[Page 2]

THE CROWTHISTLE CHRONICLES: Book Two: “The Well of Tears.”
(Following from Book #1: "The Iron Tree".)

Chapter 1:  Prophecy. (continued)

By sunset, the wayfarers had not yet found a suitable place to make camp. They plodded on through the accumulating twilight, before settling at last at the margin of a thicket of elms, in the lee of a low embankment.  There had been no sign of Marauders for many a mile, so it seemed safe to risk lighting a fire. Kindling was easily found.  They had a good blaze crackling away, when Eoin announced, “I’m off to catch something for supper.” After a nod of acknowledgement from Jewel, who was busy reversing her cloak and hood to seam-side-in, he took the coils of snare-wire and fishing-line and slipped away into the dusk. 
The wind had dropped.  The evening was so still that the fulvous elm-leaves hung static.  Hardly a one floated down to become part of the sumptuous mosaic on the woodland floor. Eoin backtracked until he reached a shallow ravine, whose steep walls he and the child had negotiated just before sunset.  Roughly fifteen feet deep, it had been gouged from the sandy soil of the hillside by a bubbling beck that flowed along its nadir. To a Marshman’s eye, this had looked like a trout-stream.  As he approached, the tinsel gurglings of moving water intensified.  He had just let himself down the fern-decorated cliff-face when an awareness grew in him that the water’s merry song was mingled with another sound.  It was a soft, protracted cry, and the voice that made it was clear and melodious beyond human ability. Through the gloaming he discerned the silhouette of a woman.  He stepped closer.  When he saw her face, he felt a sky-bolt smite him.  She was beautiful, but pallid as a marble tomb.  A smoke of charcoal-hued hair tumbled down over her shoulders, and her eyes were two melts of the most vivid, concentrated blue he had ever seen in his life.
Lilith.
She made as if to speak to him, but gave voice merely to her weird wailing.  Then, beckoning him to accompany her, she turned away.  Eagerly he followed, until without warning, he was following nothing. Only moonlight stood in sky-high columns at the ends of the ravine, pleached with the first tendrils of a slowly elevating mist.
Tormented, he hurried back to the place where he had originally spied this vision, but there was no clue to her whereabouts.  Forgetting the object of his excursion, he began to run wildly up and down the shores of the stream, calling the name that pounded through his head.
“Lilith!”
Much later, spent and grey-faced, he made his way back to the campsite empty-handed.
“What’s amiss?” Jewel asked at once.
Having just witnessed a vision of the love of his life, whose death he had brought about, Eoin was shaken to the foundations of his being, shocked and utterly unmanned. “Naught,” was all he would say, and he lay down as if to sleep, without taking so much as a bite of their meagre fare.

The lightless hours crept onwards, and far-off in the elm-wood a masked owl gave a drawn-out, rasping screech. Jewel roused from a shallow doze to discover she was alone in the moonlight, beside the ruddy embers of the fire.  Eoin’s pack lay nearby.  It was thoroughly uncharacteristic of him to abandon her in the night, so she sat up, alarmed, looking about.  He was not to be found.
Immediately she concluded he had gone back to seek whatever it was that had been troubling him since his unsuccessful fishing trip.  After quickly stamping out the glowing coals as a precaution against wildfires, she picked up her dilapidated skirts and hastened in the direction she supposed he had taken.  Along the leafy trail she ran, leaping over gnarled roots that sprawled athwart her path, dodging a sleepy hedgehog, paying scant heed to the occasional eldritch squawks erupting from deep in the undergrowth. 
Near the ravine, she found him.  By now, a dense mist had built up in the cleft and was spilling out in diaphanous waves across the ground.  Half-hidden by serpentine vapours, Eoin was roaming eccentrically about.  He seemed to be remonstrating with a being Jewel could not see, pleading with her to return.
Screaming, Jewel sprang towards him and gripped him by the arm.  “Come away!  Come away!” she shrieked, “’Tis some spell on you.  Come away!”
He regarded her with a clouded gaze.  His drooping eyes seemed to be swimming with dreams and she thought he stared straight through her.
Into his wrist she sank her teeth.
“Ouch!” His lids flew open.
Dragging at his elbow she shouted, “Come away, lackbrain!” Harsh words were the only other strategy that occurred to her, on the spot, to capture his attention.
Eoin, shocked from his enchanted stupor, looked down. Through the mist he perceived that he and Jewel were standing on the very brink of the ravine.  One false step and they would both hurtle down the cliff.  Fifteen feet was not far, yet it was far enough to break one’s neck.  Smothering a yell he caught the child by the hand and they fled.
At their backs, the mist reached out teased-lint fingers.  Muffled by humidity, the song of the water sounded like wailing, sweet and low, and two powder-blue moths fluttered out of the moonlight.

“Who did you think were you talking to?” Jewel demanded.
“Nobody.”
“That is not true!”
Eoin seemed to have found Lilith only to lose her again, and in the process he had endangered the life of Jewel’s sole protector. Tortured by his distress, he responded with unwonted harshness, snapping, “Leave me alone.”
