The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [153]
Austra lay next to her. The other girl sat up quickly, her eyes full of panic.
Anne still had her hand. She gripped it harder. “It’s all right,” she said. “I think we’re safe, for a moment.”
“I don’t understand,” Austra said. “What happened? Where are we? Are we dead?”
“No,” Anne said. “We aren’t dead.”
“Where are we, then?”
“I’m not sure,” Anne told her.
“Then how can you be certain—?” Austra’s eyes showed sudden understanding. “You’ve been here before.”
“Yes,” Anne admitted.
Austra got up and began looking around. After a moment she gave a start. “We’ve got no shadows,” she said.
“I know,” Anne replied. “This is the place where you go if you walk widdershins.”
“You mean like in the phay stories?”
“Yes. The first time I came here was during Elseny’s party. Do you remember that?”
“You fainted. When you woke, you were asking about some woman in a mask. Then you decided you had been dreaming, and wouldn’t talk about it anymore.”
“I wasn’t dreaming—or not exactly. I’ve been back here twice since then. Once when I was in the Womb of Mefitis, another time when I was sleeping on the deck of the ship.” She gazed around the clearing. “It’s always different,” she went on, “but I know somehow it’s always the same place.”
“What do you mean?”
“The first time it was a hedge maze. The second time it was a forest clearing, and on the ship it was in the midst of the forest, and dark.”
“But how? How did we come here, I mean?”
“The first time I was brought here by someone,” Anne explained. “A woman in a mask. The other times I came myself.”
Austra folded down into a cross-legged position, her brows knitted. “But—Anne,” she said, “you didn’t go anywhere, those other times. I wasn’t there in the womb of Mefitis, but you were still on Tom Woth, that day. And you were still on the ship.”
“I’m not sure of that,” Anne said. “I might have gone and returned.”
“I’m not certain about Tom Woth,” Austra granted her, “but I am sure about the ship. I didn’t take my eyes off you. That means, wherever we think we are—or wherever our shadows have gone—our bodies are still there for the knights to find and do with as they please.”
Anne raised her hands helplessly. “That may be, but I don’t know how to get back. It always just happens.”
“Well, have you ever tried? You brought us here, after all.”
“That’s true,” Anne conceded.
“Well, try.”
Anne closed her eyes, trying to find that place again. It was there but quiet, and seemed in no mood to stir.
Austra gasped.
Anne opened her eyes, but didn’t see anything immediately. “What is it?”
“Something’s here,” Austra said. “I can’t see it, but it’s here.”
Anne shivered, remembering the shadow man, but there were no shadows now. A warm wind was picking up, almost summery, bending the tops of the trees and ruffling the grass. It had a scent of festering vegetation about it, not exactly unpleasant.
And it blew from every direction, toward them, forcing the trees, ferns, and grass to bow as if she and Austra were lords of Elphin. And at the edge of her hearing, Anne heard the faint, wild music of birds.
“What’s happening?” she murmured.
Suddenly they came, over the treetops—swans and geese, fielies and swallows, brieches and red-Roberts, thousands of them, all swirling down into the clearing, clattering, cawing, and screeching toward Anne and Austra. Anne threw up her hands to cover her face, but a yard away the birds spiraled around them, a cyclone of feathers whirling up to cloud the sky.
After a moment, the fear faded, and Anne began to laugh. Austra looked at her as if she had lost her mind.
“What is it?” Austra asked. “Do you know what’s happening?”
“I’ve no idea,” Anne said. “But the wonder of it . . .” She needed a word she didn’t have, so she stopped trying to find it.
It seemed to go on for a long time, but the winds finally subsided and went to their quarters, taking the birds with them, leaving only the crane, still fishing for his catch. The sound of the birds faded last.
“Anne, I’m sleepy.” Austra sighed. Her panic seemed to have left her.
Anne found her own lids suddenly