Glory didn't even try to get back to sleep after that. She pulled on her jeans and her sneakers and her sweatshirt and sat in the doorway of the wagon, her feet on the ground, clutching Gordon and doing her best to deal, as Christina might have put it.
This hallucinatory world was still here, and she was still in it. Her faint hopes of waking up back in her own life were gone. She was stuck here for the duration, and the Allimir's problems seemed somehow more immediate now than they had before she'd seen the slaughtered stallion. She was going to have to solve them—or someone was, and the Allimir didn't look like being the ones to do it.
Item: they'd gone looking for a hero to save them from a bogeyman who'd taken down their entire civilization and was now hunting them slowly to extinction—horse by horse, if tonight's attack was any clue. Helevrin had said She was toying with them. Glory'd discounted that as empty rhetoric at the time, but it seemed more reasonable now. And that meant their monster was a smart monster, able to think and plan and not gulp its pleasures.
That wasn't good.
Item: the Allimir mages had gone looking for a hero to slay their monster, and had come up dry. They'd come to her. She'd explained their mistake (where had Englor gotten a copy of the Cox book anyway?) and they'd been going to leave without her, only something had gone wrong with that and she'd ended up back here with them by accident. After all she'd seen, Glory couldn't believe they'd lied to her about that. She didn't think the Allimir could lie, any more than they seemed to be able to stand up for themselves.
And that was odd, wasn't it? But she didn't have enough information to give the matter proper consideration, and there were a lot of other things that seemed much more important right now—like Belegir's plan to take her to the Oracle (whatever that was) to find out what to do next.
He'd said—or at least implied—that this Oracle had the power to send her home, which would probably be best all round, but she wasn't completely comfortable with the notion. She was the Allimir's last hope. They'd been really clear about that. And while she wasn't much of a hero, they were obviously doing a piss-poor job of coping on their own.
Around her, in the predawn darkness, the encampment slowly roused to greet a new day. She could hear the murmur of low voices from the nearer wagons as the word of this latest disaster spread, and listlessly the Allimir drifted together, clustering around their central fire.
"Slayer, are you all right?" Englor asked.
Glory yelped. He'd come around the back of the vardo, quiet as mice, and she hadn't seen him. He jumped back, gazing around himself wildly for the source of her distress.
"I was," she growled. It was Vixen again—Vixen's attitude, Vixen's dialogue—and Glory cringed inwardly. Being Vixen felt too much like lying, and she didn't want to lie to these people.
"I brought you something to drink." In each hand, he held one of the leather quart-jacks. Steam rose from them. She took one and sipped cautiously. Hot spiced beer. Not bad, though not what she'd choose to replace morning coffee with.
"You were so brave," Englor said sighing happily. "It was just like something out of one of the Unofficial Journeys."
Glory shook her head. "You do know that everything in that book of yours isn't real, don't you, mate? It's all made-up?"
Englor regarded her tolerantly. "The Prophecies of Cinnas tell us that every story, no matter how seemingly fabricated, is yet woven around a kernel of essential truth. And I have seen you rush valiantly forth into the darkness to do battle against an unknown foe. You would have remonstrated with Her."
I would have been dead, Glory thought.
"And you have a sword," Englor added, as if that were a deciding factor.
"And you don't?"
"Oh, no." Englor sounded horrified and intrigued at the same time. "Swords are instruments of war and aggression, tempting people to try to solve disputes by force. Violence never solved anything."
"It certainly solved the question of what that bloody nag was going to be doing come Saturday night, I reckon," Glory growled. "Englor, this doesn't make sense. You keep going on about how you are a harmless gentle people who abhor violence. You don't have a single weapon in this entire camp so far as I've seen. But you came looking for me, because you reckon I'm—" A homicidal maniac with poor impulse control, that's what he thinks. "Well, anyway. You came looking for someone to be violent for you. Isn't that a little—" Hypocritical? "—inconsistent?"
"We sought a hero because we have lost the arts of war and cannot learn them," Englor said sadly. "Without a hero, we will all die."
Glory sighed and took another swig of her drink. The sky was starting to lighten. The sun would be up in a few hours. Then they could start trying to get the animals back.
"And there wasn't anyone local you could call?"
"Serenthodial belongs to the Allimir, from the Hilvorn to the Carormanda," Englor said, as if that were an explanation. Glory sighed again. The trouble with having a meaningful conversation with any of these people was that you couldn't. They took their world for granted, and any time she wanted to know something, she had to cross-examine one of them. It was a pain in the ass.
"So what do you know about this Oracle?" she said at last.
Englor smiled, obviously happy to tell her everything he knew. "The Oracle of Erchane is revered throughout the land. Even we mages bow to the wisdom of the Oracle of Erchane. Since before time began the Oracle has served the Allimir."
"Nice, but a bit vague," Glory said. "But what is it? Have you ever been there? What do you see?"
"Indeed I have been there. Every child of the Allimir visits the Oracle before his tenth birthday, to see what path his life should take. By the Oracle's grace, I became a mage, bound to the study of the Prophecies, and so served many years within the Temple as well."
"Um." Glory thought that over. "But what if you hadn't wanted to become a mage?"
Englor stared at her, with the blank expression she was coming to know too well. "But why would the Oracle tell me to do something I didn't want to do?" he finally said.
Right.
