Jeremy had the feeling that Nul was only humoring him. His companion was distant, absorbed in something other than the wildlife they met on their way. Once, at least, Jeremy felt Nul twist backward for several moments. “What are you doing?” he asked the demon.
“Looking back.”
“What do you see?”
The spindly arm with its three-fingered hand tightened around Jeremy's stomach again. “Nothing.”
“What did you think you saw?”
“Shadow. Nothing. Hope nothing. Move faster.”
Jeremy tickled Whisper's sides again with his heels, rocked back as she quickened her slow trot to a canter. Behind him Nul squawked a protest, and Jeremy muttered, “Sorry.”
And all the time his butt ached more and more.
They passed a few lonely farmhouses, made of gray and white stone, most of them, with heavy thatched roofs. Chickens pecked about in the yard of one, and Jeremy asked about them. “We have the same kind of birds back on Earth,” he explained. “And we have horses, too, and goats and sheep. Why?”
“How should I know?” Nul grumped, but by now Jeremy had learned that the little creature enjoyed showing off its knowledge after an initial show of displeasure. Sure enough, after a few moments Nul said, “Hear Tremien speak of it once. There some connection between Thaumia and other worlds. Yours close, used to be closer. Closer many, many cycles back in history. Thaumia beings visit there, sometime. Bring animals back, I guess.”
“We have legends of magical creatures,” Jeremy said. “I suppose that would explain them.”
“Mm. Or it could be our worlds once were the same. Thaumia went its way, your world went another. That might have happened, too. Hard to say.”
“I guess so,” Jeremy said, trying without notable success to shift his hips in the saddle. They had been going downhill for some time, and ahead across their path a small river meandered, silver and red in the afternoon sun. The lane led to a little arched stone bridge. Without a murmur or sign of complaint Whisper walked steadily toward it. Jeremy suddenly asked, “Nul, what are you?”
“Fool who thought working for wizard good job.”
Jeremy laughed. “I've had the same feeling about my job, from time to time. But what sort of creature are you? You aren't human.”
“Nah, nah.”
“Melodia called you a demon.”
Nul laughed his urfing laugh. “Not demon. Demons mythical beings. Nah, I a burrower, a digger.”
“Like a dwarf?”
“Huh-uh. Dwarf look more peoply. I a pika.”
“Pika?” Imitating Nul, Jeremy pronounced it PEE-ka.”
“Uh. Used to be tribes of pika, millions of pika. Not so many now.”
“What happened?”
“Time.” Behind him, Nul sighed. “You want hear this?”
“Sure,” Jeremy said.
Their shadows grew long behind them on the right as they rode north and west and Nul spoke. Jeremy, his concentration broken by the uncomfortable saddle and by his own burgeoning saddle sores, tried hard to listen to the pika's tale.
Nul (as he explained to Jeremy) was a deep-digging pika, one of a tribe of two hundred or so that once dwelled far beneath the Bone Mountains, in the distant north. They lived simple lives, fishing the underground rivers in the caverns they favored, occasionally going out on the surface to raid the widely scattered human farms, practicing their simple magics, singing their ancient songs, and shaping the minerals and jewels they found to their own delight.
Nul, one of the younger pika and more adventurous, perhaps, than most, liked to spend his free time aboveground. Generally pika children liked playing tricks on humans, but this usually wore off with adolescence, around the age of a hundred and fifty or so. This didn't happen in Nul's case; he spent long hona setting up elaborate practical jokes on the farmers in the area, nothing really harmful, but irritating little touches just to let them know he was in the area. “Tangle skeins of wool left to dry in sun,” he explained. “Sometimes take one farmer's calf, put in other farmer's pasture. Sometimes cast illusion and disguise self as priest, give farmer penance like making tower of all rocks in his fields. Little things.”
Inevitably, one farmer caught him with a powerful trap spell. Nul refused to talk much about that, or about what the farmer did to him, but he implied that the next several years he spent in slavery, doing the work of farm animals and treated worse.
“Then great battle came,” Nul said. “I didn't know about war, even, but war was going on then. Came like storm in sky, came in fire and lightning. Great wizard battle all along Bone Mountains. Hobs came through, ugly, nasty things. Kill my farmer, kill the family. I hide, they not notice me. They eat all horses, everything.”
