“Well,” said Caewen. “I don’t know if your Croft-Ward is unpleasant or merely mercenary.”
“A little of both.” Seath stirred a pot of hot water over the fire. “Here, do you like riddles?”
“As much as the next person, I suppose.”
“What is full of holes and holds water?”
Caewen puzzled for a moment over the riddle and then saw the bar over the fire that was punched with holes to hold the hooks of pots. “That thing,” she said.
“A rannel.”
“If that’s what you call it. I’ve never been much one to work at a hearth. I did what I had to when I was growing up, but I tended to help father in the fields more than mother at the fireside.” She paused. “What do you think of the Croft-Ward’s demand?”
“Well… not much more or less than what is to be expected. He’s concerned that our Queen may think the whole town is brimming with rebels, and he wants to prove otherwise. The bloodied head of Rawn would do that nicely. It would help even to simply finding out where the robbers have been lairing up in the hills. If the lately fallen Lord Rawn can be pushed out of his hidey-hole, then he’ll have a harder time causing woe and ill for travellers.”
“And setting up those occult skins?”
Seath shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know anything about that.” Rather too abruptly, he said, “What does a raven’s head and a goose’s wing have in common?”
She thought about this. “Is it something to do with goose quills?” A pause. “They’re both as black as ink?”
“Very good.” He smiled.
Caewen looked at the dimming light through the cracks of the door. Evening was gathering without, and night’s own silks were drawing over the skies, revealing the first stars. It was dark enough now to be safe for Fetch to come out. She said so, and the lid of the box peeked open. A shadowy face with a both cattish and otterish cast to it came into view. “Tsh. Tssh. Ts. That fellow is horrid,” said Fetch. “I heard everything. Threatening you. Tsch. Making you run his errands. Tsssch. Would you like me to go into his dreams and give him nightmares all night? Ts. Tssch. Perhaps a dream about how bad things come to those who press unimportant errands on passing travellers? That might teach him a bit of sense.”
“Or it would make him irritable, or turn him fearful and twitchy. No. Of course, don’t do that.” Caewen did find herself considering their other options though. They might double back and go around Heathre, but it would delay them by ten days at least and maybe as much as two or three weeks if the weather turned bad. They needed to make good time. If on the other hand she dealt with this robber-knight, quickly and cleanly, then they’d lose a day or two at the most. And, she confessed silently to herself, she felt the people here need a little help. A storm was about to hit them. The armies of winter and night had already swept through the petty kingdoms north of the mountains, and these small kingdoms on the southern flanks of the ranges were next. If there was not already a column of knights and men-at-arms moving southward towards the borders of Heathre, then there would be soon. Having a thorn inside your boot makes it that much harder to fight off an attacker. And perhaps if she earned a little trust, they might take her warnings seriously too.
Fetch had been eying her throughout. “Say what you will about the other Caewen, but your shadow knows you well. Didn’t she say you’d get tangled up in some pointless little side-errand before long. Tsk. Tsssch.”
She shrugged. A a little while longer, thinking, she made a decision. “Fetch… go into the night-woods and find out where this robber–the Rawn of Rawnhall–find out where he is keeping himself. In the morning we’ll take a walk to his brigand hole and pay him a visit.”
“Tssch. Well, if you’d really rather I do that instead of give the pompous Croft-Ward troubled dreams? I’d much more enjoy the latter–“
“I wouldn’t. I don’t need more difficulties. Just find out where Rawn and his men are. That’s all.”
The shadow-thing leapt off the table and padded over to the door. Seath was nearest, but didn’t seem inclined to go near the little demonling. He watched it silently. Caewen had to get up, walk over to the door, and open it. Fetch shot out into the evening’s darkness and merged with the shadows.
“Oh,” said Seath. “You needed to let it out. Like a cat at night. I thought it would just walk through the door.”
Caewen sat down at the table. “Sometimes it can pass through things but mostly not. I haven’t understood the whys and hows of it.” She was feeling much better. If anything, she was restless. She wanted the dawn to come, the sun to rise, the task to be done. A thought occurred to her. “What if the Croft-Ward goes back on his word and wants more from me after the task is done?”
Seath only gave a noncommittal roll of the shoulders for an answer.
She’d have to walk that lane when it was before her.