"Tell me about being a mage," she asked, trying again. "I guess you've got to be a pretty bright lad to manage that, hey?"
"There can be only three," Englor said proudly. "It takes years of study to master the Prophecies and understand all the signs and portents, so that all we do is in accordance with Erchane's will. Until Fadril died, I was Belegir's apprentice, because of course we all thought he would die first. Aldien was Helevrin's apprentice, but he . . ." There was a long pause. "He was in Drathil the night She came," Englor whispered.
Glory reached out and patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. Every time she started thinking of these people as the inhabitants of some kind of weird sitcom, something like this happened. No matter how peculiar they were, they felt pain. They grieved.
"I'm sorry," she said.
Englor bowed his head, then looked up, smiling through his tears. "But now we have hope once more. You have come. You will hunt Her and save us all—just as you saved Queen Elizabeth from the werewolf!"
"I didn't—"
"I know," Englor said, smiling gently and holding up his hand. "They are only stories. But every story contains a grain of truth. Ay reckon this one does too," he added, in a fair approximation of her nasal Melbourne accent.
"I reckon," Glory echoed. "Look, if I'm going somewhere today, I'd better get dressed. Thanks for the beer, mate." She handed him the empty mug and fled to the safety of her wagon, closing the door behind her.
It was dark inside the vardo, though the light of dawn was seeping through the chinks in the closed shutters. She bundled the bedding up off the floor, and found that the bed-benches folded back. With three of them pegged out of the way and the fourth holding the bed-gear, she had a little more room to maneuver. She groped for the hanging lantern in the middle of the ceiling—she'd rung her head on it more than once the night before—and took it down, setting it atop the tall chest at the front wall, next to her purse and tote-bag. She rummaged around in her purse, locating first a flashlight key-card and then a disposable lighter, both stamped with the show logo. After a few tries, she got the lantern lit, then sat down on the remaining bench.
What am I supposed to do? What in God's name am I supposed to do?
She hadn't felt this inadequate in years. You trained for years for the Games, but once you got there, you had one chance to do your best, and a thousand bad-luck things might happen. In television there was a different kind of pressure: you got as many tries as you needed to get it right—or nearly—but each try cost money, and there was so many peoples' livelihood riding on one person's ability that every failure hurt.
This was like an unholy amalgam of both. Everything was riding on what she did. And there was one chance to get it right, and no ground rules.
That isn't true. That can't be true. I wouldn't be here if that were true, she told herself desperately.
No matter that the Allimir mages had made an error in contacting her in the first place, the fact remained that a power greater than theirs had brought her here. Important Great Powers didn't make wrong choices of that magnitude (she hoped), so either they'd picked the right person for the job, or the job itself wasn't so much of a muchness. Left to herself, Glory would happily have chosen Option B—but she thought about the flayed stallion again, and shuddered. No matter that she thought the Allimir twitchy and sometimes outright weird: there was some sort of monstrous monster out there on the plains of Serenthodial the Golden.
But was there? Maybe it was disease. Maybe it was underachieving army ants. Maybe. . . .
It was almost a relief when Belegir finally knocked on the door.
"Slayer? Are you within?"
Glory opened the door, wincing slightly at the dawn light. Belegir was standing there in his long pink robe, looking very much as if he hadn't slept for the last several years.
"Wozzer?"
"We must depart now for the Oracle, if we are to reach it before nightfall," Belegir said. He regarded her civilian clothes dubiously.
"Right." She could take a hint. "I'll change."
She closed the door again and picked up her armor.
Getting kitted out had all the charm of trying to put on a diving suit in a phone booth, but she managed. She rolled up her jeans, T-shirt, and sweatshirt into a tight wad, preparing to stuff them into the tote-bag duffle, and hesitated. Something was missing.
The makeup. The painted mask that turned her from Glory McArdle, ordinary person, into the hieratic Vixen, scourge of evildoers. It was silly, but she just didn't feel like Vixen without the war paint. And though it felt very much like unlawful impersonation, she suspected the best thing all round was to at least seem to be the hero they'd ordered. She set the clothing aside and rummaged in her bag again.
The pancake went on in a few swipes, covering plain Glory McArdle's pale-gold freckles. Then mascara, the soft kohl crayon around her eyes, then more mascara. Last of all, a good slather of blood-red lipstick. It was hard to manage with the tiny mirror and the dim light, but she'd done this so many times over the past months that it was almost second nature now. As she worked, she felt the Vixen persona settle into place, a soothing ghost.
When she was finished, she bared her teeth at the compact mirror and admired the effect before stowing everything away all right and tight. She stuffed everything into the tote, slung the bag over her shoulder, and picked up Gordon and her sword.
"Easy money," she muttered under her breath, and pushed open the door.
Belegir was still patiently waiting.
She stepped down onto the grass and looked around, then swung her sword up over her shoulder and into its sheath with a practiced flourish. It had taken her and Bruce, the swordmaster, hours to perfect that little gesture, but she had to admit it was damned impressive.
"Where's everyone else?" she asked. Belegir looked blank. "The rest of the people going to the Oracle—you know, the armed escort?"
Considering how terrified they all were of the Warmother, she'd thought Belegir would be bringing the biggest army he could field, or at least bringing his co-Mages Englor and Helevrin.
"It is only we two," Belegir explained. "The others remain to aid our people. We have no 'armed escort' to offer you, Slayer. The Allimir are a peaceful people—"
"Etcetera, etcetera, and so forth," Glory finished. "Yeah, I get it. So how are we getting there? We walk?"
