Upon the evening of that day, they broke out of the wilderness and tangled scrublands, and came suddenly to farmed country.
The tilled countryside had been visible from high up on the mountain slopes, but they had lost sight of it whilst moving through the wild woods and tangle-scrubs of the foothills. The fields that spread before them were the vast slave-farms of Sorthe. The boy had always imagined this place as a sort of ill-defined threat adults used to frighten children. Behave yourself, or you’ll be sent to the slave-farms of Sortheland. Be a good child, or its off to the slave-fields with you.
Even beyond these faint notions that the farms were evil places–and places where people were sent to be punished–the landscape held a grey, dimly imagined dread for him because of his disappeared mother. This vastness of this drear farmland was presumably where she had eventually found herself. He wondered if she might still be still eking out life here, unfindable in all the endless cold and windswept fields. The thought made him feel cold himself, and tired, and very alone, despite the company around him.
As they walked, they saw several slave-villages at a distance. Each was a small clustering of huts thatched with a species of grey reed that seemed grew thickly around village ponds and streamsides. They avoided the places, keeping to the scrubby edges of the woodlands whenever they could. When they spoke, it was with hushed voices. Their intermittent conversation came and went in sputters, and turned–eventually–to what they would do on reaching Baght Town. Caewen thought she should go into the town alone, but the others argued that would be dangerous. The only thing they could mostly agree on was that Dapplegrim might have to remain outside the town walls or maybe be covered up with rags. He was rather too big and too obviously weird to go wandering in as strange town and not draw attention.
Even so, Dapplegrim himself wasn’t as convinced of the need. He reminded them that there were many strange beasts in the twilight lands, and he wouldn’t stand out as much as they thought. “Hurm,” he said, “We can always just pretend we’re rallying for the war.”
“That might be even more dangerous,” said Caewen, flatly. “You might actually be drafted into some company of night-folk. And then what would become of us?”
“You? Hurm. You mean you don’t think the night-folk would also conscript a lady of shadow sorcery and an owling skin-changer? If you told them that the boy was your squire, they’d not bat an eyelid at it.”
“That’s not reassuring me.”
They were talking around-and-around these points when the four of them entered a wooded hollow that was thickly overgrown with saplings and bushes. It seemed odd that such a wild place would be left in the farmed country until they came across the first of the ruined huts. The houses were made of roughly fitted stone, but only skeletal timbers of the roofs were left. All the doors and windows had either been pulled out or allowed to rot away. There were young trees growing through the open roofs of many of the houses. Emerald mosses splotched the walls.
They walked silently through the abandoned village looking around.
It felt so sad.
“What happened here?” wondered the boy, speaking his thoughts aloud.
Caewen shrugged. They did something their masters did not approve of. Rebellion, or escape, or maybe they were caught making weapons? Such things are meted with harsh punishments here. Or so, all the rumours claim.”
As they walked a new sound became just faintly noticeable. It was as if there were voices in the wind, and in the leaves of the trees, and scurrying about on the ground among the mosses and wet mould. Straining to hear what they were saying, the boy was able to make out some words. It sounded like – The four princes are just and good – spoken over and over, echoing, pained, and somehow also mingling with the usual noises of branch and air. “It’s in the trees,” he said. “And the earth. The trees and stones are talking. How did they put voices into the things of the earth?”
“Enchantment,” answered Caewen. “Though more to the point, whose voices? I hear women and children. Old voices too.” She visibly shivered and hugged her flower-stitched cloak tightly around her. It stood out so starkly in this place. A brilliant, soft forget-me-not blue in a world of grey-brown-beige. “Come on. We should go. Now. This is not a good place.”
They hurried out of the ruins and up the far side of the wild hollow. The boy was happy to leave it behind. The whisperers took a long time to fade completely, as if they were not mere noises on the air, but rather were words imprinted into his thoughts by sorcery.
The rest of that day they saw no one despite passing close to a few farmed fields. Maybe the slave-workers saw them coming and hid? Perhaps all the people were elsewhere doing other work? Maybe they’d been called away to do war-work somewhere else? Who could know? It was such a strange land. Nearing dusk, they climbed a steep hill with slippage rings all draped around the flanks. The rings made it look as if the hill had been coiled about by a gigantic snake and squeezed. From the top they could got their first clear sight of Baght. It was no longer just a smudge of lamplights in the distance, but a mass of chimneys, roofs and garrets, all rust-hued and grey in the fading light. Beyond Baght, to the north, hills and distant woodlands rolled away-ward until they met a gleam of silver that Caewen squinted at and said, “What’s that?”
