He was still staring at the huts; he hadn’t heard what she heard. But he nodded roughly.
For no apparent reason, he pulled out his sword as he started back toward the horses.
She hoped he didn’t have a reason. Nevertheless she was glad that he was armed – and that he was determined, if not skilled. She stayed close to his shoulder all the way through the village and past the corral.
Their boots made too much noise on the hard ground: she wouldn’t have been able to hear any soft rustling sounds. But twice she thought she saw movement in the heart of a shadow, the depths of a hut, as if the dark were coming to life.
She was irrationally relieved to find the horses where she and Geraden had left them – and to find them alive. They were both uneasy: the gray bobbed its head fretfully; the roan kept rolling its eyes. Maybe they smelled the same scent that made her so nervous. They were difficult to manage at first, until they realized that they were no longer tied to the tree.
Respecting the uneasiness of the horses – and his own distress – Geraden led Terisa in a wide circuit beyond the empty village before returning to the route marked on the Termigan’s map.
Until nightfall forced them to stop, they put as much distance as they could between themselves and Aperyte. She didn’t want to stop at all; but of course they couldn’t find their way safely in the dark. A flashlight would have come in handy. A big flashlight. Sure, she muttered to herself sourly. And while she was at it, why not an armored car to ride in? Or even an airplane to drop a few strategic bombs on Esmerel? On High King Festten’s army?
All Geraden needed was a mirror.
He could do it, if he could get to his glass – the one which had brought her here.
Sure.
When they made camp, she helped him build the biggest fire they could. She hunted as far as she dared, collecting firewood. Then, while they ate supper, she commented morosely, “I don’t know what made me say that.”
Geraden looked at her across the stewpot out of which he was eating.
“You said they were the ones who didn’t get away. I said they were the ones who did. I don’t know why I said that.”
He tried without much success to smile. “Let’s hope you just have a morbid imagination.” The firelight on his face reminded her of the Termigan.
She couldn’t smile, either. “Why is it,” she went on, trying to exorcise images which haunted her, “everything that comes here by translation is so destructive? Why is it so easy to find terrible things in mirrors? Is the universe really so malign?”
“I certainly hope not.” In a transparent effort to reassure her, Geraden grimaced lugubriously. Then he set himself to give her an answer.
“It’s probably true that every world has predators. But even if a world didn’t contain any violence at all, its creatures or powers might still be destructive if they were translated – if they were taken out of their natural place. There’s nothing immoral about a pit of fire – as long as you leave it where it belongs. What’s really destructive is the man who translates it somewhere else.
“Would you call a fox destructive? After all, it hunts chickens. And people need those chickens. Even so, there’s nothing wrong with the fox.
“For all we know, the firecat that burned Houseldon might be the same thing as a fox in its own world. It might be anything. It might even be an administer of charity.”
An administer of charity. Just for a moment, she took the idea seriously. Someone who ran a mission, for example. Then, however, she was struck by the thought of Reverend Thatcher going around setting towns on fire. On his own terms, that would please him. But literally setting towns on fire—
Involuntarily, she grinned. When Geraden rolled his eyes at her, she started laughing.
She felt like a fool – like she was losing her mind. But she went on laughing, and after a while she felt better.
Nevertheless she didn’t sleep very well that night. She kept expecting the horses to snort and shy – kept expecting to smell something cold and slightly rotten in the dark. And for some reason Geraden spent most of the night snoring like a bandsaw. When she nudged him awake in the early gray of dawn, so that they could be on their way, she felt cold herself and vaguely stupid, as if the matter inside her skull had begun to turn rancid.
The day began well. The air was clear and crisp, and the horses moved easily along the increasingly traveled paths. And before noon she and Geraden came upon a village that had nothing wrong with it.
Nothing, that is, except anxiety. When the people of the village heard what Terisa and Geraden had found in Aperyte, they muttered nervously and scanned the woods around their homes and began to talk about leaving.
“Ghouls,” a woman pronounced, confirming Terisa’s guess. “Don’t know what else to call them. Never seen one – but the lord sent men to warn us. Attack at dusk or dawn. Little critters, almost like children. Green and smelly.
“Eat every kind of flesh. Don’t even leave the grease and bones. That’s what the lord’s men said.”
Geraden scowled as if he were in pain. “That’s why the gate was closed,” he muttered. “The horses never got out. They were eaten right there in the corral.”
Terisa was thinking, They’re the ones who did. They escaped into their huts and somehow sealed the doors. And then they were incinerated in their own homes.
Eremis.
She was beginning to understand why King Joyse had fought for twenty years to strip Alend and Cadwal of Imagers and create the Congery. He wanted to prevent creatures like ghouls from being translated into the world.
Through a haze of nausea and anger, she asked one of the villagers, “What’re you going to do?”
“What the lord’s men told us,” came the reply. “If we heard any rumor of ghouls around here, saw any sign. Get to Romish as fast as we can.”
“Good,” said Geraden fiercely.
He and Terisa rode on.
She still felt like the meat of her brain was going bad. Even though those villagers were safe, she couldn’t rid herself of the impression that the day was getting worse. How many ghouls had Eremis already translated into the Care of Fayle? How much of the Fayle’s strength had already been eaten away?
How could he help King Joyse and defend his own people at the same time?
She practiced saying Oh, shit to herself until it began to feel more natural.
“Here’s some more good news,” Geraden remarked the next time he studied the map. “At the rate we’re going, we’re due to reach another village just about sunset. A place called Naybel.”
Oh, shit.
Grimly, she made an effort to think. “Maybe we should stay away from it. Maybe those things are following us.”
He glared at her. “You do have a morbid imagination.” After a moment, he added, “If we’re being followed, we’ve got to warn the village. We can’t lead ghouls past Naybel and expect them to leave it alone.”
The day was definitely going downhill.
The afternoon wore on, as miserable and prolonged as a toothache. Eventually, Terisa concluded that there were after all worse things than spending so much of the day on horseback. She couldn’t get that smell out of her mind.
Without making an explicit decision to hurry, she and Geraden began to urge their horses faster. They wanted to reach Naybel before dusk.
Mishap continued to dog them. Because they were hurrying, they rode into the village precisely as the sun began to dip into the horizon. At a slower pace, they wouldn’t have arrived until full dark.
The decision to ride straight into the village was also one which they hadn’t made explicitly: they did it simply because the need to warn Naybel’s people blanketed other considerations. As a result, they were already among the huts, on their way in toward the center of the village, when they realized that Naybel was as empty as Aperyte.