“I see you can call it,” Remy said. “I haven’t seen that it can talk.”
“Awk,” the crow said. “Talk.”
Lucan clucked at it. “Slow, slow. No need to rush.” He looked up at Remy. “It has been a very long time since they received their gift. Most of them never use it and it comes back slowly when they try.”
“Time,” the crow said.
With a wink at Remy, Lucan said, “Time, right. Plenty of time.”
“No time,” the crow said.
“Why not?” Remy asked it.
“No time to talk,” the crow said. It flapped over to Remy and landed on his shoulder. Leaning in close to his ear, it said, “Found you. They found you. Time to watch you die.”
He would learn later that some of those who had died building the Crow Road returned as spectral undead, yearning for their bodies to live again-or, failing that, to at least be buried with the ceremonies of their gods. There were undead in Avankil, of course. Bodies rose from the slack waters under the piers, or dug their way out of the rubbish heaps where murderers disposed of their victims. Ghosts haunted the lower corridors of the keep and the places near the walls where the specters of soldiers remembered invaders long since gone to their own rewards. The Crow Road, though, built on death, gave rise to undeath with every step.
They turned after the crow spoke and saw behind them the insubstantial shapes of wraiths and specters. They did not pursue; they shepherded. “We’re being walked ahead to meet something,” Paelias said. “I wonder what.”
“I’d rather not find out,” Kithri said. She rubbed at her forehead over her right eye. Remy had noticed her making that gesture frequently these past few days. He wondered if she was still suffering the effects of the ogre’s kick back in the orc lair. Lucan seemed to have recovered, but the Eye of Gruumsh’s spear point had passed only through meat; his joint and bones were unhurt, and Keverel had sewn his wounds up so well that Lucan was already complaining that the scars would be too small to impress the barmaids of Karga Kul.
The crow still sat on Remy’s shoulder. “Ever get the feeling that you had a crow on your shoulder so the enemy knows who to aim at?” Paelias said loudly.
Feathers rustled in the surrounding trees, and out of the deepening darkness came more crows, to festoon the party and the horses. “Wrong again,” croaked the crow on Remy’s shoulder. They kept a stead pace, moving forward, always forward, even though the time for camp had long since come. Remy’s eyes jittered back and forth from fatigue. He couldn’t focus on anything for long.
“Found me, you said,” he said to the crow.
“Awk,” the crow said. “Aye.”
“How come they don’t attack, then?”
“Because of us,” the crow said. Its voice grew clearer the more it was used.
“How droll,” Lucan said. “It tells us it’s time to watch us die, then says that we are not dying because of it.”
“Perhaps you have failed to attune yourself to the crow sense of humor,” said Biri-Daar. She was riding out in front of the rest of them, scouting to make sure the mass of undead behind them had not somehow raised reinforcements ahead.
“Are you suggesting that a crow has more of a sense of humor than I do?” Lucan said.
“If she wasn’t, I will,” Kithri said.
The crow on Remy’s shoulder followed this back-and-forth with cocked head. “Awk,” it said at the end.
“Really, they’re not attacking us because of you?” Remy asked it.
“Really.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“The elf, awk,” the crow said. “Speaks our language. Few Tenfingers care. Awk.”
“Who would like to apologize first?” Lucan said smugly.
“What I want to know,” Kithri said, “is why the wraiths back there are afraid of a bunch of crows.”
Paelias chuckled. “This is the Crow Road, isn’t it?”
The crows on their shoulders and on the pommels of their saddles awked.
All night they rode, until the horses’ heads drooped and their riders were slumped forward over the horses’ manes. Even some of the crows rode silently, heads tucked under one wing. Remy remembered little of that night except the occasional flutter next to his ear as his first crow passenger shifted in its sleep.
The sun rose directly ahead, bringing them out of sleep with sandy eyes and frayed nerves, not to mention bruised backsides. The crows were gone. When they looked behind them, so were the wraiths. “Well,” Paelias said. “If that’s the appetizer, I wonder what the main course will be?”
Biri-Daar yawned, showing teeth that seemed to go all the way down her throat. “That will be funny exactly until we find out.”
“Remember that the builder of this road poured more and more of his madness into it as he went, and his madness grew more and more consuming,” Keverel commented. “It could well be that the crows will not want to confront whatever comes tonight.”
“Then perhaps we should sleep during the day,” Kithri said. “As much as I hate to suggest it.”
They could all tell how much she hated to suggest it by how her eyes stayed half-lidded and her head lolled a little while she spoke.
“Not a terrible idea,” Biri-Daar pronounced after some consideration. They rode off the road and found a sheltered spot in a dell over which the branches of trees had knit into a canopy. There they staked out the horses, attended to their immediate needs, and slept.
“Awk,” said a crow. Remy awoke and saw it staring into his eye. He flinched. Then he realized that if the crow had intended harm, the harm would already have come. Shadows were deepening under the trees; in the gaps through their branches he could see both orange and blue in the sky.
“Right,” he said, sitting up. “Time to go. Thank you.”
The crow awked and flew away into the trees.
Remy went around the camp waking everyone up. Even Lucan and Paelias, who did not sleep, muttered and blinked and had a hard climb back to wakefulness from their quiet meditative state. “It’s a twilight world out here. Up here. On this road.” Paelias stretched and cracked his neck. “One can only wonder what awaits us around the next bend.”
“An unholy abomination that will catch those words and shove them down your throat, sideways,” Kithri growled.
“Oh halfling, do excuse me,” he said. “I do not mean my humor to offend little people with headaches.”
She spun, knife in hand. “Stop!” Biri-Daar commanded. She stepped between them. “Sheathe the knife, Kithri. And Paelias, if you must speak, perhaps not all of your speech could be dedicated to aggravating those who must ride with you.”
The eladrin appeared to consider this. “Perhaps,” he allowed. He swung up into the saddle and went out onto the road to await the rest of them.
Perhaps inspired by Paelias’s example, Remy found himself trying to pick a fight later that day, when they had stopped for water and Kithri started her sparring with Paelias again. Remy listened to it as long as he could, Paelias coolly provoking her and Kithri gladly being provoked to complain about the unfairness of the larger party members to her-the horses were too large, the portions of the meals poorly considered, the tasks given her were demeaning and mundane… finally Remy had had enough. He had a few things he needed to say, too. “What’s unfair is that I keep on fighting with you and keeping the enemies from your backs, and then the minute you have a chance to gather your thoughts you get suspicious again. When does the fighting count for something?” Remy was going to have trouble stopping himself, he knew. He always did once he started to let his feelings run. “And how do I know I can trust you? You keep me along because I have this box, maybe, and maybe you know what to do with it and you’re just waiting for the moment to do it and then I’m going to get a knife in the back. How do I know that’s not going to happen?”
None of his companions could answer… except Paelias. “Simplest of questions,” he said. “You don’t know. None of you do. Remy, you could be waiting to kill us all. Biri-Daar could be waiting to do something unspeakable to Remy at the correct moment. And I,” he added with a dramatic gesture, “might be scheming to do you all in. We can’t know. Shall we kill each other now, or shall we assume that we are working toward a common goal for the moment?”