Chapter Fourteen

Zyran stopped to rest. He sat on a fallen log and rubbed his legs gently, trying to ease the pain. Mossal lowered himself slowly to the mossy forest floor and nibbled at a group of mushrooms growing at the base of the log. The sakiru darted through the air and came to rest on Zyran’s shoulders.

He had left Camp a week ago. Ilyat had sent him on his way with three full waterskins, a bag of dried meat for Mossal, and some more of the green paste that the iveri farmer’s wife had given him, the stuff that seemed to suck the pain out of his legs, in exchange for his two remaining belt stones, leaving his robe a pointless trapezoid of blue-black fabric. Seeing his distress, Sirrit had reconnected the two sides and stitched it up partway for him, but it was not the same. In the end, he gave the fabric, his last remaining artifact of Death, to a gypsy in exchange for a new leather sleeve for his sword-staff. The original was presumably still in Caiross. He sensed that the gypsy only did it out of pity—the fabric was worthless here.

Sull had stayed behind. “No offense,” he’d told Zyran, blood weeping through the bandage on his neck, “but you seem to be a little hazardous for people’s health. I know Illy wanted you to get to where you’re going, but I’d really like to not die. Someone has to tell our parents what happened to her.” He had waved as Zyran rode into the pines, and then gone off to go help Keller prepare for Enith’s funeral.

Zyran gathered that Enith had been like a mother to Ilyat. The day before he would not have believed it, but after seeing Ilyat’s face and hearing her cry, he had to accept that humans could form attachments like that, attachments that went beyond use. People. They feel things.

He missed the river and lake. The pine forest that he was in now was quiet, dark, and misty, reminding him comfortably of the Hollow, but there was something to be said for flowers and sun sparkling on the water, and for going to sleep on a gently rocking boat, staring at the stars.

There was something to be said for company, too, he was coming to realize. He missed the Marq Batar and her crew. Apart from being a useful source of information, they had been a comforting presence. Now that they were gone, he understood that.

He was not as alone as he could have been, though. Mossal now begged for attention whenever they stopped, demanding head scratches and the occasional belly rub. The whiskery beast remained as malodorous as ever, but Zyran didn’t mind it so much anymore. The iveri was good to have around, and it saved him from walking.

Granted, his legs were healing rapidly. The green paste that Ilyat had given him helped, he thought. He walked on them for a few minutes each day, and when he wasn’t walking on them, they usually didn’t hurt beyond a dull ache. The sakiru had taken to sleeping on them at night, and that seemed to help too. They were always best in the morning, and declined steadily during the rest of the day.

It was late afternoon, he thought. The trees were so thick here that they choked back much of the sun’s light, making it hard to tell. The forest floor was covered with a thick bed of needles. Prickly bushes swarmed across it in the sunnier areas. Moss and various fungi dominated in the rest.

It really did feel almost like the Hollow. The thought filled him with longing. He missed his home desperately. He missed being immortal. I can die. He missed his injuries healing immediately. He missed the other servants. He missed Death.

He could not think about the Song. The Song is gone. That hurt too much, more than everything else combined. Magic had occupied every layer of his being. To be without it was to be nothing. When he had been on the boat, constantly distracted by new and fascinating things, he could ignore it to some extent, but now… He had always heard losses described as a hole in one’s life, a dark shape that ate away at everything else and constantly threatened to devour the mind entirely. In truth, it was different. There did not seem to be a hole for him, or if there was one, it had grown so large that even his basic faculties teetered on its edge. Everything he did, from opening his eyes in the morning to walking, reminded him that he had lost something, lost everything.

Not everything, he reminded himself; he still had his life, tenuous as it might be. But I can die. No! I am alive. He told himself that every day, that there was still something he could use to serve Death. It was a small relief, yes. But it was the only thing that he could use to convince himself to get up, to work through the pain and drag himself onward, further north.

A drop of water landed on his hand, and he looked up. Another drop landed in his eye. It had grown darker, and a cold wind was blowing. Rain. Zyran had been indifferent to rain as a Song wielder, when he could dry himself off immediately any time he pleased. Now he found that, in addition to making Mossal stink even more than usual, it made everything cold and wet and hard to see. And it rained often here.

Zyran sighed, dug his fingers into his legs one last time, trying to convince himself that it was helping, and got to his feet, pain lighting up in now-familiar patterns. He coaxed Mossal to its feet and picked up the sakiru, which promptly flew up and tucked itself under Zyran’s cloak. It was starting to rain hard already.

