Shadow

'Thank you,' Poldarn replied. 'Now, if you don't mind, please stop looking at my buttons. You'll look all the polish off them.'

The little girl frowned. 'You can't do that, silly.'

'Of course you can.'

'No you can't. Looking at things doesn't hurt them.'

'Want to bet?' Poldarn leaned back a little. 'You know how if you leave something out in the sun for a while, like a piece of cloth or something like that, all the colour fades out of it? Same thing. The sun looks at it too long and it fades.'

The girl thought about that. 'But I don't look as fiercely as the sun.'

'Maybe. But you're much closer, so it's as broad as it's long. Go away.'

She shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'I can stay here and look at your stupid buttons if I want to.'

Poldarn rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'All right,' he said, 'but don't come any closer.'

He made a show of fiddling with the display, shifting the boards around, rearranging the buttons, turning some of them over. When he'd been doing this for a while, the little girl said, 'What was the question you wanted to ask me?'

'Doesn't matter,' he replied, not looking up. 'You probably wouldn't know the answer anyway.'

'Bet you I would.'

He laughed. 'No point betting you, you've got nothing to bet with.'

'Yes I have,' the girl replied, annoyed. 'I've got a brass ring and a rabbit-fur hood at home.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'They wouldn't fit me,' he said. 'All right, you can push off now. I'm busy.'

'What's the question?'

He made an exasperated noise with his tongue and teeth. 'If I ask you the question, will you go away?'

She shook her head. 'You've got to bet me.'

'Oh, for crying out loud. All right, then, what do you want to bet?'

'My hood and ring against a dozen buttons,' she replied. 'Those ones,' she added, pointing. 'They're nice.'

In Poldarn's opinion the ones she'd chosen were the most hideous of the lot, although they had some pretty stiff competition. 'If you insist,' he said. 'All right, here's the question: where is everybody? Why's this village got so few people in it?'

The little girl put on a sad face, as if pulling on a glove. 'They went away,' she said. 'The grown-up men had to go and join the-' She said something that sounded like merlicia. It took Poldarn a second or so to work out she meant militia. And then the raiders came and killed them all,' she added casually. 'Mummy said they aren't dead, they just went on a long journey, but I know that's not true because I saw where they got buried, in a big pit, hundreds and hundreds.'

Ah,' Poldarn said, feeling a little rattled. And what about the lady grown-ups? Did they go away too?'

'Some of them were killed,' the girl said, playing with a pulled thread on her sleeve, 'and some of them got sick and died. But a lot of them just went away. My mummy went away and I've got to live with my aunt. I don't like her very much. She smells.'

Poldarn nodded absently. 'That's dreadful,' he said. 'Where did they go? The ones who went away, I mean?'

'Don't know. Do I get my buttons now?'

'In a minute,' Poldarn replied. 'What do you know about religion?'

The girl looked at him. 'What's that?'

'Gods and stuff.'

'Oh,' the girl said, 'that. Well, there's lots of gods, and some of them live in the sky and some of them live under the ground or at the bottom of the sea, and the rest just sort of wander about. What do you want to know about them for?'

'Have you heard of a god called Poldarn?'

'Poll what?'

'Or a god who rides around in a cart, bringing the end of the world?'

'Oh yes, of course,' the girl said, her face relaxing as she addressed something familiar at last. 'Everybody knows about him.'

'What do they know?'

The little girl gathered her thoughts for a moment. 'Well,' she said, 'nobody knows what he's called, and he goes around from village to village, and wherever he goes gets burned down or invaded and all the people die; but it's not his fault, it's bad men like the raiders who do the actual burning and invading. He just sort of goes in front. Oh yes,' she added, 'and there's a silly bit, too, but I don't believe it.'

'Tell me anyway,' Poldarn said.

The little girl pulled a face. 'Well, they say he doesn't actually know he's a god, he just thinks he's one of us, a person. And he starts off by climbing up out of a river, and he keeps on going till he meets himself coming in the opposite direction. And then that's the end of the world. Like I said,' she added disdainfully, 'it's really silly, and I don't think anybody really believes it. Now do I get my buttons? You did promise.'

Poldarn found the right jar and counted out a dozen buttons. 'Thanks,' he said. 'You won your bet after all. You're clever.'

'I know,' the girl jeered, and skipped away.

By the time Copis woke up he'd got the awning down and folded up the trestles. 'You were right,' he said, 'absolutely no point staying here. We'll make a start towards Deymeson and sleep out; with luck, that'll get us to Forial good and early. Assuming,' he added, 'it's still there when we arrive.'

Forial was still there, and it was well and truly open for business. They did a very brisk trade all day, and in the rare intervals when he wasn't taking money Poldarn tried to find out about what had happened in the other village. Yes, it was true what the girl had told him; in fact the place had had a fairly dreadful time of it over the last twenty years or so. First it had been completely erased by the raiders, or by somebody-a lot of people reckoned it was the Amathy house, since they'd been in the district at the time on their way back from a war that got cancelled at the last moment, but of course there wasn't any proof; then the emperor himself had sent money and builders to restore it, by way of showing how much he cared about the northern provinces, not that anybody believed him. But it had been a good job, and quite soon they were doing a wonderful business in fruit and vegetables with Sansory and everybody was starting to get annoyingly prosperous. Then the Amathy house had shown up-definitely them this time, they were fighting for General Allectus against General Cronan, and they needed a couple of hundred labourers to build a wall or dig a trench or raise a siege mound or something of the sort, so they rounded up all the men and quite a few of the women and the older children-they had the authority; some kind of general warrant issued by the prefect of Sansory-and marched them off to do whatever it was that needed doing, but it all went wrong; the thing they were building fell down or caved in, or the enemy attacked it suddenly, and they were all killed. It was a terrible shame, the people of Forial told him, and a bloody good job Feron Amathy had gone there instead of here for his work detail. Feron Amathy was a menace, no two ways about it, though this new man, Cronan, he was probably just as bad, because when you came right down to it, they all were; them and the raiders and the government soldiers too. Still, at least it wasn't as bad as what happened to Vistock.

What happened to Vistock, Poldarn asked; and where was Vistock, anyway?

Ah, they told him, good question. Well, if he carried on up the road another half a day and he kept his eyes open and it was a time of year when the grass was short, he might just be able to make out some scorched patches on the ground, even now. That was Vistock. And that really was the raiders, they added. It all happened a long time ago, mind, over forty years ago, and though the land around there wasn't bad and it was all up for grabs, what with everybody being dead, nobody'd ever shown any interest at all in going out there and staking a claim. Well, apart from one old woman who still lived there, in some kind of mouldy old hut, but she was crazy, so that didn't count.

Poldarn supposed you'd have to be crazy to live all alone out in the wilds like that.

Ah yes, but she was a lot crazier than that. She figured she was the mother of the god in the cart; you know, the one who's going to turn up at the end of the world. Now that had to be a special kind of crazy, didn't it?