Curse of the Black Heron
Curse of the Black Heron
Chapter Three
One instant I was sliding my right foot down to tap around for my next foothold, while I clung with a firm grip on both handholds and kept most of my weight balanced on my left foot. The next instant, the left foothold crumbled out from under me, my swinging right foot encountered nothing but air, and I lost my grip and dropped. I had only enough time to realize I was doomed, and then I slammed into a stone shelf, twisted my right ankle as I landed on it, and pitched forward into darkness.
I kept sliding, face-first, downward-not quickly but steadily-until I came to rest in deeper darkness. My ankle throbbed and burned, a worse and distinctive pain against the background of overall pain that gnawed at my muscles and bones and skin. My eyes adjusted slowly. I closed them for a moment to help, then opened them again.
The darkness resolved into areas of lighter and darker vagueness. I twisted around to look behind me. I'd fallen into a narrow crevasse in the rock face behind which lay a surprisingly large cave. The angled pile of rock scree and debris down which I'd slid terminated in a fairly level rock floor that was easily two times bigger inside than Birdie's house had been, and half again as high.
I tried to stand so that I could walk to the entrance, but my ankle wouldn't carry my weight. So I crawled back up the shallow slope and leaned out the opening just in time to see Giraud move past on my right, evidently oblivious to the opening. He was climbing too fast, and not very carefully, and I realized he thought I'd fallen into the ravine and he was trying to get down there to find me.
"Pssst. Giraud," I whispered. I hoped I wouldn't startle him so much that he lost his grip on the cliff.
He stiffened and his head jerked in my direction. "Izza?" His eyes grew round as eggs and his mouth dropped open. "By Hadres, you're safe."
"Hurt my ankle, but that's all. Hurry up and get in here."
He started working his way toward me, still moving too fast . . . but the voices of our pursuers now seemed to come much more from above us than behind us. The time for caution had passed. He scrambled toward me, fingers and toes digging, face red, his breathing harsh and labored. They could probably hear him moving, I realized, and could probably hear him breathing, too. If they followed the source of the sound downward, we would be discovered.
He lost a handhold and flailed out-I braced myself and leaned far out and grabbed his waving hand, and pulled. For the next few instants, the two of us struggled desperately to get him out of sight from the ledge above. I pulled, he swung and jumped and scrabbled, and then the two of us were rolling down the scree into darkness, gasping and shaking, to lie together in a little heap at the bottom.
"STOP!"
stop
We froze.
The gentle clop-clopping of hooves, which had grown clearer and clearer, ceased. I tried to quiet my breathing; Giraud, still gasping from his exertions, pulled up his tunic to cover his nose and mouth. That muffled the sound enough that I didn't think it would give us away.
A tiny rockfall skittered past our window to the outside world. They had stopped directly above us. Did that mean they knew where we'd gone?
"You see? The tracks go no further." The voice was triumphant.
"Then the scream we heard . . . was that one of them falling into the ravine?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps not." Silence followed that thoughtful reply. We waited. Then, "Aha. Look up. You see that line of lichen?"
Giraud and I stared at each other. If we'd gone that way . . .
"I see it," a second voice replied in unison with a third that said, "Yes, right there!"
Third voice said, "We can't stop here or turn around, though. We'll have to go on, leave the horses at the next wide place, and come back."
First voice, scornfully, said, "Whoever told you that you had a brain? And let them climb down and get away while we do that? Let them run back the way we came, as they doubtless planned? No. I think not. Dischi, you're first in line. You ride on and our horses will follow you to the next landing. Macs and I will dismount here and go after them. You turn around as soon as you can and come back for us. We'll be waiting with them."
And when Macs and whoever was with him climbed up and didn't find us, what would happen? They'd climb down and find us. And when they found us, we would either go with them or they would kill us. We had no weapons, no fighting skills, and no place to run.