"The others are bringing in the animals now. Come, I will show you."
Belegir led her to the edge of the camp. Most of the Allimir, children included, were gathered there, gazing out at the plain. Those who still had horses were holding fast to their manes; the others carried the simple riding tack of the Allimir. Glory looked, but didn't see the dead stallion's body anywhere, and made a mental note to refuse any stew she was offered this morning.
Early morning mist still hung over the grass, and the sky was the palest blue of dawn. She was warm and comfortable beneath her leather, and chilly everywhere else—later in the day, the situation would be reversed, and she'd be glad then of her sweatshirt, odd as it might look with Elizabethan S&M leather.
Helevrin and Englor stood about a hundred yards away from the camp, also facing outward toward the plains. They held their hands before them, heads bowed as if they were looking at something.
It was close to full light now, and so Glory could see—beyond the two mages, on the perfect flatness of the vast Serenthodial—scattered dots: the routed livestock of the Allimir.
"They use the Calling Tools to bring the flocks and herds back to them. It is Erchane's gift to the Allimir from ancient times, held in safekeeping by the Oracle against necessity such as this. Never did I think they would be required again."
"Good thing you lot don't throw anything out," Glory commented absently. She craned her neck, trying to see what they were doing. Just as she thought nothing was going to happen, she began to see that the dots on the horizon were moving—toward the mages.
The dogs arrived first, bounding up to the two mages, brisking and fawning, pink tongues lolling, but came away quickly as their owners whistled for them. A couple of them stopped to investigate Glory and Belegir in a quick professional way, before returning to their masters.
Next came the ponies, trotting along as briskly as if someone were rattling an invisible oat-pan. As they clustered about the mages, nuzzling and pawing the ground, the herdsmen sent the horse-dogs out with a volley of whistles. The dogs quickly bunched the horses and began moving them away from the two mages. The mounted Allimir rode up to help, cutting out mounts and bringing them back to their brethren afoot. Soon all of the herd-riders were mounted. They rode out, dogs at their heels, toward the other beasts still drifting toward the mages' call.
It was all accomplished with a minimum of fuss. Whatever else might be true of the Allimir, they weren't afraid of a little hard work.
"What happens now?" Glory asked, impressed in spite of herself.
"Ivradan will bring us horses, so that we may depart. Helevrin and Englor will Call until the herds are re-gathered. Once the oxen have returned, the wagons can move—perhaps tomorrow, as the beasts will be exhausted from their flight. And we will see what stock survives."
Belegir sighed. "I fear we have lost many to this night's work. Even if She has not slain them, there are many deaths that roam Serenthodial the Golden. The wolf and the lion grow fat upon our misfortune." He shook his head, rousing himself from his melancholy with a visible effort. "I shall miss Helevrin and Englor. They will go from here as soon as they can, to return to the other camps of our people. We dare not stay together—it would be too easy for Her to slay us all with one blow, and in these dark times that would be a perilous loss, for Helevrin's apprentice is but a child, and was to have stayed safe at the Oracle for many summers yet—and I do not know where an apprentice for Englor may be found, now that we may not approach the Oracle as we once did."
Glory was surprised to realize how much she'd miss Englor and his weird combination of pragmatism and starry-eyed hero-worship. She guessed the three of them had only gotten together to go looking for a hero. She wondered what the other two would tell the rest of the Allimir when they caught up with them.
"I'd like to take a closer look at this magic of yours," Glory said. Belegir motioned her forward.
When she reached them, Glory could see that each of the mages was holding a faceted crystal sphere. The gems glowed with the same violet light that Glory remembered from the crystal that had topped Belegir's staff.
"Where do those come from?" she asked Belegir.
The pink mage looked uncomfortable, as if she'd touched on a sensitive issue. "Erchane sends them at our need."
"Hm." Another conversational dead end. "So what else do they do?" She had a vague idea in the back of her mind that this stuff might prove useful later on—but only if she knew what it did.
"These are for Calling only. There are others for other purposes—to tell the weather, to find water, to light a fire. They are the masterworks of generations of mages, all stored up against a time of great need."
Like now.
"Don't any of them do anything useful?"
"All these things are useful," Belegir said in surprise. "Why would someone take Erchane's gifts to make that which was not useful?"
Glory sighed. "But maybe there are some that would be more useful right now. Like something that could fling a lightning bolt, say."
Belegir regarded her with a mixture of distaste and admiration. "But such things would be dangerous. Their use could lead to destruction and war."
"Like you don't have that going on now," Glory muttered under her breath. She glanced sideways at the other two mages, but each seemed to be rapt in concentration on their crystals. "Oh, well. Just a thought."
"Let us go back," Belegir urged. "Ivradan will have made all ready for our journey. And we must arrive ere night falls."
Ivradan was waiting for them when they returned. Two dogs sat at his feet, pink tongues lolling happily. He had three ponies with him. Two were bridled and had thick fleece saddle-pads (Glory was relieved to see) on their backs. The third carried a wooden packsaddle, its contents an anonymous canvas-wrapped bundle, but had no bridle or leading-rein.
"These are Felba and Fimlas," Ivradan said, indicating the two riding horses. "They are brothers, and will wish to stay together. Marchiel will carry your supplies, and Kurfan will keep him honest." The dog looked up at the sound of his name. "You need carry nothing, Slayer, while Marchiel is here to do it for you."
