Dawn broke like water seeping among the trees. A wind from the mountains was seething in the treetops, but down at ground level there was barely a stir of air.
The boy woke early, made himself something to eat out of the stores, listened to birds singing and felt a bit at loose ends. Both Caewen and Fleat showed no sign of rousing. They were both exhausted, and injured in different ways. It stood to reason that they would need rest.
Dappelgrim was awake but sullen. He lay with his head on his fore-hooves, snorting every now and then, huffing in curls of smoke from the fire, coughing lightly and breathing it out again. Why he didn’t just move farther from the fire was a mystery to the boy.
The shadow-thing was nowhere in sight, though it might have been curled up in a crook of a tree, or nestled down next to Caewen, or hidden somewhere else for all that the boy could tell.
With only a silent Dapplegrim for company, an edge of boredom was sawing its way into the boy’s thoughts.
He ventured to say, “Do you think it would be safe for me to take a walk around?”
Dapplegrim raised his head and sniffed the air, several times and deeply.
“Yes. But don’t go too far. There’s no scent of anything boggartish, or humanfolksy about, nor dead-smelling neither, but there are weird smells in these woods. Something dwells hereabouts, and I don’t know if it might be good or bad or indifferent. Best to step carefully and come back at the first sign of anything.”
The boy nodded, got up, rolled the last kinks or sleep out of his shoulders, and wandered away. He thought perhaps he might find a little pool and get a bit of a wash all over. Dimly, he remembered someone telling him that pines are thirsty trees, and streams tend to run dry through pine country. This seemed to be right. Each time he found a likely defile or hollow in the earth, it held just the barest trickle of water. There were no ponds. Not even a large puddle.
Who had told him that, about pinewoods? Old Keezer? Probably. He wondered how the old man was doing. He wondered how the village was doing. Had Sorthe soldiers reached the village yet? Sorthe’s armies were probably marching south by now. What would happen to Wurmgloath? The folk of the village were used to Sorthemen visiting as slavers and sometimes merchant-traders too, but they’d never anticipated an invasion of soldiers and knights.
It occurred to him that Wurmgloath might not even be there any more. It might already be smouldering ash. Everyone he knew from that life might be gone.
The thought left him feeling cold inside, and weak in his joints.
He decided that if he ever travelled that way south again, he would stop and see. Even if he didn’t like Wurmgloath, even if he never wanted to live there ever again, it was still the place he remembered as home.
All he could do for now, though, was put the thought out of mind.
Without realising it, he had walked to the edge of the pinewoods. A view of the country they’d galloped through the day before opened out. Long, sweeping hills full of old dry off-bronze grass, over-painted with the white tufts of ghost-seed. In the sky, a ceiling of clouds glowed against the morning sun. Very far off, he could make out the scattered ruins of the Fane city, and beyond that stood more hills and patchy phantom-shapes of woodlands. The Great Grey Mountain was no more than a silhouette in blue, and the landscape beyond was barely visible against the slanting light and lifting fogs. The mountains that strode along the eastward landscape curved around and cut across north. They marched westward then: a line of white caps and gleaming snows vanishing into the tinted haze of the very far away.
Squinting, he could just make out smoke and faint firelight beacons at the foot of the northern range. He guessed these marked the fabled Dragon Gates that led into northern lands, into shadow-lands, into night-lands.
The boy was about to turn around and retrace he steps when he heard a curious noise.
It was a sort of snarling and hissing and whining.
He listened.
There seemed to be two voices, and he thought one of them sounded like the fetch.
Now intrigued–if not a little worried–he stalked around the back of some trees and scrubby bushes until he was close enough to hear the voices more clearly. There was a lot of wheedling noises and whimpering, but snarls and angry little spitting sounds too. He couldn’t quite make out what they were saying
—no, you can’t–muttering and whining–but please, please–whining and muttering–I won’t be–snarls–but I must–and more snarls–
He stalked a little closer, then peeked around a tree.