Within a few minutes of walking, the rain had become a torrent. The temperature had dropped substantially. The trees slowed the rain somewhat, but Zyran was soaked regardless. He trudged on, leading Mossal. The iveri had pinned its ears back, keeping rain out of them. It swished its long tail in annoyance, hitting Zyran in the side of the head. It felt like being hit with a dirty wet mop. Zyran gave the iveri a light push, and Mossal let out a long bray. The sakiru shifted under the cloak.

Something landed hard on Zyran’s shoulders and hit him in the face with a stick. Mossal squealed loudly and leapt away. Zyran grabbed the little creature and flung it against a tree. It was short, about waist height, and it had a wild bushy mane and glittering eyes. It leapt to its feet and charged at him, hissing, stick in hand. He caught its arms, twisted the one with the stick until it dropped the weapon, and shoved it back.

The creature backed against a tree, baring its teeth. Zyran got a slightly better look at it. Its dark mane rippled around it, but it didn’t appear to have any hair on its face, only mud. It was wearing clothes of some kind, a shirt with buttons and ragged pants. It was filthy, covered with mud. It dropped to a crouch. “What’re you doing here?” it hissed, its left hand scrabbling in the dirt for a new weapon.

“Traveling,” Zyran snapped back, pulling the sheathed staff off of his shoulder. “Why did you attack me?”

“You’ve got food. Can smell it on you. You’re in my woods, so give it!”

“Absolutely not. I have no food. You can leave.”

The creature leapt at him, too fast to catch, and snatched the sakiru out from under his cloak. The glow lit up the dark forest, turning the rain and mist golden orange. The creature froze. Its expression turned to simple wonder. Zyran suddenly saw that it was nearly human. A child. A girl, he thought. Long ears poked out from beneath her wild hair. A Fey of some kind. Her large eyes reflected the sakiru’s light.

The sakiru went wild. It began leaping and twirling in the air, looping around the child, who watched the fish-fairy in unguarded awe, turning slowly to follow it.

Zyran watched this for some time, Mossal by his side. “What are you?” he asked blankly.

“Jen,” the child said, still watching the sakiru.

“Is it what we were looking for?” he asked. The sakiru stopped dancing around the child and began waving its left fin vigorously in front of Zyran’s face.

“That?” he said incredulously. “That is the powerful mage we have traveled so far to find?”

Jen spun to face him, the spell broken. “No, I’m not a mage! But it’s okay! Not all Dellians can, all right?” Her face was twisted into a snarl again.

“You aren’t a mage?” Zyran said. Something sank within him, as if his insides had turned into lead. “You cannot use the Song?”

“I told you, no! It’s okay, Mom said. It’s okay that I can’t.”

“You…” He sat down clumsily in the mud, the staff falling beside him. “You cannot. At all?”

“Stop asking! What do you want, anyway?” The sakiru settled on the child’s shoulder.

“I want…” He was finding it difficult to think. “I require a portal.” He was cold. Very cold. His legs always hurt more when it was cold.

“A portal?” The child’s face wrinkled up. “To where?”

“To Death’s Hollow. To my master.” He hardly noticed what he was saying. The weight inside him had vanished. He felt simply empty now. She can’t use magic. I have no way home.

Jen was suddenly right in front of him. “You can go see death? Death’s a person?”

“Yes. I work for her.”

“You work for death? You kill things? People?”

“Yes,” he said, wondering why the mortal child was still bothering him. Could she not see that he no longer cared about her existence? Or any other mortal’s existence?

“Do you ever kill…other things?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Monsters?”

“I have killed any number of things.” Would the sakiru be able to find another mage? One that actually was a mage? How could it have made such a monumental mistake? It had promised him. It had been certain. And he had come all this way, and all that he had found was a miserable little mortal child that was still talking to him.

“So you can kill trolls? And bears? And dragons? Can you kill dragons?”

“Yes. Go away.” There had to be other mages on this world. There had to be. Somewhere on this world, there were bound to be mages. He would find one. He would. And the mage would make him a portal, and he could return to Death. He would.

Jen leaned against him to whisper in his ear. “Have you ever killed a shadow? The kind that walk?”

He pushed her away. “Shadows do not walk. Go away.”

She cowered down. “Don’t say it so loud! They come when you talk about them!”

