“It had to be,” the Keeper repeated, her voice a rustle of dry leaves.
“Why?” Thaile yelled. “What evil do you battle that is worse than that? Who are you to commit such crimes against me?” She ripped away the shielding to see the shriveled face—and recoiled from the agony in it.
She froze as the sheer immensity of the College registered upon her for the first time: the vast complex pyramid of power and service, the centuries of noting, planning, watching, guarding. Spiders! She sensed the web that enfolded all of Thume, a web of ancient, implacable purpose. Horrible, lifeless, stultifying denial!
“Not just me! All of us, the whole race of pixies!” And in those terrible stark eyes she read what Woom had wanted to know, what made a Keeper. She saw the suffering, and the warning.
She saw the future.
“No!” she screamed. “Not that! I never will!” She fled the Chapel in another roar of thunder.
Leeb! Leeb and her child—now she would go to them! Now they would be reunited and she would spurn the College and all its works.
She rode the night sky like a wave among the clouds. She brushed the stars, soaring higher than the icy peaks of the Progistes until she saw the great river far below, a thin scar of silver. She plunged down into blackness as a sea beast seeks the ocean floor.
She came to the Leeb Place quietly, soft and silent, like a hunting owl. In the dark clearing the cottage stood deserted, the door flapping loose in the wind. No light shone through the windows or the chinks of the wicker walls. No chickens roosted in the coop that Leeb had made for her, exactly as she had asked. No goats waited in the paddock to give milk for her child. Weeds flourished over the vegetable patch.
The cottage was a hovel. Now she saw what Jain had tried to tell her once, and she had not believed. Such life was squalor, utter poverty. The Leeb Place had held only three metal tools and virtually nothing else not made by the goodman himself, or his goodwife. Compared to the elegance and comfort of the College, this was a sty for beasts. And oh, how happy she had been here! The only tears she had shed had been tears of happiness.
Oh, Leeb, Leeb! Leeb with his clumsiness, his pure-gold eyes, his silly sticking-out round ears. Leeb with his selfmockery, his quirky smile, his gentleness. Leeb, where have you gone? A pixie never leaves his Place! Have you gone to seek another goodwife to bring back here? Or did you take our child and go searching for me?
No, of course not. The Keeper had explained that. Leeb thought she was dead. He had buried a body.
She moved through the darkness surely. She saw all the heart-wringing familiar things—the chopping block, the clothesline, the stone Leeb sharpened his ax on. The boat he had made with so much labor, pulled clear of the water . . . would he not have found it easier to travel by boat than by land when he had a child to take?
Or had he left the child with old Boosh at the Neeth Place? Thaile peered upriver with sorcery and saw the two old folk asleep in their decrepit little shanty, and no child or sign of a child.
The night was empty. The night was cold.
Then she knew what she must seek, and in among the trees she found what she expected, three of them, one of them very small.
Behind the graves stood the Keeper like the God of Death, leaning on her staff, darker than the darkness. For a moment sorceress and demigod confronted each other in silence, while Thaile struggled to control her sobs.
“It had to be,” the Keeper said quietly.
Fury and hatred bubbled up in Thaile’s throat like acid. “Why, why?”
“You know why,” said the Keeper. “We can never love.”
”Evil!”
“Do you think I do not know, child?”
And again Thaile screamed what she had screamed in the Chapel: “No! Not that! I never will!”
She tried to flee. Great as her power was, she was only human, and was pinned by the Keeper’s greater power. “It is prophesied!”
“Then unprophesy it!” Thaile rent the night with a blast of sorcery that flattened the cottage, igniting it in a blizzard of sparks. She would wipe away the remains of this awful crime. A second blast struck woodshed and chicken coop to fiery fragments. A third smashed the burning ruin of the house and fired the shrubbery around.
“Stop!” the Keeper shouted. “I say be still! You are willful! You disobey! You are sworn to obey me!”
Again Thaile smote the Place with fire. Thunder echoed back from the hills.
“Sworn? What choice did I ever have? When did I ever agree to serve you?” Smite! “Your evil infected my parents so that they would infect me, and I infect my own children in turn, slaves commanded to make slaves.” Smite! “You have bred this iniquity from generation to generation—”
Bolt after bolt of sorcery struck boat and paddock, log pile and midden, everything. The ground was melting, but still the Keeper endured and held Thaile there, also. The graves were gone. The last glowing remains of the cottage whirled away in the blast. Storm roared through the forest Far off upstream at the Neeth Place, the two old folk were wakened in terror by the rumbling and shaking of the earth.
“Iniquity?” the Keeper screamed. “You would compare me with the Evil that waits Outside?”
Still Thaile hurled destruction, fighting against the power that pinned her. On both sides of the river, trees crashed down in flames. Wind howled, and the icy peaks of the Progistes reflected the fountains of fire spouting in the valley.
“I say you are a greater evil! You slaughter babies in the name of love!” Maddened beyond reason by her pain and anger, Thaile threw power at the Keeper herself.
The ground erupted, rocks flew, glowing like coals, and the Keeper recoiled before the outburst. “Fool! You will bring the usurper upon us!”
“Then let him come! How can he be worse?”
The river had begun to boil, the Progiste Ranges glowed red in the night. ”Fool!” the Keeper cried again, and released her. Thaile rushed into the sky and hurtled away, up over Thume and the darkness, and was gone to the Outside.
Afterwards remember:
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
— C. G. Rossetti, Remember
NINE
Pricking thumbs
1
The sun was still high, but it glowed red. The goblin army jogged steadily northward, while the smoke of their passing drifted away to the west. Finding the unwooded country of South Pithmot not to his liking, Death Bird had changed direction at last, and turned east. Now he had come upon a river and was heading up it, seeking a place to cross. His horde filled the plain.
Kadie rode in a mindless daze, as she always did now. Often she felt as if she had never lived any other life except this dawn-to-dusk horseback existence and it would go on until the Gods died. Poor Allena was worn away to bones, yet she was still willing, and Kadie could not bear to seek a replacement for her, because goblins ate horses. They were not eating many these days. The imps had stripped the countryside—gone themselves and taken their livestock with them. They had not torched the crops and buildings, leaving that pleasure for the invaders. She suspected the goblins thereby betrayed their whereabouts to the Imperial Army, but she had not mentioned that theory, even to Blood Beak. And where was the army? Why had the Impire let the barbarians ravage unmolested for three whole months? There must be a reason, but she could not imagine what it was.
“Kadie?” Blood Beak trotted alongside her stirrup as he always did, untiring. His bodyguard followed.
“Yes, Green One?”
“This river? Where does it go?”
“To the sea, of course.”
”Which sea?”
“Home Water, or the Dragon Sea. I’m not sure. Ask someone before you burn his tongue out.”
“Don’t burn tongues out. Spoils the screaming. Do you still want to escape?”
She almost fell out of the saddle. He had offered to help her escape once, weeks ago, and then changed his mind. Was he serious now, or was this some sort of cruel joke? She glanced behind and noted that the bodyguard was farther back than usual. They were a new detachment, and none of them understood impish. Perhaps Blood Beak had thought of that.
“Yes, please!”
“I shall camp by the river tonight, then. In the dark, you could slip away and take a boat.” He was not looking up at her, and she could see nothing of his face except a sweaty cheekbone. He was thick and meaty, but there was no fat on him at all.