“Tarik,” corrected Tarik.
“That’s what I said,” she replied. “There seems to be less of you than last time I saw you.”
“A snake and a weasel ate the rest,” Rollan said. “A Euran adder, to be precise. I’m not sure what kind of weasel.”
The old woman noticed Conor and Rollan for the first time. “And two new Greencloaks, I see.” Really, her voice sounded more like someone eating pebbles.
“One,” corrected Rollan. “By which I mean, not me.”
“Lady Evelyn,” Tarik said faintly. “These are the ones you must have heard about. The children who summoned the Fallen Beasts.”
The lady eyeballed them closely. It was not an entirely comfortable experience. She had a little bit of a mustache. Just a few white hairs. Rollan tried not to stare.
“Oh, no, Tarin, you must be mistaken,” she crackled. “There are four of those children. This is certainly only two.”
“Tarik,” he corrected again. “There was a scuffle on the road. We have lost touch with the other two for the moment.”
“You lost half of the Fallen? That seems careless,” the old woman — Lady Evelyn — said. Now her voice was more like stepping on a very large beetle. “Well, come in before you lose another half.”
Inside the tower was the opposite of the grand Greenhaven Castle. Straw covered the floor. Threadbare tapestries hung over the narrow window slits to keep the wind out. Something thin and gray boiled in a pot hanging over the fire. Circular stairs led up to nowhere. Rollan could see clear up into the blackness that must be the top of the tower; Essix had already soared up there to explore.
“I know what you’re thinking, not-a-Greencloak,” Lady Evelyn said. She was already puttering around in a collection of glass bottles and dried herbs, fingers searching across the cluttered windowsill. “Not a very pretty castle, that’s what you’re thinking. It wasn’t meant to be pretty. It was just a place to keep cattle after you stole them.”
“Who steals cattle?” Conor asked.
She cackled. “Who doesn’t?”
“Me,” he said.
Turning, she sniffed him. “Ah, you’re a shepherd’s son, though. You’re a guardian, not a thief.”
Conor, surprised at her intuition, sniffed his wet sleeve as if he possibly still smelled like his old life.
A soft whicker interrupted them.
“Ah,” said Lady Evelyn. “This is my spirit animal, Dot.”
Rollan grimaced. Another horse. Dot was a sway-backed black-and-white miniature horse the size of a dog. She also had a bit of a mustache. Just a few white hairs.
He whispered to Conor, “It’s the opposite of a Great Beast.”
Lady Evelyn chose that moment to be deaf. She instead knocked several plates and scrolls off the table and said, “Why don’t you lay Tarbin down here, so I can get to mending him? You boys can dry off by the fire and help yourselves to dinner.”
The boys hesitantly stripped off their cloaks to dry by the fireplace and peered into the bubbling cauldron. Every now and then, something white and shapeless would boil up to the surface and then descend into the gray liquid again. Conor whispered, “I don’t know if that’s food or laundry.”
Rollan’s stomach growled. It didn’t care. “I ate my fair share of laundry on the fine streets of Concorba.”
Conor poked it with a ladle. He scooped something brown and stringy from the bottom.
“Food,” Rollan declared. “Laundry is never stringy.”
Conor didn’t seem eager to sample it. Apparently shepherds’ sons had more refined palates than street urchins. Rollan tried the stew, or whatever it was. It tasted like a puddle in the bad part of town.
“How is it?” Conor asked.
“Delicious.”
Conor looked over to where Lady Evelyn was ministering to Tarik.
“Do you think he’ll be okay?” he asked.
Rollan didn’t want to lie. So he answered, “I don’t know.”
They ate in silence for a short time. Tarik was not entirely successful in stifling his pain. Eventually he quieted too. Neither Rollan nor Conor was sure of what this meant.
“Greencloak boy,” Lady Evelyn ordered from behind them. “And not-a-Greencloak boy. I need to talk to you. About your quest.”
They joined her at the table.
“Taril is fine now,” she told them in a low voice. “I gave him something to help him sleep. He will recover. But it will take some time. He is lucky the serpent didn’t strike closer to his heart. As it is, the venom will be hard to counteract. He will need constant rest and even more constant attention. Luckily, I never rest and am constantly attentive. However, he won’t be able to travel with you.”
“What?!” Conor cried. Both he and Rollan peered at Tarik. Though their mentor’s face was more peaceful now, his skin looked strange and slack, and his lips were oddly parched. His breath came unevenly and his fingers still shook with the tremors Rollan had felt on the journey here. It was obvious he’d used the very last of his strength bringing them all here.
Rollan struggled with how to feel. Since he wasn’t a Greencloak, he technically didn’t owe Tarik any allegiance. But still — Tarik had trained him and protected him; he’d never been anything but kind to Rollan, even if Rollan wasn’t sure if that was only because of Essix. It was difficult to see him like this. Utterly vulnerable. So close to death.
“He tells me another elder Greencloak — Fonn? Finn? Fann? — should find his way here with the remaining Fallen. If they don’t get here by morning, though, you need to set off alone.”
“Alone?” echoed Conor, dismayed.
“Time is of the essence. The Greencloaks are not the only ones who seek Rumfuss.”
“But we don’t know where to go,” protested Conor.
A gaping chasm of uncertainty opened in Rollan’s stomach, and it only grew wider and blacker the more he considered. They had just barely survived an encounter with a few Conquerors. Tarik had been doing this a lot longer than either Rollan or Conor, and now he was flat on a table being fed gruel. The last time the boys had faced off against a Great Beast, they’d had the help of adults. Even if by some crazy stroke of luck they managed to meet back up with Finn, the other Greencloak didn’t fight. Which meant that the plan on offer right now involved Rollan and Conor heading into the wilderness and then taking on Rumfuss on their own.