In various crates she found an unlikely assortment of oddments: a broken spindle, a very bad poem, a sock, a curling lock of hair, several pewter spoons, a mouse nest. Having crawled entirely under the bed now, she found a last box, so heavy she could scarcely drag it out. By the light of the one unwashed window, she saw the dirt-stained wood and brass strapping that were nearly black with age. But there were handprints in the dust and bright new scratches in the escutcheon. Jareth had tried to force the lock, but he had failed. The snake poison would not be there.
Seth’s hand, the one with which she had grasped the box’s brass handle, was feeling peculiar, as though it had brushed across nettles. But the sensation was fading, and she fought back a rush of panic. She was not poisoned. But what was that sensation, and why did it seem so familiar? Was it earth magic? She ran her hand across the band of brass that reinforced the box’s hinged lid and felt the indentations of stamp marks. She blew away the dust and peered at the marks in the dim light. They looked like glyphs.
She had spent too much time here already. When she came back, if Jareth was gone by then, she would investigate this box further. She shoved everything back under the bed. The room looked no different than it had before. If Jareth had hidden poison somewhere else in this junk, it would take hours to find.
She heard voices in the distance and hastily left the room. As she crept down the stairs, the loud conversation turned to shouts, then a crash.
Seth ran the last few steps to the kitchen. There two chairs had been overturned, and Jareth, breeches smoking, was being hauled out of the big fireplace. Someone had apparently tossed a bucket of water onto the fire, and ashes floated everywhere. Damon was pinned into a corner by two mothers with shrieking babies in the crooks of their elbows. Old Sarna threatened the soldier with a gigantic porridge spoon. Mama had picked up a knife.
Seth said, “Damon, you promised you wouldn’t get into any arguments.”
“He called my mother a whore,” said Damon, sullen as a rebellious child.
Seth said to Jareth, “You did? Well you deserved it, then.”
Two people were brushing away cinders and tutting over the holes burnt in Jareth’s clothing. “I’m fine,” he said. “Leave me alone.”
Mama put down the knife on the table. “Seth, aren’t you ready to leave yet?”
Seth picked up Damon’s satchel and shouldered her own. Damon edged past the squalling babies and the upraised porridge spoon. He took the satchel from Seth, and she pulled him out the door into the sunshine. The ruckus had drawn people out of the vegetable garden to stand uncertainly near the house, rubbing dirt from their hands. Several dogs had also appeared. “It’s nothing,” Seth told this audience. She dragged Damon away by the arm before anyone could notice he was holding his breath to keep from laughing.
“Twisted his ankle, he said,” said Damon when they were well down the cart track. “I stopped him.”
“Did you have to push him into the fireplace? You should have cracked his skull with an iron pot instead.”
“Oh, Seth! I thought you were angry at me!”
“I couldn’t find his poison,” she said glumly.
“Maybe it is burned now.”
“I doubt that. I guess he came back so he could see us leave with his own eyes.”
Grinning, Damon tucked his hand into the crook of her elbow. “Now we retreat, eh, Captain?”
Their retreat ended at Ten-Furlong Farm, where Damon stopped short at his first sight of the cultivated fields. “But this is no cow farm!”
The furrows curved gently, following the undulations of the sloped hillsides. A line of bowed figures bearing baskets of seedlings to be planted stepped and stooped in cadence with each other—they certainly were singing, though they were too far away to hear. Closer by, a field of scarlet flowers was in full bloom. Damon gazed at this field in astonished silence, eyes wide open as though to see better. “But what do these farmers eat?” he finally asked.
“Flowers,” Seth said, laughing. “For that’s all they grow.”
“Why no cows?”
“They have no cow dogs, so they have no cows.”
“How have they no cow dogs?”
“It’s said that long ago the Ten-Furlong farmers killed their own dogs.”
“And no remembering why.”
“I’m afraid not.”
The Ten-Furlong family always found it difficult to gather new family members and were happy for the extra help in this busy season. They didn’t care that Damon was a soldier, and one of the farm wives even took a quick liking to him and kept him company in the room above Seth’s, where she could hear the bed scraping and thumping at all hours of the night. Damon, at first merely surprised, became confused, then dazed, and then happy. Seth had thought he was already happy, but this was a different thing entirely.
“That young man likes his flowers,” an elder commented to Seth over breakfast. “He knows many, also: Nasturtium, Red-Seal, Flowering Pea, Strawberry Up-Tuck . . .”
He named each flower with relish, and his list continued like a love ballad, through porridge and toast and a fresh pot of tea. Through the open window Seth could hear the remote cry of a falcon, the cackle of chickens, and the soft sigh of a breeze. Then she heard laughter as Damon and his new lover distracted each other from the work of turning soil in the vegetable garden. Seth said, “All soldiers seem to love flowers.”
“I keep forgetting he’s a soldier. Must he return to Watfield with you?”
Seth had been wondering about that herself. Could she leave Damon here? He surely would want to stay. Had she inadvertently brought him to the exact place he belonged, or would he eventually start longing for his bunkmates? Did he even realize he was being tested as a possible husband?