So he had to find some way to detach the sakiru from the child, and then get it to track down a mage. Killing the little beast would probably work, but it ran the risk of alienating the fairy, and he needed it to cooperate. No, no, she’s a person. I know that now. I can’t kill her, not without a good reason. Death would not approve.

He suddenly became aware of Mossal on the ground, pressed up hard against him, forcing its head into his lap, wrapping itself around him. The iveri’s eyes were closed as if in sleep, but its ears were pinned back flat, and it was shivering. “Mossal, what—“

The sakiru burrowed inside Jen’s shirt, its light all but vanishing. The child forced itself between Mossal and Zyran, burying her face in the iveri’s side. “Get out of there!” Zyran snapped.

“Shhh,” the child moaned. “It’ll hear you!”

Zyran went cold.

It happened suddenly, as if he had been encased with ice. The rain and mist swirled around him as harshly as ever, the water pounding away at him, but their sound seemed to be fading away. Just as suddenly as he had gone cold, he became utterly convinced that there was something behind him, just there, and that if he would turn his head, he would see it.

But he could not turn. He was filled with an implacable horror.

If he looked, he would see it.

He would see the source of his fear, and it would see him, and he had no doubt that it would be more terrifying than anything he had ever imagined. He did not know what it was, or what it would do, but he stared straight ahead, not daring to move, because it would see him.

It would see him. It was right there, right behind him. Close. It’s close. It was going to touch him. Any second.

Something breathed on the back of his neck, long and cold.

With all the will he could summon, he turned his head and saw empty forest.

The unnatural cold vanished. Sound rushed back into the world. The iveri in his lap groaned in relief and slumped against him. The sakiru leapt out into the air again, bringing light. Jen jumped to her feet and clapped him on the shoulder. “You did it! You turned it away! I never can, I just have to wait until they go.”

Zyran felt like collapsing. The horrible fear was fading, but it remained on the edges of his mind. “Turned what away?”

“Walking shadow,” she whispered. “Didn’t you see it?”

“No,” he said. “I looked and saw nothing.”

“You turned?” she said in awe. “You looked? You actually looked?”

“Yes,” he said. “There was nothing there to see.”

“But I see them coming,” she said, confused. “I see them walking in the woods, and I know to hide. But they always find me.” Jen shuddered eloquently.

“What do they look like?”

“Shadows,” she said unhelpfully.

Zyran sighed and scratched Mossal’s heavy head. The iveri sighed deeply. “Thank you. Now we must go.”

“Go? Where?”

He had no real answer to that. “I need a mage. There have to be mages here somewhere.”

The child considered. “Mom says the humans have a school. They send all their mages there to learn.”

Hope flared suddenly inside of Zyran again. “A school? Do you know where to find it?”

“I’m not telling you. You have to bring me with you.”

“And why would I do that?” he said irritably.

“Because you won’t find it without me. I come with you. You feed me, keep them away. I take you to the magic school.”

Zyran looked at the sakiru, which had settled on Jen’s shoulder again and was nuzzling up against her chin. It wiggled its left fin and pointed in a direction that Zyran thought was southwest. He considered.

“All right,” he said eventually. “If you really do know where it is.”

“Of course I do!” She pointed the same way the sakiru had. “It’s in Cuisienne, in the mountains.”

“Cuisienne,” Zyran said, nodding slowly. Then he remembered the child’s mortal age. “Should you not ask your parents’ permission?”

“Nope,” the child said cheerfully. “They won’t mind.”

“Right,” Zyran said dubiously. He thought mortals were generally protective of their young. “Perhaps you should ask anyway.”

“No, they’d just be mad I bothered them.”

Zyran gave in to Jen’s greater experience in the realm of mortal parenting. “What kind of food do you require?”

She bent down and pulled a mushroom out of the mud, then cleaned it off with rain and popped the fungus into her mouth. “Whatever. But you should find pine cakes. Pine cakes are really good. Mom never makes them anymore.”

“Why? What is a pine cake?”

“She just doesn’t. Pine cakes have lots of things in them. Pine nuts and sugar and flour and eggs and water and honey. They’re really sticky.”

“Delightful,” Zyran said. “Do you know of anywhere we could spend the night? Somewhere out of the rain?”

“Sure,” Jen said. “Come on.” She trotted off into the rain, heading roughly west, the sakiru still perched on her shoulder. Zyran followed them, leading Mossal. Of course the place would be uphill. He felt his legs begin to throb.

