because of the knowledge that Caewen had risked so much to save his life. It had never occurred to him that anyone would do something like that–not for him.
When they finally emerged from the scrub-weavings and interlayers of darkness, out into open air, they did in fact find both Caewen and Dapplegrim already returned, and waiting. Dapplegrim was standing, looking restless. Caewen was seated on a fallen piece of timber, running a whetstone up and down her sword’s edge. The scrape, scrape, scrape of the yellow-grey stone on the bronze made a quiet haunting echo in the gloom. As soon as the boy and Fleat stepped into the clearing, Caewen jumped to her feet, and held her sword ready. She clutched the whetstone tightly in her other fist.
On seeing them, her grip relaxed but her voice did not, as she said, “We thought you were taken by Sorthemen or a wild beast or worse! Where have you been? We come back. Fleat nowhere to be seen. And a sick child, simply gone.”
“Well,” added Dapplegrim, “She thought that might have happened. I couldn’t smell any stinking men, wolves, boggart, or anything else. I did try to point out that you probably just crept off to relieve yourself or something–“
“Dapple!” she snapped. Then turning back to the boy she added, more directly, “What have you been doing?” She sounded frayed. And her skin was as pale as moonlight. She was starting to look like one of the white warths.
He stammered out that he had woken alone, that he had not known where anyone was, that he had heard voices in the dark. He had just gone a little way to find out what they were, but then Fleat came down, and then there were the sniffing and snuffling boggarts. As he spoke, the hard mask of her expression softened. At length, Caewen waved a hand and said, far more gently, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I was worried is all. That’s all.” She sat down again after she said that. Her shoulders sagged, and her face slackened until she looked exhausted, and much older than her years. To the boy’s eye she seemed suddenly ancient–nursing the sword against her knee, toying with the whetstone now–so that she seemed momentarily like something both worn-out and ageless: a goddess or a spirit of some elder age in the grey starlight and the cloud-filtered moon. Something very old, and very tired of life.
“I’ve been having dreams,” said the boy.
The others looked at him.
“That is,” he said. “I don’t think they were dream-dreams, exactly. There was a little shadow-creature that hissed as it spoke. It took me to a hill, with great stones and I saw the master of the white ghaists. He’s called them back to him. That’s why we haven’t seen any sign of them for a time. He wanted them back. I don’t know why.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was all in shadow. Pretty cloak with stars on it. Little circlet of a crown. I think he was a prince or king?”
“Could be the Winter King?” said Dapplegrim. “Could be any number of other warlock-princes or sorcerer-kings of the north. No way to know.”
“Maybe,” agreed Caewen. Then she asked more slowly, and more suspiciously: “What about the little shadow? What did it look like?”
“Sort of long and thinnish, like a polecat, or something like a cat crossed with an otter.”
Dapplegrim snorted. “Hurm. Might be Mannagarm’s fetch? The little demon could certainly walk in dreams. Mannagarm often sent it to spy on dreaming thoughts. It was how he rooted out plans against him in the village, often as not.”
“But it’s been so long. Why would it be following us now?”
Dapplegrim was silent for a time. “It is possible… just possible, hurm, that it never stopped following us. It could have been slipping along behind us, unseen this whole time. We’d never know.”
“But why? What is the fetch playing at?”
“What indeed,” agreed Dapplegrim. “And why reveal itself to the child? Hur. And why show the boy a vision of the ghosts and their master? It is useful for us to know that the ghosts are drawn away elsewhere… so, was the fetch being helpful… or was the creature trying to frighten the child?”
The boy lightly cleared his throat by way of drawing attention. “I don’t think it meant to make itself known to me. It thought I would forget all about it, afterwards. It didn’t work. Because of the namelessness, I gather. The shadow-creature didn’t know about that.”
Caewen’s face now took up a more worried look. “Could the shadow-demon have been in my dreams? All this time? Would I remember?”
Dapplegrim shook his head. “Not if it didn’t want you to.”
She got up suddenly, paced across the campsite, then back again. Her cloak of pale blue flowers drifted behind her. “How do we trap something that only visits in dreams?”
“You don’t,” replied Dapple. “Not without working very potent magics. Too potent for you. Hur. Hurm. Assuming you want to see the dawn tomorrow.”
Wordlessness fell upon them then. Silence and worry etched themselves into the space among them. The boy moved around the fire and found a place to sit. Fleat followed and eased himself down next to the boy. Caewen continued to pace.
