Алексей Ланг - The Shadowland

Guard captain Ferras Vansen woke to the sickly glow of the shadowlands, unchanged since he had fallen asleep. His cloak was no longer covering his face and rain spattered him. He groaned and rolled over, scrabbling for the hem of the heavy woolen garment, but it was trapped between him and the dampening ground and he had to sit up, groaning even louder, to free it.

He was just about to roll back into sleep when he saw a hint of movement at the corner of his gaze. He held his breath and turned his head as slowly as he could, but saw nothing except the long, wet grass and the familiar lump of Barrick’s sleeping form. Beyond lay the terrifying creature called Gyir, but the warrior-fairy also seemed to be asleep.

Vansen let out what he hoped sounded like the honest snort of someone whose slumber had been briefly but inconsequentially disturbed, then lay silently, praying that his heart was not really beating as loudly as it seemed to be. He knew he had seen something more than the simple bouncing of rain-bent grass.

Movement resumed beside the soggy remnants of last night’s fire, a rounded shape bobbing along slowly only a few paces from the sleeping prince.

Vansen flung his cloak at it and dived after; the thing let out a muffled squawk and tried to escape, but it seemed to be tangled. Vansen scrambled across the wet ground on elbows and knees and managed to catch it before it disappeared into the darkness again. As he held it wrapped in the damp wool, he found it smaller than he had feared and surprisingly light, loose as a bundle of sticks and cloth in his hands: even with a poor grip on it, his strength seemed more than equal to the task of holding it. The captive creature let out a terrified, whistling shriek that sounded almost like a child’s cry. He could feel by its struggles that it was a large bird of some kind, with wings that must stretch nearly as wide as a man’s arms.

As he tried to protect his face from the darting beak something else rushed toward him, startling him so that he did not even fight when the bird was ripped out of his hands. By the time Vansen could turn his head, the shadow-man Gyir had a squat knife with scalloped edges pressed lengthwise against the creature’s throat as the bird thrashed and made odd, almost human noises of fear. It was a raven, Ferras Vansen could see now, mostly black, with a few patches of white random as spatters of paint, but Vansen paid it little attention. He was terrified and astonished at the sudden appearance of Gyir’s knife, and shamed by his own incompetence.

Great Perin, has he had that all along? He could have murdered us at any time! How did I miss it?

But he could not ignore the bird after all, because it had begun to talk.

“Don’t kill us, Masters!” The voice rasped and whistled, but the words were clear. “Us’ll never do wrong at you again!

Us were only so hungry!”

“You can speak,” said Vansen, reduced to the obvious.

The raven turned one bright yellow eye toward him, beak opening and shutting as it tried to get its breath. “Aye. And most sweetly, too, given chance, Masters!”

Prince Barrick sat up, tousle-haired and puffy-eyed, looking at least for this moment more like an ordinary sleepy young man and less like the maddening enigma he had been. “Why precisely are you two pummeling a bird?” He squinted. “It’s rather spotty. Might it be good to eat?”

“No, Master!” the raven said, struggling uselessly. Patches of gray skin showed where it had lost feathers, making it seem even more pathetic. “Foul and tasteless, I am! Pizen!”

Gyir changed position to steady the squirming bird, poised to kill it.

“No!” Vansen said. “Let it be.”

“But why?” asked the prince. “Gyir says it’s old and going to die soon, anyway. And it was thieving from us.”

“It speaks our tongue!”

“So do many other thieves.” The prince seemed more amused than anything else.

“Aye,” the bird panted, “speech it good and well, thy sunlander tongue. Learned it by Northmarch when I lived close by your folk there.”

“Northmarch?” It was a name Vansen had barely heard in years, a haunted name. “How could that be? Men have not lived at Northmarch for two centuries, since the shadows rolled over it.”

“Oh, aye, us were young then.” The raven still struggled helplessly in Gyir’s grasp. “Us had shiny pins and joints all supple, and us’s knucklers were firm.”

Vansen turned to Gyir, forgetting for a moment that it was harder to communicate with him than with the raven. “Two centuries old? Is that possible?”

The fairy came the closest to a human gesture Vansen had yet seen, a kind of slithery shrug. The meaning was clear: it was possible, but why should it matter?

“Yes, it matters.” Vansen knew he was replying to words not spoken and perhaps not even intended, but at this moment he did not care: in the land of the mad, a land of talking animals and faceless fairies, madness was the only sane creed. “He talks like my mother’s father, although that means nothing to you. I have not heard speech like that since I was a child.” Vansen realized that he ached for conversation — ordinary talk, not the elliptical mysteries of spellbound Prince Barrick, each answer bringing only more questions. In fact, he realized, he was so lonely that he would accept comradeship even from a bird.

But it wouldn’t do to make that clear just yet — even a bird could be suspect in these treacherous, magical lands. “So why shouldn’t we kill you?” Vansen asked the struggling raven. “What were you doing in our camp, poking around? Tell, or I will let him slit your throat.”

“Nay!” It was half shriek, half croak, a despairing sound that made Vansen almost feel ashamed of himself. “Mean no harm, us! Just hungry!”

“Gyir says he smells of those creatures,” Barrick offered, “—the ones who attacked him and killed his horse. ‘Followers,’ they’re called.”

“Not us, Masters!” The raven struggled, but despite its size, it was helpless as a sparrow in the fairy-warrior’s hands. “Was just following the Followers, like. Can’t fly much now, us — pins be all a-draggled.” It carefully eased one of its wings free, and this time Gyir allowed it. More than a few shiny black feathers were certainly missing. “Went to eat summat a few seasons gone by, but that summat be’nt quite dead yet,” the raven explained, bobbing its head. “Tore us upwise and downwise.”

“And the smell of those…Followers?”

“Us can’t stay high or fly long like us did oncet. Have to follow close, go from branch to branch, like. Followers have a powerful stink.” It ruffled its parti-colored feathers with its beak. “Can’t smell it, usself. Poor Skurn is old now — so old!”

“Skurn? Is that what you’re called?”

“Aye, or was. Us were handsome then, when that were our name.” He poked his beak toward Gyir. “ His folk drove all the sunlanders out from Northmarch. Life were good then, for a little while, in the fighting — dead ’uns every which side! But then sunlanders were gone and poor Skurn was leaved behind to shift as us could when twilight come down.” The beak opened to let out a mournful sigh, but the shiny eyes looked to Vansen with calculating hope, like a child searching for the first light of forgiveness.

He had no stomach to kill the thing. “Let the bird go,” he said. Nothing happened. Gyir was not looking at him but at Barrick. “Please, Highness. Let it go.”

Barrick frowned, then sighed. “I suppose.” He waved his hand at Gyir, still showing a remnant of the royal manner even here beneath the dripping trees. “Let it go free.”