Nul fell into a long silence. “I go back to caverns,” he said at last. “Through passage only pika-folk know. No good. Empty, all empty. Family gone, tribe gone. Evil there. I come out again.”
Hungry and afraid, Nul approached a camp of soldiers. “I not know what it was then. Just human men, but they have fire and food. And I cold and hungry.”
For a few days Nul made sporadic, skulking raids for sustenance. Then, he was caught again, this time by a wizard. “He scare me,” Nul admitted. “Say he turn me into something nasty. I fall on my knees, I beg. Wizard ask, ‘Why should I spare you?'”
Another long silence fell before Nul continued: “I say, ‘Don't spare. Family dead, friends dead. Kill last pika of Bone Mountains.’
“Wizard look at me long time. ‘No,’ wizard say at last. ‘Never waste life, for no magic can bring back a life flown away. You will work for me.’ So now Nul work for Tremien.” The little creature sighed again. “Look for friends, family, never find. Tremien try to help, but some bad magic had swept through caverns, he could find no pika trace either. We not know what happen, where they go. Nul lonely sometimes.”
Ahead of him, rocking on the horse, aching in joint and flesh, Jeremy said quietly, “Man lonely sometimes, too, Nul.”
Nul spoke little of the war, an affair of wizards, men, and other surface dwellers, but he did indicate that Sebastian had had no part in it. “Nah, nah, that long ago, before Sebastian born, probably. That war over long time back.”
“But Tremien spoke of a war going on now.”
“Going on in his head,” Nul growled. “Down there is inn. We stop there for tonight.”
After they had crossed the bridge, the lane had turned more westerly, and for some time they had been following the line of the little river off to their left. Ahead of them, where it joined a much broader stream, a cluster of houses huddled. “A town?” Jeremy asked.
“Drover's Ford. We cross river here tomorrow. Sleep tonight.”
They found an inn, the Goose and Bow, where a young ostler helped Jeremy down. He found standing almost as painful as sitting, and after the hours on horseback, his legs hardly agreed to work. Still, he made no real complaint, and when the boy handed him the bedrolls he tried to look nonchalant, swinging them up to his shoulder with what he hoped was a little panache. Nul had already waddled into the inn proper, and when Jeremy joined him, he found the pika already hard at work bargaining with a great tub of a man. “You'll take up a whole room between the two of you,” the fat man roared. “Has to be a silver at least.”
“Without meals? Five coppers for the room, three for supper and breakfast,” Nul said.
The fat man lifted his pudgy hands to the heavens. “Do you hear?” he asked of the ceiling. “Do you hear how they try to impoverish an honest innkeeper? Eleven coppers for the room. Meals extra.”
Nul shook his head. “Too much by twice. Ten coppers all told, room and board.”
“And my wife and daughters will be on the streets tomorrow, begging crusts of bread. A silver piece for food and room, drink extra.”
They settled, finally, on eleven for everything but drink. Jeremy, who had not spoken at all through the exchange but had stood with the bedrolls on his shoulder, returning the
stolid gazes of a dozen or so heavyset men sitting in little groups of three or four at scattered tables in the dining room, eating, drinking, or smoking long-stemmed pipes, was relieved to find that the room was just down a short corridor. He did not think his legs could manage stairs.
“What's wrong with you?” Nul demanded as Jeremy tossed the bedrolls onto a great, plain bed and groaned.
Jeremy put his hands against the small of his back and tried to stand straight. His back popped, but he failed. “I'm not used to horses,” he grunted.
Nul rolled his orange eyes. “Let's eat,” he said. “Then bed early. We have time to make up.”
The innkeeper at least set a good board. Jeremy and Nul had huge bowls of venison stew, or stew with something very like venison in it at least, followed by a couple of flagons each of a pleasant, light ale. Nul seemed to elicit no surprise from any of the other customers, and not one of them spoke to the pika or to Jeremy. “Farmers,” Nul muttered from the corner of his mouth. “Nothing to do this time of year but get drunk and tell lies.”
Jeremy looked around. The jollity at the Goose and Bow was, to say the least, subdued. Here and there a voice would be raised in querulous comment—"I tell'ee, worm oil's the best thing for a stopped-up sow. Put'er right no time atall"—but there was little laughter and almost no curiosity.