Zyran was thoroughly cold by the time they reached a large group of boulders, apparently part of the base of a mountain. His legs were protesting furiously now, threatening to mutiny. When he saw Jen scramble up into the rocks, he nearly gave up. Mossal turned and gave him a look. The old iveri clearly had no desire to climb the rocks either.

“How far is it?” Zyran called.

“Here,” Jen said. It pointed at a large space between two boulders, one that reminded Zyran uncomfortably of the entrance to Noom’s caves. “You coming?”

Zyran hesitated. It wasn’t so far, and there was something resembling a path up the rocks. They were almost stairs, really. Oversized, crooked, jagged, and cracked stairs, but they were like stairs. Definitely stairs. But he had to climb. You are not an animal, he thought, disgusted with himself. You can overcome your discomfort. “Yes,” he said firmly.

He pulled himself up onto the first waist-high boulder, legs shaking. The splints clattered against the boulder as he swung his legs over. Mossal climbed up behind him, grunting with effort. There are only eight or nine of these. You are perfectly capable of doing this.

The second rock was taller. He had to stretch and grab the top edge, then pull himself up. He was trying to hoist himself up without using his legs too much when he lost his grip on the wet rock and bashed his knee. Falling was bad with the splints. He couldn’t bend his knees. This was not going to work. “Mossal, help,” he hissed. The iveri seemed to understand. It pressed itself up against the second rock, allowing Zyran to stand on its back. With the animal’s help, Zyran made it up the second boulder, ending up on his hands and knees, cold, wet, and in pain. Mossal leapt up the rock like a cat, landing heavily, nearly knocking Zyran off the rock.

Only seven or eight more to go.

By the time he climbed up the last agonizing boulder, Zyran was utterly exhausted. He forced himself to look up and saw two large stones leaning against each other, forming a doorway into the mountain. There was a flickering light coming from inside. He crawled between the rocks and found himself in a cave that was cramped, but warm and dry. A tiny fire was burning in the middle. He immediately got as close to it as he could without burning himself.

Only when feeling had returned to his fingers—reminding him that they were cut and scraped—and Mossal had squeezed into the cave behind him did he take in his surroundings. The walls of the cave were covered with crude drawings, apparently made with charcoal. They were all fairly standard primitive fare—handprints, simple human figures, trees—but the one above the entrance to the cave. A completely black figure stood there, its arms outstretched. It was unsettling. Zyran turned away from it and looked across the fire at Jen, who was sitting up against a pile of sticks and branches. She had cleaned the mud off of her face and hands.

“You’re hurt?” she asked.

“Yes,” Zyran said. “My legs.”

Jen turned to a bag made of some kind of animal skin and pulled out a handful of leaves. They looked vaguely familiar. “Here,” it said. “Chew on them.”

“I cannot.” Zyran pulled the sackcloth off of his head.

“Eww!” Jen said, apparently delighted. “What are you?”

“A servant of Death. I told you.” Zyran rubbed his legs, trying to dull the pain.

Jen hopped around the fire and poked at his Veil. “Gross. That’s why you sound sick, huh? Like you’ve got wet lungs. How do you eat?”

“I don’t. Please stop touching me.”

She poked him again. “Are you blind?”

“No,” Zyran said, once again reminded of Noom. His legs throbbed painfully.

“Why do you have funny eyes, then?”

Zyran suddenly noticed that Jen had been sitting on what appeared to be a sleeping mat of some kind. He looked around the cave again, taking in more than he had previously. The space was cramped with all three of them in it, partially because it was very small, and partially due to all the things. Most of them were primitive, clearly made by Jen. Crudely woven baskets, barely held together by grass and string, contained roots, sticks, leaves, and any number of other things. Simple dolls were lined up against the wall. A collection of polished stones was piled in a corner. A kind of shelter made of sticks tied together had been erected in the back of the cave.

But some of the things were of better construction, finer than most of the things that Zyran had seen in Rune. A delicately carved wooden flute, stained with age, stuck out of a basket of mushrooms next to him. A metal spoon, curved like a vine and etched with leaves, was lying on a flat rock by the fire. A blue ceramic jug molded in the shape of some kind of scaled creature sprouted dead flowers from its mouth. The blanket piled on the sleeping mat had obviously once been fine, though it was now frayed and dirty. And Jen’s clothes. They were filthy and torn, but they spoke of better origins.