The child was stung by his gruff retort.  She withdrew into her protective shell of silence, feeling that she ought to have guessed he would eventually lash out. The world had recently proved itself a cruel place – how could she expect unfailing kindness from any quarter, even from her beloved uncle?
Other eldritch wights manifested themselves along the way, but after that night none of them greatly troubled the wary wayfarers.  Over the next seven days Eoin and Jewel forded many lively tributaries running down from the hills. At length, hungry and weary, they entered the valley bordering the Canterbury Water.  These river-drained slopes were broad and shallow.  Indeed, they descended towards the watercourse so subtly that the incline was scarcely noticeable.  Darkly gleaming forests of evergreen lilly-pillys and silkwoods clothed the valley sides.
Eoin steered by the sun.  This was not effortless, now that he and Jewel had penetrated the close-ranked timber. Little trails made by wild things meandered haphazardly, before fading into the creeping herbage.  The wayfarers were continually forced to leave these paths when they twisted in the wrong direction, to push their way through a tangle of woody lianas and webs of blossom-starred clematis. Fallen branches and drifts of rotting leaves littered the forest floor. 
“We ought to turn east right now, and make for the road,” said Jewel. She twitched the hem of her skirt aside, tearing it from the opportunistic grip of a briar.  “We must find the road in any case, since it leads to the bridge – we might as well be striding along in the open spaces, instead of struggling through this wretched gallimaufry.  In sooth, we’d be going more swiftly than at present.”
“We cannot risk it,” replied Eoin. “Crossing the bridge will be perilous enough.  I do not want to be on the road for longer than necessary.”
“What is so dangerous about the road?”
“We cannot be sure King Maolmórdha’s soldiers did not worm the secret of your existence from the folk of the Marsh.”
“Ha!” snorted Jewel, “No amount of gold would make our people betray their own kind to out-marshers.”
“Not gold,” said Eoin sombrely.  “Maolmórdha and his druids would have other means of extracting information from those who are reluctant to divulge it.”
“Oh,” said Jewel.  After a moment’s thought, she added, “I feel ill.”
“Do not,” Eoin instructed briskly.  “We have no time for illness on our journey.  You understand, little one, that if Maolmórdha has heard of you, the roads will be patrolled by his men.”
“Not here in Narngalis!”
“Even in Narngalis, they may well be able to find some pretext to ride the highways.  A species of arm’s length cordiality officially exists between Cathair Rua and King’s Winterbourne, in spite of the fact that the two kings have no love for one another.”
“Does this signify we shall be travelling off-road all the way to King’s Winterbourne?”
“Perhaps.”
“Pish!  A plague on’t!” muttered Jewel, wrenching a fold of her skirt off a dead bough and ripping the fabric in the process.
Had he been in a better frame of mind, Eoin might have secretly smiled at his protégée’s outburst. She looked so small, so fragile; yet by nature she was tempestuous and valiant. Instead of wilting like a fallen leaf in the face of adversity, here she was uttering curses, railing at her lot, like some hardy, blustering soldier in the guise of a girl-child. Like anyone she had her faults – indeed, she could be selfish and even somewhat conceited - but Eoin, the indulgent uncle, deemed that any flaw was not her fault; it was due to her being an only child, much spoiled and fussed-over. Her imperfections had always been outweighed, in his view, by her disarming qualities of generosity, kindness, courage, and perseverance, and by her exuberant zeal for knowledge.
Clouds blew across the sun’s tawny countenance. That night, it rained.

The rain kept up, on and off. Their supplies of food had long since run out, and they were living on the wild fruits of Autumn gathered along the way; hazelnuts and blackberries plucked by the handful, dandelions and astringent rose-hips, mushrooms and watercress, the roots of pignut, silverweed and wild parsnip, and the seeds of the common weed Fat Hen. Eoin became gaunt and haggard, but Jewel appeared to experience no ill-effects from this meagre diet.
By the morning of the thirty-second day since they had departed from the Marsh, they reached the banks of the Canterbury Water, which were lined with a spangle of willows and river peppermints. The sight of willow trees and large expanses of water was familiar to them both; their spirits rose as they picked their way upstream. The sun was a silver disc behind thin sheets of altostratus cloud.  It hung directly overhead by the time they glimpsed, at last, through the vertical slats of the lilly-pilly boles, the grey sash of the road, its rain-puddled surface shining. To the left, they could see the massive stone bridge with its twenty-one arches, soaring across the water.  A small building squatted at the bridge’s far terminus: the toll-house. 
Traffic was passing to and fro along the road to the bridge.  On the north bank, three travellers on foot had come to a halt at the toll-house. A coach-and-four was bowling across the bridge, moving south.  From the other direction an ox-cart and a donkey-cart, widely spaced apart, were rattling up the road. 
“Have we money for the toll?” questioned Jewel.
“I carry coin,” said Eoin absently.  Frowning in concentration, he was peering between heavy draperies of dark, glossy leaves and ripening lilly-pilly berries.
