City of Golden Shadow (35 page)

"Well, never you mind, governor. We'll sort you out"

Gally handed out the bread and cheese, but Paul had eaten earlier, and although he was hungry again, he did not want to reduce the children's small portions any further. They looked so small and poorly nourished that he found it painful to watch them eat. Even so, they were remarkably well-behaved urchins, each waiting his or her turn for a mouthful of crust.

Afterward, with the fire blazing and the room warm at last, Paul was ready to go back to sleep, but the children were too excited by the night's events to return to bed.

"A song!" cried someone, and others took up the cry: "Yes, a song! Have the man sing a song."

Paul shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't remember any. I wish I did."

"No need to worry," Gally said. "Blue, you sing one. She's got the best voice, even though she's not the loudest," he explained.

The little girl stood up. Her dark hair hung in tangled knots around her shoulders, confined only by a band of soiled white cloth around her forehead. She frowned and sucked her finger. "What song?"

"The one about where we come from." Gally seated himself cross-legged beside Paul like a desert prince commanding entertainment for a foreign dignitary.

Blue nodded thoughtfully, took her finger from her mouth, and began to sing in a high, sweet, and slightly wavering voice.

"The ocean dark, the ocean wide

And we crossed from the other side

The ocean dark, the ocean deep

Between us and the Land of Sleep

"Away, away, away, sing O

They called for us, but we had gone

Away, away, away, sing O

Across the sea we had to go. . . ."

Huddled with this small tribe, listening to Blue's voice float up like the sparks from the fire, Paul suddenly felt his own loneliness surrounding him like a cloud. Perhaps he could stay in this place. He could be a kind of father, make sure these children did not hunger, did not need to fear the world outside their old house.

"The night was cold, the night was long

And we had no light but our song

The night was black, the night was deep

Between us and the Land of Sleep. . . ."

There was a sadness in it that Paul could feel, some note of mourning that sounded beneath the melody. It was as though he listened to the keening of a baby bird which had fallen from its nest, calling across the hopeless distance to the warmth and safety it had forever lost.

"We crossed the sea, we crossed the night

And now we search the world for light

For light to love us, light to keep

The memories of the Land of Sleep.

"Away, away, away, sing O

They called for us, but we had gone

Away, away, away, sing O

Across the sea we had to go. . . ."

The song went on, and Paul's eyes began to sag closed. He fell asleep to the sound of Blue's small voice chiming against the night.

A bird was beating its wings against a windowpane, wingtips pattering against the glass in frantic repetition. Trapped! It was trapped! The tiny body, shimmering with green and purple, beat helplessly against the pane, rustling and thumping like a failing heart. Somebody must set it free, Paul knew, or it would die. The colors, the beautiful colors, would turn to ashy gray and then vanish, taking a piece of sun out of the world forever. . . .

He woke up with a start. Gally was kneeling over him.

"Quiet," the boy whispered. "There's someone outside. Might be the soldiers."

As Paul sat up the knocking came again, a dry sound that murmured through the vast Oysterhouse.

Perhaps, Paul thought, still tangled in the rags of his dream, it's not soldiers at all. Maybe it's only a dying bird.

"Get up there." Gally pointed to a rickety staircase leading up to one of the galleries. "Hide. We won't tell them you're here, whoever it is."

Paul mounted the squeaking stairs, which swayed alarmingly. Clearly it had been a long time since anyone so heavy had climbed them. The furtive knocking sounded again.

Gally watched until Paul had reached the shadowy upper reaches, then took a smoldering stick from the fire and crept toward the doorway. A thin blue light seeped in through the wide fanlight over his head. Dawn was approaching.

"Who's out there?"

There was a pause, as though whoever knocked had not truly expected an answer. The voice, when it came, was smooth and almost childishly sweet, but it raised the hairs on the back of Paul's neck.

"Just honest men. We are looking for a friend of ours."

"We don't know you." Gally was fighting to keep his voice steady. "Stands to reason there's no one here calls themself your friend."

