Chapter 2

The Kalds started the line moving again, using the wands like ox-goads. They shuffled off down the gully, going deeper and deeper into the Forbidden Plains.

Very softly, so that nobody but Ciaran could hear her, Mouse whispered, “These locks are nothing. I can pick them any time.”

Ciaran squeezed her hand again. It occurred to him that Mouse was a handy girl to have around.

After a while she said, “Kiri—that shadow. We did see it?”

“We did.” He shivered in spite of himself.

“What was it?”

“How should I know? And you better save your breath. Looks like a long walk ahead of us.”

It was. They threaded their way through a growing maze of cracks in the plain, cracks that got deeper and deeper, so you had to look straight up to see the red sky and the little floating suns. Ciaran found himself watching furtively to make sure they were still shining. He wished Mousie hadn’t reminded him of the shadow. He’d never been closer to cold, clawing panic than in those moments on the ridge.

The rest of the slave gang had obviously come a long way already. They were tired. But the Kalds goaded them on, and it wasn’t until about a third of the line was being held up bodily by those in front or behind that a halt was called.

They came to a fairly-wide place where three of the gullies came together. The Kalds formed the line into a circle, squeezed in on itself so they were practically sitting in each other’s laps, and then stood by watchfully, lolling pink tongues over their bright grey teeth and letting the wands flash in the dimmed light.

Ciaran let his head and shoulders roll over onto Mousie. For some time he had felt her hands working around her own collar, covered by her hair and the harp slung across his back. She wore a rather remarkable metal pin that had other functions than holding her tunic on, and she knew how to use it.

Her collar was still in place, but he knew she could slide out of it now any time she wanted. She bent forward over him as though she was exhausted. Her black hair fell over his face and neck. Under it her small quick hands got busy.

The lock snapped quietly, and the huge red-haired man collapsed slowly on top of Ciaran. His voice whispered, but there was nothing weak about it.

He said, “Now me.”

Ciaran squirmed and cursed. The vast weight crushed him to silence.

“I’m a hunter. I can hear a rabbit breathing in its warren. I heard the woman speak. Free me or I’ll make trouble.”

Ciaran sighed resignedly, and Mouse went to work.

Ciaran looked around the circle of exhausted humans. Charcoal burners, trappers, hoop-shavers—the lean, tough, hard-bitten riff-raff of the border wilderness. Even the women were tough. Ciaran began to get ideas.

There was a man crushed up against them on the other side—the man who had hitherto been at the head of the column. He was tall and stringy like a hungry cat, and just as mean looking, hunched over his knees with his face buried in his forearms and a shag of iron-grey hair falling over his shoulders.

Ciaran nudged him. “You—don’t make any sign. Game to take a chance?”

The shaggy head turned slightly, just enough to unveil an eye. Ciaran wished suddenly he’d kept his mouth shut. The eye was pale, almost white, with a queer unhuman look as though it saw only gods or devils, and nothing in between.

Ciaran had met hermits before in his wanderings. He knew the signs. Normally he rather liked hermits, but this one gave him unpleasant qualms in the stomach.

The man dragged a rusty voice up from somewhere. “We are enslaved by devils. Only the pure can overcome devils. Are you pure?”

Ciaran managed not to choke. “As a bird in its nest,” he said. “A newly-fledged bird. In fact, a bird still in the shell.”

The cold, pale eye looked at him without blinking.

Ciaran resisted an impulse to punch it and said, “We have a means of freeing ourselves. If enough could be freed, when the time came we might rush the Kalds.”

“Only the pure can prevail against devils.”

Ciaran gave him a smile of beatific innocence. The scar and the missing tooth rather spoiled the effect, but his eyes made up for it in bland sweetness.

“You shall lead us, Father,” he cooed. “With such purity as yours, we can’t fail.”