“If the toll-house sentries have been warned to watch for a girl-child who speaks with the lilt of Slievmordhu, then we are indeed in danger,” he mumbled, speaking chiefly to himself.
“But the sentries are Narngalishmen.  Why would they heed King Maolmórdha’s edicts?”
“Some fabrication might have been spun; possibly some falsehood about thievery or other crimes.  And as I said, officially, goodwill and cooperation are firm between the two kingdoms.”
“In that case we ought to cross the bridge in the company of some Narngalisers returning home,” said Jewel.  “The sentries will hear them speak, and believe we are of their party.”
“A profitable notion,” said Eoin, nodding thoughtfully.  “However, we can hardly jump our of the bushes at the next group of travellers and begin walking alongside them.  If strangers appear unexpectedly from the wilderness, folk naturally demand explanations.”
“We must double back,” said Jewel, “travelling south and staying parallel with the road but hidden from its traffic.  At dusk, these comings and goings must surely cease.  Most folk mislike being abroad after dark, and will have found themselves shelter at some wayside inn. When the road is empty, we ought to make camp on the very verge, just the other side of the ditch. Come morning, we must listen to the language of passers-by when they hail us.  If any prove to be Narngalisers, we should join them.”
Her step-uncle scratched his head.  “I can think of no better way,” he admitted eventually. “Very well, little one – let us put your plan into action.”
As they set off again it came to Eoin that during this exchange Jewel had somehow become the authoritative member of the expedition. For the moment, they seemed to have swapped roles. The insight reinforced his fond opinion of his niece as a competent, self-assured damsel who would never meekly stand back and allow ill-fortune to get the better of her. He allowed himself to dare hope that she might ultimately prevail over their current trials, even though he was irrevocably doomed.

Slowly, majestically, the treetops bowed and swayed, their foliage glinting in the morning sun as if the underside of each leaf were lined with thinly beaten metal. Near at hand, small wrens chirruped peevishly, bossily, in low bushes of tea-tree. Above the forest roof, a flamingo sunrise painted the eastern skies. Elongated tree-shadows lay across the trampled dirt of the road.
By the roadside the wayfarers were kicking loose soil over the remnants of their diminutive fire when a faint snatch of sound drifted to their ears.
“Voices…” said Eoin.  Hurriedly, he hoisted the leather pack onto his shoulders. With much of the food gone, he had crammed Jewel’s small bundle inside it, and now carried both.
The hint of conversation ceased, but it was not long before there came into view a straggling group pf pedestrians carrying bundles and a basket.  Three were adults, two were half-grown children.  Eoin and Jewel turned away and feigned ignorance of their approach, busying themselves with adjusting the pack-straps. In low tones the Marshman said, “It looks to be a family – husband and wife, children, and the grandfather.”
“Good morrow, strangers!”  a man’s voice called.  The wayfarers exchanged a quick nod of relief.  By his pronunciation, the man was a native of Narngalis.
“Ah!  Good morrow, sir!” returned Eoin, trying to appear surprised.
“We are of mortal kind,” said the husband, employing traditional etiquette.
“We also are of mortal kind,” Eoin responded, according to the time-honoured formula.  Wights of eldritch could not tell outright lies, so this was as good a way as any of finding out who one was dealing with, when one met a stranger on the road or in untame regions. The converse side of the coin was that humankind could lie, and swindlers would not hesitate to do so, with eloquent flair.
With Jewel in tow, Eoin jumped the ditch and walked towards the group. “My niece and I were about to set off again after a cold night spent sleeping amongst the weeds of the wayside.  How far is it to the bridge?”
“Not far. Noon should see us all there,” said the man.
It was obvious these people were not affluent. They were not aided in their labour by any beast of burden, and their simple, homespun garments were copiously patched. Yet as Eoin glanced from parents to children he noted they were clean and red-cheeked, their hair combed, their eyes bright.
“I am Daithi, son of Donncha,” said Eoin, “and this is my sister’s daughter, Aisling. May we keep you company for a while?”
“Gladly,” replied the man.  “I am Leofric of Fiddler’s Hamlet.”  He introduced his smiling wife and children. “We are on our way home,” he continued, “after calling on my wife’s sister in Cathair Rua.”
“She has a new-born infant,” volunteered his wife.
The two children stared at Jewel, whispering to each other.
“What coincidence,” said Eoin, thinking quickly. “We are on our way to visit cousins in King’s Winterbourne.”  He turned to the fifth member of the Fiddler’s Hamlet expedition.  “But we have not yet been introduced to you, sir-”  The Marshman’s words were chopped off as if his throat had been squeezed.  His eyes bulged like a frog’s as he stared at the ragged, filthy old man.
Leofric of Fiddler’s Hamlet said, somewhat sourly, “In sooth, this greybeard is a stranger to us.  He fell in with us three leagues back and continues to follow.”
It was the beggar from the streets of Cathair Rua.
