“Give me,” cried Dupey in two voices. “Give me.”
“He has various ways of removing the top half,” mused the Tallman. “Dupey is original, innovative. I have been much amused by watching Dupey.”
“Dupey was saved,” the monster cried. “Saved from the horrid midwifes. Saved to serve Tallman and them. Weren’t we, Tallman? Oh, give me.”
“Patience, patience, Dupies. First you must unload the cold-wagon. Otherwise you will have nowhere to keep the pretty legs.” Some other sound came from Tallman, some sound of humor. Compared to that sound, laughter is the song of angels. Such a sound devils might make.
But with that sound the cover was thrown back from the chill wagon, and long bundles were brought from it and laid in a single, close layer upon the car. Something about the size and shape of those bundles picked at a mind horrified by Tallman, petrified by monsters, picked at a mind without result. But then Dupey turned too quickly from his work, and the covering of one of the bundles caught upon his belt. He turned to cover the contents of the bundle again, quickly, but the water ox which was Peter had seen, seen, seen. It was Windlow, old Windlow lying there, ash gray with cold, unmoving. It all happened too fast, too fast for Peter or Dolwys to react, for Tallman was once more on the car, the pawns were summoned to sit upon its edges, and it was moving away through the tower mouth which had rumbled open. Fatman was watching Dupey. Dupey was approaching Izia. Peter fought to be in two places at once, but it was too late. The tower door mumbled shut.
Water oxen have horns, usually blunted. They have huge, slow feet. They are ponderous, quiet, seldom moved to anger. Therefore, what Dolwys and I became might not have been called water oxen but something else, not totally unlike. Our horns were needle sharp, our feet hard and hooved, our anger real. Dupey never reached the place where Izia lay. Fatman was spilled from his wagon long before he reached the tower door he wheeled for. Beneath the trampling hooves they became mere broken clots of shadow upon the hard pavement within the darkness of the spidery arches. When we had done my heart was pounding as though we had fought a great battle, and it was almost with surprise that I turned to see Izia still upon the ground, mouth open in bleak astonishment.
It was furred-Peter and long-legged Dolwys who brought her up the steep slopes to the pinnacle where Mavin waited. Perhaps she had been watching us from her bird form, for it needed little explanation to tell her what had happened. Izia fell away from our supporting arms to curl upon the stone, turned into herself as a snail turns, tight against the world. The seared, horrid skin of her legs lay bare, an obscene statement of her life with Laggy Nap. Dolwys and I sat panting until I could speak.
“Windlow’s body, Mavin. Brought by Nap, in the wagon. The Tallman took it. Through those doors. We didn’t have time to … I’ll have to go back.”
“But we need a Healer for her,” said Dolwys. “We must do something for the girl!”
“We have a Healer,” said Mavin, fixing me with her raptor’s eyes. “That is, we have one if Peter chooses to use it.”
I was so breathless, so senseless, that it took me a time to realize what she meant. Dealpas. First among Healers. Among tile Gamesman of Barish in my pocket.
“Of course,” I stuttered. “At once, I’ll …”
“Shhh,” she said. “Take a moment to get your breath. She will not perish in the next moment what she has survived for the past years.” She went to the woman and knelt beside her urging Izia to her feet, into the cave and onto the bed there, pressing a hot brew into her hands, all despite Izia’s incomprehension and blank-eyed apathy. The sight of her legs had done what all the years of Laggy Nap had not, driven her into a kind of madness.
“What if Dealpas cannot heal her?” I murmured, to no one in particular. It was Swolwys who answered me as he brought me some of that same brew which Mavin was spooning into Izia.