The boy had been trying as best he could to follow the conversation. He glanced at Fleat, who was also listening, looking a bit confused, looking worried also. Though Fleat seemed to think it best to be tight-lipped and silent, the boy couldn’t help himself. He piped in. “Wait! Wait… Are you saying that you can save Caewen?”
“Child. This creature is nothing but a breath-stealer. Do no speak to it.”
“Dapplegrim!” The boy surprised himself. He had just yelled at the huge skull-faced horse. He didn’t think he had it in himself. Dapplegrim turned his eyes, and stared at him–red and aglow–without apparent emotion. But the boy pressed on. “No. It’s not right. You don’t get to make that choice. Caewen is dying. You said it. It’s not fair to let her die if there’s something that might help her.”
“And you think you know what is best for her, little one?”
“No.” After a long pause he added, more hesitantly, “But I think she does. Ask her. She’ll rouse if we wake her. She’s been in and out of sleep, but she’ll wake enough to answer a question.” His shoulders sagged. His expression felt collapsed in on itself. “And if she is slipping away… well… we must ask–mustn’t we? She will say no, or she will say yes.”
“I will certainly abide by whatsoever the fair mage-lady commands, tssssch. I must, after all. Tassh. Tsssch. My service is bound to her.”
“I mislike this.” Dapplegrim shook his head. “She needs rest. I say, no.”
“Rest won’t help, any old way, and you know it.” This was Fleat. It was the first thing he’d said in a while. “All the small tricks of the healer I’ve been taught are nothing and aught for her. Rest is aught too. I’m starting to doubt meself that any healer could save her now. She’s got her toe on the other side of death’s dripping door. It will have her soon. The darkness. And didn’t you say that would be worse than a quiet death?”
“That right!” said the boy. “You said that a magician who dies this way will come back as something else. You said it. If it is a choice between the shadow-spreet, or seeing Caewen raise up as some ghaist: then surely the little shadow must be the lesser of the two evils?
“Really? You’re an expert of the dangers of demons and undeath, now?”
Fetch smiled, broadly. “Don’t be so proud. Listen to the child. I am definitely the least of all evils. I’m barely capable of surviving sunlight. On my own, at least. Tssch.”
“If she dies, then she might come back as a deathly shade,” said Dapple. “Only, might.”
Fetch moved closer to Caewen and sniffed. “I’d have said very probably, that will be the outcome. She smells of undeath already.”
“And you can be trusted,” snapped Dapplegrim.
“Well, tasssch, apparently I can be trust more than a certain horse-demon that–“
“Enough!” They both looked at the boy. “That. Is. Enough. We will wake Caewen and ask her. No one else has a right to make this decision.”
Dapplegrim was silent.
Eventually he sighed, inwardly. Throughout his moment of drawn out thought, he watched Caewen intently, as if he was counting the length of her breaths. And perhaps each in-drawing of air did come slightly shorter and shallower than the one before? Finally, Dapplegrim allowed his head to droop to the ground. With resignation he whispered, “Forgive me, Caewen. I don’t know what else to do. Little one? Can you wake her. I can’t bring myself to do it. Be gentle. Explain everything. Be quiet and be calm about it. Do not upset her, please.”
So the boy went to her side. He knelt down and gently pushed at her shoulder. When that didn’t wake her, he pushed again, a bit harder. She roused then, wrinkling her eyes open.
“What?” she sounded tired. Her voice was worn out. She seemed to want to say something more, but managed only another, softer, “What?”
“It’s just me,” said the boy. And not for the first time he wished he had a real name. He felt cold all over. It seemed like the mountain wind was biting at him all of a sudden, when it hadn’t been even noticeable before. His scarf ruffled lightly on the air. “There’s a thing here… a…” he realised that he didn’t know what it was, “…a creature made of shadows. It says it belonged to a magician you bested in a fight…”
“More of a contest of wits,” interjected Dapplegrim. “It’s Mannagarm’s fetch. His shadow-thing. It wants to make a bargain. A bit of your life in exchange for its wellspring of power. I don’t think it’s wise. I don’t think you should. No one makes bargains with wildling demons and is unchanged afterwards.”
Caewen shook her head. She stared past the boy and straight at Dapplegrim. “I’ve made mistakes, old friend. This mistake though, it really was a good and proper mistake, wasn’t it? I thought I could draw enough magic from the roots of the tree, and the water gathered beneath–“a raspy wheeze–“but I was wrong. I’ve eaten up too much of myself, haven’t I?” She seemed reflective as she said, “Am I dying? It feels as if I am dying.”
Dapplegrim looked haunted. He nodded.
“How long?”
“Minutes? Hours? Hard to say. Hurm.”
“I have taken too much of my blood and warmth.” She did her best to get up on an elbow and look around, though mostly failed in this. “Where is the shadow? Where is Mannagarm’s old fetch.”
“Here, lady and master, here. Tssssch. My service is yours, if you will have it.”
“In exchange for what?”
The shadow-creature slunk closer, a liquid curl of darkness across the ground, to sit itself down into a heap of blackness beside her. It leaned into her ear and whispered to her in a voice too low for the boy to hear. He guessed that if he couldn’t hear it, then Dapplegrim and Fleat couldn’t make out the words either. The words were hissed very low, and maybe not even spoken at all: but insinuated through tone and rise and fall of breath.
Dapplegrim looked worried.
“I see,” said Caewen, after the shadow-thing ceased its whisperings. “That is certainly a price. And what would we do, to seal such a bargain?”
It smiled. It had won, and it knew it. “Easily done, good mistress of beshadowed charms. I would but merely have to tell you my own true and secret name. And then the compact will be settled. Sealed. Done. Bargain for bargain. Tasssch. Promise for promise. Tsssch. And then, then… I will give to you such unearthly power, as is mine to give. It will not be very much, for I am a small and petty demon. But it will be enough to save you. And you will give unto me that which I need to keep my physical form. It will not be much, because you are a witch of no great skill. But it will be enough.” The creature hissed, sadly. “I do not wish to wither, and become a voice on the wind, lost in the wild places, or eaten up by other bigger demons. I do not. No. No. Tssch.”
“I see.” She was quiet for the passing of a moment, almost to the point of seeming to have fallen asleep again. At last, she said: “Very well,” and she half-wheezed a breath. “Agreed.”
“No,” said Dapplegrim. “Wait.”
But it was too late. The fetch already flashed a weird smile of dark shadowy teeth in a mouth of darkness. It leaned very close to her ear again. It hissed a long and many-syllabled sound that might have been a name, or might have been the noise of a faraway wind disturbing shadows that have not seen sunlight in a thousand years.
“Ah,” said Caewen. “That your name then. I see. I ought have guessed.”
The creature nodded and settled itself down like a cat curling up in the crook of her neck. It hissed, but it was a warmer, happier noise, almost a purr.
Caewen closed her eyes. “I have to sleep now. I am so worn. So very worn out by everything.” She slid back into unconsciousness. The shadow-creature continued to purr where it was, curled up beside her.
After a while, Dapplegrim snorted, unhappy. The fetch flicked open one eye to look at him, and that small weird grin spread again on its small weird face.