Eoin had no difficulty in recognising him – that decrepit face was imprinted on his consciousness. The appalling circumstances of their meeting flashed through his mind. This was the vagrant who had chanced to be standing beside him when the passing-bell had rung untimely, heralding the eldritch funeral procession; the ancient mendicant who had held Eoin’s horse while he peered into the coffin and beheld the corpse with his own face…
“Good morrow, sir,” said Eoin to the beggar on the road to the bridge.  Acid was churning in the pit of his stomach.  Would the man recognise him? He had encountered the fellow little more than a month ago, yet to him it seemed a lifetime…
“Cat Soup,” the beggar was saying.
The Marshman flinched, startled from his ghastly reminiscences.
“Cat Soup,” the beggar repeated.  “’Tis what they call me, in the city.”
Jewel said demurely, “May the Fates smile upon you, Master Cat Soup.”
The beggar stretched his thin slash of a mouth, uncovering eight brown teeth distributed between gummy gaps.  Eoin stepped back, blasted by the stench of the old man’s breath. Alert to her step-uncle’s discomfiture, Jewel diverted attention by asking the others, “Good folk of Fiddler’s Hamlet, prithee, have you any victuals for sale? We carry small coin.  We can pay.”
At the mention of coin, the beggar seemed to prick up his ears.
“No need for payment,” said Leofric’s wife affably.  “We have food to spare.”
She began to rummage through her covered basket.  Meanwhile, Eoin rummaged through his memories.  What had altered about his appearance since his first meeting with the beggar? He was wearing exactly the same garments – the dark red tunic purchased from the innkeeper at the Ace and Cup, the same buckskin leggings.  Every item of his clothing, however, was stained, wrinkled, sagging, torn.  His face, too, must have changed – a month’s worth of beard covered his jaw, and dirt ingrained the furrows of his skin.  Hanks of unkempt hair fell across his forehead and into his eyes, which felt sore and bloodshot.  Surely he must be unrecognisable.
From her basket, the goodwife extricated a strange, green fruit slightly larger than a man’s fist, lumpy and knobbled.
“By all that’s wonderful!” exclaimed Jewel wonderingly. “I’ve never seen such a grotesquerie. What is it?”
“A custard apple,” said the woman, bringing out a small table-knife.
“It looks like a goblin’s head.”
“How would you know, little one?” asked Eoin, regaining enough composure to attempt joviality.  “You’ve never seen a goblin!”
“I can imagine,” said Jewel.
Eoin fossicked in his money-pouch for some coppers to present to the woman.  Having waved away his offering she sliced some chunks off the fruit and handed them to Eoin and Jewel.  After the first nibble they commenced to devour the creamy flesh with gusto.
Cat Soup was everywhere at once, his dripping nose somehow inches from the fruit.  The goodwife cut up a second custard apple and gave him a piece, to the evident disgust of her husband.
“Come,” he said brusquely, “let us walk on, if we are to reach the bridge by noon.”
The party of seven moved off. 
The road was wide and curved gently between the walls of trees.  As the sun lifted, the clouds began to disperse.  The few sky-sheened puddles on the road’s surface shrank and disappeared.  On Eoin’s brow, perspiration stood out like granules of quartz.  Any moment now the old fool will recognise me and say something, he thought, yet we cannot simply part company with these folk.  To walk away into the forest must invite speculation of the most detrimental kind. 
What if the beggar suddenly blurted, “Have I not seen you in the streets of Cathair Rua? I remember that day, for it was the same day an eldritch funeral mockery came out of the Sanctorum, and the jewel was taken from the Iron Tree, and the city was all a-buzz with the news that king was searching for the thief!”  What if the old man went on to demand, “What is your business on the road to Narngalis?  Do you know the man they are seeking?  Are you he?”  And the suspicions of everyone would be aroused. Eoin forced himself to march, rather than breaking into a run, dragging the child with him. He kept steadily on, though needing every particle of effort to maintain his mask of nonchalance.  By his side, Jewel glanced frequently up at him, aware his thoughts were troubled, but unsure of the reason.
The sweetness of wild clematis perfumed the air. Contralto magpies warbled in the lilly-pilly forests.  Apparently cheered by this, or by his gobbet of fruit, the beggar began to wax voluble.
“I’ve been on this road aforetimes,” he said knowledgeably. 
“No doubt,” said Leofric of Fiddler’s Hamlet, “as have we.”
“Ah, but have you, sir?” the old man said, leering at up Eoin from his stooping posture.
“Nay.”  The Marshman shook his tangled locks further over his features.
“Be warned, then,” said Cat Soup, “for if you think the road so far has been perilous, ’tis naught by comparison with the other side of the river.”
“The road north of the bridge is safe enough during daylight hours,” said the goodwife.
“Maybe, maybe not,” the beggar chuckled, “for you see, sir,” he said to Eoin, “before it reaches the village of Saxlingham Netherby, it passes right through a certain field they call Black Goat, which has a dreadful reputation, dreadful indeed.  Murderous wights haunt it, they do.  ’Tis a brave man who’d set foot there between sunrise and sunset, and a fool who’d try it any other time.  I have heard - ”
“Prithee, Master Soup, do not repeat any tales of horror you have heard,” said the goodwife.  “My husband and I would prefer it if our children were to sleep soundly this night, their dreams untroubled by lurid fancies.”
