The place was like a bath sponge or a cheese with square holes, little rooms and cubbies throughout, all the exterior walls perforated with windows, hung with little balconies, pierced with walkways and stairways. Narrow chimneys sprouted from wall corners, singly and in clusters, only a few of them emitting pale smoke. Flowerpots stood on roof corners, though the frostbitten vines they held trailed disconsolately down the outer walls. In summer, she thought, the little village would be interesting and gay looking. At the very top, some tile roofs fed rain into gutters that fed into cisterns at the bottom of the walls; other roofs were flat and strung with clotheslines.
“How can they live all on top of each other like that?” she asked no one in particular.
“They’re island people,” said Abasio from behind her. “Island people are sea people, and sea people spend a lot of time on ships. On ships, people do live on top of each other.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Come, you need supper.”
When they had all eaten, they tidied the camp area before sitting together around the campfire, drinking tea, ignoring the parade of Pure Becomers who patrolled the road near the way-halt, chanting and staring. All of them wore the earring in their left ear.
“First watch mine,” murmured Bartelmy at last.
“No. Mine,” said Precious Wind insistently. “I slept for a while in the carriage; you didn’t. We’ll make it short watches, though, so everyone gets some sleep. I’ll wake Black Mike.”
In the night, Xulai woke. Black Mike, supposedly on watch, dozed on a wagon seat. A few Becomers still strolled by, among them the woman who had sold them their robes. When she saw Xulai looking at her, the woman smiled and came a few steps into the way-halt, where she put something on the ground, and pointed at it before rejoining the others.
When Xulai woke in the morning, in deep shadow, the dawn still pale above the cliff, she went to the spot the woman had pointed out and found a tiny loaf of sweet bread, full of raisins and spice. Both her nose and the chipmunk told her it was good. By the time the others had wakened, she and the chipmunk had eaten it all. Though normally she would have told Precious Wind all about it, she did not. The Becomers had picked her, Xulai, to smile at and wink at and bake cake for. Like most mysteries, time might explain it, but before it was explained, she did not want her guardians keeping watch on her night and day. Their customary watchfulness was quite enough. Or too much.
Soon the others woke. Every person and creature seemed well rested. The parade of Becomers resumed as they breakfasted and went on until they had relinquished their robes and were above and beyond the village on the slowly rising road. Seemingly, the Becomers could not get enough of looking at these particular travelers!
That day, Xulai spent much of her time knitting. There was nothing else to do, and she wanted to make something for Black Mike and the other Woldsgard people to thank them for their care.
During the next day, they passed through six more villages. The Sky Becomers wore all blue clothing and painted their skins the same color, for the king’s favorite color was blue; the Perfect Becomers bound their bodies to change them toward an ideal form; the Song Becomers sang all their conversations with one another. There were also the Joy Becomers, a seemingly deadly serious people who invited the group to join them in sexual gratification and using mind-altering substances, following the wagons some distance on the road reiterating this invitation in voices, so Xulai felt, that were syrupy with duplicity. All the Becomers spoke of “her,” the woman who told them how they were to become treasured by the king. Xulai counted sixteen or so other villages crowded into caves at various distances above the road, connected to it only by goat paths and treacherous-looking stairs. If all these were being influenced by the Duchess of Altamont, she was spending a great deal of time amusing herself with a great many people who were playing along though they were not, themselves, either amused or convinced. Perhaps, Xulai thought, this fairly innocuous game preempted other games that would have been far more painful.
Above the Pure Becomers’ village, the way had grown steeper, the progress slower. The second night was spent at the eleventh switchback. Early on the third day on the cliff they came to the thirteenth turn, this one with another bell tower and space for wagons, like the one they had seen before. Several wagons and a flock of sheep were lined up on the road above them, coming down, and several other wagons, going up, had accumulated on the flat. The Wold wagons were waved onto the flat with the others by a bored-looking traffic controller, and there they sat idle while several loaded wagons and a flock of sheep went down.
