Old Seath roused and started knocking around in his room not much after dawn. Caewen greeted him with a wan smile when he emerged into the larger, living area where she had slept–or not slept, as the case was. She yawned, then blinked at him through her tiredness. “Strange storm last night.”
“Hm? Oh, that.” He appeared genuinely unworried. “The Old King was up from his stony bed, as they say hereabouts. I hope it didn’t disturb you? You don’t seem the sort to be afeared by storm winds.”
“The Old King?”
“Just a name,” he said, but reflected a moment and added, “truth is I grew up with people calling the squalls that come out of the mountains the Old King. I don’t know if I do know why. People will say, The Old King’s angry, when there’s a storm, or The Old King’s pissing on us, when there’s a rain. Or The Old King’s shaking out his pillow-down, when there’s a snow. Funny thing. I suppose he was a god once, or something worshipped as one.”
“But there is no cult for this storm-wanderer now? There are no priests?”
“Not in my lifetime. Ever since the coming of the hierophants three hundred years ago or more this whole valley has paid homage to the Lady of Brightness, Our Lady of the Sun and Day. Her handmaid, the Daughter of Dragonets is special to the valley too. There’s a big stone pillar in the town square with the sun carved into it, if you doubt me. We’re no night-worshippers, not around here. There’s no covens of Old Night and Chaos here.”
“No. That’s good to know.” But still, she was suspicious. Caewen had, in her wanderings, now visited many places where old powers of the earth ruled isolated vales and old sacrificial pools, bloody oak grottos, waterfalls or mountaintops… but she had never before met a thing of the storms and winds that seemed to have such a power in it. It felt more akin to the Voice in Darkness… so long ago, down deep in the earth under the Castellation of Shadows. The similarity was a worry.
“What about the stones? With the bloody skins?”
“Oh. That? That only started after the uprising. It’s Lord Rawn’s men. They’re doing it to frighten folks, that’s all. There’s nothing more to it. When right-thinking folks find one, they take it down and put the flowers about the stone instead. Make it special for the Drake-Daughter again.” He looked at Caewen over his shoulder as he started to potter around with getting a breakfast together. “You look unconvinced?”
“Fetch thought there was perhaps some weak power of magic in the skins. Not much, he thought. Little tatters…”
“Maybe. But, if there is, it’s just the magic of fear, gathering, just like clouds. People have always been afraid of dark spirits of the air, storm-gods, haven’t they? Folks have always afeared storm-wanderers and their bands of the wretched dead, their stolen storm-tossed souls, like flocks swarming in the sky… but it’s all just fear in the end. It puffs away when the sun shines.”
A noise of eggs cracking into a frypan rattled. Mushrooms went in too, and some of last night’s leftover pottage to fry.
“Fetch,” she said, “what do you think?”
“I think we ought to go back and walk two weeks around this accursed place, tssch, tsch, tsss. Maybe the storm-thing can only hurl rain and sleet and wind at you, but I live in his world. He can pick me up and gnash me in his teeth. Tsch. Tss. And I’m quite certain he wants to do exactly that.”
Caewen considered matters. “Perhaps. Did you find out where Rawn of Rawnhall is hiding?”
“Yes. There’s a secret trackway between two rocks, just up past the woodlands north of here. Tsch. Tss. I can show you, but I’m not lingering if storm clouds gather. I’ll flee back from shadow to shadow, and I’ll go and hide inside someone’s dream if I have to–curse be it, tsssk–even if I’m caught in a pool of sunlight and dry up like so much rainwater, I’ll chance that instead. Better to go that way than be caught between tooth and maw by that thing out there. Tssch. It’ll eat me, but I might not die properly? Do you understand that about spirits, lady wizardess? I might be squirming in agony inside that thing for a thousand, thousand years, if it catches me?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Why do you think small spirits are so keen for the company and protection of a magician? Tssssch. It’s not the conversation, I can tell you. Tsk.”
“Charming little creature, isn’t he?” This was Seath, though he said it with smile. He got a fire going, and promptly filled the air with smells of frying eggs, butter and woodsmoke.
They ate in relative silence then, exchanging only a few words, and all of it on the topic of the meal.
“Salt?”
“Yes.”
“Some buttermilk to drink?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“More?”
“No. I’m good.”
Only at the very end, did Seath say, “So will you go back the way you came, or do what the Croft-Ward wants?”
Caewen heard herself answer without thinking. “It’s too far to go around. My pursuit is too much in haste. I cannot waste the time. We find Rawn. Put an end to him, if I have to. Quickly. Cleanly. Without fuss. Then we leave. That is the way it must be.”
Fetch was not happy about the decision, not at all, but he crawled into Caewen’s leather satchel all the same, whimpering and mewling as he did. She tied the flap down so no sunlight could sneak in and burn him. Then, with her gear all packed, sword in sheath, and some additional provisions stowed away, she said goodbye to Seath and thanked him. Once out the door, she set off north through the hamlet following the whispered instructions hissing from her bag.
She noticed that the sky had been washed clean by the storm. It was a deep, translucent blue, of the sort you really only see after a powerful rain had been through the air.
If anyone noticed the strangeness of the young woman who spoke to her whispering bag, they said nothing. There were only a few people about the muddied-up streets anyway, and after Caewen passed through the small north post-gates she found herself alone in a landscape of rich grass, scattered wooly sheep, oat fields, and lone, tall paddock trees. For a while she could hear the whistling of a shepherd somewhere over the hills, but that faded too in time.
Ahead of them the landscape rose into a scrubby woodland and beyond that stood the dim grey hints of a rocky landscape that presumably stretched itself all the way to the mountains of the north. A handful of snow-capped ranges were soon faintly visible as traceries of blue-grey and shimmering white against the clear blue sky. As the rain had washed all the dust and grit from the air, the whole world seemed to be set in a blob of vast, perfect crystal. Water and dew glistened and sparked on leaves and grass. A scraggly brown buzzard drifted lazily overhead.
It was, ironically enough, a perfect day for a morning walk.
The passage through the grassy hills had the benefit of giving Caewen time to reflect on matters. She wondered what her shadow other-self was up to. She thought about Farrlowly, trapped in darkness, and how much he would have enjoyed a stroll on a day like this. She even considered turning east and simply cutting across field and glen, taking a chance that she would not be caught, and simply forgetting about the whole business of the robber-knight.
But she also guessed that Toyst would send messengers ahead of her with a description, and she couldn’t risk ending up in a lockup for breaking faith on an agreement.
Also, she just didn’t like going back on her word.
After a time, Caewen realised that she was looking at things in a new way. Critical, but not detached. Focused, but not coldly so. She found in herself a sort of dogged mental state that hungered to find things out and also had a strong desire to see justice done. It was the sort of mental state that a good thief-taker would need, or a spymaster, and she half-suspected she might never have properly examined this way of looking at things if she had not lost so much of herself to the shadow.
It was odd. She had thought she would go forth, grim, grey and joyless. But now, here, she discovered that there was a sort of joy in iron-hard thinking and judgement.
Interesting, she thought to herself. Interesting. And not at all what she had expected.
In this new state of thinking, she marched onward, drawing out long strides, making the distance grow shorter with each step.