Nul indicated that it was time to retire, and, following the pika down the corridor, Jeremy was surprised to find his steps a bit unsteady. The ale had given him a buzz. He wasn't really drunk, but he felt definitely mellow. That wore off a bit as the two undressed for bed. “You've got a tail!” Jeremy exclaimed.
Nul, with his trousers down around his knees, looked over his shoulder at Jeremy. “And you've got blisters on your arse,” he growled. His tail was really pretty short, a furred stub the length of Jeremy's little finger, but it added to the overall impression of inhumanity about the creature. Nul slipped beneath the blankets on the far side of the bed. “Sleep now,” he said. “Try your stomach. Might be less painful.”
On his stomach proved to be the only way that Jeremy could sleep. He dreamed, though, of sitting on Whisper as she ambled along, and he felt again in his hands the tug of her bridle. He was just dreaming that she was brushing him against tree branches when he woke up smothering. A hand clamped down tight on his mouth—a three-fingered hand. When he stirred, a quick whisper came in his ear: “Someone in room. Quiet.” Nul's breath was like a breeze off a compost heap. It brought tears to Jeremy's eyes. The hand eased off, and next to him, Jeremy felt the pika tense. Nul was whispering something very softly.
Light flooded the room, sourceless yellow light, and Nul sprang out of bed at the same time, crying “Ha!”
The empty room mocked him. Nul shook his great basketball of a head. “Thought something here,” he muttered. “Something bad.” He clambered back up into bed. “Just dream. Gone now. We sleep, leave early-early.” Nul turned on his side, pulling most of the blankets tight around him.
“Hey,” Jeremy protested, tugging them back. “What about the light?”
“Minor spell. It die in short time. Close eyes.”
Jeremy did, certain that he would sleep no more that evening. Thanks to the enchantment of exhaustion, he fell asleep at once.
He woke next morning stiff and aching, and he did scant justice to the innkeeper's breakfast of milk, bread, eggs, and ham. Nul quibbled a little about Whisper's feed bill, but not much, and the two travelers set forth in the deep darkness preceding dawn. A waning moon, much larger than Earth's moon, rode blue and pale low in the western sky. The firmament was sprinkled with stars, in configurations absolutely alien to Jeremy. With good reason, he reflected.
They headed north and west that day, climbing into hillier country where the farms were even more widely scattered, the inns smaller and more cramped, the farmers more dour and taciturn. Nul brooded and spoke little, and Jeremy suffered from saddle sores. Only Whisper seemed to take the journey in stride, her steady pace never slackening.
After a second night at another inn and another early start, daylight caught them climbing a winding road among rising hills. Again Nul seemed uneasy, turning from time to time to crane back over the way they had come, and once or twice Whisper tensed or did a quick, skittish double-step before settling back into her normal pace.
“Don't know,” Nul grunted. “Feel like someone watching us.”
“I've had that feeling a lot,” Jeremy said.
Nul laughed. “You? You with no magic, no spells? How you know, human?”
“Humans have their moments, pika.”
“Mm.” They jogged along quietly for a while, came to a place where the road made a sharp turn around the neck of a hill, and then Nul said: “Stop. We see.”
The road had been narrow, with steep shoulders slanting up and down into evergreen forest, but on the far side of the turn the uphill shoulder had leveled. At Nul's direction Jeremy urged Whisper that way, behind some low brush and stunted trees. Nul hopped off easily. Jeremy groaned his way down. “Tie horse,” Nul said. “Not like that! Here, I show you.” The three-fingered hands made a quick and dexterous knot. “Follow. Quiet.”
The two of them climbed the hill and, shielded by trees, came down the other side to a point where they overlooked the road. The hillside here was practically a cliff, and Jeremy felt safer clinging to the trunk of a spearleaf than trusting to his own aching legs.
Nul gestured for quiet. Then, without a word, he pointed ahead and down. Jeremy followed, at first saw nothing, and then realized what he was looking at: a shadow, a detached and ownerless shadow the size of a man on horseback coming slowly along the road. He looked up, but the sky showed no cloud.
Nul unslung the pouch from his shoulder. Keeping his eyes on the road, he felt inside, pulled out the spectacles, and looked through them. Jeremy heard the pika's quick inrush of breath.