“Last turn.” Ordinarily taciturn, Black Mike grinned. “Fourteen times across the cliff, seven goin’ north and seven goin’ south, and we’re up!”
By noon, looking down the cliff-side, they passed the six southern switchbacks that lay in a line beneath them. Each turn up to this point had been more or less in line with the ones above and below, but now the road beneath them continued to the south, still gently rising and shaking with a slight vibration. After a time the vibration turned into a low rumble, increasing in volume as they went until the world around them shook with continuous thunder. Opacities of fog came and went on the road before them. The drivers got down to lead the horses and mules around shrouded curves hidden by wavering, silken evanescence that twisted endlessly as they unrolled outward. Since they had only vagrant glimpses of the road before them, everyone but Oldwife preferred to walk, blindly clinging to the cliff-side on their left, watching their feet to be sure they did not approach the edge. On their right they caught occasional glimpses of the enormous cataract surging glassily over the precipice to break into a hundred separate falls on the ledges below. Momentarily, a gust of wind blew the clouds aside to let them see all the way down, multiple cascades leaping and frothing in a frenzy of foam and shattered stone.
The wind persisted long enough to disclose a colossal cauldron a mile or so below, a stone bowl licked out of the bedrock by a millennium of swirling water, maelstrom-filled from edge to edge. Fleeing this vortex, the gleaming, glassy torrent exploded through a narrow cleft in the western edge and lost itself within a wide black canopy of dripping forest, beyond which stood Eastwatch Tower, the watchtower they had left three days before, tiny as a toy.
Several wagons stood ahead of them on the road, waiting, and a bell tolled from a tower on the cliff’s edge as they went onto the downward road. It was answered by a far-off echo from the tower they had passed this morning.
Bartelmy said, “I can see why there’s no quicker way. What a drop that is!”
“One of the wonders of the world, I’m told,” said Precious Wind. “Certainly there is nothing like it in Tingawa.”
“Tingawa has mountains,” murmured Xulai. “So you’ve told me.”
“Lovely rounded mountains,” said Bear in a meditative voice he seldom used. “Like the flanks of maidens, lying at their ease beneath the sun. We have rivers, too, but none so impolite as to roar at anyone.”
“We camp here?” asked Bartelmy with a quick glance at the lowering sun.
“A bit farther, please,” begged Oldwife, who had left her carriage to get a better look at the falls. “The noise makes my head ache. Besides, everything is soaking wet!”
They turned east. At first flickering in and out of sight before them, the road showed more clearly as both fog and noise dwindled behind them. Eventually there was only a murmur of water, like strong wind in distant trees. By this time dusk had fallen.
Xulai tugged at Precious Wind’s sleeve. “I have this feeling,” she said. “It would be a good idea for us to camp somewhere where we won’t be seen tonight.”
“A feeling?” said Precious Wind.
“Like . . . the feeling I had about the horses.”
Precious Wind called a halt to the caravan and went to explain to Bear that Xulai had a feeling.
“I’d take it seriously,” she said, seeing his scowl.
“I’m getting a feeling also,” he
said. “I’m getting a feeling that I’m not sure who we’re taking where. You knew Xu-i-lok?”
“I did, yes.”
“Do you get the feeling that the princess may be directing operations here?”
“You mean . . . ?”
“Who knows what I mean? If she’s actually carrying Xu-i-lok’s soul, does that mean she’s carrying the princess’s personality, her opinions? Her special kind of knowledge?”
Precious Wind looked at her feet while she composed her face. “Bear, I don’t know, but I do know she gets these premonitions. About horses. About wagon wheels. About this and that. She’s been right each time, so far.”
“So far. Very well, we’ll take ourselves away from the road.”
At Bear’s direction, they crossed one of the numerous little streams flowing down from the heights to their left, then turned parallel to it and left the road, not stopping until they were deep among the trees that edged the valley. Bear and Black Mike went back to the road.
