Beyond the Pale: A fantasy anthology (24 page)

Niall stepped cautiously past me.
~Come, child. It’s safe.

I didn’t have time to swear at him for dropping his block. He reeled
back with a short scream, clawing at his forehead, and the Lammyr came down on
him like a falling demon, its leather coat swirling around it.

I lashed with my sword, hacking its wrist more by accident than skill,
and it was only by that outrageous chance that Niall avoided having his throat
opened. Its hand spun and bumped to the stone floor, and I had to duck to dodge
the squirt of blood. Niall rolled out of its way too, reaching out for the girl
in the corner. But instead of taking his hand, she scuffled along the wall
towards the wounded Lammyr. It gave me a twisted smile.

Still rubbing his head, Niall glanced up to ensure there were no more
Lammyr skulking in the roof; I could only stare at the girl, huddling behind
her captor, more afraid of us than she was of it. The Lammyr shook the stump of
its wrist at me, mockingly, scattering thick clotting droplets. “She’s ours,
Griogair,” it hissed.

I shook my head. “How young did you get her?”

“Young enough.”

“You might as well give her back.” Niall Mor lifted his sword with a
snarl, as angry with himself as he was with the Lammyr. “The rest are dead.”

“It was worth a try,” said the Lammyr, and sprang at us.

I felt its second blade whisper past my skull, and an instant later the
sting of pain, but I’d dodged in the right direction and Niall had leaped high
to come down on it. His first strike missed as the creature twisted sideways,
but his backslash caught its belly, making it slump with a groan to the ground.
I finished it with a thrust to its back.

The girl did not look at us, but at the Lammyr. Not with grief exactly,
but perhaps regret. She did not move from her dark nook, keeping her arms
wrapped round her knees. When she finally did catch my eye, through a
straggling curtain of black hair, I didn’t know what I saw there. The strongest
impression was of nothing. Her mind-block was astonishing in its thoroughness,
its smooth glassy impenetrability.

Niall was quicker than I was to break the strange deadlock. Sheathing
his sword on his back, he crouched in front of her, his fingers linked so that
she could see them.

“Child, you’ll have to come with us. You don’t belong here.”

She looked from him to the corpse of the Lammyr and back, then got to
her feet. For a moment she looked terribly old, but then she nodded quite
meekly.

“Where am I going?” she asked.

It was almost a shock to hear her speak. “To be with your own kind,”
Niall said.

Again she glanced at the Lammyr before studying the two of us. Her
reply was almost indifferent. “All right.”

It wasn’t Niall she approached; she sidled close against me. Niall
might have put a reassuring arm round her thin shoulders; I refrained, though,
and I suspected, then and now, it was why she chose me. And she stayed close
enough to touch me
—
though she didn’t
—
as I led the way out of the tortuous
caverns.

We didn’t think to ask her if she had any possessions; we must have
assumed she had none, and in that at least our instincts were right. At least,
she had none but the thin dress she wore, and the leather belt and pouch around
her waist, and the silver collar on her neck. She drew the stares of every one
of my fighters as we emerged from the cavern mouth, but she walked on beside me
with her head straight and unbowed, her expression once again not so much
insouciant as indifferent. She waited only for me to mount my own horse, and
didn’t hesitate to be pulled up onto its back after me. So small and skinny was
she, I couldn’t even be sure she was still there till I urged the horse
forward, and I felt her bony arms go round my waist.

There was no point racing home; our wounded had already gone with Grian
to the dun. This meant he wasn’t there to mend the slash in my ear, but for all
its copious bleeding the wound was superficial and I made do with a strip of
cloth wrapped round my head. At any rate we could afford to take it easy, to
revel in the faint sunlight breaking through the earlier mist. Eventually the
heavy sense of ill-omen lifted even from me.

It had not gone badly, after all. The Lammyr were cleared from this
particular nest, and our casualties had been surprisingly light, and the job
I’d been dreading was done. Whatever Crickspleen had wanted with the unnerving
girl at my back, he was thwarted. I even felt light-hearted enough to make
conversation with her.

Not that the conversation itself was exactly light. “Where are your
parents?”

“They’re dead. Ever so long ago.” Her tone was matter-of-fact.

“Did the Lammyr kill them?”

“I don’t remember.”

She might have been blocking like a three-hundred-year-old veteran, but
I could still tell that was a lie. I glanced over my shoulder, but she seemed
untroubled, watching the light flow over the landscape. I wondered how long it
had been since she’d last seen the sunlight. It depended on how closely she was
kept prisoner, and given how calmly she seemed to have accepted her captivity
—
as
calmly as she’d greeted her release, in fact
—
I suspected she’d had a certain amount of
freedom.

“What’s your name?” I suddenly remembered to ask.

She paused again, barely perceptibly. “Lilith. I think.”

“You think?”

I felt the slightest of shrugs in her body behind me. “They called me
Lilith.”

Why did I get the feeling that everything she said was not quite a lie,
but not quite the truth either?

I stopped worrying about it when we came in sight of the dun, its stone
walls gilded by sunlight and dappled in sea-reflections. My heart never failed
to lighten when I rode home, especially on a morning like this: the mist had
cleared altogether and sparks of light glittered across the water, and the air
smelt of sea-grass. Unthreatened for now, life in the fortress was raucously
cheerful, and the gates were thrown wide. Falaire was leading five horses
across the machair and the dunes for their swim; the black cattle cropped
lazily; the guards on the rampart gave us a yell of welcome. So none of our
wounded could be too badly hurt, and the news must have spread that the raid on
the Lammyr had been as straightforward as it ever could be.

