have taken it over.’
‘Well, maybe so. I hope they don’t mind us using the road.’
‘So do I.’
Thinking about what might happen to them if they ran into hostile natives made Jahdo nervous enough to sharpen his eyes. As the river began turning east, he found himself studying the bank as they walked. Here and there he found brown traces of crumbling horse-dung, and the rare hoof-print, too, cut so deeply that the rains hadn’t washed it away.
‘Do you think that’s dung from Thavrae’s horses?’
‘It sounds too old from the way you describe it,’ Meer said. ‘So it more likely came from horses belonging to the natives. Hum. If they drive stock through here, clearing the bank would make sense.’
‘I wonder if they be the same people from the old tales? The ones who helped the ancestors escape.’
‘Those were the Children of the Gods,’ Meer snapped. ‘The lore says so.’
‘But what would gods want with real horses?’
Meer had to chew over this piece of heresy for a long time before he answered.
‘Perhaps your helpers were indeed horseherders, as your lore says, but acting under the direction of the gods or their children, as our lore says. That would make sense, all nice and tidy, like.’
‘Very well, then. If they are the same people, then we don’t have to worry. The tales talk about how decent they were, feeding the ancestors and giving them knives and mules and stuff so they could farm up in the Rhiddaer.’
‘Hum. Goes to show, then, that they were guided by the gods for purposes of the divine wills.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, any ordinary folk would have enslaved the ancestors all over again.’
‘The tales do say that these people were against keeping slaves, on principle, like, just like we are. They thought it was dishonourable and just plain rotten.’
Meer snorted in profound scepticism.
‘Not likely that anyone would believe such a thing, is it?’ he said. ‘Well, not to insult your tribe or suchlike.’
‘Oh, never mind.’ Jahdo had always heard the grown men say that trying to change a Gel da’Thae’s mind about anything was like trying to stop a fire mountain from spewing. ‘Everyone be different.’
Round noon they came to an enormous meadow, ringed with rotting tree stumps, which gave credence to their theory that the mysterious horseherders had cleared some of this land. After they’d unloaded the stock and let them roll, and Meer had prayed, they unpacked a scant dinner and settled down to eat. Although they still had a good amount of cheese, hard tack and jerky left, they’d used up half of their supplies, and Jahdo was beginning to worry about what they’d eat on the way home. Meer, of course, was convinced that the gods would provide for them when the time came.
Jahdo had just finished his meal when he heard a strange sound, a rasping bird-call, up in the sky.
‘What’s that?’ Meer said. ‘Sounds like a hawk.’
Jahdo looked up.
‘It is, truly.’
Far above them, silhouetted against wispy clouds, the bird was circling the meadow. From the backward sweep of its wings and its colour, dark grey on its back, a very pale grey on its belly, Jahdo could tell that it was a falcon of some variety or other. Even though it soared high, he could see its slender grey legs and the mottling on its breast so clearly that, he realized suddenly, it had to be enormous. As he stared up, the bird suddenly flapped and flew, just as if it knew he watched. Yet he thought little of it at first. Toward evening the falcon, if indeed it were the same bird, reappeared to hover above them as they made their camp. Again, when Jahdo stood for a better look, it flew abruptly away.
On the next day Jahdo kept watch for it, and sure enough, in the middle of the morning it reappeared, flying in lazy circles and holding its place even when he stopped walking to scrutinize it. With a call to Meer to hold for a moment, he shaded his eyes and studied the bird, which seemed to be flying lower than it had the day before.
‘Meer, here’s an odd thing! Way above us there’s a falcon, circling round, like, but it’s the biggest falcon I’ve ever seen. It’s way too big for a peregrine, which is sort of what it does look like.’
‘How big, lad? This could be important.’
‘Well, huge, actually.’ He paused, trying to gauge distances and size. ‘You know, I’d swear it were as big as a pony, but that can’t be right. It’s all the clouds and stuff, I guess, making it hard to see. I mean, not even eagles do grow so big.’
Meer howled, a cry of sheer terror, and flung both hands in front of his sightless eyes. With a flap and a screech, the falcon flew away.
‘It be gone now,’ Jahdo said. ‘What be so wrong?’
‘Bad geas, lad, bad bad geas! Don’t you understand? There’s only one thing a bird that large could be!’
‘But there can’t be a bird that large. That’s what I did try to say.’
‘Hah! You don’t understand, then. I should have known you didn’t, when you didn’t sound afraid. A mazrak, lad, that’s what it must be. The most unclean magician of all, a shapechanger, a foul thing, using a coward’s magic.’
‘Huh? You mean someone who can turn themselves into a bird?’
‘Just that. If a mazrak’s spying upon us, then things are dark indeed.’
Jahdo quite simply didn’t know what to say. While they’d been travelling, Meer had been teaching him lore, just as he’d promised. The bard’s tales had introduced him to an entirely new world, one where the gods moved among men and demons fought them, where spirits roamed the earth and caused mischief, where magic was a necessary part of life, as well, to fend all these presences off or to bend the weaker ones to your will. Automatically Jahdo’s hand went to his throat to touch the thong-full of talismans that hung there. He would have laughed all the tales away if he hadn’t seen with his own eyes the being called Evandar disappear. As it was, he was prepared to believe almost anything.
‘Well, it were an awful huge hawk,’ he said.
‘Of course it was. Mazrakir can’t shrink themselves or such-like. They can only change the flesh they have into another form. It’s only logical that their totem animal, the one they change into, I mean, would be about the same size they are.’
‘There be other ones than birds?’
‘Some are bears, some wolves, some horses. All kinds of animals, depending on the nature of the mazrak.’ Meer turned his head and spat on the ground for luck. ‘But it’s bad geas to even talk about such things. Let’s move on, lad. And we’d best travel ready to duck into the forest, where spying hawks can’t follow or see.’
‘All right. And can we sleep in the woods, too?’
‘We’d best do