"Ah. Ah, but perhaps you've seen him, this friend of ours?"

"Who are you, knocking on doors at such an hour?"

"Just travelers. Have you seen our friend? He was a soldier once, but he has been wounded. He's not right in the head, not right at all. It would be cruel to hide him from us-we are his friends and could help him." The voice was full of kind reason, but something else moved behind the words, something greedy. A blind fear gripped Paul. He wanted to scream at whatever stood outside to go away and leave him in peace. He put his knuckle between his teeth instead and bit down hard.

"We've seen nobody, we're hiding nobody." Gally tried to make his voice deep and scornful, with only middling success. "This is our place now. We are working men who must have our sleep, so be off before we set our dogs on you."

There was a murmuring sound from behind the door, a grumble of quiet conversation. The door creaked in its frame, then creaked again, as though someone had for a moment set a heavy weight against it. Struggling against his terror, Paul began to creep around the upper gallery toward the door so he could be close enough to help Gally if trouble began.

"Very well," the voice said at last "We are truly sorry if we have disturbed you. We will go now. Sadly, we must seek our friend in another town if he is not here." There was another creak and the latch rattled in its socket. The invisible stranger continued calmly, as though the rattling were something quite unconnected. "If you should happen to meet such a man, a soldier, perhaps a trifle confused or strange, tell him to ask after us in the King's Dream, or in other inns along the river. Joiner and Tusk, those are our names. We so badly want to help our friend."

Heavy boots scraped on the doorstep, then there was a long silence. Gally reached up to open the door, but Paul leaned over the railing and signaled him not to touch it. Instead, he moved to where the gallery rail stood closest to the fanlight above the door, and leaned out.

Two shapes stood on the doorstep, both bundled in dark cloaks. One was larger, but otherwise they were little more than lumps of shadow in the gray before morning. Paul felt his heart speed even faster. He gestured frantically at Gally not to move. By the thin light, he could see some of the children were awake and peering out of various sleeping places around the Oysterhouse, their eyes wide with fear.

The smaller of the two shapes cocked its head to one side as though listening. Paul did not know why, but he was desperate that these people, whoever they were, should not find him. He thought his heart must be pounding as loud as a kettledrum. An image came bubbling up through his panicked thoughts, a picture of an empty place, a vast expanse of nothingness in which only he existed-he and two things that hunted him. . . .

The smaller figure leaned close to the larger as though whispering, then they both turned and made their way down the path and vanished in the fog that was drifting up from the river.

"Two of them, eh? Are those the strange folk you said you saw?"

Miyagi nodded vigorously. Gally screwed up his forehead in an awesome display of concentration. "I can't say as I've ever heard of such before." he said at last. "But there's plenty of strange folk coming through these days." He grinned at Paul. "No offense. But if they're not soldiers, they're spies or something like. They'll be coming back, I reckon."

Paul thought the boy was probably right. "Then there's only one thing to do. I'll go, then they'll follow after me." He said it briskly, but the idea of having to move on so soon made him ache. He had been foolish to imagine that he might find peace so easily. He could remember very little, but he knew it had been a long time since he had been somewhere he could call his home. "What's the best way out of this town? As a matter of fact, what's beyond this town? I have no idea."

"It's not so easy to travel through the Squared," said Gally. "Things have changed since we came here. And if you just set out, chances are you'll walk right into the Red Lady's soldiers, and then it'll be the dungeons for you, or something worse." He shook his head gravely and sucked his lip, pondering. "No, we'll need to ask someone who knows about things. I reckon we should take you to Bishop Humphrey."

"Who's that?"

"Take him to Old Dumpy?" Little Miyagi seemed amused. "That great bag of wind?"

"He knows things. He'll know where the governor here should go." Gally turned to Paul, as though asking him to settle an argument. "The bishop's a smart man. Knows the names of everything, even things you didn't think had names. What do you say?"

"If we can trust him."