She finally said, “When I go back to High Meadow in a couple of days, I’ll leave Damon here to see how he manages without me. When I come back, I’ll ask him what he wants to do. I think I could let him stay for the summer. In Watfield he’s just one of five hundred soldiers, and no one needs him.”
The day before she was to leave, Seth carried the midday meal to a flower field where Damon, with several others, was hoeing weeds and even tying young vines to trellises, for he was deft with his maimed hand. His shirt was sweat-stained, his face dirt-smeared, and his shorn hair covered by a white head-cloth. His back was even starting to bend.
They all sat on the rough stone wall that edged the field and started sharing out the food. “You are quiet,” Damon commented.
“I was thinking how I’d miss your company. Then I though what a marvel it would be, to come back for your wedding.”
She had thought Damon would be startled by this possibility, but it seemed his lover had already mentioned it. “I am not a good soldier,” he said with a grin.
“Well, I hope that you’re only the first. Maybe the Peace Committee will become matchmakers.”
Damon began telling Seth about the flowering peas, which were a unique variety grown only on this farm, that was much sought after for the vividly colored flowers. “But when people on other farms save their seed, the colors fade from year to year, until they are only pale pink. Why do they do that?”
Everyone within hearing engaged in a lengthy discussion of the importance of keeping a unique variety pure, which led to Damon’s exclamation, “And that is why Ten-Furlong Farm grows no common peas in the vegetable garden!”
“We’ll make a flower farmer of you, sure enough,” someone said.
Seth began to say something but stopped short with surprise at the sound of a dog’s bark.
The flower farmers were so astonished that some jumped to their feet to peer southwestward, where the sound had come from. It had been a peddler’s dog, some said. Others said it could have been a fox.
Seth said, “I
’d swear that was a High Meadow cow dog.”
“But it’s impossible!”
Damon was standing beside her, tensely alert, a soldier again.
At the sound of another imperative, impatient bark, Seth shouted, “Come!” In a few moments, a group of four panting cow dogs came into sight, and the flower farmers cried out with surprise. But Seth could not utter another sound. The chief dog, leading the group, carried a limp black corpse in his mouth. He raced up to Seth and dropped the dead raven at her feet.
“I must go home at once!” Seth cried.
“I will fetch our gear.” Damon started for the house at a run. His lover followed, breathlessly asking plaintive questions.
The dogs all fell to the ground, scarlet tongues lolling, chests working like bellows. Seth picked up the water jug and went from one dog to the next, dribbling water onto their lapping tongues. Cow dogs were sturdy and agile, but their bodies were not shaped for running. Still, the chief dog had chosen young, vigorous dogs as his companions, and Seth’s quick examination revealed that they were tired and hot, but not injured. The farmers gave the dogs the meals they had been about to eat.
Seth examined the raven, then cut it open with her work knife. The bird had died of a broken neck. She sat back on her heels and looked around at the befuddled flower farmers. “Someone has killed a G’deon’s raven.”
“On purpose?” asked one stupidly, while others gasped.
“Of course it was on purpose,” said another. “Everyone knows not to kill or harm any raven!”
“Even the dogs know.”
The farmers’ confusion turned to sober astonishment, and then to outrage. “That’s the same as murder!”
“Or assassination,” said Seth. She wrapped the raven’s body in a sweat-stained head-cloth and the farmers buried it under a tree. Damon returned with the knapsacks and kissed his miserable lover farewell. The woman had managed to tie a small love-knot in his short-cropped hair.
“I hope you told her you would return,” said Seth, after the two of them had been walking for a while, with the tired dogs trailing behind them.
“A risky promise, Seth. I did not say it.”
It was evening when they reached the boundary of High Meadow Farm and were greeted there by the rest of the dog pack. Seth found the dogs’ ordinary enthusiasm reassuring. The farmstead seemed as always. The cows were being milked in the barn; shirtless people were washing off the mud and dousing each other with water by the well. Homely kitchen sounds and smells came from the propped-open kitchen windows. In the bright parlor, many of the adults had gathered as usual to wait for supper. But as Seth stepped in and was greeted with surprise, she sensed an unusual tension. “The chief dog came to Ten-Furlong Farm to fetch me here,” she said.
Then, of course, people must exclaim at and discuss the extraordinary behavior of the dogs. Everyone thought the dogs were not even capable of crossing farm boundaries. But when Sarna began to tell a rambling dog story, Seth could not restrain herself. “I am in a hurry! Where is that visitor, Jareth?”
Mama, approaching Seth and Damon with cups of tea, said, “Oh, he’s gone. He left in the dark of night, apparently. So put down your things and have a cup.”
“In dark of night?” said Seth.
“What did he steal?” asked Damon.
They gave Damon a startled look, then one said in a disgusted tone, “We just noticed the donkey is gone.”
“But Jareth had no reason to take the donkey,” declared another. He was one of Jareth’s friends, Seth supposed. “The donkey just wandered off, probably.”
“He could sell it.”
“A tired old animal like that?”
“The donkey just wandered off, I tell you.”
This must have been the argument Seth and Damon had interrupted, an argument fueled as much by hurt feelings and embarrassment as it was by desire to understand the event or to make a decision. Seth touched Damon’s arm and murmured in his ear, “I’m afraid this is my family at its worst. Everyone trying to be right for wrong reasons.”
