Renata looked at him for a long time without saying anything. Then all she said was, “You should keep the mark covered, Tebriel. It might help to save you from Quazelzeg.”
“Who is Quazelzeg? Why does he seek to enslave all of Tirror?”
“He is the unliving,” said Pixen.
“The dead . . . ?” Teb began.
“No, Tebriel. Not the dead. The unliving. There is a vast difference.”
Teb waited, not understanding.
“Death, Tebriel,” said Renata softly, “is not a condition. It is not a permanent state. It is merely a passing through. A journey into another world, and into another self. Death is not an ending.
“Don’t you remember, when you were small, feeling that there was something you’d forgotten? Something you almost knew, almost remembered—then it was gone?”
“I still do that,” Teb said.
“So it will be in the life after this one. Fragments of this life and of all other lives will come to you unclearly—for all are linked, Tebriel. You take from one into the next, though you don’t remember.
“But to be unliving is very different. It is not like the crossing-over experience of death. It is, precisely, no experience. Precisely unliving. The unliving embrace and feed on the opposite to everything we find warm and joyous and filled with life. They feed on nothingness, on all that turns from life. They hate folk who go about their own pursuits with vigor and joy; they hate the strength one feels in self. They want all creatures massed in sameness, and enslaved. They hate the deep linking of one person’s life with another, the linking of generations, the tales of one’s childhood and one’s parent’s childhood, the memories that link a family, a nation, and so link all of us. Let me show you. . . .”
The vixen looked deep into Teb’s eyes, and her pale silver face seemed to grow lighter still and her dark eyes larger until Teb could see nothing else, until he swam in that bright darkness. “Remember your mother, Tebriel. See her . . . see her . . . Remember your father, your sister. Remember their faces, their voices, and the things you did together. Remember it all. . . .”
The memories came flooding, a hundred memories surrounding him. They were galloping over green hills, the four of them, Cannery’s pale hair flying, their mother laughing as her horse plunged up a steep hillside. Then they were at supper in their quiet private chambers, their father was carving roast lamb, the room filled with its sweet gamy scent, and there was a white tureen brimming with onions and mushrooms. His mother wore a pale yellow dress, and was laughing. All the memories came flooding: being tucked into his bed, his first pony, Camery sewing a quilt, his mother’s garden, Camery’s owl. . . .
And then suddenly the memories vanished. He caught his breath. There was only emptiness.
There was nothing.
He could not remember how his mother looked, could not remember the color of her hair, how his father looked. . . . There was a girl. . . .
His mind was gray and empty.
The only link he had with himself or anything real was a pair of dark huge eyes in a pale face—what was this creature? Why was he here . . . ?
“Who am I?
“My name—I don’t know my name. . . .” He was shaking. . . .
Then suddenly the world popped back to fill his mind bright and loud . . . alive—alive. . . . The tales of his father’s childhood in Auric, running on the sandy shore . . . the tales his mother told him, his own memories—all of it thronging and churning in his mind singing and alive. . . .
The little silver vixen was there before him, her dark eyes watching him with concern. “And so, Tebriel, you have seen as the unliving would have it. They would destroy your memory and knowledge, and so destroy your self.
“So is Quazelzeg,” she said. “He is the unliving. And he would make slaves of us all.”
*
They did not leave the cave until nearly nightfall, and again Teb followed blindly as the foxes made their way through the low, narrow tunnels. Renata left an old aunt with the cubs; and three more foxes joined them at the common, so now they were twelve again as they wound and dropped and climbed through the pitch-black holes. Then at last a faint smear of moonlight far ahead, and a smell of the sea, told Teb they were coming to the western portal.
At the portal they listened, but there was no sound except the far lapping of the water. The moon was thin and its shadows indistinct. Pixen sent a young fox out to look, and he was gone a long time, returning at last with an uneasy frown.
“No strange scents, nothing stirring. The land seems empty, but I feel something amiss, all the same.”
“Come back inside,” Pixen said, and he went out himself to have a look.
Pixen was gone even longer. He returned with his ears back and his tail lashing. “There are still troops at the western portal—nine that I counted—and they have the two jackals with them. Luex was surely right, they do stink. The troops are growing restive—I think we’d better go on before they decide to explore.”
Teb took up his pack and waterskin, touched the knife at his belt, and followed Pixen out the small hole, with the others crowding behind him. The bushy cover outside scratched his face and caught at his clothes, and he could not seem to go silently as the foxes did. Soon Pixen stopped. “Take off the pack and waterskin, Teb. Reeav and Mux will drag them back inside.”
Rid of his belongings, Teb was able to move more quietly. He feared for the foxes, though, for even in the thin moonlight they could be easily seen. The tops of the bushes caught light, and the tops of the stones, and when they drew near to the bay, a thin path of light fell across the water. On the other side of the water rose the dark towering mass of Fendreth-Teching, topped by the rocky peaks of the dragon lair.
The little band moved along beneath a mass of bushes, Teb crawling through the leafy tunnel of branches that insisted on snagging his clothes. The foxes slipped through quite untouched. Teb breathed in the scent of the bay, salt and wild. When they came out of the bushes they were on a sheer cliff high above the water, and now the way was rocky and precarious. The foxes skipped along it and, Teb suspected, would have traveled much faster without him. He tried to see where he was by the shape and width of the bay directly below. Yes, here the bay had begun to narrow, but he could not yet see, off ahead, the thin channel linking the Bay of Dubla with the outer, seaward Bay of Fendreth. Once they reached the channel, Bleven would lie less than a mile beyond. He would go on alone then.
But suddenly heavy flapping filled the sky, and a coughing growl. The jackals were on them, dropping and snarling. Hoofbeats were pounding behind, loud on the stone as if they had just come up from softer ground.
“Run!” Pixen cried to Teb. “We’ll delay them.”
But Teb could not; his knife was slashing at a jackal even before he knew he had drawn it, for the creature had little Reeav in its mouth, shaking her. He slashed at its throat, then its face, but it would not let her loose. At last, with three foxes at its throat, it twisted in agony and let her go. Reeav staggered away. Mux tried to get to her, but the riders were all over them, all was confusion. A jackal grabbed Teb’s leg, tearing; then he felt himself snatched up by the shoulder as a horse shied against him and he was lifted and thrown across a saddle, facedown, so the saddle back jammed hard into his ribs and belly, knocking out his breath and searing him with pain. The horse swerved, and Teb revived enough to bite the rider’s arm and kick at him; he got a blow across his back that shoved him into the saddle again and made him go dizzy with pain. Then the horse was whipped to a gallop, and the pain was like fire in his middle.