After breakfast, Caewen collected her gear, pulling on her cloak of flowers and taking up Fetch in his satchel. When she was satisfied she had everything belted and strapped on, she went back down to the common room, paid for the night, and strode out into the white suffused light of midmorning. Matty Nutch was waiting for her, patiently. He had pulled a heavy double-layered walking cape around his shoulders and was carrying a big, heavy blackthorn cudgel. The stick was long enough and solid enough to be used as a short staff. He stood in the sunlight, puffing at his pipe, humming small snatches of song under his breath.
She looked about. Behind them, the brown road wended one way; before them, it plunged into woodland. In both directions it was splodged with shiny grey puddles of rain, but was otherwise empty. Nothing stirred in the woods either. Now and then a blackbird called.
“I don’t see your hound-things?”
“And I don’t see your little demon, but I know it is about your person somewhere.”
Caewen shrugged. “True enough. Shall we?”
He nodded.
They started off, following the road as it twisted eastward and southward and eastward again. At first they walked in a slightly discomfited silence, but Caewen eventually cleared her throat and tried a question. “Are you a chief magician, hereabouts? Or shire-reeve or something like that?”
“Something like that. I have authority, though it is all rather accepted on tacit agreement. Which is to my preference. I wander here and there, keeping an eye on things. These are my people and I like to keep an eye on the lands. Now, may I ask a question?”
“Of course.”
“What happened to your shadow?”
“Ah,” said Caewen looking down. Where a long slanting greyish phantom of Matty Nutch stretched away behind them, of Caewen there was no trace. “You noticed?”
“Difficult to miss.”
“It went away,” said Caewen, and she found that she could not keep the strain from her voice. What was that note in her throat? Worry. Fear. Sadness. She had been doing her best not to think about it, but she needed to accept that there was a tightly twisting knot of fraught emotion in the back of her mind. A rope that is pulled too tight and twisted too viciously will eventually break. having lost herself in her thoughts, she suddenly remembered her travelling companion, and found that he was looking at her, hard and assessing.
“That so? Just, got up and walked away, did it?”
Caewen could not help letting out a small, bleak laugh. “Well, as it happens, that is exactly how it was. We disagreed on… a thing. So, we parted ways.”
“You must have a remarkable relationship with your shadow to have such a disagreement.”
“No, in fact, I don’t think I do. I think it is the other way around. If I was on good terms with my own personal darkness, we might not have had such a falling out.”
“Hmm,” said the man, measuring his strides, just as he measured his thoughts.
They walked the rest of the day, stopping for a midday meal, then walking on. The road wound among green, steep-sided hills that were skirted about with straggly woods. Once, Caewen was certain she saw several hairy, ugly faces watching from the tangle-woods, but when she stopped to look again, they were gone. The hills rose up into quite sharp ridges in places, and sometimes formed a clayey peak on which remnants of evil-looking ruins perched. Looking at one rotten tower among jagged walls, she asked, “Who used to live here?”
“Worshippers of an old untamed god. But they were cast down long ago. The folk of the land now give their adoration to brighter and more pleasant spirits and goddesses.”
###
It was getting towards the pewter-stained hour of dusk when they came at last in sight of a collection of warm-glowing windows in the near distance. A jumble of houses nestled themselves together in a hollow beside a curling brook. The abundant thatch of the roofs gave them a shaggy look so that they seemed to Caewen like hairy beasts all settled down and slumbering cosily. Between the village and the two walkers on the road, the shadows were all getting towards lilac hues. Moths fumbled about on the air: whispery, tumbling things almost as large as Caewen’s palm. She was at least glad to have arrived at twilight. The absence of a shadow would be less obvious.
It was a warm, inviting looking scene, especially with the fire and candlelight spilling out in golden aprons on the ground and filling up windows. As they approached the village, a few residents who were going about evening chores greeted Matty Nutch enthusiastically. He nodded back, friendly and paternal. Deeper in amongst the houses of Whittawer, a noise stirred the air. When Caewen strained to listen, she realised it was a number of voices raised in a repeating chant. Her companion said nothing about it, but just continued onward with a contented expression on his face, his blackthorn staff tapping and scuffing on the dirt.
At about the midpoint of the village, the houses eased back and a rather pleasant little square opened up. The ground was flagged here with big, flat pinkish grey stones. There were old pillars garmented in honeysuckle, remnants of some older shrine perhaps. At the heart of the square was a standing stone: much larger than any Caewen had seen so far. But unlike the others she had passed, this one was not bare rock. A wickerwork effigy had been placed over the top of the stone. It was a cunningly woven and dyed image of a beautiful woman with a long dragonet coiling around her waist and creeping up onto her right shoulder. Her hair was bright with gold leaf, and her dress was a mixture of ochre and yellow sand hues. Around the base of the stone were heaps of red and yellow flowers.
Everywhere at the fringes of the square, men and women stood or sat, chatting idly and drinking quietly from sudsy mugs. An occasional solitary laugh went joyfully up to the sky above, drifting away into the grey sheen of cloud.
A number of girls–all younger than Caewen, but not by much–were the source of the song. They were dancing about the stone and singing, “Blood and gold. In days of old. Blood and gold. In days of old.” This chant was repeated, seemingly without variation.
“Ah,” said Matty Nutch. “It seems the wedding celebrations are starting to get going. The wedding is tomorrow, but we’ll have a pleasant little revel tonight.”
“Is there an inn or resthouse?” asked Caewen, looking about.
“Nonsense. I keep a small house here. Nothing too grand, but it has an extra room and an extra bed. You will retire there tonight. I insist.”
Caewen was certain that when he said that he insisted, he meant it. She resigned herself to finding a place where she could watch the celebrations without getting involved. The song kept going round and round. “Blood and gold. In days of old. Blood and gold. In days of old.”
Caewen wandered about until she found a quiet table with a couple older women who were watching the dancing, nodding and humming along. Someone handed her a mug. She tasted it gingerly and found it to be a malty tasting black ale. It was a strong taste, but not unpleasant.
After watching the festivities for a while one of the elderly ladies seemed to notice that Caewen wasn’t a local for the first time. She extended a smile and introduced herself as Padgette. They spoke a little, and they asked her questions about what she had seen and what news she had. She told them about the armies scouring lands west and north, but they didn’t seem bothered.
With the chant in her head, Caewen started to wonder about the effigy. It was the right size to fit on the stone, but also the right size to capture a person and hold them tightly, assuming a person were forced into the thing.
“You don’t burn strangers alive do you, by any chance?” said Caewen, not wholly joking.
The old ladies laughed and laughed. “Oh, dearie, no,” replied Padgette. “What a question. Why, we’ve not done that in at least a hundred years.”