“We’ve raked up the grass to hide our tracks,” said Bear when he returned. “Here, we’re close to water. There are trees and a hollow to hide the campfire. We are unlikely to be seen or bothered by nighttime travelers.”
“We keep watch?” Bartelmy asked.
“We always keep watch, until we reach Wilderbrook,” said Bear with a long look at Xulai.
In the night, Xulai dreamed of the monstrous roar of the falls and woke to its earthshaking thunder pounding at her. Fully awake, she realized it was not water she heard! A great many horses in a frantic hurry. She sat up, feeling someone near.
“Shh,” said Abasio. “Quiet. Not that they could hear you over that stampede.”
From the forest edge they peered at the roadway, gleaming silver in the light of the moon and thick with riders. The horsemen were riding from the east, toward the falls, many of them carrying torches that streamed fire and reflected from helms and gauntlets, spear shafts and armor.
“Soldiers,” whispered Xulai. “Why? Where are they going?”
“From here the road goes to Altamont,” said Bear from behind her. “Also to Wellsport and the Lake of the Clouds. Even to Ghost Isle and Kamfels.”
“And Woldsgard,” Xulai said to herself.
“How many?” asked Willum Farrier from the darkness.
“Hundreds,” Bear answered.
“King’s men?” asked Clive.
“Possibly,” said Precious Wind.
“I think they’re from the abbey,” said Bear. “It’s hard to see the banners in torchlight, but I think I recognize them from the ones we saw at Netherfields. They had the device and colors there. The duke told us the abbey’s old and rich and it maintains a considerable force of its own.”
“My poor cousin,” said Xulai in a wounded voice. “My cousin, the duke.”
“Shhh, shhh,” said Oldwife. “Why should you worry over him? That’s pure silliness.”
Xulai started to speak, then caught the words before they came from her mouth. If the riders were from the abbey, they were probably headed for Netherfields, but not necessarily to build. Possibly to protect! If, on the other hand, they were from the king, they might well intend to attack Woldsgard. But! But, Woldsgard was probably already protected by an army sent by Prince Orez. The thought fell into her mind like a key into a lock.
“The troops of Prince Orez are already at Woldsgard,” she murmured. “They were on the way there before we ever left. My cousin felt he could use the help.”
They all looked at her as though she had turned into something strange. “Hallad, Prince Orez?” asked Bear. “Would that have been who was spying out the road near Altamont? I saw tracks when we crossed the road. A couple of riders came from the west, checked out the roads both ways, and then went back the way they had come.”
“Because we weren’t where we were supposed to be,” said Bartelmy. “According to the plan the duke and I made, we should have turned east by then and gone some miles down the eastern road. So they watched through the night, maybe until we headed east, and then, if Xulai is right, the troops from Etershore were at Woldsgard by the time we got to Eastwatch Tower, below the falls.”
“Why weren’t we supposed to see them?” asked Oldwife.
“What we didn’t see, we wouldn’t talk about,” said Precious Wind. “Is that the reason, Xulai?”
She nodded sorrowfully. “I’m sure we’re not supposed to know about it, and I made a mistake when I mentioned it. Prince Orez’s commander probably sent outriders to be sure we’d gone on by and there was no one else on the road. The outriders reported we’d be delayed because the bridge was blocked, so the army waited until the crossroad was clear. I hope they waited until the duchess was out of the way, as well.”
“I rather imagine,” said Precious Wind, “that they went by quietly, at a walk and well spaced out, shortly after we had camped, probably during or after that wolf-thunder nonsense with the horses, as well. We were far enough away that we wouldn’t have heard them, and getting there at night would have made the most sense. Few travelers ride at night, and at a quiet walk they could have gone far enough north to camp without being seen from the Wells Road. Very possibly, knowing of Prince Orez’s reputation for thoroughness, the last men of the troop were assigned to drag the road behind them to wipe out the hoofprints of the troop, while a few others followed them to simulate normal traffic on the road.”
