By the time Dapplegrim returned, Caewen was asleep again.
The boy and Fleat tried as best they could to explain what had happened. The shadow-demon was unhelpful and only said, “Tssch. What needed to be done, was done,” and was afterwards silent. It now sat curled up in the nook of Caewen’s neck, the way a pet cat sometimes will with a sleeping owner.
Caewen finally stirred herself back to life about an hour later. The boy had got a breakfast fire alight, and had some oat-cakes, wild carrot and slices of salted mutton cooking on an iron griddle. The smell seemed to have roused her. She looked about, gave out a yawn, stretched her arms right down through the wrists and fingers, and seemed to be much more herself again. She said in a musing voice, “I had the weirdest dreams. I dreamt I was…” and then she saw the fetch beside her, its black eyes glistening against its fur of shadows. “Oh,” she said, surprised. And then after a pause, “Oh,” again and, “It wasn’t a dream then?”
“No,” said Dapplegrim, darkly. “Not a dream.”
The shadow-thing leapt from where it had been sitting to land in Caewen’s lap. “Tsssch. We have made a bargain, you and I. A bit of your life for a great deal more magic than you ever dreamed of.” It purred and turned a small circle. “And life for you too. You were not long to be drawing breath in this world. Too much eating away at your own inner energies. Tsch. Tss. Too much raw blood-magic. It was going to be an end to you, very, very, very soon.”
Caewen brushed the fetch off her lap, not aggressively, but firmly. She stood. And standing, she wavered, a little uncertain on her feet. “I seem to remember breaking my sword. Did I do that too?”
“You did,” said the boy. “Though I don’t know why. You were ranting. It didn’t make a lot of sense.”
“The sword had to be broken,” said Caewen, suddenly, and almost as if she were remembering it all at once. “I had to break with it. I had to break with that part of me, and that aspect of my past.”
“That is true,” whispered the fetch. “That is how it must be, and is, and was. But, it was for a purpose.” It’s voice became enticing, inveigling even. “Nearby is a trove of relics more suited to a person of great magic. These ruins were once a walled citadel of the fane, long ago. They were overrun, and the walls were brought down, and all their great buildings were burnt and shattered. But their tombs remain… hidden, secret, beneath the soil. Tsssch. I can hear the songs of magic things. If you were to go into the dark places, the hidden places beneath the earth, you might take for yourself a great blade, fane-wrought and ancient of days, and fair of powers. Tsssch.”
“Hur. Where are these tombs exactly?” asked Dapplegrim, suspicious.
“Very, very close at hand,” replied the fetch. “Come. Come. I will show you. Tssch. Your ears must be so dull that you cannot hear the songs of the lost enchantments, but that great nose of yours will sniff them: once you know where to huff and snuff. Come and follow.” And the shadow-thing leapt away from them, curled itself into a languid coil of black and shadowy fur, then blinked its eyes back at the group, lazily and slowly.
“Alright,” said Caewen as she got to her feet. “Let’s go then.” She reached for her belt and scabbard, and seemed to remember it was empty only when she picked it up. A little awkwardly, she pulled the scabbard off and dropped it. She pulled on her over-clothes, and her jerkin, satchels and bags, purse, boots and cloak, then strapped on the empty belt. When she was ready to go, she said, with a weak smile: “Lead on.”
“Very good. Very good. Tsssch.” The fetch moved away from them, serpentine, weaving in and out of the dappled gloom, always keeping to the darkest parts of the wooded floor. “Tssch. You shall have to clean out a bag for me to ride in,” it said in a low whisper. “The sunlight will hurt me, and I must ride with you somehow. A pouch, or pack, or something of that sort will do. Old Manngarm used to tie me up in a nasty, scratchy hemp sack when he was journeying, but that’s a horrid way to travel. Something a little more comfortable, perhaps.”
“Could be that a dirty sack is all we can spare,” sniped Dapplegrim. “Depending on how you behave yourself. Maybe we can find ourselves a really dusty old coal sack.”
The shadow-thing growled at Dapplegrim, but not very loudly.
They came to the place where trees stood close around the ruined court, and the little flitting shadow stopped. The sun on the grey and wafting grass that grew between flags was pale, but still bright enough to cause the demon to pause in his tracks. “I cannot go out there.”
Without saying a word Caewen unslung a bag from over her shoulder, and upended it onto the ground, tipping out three apples, an old eating knife, some leather offcuts, a ball of twine and a short coil of rope. “Here you are,” she said, then and held the bag’s mouth open for the fetch. The creature sniffed it gingerly, but seemed to decide it was acceptable, and jumped into the bag, as silent as any shadow ever was. Once the shadow was snugly inside, it looked as if the satchel were full of liquid darkness. The creature made a low purring noise, as Caewen closed the flap on the bag, concealing it from view and hiding it from the rays of the morning sun. She then collected up the spilled items and dropped them in another of her bags.