I heard the horses clopping away, and then the sounds of our hunters climbing. They called to each other as they went up the face of the rock, and from time to time a stream of debris would rattle down into the ravine as they knocked it loose. Aside from those few noises, though, we waited in silence. I wished I could think of some way out of our trouble, and from the expression on Giraud's face, he shared my wish. We didn't even dare move further back into the cave-sounds carried preternaturally well at this spot in the path, and we didn't want to give away our location.
We might still hope, after all, that they wouldn't be able to find us.
We waited.
"I'm almost there."
"I can't find a handhold beyond this one."
"Hold on. Hold on, will you."
"I can't find . . ."
"By sacred Anyu's dugs . . ."
"What?"
"You won't believe this!"
"Throw me your damned rope so I can get up there, and I'll decide whether I believe it or not."
Another silence this time, followed by grunts and muttered swearing.
And then, "There, you see-"
-and two horrible screams.
A man hurtled downward past the opening to our cave, followed immediately by a second. My blood chilled in my veins and my heart nearly stopped.
We both scooted up to the "door" on hands and knees and looked out. Far below, we could make out the two crumpled bodies of what had been our enemies.
For the longest time, neither of us said anything.
Finally Giraud said, "We almost went up there."
I nodded. I couldn't speak; I was having a hard enough time breathing around the lump my heart made in my throat.
A cold, low, slightly lisping voice behind the two of us said, "As well you did not. Neither promise nor prophecy guarantees even temporary safety to visitors at my front door."
I turned. Slowly. Very slowly, in case whoever stood behind us felt inclined to view any movement as a threat. My eyes had to readjust to the darkness. First I saw only the size of the one behind us. Its head reached halfway to the ceiling, making it nearly as tall as Birdie's house.
Then, as my eyesight improved, I could see its head, long as a horse's but skeletally lean, and make out the pallor of its skin and the burning insanity that gleamed from the row of dark sockets that housed its many eyes. It moved forward soundlessly, until it towered over the two of us.
"And there are no guarantees of your safety, either. Unless you are . . . well . . . we'll determine that."
It crouched down onto all fours, and its hands came out of the sleeves of its robe, and they weren't hands at all, but claws like those on the little stream crabs the boys in the village caught and sold. "We . . . will . . . determine . . . that," it said again.
It leaned toward the two of us, and instinctively we shrank back. Its face wasn't merely lean but utterly fleshless, with long jaws hinged far back and a black, darting tongue that it flicked in and out, in and out. And from eight deep caverns, its hideous eyes glared out at us, unmoving unblinking crystal-faceted gems that in the dim light reflected all the colors of the rainbow, but stained those colors with a horrible oily darkness of their own.
"So . . ." it said, and chuckled softly. "What are you doing sneaking into my home through my back door?"
I cleared my throat. "We were hiding from the men who were chasing us."
"Why? Are you thieves? Scoundrels? Vagabonds?"
Giraud said, "I am the son of Anjourd dar Falcannes, lord of Blackwarren. I'm no thief. And she's the daughter of Bard Haral dar Danria . . ."
"I have no use for the 'sons of' or the 'daughters of',' " the monster said. "No use. What . . . are . . . you?"
First I thought "human," but "human" had done the hunters no good. "I'm an apprentice weaver," I said. The "apprentice" part stung. "He's an apprentice historian."
"So you are . . . are students. Unfinished. Like . . . like books half-written."
That seemed an odd description, but Giraud and I both nodded.
"Sing for me . . ." the monster said. "The song I sing." It cocked its head to one side and, in a shockingly pure voice, did a few phrases of a song in a language I didn't know, with a tune that danced across the range of a good singer's voice.
I have a good memory for music-a gift left over from my early childhood as a bard's daughter. I repeated the song back to the creature, as clearly as I could, trying to match its sweetness and purity of tone, though I certainly failed there. I was almost sure I'd gotten the words right, though, and I was certain I'd matched the melody.
It studied me for only an instant, then said to Giraud, "Now you."
It sang the song again-the same words, but this time in a lower range.
Giraud nodded, then sang it back. He mimicked the monster, too.