“Where did you get this?” Zyran asked, pulling the flute out of the basket to examine it more closely.

Jen snatched it from him. “Don’t touch that!” She placed the instrument carefully back in the mushroom basket. “It’s Mom’s.”

“You are alone here.” Zyran was sure now.

There was a long pause. “No,” Jen said finally. “The walking shadows are here too.”

“Have they always been here?”

Jen leaned against Mossal, apparently not minding the stink. “A couple. But there are more now.”

“When did you notice an increase in their numbers?”

“After the fire.” She began working her fingers through Mossal’s fur, untangling it.

“What fire was this?”

“I was little. I don’t remember it, really.”

“Yes, you do,” Zyran said, looking at the child closely. “You survived it. But your mother did not.”

Jen would not look at him. She was apparently completely absorbed in a particularly stubborn mat on Mossal’s side. For a moment Zyran thought that she would tell him no more. Then she whispered, “They’re walking shadows now. All of them.”

Zyran wanted to laugh. The idea that dead things could return to the living was a more or less universal idea in mortals. It was born out of a fear of death and a desperate hope for a second chance at life, nothing more.

But Jen’s conviction was so strong, and the memory of the sudden cold and silence in the woods so near, that he felt a twinge of fear. “That is impossible,” he said, feeling absurdly like he was reassuring himself. “When mortals die, there is no return. Death is absolute.”

“They didn’t return,” Jen said as if he were an idiot. “They just didn’t leave.”

“That is equally impossible,” Zyran said. “Nothing can escape death. Life cannot be prolonged even by an instant. It is one of the basic rules of the universe.”

Jen did not respond. Zyran could see that he had not changed her mind at all, and he didn’t particularly feel like trying again, so he leaned back against Mossal and thought as the fire warmed him.

The “walking shadows” seemed to be very real. They were apparently some kind of incorporeal being from a spirit world. Zyran had had very few dealings with spirits. They lived much longer lives than mortals did, almost long enough to be considered immortal. On the rare occasion that they left the spirit worlds, mortals that stumbled across them worshipped them as gods. Which was appropriate, as the first mortal beings had been created by spirits.

That had been so long ago that Zyran did not know even an approximate time. The mortals had at first been welcomed into the spirit worlds, but their rapid spread and infinitesimally short lives had been such a disruption that they had been cut off, relegated to the mortal worlds. Since then, the creation of new life had been outlawed. After a few disastrous power grabs by spirits that grew to believe in their own godhood, almost all of the connections between the mortal and spirit worlds had been severed. Contact between them had become minimal.

There had been a few notable contacts. The introduction of magic into mortal creatures, for instance, which had, among other things, resulted in the creation of the Fey. And the Release, when a number of lesser, barely-sentient spirits had discovered an old spirit bridge to a mortal world. The bridge had broken eventually, but not before massive numbers had gotten through. They had spread across a number of worlds, and they had never been eradicated.

Was it possible that the shadows were left over from that event? They certainly were powerful in the Song, to manipulate a mind like that. The cold, the quiet, the fear… Zyran had never been so afraid, not even when he had been certain he would die in the sands of Rakken. How could he face something like that? Spirits were extremely difficult to kill, due to their lack of a conventional physical body. They had to be twisted apart with the Song.

A wave of emotion crashed over Zyran at the thought, and he shuddered a little. Fear, anger, but mostly loss. He wished that he could acclimate himself to the idea that he could no longer hear the Song, but he couldn’t. Every time he thought about it, it hurt him anew, turning his world upside down. The Song is gone. I can die. The words stuck in his head as if they had been burned there. Adapt! he told himself. There was the anger, the fury he felt at acting like a mortal simply because he had been turned into one. It was shameful for a servant of Death, the Inexorable Lord, to succumb to pain and fear the way he was. Self-pity was for mortals. He was not truly mortal, or at least he wouldn’t be for long. He could do this.

“What’re you thinking about?” Jen was looking at him. She had completely combed through all of the fur that she could reach. Zyran glanced at the iveri’s head and saw that it looked completely relaxed, its eyes half closed and its breathing slow and steady.

“Your walking shadows.”

Jen burrowed into Mossal’s newly soft fur. “Don’t,” she said simply.

“I think that they are spirits of some kind.”

She looked up at him. “I thought you said ghosts aren’t real.”

“Ghosts, no, of course not. But there are such things as spirits.”