“They need a senior officer, Captain Seth.”
“How did you know Jareth had stolen the donkey?”
“Because he sneaked away.” Damon paused. “Donkeys carry things. He took something else, something heavy.”
“Shit!”
The room fell silent at the sound of this barn curse, which was never to be uttered indoors. “Seth!” Mama hissed.
“Jareth stole a box that was under his bed. I’m sure of it. It was a locked wooden box, marked with glyphs.”
A couple of people went upstairs to check. Mama, who was still holding the mugs of tea, thrust one rather violently into Seth’s hand. “If you won’t set down your burdens—”
“Mama, we have to leave almost immediately. Do you know anything about that box? It must have been there forever.”
Mama, having also given Damon his cup, stood back with her fists on her hips. “What haven’t you told your own family, Mariseth?”
For a moment Seth felt like a little girl being chastised. But it would not do. Damon was right: an officer was needed here, and, like it or not, that person was her. She raised her voice so it would carry over the bickering. “Didn’t the dogs tell you which way Jareth went?”
“They were barking down by the southern boundary in the middle of the night,” admitted one.
“I heard it, too. I thought it was that fox again.”
The two people came back downstairs to announce that there was no locked wooden box under the guest bed.
Mama said, “I do remember a box like that. A long time ago, before you were even born, Seth, we had a bad leak in the roof and had to empty the entire attic. All of us puzzled over that box. We tried all the keys in the basket but couldn’t unlock it. Some people were all for knocking apart the hinges. But in the end we just put it back where we found it.”
The farm itself was hundreds of years old. The box could be that old, also. “I should have taken the box when I realized Jareth had been interested in it. But I was looking for his snake poison, the same poison that his friends used to attack the G’deon.”
The room fell silent. Mama abruptly sat down. “Jareth was one of those people? And you didn’t tell us?”
“I couldn’t. But now he has killed the G’deon’s raven that was following him, and we’re going to lose him again. Now do you understand?”
They looked as if they could continue to demand explanations all night. Seth gave Damon’s sleeve a tug. “Let’s go.”
A number of dogs went with Damon and Seth into the marshland and were soon leading the way, their white hindquarters easily visibly in the starlight. Seth, though still unsettled by the dogs’ secret ability to cross farm boundaries, appreciated that escort. The marshland was not easy to negotiate even in full daylight, but the dogs never took them off the dry path. Then, at dawn, the dogs barked to draw Seth’s attention and snuffled in the hoofprints that were quite visible in the sideways sunlight.
The dogs went home, and Seth and Damon followed the tracks directly into the tangled wilderness.
The next day, they caught their first glimpse of the sea.
Chapter 26
Zanja spread a blanket on the dry remains of last year’s heather and sat on this crackling, lumpy mattress under the open sky. The blasted landscape of the Barrens seemed ablaze, but it was just the light from a brilliant sunset. Among stones of unrelenting black, Zanja felt that she had wandered into a vast coal fire. From dawn to dusk a heat shimmer had blurred the horizon, and she could see neither her back trail nor her destination. She had been lucky to find a pool of sweet water, but her last meal, provided by a friendly ferryman who had carried her to the south bank of the Corber, had been eaten two days ago. She would have to endure yet another com
fortless night.
Her involuntary travel companion, a donkey she had stolen from a poor farmstead outside Kisha, was scavenging for greenery in the fading light. He had borne the monstrous book with reluctance as she fled through pathless wilderness, first north, hoping to mislead her pursuers into concluding she had taken refuge in the northern borderlands, then east, then south. When she finally reached Shimasal, a bland market town, she half expected that a company of Paladins would be looking for her there. But she aroused no more interest than usual.
In Shimasal she asked the glyph cards a direct question: should she go east, to the water tribe that lived near the mouth of the Aerin River? Or should she continue south, towards the shattered coastline and the place called Secret? She wanted to go west, for it would be a much shorter journey and she could avoid passing the House of Lilterwess. The glyph cards told her to go south, though. Now she had nearly reached Basdown without seeing any pursuit and could only hope that Tadwell was no longer there. Once news of the theft and the rogue Paladin reached him, she might as well surrender.
The stolen lexicon, the cause of her trouble, lay on the blanket beside her. She opened it carefully and lost herself in examining an illustration. The foreground and the background of the picture were so entangled it was difficult to distinguish the dog leaping across its center. Around it were intertwined images of other animals, wild and domestic, among trees, grasses, ponds, grasslands, and townhouses with upcurved rooflines like those in a garrison. The animals were as odd and fantastic as those Zanja had glimpsed in the fresco of the library vault. The cows were spotted, the lion was striped, the birds were blue; even the plants and trees looked like nothing she had seen. The chaotic illustration had too much vitality: Zanja could not take in the whole, could not think of how it made any sense. She struggled with it until dark, and then shut the book. The donkey had already lain down to sleep. So did she—but her stomach ached, the inexplicable illustration haunted her, and the twigs of her mattress dug into her back. She turned restlessly, exhausted and frustrated.
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