He reached for her tote-bag, hefted it for weight, and expertly lashed it to the packhorse's load with plaited leather ropes. Glory realized she was still clutching Gordon, and reluctantly surrendered the stuffed elephant as well. Gordon looked incongruously gay perched atop the bundle on Marchiel's back.
"I will ride with you a little way," Ivradan added. "If it is permitted."
There was a pause, and Glory realized that both men were looking at her. "Oh, sure, ta very much, mate," she said quickly. It occurred to her to wonder just what Belegir had told his people. Last night he'd brought them a "hero," and today he was taking her away. But maybe the Allimir were as incurious as they were passive—Ivradan didn't ask questions, anyway.
Ivradan mounted his pony as Glory contemplated her own mount. Fimlas was a bit larger than the pony she'd ridden yesterday—probably one of the largest animals the Allimir had. It was still ludicrously undersized for its rider—about the size of a large Shetland pony—but there was nothing to be done about it. It was this or walk. She took a firm grip on its mane and bounced up onto its back.
She was relieved to note that either Fimlas was naturally quiet, or the night's exertions had taken the kinks out of his temper. He stood steady as a rock while she settled herself, whisking his scraggly black tail meditatively.
Seeing them both mounted, Ivradan clucked to his mount and moved off, one of the dogs at his side. The other horses followed. Kurfan circled back and encouraged the packhorse with a few growls and a rush at its heels. Apparently the Allimir ponies were used to such treatment, for Marchiel only seemed to sigh, and wandered sedately after the others.
The Allimir camp was small, its wagons seeming as if they were constructed on three-quarter scale, but Glory was uncomfortably surprised to realize how exposed she felt once they'd ridden away from them. As if she'd ventured from concealment into exposure, like a cockroach wandering across a kitchen table. Her nervousness embarrassed her—it was the height of un-Vixen-ishness. Her alter ego had no nerves to speak of, and was as phlegmatic as your average granite rock. Sister Bernadette had taken care of all of the screaming and marveling required, which had been a blessing to Glory's limited acting abilities.
But this wasn't television. This was reality, and she wasn't sure how to behave.
The day brightened into full color as they rode westward, the last of the mist vanishing from the long grass. The sun turned the sky violet, then to a blazing pink behind them (she looked) and then slowly began to ripen into a deep and limitless blue. Glory was relieved to find that the thick padded fleece beneath her made riding relatively comfortable, though she expected she'd still be sore come tomorrow. They rode through scattered livestock—goats, cattle, a few loitering horses, and several of the (now) placid, plodding oxen, all moving purposefully in the direction of the encampment. The dogs whined hopefully at the sight of so many things to chase, but not receiving any encouragement from the riders, continued following in the horses' footsteps.
When they had ridden a little way, Ivradan stopped.
"Here I must leave you," Ivradan said. "There is much work to be done to repair this latest incursion, but I do not envy you your part. Each of us has a task to perform—and may Erchane's grace defend you on your journey!" Setting heels to his mount, he sent it pelting back the way they'd come, wheeling in a wide arc toward a nearby clump of sheep. His dog put on a frantic burst of speed and circled wider, barking authoritatively. Between them, dog and rider managed to get the wooly beasts moving faster and in reasonably good order. The familiar sight woke a pang of homesickness in her.
Stupid beasts. I suppose this Call of the Allimir's needs a brain to work on, which means they'll be looking for the witless brutes until Kingdom Come, Glory thought sourly. Sheep weren't as stupid as cabbages, but just barely.
Kurfan woofed hopefully, looking after the sheep, but seemed to resign himself to the task at hand, encouraging Marchiel to close up with the two riders. Glory and Belegir rode on for a while in silence, until Glory finally broke it.
"You know I'm not a real hero," she said lamely. "You know I'll do what I can for you—but I'll need your help. You need to tell me about your world—what it's like. What I should expect. You can start with this Oracle of yours, for one. Why are we going there?"
Belegir thought carefully and hard before he answered. "The Oracle of Erchane first told us we must find a hero to save us—that was when Evesal was still alive to tend the shrine. I do not know how she survived as long as she did," he added musingly. "She moved quickly against any who might defy her."
Which seemed to leave Belegir and his mates right out, if truth be told.
"So this Evesal's dead now and there's nobody home. So why are we going there?" Glory asked. In her admittedly limited experience, oracles were run by collections of women in sheer draperies, who either read their prophecies out of dusty old books or made them up on the spot.
"The Oracle itself is undamaged, of course. Its magic remains. And perhaps it will explain why you are here and what we must do now," Belegir said, sounding hopeful.
Glory realized with a sudden sinking feeling that Belegir had no more idea of what to do in this situation than she did.
"And what if this Oracle of yours dummies up?" she asked.
"Do you think Erchane will withhold her grace from us?" Belegir asked, sounding so horrified that Glory hastened to assure him that no, nothing could be further from the case, of course she wouldn't. And Belegir believed her, which only made Glory want to scream louder as soon as the time for advanced screaming rolled around.