The spectacles went back in, and a stubby black stick, thicker than a pencil but about as long, came out. The shadow was near now, and in a second it would pass them. Nul tensed to spring, the wand tight in his right hand.
The shadow stopped, wavered. A flash of light and heat—lightning, Jeremy thought, but it couldn't be lightning from a clear sky—washed over them, and Nul toppled backward, then rolled, tumbled to the road.
“Nul!” Jeremy snatched up the black rod from the spot where the pika had dropped it and leaped. He hit hard in the dusty road, his ankles and knees exploding in pain. The pika, orange eyes wide, had thrown up both hands. “Here!” Jeremy thrust the wand into the left hand.
Nul spat a guttural phrase and pointed the wand at vacancy. For a bare instant the whole visible world went black, replaced by the ghostly white sketch of a monstrous thing on a monstrous mount, a thing reeling back in anger and frustration—
And then it was gone and the world was back. In the winter sunshine, crouched in the road, Nul slumped. “Thank you,” he said.
“What was it?”
“An evil thing.”
“But what happened?”
“It hit us with shock spell.” The orange eyes turned in speculation toward Jeremy. “You not feel?”
“I felt something, but—”
“Mm. It have no real effect on you.” Nul got to his feet, brushing dust from his coat and trousers. “Not hurt. You?”
“Skinned my knees. The—the evil thing. Did you kill it?”
“Nah, nah. Revealed it. Travels in its own dark, cannot abide light of day.” Nul extended a hand, and Jeremy pretended to use it to help himself stand. “We go now. Hurry-hurry. May be more of them.” Nul shivered. “They may be more prepared.”
Whisper awaited them, all patience. As soon as Jeremy had painfully remounted her and they had regained the road, Nul said from behind him, “Almost safe now. Over next hilltop you see Whitehorn. All that country protected by Tremien's spells.”
Jeremy goggled as they topped the crest of the hill, for in the distance was a purple line of jagged mountains lo
oming high above them. “We're going there?” he asked.
Behind him Nul grunted, “See the tallest? There, a little to the left. That Whitehorn. Castle up at peak. Can't see now, too far.”
“We've got to climb that?” Jeremy asked.
Nul sighed. “Too slow. Little faster now. We late.”
Jeremy thought of more evil “things” coming back, perhaps angry. He flicked the reins and Whisper picked up her pace a little. Looking ahead, Jeremy despaired. He didn't see how they could possibly reach the peak of Whitehorn in less than a week, if that. And—he shifted his weight again—by that time he expected to be dead of terminal saddle sores.
He felt a little better by midday. The lane had become a road, hard-packed and well-tended, and somehow they seemed to make much better progress than he could have predicted. Already they were on the flanks of the great mountain, going upward. At first they rode under boughs of evergreens, but the trees became sparser and stunted, and by midafternoon, they had left the last of them behind. Above were bare rock and snow, and at the crown of the snow they now could see the yellow walls and turrets of a fortress. “Home,” Nul muttered.
At a bend in the road Jeremy looked back the way they had come, across a broad valley, watered by a wide, shallow river that rushed and chuckled over timeworn stones. “How can we be going this fast?” he asked Nul. “It must be miles across—” He fell silent for a moment. “An enchantment on the road?” he guessed.
“Tremien is a powerful mage,” Nul told him. “Hard to put magic into small object. Harder to put magic in large one. Think of this: whole valley around mountain is magical. Tremien magicked it, put good speed there for friends, put peace, put healing. You still hurt?”
“Of course I—hmm. No. No, I guess I don't.”
“Tremien.”
Whisper didn't tire at all. Indeed, if anything, she picked her feet up a little higher as the road wound and climbed. The road remained clear of snow, even when it heaped up cold and white chin-high on either side of them, even when it piled even deeper and they rode between blue-shadowed ramparts of snow that frosted their breath and stung their noses. For what seemed a long time they rode blind. Then the walls fell away and they came out on a high plateau. Again Jeremy looked back, and he caught his breath. Far off to the left the red sun balanced on the rim of the world. Between it and the mountain fields rolled, and little hills, and rivers snaked, bloodied by the dying sun. The air was achingly clear up here, and to Jeremy it seemed he could see forever. The bleakness of the winter landscape, and the forbidding beauty, made him shiver.
Moon Dreams (The Jeremy Moon Trilogy Book 1) Page 12