Cat Soup’s eye alighted on her basket of provisions and his mouth slammed shut like a trapdoor.  His silence was annulled by the soft chatter and giggles of the two children from Fiddler’s Hamlet. 

Only a trickle of southbound traffic went past in the other direction, and no northbound equipage overtook the party.  Well before noon, they reached the Canterbury Water.
“How much is the toll?” Eoin asked Leofric, as the bridge again loomed in sight, arches and stanchions formed from huge blocks of granite, solid as a castle.
“Tuppence. ’Tis free for children to cross.”
The Marshman dug two pennies from his money-pouch and clutched them in his fist.
As they walked across the broad span of the bridge, the members of the party were able to look out over the stone parapets at the lustrous black-grey waters careering towards them from the right, rushing away on the left. Mustard-yellow willow leaves and the pellucid domes of bubbles swirled on the river’s surface.  Where the bridge poured itself onto the opposite shore, two strong gates reached across the road, meeting in the middle. To one side stood a slate-roofed edifice constructed of the same hoary granite as the bridge. It was small in diameter, but quite tall.
“That is the toll-house,” Eoin murmured in Jewel’s ear.  “Fall back beside me, and say no word.”
At the distance of a bowshot from the toll-house there arose an artificial hill, perfectly cone-shaped.  On its flat top crouched a structure resembling a haystack, which was, in fact, a huge pile of kindling and dry logs, thatched to keep out the rain. In times of danger, this beacon fire could be lit by a flaming arrow sent from the toll-house.  It would be seen by fortified settlements within eye-view of the beacon, on hilltops further away. On the pinnacle of the toll-house perched a watch-turret whose narrow windows faced every direction, and atop the turret, under its own tiny roof, hung a bell. 
A helmeted sentry dressed in the colours of Narngalis came out of this robust edifice.  He stood facing them, with his back to the gates, similarly barring their path. His tabard was the colour of black raspberries, bordered with orpine and emblazoned with the sigil of the sword.
“Travellers hail,” he recited in a voice like river-gravel, “The toll is tuppence a head, be that head sixteen Winters’ age or more.”
“Hail, sir.  Well met,” Leofric greeted the official in his congenial manner. 
Eoin and Jewel hung back to the rear of the party, but try as they might, they could not get behind Cat Soup, who always managed to slip adroitly into last position.  Goodman Leofric was in the lead, and as he fumbled with the knot in the drawstring of his belt-purse, the drubbing rhythm of fast-approaching horses came up the road from the south.
Cold claws of dread laid hold of Eoin, and the galloping hoof-beats throbbed in the blood through his temples.  In a foment of panic, he could only shuffle from one foot to the other, trying desperately to maintain his charade of indifference, itching to throw his coins at the feet of the sentry, grab Jewel and make a dash for the hedges bordering the road on the northern shore. Jewel showed no signs, but he understood her well enough to be certain she too had picked up the rumour of swift riders, and knew what it might mean.
“For myself and my wife.” Leofric’s four copper coins dropped clink! into the upturned hand of the sentry, who stared past the Narngalishman, shading his eyes with his other hand.
“Riders from Rua, eh?” he said. “King’s men, by the look.”
The Marshman stepped forwards and dropped his pennies into the still-open palm. The bridge-guard stood aside, pushed one of the gates ajar and motioned for him to pass, along with Jewel and the family from Fiddler’s Hamlet.  Simultaneously, he called out to his fellows in the toll-house –
“Sigeweard! Hunfrith! Look lively and show yourselves.  Here’s riders from Cathair Rua, and they look to be in a mighty hurry.”
A clatter as of spilled ironmongery emanated from the unglazed windows of the toll-house and somebody let fly a curse.  By this time, the entire party had stepped off the bridge, but the gritty voice of the sentry shouted, “Hey, you there!  Stop!” and everyone came to a halt.
Eoin felt the muscles in his scalp slide on his head-bones, of their own accord.
They all turned around, to see two other sentries emerging from the toll house, while the first strode towards Cat Soup, beckoning and snapping his fingers, saying, ‘You, sir, may not pass.  You have not paid the toll.”
A surge of relief made Eoin weak at the knees, yet it was mingled with mounting horror at the riders’ relentless approach. He longed to get himself and Jewel away from that place with all speed. The old man began to protest.  Paying no heed to his objections, the sentry indicated with a wave that the rest of the party might proceed unhindered.  As they set off, they heard Cat Soup insisting, “I have no money, but I have special powers and can tell you things that will be greatly be to your benefit!”
The bridge guard rolled his eyes.  Wearing a look of boredom, he continued to conduct the beggar back through the gates. It took great effort on Eoin’s part, to resist taking Jewel by the hand and making a dash for freedom. Each step seemed unbearably slow, as if they all waded through knee-deep mud.  His ears twitched, for he kept expecting to hear someone call out from behind, bidding him halt immediately.