She tried a few more questions, but they all seemed to lead immediately into conversational dead ends. It wasn't that Belegir didn't want to help her in any way he could, it was just that he seemed so convinced that there was nothing he could do. Figuring out what was going on here was like trying to solve an Agatha Christie with half the pages missing, and doing the Sherlock wasn't something that Vixen would have done. Vixen never borrowed trouble—just waited for it to show up and hit it with her sword. Eventually Glory stopped prodding him.
The journey settled into a quiet rhythm—ride for an hour, walk the horses for a while, then ride again. At least the frequent dismounts kept her from stiffening up, though Glory knew she was going to be sore by tomorrow morning.
After a while she realized she was straining her ears to hear traffic noises, or the sounds of planes flying overhead, and that she wasn't going to hear either one. Except for the sound of the horses, the wind through the long grass, and the distant calls of unfamiliar birds, everything was quiet in a way that a truly inhabited place could never be. The only things in the sky were the black shapes of high-wheeling birds—hawks, she supposed, or eagles. Serenthodial stretched out around her like a sleeping golden lion, leading her eye toward a horizon as infinite as the ocean's. In the distance ahead, she could see the mountains towering skyward, their lower slopes clothed by the forest she'd come through only yesterday, though so many strange things had happened since then that it seemed a very long time ago.
At last they came to a road.
It was pounded earth, two wheel-ruts with a hummock of brittle dispirited grass running between. Its presence changed the scope of things immediately. Roads implied traffic to run on them, cities for them to run between, but this haunted land seemed to hold neither. Belegir turned his pony onto the road with a small grunt of approval.
"This will take us past Mechanayas. It is halfway to the Oracle and I believe that the well there is still good; we should stop there to eat and give the horses a longer rest."
Glory nodded without speaking.
The first sign they had of the village was the trees—orderly plantings of fruit trees, their branches full and heavy with bird-pecked autumn fruit. The ground at their roots was littered with windfalls that soured the ground, and the horses slowed, nosing among the bounty. Even Kurfan gave one of the apples an experimental bite. Glory dismounted and stood, stretching, looking around.
Beyond the orchards were a series of patchwork gardens, the earth straggly with the green leaves of plantings untended for many seasons and intermixed with the tall stalks of opportunistic weeds. The poles set in the middle of some of the gardens leaned crazily in the buckled earth. Some of the whirligigs of folded paper that had been tied there as scare-crows still dangled from them, drab and draggled by the rains.
Surrounding the garden plots were a series of low stone walls, no more than two feet high, and as Glory's eyes adjusted, she could see that in many places the walls were buckled and charred. Here and there half a brick wall stood, or some tumbled timbers, and Glory realized that some of the "walls" were the foundations of buildings, and that there had once been a large and prosperous village here, now gone.
She wanted to ask where the village was, but that would be trivial and stupid. Her eyes could tell her where the village was. It was here, all that was left of it. It was just that part of her hoped that by asking the question she'd get a different answer than what she knew to be the truth.
She didn't understand at first why so many of the gardens had been dug up and replaced with neat tamped mounds over which weeds and grass ran anarchic riot, but it was only a moment before she saw the place where a pit had been dug and not refilled. These were graves, all of them, mass graves, dug to house too many dead. The Allimir of Mechanayas had been laid to rest in their own gardens.
She left her horse to browse among the apples, and walked through the orchard toward the village beyond. She did not look back to see if Belegir followed. She did not walk over the mounded gardens, or near the last still-open grave. She had no desire to see what it contained, nor to know why its dead remained unburied.
The sun was warm on her back, illuminating the landscape with a shadowless noontide glare. Much of the village had burned, it was true, but as much more looked as if it had been simply blasted out of existence. One building was nothing more than a spray of bricks scattered on the ground, as if some giant had just come along and shoved it over. From what she could see and imagine, Mechanayas looked as if it had started life as one of those doll-sized ideal English villages that Anne-Marie liked to collect. Everything was built to Allimir scale, giving the remains of the tidy little houses around her the air of having been built for hobbits. Dead hobbits.
A sudden movement startled her, and she squealed and jerked in surprise, but it turned out to be only a lean and suspicious chicken startled into flight by her presence. The Allimir had gone to their gardens, but it seemed their livestock had been left behind, to fend for itself as best it could. Those wary and clever chickens that had survived seasons of freedom and predators still haunted their ancestral homes.
Here and there some things remained, untouched by what had slain Mechanayas. A gate in a stone wall, carved and painted blue. A tile stove, half-sunk into the earth and surrounded by poppies, with no sign of the house that should have contained it. A building's interior wall, the exposed beams shaped and polished, the small-paned window of colored glass, unbroken in its painted carven frame, casting pools of green and blue, gold and red, upon the weeds that grew up through the stones of the floor.
She kept seeing movement out of the corner of her eye, but every time she turned it was gone. Trick of the light? More chickens? Survivors? She stopped and listened, but heard nothing other than scraps of birdsong and the whistle of wind over the stone. After a pause, she walked on.
The Allimir village had been built along medieval lines, with what must once have been shops and houses set around a town commons with a well and a watering trough beside it. Unconsciously she'd expected the destruction to get worse the closer she got to the center of the village, but instead there were more partially intact houses—as if whatever had come for the villagers had worked its way inward—and the central green itself was untouched, though the grass had gone weed-choked and yellow. There was a tree growing beside the well—an enormous tree, of village smithy proportions. It looked enough like an oak to be one, and its bark, as far as she could reach, was smoothed and polished by generations of caressing hands.
