Suddenly cold, suddenly terrified, he heard Phaed’s knowing laugh.
‘You look ill,’ Skintick said. ‘Should we halt for a rest?’
Nimander shook his head. ‘No, let Clip’s impatience drag us ever onward, Skintick. The sooner we are done…’ But he could not go on, would not finish that thought.
‘See ahead,’ Desra said. ‘Clip has reached the forest edge, and not a moment too soon.’
There was no cause for her impatience, merely a distorted, murky reflection of Clip’s own. This was how she seduced men, by giving back to them versions of themselves, promising her protean self like a precious gift to feed their narcissistic pleasures. She seemed able to steal hearts almost without effort, but Nimander suspected that Clip’s self-obsession would prove too powerful, too well armoured against any incursions. He would not let her into his places of weakness. No, he would simply use her, as she had so often used men, and from this would be born a most deadly venom.
Nimander had no thought to warn Clip. Leave them their games, and all the wounds to come.
‘Yes, leave them to it, brother. We have our own, after all.’
Must I choke you silent once more, Phaed?
‘If it pleases you.’
The clearing ahead stretched out, rolling downward towards a distant river or stream. The fields on the opposite bank had been planted with rows of some strange, purplish, broad-leafed crop. Scarecrows hung from crosses in such profusion that it seemed they stood like a cohort of soldiers in ranks. Motionless, rag-bound figures in each row, only a few paces apart. The effect was chilling.
Clip’s eyes thinned as he studied the distant field and its tattered sentinels. Chain snapped out, rings spun in a gleaming blur.
‘There’s a track, I think,’ Skintick said, ‘up and over the far side.’
‘What plants are those?’ Aranatha asked.
No one had an answer.
‘Why are there so many scarecrows?’
Again, no suggestions were forthcoming.
Clip once more in the lead, they set out.
The water of the stream was dark green, almost black, so sickly in appearance that none stopped for a drink, and each found stones to step on rather than simply splash across the shallow span. They ascended towards the field where clouds of insects hovered round the centre stalk of each plant, swarming the pale green flowers before rising in a gust to plunge down on to the next.
As they drew closer, their steps slowed. Even Clip finally halted.
The scarecrows had once been living people. The rags were bound tightly, cov-ering the entire bodies, arms, legs, necks, faces, all swathed in rough cloth that seemed to drip black fluids, soaking the earth. As the wrapped heads were forward slung, threads of the thick dark substance stretched down from the gauze covering the victims’ noses.
‘Feeding the plants, I think,’ Skintick said quietly.
‘Blood?’ Nimander asked.
‘Doesn’t look like blood, although there maybe blood in it.’
‘Then they’re still alive.’
Yet that seemed unlikely. None of the forms moved, none lifted a bound head at the sound of their voices. The air itself stank of death.
‘They are not still alive,’ Clip said. He had stopped spinning the chain.
‘Then what leaks from them?’
Clip moved on to the narrow track running up through the field. Nimander forced himself to follow, and heard the others fall in behind him. Once they were in the field, surrounded by the corpses and the man-high plants, the pungent air was suddenly thick with the tiny, Wrinkle-winged insects, slithering wet and cool against their faces.
They hurried forward, gagging, coughing.
The furrows were sodden underfoot, black mud clinging to their moccasins, a growing weight that made them stumble and slip as they scrambled upslope. Reaching the ridge at last, out from the rows, down into a ditch and then on to a road. Beyond it, more fields to either side of a track, and, rising from them like an army, more corpses. A thousand hung heads, a ceaseless flow of black tears.
‘Mother bless us,’ Kedeviss whispered, ‘who could do such a thing?’
‘“All possible cruelties are inevitable,’” Nimander said, ‘“every conceivable crime has been committed.”‘ Quoting Andarist yet again.
‘Try thinking your own thoughts on occasion,’ Desra said drily.
‘He saw truly-’
‘Andarist surrendered his soul and thought it earned him wisdom,’ Clip cut in, punctuating his statement with a snap of rings. ‘In this case, though, he probably struck true. Even so, this has the flavour of… necessity.’