Eventually they were as clean as they were going to get, and all dressed. The farmer-whose name, they discovered, was Tiro-gave them cold chicken to eat. Silverdun wasn't hungry until the plate was set in front of him, but as soon as he took the first bite, he found he was ravenous.
It was night when they finally bade Tiro good-bye.
"Are you sure I can't drive you back to town in my cart?" he asked. "It's two miles to the gate from here."
"No," said Sela, taking his hand in hers. "You've done too much already."
"Whatever suits you," said Tiro.
"Thank you so much," said Sela.
Timha, who had said little up to this point, offered, "You are a great friend in Mab."
"We all do what we can in her service," said Tiro.
Tiro looked at Silverdun, very serious, and motioned him aside. "Let me give you some advice, son," he said. "I know a little of the ways of the world, and if you've got any sense, you'll marry that young lady before you go off to fighting." He nodded toward Sela.
Silverdun thought of correcting Tiro, but stopped himself. "That's wise advice," he said.
They took the road to the city, but veered away before they reached Elenth proper. Instead, they headed up a side road up the far slope of the valley, to the south of the city, to a villa where the Arcadian priest Virum was waiting for them. Virum would provide them with mounts and escort them to a closely guarded secret spot along the border where they would be able to cross unobserved.
The villa was dark when they arrived. Odd, since the evening wasn't that far gone, but not worrisome; they were three days late, after all.
The villa was a great pile of moss-covered stone set amid a stand of willow trees. An old rope swing hung from a willow branch in the wide, walled-in front garden. In the stable next to the house, horses quietly whickered at their approach.
Silverdun led the way through the gate and up to the house. He knocked. Receiving no answer, he knocked again, louder.
"What do we do?" asked Sela.
"Perhaps Virum doesn't want to take any chance of being seen with us that he doesn't have to."
Silverdun tried the door and found it unlocked. They went inside. There was no one to be seen.
The house was elegantly decorated; thick damask curtains hung over the windows, and the furniture was plush and well crafted. Timha spied a soft divan in a parlor off the entryway and slouched toward it. Silverdun raised a bit of blue witchlight, looking for a lamp.
"Hello, Journeyer Timha," came an oily voice from the parlor. "So lovely to see you again." A tall, thin figure dressed entirely in black stepped out of the shadows and swiped at Timha's throat. Blood spattered purple in the witchlight, and Timha fell to the floor, gasping.
The slim figure stepped into Silverdun's light. It was Bel Zheret. Another appeared on the stairwell, and another materialized out of the darkness of the hallway. Each of them held a long, serrated knife.
"You are the Shadows, yes?" said the one in the parlor. His knife was smeared with Timha's blood. Before Silverdun could react, he said, "Hold a moment, won't you? We have no wish for further violence."
Silverdun stopped, knife in hand. No one moved. From everything Paet had told them about the Bel Zheret, a fight in close quarters could well be suicide.
"What do you want?" said Silverdun. "Other than murdering poor Timha."
"I am called Asp," said the Bel Zheret in the parlor. "My colleague on the stairs is Dog, and in the hallway is my dear old friend, my boon companion, Cat."
"Lovely meeting you," said Silverdun. "Again, what do you want?"
"We Bel Zheret take our promises very seriously," said Asp. "It's in our nature, you see. We were lovingly crafted by Mab to be loyal, honest, and most of all, reliable. I made a promise that I would kill Timha if he failed his queen, and I am unable-constitutionally unable, mind you-to ignore that oath. Surely you can understand."
"Of course," said Silverdun. "A promise is a promise, after all."
"Now," said Asp. "As I'm sure my old acquaintance Paet has informed you, you Shadows are woefully inadequate to the task of defeating us in combat. He probably told you to flee us on sight, as he did us, back in Annwn."
"Tell me," said Cat. "Does he still walk with a cane?"
Silverdun felt an odd sensation. He turned to face Sela, saw her glancing at him. She was pressing against him with her Empathy. He dropped his guard and let her in, much as it pained him to do so. He allowed her access to him, and immediately regretted it. The remorse and sense of loss was palpable; it washed over him, draining what little hope he had of escaping this confrontation alive.
"He does, in fact," said Silverdun. "It's a jaunty thing, too. Head in the shape of a duck."
He felt a thought forming in his mind. I can stop then. It was less a statement than a collection of emotions: aggression, confidence, concentration. But the intent was clear. Then came worry, concern. You and Ironfoot must be out of the way. She looked down at the band around her arm. Frustration, impotence. Make this go away.
And fear: Run.
"Well, here's a proposition for you," said Asp. "We've been here waiting for you for a few days, and it's given us a chance to talk and think about things, reminisce over old acquaintances.
"It also gave us time to nibble on that priest Virum. And my, was he tasty."
Both Paet and Sela had been cagey about exactly what purpose Sela's armband served. It was a restraining band-that much was obvious. They were generally used to bind prisoners with Gifts, to render them reitically harmless. Sela was already a powerful Empath. What would happen if she removed the band? He wasn't sure he wanted to find out, and he certainly didn't want to be connected to her when it happened.
"So we decided on a fun compromise," Asp continued. "You came all this way for poor Timha, and you didn't get him, so I don't see that letting you go could do much harm. So we'll just take one of you, and let the other two go free. On the assumption that if we were to fight, there's some chance that you might kill at least one of us. I think that's a very good bargain."
Silverdun glanced quickly over at Ironfoot, who nodded. He was connected with Sela as well.
Asp frowned. "Please tell me you're not planning some kind of secretive maneuver," he said. "It's just going to get you all killed."
"Fine," said Silverdun. "You can have the woman."
"What?" said Sela, looking at him in horror. Had he misunderstood her? Or was she simply playing the part? Her connection to him vanished before he could sense the answer.
"Oh," said Asp. "Well, that's lovely! I honestly didn't think you were going to agree. All that Fae propriety and so forth."
"We Shadows have no use for propriety," said Ironfoot. "They leached it out of us, just as your masters did to you."
"Not quite," said Asp. "We never had any to begin with."
"So, we give you the woman, and you let us leave?" said Silverdun.
"Why, I suppose so!" said Asp, seemingly delighted.
"Then come along, Ironfoot," said Silverdun.
"But the next time we see each other," said Asp. "I wouldn't expect any such bargain."
"Understood," said Silverdun. He and Ironfoot backed slowly toward the door. Sela looked at him, forlorn, empty.
At the doorway, Silverdun stopped and said, "I'm so sorry, Sela." He stepped toward the door, raised his hand as if to bind the witchlight in the room to keep it lit, but instead channeled Elements, and dissolved the silver lining around the iron band on Sela's arm. He heard it clatter to the floor, heard Sela shriek.
The world exploded with light. Not actual light, like the witchlight that Silverdun had conjured in Preyia. Something else: an illumination of reality that separated and defined everything in Silverdun's vision: each blade of grass, each willow, each stone on the garden path. He and Ironfoot ran, and when he looked at Ironfoot, he saw a being of light, a superimposition of bone and blood and flesh and something else, a column of white entangled in a web of blackness. That web, he knew, was in him as well. It was what made him a Shadow, he realized with total certainty. The pit that Jedron had thrown them in, the pool of blackness. It was in them and around them and it had somehow become them.