What am I doing here? No power of the gods or earth should have been able to lure me back to this mad place. But shame and desire, commingled in a most devastating way, had clearly been more powerful than any gods, because here he was behind the Shadowline again, lost in an unholy forest of crescent-leaved trees and vines sagging with heavy, dripping black blos¬soms, terrified that if he did lose the boy he would bring even more pain to the Eddons-and more important, to Barrick's sister, Princess Briony.
Hidden lightning glowed above them and thunder rumbled as the cold torrent grew stronger. Vansen scowled. This storm was too much, he de¬cided: even if it meant another pitched battle with the unresponsive prince",
they dared not go any farther today. If they were not struck by lightning or a deathly fever, their horses would surely stumble blindly of a crag and they would die that way-even Barrick's strange, dark fairy-horse was showing signs of distress, and Vansen's own mount was within moments of balking completely. No sane person would travel unknown roads in weather like this.
Of course, just now, Barrick Eddon was clearly far from sane; the prince showed no inclination even to slow down, and was almost out of sight.
"Highness! "Vansen called above the hiss of rain. "If we ride farther we'll kill the horses, and we won't survive without them." Time was confusing behind the Shadowline, but it seemed they had been riding through this endless gloaming for at least a day. After a terrible battle and a sleepless night spent hiding in the rocks at the edge of the battlefield, Ferras Vansen was already so exhausted he feared he would lose his balance and fall out of his saddle. How could the prince be any less weary?
"Please, Highness! I do not know where you are going but we will not reach it safely in this weather. Let us make some shelter and rest and wait for the storm to pass."
To his surprise, Barrick suddenly reined up and sat waiting in the harsh drizzle. The young man did not even resist when Vansen caught up and half yanked him, half helped him out of his saddle, then he sat quietly on a rock like an obedient child while the guard captain did his best, spluttering and cursing, to shape wet branches into some kind of shelter. It was as though only part of the prince were truly present, as though he were living deep inside his own body like an ailing man in a huge house. Barrick Eddon did not look up even when Vansen accidentally scratched his cheek with a pine bough, nor respond to the guardsman's apologies with anything more than a slow eyeblink.
During his life at the castle Vansen had often thought that the nobility lived in a different world than he and his kind, but never had it seemed more true than this moment.
What kind of lackwit are you? Vansen's tiny fire, only partly protected by the overhanging rock against which he'd set it, hissed and struggled against the horizontal rain. An animal-he prayed it was an animal-howled in the distance, a stuttering screech that made Vansen's hair stand and prickle.
TRigon guard us, will you truly give up your own life for a boy who scarcely knows you're here?
But he wasn't doing it for Barrick, not really. He'd nothing against the youth, but it was the boy's sister that Vansen feared, whose grief if her twin were lost would break Ferras Vansen's own heart beyond repair. He had sworn to her he would treat Barrick as though he were his own family- an oath that was foolish in so many ways as to beggar the imagination.
He watched the prince eating one of their last pieces of jerked meat, chewing and staring as absently as a cow in a meadow. Barrick was not merely distracted, he seemed lost in a way Vansen couldn't quite under¬stand. The boy could hear what Vansen said at least some of the time or he would not have stopped here, and he occasionally looked his companion in the eye as though actually seeing him. A few times he had even spoken, although saying nothing much that Vansen could understand, mostly what the guardsman had begun to think of as elf-talk, the same sort of babble Collum Dyer had spouted when the shadowlands had swallowed his sense. But even at his best moments, the prince was not completely there. It was as though Barrick Eddon were dying-but in the slowest, most peaceful way possible.
With a shudder, Vansen remembered something told to him by one of his Southmarch guardsmen-Geral Kelty, who had been lost in these same lands on Vansen's last, terrifying visit, vanished along with the merchant Raemon Beck and the others. Kelty had grown up a fisherman's son on Landsend, and when he was still a boy, he and his father and younger brother had been caught in a sudden violent squall where the bay met the ocean. Their boat tipped over, then was pushed under by a wave and sank with horrifying swiftness, taking their father with it. Kclty and his younger brother had clung to each other, swimming slowly toward the land for a long time, fighting wind and high waves.
Then, with the beach at Coiner's Point just a short distance away, Kelty told Vansen, his young brother had simply let go and slipped beneath the water.
"Tired, mayhap," Kelty had said, shaking his head, eyes still haunted. "Cramped. But he just looked at me, peaceful-like, and then let himself slide away like he was getting under his blanket of a night. I think he even smiled." Kelty had smiled too as he told this, as if to make up for the tears in his eyes. Vansen had been scarcely able to look at him. They had both
been drinking, another payday spent in the Badger's Boots or one of those other pestholes off Market Square, and it was the time of night when strange things were said, things that were sometimes difficult to forget, although most folk did their best.
Wincing now at the rain that leaked through their pathetic shelter of woven branches and ran down the neck of his cloak, Ferras Vansen won¬dered if Kelty had seen the same thing in his younger brother's eyes that Vansen was seeing in Prince Barrick's, the same inexplicable remoteness. Was Briony's brother about to die, too? Was he about to surrender himself and drown in the shadowlands?
And if he does? What becomes of me? He had only barely made his way out of the shadowlands the first time, led by the touched girl, Willow. No one, he felt sure, least of all Ferras Vansen, could be that fortunate twice.
They had found an open track through the forest, a bit of clear path. Vansen jogged out ahead of the prince, trying to spy out a place where they might stop and spend a few hours of rest in the endless gray twilight. After what must have been several days' riding, the supplies in his pack had dwin¬dled to almost nothing; if they had to hunt for food, he wanted to do it here, where the dim ghosts of the sun and moon still haunted the sky be¬hind the mists. He could not be certain that whatever animal he caught here would be more ordinary than prey taken deeper behind the Shadow-line, but it was one small thing he was determined to do.
Vansen's horse abruptly shrilled and reared, almost throwing him from the saddle. At first he thought they were being attacked, but the forest was still. His heart slowed a little. As he brought the horse under control he called back to the prince to hold up, then, as he leaned forward to stroke his mount's neck, trying to soothe the still-frightened animal, he saw the dead thing on the ground.
At first disgust and alarm were mingled with relief, because the creature was no bigger than a child of four or five years and was obviously in no state to do any harm: its head was mostly off, and black blood gleamed all over its chest and belly and on the wet grass where it lay, thinning and run¬ning away under the remorseless rain. The more Vansen looked at the corpse, though, the more disturbing he found it. It was like an ape, but with abnormally long fingers and skin like a lizard's, rough and netted with scales. Knobs of gray bone stuck out through the scaly hide at the joints and along the spine, not injuries but as much a part of it as a cow's horns