On the northern side of the Canterbury Water, the road was paved with flagstones and cobbles.
“Now that we’re across,” said the goodwife to her husband, “I should like to rest over there beneath the trees.  The children are hungry, and ’tis high time we had a bite to eat.”
Aware that the family’s provender was scarcely ample, and desperately eager to get away from the converging riders, Eoin spoke rapidly. “Alas, we cannot tarry with you, for we must make haste. We are grateful for your kindness, and hope we may meet again.”  He bowed, and when he looked up he saw by their facial expressions that he had eased them of a burden – yet also they were concerned for the welfare of their companions.
“Take this, child.” The goodwife thrust a wedge of hard cheese into Jewel’s hand.  The Marshchild thanked her with a polite curtsey and thus they took their leave.
From the bridge, the road barrelled on, straight as a javelin. The land to either side had been tamed into hedge-bordered fields and meadows, interrupted by copses and spinneys and laced with slender brooks. Eoin and Jewel strode along as fast as they could go without actually breaking into a run. “With all speed we must reach that bend up ahead,” the Marshman muttered fervently.  “Even a slight curve will suffice to put us out of view of the bridge.”
Neither of them dared to look back, but Eon felt as if his ears had somehow lengthened, stretching behind him like the ears of a hare, straining to pick up sounds of hoofbeats.  It could not be long until the horsemen caught up with them. Just before they reached the bend they risked a glance back towards the bridge. One of the gates, left ajar, had swung wider on its well-oiled hinges, revealing a clear view. Outside the toll-house, four riders had drawn rein. They wore the uniform of the King’s Guard, emblazoned with Slievmordhu’s sigil of the burning brand. Still on horseback, and in the company of the toll-house guards, they were grouped around the beggar.  Indeed, Cat Soup appeared to be the focus of attention. One of the riders was leaning down, speaking to him.  Then the beggar spoke, and the riders were obviously heedful.
“He is betraying me,” said Eoin, suddenly.  “He recognises me from a chance encounter in Cathair Rua, and he is telling the King’s cavalrymen.”  Jewel gasped.  Fear shadowed her eyes of glacial blue. “Hasten!” cried her step-uncle. “Once around this bend, we’ll be hidden from their line of sight and we can leave the road once more.”
Even as they fled around the curve in the road they heard it start up again – the clop and clatter of iron crescents on flagstones.  After jumping the ditch on the left, they ran alongside a berry-ornamented hawthorn hedge until they found a stile. This they vaulted swiftly in their terror, and were thus able to keep sprinting on the other side of the hedge, along the margins of a field, concealed from view of the road.
From behind them the sharp drumming of a fast-moving cavalcade grew louder.  In front loomed a belt of old pines, probably planted long ago as a windbreak.  The two terrified wayfarers plunged into the verdurous twilight beneath their boughs, with the clap of iron on stone racketing through their heads. The Marshman threw himself to the ground, pulling Jewel after him.  The cacophony crescendoed to its peak, as if the horsemen rode across their very spines, but no iron-shod hoof planted itself in the sumptuous carpet of pine-needles, no harsh voice shouted a command, and as the hammering of hooves faded up the road the wayfarers opened their eyes and sat up.
They listened.
In the branches above, a blackbird sang a poignantly beautiful melody. The wind crooned through the dark green needles.  There was a muffled thud as a pine-cone hit the ground.
Nothing else.
“They will return,” said Eoin, his eyes flicking nervously from side to side as he scanned their surroundings for hints of any further peril.  “I daresay they will eventually guess our strategy and come hunting. Let’s go! We must hasten from this spot, but we must not return to the road.  Not in daylight.  We’ll wait until dusk.”
As they picked themselves up and resumed their journey, Jewel said, “But uncle, this is likely to be the very region the old man warned us about – the field called Black Goat, with its reputation as a haunt of unseelie wights. It will be too perilous here.  Let us go back to the road at once.”
“You are invulnerable, little one,” her step-uncle reminded her.
“Except against mistletoe,” she amended.
Paying no heed to the interruption he repeated,  “You are invulnerable, and I can take care of myself. The need for speed and secrecy is paramount. We shall take our chances off-road during daylight hours and return to the road at nightfall.  And we shall stay wary at all times.”
He was determined, and in the end she gave way to his decision.
The fields across which they were passing looked innocent enough, though rather wild and neglected, knee-deep in a profusion of weeds and wildflowers.  Amaranth-pink blooms climbed the tall stems of common fumitory, the delicate albino racemes of shepherd’s purse trembled, brushed by the corner of Jewel’s cloak, and the sepals of charlock, bright yellow, glowed like warm butter. There was prickly crowthistle too, grown lanky from the fierce need to reach for sunlight from amongst the shadows of its neighbours. Its blossoms perched on their stalks like colonies of purple birds.
Screened from the road by hedges and windbreak plantations, the wayfarers ploughed on, stopping now and then, when Jewel’s exhaustion overwhelmed her.  Eoin was anxious to keep moving.  He strapped his pack to his chest and bade his niece climb on his back, so that he might carry her.  She went to sleep on his shoulders and almost slipped off.
