For a long while they saw not so much as a farm, but perhaps two hours after the sun passed its zenith, they came on a sizable village. The ring of a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil sounded dimly. The buildings, some of three stories, were all heavy timber framing with whitish plaster between and had high-peaked roofs of thatch and tall stone chimneys. Something about them tugged at Mat’s memory, but he could not say what. There was not a farm to be seen anywhere in the unbroken forest. But villages were always tied to farms, supporting them and living off them. They must all be further in from the road, back in the trees.
Oddly, the people he could see ignored the approaching train of show wagons. A fellow in his shirtsleeves, right beside the road, glanced up from the hatchet he was sharpening on a grindstone worked by a footpedal, then bent to his work again as though he had seen nothing. A cluster of children came hurtling around a corner and darted into another street without more than a glance in the show’s direction. Very odd. Most village children would stop to stare at a passing merchant’s train, speculating on the strange places the merchant had been, and the show had more wagons than any number of merchants’ trains. A peddler was coming from the north behind six horses, his wagon’s high canvas cover almost hidden by clusters of pots and pans and kettles. That should have caused interest, too. Even a large village on a well-traveled road depended on peddlers for most things the people bought. But no one pointed or shouted that a peddler had come. They just went on about their business.
Perhaps three hundred paces short of the village, Luca stood up on his driver’s seat and looked back over the roof of his wagon. “We’ll turn in here,” he bellowed, gesturing toward a large meadow where wild-flowers, cat daisies and jumpups and something that might have been loversknots, dotted spring grasses already a foot high. Sitting back down, he suited his own words, and the other wagons began following, their wheels rutting the rain-sodden ground.
As Mat turned Pips toward the meadow, he heard the shoes of the peddler’s horses ringing on paving stones. The sound jerked him upright. That road had not been paved since … He pulled the gelding back around. The canvas-topped wagon was rolling over level gray paving stones that stretched just the width of the village. The peddler himself, a rotund fellow in a wide hat, was peering at the pavement and shaking his head, peering at the village and shaking his head. Peddlers followed fixed routes. He must have been this way a hundred times. He had to know. The peddler halted his team and tied the reins to the brake handle.
Mat cupped both hands around his mouth. “Keep going, man!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “As fast as you can! Keep going!”
The peddler glanced in his direction, then hopped up on his seat quite spryly for such a stout man. Gesturing as grandly as Luca, he began to declaim. Mat could not make out the words, but he knew what they would be. News of the world that he had picked up along the way interspersed with lists of his goods and claims for their vast superiority. Nobody in the village stopped to listen or even paused.
“Keep going!” Mat bellowed. “They’re dead! Keep going!” Behind him, somebody gasped, Tuon or Selucia. Maybe both.
Suddenly the peddler’s horses screamed, tossing their heads madly. They screamed like animals beyond the ragged edge of terror and kept screaming.
Pips jerked in fear, and Mat had his hands full; the gelding danced in circles, wanting to run, in any direction so long as it was away from here. Every horse belonging to the show heard those screams and began whinnying fearfully. The lions and bears began roaring, and the leopards joined in. That set some of the show’s horses to screaming, too, and rearing in their harnesses. The tumult built on itself in moments. As Mat swung round, struggling to control Pips, every one he could see handling reins was fighting to keep a wild-eyed team from racing off or injuring themselves. Tuon’s mare was dancing, too, and Selucia’s dun. He had a moment of fear for Tuon, but she seemed to be handling Akein as well as she had in her race into the forest. Even Selucia seemed sure of her seat, if not of her mount. He caught glimpses of the peddler, as well, pulling off his hat, peering toward the show. At last, Mat got Pips under control. Blowing hard, as if he had been run too hard for too long, but no longer trying to race away. It was too late. Likely, it had always been too late. Hat in hand, the round peddler leaped down to see what was the matter with his horses.
Landing, he lurched awkwardly and looked down toward his feet. His hat fell from his hand, landing on the hardpacked road. That was when he began screaming. The paving stones were gone, and he was ankle-deep in the road, just like his shrieking horses. Ankle-deep and sinking into rock-hard clay as if into a bog, just like his horses and his wagon. And the village, houses and people melting slowly into the ground. The people never stopped what they were doing. Women walked along carrying baskets, a line of men carried a large timber on their shoulders, children darted about, the fellow at the grindstone continued sharpening his hatchet, all of them nearly knee-deep in the ground by this time.
Tuon caught Mat’s coat from one side, Selucia from the other. That was the first he realized he had moved Pips. Toward the peddler. Light! “What do you think you can do?” Tuon demanded fiercely.
“Nothing,” he replied. His bow was done, the horn nocks fitted, the linen bowstrings braided and waxed, but he had not fitted one arrowhead to its ash shaft yet, and with all the rain they had been having, the glue holding the goose-feather fletchings was still tacky. That was all he could think of, the mercy of an arrow in the peddler’s heart before he was pulled under completely. Would the man die, or was he being carried to wherever those dead Shiotans were going? That was what had caught him about those buildings. That was how country people had built in Shiota for near enough three hundred years.
He could not tear his eyes away. The sinking peddler shrieked loudly enough to be heard over the screaming of his team.
“Help meeee!” he cried, waving his arms. He seemed to be looking straight at Mat. “Help meeee!” Over and over.
Mat kept waiting for him to die, hoping for him to die—surely that was better than the other—but the man kept on screaming as he sank to his waist, to his chest. Desperately, he tipped back his head like a man being pulled under water, sucking for one last breath. Then his head vanished, and just his arms remained, frantically waving until they, too, were gone. Only his hat lying on the road said there