“Well”—Whit sighed—“maybe we’ll find her Alder, and you and me’ll both look nohow.” Turning away, he muttered dolefully under his breath, “I wonder if he’s tall?”
Dag sat on the edge of the Fetch’s roof in the dark, legs dangling over, gingerly testing his groundsense. The familiar warmth of Copperhead, Daisy-goat, and the chickens, the known shapes of the people near him: Whit and Hawthorn out back cleaning up after supper and amiably arguing, Spark’s bright flame collaborating with Berry on rebuilding a bed-nest after their stack of supporting hides had been sold out from under them today, Remo sitting in a corner with his ground wrapped up tight, a nearly transparent smudge. Bo had gone off, he said, to ask around the taverns after further news of the Clearcreek Briar Rose, a plan that had made Berry grimace; Hod had gone along.
Dag widened his reach to the other boats nearby, holding dozens of people more. Up to the line of goods-sheds, more comfortably deserted except for a night watchman or two, and a loiterer who might or might not be looking for an unlocked door. The river behind, lively with moving water, plants, a certain amount of floating scum suspiciously rich in life-ground, a few fish with their bright fishy auras, crayfish creeping and mussels clinging in the rocks and mud. Still wider, across the street to the buildings thumping with lives boiling in his perceptions—awake, asleep, arguing, scheming, making love, making hate, the warm ground-glow of a mama nursing a child.
That’s three hundred paces. Try for more. On the far shore of the river, ducks slept concealed in the scrub, heads tucked under their wings. In a barn up the bank, tired oxen dozed after a day of hauling boats up over the shoals along the well-beaten tow-path. A dozen houses were clustered around the towing station and ferry landing, and more goods-sheds; Dag could have counted their inhabitants. That’s over half a mile, yes!
He studied the ground in his own left arm. The five oats that he’d surreptitiously ground-ripped this morning, stolen from a handful fed to Copperhead, were all turned to Daggish warm spots. The ten he’d snitched at lunch were well on their way to conversion. His ground seemed healthy and dense, the old blighted patches fading away like paling bruises. He quietly extended his ghost hand, drew it back in. And again. Once so erratic and frightening, the ground projection was coming under his control, even fine control. Why did I fear this? Perhaps he’d try ground-ripping something even bigger tomorrow. Not a tree—impressed with Spark’s shrewd guess, he’d stick to food, for now.
The shadow of Remo’s closed ground, like a ripple in clear water, moved beneath him; the young patroller ducked out the front hatch and straightened by Dag’s knee, looking up at him. A brief flicker as he opened a little and found Dag open wide. Remo turned his head and stared back up the hill toward the many lights of Silver Shoals, scattered up the slope and over the slopes beyond. Even at this hour, there were a few wagons and people wandering the streets. Beyond the line of goods-sheds, light and laughter burst from the door of the mussel tavern as it swung open and closed, loud enough to carry down to the waterside.
“How can you stand the noise?” Remo asked, pressing his hands to his head in a gesture of pained dismay. He didn’t, of course, mean the sounds of the actually quite peaceful autumn night that came to their ears. Silver Shoals had to be the largest collection of unveiled humanity he’d encountered in all his short life.
Dag considered him, then gestured friendly-like to the space on the roof edge beside him. Remo clambered up easily. He’d pretty much fully healed from his beating, due to a combination of Verel’s earlier ground treatments, plenty of good food, and simple outdoor exercise, although mostly, Dag suspected glumly, due to youth.
“Farmer ground’s a bit noisy,” Dag said, “but you can get used to it. It’s good ground, just a lot of it. It’s blighted ground that hurts. Malice ground, now that hurts like nothing else in the wide green world.”
Remo looked appropriately daunted by this reminiscence; Dag went on, “Still, it’s a lot to take in. Even for townsfolk. If you study them, you’ll notice that they pass by each other in the street with a lot less looking or talking than village or hamlet farmers do. They have to learn not to look, because there’s no way they can stop and deal with everyone when there’s thousands. It’s not ground-veiling, but it’s something like, in their heads, I think. In a way, it makes big towns saf—more comfortable for Lakewalkers alone than tiny ones. Townsmen are more used to ignoring odd folks.”
“But there’s more of them to gang up on you if there’s trouble,” said Remo doubtfully.
“Also true,” Dag conceded. “Try opening up to the limit of your groundsense range, just once, to see what happens. I promise it won’t kill you.”
“Not instantly, maybe,” muttered Remo, but he obeyed. Brows rather clenched, he opened himself, wider and wider; the water-shadow of his ground gradually thickened and became perceptible to Dag in all its dense complexity.
The boy’s got a groundsense range of a good half-mile, Dag thought in satisfaction. Remo was clearly well-placed as a patroller, maybe a future patrol leader, if he could be lured away from wrecking himself on the rocks of his own mistakes.
With a muttered Oof! Remo let his groundsense recoil. But not, Dag noted, all the way; it was still open to perhaps the dimensions of the Fetch and its residents. And to Dag. Remo rubbed his forehead. “That’s…something.”
“Town like this has a tremendous ground-roil,” Dag agreed. “It’s life, though—the opposite of blight, as much as any woods or swamp. More. If our long war is meant to hold back the blight and sustain the world’s ground, if you look at it rightways, a place like this”—he nodded at the slopes, the lamplights spread across them like fireflies out of season—“is our greatest success.”
Remo blinked as this odd thought nudged into his brain. Dag hoped it would stir things up a bit in there.
Dag drew breath, leaned forward. “The fact that this town is also a vast ground-banquet for any malice that chances to emerge too close troubles me hugely. What all had you heard down at Pearl Riffle Camp about the losses in our summer’s campaign over in Raintree?”
Remo replied seriously, “It was bad, I heard. A place called Bonemarsh Camp was wholly blighted, and they lost seventy or a hundred folks in the retreat.”
“Did the name of Greenspring even come up?”
“Wasn’t that some farmer village the malice first came up near?”
“Praise Fairbolt, at least that much got in. Yes. Had you heard their losses?”
“I didn’t read the circular myself, just heard talk about it. Lots, I’d guess.”
“You’d guess right. They lost nearly half their people, about five hundred folk in all, including almost all their children, because you know a malice goes for youngsters first. Absent gods, you should have seen that malice when we slew it, after that fair feast. I never knew one could grow so ghastly beautiful. Sessiles, early molts, they’re crude and ugly creatures, and you get to thinking ugliness is what malices are all about, but it’s not. It’s not.” Dag fell silent, but then shook off the haunting memory and forged on while he still had Remo’s ground and mind open. “I took my patrol through Greenspring on the way home, and we came upon some townsmen who’d come back to bury their dead. It was high summer, but most of the victims had been ground-ripped, so they were slow to rot. I counted down the row, so pale they were, like ice children in that gray heat…How long a trench do you think you’d have to dig, Remo, to bury all the youngsters in Silver Shoals?”
Remo’s lips parted; he shook his head.
“It’d be about a mile long, I figure,” said Dag evenly. “At the least estimate. I’d have dragged every Lakewalker I know down that row if I could have, but I couldn’t, so now I have to do it with words.” And maybe his clumsy words were working better here, with Silver Shoals spread in front of Remo’s eyes, than they would have in the comfortable isolation of Pearl Riffle Camp.