The fetch was sitting on the ground, not more than a few paces away. It was standing in the long-cast shadow of a big pine. Its head was tilted upwards, as if it were talking to the branches of the tree above. But when the boy followed the gaze, he saw another creature, perched high up. Where fetch was shadows and inks, this creature was a brilliant white and gold. It was of a similar overall shape, feline in most of its form, but it had a head and face that looked humanlike and feminine. It had a mass of hair, something like a mane, that was flickering with subtle light. Light seemed also to play and shine on the branch where the creature crouched. It was the one was making the small whining noises. Fetch was snarling and hissing.
“Please,” said the faintly aglow thing.
“No,” snarled fetch. “Go away. Tssssch.”
“We could share her? Why don’t we share her? Please?”
“I’m not sharing my magician with a brightness demon. Go away, you nasty little lump of sunlight.”
“But there are demons in the woods. Big demons, night-demons. One almost caught me last night. I can’t keep running. They’re going to eat me.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have been born so far north? Tsch. Far away south, and you’d be the one doing the eating, eh?”
“That’s cruel. Cruel.”
This did seem to arrest the fetch. He twitched uncomfortably, and after a pause added: “My advice–for what it is worth–take yourself off southwards. You’re only at the boundary of the night-lands. A day or two of scurrying, and there won’t be nearly so many night-demons about. Might be other demons–of course–tsssch, but you’ve a chance of finding some poor sod of a mortal, and you can infest them, and you can make beautiful tinkling sunlight magic together. They’ll love it. Mortal folk love getting all magical. Just find someone.”
“What about him? Can I have him?” The sunlit-thing must have seen the boy. She was staring at him, and her eyes looked like gaps in a canopy through which the day was filtering.
Fetch turned, nonchalantly and stared blinking at the boy. He didn’t seem surprised that the conversation was being spied on. Instead, he gave a small dismissive shrug. “You can try. Tsch. He hasn’t a name, though, you see, you see. You’ll find it hard to get your claws into that one. Impossible, probably.”
In the moment that fetch took his eyes off the glimmering cat-creature, he was set upon. The brightness-thing leapt down from the tree, tiny claws like pricks of flame and teeth like barbs of sunlight. It’s female face turned ugly and nasty. Snarling and screeching, it landed on the fetch, and bit viciously.
The two creatures rolled around in a spitting, angry fight. It was like two tomcats battling. Droplets of dark, shadowy blood and bright, flaming blood scattered all around; everywhere the weird blood fell, the ground smoked, and gave off little smouldering shudders of shadow and fire.
The fight must have only been moments long, though it seemed to range all over the trees and the ground. In and out of shadows, in and out of light, along branches, across gnarled roots and up trunks, then down again. One chased the other. The other chased the one. Back and forth.
It was the brightness-thing that broke. Snarling, whimpering–almost crying–she leapt away in bounds screaming, “Cruel! Cruel! Selfish!” She vanished into the broad open light of the grassy hills.
Fetch remained. He walked with a limp, slowly into a dark patch of shadow, where he sat down and started to lick his front leg. “Nasty little sunlight demon,” he hissed. “Thinks she can just barge in and take my magician!”
The boy risked a few steps away from the tree he’d been standing half-behind. He looked around. “Is she gone?”
“Yes. And good riddance.”
“What was she afraid of?”
“Tsssch. Other, bigger demons. It’s what all demons are afraid of: shadow and light, night and dawn, or flame, or demons of moss, earth, water, wind or hairy beast. Demons are born. Demons scurry around. Demons are eaten by bigger demons. It’s our lot, unless you find yourself a nice protective mortal body to hide inside.” It seemed that fetch’s injuries had left him less guarded. “I wouldn’t feel sorry for that one. If she had got the better of me, she would have drunk my blood and grown to twice the power. Then she’d have made herself at home in Caewen’s mind: whether or not the young miss wanted it.” After a small, indignant huff, the fetch added, “Tsch. I at least have the good sense to make a bargain of it. Honestly, it’s so much better that way. Tsssch. Tsch. Much better not to force a joining and companionship. Tssch. I certainly learned that to my sorrow: after the first couple of attempts, at any rate.”
“Oh,” said the boy. He sat down next to fetch. “What about the big night-demons?” He looked around nervously.
“They will mostly keep to themselves, if we keep to ourselves. If they are feral–and without a sorcerer, and I think they are–then they will just as afraid of being eaten.”
“By what?”
“By something bigger and meaner,” said fetch with a grin.