“And inland Sea,” explained Dapplegrim. “It used to be called Mëar-illur-Necsch, but its been more than a hundred years since I last passed this way. Could be called something different now.”
Behind them in the south, the mountains strode off into the fading west, a snow-capped rampart larger and more impregnable than any line of fortresses. The inside of the Dragon Gate was visible from where they stood too, though it was only a mass of tiny towers at this this distant angle. The shape of the carven dragons could not be made out at all. Presumably, they weren’t easily visible from the north side of the gate anyway, as they faced southwards.
There was a small crowd of weathered trees just downslope from the bald crown of the hill. Baght was still at least a day’s walk away. After a quick conference, they all agreed to make camp under the shelter of the trees for the night. Tomorrow morning they would decide how to approach Baght.
That night was a restless one for the boy. He had trouble getting to sleep, and when he did sleep the tutor in his dreams had difficulty making him pay attention to anything. Finally, in an almost petulant fit the spectral man said, “She’s dead, child. She’s been dead a long time. I’m sorry.”
“Who?” said the boy.
“The one you’re so worried about. Your mother. Look, I’m sorry, young lad–but she’s dead and that’s all there is to that. She didn’t live long after being taken. A disease or some such. I don’t have the power of sight to know exactly. It was a long time ago.” He waved a hand.
The boy felt anger rise in his throat, and turn around in his stomach, like a hot stone turning over. “You’re lying. You just want me to pay attention to these stupid lessons. How would you even know?”
“I know.”
The boy yelled wordlessly in his dream.
He woke with a start.
There were tears in his eyes as he opened them. He didn’t learn anything that night. When he did finally slip back into sleep he didn’t dream of the tutor or the pleasant little room with its warm carpets, fire and shelves of books.Perhaps the man in his dreams decided to leave him alone for the night. Perhaps his mind was too much in turmoil to slip into the dream-place. He did pass through a few half-dreamt fitful visions of a kind woman’s face, vaguely known, dimly remembered. During the dream her features shifted into those of Caewen’s, and then they shifted again and they became the face of the she-boggart, and then they shifted again, and became a death’s mask: dead, pallid skin pulled tight over a skull. Sockets empty of eyes. Hair like dead thin straw drifting on the air. The dead face said in a kind, soft voice, “Can’t say as I much want to see me only child go off and dress up in iron and get themselves gutted, or shot through the eye with an arrow by some fearsome knight. Terrible things when you get down to it, wars are. Terrible things.” And then she was herself again, the boy’s mother: Alive and full of bright-eyed kindness. “Goodbye,” she said. “I’m sorry I missed you growing up. You’ve become such a brave young man.“
“Wait,” said the boy. “Wait. Don’t leave. I mean–stay–can’t you stay?”
“Goodbye,” she said and she faded and was gone.
The boy woke again. His eyes were raw, as if rubbed with salt. They felt like piss-holes in the sand, as his father would have said. He felt certain his mother would never have said anything like that. Nothing so crude or aggressive. Not when she was alive.
He was soon choking on emotions… trembling. He had to get up and move away from the others. He walked around the camp in circles, trying to choke back tears. He didn’t even try to return to sleep after that. About an hour later he realised that if it really had been his mother’s ghost, he should have asked her about his name. She would remember, after all. Even if his father never cared enough even remember the boy’s true given birth-name. She would remember.
He stood–bitterly awake and looking up at the clouds and stars through the wind-roused leaves. He thought about whether a person perhaps doesn’t even have a name if no one remembers what it ever was. And he tried not to think about the dream. About the skull. About the sadness in the voice.
When dawn came he was staring blinding into the distance, still standing a little way outside the wooded cleft in the hillside. His head felt thick, as if he were carrying something clayey and heavy inside the front of his skull. But all the same, he felt a rise of hopefulness as he saw the dawn’s sun appear over eastern horizon, and light up the dew of the earth, and the woods, and the thin strands fogs with all the pale gold it could manage so far north.
Gold for everyone, he thought as the sun’s light spread. All the people. All the creatures. All the world. Free gold for the poorest and the saddest and the most bereft of hope. Free gold of hope.