Xulai shivered. Had she said too much? A little, yes. They hadn’t known Prince Orez would be guarding Wold. But she hadn’t said anything about her cousin’s plans, just that he needed help, and everyone in Woldsgard knew that. His leaving was still a secret, and so was the eventual building of an abbey, but the horsemen who had passed tonight did not look like carpenters and stonemasons. She would keep that to herself.
“An excellent decision,” whispered the chipmunk from under her collar.
Eventually, Bartelmy asked, “Does this change anything?”
“We have our orders. We do what we set out to do,” said Bear, his jaw clenched. “And if Xulai has no particular feelings about it, we can do it in moonlight, the hidden way. With this many riders on the road, it would be better not to get involved, however casually. Hitch the wagons. We’ll move in darkness, have our own outriders, and stay hid daytimes.”
Xulai forbid herself to cry. Being frightened for the duke or for her home at Woldsgard did not help. He had sent her to Wilderbrook; if she could do nothing else, she could be obedient to his wishes and keep her mouth shut. Still, she could not get his face, the way she had seen him last, out of her mind. He had been weeping, and she had felt he had been weeping for her, Xulai. He must have thought his princess’s Xakixa was in danger, or why weep?
They moved onto the level road with only four of the six mules harnessed to the dray. Clive Farrier rode one mule at some distance behind them; Bartelmy rode the other well ahead of them; both outriders were far enough from the slight jingle and crunch of the wagons that they could hear riders coming from either direction. The road was almost level; the wide river wound among an endless series of ponds and small lakes that virtually filled the wide valley. The animals made good time, and the moon did not set until just before dawn. By then both animals and wagons had been hidden in the forest once more while the men moved between forest edge and roadside, raking the grasses upward to hide their tracks.
They built a small, smokeless fire, using dry wood they had brought with them in case of need. They had hot soup and tea, slabs of toasted bread with honey, then collapsed into their blanket rolls, all except Oldwife and Nettie Lean, who claimed first watch since they had slept in the carriage and were wide awake. Nettie was posted at the wood’s edge, watching the road, while Oldwife sat with her sewing kit inside the woods, her back against a tree, where she would hear Nettie’s signal.
When everyone was asleep except herself, Xulai eased open the basket in which the two cats were sleeping, rolled them into her blankets, and lay her face where they h
ad been. The box the princess had sent her to find was there, close. The thing she had swallowed was . . . inside her, somewhere. Surely it could hear her if she spoke. “What should we do?” she murmured. “Is there something we should do?”
Only silence. Her eyes filled with tears as she put the cats back into their bed and pulled it close to her, one arm protectively around it, the other thrust into the pocket of her cloak, where the chipmunk slept in the palm of her hand. She had had him now for some time, but he had not grown at all. He was still tiny enough to need her warmth. Though she thought it would be impossible to sleep, she fell into a deep, dreamless slumber and did not wake until late in the afternoon when Nettie Lean shook her by the shoulder, laying a finger across her lips.
“Shhh,” said the woman. “More riders.”
The other blankets were already empty. Everyone was crouched at the edge of the forest, looking at the troops going by. Mounted soldiers, their guidons bearing the king’s emblem: a stone tower, truncated, with an eagle above it.
Xulai crawled up beside Bear. “How many?” she asked.
“Troop of one hundred,” he said. “Eight of them so far.”
“How many last night?”
He tilted his hand back and forth, meaning “More or less.”
“An equal force, then,” whispered Precious Wind. “To join with the others? Or oppose them?” She turned to stare at Xulai. “Do you have some sudden and wondrous insight into this, pet?”
Xulai shook her head. Nothing. Except a feeling that the duke may have left Woldsgard for a time. He had said he might go, and she was sure he had gone. He had not told her where.