Again Glory had the creepy sense of being watched and measured, but saw nothing. She certainly had nothing to fear from the Allimir, if Belegir and the others were any indication, and if there were anything in all the Land of Erchanen capable of even using harsh language in an adversarial situation, Belegir would certainly already have enlisted it in the fight to save his people.
She turned back to the well. Belegir said they'd need to water the horses here. She might as well see what kind of effort that was going to take.
To her surprise, the well was pump-driven rather than bucket-and-windlass, though if you wrestled the wooden cover off the well, you could probably get a bucket down it. She did pull the cover off before she started pumping—no point in going to all that work for foul water—but when she'd dragged the heavy lid from the wellhead and leaned in, all she could smell was moss and wet stone. She picked up an acorn from the ground and dropped it in. It fell for several seconds before she heard a faint plash.
So there was water down there, and odds were it was drinkable. Now to get it out. She turned to the pump. The handle had slipped free and was lying in the weeds. After a little trouble she located it and slipped it into place.
The rusty, iron-bound wood gritted against her hands as she worked the pump-handle up and down, wondering how long it had been since water had flowed through these underground pipes. Finally, thick black sludge began to ooze from the spout, splatting into the hollowed stone catch-trough. The bottom of the trough was covered with dried ooze, and windblown seeds had taken root only to die. In a few more generations, some chance-flung acorn would grow up through the stone, breaking it into anonymous bits and crumbling it away to sand, just as every stone and timber of this village would crumble. And then nothing would remain but the endless golden grassland and the wild herds of animals that had once been tame.
The image was eerie, apocalyptic yet strangely mesmerizing. Not with a bang, but with a whimper, hey?
Finally the water came, stuttering and spraying in a frigid rainbow mist from the half-clogged spout, propelled by gouts of bright clear water that even smelled cold. Glory ducked her head under it, forgetting her makeup and her public persona for one shining moment, and reveled in the shock of cold. She pumped until the trough ran over, knowing that next time—would there be a next time?—it would be that much easier to start the water coming, and then went to duck her face and head in the filled trough. No Wardrobe wrangler stood over her worrying about the safety of the precious leather costume, no Makeup artist stood ready to repaint her face while some hairdresser stood by to make her pretty for the money shot. It was just . . .
Real.
No retakes, no second chances, no script. Everything counted the first time.
When she blinked the water out of her eyes, Glory was staring at a wolf.
No, a dog. Several dogs, which had approached while she was pumping and now stood staring at her. Their leader was a huge black animal who regarded her from a sitting position, head cocked and tongue lolling. But where Kurfan and the other animals she'd seen at the caravan were sleek and happy, these animals were gaunt and watchful, obviously in business for themselves. As she stared, only slowly coming to realize how much trouble she was in, he got to his feet, lazily, and took a step forward. The others began to pace to the sides, flanking her. Glory backed up, feeling the warm stone of the wellhead at her back. She could run, but they'd pull her down. She could stand, and sooner or later they'd rush her. These dogs had been companions once. They had no fear of Man.
She wondered if she could get her sword out without looking away from the leader. "Good boy," she said in a husky whisper. He cocked his head again, listening. In a story she might be able to win him over, but he didn't look well-fed enough for that. He took another step forward, lowering into the crouch that was the prelude to a spring.
A rock whizzed by her head, striking him in front of his ear. He yelped and jumped back, turning to run as other stones flew around her, hitting the flanks and haunches of the pack with a series of audible thuds.
Glory spun around. Belegir was walking toward her, a sling in his hands, a sack of stones slung over one shoulder. As she watched he loaded his sling once more and sent a last missile flying after the retreating pack.
"Forgive me, Slayer, I should have mentioned the dogs," he said apologetically. "I did not think you would wish to sully your sword upon such unworthy prey, so I followed you."
"Damn skippy you should've mentioned the dogs, mate!" she said hotly. Her heart was hammering and her mouth was sour with fear, and beneath it all she felt a vast betrayed indignation. "The-Allimir-are-a-peaceful-people." Yeah, right. Tell that to White Fang there.
But a nation of farmers that couldn't even scare crows out of their fields would soon starve. Apparently the Allimir could chastise the animal kingdom—someone after all must have slaughtered whatever had been made into the pot roast she'd eaten last night—but that still didn't mean they could do much about the gods and demons that were giving them their current problems.
Seeing the pack was gone, Belegir whistled. A few minutes later Kurfan arrived, herding the horses before him. Just as well they hadn't been left to graze their fill in the orchard; they'd be colicky, or drunk, or both, and nursing a drunk horse was not Glory's idea of a good time. When they smelled the water, they hurried toward it, shouldering each other aside at the trough and blowing bubbles through the water.
Belegir looked almost guilty, as though he'd done something more than chase off a pack of dogs that were about to have her for lunch. Or maybe it was just her nerves being on edge. The sight of this place—thoroughly dead, thoroughly empty, half picked over by scavengers on two legs and four—was unsettling in the way that nothing before it had been. But it wasn't as if he'd sprung things on her. Belegir'd said they were coming here, and they'd come here. He'd already said the Allimir had been hunted from their homes. This was what it looked like. There was no point in asking by what, or who, or how. By now she'd had variations on that conversation with Belegir so many times that she could run it by herself at will.
—What happened here?
—She came, to wreak destruction on the Allimir.
—Why?