Silence lurked about between them again. Seath filled it with another riddle. “Roundy-toundy fell on the ground, his flesh was white, his guts were round.”
Caewen got that one immediately. They had a similar riddle in her village. “An egg. The yolk is his guts.”
“One more,” asked the old man.
“Why not?”
“rock-a-bye baby up in the trees, a gentle rocking with a gentle breeze, but if the wind should start to squall, out of the tree baby will fall, tumbling down, crib and all.”
She had to think about that one. “A nest? A bird’s nest with a chick in it?”
“A crow’s nest specifically,” he said. “You’re very good at these.”
“Much better than I ever used to be.” Caewen reflected on this. “You know, I do feel much more focused than I was. I have a sense of feeling like a bloodhound on a scent, which I never used to.”
“It feels to me that you are about to say since something happened?”
“I don’t think I ought to talk about it. Sorry.” She couldn’t help but look at the floor where she was casting no shadow.
Seath was no fool. He followed her eyes, saw what she was looking at, but didn’t pursue it, instead, just humming under his breath. Some moments passed. With not much else to do, the two of them chatted idly as the fire burned down to a bed of starry ashes. Caewen told Seath about the rousing of northern armies, and she took a chance and asked him if he knew anything about her destination, a dark, wet place, full of tarnished silver and old pearls.
He did not. “Why are you going there, wherever it is?”
“Tidings. Presentiments. Visions. The usual, I suppose, in this line of things.”
“May I ask what those tidings are?”
“You may, but I won’t answer.” She smiled. “I’m sorry. Some things I need to keep close to my chest. It would have been better for everyone if I had passed through unnoticed, but that can’t be helped now.” She heard a noise outside, but it was only a creak of house timbers against a softly rising wind. Maybe there was a squall up on the mountains. “Do you think the Croft-Ward and your Queen will take the threat of the Winter King seriously? I’ve warned many of the lords and small holdings along the road, but it has been such a long time since there has been any trouble out of the north. I think most people reckon me half-mad.”
“Talk of knights in dark silver and huge pale-haired boggarts will mostly get a few curious, but ultimately uninterested listeners. It’s all too fanciful seeming around here. Things have been peaceful a long while.”
“Still, it would be best to try and raise some alarm.”
“I will, but the people hereabouts are more likely to flee than fight, truth be told. There are caves and endless stony rifts to the south and east–ruins of ancient cult-towns are all that you’ll find there now, but they make a good place to hide. With enough warning, we can move most of the vulnerable to safety. We’ve done it before. Wandering invaders from the faraway lands raiders. They come and they go. t’s difficult to hold a conquest when your soldiers keep falling down dead from poison arrows and deadly snakes somehow find their way into your bed each night”. He smiled wanly.
“Raiders are raiders,” said Caewen. “Somehow I doubt the Winter King cares much for poison snakes.”
“And who is he then?”
“A sorcerer-lord of great power? A vassal of one of the Lords or Ladies of Twilight, or one of those Lords himself? A trueborn child of the Queen of Night? He is a great power, that much is clear, and there may not be another power in all the Clay-o-the-Green to challenge him.”
“And where the servants of night rule, the everlasting night will settle.”
She continued the passage. It was from a book called the Sortuagint.”And the whole world will be covered in the dark, and the night-folk who are good will revel under moon and stars, and never again will sun be seen in those lands.” She frowned. Ode had recited some of it on the road, and described the book, though where he’d got it from, she wasn’t sure. Something to do with the weird little tome of his, at a guess. He’d started reciting a lot of random, strange passages from random, strange books before they parted ways. “I’m not sure we should believe a book written by a night-seer somewhere in shadowlands though.”
“Indeed,” said Seath. “Indeed.” He looked at the door. “How long until your little demon comes back? An hour? Two?”
“Maybe. Hard to tell. His quickness in completing any task is always unpredictable.”
He looked hard at her. “Almost as if perhaps he is seeing to other things when out of your sight sometimes? I’m not sure I get a strong sense of trustworthiness of that creature.”
Caewen felt discomfort, but nodded. “The thought has occurred to me.”
“And do you trust the creature?”
That, she had to think about. After a time, she said, “I’m really not sure any longer. I did–for a time–but now I don’t know. Fetch has been acting strange, of late. Or, more strange than he ever used to, I mean. He’s always been a bit of a strange thing.”