“What do you mean?”
“It’s come forward.” He didn’t want to believe it but he had spent as much time in these hills as anyone. “Like floodwaters coming over the banks. At least a dozen paces ahead of where I’ve ever seen it.”
“Is that all?”
“Is that all? Woman, the Twilight People made that line to keep men out of the shadowlands. No one crosses it and returns, not that I’ve ever heard of. And before today, it hasn’t moved an inch closer to the castle in two hundred years!” He was breathless, dizzy with it. “I have to tell someone.”
“You? Why should you be the one to get tangled up with this, old man? Aren’t there big-folk guards that watch the Shadowline?”
He waved his hands in exasperation. “Yes, and you saw them when we went past their post-house, although they didn’t see us, or didn’t care They might as well be guarding the moon? They pay no heed to anything, and the task is given to the youngest and greenest of the soldiers. Nothing has changed on this foggy border in so long they don’t even believe anything could change “ He shook his head, suddenly troubled by a low noise at the edge of his hearing, a tremble of air. Distant thunder? “I can barely believe it myself, and I have walked these hills for years. “The dim rumbling was growing louder and Chert finally realized it wasn’t thunder. “Fissure and fracture!” he swore. “Those are horses coming toward us!”
“The hunt?" she asked. The damp hillside and close-leaning trees seemed capable of hiding anything. “You said the hunt was out today.”
“It’s not coming from that direction—and they would never come so far this direction, so near to “ His heart stumbled in his chest. “Gods of raw earth—it’s coming from the shadowlands!”
He grabbed his wife’s hand and yanked her stumbling along the hill away from the misty boundary, short legs digging, feet slipping on the wet grass as they scrambled for the shelter of the trees. The noise of hooves seemed impossibly loud now, as though it were right on top of the staggering Funderlings.
Chert and Opal reached the trees and threw themselves down into the scratching underbrush Chert grabbed his wife close and peered out at the hillside as four riders erupted from the mist and reined in their stamping white mounts. The animals, tall and lean and not quite like any horses Chert had ever seen, blinked as though unused to even such occluded sunlight. He could not see the faces of the riders, who wore hooded cloaks that at first seemed dark gray or even black, but which had the flickering sheen of an oily puddle, yet they too seemed startled by the brightness of this new place. A tongue of mist curled about the horses’ feet, as though their shadowy land would not entirely let them go.
One of the riders slowly turned toward the trees where the two Funderlings lay hidden, a glint of eyes in the depths of the shadowed hood the only indication it was not empty. For a long moment the rider only stared, or perhaps listened, and although Chert’s every fiber told him to leap to his feet and run, he lay as still as he could, clutching Opal so tightly that he could feel her silently struggling to break his painful grip.
At last the hooded figure turned away. One of its fellows lifted something from the back of its saddle and dropped it to the ground. The riders lingered for a moment longer, staring across the valley at the distant towers of Southmarch Castle. Then, without a sound, they wheeled and rode their ghostwhite horses back into the ragged wall of mist.
Chert still waited a dozen frightened heartbeats before he let go of his wife.
“You’ve crushed my innards, you old fool,” she moaned, climbing up onto hands and knees. “Who was it? I couldn’t see.”
“I… I don’t know.” It had happened so quickly that it almost seemed a dream. He got up, feeling the ache of their clumsy, panicked flight begin to throb in all his joints. “They just rode out, then turned around and rode back…” He stopped, staring at the dark bundle the riders had dropped. It was moving.
“Chert, where are you going?”
He didn’t intend to touch it, of course—no Funderling was such a fool, to snatch up something that even those beyond the Shadowline did not want. As he moved closer, he could not help noticing that the large sack was making small, frightened noises.
“There’s something in it,” he called to Opal.
“There’s something in lots of things,” she said, coming grimly after him. “But not much between your ears. Leave it alone and come away, you. No good can come of it.”
“It’s… it’s alive.” A thought had come into his head. It was a goblin, or some other magical creature banished from the lands beyond. Goblins were wish-granters, that was what the old tales said. And if he freed it, would it not give those wishes to him? A new shawl… ? Opal could have a queen’s closet full of clothes if she wished. Or the goblin might lead him to a vein of firegold and the masters of the Funderling guilds would soon be coming to Chert s house with caps in hands, begging his assistance. Even his own so-proud brother…
The sack thrashed and tipped over Something inside it snarled.
Of course, he thought, there could be a reason they took it across the Shadowline and tossed it away like bones on a midden. It could be something extremely unpleasant.
An even stranger sound came from the sack.
“Oh, Chert.” His wife’s voice was now quite different. “There’s a child in there! Listen—it’s crying!” He still did not move. Everyone knew there were sprites and bogles even on this side of the Shadowline that could mimic the voices of loved ones in order to lure travelers off the path to certain doom. Why expect better of something that actually came from inside the twilight country?
“Aren’t you going to do anything?”
“Do what? Any kind of demon could be in there, woman.”
“That’s no demon, that’s a child—and if you’re too frightened to let it out, Chert of the Blue Quartz, I will.”
He knew that tone all too well. He muttered a prayer to the gods of deep places, then advanced on the sack as though it were a coiled viper, stepping carefully so that in its thrashing it would not roll against him and, perhaps, bite. The sack was held shut with a knot of some gray rope. He touched it carefully and found the cord slippery as polished soapstone.
“Hurry up, old man!”
He glared at her, then began cautiously to unpick the knot, wishing he had brought something with him sharper than his old knife, dulled by digging out stones. Despite the cool, foggy air, sweat had beaded on his forehead by the time he was able to tease the knot apart. The sack had lain still and silent for some time. He wondered, half hoping it was so, whether the thing inside might have suffocated.
“What’s in there?” his wife called, but before he had time to explain that he hadn’t even opened the cursed thing, something shot out of the heavy sack like a stone from the mouth of a culverm and knocked him onto his back.
Chert tried to shout, but the thing had his neck gripped in clammy hands and was trying to bite his chest through his thick jerkin. He was so busy fighting for his life that he couldn’t even make out the shape of his attacker until a third body entered the fray and dragged the clutching, strangling monstrosity off him and they all tumbled into a pile.
“Are you… hurt… ?” Opal gasped.