They walked out into the open air then, pausing a moment to scan the surrounds. There were no signs of movement anywhere, but that wasn’t very surprising. Boggarts wouldn’t be out in the daytime and the Sorthelandmen couldn’t have been fast enough on foot to find them so soon. The white warths might be lurking about, but as yet, there was no sign of them either.
Thin lines of grasses stirred and rippled under the hand of gentle winds coming down from the west. The fields that stood beyond the last of the trees were full of ghost-grass, with its white and cottony heads, looking for all the world like imaginary spectres bobbing and floating as the air toyed with them. Caewen led the way, and they broke out of the trees and into the fields. A short walk took them across the fields of ghost-grass, and to a low protuberance in the earth, ringed around with tumbled ruins of a pale white and pink stone. At the top of the rise, and beyond the ruins, stood more signs of what must have once been a great city or fortress: low grassy hillocks and banks that had presumably once been grand houses or towers. Here and there were a few remnant stretches of road, choked with grass. Just looking about and trying to take in the scope of the ruins was dizzying. Whatever had once stood here, it was just tumbled overgrown stones and green hills far up and down the mountain daleheads now: but clearly, it had once been both magnificent and vast.
“Are we here?” said Caewen.
“Yes, tsch. Yes, yes,” said the small voice, hissing out of the bag she carried. “The ruined edifice, just ahead of you. Go within, and look for the last keep. There will be a doorway. And stairs. And a descent. Into deepness. Into the darkness beneath.”
They threaded between the stones and farther up the hummock, through the knee-deep grasses. The stone walls that surmounted the low rise were in somewhat better repair than most every other remnant. And within the broken circle of rock, they found the base of a once-great tower or keep. It was no taller than the boy’s shoulders now, a hollowed out shell with twining grasses growing up through its few remaining windows, crowning the jagged teeth of its walls like some sort of strange green-gold light tendrilling upwards from the crevices and surfaces.
“Go into the ruins,” hissed the voice from the bag. “Tasssh. Tssssch. There will be a door. Find it.”
They searched and there was indeed a door. It was half-hidden behind wild masses of foliage and fallen, mossy rocks. The door’s frame was cracked by age, but it was ornately carven and had once been a splendid piece of work. It now stood worse for its years, covered all over with rain-runnels and wind-pitting. On its surface was depicted a creature half-woman and half-lion, radiating lines of light. Caewen went up to the door, and parted some leaves from the frame. There were markings gouged into the stone frame that the boy recognised as letters. Though, of course, he could not read them, and these letters looked very strange besides. Not at all like any he had seen before.
“It is in the old tongue of the fane,” said Dapplegrim, leaning in over Caewen’s shoulder. “If you you are willing to make the sacrifice, you may enter. Hur. The original wording is rather more poetical–but that’s the gist of it.”
“Well…” said Caewen, wondering out loud, “I have sort of already made a sacrifice, haven’t I?”
Dapplegrim just performed his little shrug.
The fetch was more insistent now. “Take no weapons, tsssch, tassch, and go alone, but for a single light-bearer. Be prepared to make sacrifice. That is the manner of entry. It is the law by which you may enter. I cannot come with you, nor any charmed creature or being. There are those who still linger here–deep in the darkness of the earth–tasssh, tsch, tsch, and they will not abide such things as I. And they will certainly not abide such creatures as your demon-horse. They will view charmed trespassers as a threat.”
“What could possibly live here?” asked Caewen. “In this desolate ruin?”
“Tsss. I said linger only. I did not say live.”
“I’ll go alone then.” Caewen swung the pack down and the shadow-thing poked its elegant muzzle out of the bag. It’s eyes shone blackly in the thin light. “No! You must take one with you. It is required. Take the child. The others are no good to you. The skin-swapper and the horse-beast, they are too dangerous naked, let alone armed. They are too much like weapons. Take the child to bear your torch, so that you may go empty-handed. No risk of them thinking you carry a weapon that way, and the child is too weak to be a threat. Empty of hand is best for old, jealous things that dwell where the dead lie. Empty of hand, tasssh, tsch, tsh, tasssch…”
Caewen looked at the boy, and her bright eyes seemed to burrow into his forehead, almost as if she could read his thoughts. He looked down at the dirt and his own scuffing feet.
“Will you come with me then, child? It will be dangerous, but perhaps we’ll win through whatever it is that lies beneath?”
“Tsch. And win a great weapon, a weapon fit for a sorceress-of-war, a weapon of the elder ages. Do not forget your purpose, tasssh, tsch. You must be armed to defend–erm–yourself. To defend yourself, yes.”
“Well?” said Caewen.
The boy took a deep breath. “Yes. Yes. I confess, I’m a bit terrified, and I don’t know if I’ll be any use if there are living dead down there, but I’ll… I’ll do my best.”
“That’s all anyone ever can ask,” said Caewen with a smile, and she bent forward and lightly kissed the child on his forehead.