Daughters Of The Storm (63 page)

He gave the horse some water and let it free. He wouldn't need all this gear anyway. Just bread and water for him and Eni for one day. Everything else, he could figure out later.

He grasped Eni's hand firmly. ‘We are walking. Hold onto me tight. The monster may be here.'

Eni tightened his grip on Wylm's hand. They walked as the sun rose and peaked. Later in the afternoon, Wylm noticed Eni tilted his head this way and that, like a bird. Perhaps he recognised the sounds and the smells; they were very close to his home. It was a fine day, and the ground was firm underfoot. Soon the millet fields came into view, a sea of green undulating gently with the warm southerly breeze. It didn't seem like a day when anything bad could happen and he took heart. He had all the advantages. She didn't even know he was here. He simply had to find a place to hide until she came.

Then he frowned.
If
she came. What if she went directly to Blicstowe? What if the well-being of her lover was less important to her than taking revenge? The thought bit him coldly. Even now, his mother could be hours away from her brutal death.

Breathe. Breathe.
He couldn't defend her without risking his own life. Mother would want him to live and be king, and with Bluebell out of the way, he could.

The farmhouse came into view, and Eni tensed.

‘Yes, you know where you are, don't you? How can you tell without seeing?' Wylm took a deep breath of the air, but could not smell anything distinctive. Earth and animal shit. Perhaps that was enough for Eni to recognise his home. ‘But we must be careful. We have to hide a little while. Very quietly.'

‘Papa,' Eni said, and Wylm had a pang. Surely he wasn't so simple that he thought his father might still be alive? He glanced at Eni's face. No, it was sad, lost. Wylm forced steel into his heart.

‘Papa's not here. The monster killed him. Now the monster must die.' He spotted a chicken coop, directly parallel to the farmhouse's back door, about twenty feet away. He flipped up the door and crawled in. It smelled of chicken shit and damp hay. He opened one of the boxes and found an egg for him and one for Eni, puncturing them with one of his knives so they could drink them. Then he took the child into the house, where he went into paroxysms of anxious whimpering, remembering the feel and smell of the place. Wylm found a position, behind weevil-ridden flour sacks beside the door, for him and the child to sit and wait. Should Bluebell enter the farmhouse, he would be able to see her before she saw him. He thought about the back of her neck — smooth and white — and he shivered slightly. He hoped she wouldn't be too long coming.

Rose spent the day outside. First washing all the blankets down at the stream — Bluebell and Heath were gone, and Willow was nowhere to be found — then finding trees with low branches in the sun to dry them. The sky was wide and blue. A light wind down low made the fast-moving shadows across the grass and lifted the fluffy seeds of dandelion clocks so that they tumbled past, catching in Rose's hair. The sun was warm on her back, and Rose had a strong desire to keep walking, not to return to the dim house just yet. So she'd started up the edge of the stream, searching for mushrooms between the trees and rocks. Willow had disappeared, Yldra never cooked and Æthlric would have his appetite back, so that afternoon's dinner was her responsibility. She realised it was the first time she had been out of the house
since Heath left. Being out made her feel lighter. As though she could breathe.

By the time she came back, the sun was low in the sky and the house was quiet. Bluebell's dog, Thrymm, looked up when she came in.

‘It's quiet in here, girl,' Rose said, dropping the mushrooms on the bench and wiping her hands on her skirt.

The dog's tail thumped. Rose went to the bedroom door to look in on her father and Yldra.

Yldra was not there, but more importantly Æthlric was not there either. The bed was empty. At first she feared something bad had happened, but then she realised that the fresh clothes, boots and sword that Bluebell had insisted they bring from Blicstowe were gone. He was up. He was dressed. That morning when she'd last seen him, he'd been asleep still, snoring softly. But now it seemed he and Yldra had gone out somewhere. Perhaps hoping, as she had, that fresh air and sunshine would do him good. If only she could get a message to Bluebell that Father was awake and risen. That grim face might actually break into a smile.

Rose was tired from her day's work and wandering, so she lay down crosswise on her father's bed. Thrymm climbed up to lie next to her, head on paws. Rose rested her hand lightly on the dog's head, closing her eyes.

She must have drifted into a doze because when she opened her eyes, Thrymm was sitting up, ears pricked, whining softly.

‘What is it?' Rose asked.

Thrymm barked once then leapt off the bed and ran towards the door. Footsteps beyond the bedroom. Rose sat up, embarrassed that Yldra and her father might find her sleeping before supper was made.

But it wasn't Yldra or her father. Standing at the door to the bedroom, his hands being savagely licked by Thrymm, was Heath.

For a horrible, too-bright moment she thought she was dreaming. But then he smiled and opened his arms and she was pressed against his chest, breathing the clean-earth scent of him. He was warm and hard and real. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘I've been camped in the woods since Bluebell told me to leave. I couldn't go without saying goodbye. I saw horses leaving earlier today. Your father. He's better?'

‘Yes, he is. They took horses? Do you have any idea where they were going?'

‘No.'

‘They can't have got far. Father has been sick a long time and Yldra would have trouble staying horsed. She has a terrible limp.'

‘She had no limp.'

