“To the Night Man city? The bad place?” Skurn shook his shiny head in weary disapproval. “Fearsome far, still. Days and days walking.”
Barrick frowned. What had the blind king said in the dream the Sleepers had given him? “Come quickly, child. We are rushing toward darkness.” Time was growing short, that was clear… but what was the darkness the fairy-king feared?
Not everything about the river meadows was bleak. Unlike the tangling forest, these lands were at least open to the gray sky of the shadowlands, so that for the first time in a while Barrick could watch it through the course of the day. It remained in perpetual twilight, but it was not as unchanging as he had thought: the clouds moved as the wind rose and fell, and the sky itself darkened and lightened from a pearly, pale fog-color to the harsh, bruised hues of thunderstorms. Flights of birds winged overhead, too far away to see clearly, but apparently as natural as those he remembered from more wholesome lands. And the river, although slower here than in the heights behind him, was still lively enough that for nearly the first time since crossing the Shadowline Barrick could actually see himself moving forward, making progress.
Sometimes it was almost like being back in the lands of sunlight. Despite the lack of full darkness or bright light, both banks of the Fade were full of life. In low spots the river spread out into the meadows, creating marshes full of pale nodding reeds like thin bones; in other places drooping willows dangled branches in the water like women washing their hair. Swollen black frogs full of high-pitched, questioning noises fell silent as he went by, then resumed their piping when he had passed. Occasionally something larger rattled invisibly in the reeds, and once he saw a huge stag look up from where it had been drinking at the river’s edge, dark but with a magnificent rack of silvery antlers, its silence and calm gaze making it hard for Barrick to believe it was only an animal, so impressive that despite his almost constant hunger it didn’t occur to him until the beast was long gone that he could have tried to kill it.
There was also life in the river itself, from little shoals of glittering fishes that filled the backwaters to larger things he could not quite see, visible only as spiny backs breaking the surface or as long shadows slipping through the water.
Still, all of this life did him little good as far as filling his stomach. He discovered after a cold, wet hour or two wading in the river that the shiny fish were too swift to catch, and the closest he came to any of the birds haunting the marsh was uncovering an occasional nest of small, oddly colored eggs. Those and the edible roots and reeds Skurn suggested were Barrick’s only fare. Although he now had fire, being able to cook food meant little when he had no food to cook. And after what must have been a week or so following the river through the apparently unending grass-lands, even Barrick’s healed arm began to seem unremarkable. It was hard to rejoice over being able to move an arm freely when his stomach always ached from hunger, and though the fingers that had once been crimped like a bird’s claw now miraculously moved, they were still red and raw from the endless cold wind.
When the trees growing beside the river began to spread out into the surrounding land, first in small copses, then into larger stands of birch and beech interspersed with clumps of evergreens and other trees he did not recognize, Barrick at first found it a relief. It seemed a little warmer under the canopy of leaves, and it certainly held back the worst of the wind. But it also made it harder for him to make his way forward while staying next to the river, and it brought back uncomfortable memories of the silkins as well. Did the pale, hideously wet-eyed creatures live in this new forest as well? Or might something even worse make its home here—snakes or wolves or creatures no mortal had ever survived to give a name to?
Skurn was even less help than usual. As the woods began to grow thicker he was often distracted by the prospect of new and interesting meals, and although some of these benefited Barrick as well, especially the greater abundance of bird’s nests, others—such as some spotted gray slugs the raven declared “sweetish and softly slurpsome”—were of no use to him at all. He was hungry enough to try one bite of the quivering thing, but nothing on earth could have induced him to take a second.
So it was that after days of walking through the empty lands toward Sleep, it was a wet, weary, unhappy, and very hungry Barrick Eddon who met the patchwork man.
Rain was pattering heavily on the leaves above his head, loud enough to be heard even over the rushing of the river. Barrick had struggled with damp kindling for a long time before finally getting it to light, and had just got the fire burning well enough to continue on its own when he heard a sound and saw an upright shape moving through the reeds near the river’s edge some distance away. The intruder was not making much attempt to conceal itself—in fact, it was making a rather considerable amount of noise—but the hairs lifted on the back of Barrick’s neck and he rose to a crouch, pulling the broken spear from his belt.
He stayed in this position, silent and alert, as the thing stumbled nearer. It seemed oblivious to Barrick’s presence—unless, he reminded himself, it was trying to trick him. He held his breath and did not move as it emerged from the reeds and turned its grotesque head toward him. For a moment it seemed his worst fears had been made flesh—the thing was some sort of monster, a shambling heap of strange colors and waving fronds.
Barrick had already scrambled onto his feet, uncertain whether to attack it or run away, when he realized that what he had supposed was its head was only the hood of a cloak pulled low against the rain. The fronds were its tattered clothes, the colors surprisingly gaudy and bright, so that the strange figure seemed more like something out of a religious procession than any forest wild man.
Skurn dropped down onto his shoulder, startling Barrick badly. “Not right,” the bird said in a quiet, anxious rasp. “Seen naught like that before. Don’t go near. Us doesn’t like it.”
The thing had spotted their fire and hurried toward them, arms waving, shouting meaningless words in a scratchy voice: “Gawai hu-ao! Gawai!”
Barrick sprang back a step, brandishing his spearhead. “Stop!” he shouted. “Skurn, tell it some fairy-talk! Tell it to stay back!”
The tatterdemalion figure stopped and pushed back its hood, revealing a pale, mud-streaked face that Barrick could not help thinking looked rather ordinary, not to mention as human as his own. “What… what did you say?” the newcomer asked. “Is that sunland speech?”
It was a moment before Barrick remembered that was what the shadowland folk called the other side of the Shadowline. “Yes,” he said, but kept his weapon leveled toward the newcomer. “Yes—that’s where I’m from. You speak my tongue?”
“I do! I remember it!” The stranger took a few more staggering steps toward him. “Oh, by the Black Hearth, and you have a fire—all blessings on you, sir!”
Barrick waved him back with the spearhead. “Stop there. What do you want? And who are you?” He examined the odd figure. “You don’t look like a fairy. You look like a man.”
This startled the stranger, who wrinkled his face into a comical squint as he considered. He certainly had none of the exaggerated boniness of the Qar. His face was straw-thin and dirty, with grime in every wrinkle, and his hair was a wet tangle festooned with twigs and leaves. Still, though he had more than the usual number of missing teeth, he didn’t look much older than the prince himself.