"Yes, it's all quite simple," growled Ebbitt. "Find Sharrakor, stop him from undoing the Forgetting and raising an army of tens of thousands of Aenirans, get the other half of the Violet Keystone back, return to the Castle, restore the Veil, settle the war with the Icecarls, free the Underfolk--"
"Yes!" interrupted Crow.
"As I was saying, free the Underfolk, and… I've lost my locomotor of thought."
"The Storm Shepherds!" interrupted Crow again, pointing at the sky. "At least, I hope that's what they are."
Tal and Milla turned together and held out their arms. Two huge figures of cloud swooped down and embraced them so vigorously they would have fallen over again if they hadn't been almost crushed in puffy arms. Odris cried as well, rain pouring out in streams from the side of her head, making Ebbitt's cat give a strange yipping cry and jump aside.
"We almost died!" sobbed Odris. "And we ended up back at Hrigga Hill and it tried to eat us!"
"I want to give your shadow back," said Adras.
"It hurt too much."
"Yes," said Tal, pushing Adras's arms aside and stepping back. "I think it is time we undid the binding between us. We should go into the next fight as we mean to go on. Without Spiritshadows or bound companions."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"I will be sorry to see the old cat go." Ebbitt sighed. "But I see your point."
"Oh, I didn't mean your--" Tal started to say.
"We've had one rule for some and a different rule for others for too long," said Ebbitt. He leaned over and rubbed his green cat under the chin. It purred and shifted its head so he would scratch the best spots. "Got to set an example for you young folk, don't I? Now, how do we go about it?"
"Um, I don't know," said Tal. "I thought you might."
"Not on the curriculum." Ebbitt sighed again. "Finding and binding, that was it."
"I know," said Malen quietly. "You use a variation of the Prayer to Asteyr to bind them in the first place. I can see it in the Aenirans. I can undo the binding between Tal, Milla, and the Storm Shepherds. I don't know about yours, Ebbitt. The… cat… was unwilling originally and the binding is very old and strong."
"Do it, then," said Milla. She would get her own shadow back! It was a step toward being a normal Icecarl again, a step she never thought she would be able to take. Yet at the same time, she had become used to Odris, and the Storm Shepherd had been a good and helpful companion. If a trifle annoying at times.
"Stand in a line," ordered Malen tentatively. "Next to one another."
They all shuffled into a line, Ebbitt still scratching the neck of his cat. Tal noticed that there were the beginnings of tears in the old man's eyes, but he didn't say anything. He was sad himself. All his life he had wanted a powerful Spiritshadow, to help him gain a high place in the Castle. But all that was gone. If they survived, they would live in new times, and there was no place for Aeniran--or human--slaves.
Malen began to chant as they stood silently in front of her. The words were familiar, many of them from what Tal now knew was the Prayer to Asteyr, but with a different cadence and rhythm. He felt the words resonate deep inside his bones, sending a shivery, feverish feeling through every part of his body.
The chant grew faster and stronger, and Malen began to stamp around in a circle, punctuating every ten words or so with a heavier stomp, sending dust flying.
Slowly, in answer to the words, shadows began to creep out of the three Aeniran creatures. Human shadows, which flowed slowly across the stones toward the feet of their original casters.
Malen shouted the last word and came to a sudden stop. Tal felt his shadow reconnect, and the connection he had with Adras was totally severed. For a moment, he felt thick in the head, as if he had a cold. Then he realized that the sense of the wind and the weather that came from Adras was gone.
Tal turned to Adras, and Milla to Odris.
"Well, that's that," said Tal in a small voice. "Thank you for everything you've done for me, Adras."
"I thank you, too, Odris," said Milla. "I hope you bear no ill will for the times I have been hard with you. Farewell."
"Farewell?" asked Odris. "We aren't going anywhere without you. Certainly not back to our old life at Hrigga Hill. Far too boring."
"We're going to come and watch you fight Sharrakor," said Adras. "We'll even help if we can, though he is the Overlord and all that."
"The Overlord?" asked Tal. His mind was only half on the conversation, as he was watching Ebbitt kneel down by his cat and bare his neck, as if inviting it to bite him or something. Milla had seen it, too, and was already moving across, ready to intervene.
"Sure," said Adras. "The King or whatever. Odris said."
"What?" asked Tal, tensing as the green cat leaned forward and opened its mouth, revealing teeth as white as its claws, but much larger. Would it kill Ebbitt for enslaving it for so long? Milla took another step closer, the Talon extending.
"That's why we had to obey back in the Dark World," said Odris. "Sharrakor holds the oaths of most Aenirans from the old times, including our parents. But we don't have to obey him in everything. At least, I don't think so."
The cat licked Ebbitt's face, making him splutter and almost fall over, and jumped away, a green flash speeding through the ruins.
"That's what my shadowguard did," said Tal. "He was with me for sixty years," said Ebbitt.
He sighed and accepted Milla's help to get up. "Well, we had best be getting on, children."
"Where?" asked Tal. "Where will Sharrakor be? And how does he undo the Forgetting?"
No one answered him. It was clear from the looks on the faces of humans and Storm Shepherds alike that no one knew the answer to his questions.
"I don't know," said Milla. "But I do know someone we can ask."
"Who?"
"Zicka the Kurshken," said Milla. "At Kurshken Corner. Wherever that is."
"Kurshken Corner?" said Odris. "I know how to get there, provided it hasn't moved lately. Assuming this is Rorn, which I guess it must be."
"Rorn?" asked Tal.
"Rorn?" echoed Ebbitt.
Milla and Crow looked at their shocked expressions.
"Rorn is forbidden to the Chosen," explained Tal. "Though I don't know why. We were taught never to go there… come here."
"The penalty is death," said Ebbitt. "I always wanted to take a look myself. This must be it. I know Rorn was a ruined city, heavily staked."
"Staked?" asked Crow.
"Staked through with Sunstone stakes," said Ebbitt. "Like the Chosen Enclave. To stop it from moving around. If we see some of those, then it must be Rorn. I wonder whose city it was and who lived here."
"Sharrakor, of course," said Odris. "Even
I
know that. It was the capital, before the Forgetting. All Sharrakor's people lived here before they got killed in the war. He's the only one left."
"This was a city of dragons?" asked Milla.
"No, silly," said Odris. "Sharrakor isn't a dragon all the time. He's a doubleganger, or maybe a tripleganger. A shaper. He can turn into two or three different things, big like the dragon, or small like a mind-drill. The really bad ones that climb into your brain. That's what the shapers used to do a lot. That's one of the ways they ruled everyone else in the old times."
"Why didn't you tell us this before?" exclaimed Tal. "It would have been useful to know that Sharrakor could become a… a shadow mind-drill… back in the Castle."
"You never asked," said Odris primly. "And I never heard you mention Sharrakor at all, so it's your fault, not mine. And Adras didn't know because he never paid any attention to my lessons."
"Never!" announced Adras proudly. "Too boring."
Tal sighed. If only he had taken Odris with him instead of Adras when they met the Empress and the Light Vizier. If only he had taken Odris with him full stop. But that was an old and familiar feeling by now. Adras was Adras, as Ebbitt was Ebbitt. They both had their advantages, he supposed.
r /> "Let's assume this is Rorn," said Milla, bringing them all back on track. "How far is Kurshken Corner, Odris?"
"Half a day's flight, maybe less," Odris replied with a shrug. "If it hasn't moved."
"Three or four days' walk," mused Milla. "Too long. Is there some way we can all fly?"