The monster hissed and rocked backward on its heels staring from one of us to the other, then back. It rose from its crouch, moving gracefully, and its claw-hands vanished back into the folds of its robe. It stared at us still, its head turning slightly left, then right, then left, then right.
"Two will come," it said, in the voice of one reciting poetry,
"Two will come,
Unfinished stories.
Books half-written,
Carrying nothing
Containing everything,
They flee death,
Bring life,
Promise the future.
Wait by the back door;
To them give the key."
It watched us a little longer, as if by waiting we would figure out the meaning of that odd half-song, half-riddle ourselves.
Finally Giraud asked, "What does it mean?"
It cocked its head. "I don't know what it means. It's a riddle, and I have the key, but I don't have the answer. I must . . . I must assume . . . that your lives are the answer. Or at least your living of them. And if you are to be an answer I don't like, then I will be better off to kill you now, for all that I've waited here for you long beyond the time I thought I would."
That didn't sound at all promising. But I had no idea what to say. Don't kill us sounded weak and cowardly, while We won't do anything to cause trouble was a promise that, quite frankly, I didn't think I was qualified to make. I didn't know enough about the situation I faced to make any promises at all. And lying to a monster such as this, my gut told me, would be a very bad idea. So I said nothing.
Giraud evidently couldn't think of anything useful to say, either. He watched the bony nightmare too, doing nothing more than blinking and breathing. We were mute and scared and at the same time intrigued. After all, for what reason in the universe could such a monster be waiting in a cave on the side of a mountain for us to visit?
After a long silence, it said, "So you can hold your tongues, too." It turned with a fluidity the angular, bony form of its body made especially improbable. "That's fortunate. Come, then."
Giraud stood. I tried, but the instant I put weight on my ankle, the dull red throbbing pain in it became a white-hot agony, and I started a scream that I immediately cut short. Tears started in the corners of my eyes, and I balanced on one foot, now terrified. Giraud moved to my side and let me lean against him so that I could hop, but the monster had already turned and was watching me.
"You're injured," it said.
"Not badly. Nothing that won't heal-"
"-with time," it said. "Nothing that won't heal with time. But for all that we had the time from the day the song was born until the sun burned to ashes for you to get here, now that you're here I'm afraid we're in a bit of a hurry."
It walked back to me, reached for me with those dreadful claws, and Giraud threw himself in front of it, trying to block its access to me. The monster brushed him aside as if he were no more significant than a gnat, and picked me up with a gentleness that shocked me.
"Don't be ridiculous," it said to Giraud, and with me caged in its bony arms, it slid through a doorway of rock that opened before it, glided into a faintly lighted passageway that led upward, and after numerous twists and turns, through passageways that branched, folded, and wove around and up and down, came at last to a bright, high-ceilinged cavern lit by the reds and golds and deep, rich purples of a brilliant, beautiful sunset.
"Ah-h-h-h," it said. "The finest place in the mountain to see the closing of the day." It put me down on a bench, and said, "Tell me where it hurts."
I pointed. As I was showing it, Giraud burst into the room, panting like a beast, with sweat dripping down his face. He glared at the monster.
"You almost lost me in there."
The monster glanced from me to him, shrugged slightly, and returned its attention to my ankle. "Had I lost you," it said, "you would not have been the ones, and I would have killed her, then come back looking for you."
My breath caught when it said that. It spoke so calmly of destroying us, as if doing so would be a matter of no concern to it. And then it touched my ankle, and the skin began to glow, and for just an instant I could see the bone beneath it. And the pain went away.
"There," it told me. "Now you'll be able to walk on it. Be careful not to hurt it again. The next time, you won't find anyone who will fix it."
It straightened and looked at Giraud. "Sit beside her. Wait for me. I'll return."
Giraud sat and waited. Neither of us talked-I said nothing because I feared it might be listening to us, and I was afraid that I might say something that would make it decide to kill me. I didn't ask Giraud his reasons for keeping quiet, of course. We sat on the carved stone bench, holding hands, staring out through a beautiful carved archway at the blazing sky and the creeping edge of twilight that slid down the sky behind it, and we waited.
