“Galul,” they whispered. “We were promised Galul. Be resigned, they said, until you are grown. Then you will go to Galul. Be resigned, they said, until you are married. Then, then you will go to Galul. Oh, be resigned, for when you have children, then, oh, then you will go to Galul.”
“Galul,” they whispered, “where we may lie bare-skinned in the soft surf and make castles in the sand. Galul, where we may speak aloud. Galul, where we may dance among the flowers . . .”
He told them that Galul was only over the next dune, but still they would not let him rest. No matter what direction he took, there they lay, speaking to him.
“I wanted to leave the old man and go to heaven.”
“They gave me to him when I was only ten, when I was only a child.”
“I was the fourth wife of the Duke of Highland. He was an old, old man, long past the ways of love. He left me alone with a young guardsman, who said he loved me. When I was with child, the guardsman went away, and my husband sent me here . . .”
“My child, my child! Here by my side. Is he alive? Take him, save him! Oh, please, take my child . . .”
They spoke in his mind, they disputed with one another, they were angry at themselves, they boiled with disappointment, their heat charred him, turned him into ashes . . .
* * *
“He’s burning up,” said a voice.
“Look at that wound on his head. It’s puffed up like a melon. I’ve brought the all-heal. Here, hold his arm . . ,”
He didn’t even feel the pinprick though he gulped thirstily at the water they gave him. He couldn’t hear their voices over the voices in his head.
“You don’t understand,” he told the shadow women. “They planned to kill you all along. It’s your blood that makes the lichen work. The blood of nursing mothers. If men bleed on it, it becomes something else. It turns people to wood.”
Etain said, “Listen to him. He says if a man bleeds on the lichen, it becomes something else. Could that be true?”
Joncaster felt Aufors’s head, playing the words over in his head. “Look at his hands. They’re covered with cuts. He’s been cutting himself, so it looks like he believes it’s true.”
“Wouldn’t we have heard of that if it were true?”
“The lichen’s been tapu for us for a long time, Etain. We haven’t even gone near it. But for him . . .”
“Would bleeding on it be tapu for us?”
“I don’t see how. Scout around. See if you can find a patch of lichen close by.”
Etain departed. Joncaster settled Aufors more comfortably in the shade. He had heated water, applied an herbal compress to the wound on Aufors’s head, and was readying a replacement before Etain returned, sliding down a dune in an avalanche of sand.
“There’s a patch just over there. He’d moved two bodies. There were still four of them there. I moved them. Then I bled a little on the lichen, just to see. It went crazy. More than when the women are killed on it.”
“How much blood?”
“Only a little, Joncaster. Really. I’ve bled more shaving!”
“How many patches are there, close around here?” “The Mahahmbi did fifteen, last holy days.”
“He couldn’t have happened upon more than three or four of them if he aimed for the sea. If this … if this works, we ought to do it everywhere, now! Before the Aresians find the women’s bodies and put two and two together.”
“Aresians,” cried Aufors, becoming agitated. “They want to know about P’naki. Don’t let them find out about P’naki.”
Joncaster muttered soothingly to him, then turned to Jorub. “You brought a couple of birds didn’t you? What’s home for them.”
“Refuges Four and Six.”
“Melanie should get to Six by tonight. Give the birds enough water to get them through a day’s flight.” Joncaster busied himself with paper and marker:Aufors found, important to move bodies, put drops of male blood on lichen. He rolled the messages into the slender quills the birds were trained to carry. Meantime the birds drank, cooing softly between themselves. Then they were aloft, headed southward.