"He had read more of the Prophecies of Cinnas than any of us, and for years he had warned us that the stars foretold that on the thousandth anniversary of Cinnas' great battle, Evil would stalk the earth once more."
Helevrin fell silent, staring into her mead.
"And did it?" Glory prompted after a while.
"Drathil burned," Helevrin said, as if that were an answer. "I was not there to see it, but that is what I heard. Great Drathil burned, and then the outlying villages, the markets and the towns, until all our people found themselves wanderers. We could not bring the harvest in from the field. We could not husband our flocks. All we could do was flee from the fires that sought us out, harrying us across the face of Serenthodial the Golden. We starved, we sickened, we died of a thousand causes. The Traveling Folk took in as many as they could, and taught us to build wagons, for the first thing we learned was that each time we tried to rebuild our villages, we made ourselves Her prey. Only so long as we move are we safe—safe to glean grain from abandoned fields and fruit from abandoned orchards, and tend such stock as remains to us, and so we have not died of hunger and lack. But when the last store of grain is gone, if any of us are left, we will die then.
"I do not think we will survive so long as that. She comes, like a wolf in the night, to take our children and our hope. She will have us all, for what Cinnas did."
"But who is she?" Glory asked.
"The Warmother," Helevrin's voice dropped to a hiss. "She whom Cinnas chained upon Elboroth-Haden of the Hilvorns a thousand years past, who now walks among us unfettered once more."
"What does she look like?" Glory asked, hoping for more information.
"Look like?" Helevrin echoed, sounding puzzled.
"Look like. Is she tall, short, what?"
"No one has ever seen the Warmother," Helevrin said, as if this were self-evident.
Glory stared at her. "You're out here running around in circles to get away from something you've never seen?"
The disbelief in her voice made Helevrin get stiffly to her feet. "You think that we are foolish children, running from shadows, yet it was no shadow that reduced Great Drathil to ash. Bide here with us, Vixen the Slayer, and you will have all the proof you require, to the last full measure." She stalked off, leaving Glory alone.
Carefully, Glory removed the half-empty platter from her knees and set it on the ground. Several of the camp dogs—big animals that looked half wolf, their golden fur stippled and barred with grey—had been sitting a few feet away, watching them as they ate. Seeing that Glory wasn't going to chase them away, they quickly made short work of the remains of the food, grumbling and growling amiably among themselves as they licked the platter clean before wandering off again.
Helevrin had left her mug behind, so Glory prudently finished off its contents, then drained her own.
This just keeps getting better. The Allimir were being chased by a monster that none of them had ever actually seen. And better yet, a monster out of their old nursery rhymes.
And exactly how am I supposed to square off against Mother Goose, hey?
There didn't seem to be much of an answer to that.
* * *
Soon enough thereafter, the combination of a heavy meal and a long walk did their job. Her head started to droop, and Glory caught herself nodding off. Time to hit the sack. And maybe, if she were lucky, she'd wake up in some nice California hotel room tomorrow and this would all have been a really weird dream.
The wagon that the Allimir had reserved for her use had four shelf-beds, none of which was long enough for six feet of red-headed ex-gymnast to occupy comfortably. She stripped the bedding from all four and made herself a satisfactory nest on the floor. She'd slept rougher than this, God knew, back on her Dad's old sheep station. This was no hardship. She fell quickly asleep, clutching Gordon tightly to her chest.
* * *
She awoke in the middle of the night. The ground was shaking, as if beneath the impact of many hooves. Earthquake? she wondered, mind still muzzy with sleep.
Then the screaming began.
She reacted instinctively, struggling out of the wagon before she remembered where she was. The sight of the gathered vardos made her reel with the shock of recognition, as though she'd tried to mount a step that wasn't there. But the screaming—a polyphony of shouts and unearthly howls—galvanized her. She ran toward it, her bare feet pounding against the earth: six feet of red-headed gymnast wearing a Vixen T-shirt and very little else.
The night was bright with enough starlight to make it possible to find her way, and the flickering lanterns hung on the ends of the vardos provided additional aids to navigation. All around her the sleeping encampment was coming to life, but she was the only one moving. Everyone else seemed to be staying inside their wagons.