“What are they?” She had an expectant look, as if she were waiting for him to tell a story.

He considered. “Very long-lived beings. Nearly immortal. They come from the spirit worlds. A very long time ago, some of them escaped into the mortal worlds. I think these must be remnants of that time.”

“What’s immortal?”

Zyran stared at it. How long had she been out here alone? He was unsure of her exact age, but he felt sure that she should have had a good grasp of her language by now. This one speaks the same language as the others, he suddenly realized. There were altogether too many unanswered questions about this world. He mulled over the language one for long enough that Jen prompted him again.

“What’s immortal?”

“An immortal is a being that cannot die.”

“But you said no one can escape death.”

Zyran considered how to respond to that. “There are some things that can. Issimil, for example. He is the Lord of the Song. All magic in the universe comes from him. He is an essential part of the fabric of the universe, like Death. They cannot die. If they could, the universe would be ripped apart.”

Jen picked a tick off of Mossal’s hide. “What else can’t die?”

“Those are the only two truly immortal beings,” he said reluctantly. It had always been a sore point for him, this technicality. “They were here before the universe was created, and they will be here after it collapses into nothingness. But there are some beings that are so close to immortality that they are also called immortals.”

“Like what?”

“Death’s servants. We cannot be killed. Eventually, after a very long time, we are released from service. Then we die. But the life is so long, and we are so impervious, and so powerful, that we are called immortal. We call ourselves immortal.”

Jen was leaning forward, staring at him avidly. “You said you work for Death. You can’t die? If something bit your head off, you wouldn’t die?”

There was that familiar set of feelings again. Loss, anger, and fear, that together threatened to engulf him. “I would.” The Song is gone. I can die. The Song is gone.

“But…” She sat back, looking confused.

“I was stripped of my immortality.”

“Why?”

“It is a test. If I can return to Death, I will be given back my immortality.”

Jen nodded in comprehension. “You can die. But you can kill them, right?”

“Your walking shadows?” When she nodded, he sighed. “No. When my immortality was taken from me, so was the Song. There is no weapon I can use against them.”

“No!” Jen groaned. She collapsed against Mossal. The iveri snorted. The child remained quiet for a while, stroking Mossal gently to reassure it. Then she sat up and looked at Zyran very seriously. “We have to leave first thing tomorrow, then. Right away.”

Zyran nodded slowly. Part of him was surprised at the intensity of her reaction. Another part, the part that remembered the walking shadow, the part that he pushed away, understood completely. “Then we will leave at first light.”

“Good,” Jen said. She went across the cave and pulled a handful of nuts out of a basket. “Pine nuts. Want one?”

“I cannot eat.”

“Oh yeah,” she said, reminding him absurdly of Death. “Sorry.” She put the nuts on a piece of metal that looked like it had once been part of a suit of armor and pushed it to the edge of the fire. “Can you pass me the mushrooms?”

Zyran turned and made to pass her the basket of mushrooms that had the flute in it.

“No, not those. The yellow ones.”

Zyran found the appropriate basket and slid it across the stone floor of the cave to the child. She broke several mushrooms into pieces and tossed them into the makeshift bowl.

“The bag behind you. The big one.”

The sack turned out to be nearly empty. Jen poured a quantity of what appeared to be some kind of grain into the mixture as well. Rakka? Then she got up, padded out of the cave, dragged in a bucket of water, and used her hands to ladle some into the bowl. Zyran watched with interest. Before coming to Rune, he had only ever seen tea being prepared, and the various ways that mortals made food never ceased to surprise him.

After a few minutes, Jen pulled the metal bowl away from the fire with a stick. The grain had dissolved into a mush, resulting in some form of soup. Zyran had never eaten anything, but the mixture smelled unpleasant. Jen appeared to enjoy it, though.

She finished her food more quickly than Zyran would have thought possible. Then she tossed the bowl out of the cave into the rain, grabbed the sleeping mat and blanket, and pulled them under the rickety wooden shelter at the back of the cave a few feet away. “You should sleep. You looked at the walking shadow, and it went away. Maybe it won’t come for you tonight.” She burrowed under the blanket, reminding Zyran of a small animal. The sakiru curled up next to her.

Zyran rubbed his legs pointedly, hoping that the fish-fairy would notice, but it ignored him. He pulled his cloak more tightly around himself and huddled against Mossal as he did every night. He was almost warm now, and even with thoughts of the shadow swirling in his head, sleep came easily.