After a time in silence, Fleat tried to break the uncomfortableness by saying, “I been meaning to say, that is a lovely cloak, Caewen. Why do you wear it? Does it have charms in it?” He looked around, and added, mostly to himself apparently: “Perhaps I might stoke up the fire and get some tea on?”
Caewen glanced at her shoulder and pulled the cloak outwards, and around, so that the faint green leaves and pallid blue flowers were caught in a silvery light of stars and moon. “No,” she said with a touch of embarrassment in her voice. “It’s not magic. I saw it in the market at Sorcery Tor. I just thought it was pretty. I grew up not owning much of anything that was pretty. I just wanted it for that. That’s all.” This seemed such a strange thing for her to say. The boy found himself having to look at her again, anew. Her voice sounded so much like a village-girl, talking about some dress she had seen in the nearest market-town. This lean, hard-seeming woman, in her oiled leathers and mail, with her beautiful leaf-and-flower cloak covering up so much of the harsh lines and the steel. She seemed to be speaking more to herself than anyone else now. “And I like blue and green, but blue and green armour–enamelled or tinted or dyed–that would be too costly.” After a moment more she said, “No tea for me. I need to sleep. I’m spent.”
But Dapplegrim shook his head and bared his sharp white teeth. “We can’t sleep here, not tonight.” He said it apologetically. His nostrils flared. “I’m picking up a stronger and stronger taste of boggart on the air. It’ll only take the wind to turn the wrong way, and they’ll be on our scent too.”
The boy sniffed deeply. “Oh yes, you’re right. There are boggarts upwind.”
“What?” said Caewen and Dapple, more or less in unison.
The boy and Fleat did their best to explain in turns. But, as they didn’t really know what had caused all of the boy’s senses to sharpen, they weren’t able to say much. In the end, Caewen just nodded.
“Seems we’ve two keen noses in the company. “She stretched then, weary, exhausted. “No tea for anyone, unfortunately. Alright. Yes. Let’s move on. I can ride for a while.”
“That may all be true-and-true, but I can fly for a good while longer than you can ride, I reckon.” Fleat began to shrug off his clothing. “Here, how about this: I’ll circle and sweep about southward, back towards the scarle. When I’ve my owl-eyes, I can see a mouse stir in the grass within the pitchiest of dark. If I spy anything moving towards the camp, I’ll be able to swoop back and warn you well ahead of time.” He looked meaningfully at Dapplegrim. “The lady needs sleep, if you excuse me for being so direct. Caewen is right ready to fall over.”
“I am,” she agreed. She threw a glance at Dapplegrim. “Well? What do you think?”
“Risky.” He snorted and considered it anyway, “But I think, probably acceptable for now. Hurm. The owl-boy is right. You do need sleep, and if he can keep one eye out, and I can keep one nostril flared, then maybe you might get some rest.”
“What about me?” said the boy.
“You? You’ve slept enough and caused enough worry, child,” said Caewen, perhaps more harshly than she had meant because her face and her voice did soften a moment later, “Stay awake with Dapple and keep up a watch for a time. Maybe you can make that tea Fleat wanted. You can sleep in the saddle, if you need it. For now… I only need to rest–” and she yawned “–an hour. Two.”
“Three,” said Dapplegrim. “Or four.”
“Alright, alright.” She peeled off her weapons and pulled her boots off but did nothing else to prepare for bed except carefully fold up her beautiful, now somewhat travel-stained cloak, and wrap herself in a wool blanket instead. Her fingers idly played with moth-holes along its edge. As she lay down, and as she closed her eyes, the boy felt a pang of guilt–he was the reason she was in such a state–and with that he felt also a terrible deep certainty that he would risk his life for her. And Dapplegrim too, for that matter. And Fleat. As he sat and tended the fire, he worried that he had returned their gracefulness with clumsiness, returned their kindness with thoughtlessness. Getting himself knocked into the water by that lurking eel-leech. Getting himself shot with a poisoned arrow. Getting himself nearly caught by boggarts after wandering off. All, when he ought to have known better.
He wasn’t strong enough to pick up her sword, but Caewen’s dagger was easy enough to draw and lay down near at hand, just in case. No-one tried to stop him. Fleat was already flapping away into the torn cloud-greyed skies, into the gaps full of stars. Dapplegrim only watched him cooly, as he lifted the dagger from its sheath.
By the time he starting preparing the tea, Caewen was already asleep.