"You're hungry," the monster said, reappearing behind us so suddenly and soundlessly that we both jumped. "I have food for you-to eat now, and when you get ready to leave, enough to get you where you must go."
It handed us a heavy wooden bowl full of little brown crunchy morsels all mixed in with seeds and dried fruits and shreds of dried jerky.
I glanced from the meat to it, and it said, "Wild goat," as if it knew that I wondered where it got its meat. I had no wish to discover after the fact that I'd eaten a bit of someone who'd just been passing through.
It left the food with me, vanished back into its hole in the wall, and reappeared, this time with two tall goblets. They held water, I discovered, and sweeter, more welcome water I have never tasted. I drank slowly, savoring each drop. And when I finished, I dug into the bowl and tried some of everything. I liked the nuts well enough, and the dried fruits were very tasty, and the jerky had that strong flavor I've come to associate with goat. The brown, crunchy tidbits, though, tasted like nothing I'd ever had before-slightly salty, meaty, incredibly rich, with just the faintest hint of unfamiliar spiciness. Those I tossed down by the handful.
I glanced over at Giraud as I ate, and wondered if I looked as much the starved wild beast as he did. Not that I cared. After a day without food, I would have shoved my face into the bowl and eaten without using my hands had that been my only way of getting to it.
Giraud and I devoured every bit of the meal-I felt near to exploding by the time I finished. Then the monster settled itself on the stone bench, lit the lamp it carried, and set it on the floor between us. The flickering flame cast pale light upward, illuminating our faces from below and casting distorting shadows that made Giraud look like a stranger and transformed the monster into something almost demonic.
"You do not need to know my name," it said without preamble, "but you need to know why I've waited for you. Listen closely and say nothing until I've finished, for I will not answer questions, and I will not repeat what I tell you.
"I am one of the nantatsu," it said, and those words froze my heart as solid as river ice in the darkest days of winter. Like every child, I'd been told stories of the nantatsu-of their magic and their evil; of the way they haunted the mountain passes and hunted among travelers for their next meals; of the rumors that they tortured and sacrificed and devoured their victims. They were known as the White Spirits of the Mountains, and every story I'd heard insisted that they were virtually inescapable, nearly unkillable, and utterly without mercy.
The monster glanced from my face to Giraud's, chuckled, and said, "Always, travelers know of the nantatsu. You will be unique among travelers, however, in that, if you do as I tell you, you will survive our meeting. This time."
Giraud took my hand and held it.
"I have been in this cave for a long time-longer than you can imagine. It is my home, the place where I was born, but it is not the place where I will die," the nantatsu said. "I am older than I choose to be, but because of a spell cast on me by a long-ago bard, I have been unable to travel to the dying grounds to prepare my egg or bring forth my successor. I have been trapped here for long ages, awaiting your arrival.
"When I caught the bard, I refused to give him his life, but before I could kill him, he cast on me this songspell."
It began to sing. I immediately recognized the first part-
"Two will come,
Unfinished stories.
Books half-written . . . "
It sang clear to the last line of the song it had quoted to us when it caught us in its cave-room before:
"To them give the key."
It didn't stop there, though. It began another verse of its song.
"Bag of bones,
Box of wood,
String and voice,
Words and breath-
And as within
So without
And as together
So apart.
Guardian be
By my will
Until they come
Until they come-
Worldsinger and
The voice of time.
And when the song
Is sung, is sung . . .
You will be free."
"Killing that misbegotten snack didn't break the spell, and trying to destroy the objects he'd left behind in my care proved impossible, and the Worldsinger has not yet come through my door, though I tell you I have tried everyone who has. To some who arrived before you I've given his cursed pack, and let them try to leave-but the pack will not leave with any save the right one, and will not let me leave until the right one comes.
