"All along the border countries they were saying the same thing.
People who live or work along the edge of the Forbidden Plains have
disappeared. Whole towns of them, sometimes."
"One man falls into a beast-pit," said Ciaran impatiently, "and in two
weeks of gossip the whole country has vanished. Forget it."
"But it's happened before, Kiri. A long time ago...."
"A long time ago some wild tribe living on the Plains came in and got
tough, and that's that!" Ciaran wiped his hands on the grass and said
angrily, "If you're going to nag all the time about being scared...."
He caught the plate out of her hands just in time. She was breathing
hard, glaring at him. She looked like her name, and cute as hell.
Ciaran laughed.
"Come here, you."
She came, sulkily. He pulled her down beside him and kissed her and
took the harp on his knees. Mouse put her head on his shoulder. Ciaran
was suddenly very happy.
* * * * *
He began to draw music out of the harp. There was a lot of distance
around him, and he tried to fill it up with music, a fine free spate
of it out of the thrumming strings. Then he sang. He had a beautiful
voice, clear and true as a new blade, but soft. It was a simple tune,
about two people in love. Ciaran liked it.
After a while Mouse reached up and drew his head around, stroking the
scar on his lip so he had to stop singing. She wasn't glaring any
longer. Ciaran bent his head.
His eyes were closed. But he felt her body stiffen against him, and her
lips broke away from his with a little gasping cry.
"Kiri--Kiri, look!"
He jerked his head back, angry and startled. Then the anger faded.
There was a different quality to the light. The warm, friendly, reddish
sunlight that never dimmed or faded.
There was a shadow spreading out in the sky over Ben Beatha. It grew
and widened, and the sunballs went out, one by one, and darkness came
toward them over the Forbidden Plains.
They crouched, clinging together, not speaking, not breathing. An
uneasy breeze sighed over them, moving out. Then, after a long time,
the sunballs sparked and burned again, and the shadow was gone.
Ciaran dragged down an unsteady breath. He was sweating, but where his
hands and Mouse's touched, locked together, they were cold as death.
"What was it, Kiri?"
"I don't know." He got up, slinging the harp across his back without
thinking about it. He felt naked suddenly, up there on the high ridge.
Stripped and unsafe. He pulled Mouse to her feet. Neither of them spoke
again. Their eyes had a queer stunned look.
This time it was Ciaran that stopped, with the stewpot in his hands,
looking at something behind Mouse. He dropped it and jumped in front
of her, pulling the wicked knife he carried from his girdle. The last
thing he heard was her wild scream.
But he had time enough to see. To see the creatures climbing up over
the crest of the ridge beside them, fast and silent and grinning,
to ring them in with wands tipped at the point with opals like tiny
sunballs.
They were no taller than Mouse, but thick and muscular, built like
men. Grey animal fur grew on them like the body-hair of a hairy man,
lengthening into a coarse mane over the skull. Where the skin showed it
was grey and wrinkled and tough.
Their faces were flat, with black animal nose-buttons. They had
sharp teeth, grey with a bright, healthy greyness. Their eyes were
blood-pink, without whites or visible pupils.
The eyes were the worst.
Ciaran yelled and slashed out with his knife. One of the grey brutes
danced in on lithe, quick feet and touched him on the neck with its
jeweled wand.
Fire exploded in Ciaran's head, and then there was darkness, pierced by
Mouse's scream. As he slid down into it he thought:
"They're Kalds. The beasts of legend that served Bas the Immortal and
his androids. Kalds, that guarded the Forbidden Plains from man!"
Ciaran came to, on his feet and walking. From the way he felt he'd been
walking a long time, but his memory was vague and confused. He had been
relieved of his knife, but his harp was still with him.
Mouse walked beside him. Her black hair hung over her face and her
eyes looked out from behind it, sullen and defiant.
The grey beasts walked in a rough circle around them, holding their
wands ready. From the way they grinned, Ciaran had an idea they hoped
they'd have an excuse for using them.
With a definitely uneasy shock, Ciaran realized that they were far out
in the barren waste of the Forbidden Plains.