Whether it was the fragrance of the wildflowers or the fact he had not had a good night’s sleep for more than a month, or whether due to the aftermath of the terror engendered by the king’s horsemen, or some other reason, Eoin too began to be affected by somnolence.  With his lids sagging, he plodded stubbornly on, partially supporting himself on his blackthorn staff.  His right arm, supporting Jewel’s weight, was locked painfully into position; his knees creaked, his head throbbed. His sole notion was to keep moving north while staying out of sight of the road.  It did not occur to him that after the single burst of speed and noise from the horsemen passing by, there had been no sign of them again. The king’s riders had not doubled back to search for him and Jewel. 
This was because, unknown to Eoin, the riders were not pursuing these two refugees at all.  They were merely delivering a letter from Primoris Asper Virosus, the Druid Imperius of Slievmordhu, to the Druid Imperius of Narngalis.  The letter had nothing to do with any descendants of the Sorcerer of Strang. At the toll-house Cat Soup, whose half-demented brain had not recognised Eoin, had been spinning the king’s men a tale of his “unusual powers”; of how he “knew” what was in the letter they carried, and they had better beware, for it was not to the letter-bearers’ advantage.  Because of everyday association with the sanctorum of Slievmordhu, the soldiery of Cathair Rua were highly superstitious. Unlike the Narngalish toll-house guards, they were inclined to believe the old man, even though they feigned scepticism.  Before they rode away they had tossed him a couple of coins, with which he paid the toll and crossed over the Canterbury Water.
Eoin, however, was unaware of this and in his miasma of weariness, or enchantment, he was also unaware how far he had strayed from the road. 
A grey gloaming crept over the fields. On her uncle’s shoulder, Jewel stirred. “Should we not be returning to the road now?” she murmured sleepily.  “’Tis getting dark.”
“Aye.”  Eoin veered to the right, then stumbled.
“Put me down,” said Jewel. He let her slide from his back, and flexed his stiffened arms, passing his staff from hand to hand.
“Come on,” he said grimly, looking about as if he, too, had just awoken.  “We must head due east.  Somehow I’ve blundered too far from the road.  ’Tis nowhere in sight.”
He reinstated the pack on his back and again, they set off.
A wall of cloud, iron-grey, stretched across the western sky.  As the twilight thickened translucent steams arose stealthily, and the weeds through which the wayfarers were wading looked taller than they had appeared by daylight. Their leaves now seemed blackish instead of green, and amongst them nightshade proliferated, heavy with orbs of poisonous fruit. Hidden beneath the rank growth were rocks and odd-shaped things, ready to turn one’s ankle if stepped on. And instead of birdsong, a weird, acute melody was spurling across the fields, thin as a razor’s edge.
In the distance, a cluster of red-gold lights flared. “Look yonder,” said Eoin. “Bonfires on some hill-top. Perhaps folk are making merry there.” Gold-tinged smokes haloed the remote blazes. If the fires had an uncanny look, the travellers were too weary to note it.
The mists that had been conspiratorially exuding from the ground floated ingenuously across his line of sight.  They dimmed the lights and ultimately obscured them completely. Without reference to the descending sun, the Marshman felt even more disoriented.  He wondered if he had stepped on a Stray Sod – an eldritch piece of turf with the power to disorient any mortal creature that set foot on it - and muttered an age-old protective rhyme under his breath; “Hypericum, salt and bread, iron cold and berries red…”
The humid haze commenced to slowly circulate, and Eoin was vigorously reminded of his encounter with the blue-eyed woman-seeming wight. That had all been glamour; nothing but an illusion created at the whims of supernatural beings for the purpose of luring mortal men to their deaths. I’ll not fall for that trick twice, he decided, yet an inexpressible horror pressed weightily on him. It struck him that for some while he had heard scant sound of Jewel beside him, swishing through the weeds. “Stay close,” he said, turning towards her, but she was no longer there.
“Jewel?”  he called, squinting through the murk and mist. “Jewel!” 
No voice answered.  He panicked, and started to run.

Alone in the dark, Jewel was beating through the tares, calling out the name of her step-uncle.  She could not understand how the two of them had become separated. Clammy tentacles of apprehension crawled across her flesh. Spying a rowan tree that stood alone, laden with its Autumn jewellery of scarlet beads, she hurried to shelter beneath its branches.
I shall wait for him, she thought. It is safe here, beneath the rowan. 
She was too tired to walk any further. The wighting hours were upon the land and she knew there might be trows about, or worse. Trows were apt to abduct folk. They did not harm them, but they kept them, trowbound. If that should happen, her invulnerability would avail her naught.  At all events, trows and other minor unseelie creatures were unable to approach rowan-wood.
“Uncle!” she called into the night.
The thin music was joined by distant voices, singing.

The fog had become so dense that Eoin could not see where he was going, and he was forced to lurch to a halt.
