“. . . And there is one sentence on that paper I haven’t read to you. The one that convinces me the traitor is you.” She stood stock-still. In the moonlight the Sekoi’s glance was sharp and melancholy.
“What sentence?”
“Simply this. After Galen’s name it adds: THIS MAN IS ALSO KNOWN AS THE CROW.”
In the utter silence the lap of the sea seemed nearer. Far out over the dim waves, a mew-bird squawked.
Carys sat down as if her legs had given way. She was so astonished she could hardly speak. “They know about the Crow?”
“I think you’ll agree,” the Sekoi said tartly, “that lets off Marco. And Solon. There’s no one else. Unless you think Raffi is a spy?”
She scowled at it. Then her face lightened. “Alberic! What about Alberic and his gang! They know!”
Just for a second the Sekoi frowned. “That one. But how would he find out where we are now, or that our destination is the observatory? Only we six know that. And if the Watch know it, they know everything. About the Crow. About the Coronet. And about Sarres.” It looked at her and its voice was a hiss of sudden bitter anger. “How could you do this, Carys? After all the Order has suffered? And Sarres! If I ever get back there and find Felnia gone and that sweet island blackened by Kest’s taint I will never forgive you for it. Never. Because it has to be you.”
In despair she glanced around. The tawny Sekoi with the crossbow had crouched. Now it stood up again.
“What are you going to do?” she said coldly. “Kill me?”
The Sekoi looked disgusted. “I’m going to find Galen. You will be kept here. In a cage.”
“A cage!” She laughed bitterly. “Do you really think you people have a prison that can hold me? I was trained by the best.”
“Indeed?” the Sekoi purred, icily polite. It drew its long knees up and leaned on them. “But we have, Carys,” it said quietly, the ripple of the sea in its voice. “We have chains the Watch never imagined and a prison no one can break out of. Because the chains are stories and the prison is your own mind.”
“No!” She leaped up instantly. “I won’t let you do that to me!”
“There are too many of us,” its voice said smoothly. “And besides, we’ve already begun.”
“No!” she screamed, grabbing at it.
But the Sekoi had faded into a rock and all the beach was empty.
The hand she held out was furred. And in her seven fingers she held a small basket full of clams.
19
“I suppose,” the Wolf said, “I should be scared?” It licked its great teeth with a long tongue.
“You should.” Pyra put down the clam basket and shrugged off the red cloak.
“Because I’m not what you think. And if you swallow me, all you’ll get is a fire in your belly that will never go out.”
The Wolf crouched. “If you don’t mind,” it said politely, “I’ll take my chances.”
“Fine. Whenever you’re ready.”
Pyra and the Wolf
AND THE WOLF LEAPED.
“No!” Carys screamed in fury. “This is just a story!” But the great maw opened and she was inside it, swallowed deep down red tunnels into a raw, pounding heat.
THE SUN WAS GOING DOWN. All the horizon was on fire and Herax knew the danger beacons had been lit; warning flames across the Karmor hills. Below her the Sekoi army was gathered, thousands strong, armed only with wooden staves, small knives, hastily cut spears. The Karamax went among the columns, encouraging them, firming their minds with legends.
Beyond the fires, over the edge of the world, the Watchmen were. They moved in dark rows on the high downs.
Herax tuned the final string on the saar. She struck a soft chord, and the music went down into the veins of Anara, and shivered in the leaves of the trees. All the Sekoi-host heard it; it entered their stories and memories, seeping into them, a great unsettling, stirring their wrath.
Herax sang the Song of Anger; a wordless song, a song without harmony, that had not been sung since before the Starmen came. It moved through the host like anxiety, like an ache, darkening their minds; and as she sang it she felt her own thought curl up and her mind go cold with the chilling anger of the Sekoi, knowing it was her skill that would bring so many to their deaths. Herax . . .
But her name wasn’t Herax.
She stopped, struck by that. Her fingers gripped the taut strings and she stared out at the smoky fires, not seeing them. Her name was . . .
Was ...
It had gone. Shaking her head she flung the saar down among the rocks. “No!” she snapped. “Not this story either. You’ll never get me to forget! My name is . . .”
But there was only emptiness. And as the army in the plain below gave a great cry, rain pattered hard from the iron-gray clouds.
Bewildered, she watched it drip from her seven fingers.
THERE WERE TOO MANY STORIES. They came so fast; she slid helpless from one to another like a shadow, caught up in the fights, the journeys, the escapes. Breathless and injured in the Karelian jungle; then lazing on a bed of silk in the Castle of Halen; another time wandering deep in the Forbidden mines, consumed with nothing but thirst—all the scenes crowded in on her. And she lived them. They were real. She could smell the mossflowers that tried to devour her, taste the bitter chocolate in Bara’s box. When the kite-bird struck at her in the tombs of Ista it made her bleed and hiss with pain, the thin amber stain clotting the fur of her neck.
Only now and then when a story drew to its close did the despair come flooding back, the sudden knowledge of the cage, so that she knew she was trapped in an endless web of words and events and happenings—old treacheries, love affairs, wars, quests—none of it hers, none of it mattering. And beyond that was something else, some deep real anxiety that bit her like a Kest-claw which she couldn’t shake off, and in all the confusion of the stories she could never find out what it was.
Once, deep in the strange Sekoi-houses in the tale of Emeran from before the Watch-wars, she caught a glimpse of her own narrow striped face in the mirror and knew her name was Carys and that her eyes were brown, not yellow, but the knowledge was gone in an instant as the keeper Ganelian knocked on the door and the whole relentless tragedy began. She was Emeran; all that had happened to her had to be lived through, and only when the tale ended and she found herself weeping over his body with the poison vial in her hand did she struggle back to herself.
Just for a second, her mind cleared. She smeared the tears away fiercely, knowing she had to do something, now! But what? There was no Watch-training for this. No procedures. Old Jellie had never taught her anything about escaping her own mind. Galen would have. The Order, they understood things like this. They knew ...
But it was already too late.
The story flowed back. She drank the poison, feeling its hot stain corrode her stomach and veins. As she fell forward, retching, the white Emeranflowers sprang out of the ground around her.
THIS WAS THE SEKOI-CONSCIOUSNESS. She saw with their eyes, smelled their sharp scents, dreamed in their odd, complex colors. The stories grew older, more alien. Now they were myths of heroes from before the Wakening, when the world was colder.
Standing on the rock of Zenath, tied hand and foot with the broken sword at her feet, she stopped struggling with the ropes and stared up at the sky, the wind flapping her long coat.
Because it was dark. Too dark.
Quite still, she wondered why the stars astonished her, what was wrong with them; ignoring the churning wash of waves as the great two-headed god strode toward her through the sea.