—Because She has been released.
—Who's she?
—She is the Warmother.
—Who's the Warmother?
—She is that whom Cinnas the Warkiller, greatest of the Allimir Mages, chained upon the peaks of Grey Arlinn a thousand years ago.
And round and round and round, and if she asked "how" rather than "who," she'd get to hear about how it was dark, and how She came in the night, and how the Allimir knew not the arts of war.
Glory sighed heavily. "So what's for pudding, then?"
She watched as Belegir lifted the pack from Marchiel and began to empty out supplies. She plucked Gordon and her tote-bag from the top of the pile and retreated, watching as Belegir removed the tarpaulin and stacked a series of bags and baskets on the ground beside the well, until he'd assembled a tidy little mound of picnic gear, then led the three horses around to the far side of the oak to graze. Kurfan paced around the edge of the green, sniffing and posturing, but Glory doubted the wild dogs would come back any time soon.
Glory leaned against the tree, feeling as if she ought to help, but with no idea of what to do. Belegir spread the tarp as a groundcover and opened a well-worn leather bag, from which he removed a small metal stand, a round pottery bottle with a protruding wick, and several metal hoops and stakes. Obviously the wick meant a lamp of some sort, but she couldn't see the point to the rest. It was broad day; they hardly needed light.
With the ease of long practice, Belegir assembled the object, producing a ring held by metal rods about six inches above the wick.
I've got it now.
When he turned back to the bundle of supplies, she'd anticipated him, plucking out an irregular tin jerrycan and dipping it full of water at the trough. She handed the container to him, and was absurdly pleased to see him smile and set it carefully above the lamp. She'd figured right, then.
Belegir leaned forward and snapped his fingers. The wick burst into sudden light, settling to burn with a strong yellow flame. Glory blinked, disconcerted. She managed to forget about the magic between the times it was shoved in her face. It just didn't seem likely that people could be so ordinary and still do things like light a fire with a snap of their fingers. Being able to do something like that ought to make you different, somehow. More different than a little old man whose strongest resemblance was to a pink-cheeked Kewpie doll, and not Gandalf the Grey.
She sighed and shook her head. Shouldn't magic solve your problems? And if it should, why wasn't it?
"There is ale if you wish it, Slayer," Belegir said, catching her look. "I know that a great hero—"
"Button it!" Glory snapped. She closed her eyes for a moment, fighting to hold on to her temper. "See here, Belegir. I reckon we'll both get on a deal better if you don't confuse me with her—" God's teeth, now he had her talking in italics! "With, um, the Slayer, I mean. Vixen. Her. I'll do what I can, but just . . ." her furious guilt evaporated, along with her point. "Don't call me a hero, hey?"
"As you wish," Belegir agreed, sounding baffled.
As the water heated he turned back to their supplies. Glory knelt on the sun-warmed tarp with the grace of many hours of practice at moving with five feet of live steel strapped to her back. Fortunately the costume's scabbard was hung to rock up and sideways, or wearing the sword would have been like being tied to a stake.
Lunch was cold meat pasties and apples gathered from the orchard. Having had not-much for breakfast, Glory tucked into her share with a good will. The meat was tough and stringy, as free-range protein tends to be, thickened with boiled grain instead of root vegetables, and unexpectedly filled with raisins—or something rather like raisins—as well, giving it a sweet-vinegar tang. Kurfan returned from his explorations and sat at the edge of the groundcloth, alert and watchful for scraps. Glory shied a few bits of crust his way. He snapped them gracefully out of the air and looked hopefully at her for more. Belegir tossed the dog a whole pasty, and Kurfan retreated behind the tree with his prize.
By then the water had boiled. Belegir took a brightly painted tin box from another of the ubiquitous baskets and shook some of the contents into the boiling water, then extinguished the flame beneath the pot with another snap of his fingers. When the liquid had turned peat-dark, he poured it out into a pair of wooden mugs and added several lumps of something dark and gritty-looking to both. When she sipped, Glory realized the lumps had been some kind of sugar; the tea itself was bitter, an unfamiliar mix of herbs. She only hoped that none of them had embarrassing side effects, but she'd always had the constitution of a horse. Besides, last night's dinner hadn't killed her.
John Carter of Mars never has to worry about things like this. But then, he's got the writer on his side. And you don't. Not here.
Soon enough the sun began moving visibly westward. As Belegir began to repack their supplies, Glory finally remembered her makeup. A quick check of her mirror in her bag convinced her of the need for repair. Her eyes were ringed with shadowy grey smudges where the kohl and mascara had run, and her freckles showed plainly through the pancake. She sighed, and pulled out her stuff. She might not look like a cover-model, but she could at least look like Vixen.
After all, if Belegir believed in the Slayer, then maybe the Warmother did too. Wouldn't that be a kick in the head?
By the time she was done with her repairs, the supplies were all bundled back together. She held the packhorse while Belegir built the pack into place, lashing it down firmly. As before, she tucked Gordon onto the top. The little stuffed elephant looked absurdly surreal, and once again Glory felt a pang of angry guilt. She was a Phys Ed teacher who still slept with stuffed animals—what right did she have holding out even the most tenuous sort of hope to these people? She didn't have any experience dealing with something that could whip through a village like turbocharged Black Death and peel a full-grown pony stallion like a banana. She wasn't a hero. She wasn't even a cop. She wasn't anybody!
