I suggested to him that I would be happy to eat egg in any form he cared to offer it, and then I went off into the bushes to think a bit. I sensed no danger in the man, no hostility, but Gamelords, what a surprise! I thought of calling on Didir, but rejected the idea. Was he Gamesman or not? Might he detect — and resent — such inquiry into his state of mind? Better leave it for now, I decided, and wandered back to the fire, stopping on the way to look at the wagon he had mentioned, peaceably parked beneath the trees and as odd a collection of derangement as the man himself. It had a peaked roof and wheels as tall as my shoulder, windows with boxes of herbs growing beneath them, and a cage hung at the back with something in it I had never seen before which addressed me gravely with “has it got some thrilp? some thrilp?” before turning head over tailless behind to hang by one foot. No tail, I thought. The krylobos had none, either. Nor, of course, did Queynt, which told me nothing at all.
Jinian was waking Silkhands, murmuring explanations in her ear as I rejoined them. The krylobos were picking nuts from the trees with their wing fingers, cracking them in the huge, metallic-looking beaks which seemed to have some kind of compound leverage at their hinge. Pop, a nut would go into the beak, then crunch, as the bird bit down, then crrrunch as it bit down again and the nutmeat fell into the beak or the waiting fingers. “Kerawh,” said one of them conversationally to the other. “Kerawh, whit, herch, kerch.”
“How do you tell them apart?” I asked Queynt, unable to see any difference between Yittleby and Yattleby at all.
“Ah, my boy, one of the great mysteries of life. How does one tell a male krylobos from a female krylobos? No one knows. Oh, but they manage to do it, the krylobos do. Never make a mistake. A female will tell another female across a wide valley and challenge just like that, but she’ll let a male come into her very courtyard, as it were, without a threatening sound. And what’s to see in difference between them? Nothing. That’s the honest truth. Not a thing. Isn’t it so?”
“But you know them apart. You said Yittleby was on the left?”
“Ah, my boy, when they drink or eat or talk with one another, Yittleby is always ‘pon the left, indeed yes. When they are hitched to the wagon, Yittleby is always ‘pon the left. Yes, indeed. And when I find an egg, it is always ‘pon the left, my boy, certainly, which is how I know it is Yittleby. But if they were not properly arranged, why then, my boy, I could not tell Yittleby from Yattleby or either from the other. And if there were more than two, why, my boy, I would be totally lost among them. Indeed I would.”
Thereafter, I watched them, and it did seem that the same one of them was always to the left, the other to the right, though I could not be sure. Nor could I be sure that the two incredible creatures did not know exactly what I was thinking and were not laughing at me the entire time without opening their beaks.
We had the egg scrambled. Somehow we managed to eat it all, and it was very good, with a mild, nutty flavor. I began to gather our gear, wondering what would happen next, but Queynt soon clarified that. He summoned Silkhands to ride beside him on the wagon seat, holding up the harness so that Yittleby and Yattleby could thrust their long necks through it and pull the traces taut. They were hitched separately, one to each side of the wagon, the harness running across their prodigious chests. I thought it would be a strange, whipsawing way to travel, but when they strode off it was a matched stride, varying not a finger width between them as they went down the road chatting with one another in an endless whit, kerawh, whit, while Queynt lounged on the wagon seat talking to Silkhands who, for the first time since I had known her, could not get a word in edgeways. Smooth as ice they moved along, Jinian and I following, coming up beside when the road widened, falling well back when it was narrow and dusty. So we went, west along the Boneview River toward the Great North Road. When we saw it ahead of us, I suggested to Silkhands that we turn north, avoiding the Great Road and its possible dangers, but she and Queynt forestalled me.
“Why, my boy, this young lady is too weary to go ahorseback another step, not a step will I allow, no, not at all. She may go inside the wagon and the other young lady as well, if you think it necessary which I do not, for as I understand it, no one knows her at all, and as for you, you can Shift a bit not to seem so familiar to any who may be hunting you, and with Yittleby and Yattleby to carry us along, we will go leagues and leagues on the Great North Road in less time than you can imagine.”
If Silkhands were minded to trust this strange one enough to confide in him, which angered me a good deal, then what could I say against it? I would not leave her and turn aside with Jinian, though the thought did go through my head all in an instant. No, if I Shifted a little, we could ride on the Great Road in some safety, I concluded. The wagon and the birds were so outrageously unfamiliar that no one looked at the riders along of it. None who passed failed to turn and stare at the great birds, and to each Queynt called out with a greeting or a jest, all full of words and empty of much sense. The hours went by. Queynt gave us fruit and bread from the wagon, come noon, and we rode on, the birds striding tirelessly, the tall wheels turning, and it was not yet evening when we began to see scattered nut plants and the spires of Reavebridge shining across the silver of River Reave which had been drawing ever closer to the road with the leagues we had traveled.
“We’ll make for the Tragamor’s Tooth,” Queynt told us when we came up beside him. “A fine hostelry with excellent food and a stable which I am happy to say both Yittleby and Yattleby have found to their liking. We have never before been so far south as during this season. We must seem very strange to all these people, who, I must say, seem not far traveled by the looks of them. Why, I’ll wager not one in a hundred has been north to the Windgate nor upon the heights of the Waeneye or upon the Waenbane Mountains. ‘Windbone,’ you know. That’s the ‘Windbone’ Mountains, so called because the wind has carved great skeletons of stone up there, ribs and fingers reaching into the sky as though the very mountain had lain down and lost its flesh upon those heights. Ah, one must go there by way of the Wind’s Eye, Waeneye as they say in these parts, if one is to see krylobos which put these two to shame for smallness. There are krylobos there, mark me, which would make you shiver in your boots to see, half again as tall as these, and able to kick gnarlibars to death I have no doubt.”
“Wind’s Eye,” said Jinian. “That’s the prophesy you heard in the Bright Demesne. Wind’s Eye.”
She had remembered it before I had, but her words brought back the sound of Windlow’s voice in my head. “You and Silkhands. A place, far to the north, called Wind’s Eye.” I dug out the memory of the other things he had said. “A giant? Perhaps. And a bridge. You must take me along … and the Gamesmen of Barish. “ A giant. Perhaps a giant of mist, of cloud, of sadness, a giant seen at dusk who begged for help of his kinsmen. I raised my eyes to the towering scarps which loomed to the west of Reavebridge. Sharpening my Shifter’s eyes, I could see the curved spires and organic shapes which Queynt had spoken of, as though some great, unfamiliar beast had laid himself upon those heights to leave his bones.