Gally nodded. "He's a bag of wind, it's true, but he's an important man, so the redbreasts leave him alone." He clapped his hands for attention. The children gathered around him. "I'm taking my friend to see the bishop. While I'm gone, I don't want you lot going out, and I certainly don't want you letting no one in. The password idea's a good one-don't open the door to anyone, even me, 'less they say the word 'custard.' Got it? 'Custard.' Miyagi, you're in charge. And Bay, wipe that grin off your fazoot. Try not to be an eejit just this once, will you?"

Gally led him out the back door, which opened onto the headlands and a pine forest that grew almost to the very walls of the Oysterhouse. The boy checked carefully, then waved for Paul to follow him into the trees. Within moments they were tramping through a wood so dense that they could no longer see the large building just a few dozen yards behind them.

The morning fog was still thick and lay close to the ground. The woods were unnaturally silent; except for the sound of his own feet crunching across the carpet of fallen needles-the boy made almost no noise at all-Paul could hear nothing. No wind rattled the branches. No birds saluted the climbing sun. As they made their way beneath the trees with the mist swirling about their ankles, Paul could almost imagine that he was walking across clouds, hiking through the sky. The idea cast a shadow of memory, but whatever it was would not allow itself to be grasped and examined.

They had walked for what seemed at least an hour, the slope slanting downward more often than not, when Gally, who was several paces ahead, waved Paul to a halt The boy silenced any questions by lifting his small hand, then lightfooted his way back to Paul's side.

"Crossroads lies just ahead," he whispered. "But I thought I heard something."

They made their way down the hillside until the land flattened and they could see a cleared place between the trees with a strip of reddish dirt road at its center. Gally led them alongside it with great caution, as though they paced the length of a sleeping snake. Abruptly, he sank to his knees, then reached up to pull Paul down, too.

They had reached the place where a second dusty road cut across the path of the first. Two signposts that Paul could not read pointed away in the same direction down the crossroad. Gally crawled forward until he could watch the spot from behind a bush, not fifty paces from the intersection.

They waited in silence so long that Paul was just about to stand up and stretch when he heard a noise. It was faint at first, faint and regular as a heartbeat, but it slowly grew louder. Footsteps.

Two shapes appeared out of the misty trees, coming toward them from the direction the two signs were pointing. The pair walked in an unhurried way, their cloaks dragging in the dew-sodden dust of the road. One of them was very large and moved with an odd shuffle, but both were familiar from the front porch the night before. Paul felt his gorge rise. For a moment he feared he would not be able to breathe.

The figures reached the center of the crossroad and paused for a moment in some silent communion before continuing in the direction from which Paul and Gally had come.

The mist eddied around their feet. They wore shapeless hats as well as the sagging cloaks, but still Paul could see the glint of spectacles on the smaller. The larger had a peculiar grayish cast to his skin, and appeared to be holding something in his mouth, for the jutting shapes that bulged his upper lip and pressed against his jaw were surely far too large to be teeth.

Paul clutched hard at the mat of needles, digging furrows in the ground with his fingers. He felt light-headed, almost feverish, but he knew that death was hunting for him on that road-no, something worse than death, something far more empty, grim, and limitless than death.

As if they sensed his thoughts, the two figures suddenly stopped in the center of the road, directly opposite the hiding place. Paul's pulse, already painfully fast, now rattled in his temples. The smaller figure bent down and craned its head forward, as though it had somehow become a different kind of creature, something more likely to go on four legs than two. It pivoted its head slowly; Paul saw the lenses spark, spark, spark as they caught light through the shadowing trees. The moment seemed to stretch endlessly.

The larger figure dropped a flat grayish hand onto its companion's shoulder and rumbled something-in his panic, Paul could only hear words that sounded like "sealing wax"-then set off down the road, waddling so slowly its legs might have been tied together at the ankles. A moment later the smaller straightened up and followed, shoulders up and head thrust forward in a sullen slouch.

Paul did not release the breath burning in his chest until the two shapes had vanished into the mist, and even then he lay unmoving for some time. Gally did not seem in a hurry to rise either.