I left the reins loose, let my horse pick his own way up the
rock-and-peat slope to the dun gates. Niall was joking and flirting with one of
the other fighters, and I was half-listening and laughing under my breath at
her retorts, and I’d almost forgotten the thin creature at my back when she
leaned forward, showing eagerness for the first time.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. Her tone was still noncommittal, but there
was no mistaking the way her body tensed with interest.

“Yes,” I said.

She said no more, but as we clattered into the courtyard she didn’t
shrink under the stares of my clann; she returned them with a frank curiosity.
All the same I felt a little protective of her, so when my fighters halted I
rode on to the door of the forge, and dismounted into the force of its blasting
heat. The child slid down into my arms and I set her on the ground.

For the first time she hesitated, and gripped my arm. Her cheekbones
were flushed with the heat, and the darkness within seemed very deep compared
to the sunlit courtyard, but with my hand on her back, she stepped inside at
last.

“Griogair?” Wiping sweat from her forehead, Lann straightened and
stared at the girl. “What’s this?”

“Her name’s Lilith,” I said.

Warily Lann laid down the half-made sword and stepped forward. She
slipped a finger under the carved circlet round the child’s neck. It was
slender, delicate and strong, and exceptionally beautiful.

“That’s not silver. That’s Lammyr steel.”

Lann had an annoying habit of telling me what I knew. “Of course it
is,” I said sharply. “Get it off her.”

“Yes, Griogair. And do what with it?”

I shrugged. “Melt it down.”

For the first time the child shot me a look of hostility, and her hand
went to her throat. “It’s mine.”

“No. It was theirs, and so were you. Now you aren’t.”

She frowned, studying my eyes. I wanted to blink and look away.

“All right,” she said at last. “If I’m yours instead.”

~

“Where the hell did they get her?” I asked Niall Mor as we leaned on
the rampart watching the sun set.

“You’re not expecting an answer from me,” he pointed out dryly.

“Just thinking aloud.” I took a long swig of ale. “Either she doesn’t
remember or she isn’t telling.”

The last of the light lay green on the sea, so that it glowed like
liquid tourmaline. The child Lilith sat on the rocks down by the shore,
perfectly alone and perfectly content. She was just as she’d been all day:
quiet, self-contained, but not remotely shy. She had made no complaint about
the scratches and grazes Lann had left on her neck as she cut the Lammyr collar
away; in fact Lann had seemed unnerved by her.

So was I.

“It’s not surprising she’s strange,” said Niall. “She must have been
years with the Lammyr. I’d be bloody strange.”

“Who says you aren’t? And you make Lann nervous.”

He grinned. “Not as nervous as she makes me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Do something about it, then. Don’t be so damn
indecisive.”

“Yes, boss. And speaking of bound lovers, when does Leonora come back?”

“A week.” I felt the usual ripping stab of longing in my gut. Gods,
binding hurt sometimes. But I wasn’t about to say anything that might dissuade
Niall. He’d been pissing about for quite long enough, and he wasn’t the only
man in the dun who was sniffing around Lann like an enthusiastic hound. Not to
mention at least one woman: my best sharpshot archer who’d taken a sudden
interest in the creation of swords.

“It’s not as if we have to bind,” he said unconvincingly.

“Uh-huh. Wait till she’s bound to Falaire, and you don’t get to sleep
with her whenever you like.”

Niall fell silent. I hoped he felt bad. And jealous. Binding would make
offspring a little more likely, after all, and I couldn’t wait to see the
warrior he and Lann would come up with.

That only made me think of Leonora again. Abruptly I stood up.

“Either go and flirt with her, or get a detachment together and do
something about that broken wall on the south boundary.”

“It’s dark.” My lieutenant yawned and stretched, and grinned as he got
to his feet. “Can’t see the stones at this hour.”

Shaking my head, I watched him jog down the stone steps towards the
forge. About to follow him, I turned back to call to Lilith. The sun had
lowered beyond the sea horizon and the landscape was darkening fast to charcoal
and indigo.

My shout of summons stayed in my throat. She was standing at the edge
of the water now, balanced delicately on a slab of basalt, arms outstretched
and head thrown back, like a little girl about to spin into a dance. She looked
blissful but she looked rapt, too, and in a way that sent tremors down my
spine. Falaire was leading two horses up the path through the rocks and back
towards the dun, but she took no notice of him, simply swayed back and forth on
her tiptoes, singing softly.

I shuddered. As far as I could tell she was singing to the empty air
and the ocean. I had no grounds for suspicion, no reason to rebuke her: only
the solid certainty that she was calling, over and over again, to someone
—
something
—
beneath the water’s opalescent skin.

~

She seemed happy to be solitary, haunting the dun like a small quick
shadow, and I admit I didn’t take enough interest in her: not then. Of course
that was a mistake, and of course I regretted it, but I had much on my mind,
and more to do. There were patrols to coordinate, quarrels to settle, a whole
winter to prepare for; and that winter was already drawing near, hauling itself
across the land like a sluggish giant, shadowing the broad blue skies and
crushing the sun tight against the horizon.

The clann gave her a place to live with her own people; we provided her
with warmer clothes and furs now that the darkness fell earlier; and then we
let her slip from our conscious minds. I knew she wasn’t exactly gregarious,
but I saw the other children try to make friends; I saw her sit peacefully
watching their games even when she didn’t join in, and
—
it
seemed to be all she required
—
they were distantly kind to her, and didn’t persecute her for her
strangeness.

All of them but one, that is.

Ramasg MacRaonull: never my favourite child of the clann, but he had
the makings of a sturdy fighter. He had a head of wiry black curls,
impenetrable hazel eyes, and quick violent fists. He also had a tendency to
sulk at criticism, and an inclination to laziness, but I knew he’d grow out of
both. I didn’t take him for a bully till the day I found him tormenting Lilith;
I’d certainly never thought him capable of actual malevolence.