"I've puzzled this out for years on top of years," it continued. "I know what you have to do. You're to take the spell I've marked in the book, and you're to go to the Pillar of the Sun at the summit of Hearthold Mountain, where you're to sing it." It growled. "I've tried my best to decipher the meaning of the song, but I cannot. I don't know the bards writing, and I don't know human magic. No doubt it's a spell I won't like much, but that doesn't matter. When you sing it and I'm set free, I'll travel to the breeding grounds to breed and die, and I don't care what happens after that."
I said nothing. Giraud said nothing.
The nantatsu snarled. "All these years, bards and wizards have come looking to reclaim their magic book. They feel it out with their spells, and they follow it to me, yet none of them has freed me." It stared at me, then at Giraud. Its eyes sparked fiercely in the dim light of its lamp.
"Tomorrow at sunrise, I will give you the pack and try to take you to the road to Hearthold Mountain, so that you can sing the damned bard's cursed song. If the pack will let you leave-if you are the two 'unfinished stories' that I've been waiting for-I will accompany you as far as the base of the mountain, so that I can be sure that you don't get lost or forget the task you are to be about. When you climb up to the peak of the mountain to sing, I will wait for you below. If you succeed, I will be freed, and I will go to the dying ground. If you fail, or if you do anything to betray me, you will find me waiting for you when you come down."
The monster picked up its lamp and rose.
"You will stay in here tonight. Don't try to leave, of course."
It turned and moved quickly away, slipping through the stone door that opened before it and slid noiselessly shut behind it.
I squeezed Giraud's hand.
"Well," he said softly.
"What do you think it is?"
"The spell?"
"Yes."
He shrugged. "I was trying to think of stories from the history I know-tales of bards with spells who went into the mountains and were devoured by nantatsu, or stories of wondrous magical spells lost and never recovered." He shook his head. "I can't think of anything that would seem to apply to our situation-but if the Watchowl bards still consider the spell something that they must retrieve, perhaps they haven't let word of its existence get out."
I'd done something similar, trying to remember, as I listened to the monster's story, the conversations my father had carried on late into the night with his important visitors from all over Terosalle. Like Giraud, I came up empty.
But if I couldn't remember any useful stories or rumors, I could do something practical toward improving the chances of my survival. I took my other clothes out of the cloak pocket I'd carried them in and stuffed them into the empty pack. I didn't have anything else to put in it. If I had to sleep on a stone slab, I wanted to do it with a decent pillow. I could use my cloak as a blanket. The stone bench would be a cold, hard bed, but after years in Birdie's loft, I wasn't used to much better.
When I had my pillow made and my blanket readied, I gave Giraud a quick kiss on the cheek, then moved to the other bench and stretched out on it.
"You're going to sleep?" he asked.
"We're to be awakened at sunrise, and I thought I ought to get a good rest first."
"Well, yes . . ." He didn't look convinced. Giraud was no doubt hatching some thrilling plan for sliding down the side of the mountain without making a sound, thus escaping the clutches of the nantatsu. He would have all sorts of historical precedents for such heroics, and would be certain that we could get to safety before the nantatsu realized anything was amiss.
I decided I needed to forestall the suggestion of heroics that would surely be coming my way. I said, "I'm not going to try to escape from such a monster in its own lair."
"But you don't think we're the ones this magical spell that the monster spoke of has been waiting on, do you?" he asked.
I raised an eyebrow. "No. I figure we're doomed no matter what happens, but I would rather live for tomorrow's chances than die for sure tonight." I shrugged. "If we're going to die, nothing I can do will change that. But if we're going to live, then I need to get a good night's sleep, because tomorrow may be as difficult as today was."
Giraud sat on his own bench watching me for a moment. I thought he was going to try to talk me into running, no matter what I'd said, but he didn't. "You're disgustingly practical sometimes." He shrugged, though, and gave me a wry half-smile. "I won't leave without you," he said. Then he pulled off his own cloak and divested it of spare clothing. He made himself a bed like mine, and settled in to sleep the sleep of the hopeful.