As the vapours thickened, the singing sprang up around him, louder than before. He knew then that he was surrounded by wights, who at best would hinder and mislead him. He turned back, heading in the direction from which he thought he had come, but a hedge barred his way. Its ends, if ends it possessed, were lost in the mists. Eoin was certain the hedge had not been there earlier, and this reinforced his suspicion that he had inadvertently stepped on a Stray Sod.
The hedge was of cypress, not prickly hawthorn, so he left his staff propped against it, pushed his way in amongst the springy foliage and began to climb.  As he ascended, however, the hedge-top never came any closer.  It was as if the cypresses were growing taller, the higher he went. Eventually he surrendered and jumped down, before retrieving his staff. Striking out to the left he made his way along the line of the hedge, bewildered and alarmed by the loud chorus of eldritch song issuing from all sides.
Foremost in his mind was the desire to locate Jewel. His heart was thundering like a rampage of mad horses, and every breath puffed in short, shallow gasps.  He must find Jewel; protect her. Guilt was ripping his spirit apart. She was lost alone in the wilderness, and it was his fault. He had catapulted her into this predicament, and now he had failed her.
The aqueous gases clung to him stickily, chillingly. Damp, intangible wool pressed on his eyes. He began to stumble, and every time he did so, jeering laughter broke out. After a while he could endure the invisible mockery no longer.  He sat down and took off his pack, then brought out his tinderbox.
A spark jumped from his flint and steel onto the curls of dry bark in the box. A flame flowered. Light blossomed.
A pile of jagged stone ruins leaned suddenly out of the nearby darkness. The radiance of the tiny tinder-fire flowed over it like rose-water, describing savage perforations and rude projections. The openings gaped to reveal the interior of this relic, which was filled with wildly gambolling figures, ludicrous mockeries of human shapes.  Many possessed long-snouted heads, splayed hands, skinny limbs and monstrous feet. Others were perverted to the degree of indescribability.
Eoin picked up his staff and sprang to his feet, but as he was about to escape, he was intercepted. Right in front of him capered an incorporation of the macabre; it looked like a black buck-goat, with horns a yard long, flaming eyes and a long, twirling tail. Around the Marshman it bounded, attempting to grasp him. Choked with terror, Eoin comprehended that instead of hooves, its forelegs terminated in hairy paws.
The numinous music and singing squealed from every point of the compass.  It streamed into the ears of the mortal, flowing down his canals to his cerebellum, and down nerve fibres to his feet.  Absurdly, his feet danced, compelled to move in rhythm with the eldritch minstrelsy. These wights, with their musical tricks, were making him look like some awkward, jiggling clown! His terror changed to fury.  He was being forced to perform like a string-puppet, and this monstrous goat-thing appeared to be trying to lead him in the dance.  But if it gripped him, what then?  Would he be made to dance endlessly in some eldritch place, forever lost to mortalkind? In the past, he had survived many an encounter with wights, some tricksy, some malevolent. And he might do so again! With a surge of anger, forgetting he no longer wore an effective amulet, he brought up his fist with the cudgel of blackthorn and lashed out at the bizarre actuality leaping before him. 
The weapon was torn from his grasp. 
The guttering lambency from his tinder box extinguished itself.
Something tripped Eoin and he fell flat on his back.  A heavy blow sent him rolling down a slope. He felt himself crash into a thorny hedge at the foot of the incline, then two prongs of burning agony lifted him and he was thrown over the hedge on the horns of the goat-simulacrum. After that it was as if an unnaturally violent wind had manifested, tossing and spinning him as if he were no more than a speck of dust, dashing him against rocks and briars, stripping the clothing from his back and the flesh from his ribs.
There was no lull, until at last he lay broken and insensible at the foot of a great rock.  After a long while, consciousness returned briefly to him. He looked up at the sky, which was now visible, since the mists and cloud had cleared. He was alone. The stars shone kindly down on him, and all pain receded.
Thus it comes to pass, he understood, that the forecast of the eldritch pallbearers is validated. I am departing from this world.
The idea made him forlorn.
I am leaving Jewel.  I am abandoning her to an uncertain fate, she whom I love more than anyone alive. It is I who am the cause of all her past sorrows, and probably her future suffering as well. What tribulations will tomorrow bring for my lost little one? My heart bleeds for her. Oh, if only I had not acted out of spite, if only I had never…
The dying man sensed a drawing back, a departure. Oddly enough, no more was he afflicted with wretchedness; instead he became flooded with a sublime tranquillity.  He believed himself to be floating, as if his point of view had flown from his body and he gazed from a distance at his own person lying bloodied on the ground. Detachedly he thought, I have suffered for my mistakes, but suffering is now at an end. May the child find protection, for I can be her guardian no longer.
Suddenly his physical eyes opened wide, as if he were staring at some wonderful, unexpected sight, or someone he had fervently longed to behold, and a look of joy illuminated his features.
“Is it thee, at last?” In tranquillity, his lids closed. That final whisper condensed into a puff of steam and wafted away.
The night went on and on.

Far away beneath the rowan tree, worn out from calling vainly for her step-uncle, Jewel was fast asleep.

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