Maybe this Oracle of Belegir's would see that, and send her home before she could get anyone into any trouble by believing she could help. At least she wouldn't have to choose, and wonder forever if she were being a coward or just a realist.
And if it says you should stay?
She shook her head. If the Oracle thought she should stay, then it wasn't much of an Oracle, that was all.
They rode away from the village. As the day wore on, she could feel a prickling on her neck and shoulders—and on her bare upper thighs and exposed and cantilevered chest—that promised a ripe sunburn tomorrow, and wished she'd thought to get out her T-shirt when they'd stopped—it would cover some of her at least. Belegir was more than usually pink as well, though his mage-robes covered all of him except his hands and feet. Soon he'd be as brown as the rest of the Allimir.
And you should have asked for a tube of sun cream before you went off on this wild goose chase. Sun cream, and a big hat, and a dozen other things these people probably didn't have. This wasn't weekend camping or a Cable TV game of Let's Pretend. It was real, no matter how much she might keep forgetting that. There was no referee to whom she could appeal for a Time Out when she didn't like the way the play was going.
And she wasn't her character. Why did she keep coming back to that, as though she were arguing against some unseen audience? God knew Vixen's was a tempting lifestyle—nobody gave you a lot of lip when you had a large sword and a bad temper and a host of spear-carriers to clean up after you—but it just wouldn't play in real life. The rules were different for heroes, and maybe that explained why there weren't any heroes anymore, except in popular fiction.
But it was tempting. Was that her problem? That she was tempted by the chance to be Vixen in something that passed for reality, translating every passing mood and pang of wayward conscience into backflips and sword-blows? Only she was smart enough to know it wouldn't work—and still wished it could.
But not enough to get real people hurt. Fun's fun until people start dying. She flashed back to the mass graves she'd seen at Mechanayas, and shuddered. Dead, all dead, and Belegir said that no one else would come to save them. The inarticulate anger she'd felt before woke again into sullen life. It wasn't fair, by God—the Allimir had played by all the rules of fairy tales, and by those rules they should have gotten a proper hero to sort out their mess, not a pack of apologetic refusals.
Still brooding, she rode after Belegir.
They reached Duirondel in the late afternoon. The light was golden, but the trees were casting long shadows back the way they'd come and there was already a hint of evening chill in the air. She squinted up at the sun. If they were going to reach their destination before night fell, it'd better be no more than two hours away at the outside. Reflexively, Glory touched one of the "rowan" stakes sheathed on the outsides of her thigh-high black leather boots. They were cast resin—more durable than wood and able to be lit up nicely for the money shots—and sharp, but she'd hate to try to defend herself with one. Come to that, being in a situation where she had to defend herself at all from anything other than bad press was really low on her list of fun ways to spend an afternoon.
"Are we there yet?" she called to Belegir.
"Soon, I hope," was the less than reassuring answer.
It was okay while they were still riding among the scattered birches—the road vanished beneath drifts of golden leaves, and Glory no longer knew whether they were following it or not—but when birch gave way to pine, the sun-drenched gold gave way to cool blue shadows. As soon as the sun dropped behind the Hilvorn Peaks, it would be dark. In direct sunlight, her chrome-and-black-leather costume had been almost too hot to touch, but now the metal was only barely warm, and she was starting to feel chilly again. Freeze or fry, it's always the way.
"Say, Belegir, what have you got round here that comes out at night? You've got sheep, you must have something that eats sheep."
"Wolves, of course, and in these dark times, dogs that have lost their masters. If it has been a long winter, sometimes bears will come down off the mountain, but only in spring, when they are hungry. The rock-cats do not bother the herds, unless they think they may take a lamb or kid easily. It is fall, so I do not think we need fear for the horses, even here, and besides, Kurfan will warn us should anything draw near."
Glory glanced over her shoulder, and saw the shadowy shape plodding along at Marchiel's heels. The dog's eyes flashed silvery-red in the dimness.
"What about dragons, then?" she asked. Or bandits, outlaws, that kind of thing? Except I'm betting you don't have any of those here in the worker's paradise, do you? Not going by what Englor was saying earlier.
Surprisingly, Belegir laughed.
"Slayer, dragons belong to the Age of Legend, when Cinnas walked the earth! You need not fear meeting such creatures today."
But how do you KNOW? she wondered. Helevrin had said that none of the Allimir had ever actually seen the monster that had driven them out of their homes and was slowly killing them, only its effects. Now she'd seen some of those effects, too, and she had to admit they were pretty daunting. But couldn't there be another explanation—or a whole collection of other explanations—than a demon out of legend? Maybe a dragon, and a few volcanoes, some plague, and . . .
You're guessing, gel. But here in the woods in the dark was no place to be asking—just in case Belegir was right, and there was a Warmother. But sooner or later they were going to have to have a nice long chat about Her, and what she was, and what she could do—why the Allimir feared her, and why this Cinnas had locked her up in the first place.
And what I can do about it. Just to add a little farce to the mix.
But maybe it IS a dragon. The thought made her feel better. A dragon was just another predator, and she'd seen today that the Allimir could fight back against predators. If she could prove to Belegir that it was just a dragon, then the Allimir could—
"Just" a dragon? Just a DRAGON? Are you listening to yourself, Gloria Emmeline McArdle?
"Yeah, right," she muttered under her breath. "A dragon. Easy money."