I turned to Traiben after a time and saw him looking upward, more fascinated, so it seemed, than appalled. His lips were moving. I heard him counting under his breath: “Seven … eight … nine. One … two … three …”
“What are you doing, Traiben?”
“How many demons do you make it out to be, Poilar?”
“About a dozen, I suppose. But why should that matter in the slight—”
“Count them.”
“Why?”
“Count them, Poilar.”
I humored him. But it was difficult to get a good count; the demons were in constant motion, alighting, feeding, leaping aloft again. At any time there might be four or five of them sucking blood and four or five more wheeling through the night sky, but one would descend and another would arise while I was making my tally, and I had a hard time keeping them sorted out. Irritably I said, “Something like nine or ten, is what I get.”
“Nine, I would say.”
“Nine, then. How many there are hardly seems of any importance.”
“What if these are the Nine Great Ones, Poilar?” said Traiben quietly.
“What?” I blinked at him uncomprehendingly. Traiben’s notion had taken me utterly by surprise.
“Suppose that these are the kings of the Melted Ones,” he went on. “Perhaps created by whatever force it is that has brought the Melted Ones themselves into being. And reigning over them by strength of will, or perhaps by some kind of magic. Breeding them, even, to serve as sources of food.”
I fought back a shudder. More carefully, this time, I counted again, following the wheeling winged forms as they moved in the darkness. Nine, so it seemed. Nine. Yes. Who moved as they pleased among these miserable creatures, feeding on them at will. The Nine Great Ones? These repellent blood-drinkers? Yes. Yes. Surely Traiben was right. These demon-birds, or whatever they were, were the masters of this Kingdom.
“And we’re supposed to ask permission of them to pass through this place?”
Traiben shrugged. “There are nine of them,” he said. “Who else can they be, if not the Nine Great Ones who rule here?”
I slept very little that night. The sky-demons remained with us far past midnight, feasting insatiably, and I sat up, clutching my cudgel, afraid that they would attack us when they tired of the blood of the Melted Ones. But they went only to their own. At last they disappeared, flapping off to the west, and then the moons themselves vanished from sight, dropping behind the looming bulk of the Wall, so that we were plunged into darkness. It was then that I slept, but briefly and poorly, dreaming that hairy wings were fastened about my body and glistening fangs were reaching toward my throat.
My sleep, such as it was, was broken by a cry of anguish. I came awake at once and heard the sound of Thissa’s wailing.
“Thissa? What is it, Thissa?”
“Death!” she called hoarsely. “I smell death!”
I went to her side. “Where? Who?”
“Death, Poilar.” She was shivering. Words in an unknown language came tumbling out of her. Unknowable santha-nilla words, I suppose: magic-talk, the voice that rises out of the well of mysteries. I held her and she fell asleep in my arms, murmuring, “Death … Death …”
There was nothing I could do in the darkness. I sat holding her until Ekmelios crossed the horizon and the plateau was lit by brilliant morning light.
Dozens of Melted Ones, drained white, lay motionless across the way, scattered about on the ground like broken boughs after a wind has rampaged through the forest. They appeared to be dead; very likely they were. The rest, the whole immense horde, sat huddled close together, watching us sullenly. No demons were in evidence. I was without any idea of what to do next. The Melted Ones had allowed us to come this far but evidently they would let us go no farther unless we acknowledged them in some unfathomable way, and if we tried to move forward without the blessing of the Nine Great Ones they would surely resist our advance, so I supposed, and throw us back by sheer force of numbers. I saw no way to reach the Wall other than through the Kingdom of the Melted Ones. But how could I parley with those blood-drinking birds? We were stymied. It was the first great test of my leadership and I felt myself faced with failure.
Then, while I hesitated, Grycindil came running to me, crying that Min and Stum were missing.
A group of the women, said Grycindil, had gone down to the river at daybreak to bathe. Min and Stum had not been among them, which Grycindil thought was odd, for of us all Min was the most fastidious about such things; and Stum, who was her friend, always went wherever Min went. When they were done bathing, the women filled a flask with cold water and went looking for them, thinking that they were still asleep, and planning to splash them for a prank. But no one could find them, Grycindil said. She and Marsiel and Tenilda and Tull had searched through the entire camp.
“Perhaps they’ve gone off for a morning walk by themselves,” I said, and the foolishness of my words made them die in my throat even as I spoke them.
I called everyone around me and told them of the disappearance. There was great consternation. I went to Thissa, who still sat stunned and trembling, and asked her to cast a searching-spell.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will.”
She gathered little sticks and said the words and threw the sticks again and again. But each time she shook her head and snatched the sticks up and said it was no good, that there was too much noise and confusion all about her. Even when she drew Witch-lines on the ground and knelt to whisper god-names to them, and dropped the sticks within those lines, she could learn nothing that was of any use to us. The strain on her was terrible: her eyes became very bright and large, her face grew rigid.
“Are they still alive?” I asked her. “Can you tell us that much?”
“Please,” she said. “Let me rest. All this is beyond my understanding, Poilar.” And she began to weep and shake like one who has been taken ill. I told Kreod the Healer to comfort her.
We divided ourselves into six search parties and went off in different directions, with Kilarion leading one group back across the river to look for them to our rear. Seppil and Dorn and Thuiman and I went forward, toward the masses of Melted Ones, and I stared into the teeming multitude of them, trying to catch some glimpse of Min and Stum among them. But I saw nothing. Nor did any of the other search parties. We didn’t learn a thing. There were muddy tracks all over, but who could say what they meant?
Everyone was looking at me. I was supposed to tell them how we were going to deal with this. But I was far from having any solution.
I looked to Traiben, to Jaif, to Naxa, to Kath. They had no help to offer me.
Then I became aware of a stirring behind me in the ranks of the Melted Ones. I saw Talbol gaping and pointing, and Muurmut grunted sharply like one who has been struck. I turned and stared, as amazed as they were by the terrible apparition that was approaching us.
A Melted One who might almost have been Min—whose face and form were oddly like hers, although much deformed and distorted in the manner of their kind—had emerged out of that hideous multitude and was making her way unsteadily toward us. My first thought was that the creatures who had captured Min had made a crude copy of her after their own fashion. But then she came closer, and I recognized Min’s familiar lively eyes and the tattered green shawl of her House that she always wore, and I realized that this was no copy of Min, but Min herself, a Min who had undergone a strange transformation: a melted Min, in fact.
She moved in a dazed, tottering way. Tenilda and Tull ran to her, reaching her just as she was about to fall, and carried her into our camp.