But Toto noticed nothing. Nor was Arrow Wind frightened. Together, they reached the pass. Here the forest and sky opened around them, and they could see for miles in every direction. Toto dismounted and walked through the pass, coming to a stop at the other side.
He saw something that staggered his imagination.
A city, surrounded by high, gray walls. It was giant, enormous, the largest city he’d ever seen. It was dozens of times larger than Toksa, at least. The houses were monumental stone edifices, standing close together. Brick-lined streets crisscrossed between them. He spotted something that must have been a church, with a tall spire that reached for the sky and a large hall with a flag flying above it.
And there were people. A great throng, filling the streets.
Toto’s eyes went wide, and his mouth gaped. Then, for the first time, he felt uneasy.
Why was the entire city so gray, from corner to corner? And the people too-why were they gray?
Why isn’t anyone moving?
Everyone stood in the streets, perfectly still. When he squinted his eyes and looked, he noticed the flag wasn’t moving either. Perhaps the breeze that blew against Toto’s cheek up here in the pass did not reach down so far.
5
THE MEN OF the village returned empty-handed from the day’s search. They watered their horses and rested aching limbs before quickly conferring and heading back out. The looks of determination in their eyes were undermined by a growing certainty that Toto had gone north, toward the mountains-though none dared say it.
Sometime after noon, the elder met with a messenger from the lodge across the river, come to tell them that the priest from the capital was growing tired of waiting.
In the weaving room, Oneh worked the loom tirelessly. She had only paused once that day, to glare at the elder when he came to make sure she wasn’t worrying about Toto instead of her task.
The elder had sent word back with the messenger, asking with utmost politeness for another three days. The messenger returned bearing both a message and an air of grandeur, and he cast a disparaging eye at the hunters hurrying to and from the village.
“If the situation here is beyond your ability to handle,” the messenger told the elder, “it would be a simple matter for us to send our guards to assist you.” There was a haughty ring to the man’s words.
The elder bowed deeply. “Please tell them it is nothing so serious. We are merely doing all that we can to carry out our instructions in accordance with the priest’s wishes. We remain, as always, entirely loyal.”
After the messenger left, the elder stood clenching his fists. He told himself that he was furious at Ico’s betrayal, at Toto’s recklessness, and Oneh’s stubbornness-but the more he tried to summon his wrath, the more his true feelings interfered. If that self-important, self-serving priest wants the Sacrifice so badly, why doesn’t he come dirty his own hands? Whatever excuses he might make, he knew the priest didn’t stay in Toksa because he didn’t want to hear the village’s laments at having to hand over the Sacrifice-to feel the accusatory stares of the villagers. The priest could lock Ico up in a cave, make Oneh weave the Mark, and silence the villagers’ questions himself…if he wasn’t such a coward. It left a bitter taste in the elder’s mouth to realize that no small part of his anger was directed at himself for striking Ico and speaking to him as he had.
A woman from the village arrived, breathless, calling for him. The hunter who had taken a fall several days before had just passed away. The elder’s heart sank even deeper, and the lines in his face hardened so that he looked more like a statue carved from stone than a man of living flesh. How easy it would be if only his heart would turn to stone as well. To stone. All to stone…
Toto sat astride Arrow Wind, gaping down at the scene below him. That’s why nothing moves.
Even the flag flying from the hall had been frozen in mid-flutter.
Toto urged Arrow Wind down the mountainside and rode directly through the city gates. The horse walked smoothly with Toto gripping the reins, but Toto no longer rode gallantly. He crouched low against the horse’s back, clinging to its living warmth for encouragement.
The world around him was petrified and gray.
The people in the streets around him had been frozen in time. Some pointed toward the sky, others ran, holding their heads in their hands, while still others held their mouths open in soundless screams. Toto wondered how many years they had stood there like this. When he reached out hesitantly to touch one, it crumbled into dust beneath his fingertips.
Arrow Wind whinnied and Toto steadied his grip on the reins.
No matter which turn he took on the winding streets, people turned to stone awaited him. At first, he tried to believe that these had all been created. Perhaps someone important from the capital had crafted a sculpture of an entire city here for some purpose beyond Toto’s comprehension. They had made countless statues-entire houses-and encircled the grim tableau within a wall when they were done.
But why would they do that? Was the city a decoy of some kind? Toto nodded, pleased with his theory. It has to be that. When the enemy saw a city full of people unprepared, men without helmets, with bundles on their backs, leading children by the hand, people carrying baskets and fetching water, they would be tempted to attack. And then-
Toto’s imagination failed to produce the second phase of the strategy. It also struck him as odd that the statues would be crying and shouting and obviously fearful if they were intended to appear an easy target. And nothing explained why so many of them were pointing upward, toward the western sky.
Toto was not the brightest boy, but he had a keen eye for detail, and everything he saw undermined his attempts to remain calm. The looks of abject fear on the faces of the stone people. Hands raised as though to ward off the fast approach of…something. Lips shaped around cries of despair when there was no longer time to escape.
He reached the entrance to a street where a pile of barrels sat, one stacked upon the other. Toto stopped. Dismounting, he reached out to touch one of the barrels, and its surface crumbled like a castle of sand. Craning his neck, he saw a figure behind the barrels-a boy about the same height as he, cowering. Fragments of the crumbled barrel dusted his stone hair.
The boy was smiling.
Toto understood instantly. He wasn’t hiding from whatever it was everyone else had been looking at-he was playing hide-and-seek. Whatever happened to the people in this city had happened so quickly, he hadn’t even had time to realize that he was about to die.
Reluctantly, Toto admitted what he had known for some time already. This city was no grand work of sculpture. This was the reason why the mountains in the north were forbidden. This was the curse of the Castle in the Mist.
The master in the castle was capable of dooming an entire walled city in the space of a breath.
This was what Ico had seen. This was what he meant by “trouble,” why he was so determined to sacrifice himself for the village.
Arrow Wind gave a light whinny and rubbed his nose on Toto’s shoulder. Toto stood, rubbing the horse’s neck, unable to take his eyes off the stone boy. At the end of the street, he saw a stable. The horses were still inside, their manes a uniform ashen gray. Toto was acutely aware of Arrow Wind’s warmth beneath his hand, the softness of his mane, and the musty smell of him. He pictured Arrow Wind turning to stone, a cold gray like the other horses.