Rose pressed her lips together, curious.

‘I saw you returning to the house alone a little while ago,' Heath continued. ‘I figured it might be my only chance to see you. Before I go.'

‘Where are you going?'

‘North. My father had relatives on the very northern coast of Thyrsland, in Bradsey. They don't know me, but they may take me in for a while.'

‘They are Ærfolc?'

‘Yes. I know nothing about them.' He rubbed his chin, a few days unshaven and already ginger. ‘I'll be able to grow my beard at last.' He smiled, but when he saw that she didn't he dipped his head. ‘I'm sorry.'

The northern coast. Icy-cold seas, the ever-present danger of raiders, widespread poverty. ‘So we really aren't to see each other ever again?'

‘Bluebell is right. For Rowan's sake. For your own. And for mine.'

She dropped her head on his chest once again, heard his heart thudding. ‘How is it that love, so pure and so true, cannot be allowed to survive?'

He stroked her hair and her back. ‘I don't know, Rose. All I know is that I will always love you. Through every cold day of winter and every long day of summer. I will always love you.'

She turned her face up to his and he kissed her, gently at first, then gathering in passion, his tongue and hers seeking each other out. Then he stood back, sent Thrymm from the room, and closed the door.

‘I don't know when Yldra and Father are coming back,' she said.

He smiled and reached up to drop the latch across the door. Then he moved towards her, his hands unpinning the brooches that held her dress together while his mouth remained pressed against hers. Her dress fell to the ground. She pulled off his tunic and they collapsed on the bed together, struggling half out of their clothes. Her shift was tangled around her waist, his trousers around his ankles. His mouth found her breasts, his hands squeezed her thighs, her fingers grasped his back. Desire made her deaf and blind. There was only the bright light and ringing music of passion. He was inside her, kissing her and kissing her, his body crushing her sweetly. Every sensation in her skin was amplified in her blood, echoing through her body and her breath. She clamped her legs around his hips and gave herself up as she had never given herself up before. When he came, she realised she was weeping silently. He kissed the tears from her face and held her while her blood pressure returned to normal and her knees grew solid once again. Afternoon light fell through the open shutter, making a square on the bed that fell on his skin and the blanket. She burned the image into her mind, in case it was the last time.

The very last time.

‘I have something to give you,' she said, sitting up and searching the floor for her belt. She lifted it with a jangle and placed it on the bed between them, then unhooked the seeing-circle and handed it to him.

‘What is it?'

‘Every morning at dawn, you can see somebody you love in it. A witch gave it to me, but it doesn't work for me any more. You can see that person sleeping.' She never wanted to see the bed she'd shared with Rowan in Folcenham again. Not now it was empty.

‘What do I do?'

‘Say their name into the loop now, and that will enchant it and bind it to you.'

He put his lips against the loop and formed an ‘R'. But he didn't say Rose.

‘Rowan,' he said.

Intense, jealous sadness squeezed her around the ribs. ‘You will be able to see her. If she is ever unwell or sad or injured ...'

‘I will send you word,' he said, but she wondered if he would. Or if he knew how much it would torture her to know her child needed her, but was nowhere to be found.

Thrymm was whining and pawing at the door.

‘I should go,' he said, ‘before Æthlric returns.'

They dressed and let Thrymm in. The house was still quiet. Rose opened the door and peered out. No movement from the stable, with its burnt-out door. No movement on the road beyond. ‘You'll need a horse and money,' she said to him.

‘I don't need anything. I'll be fine.'

Rose shook her head. ‘You will take a horse, and I'll give you what coin I have.'

Heath looked as though he might protest, then changed his mind and sighed. ‘I should be able to look after myself.'

‘You have provided me such joy and comfort, my love. Material things are the least I owe you.'

He nodded, and she fetched her purse to give to him. He collected the spare clothes that he'd left behind, and then they stood awkwardly together at the door.

‘I don't know what to say,' he said at last.

She opened her eyes. ‘Goodbye. And I love you.'

‘Yes.' Then he was walking away, towards the stable. A few minutes later he emerged, mounted, and lifted his hand in a wave. Tears ran down her face and dripped from her chin. She shuddered as he disappeared out the front gate. A lumpen cold possessed her. She put her hands over her face and she could still smell him. ‘Goodbye,' she said, kissing her own fingers as passionately as she had kissed him. ‘Goodbye.'

Ash paid close attention to the prickling tingles of her premonition. She had not woken free of dread, as Unweder had suggested. Rather, she was sure that today was the day that Bluebell would die. Every second seemed heavy with it. The tension was soft, though persistent, in the morning, but by the middle of the day it clutched firmly and unreadable runes danced across her field of vision. Ash knew what she had to do, she just didn't know when she had to do it. She barely listened to a word Unweder said to her that day, but he seemed to have decided to let her be preoccupied. As the sun passed full height and began the slow slide towards setting, the tension became acute, a hard sharp thing in her stomach.

She stood, began to pace.

‘What is it, Ash?'

‘I have to go.'

‘You have no illusions of riding to Bluebell's rescue.'

‘To the woods,' Ash said. ‘I have to go to the woods. I know what I have to do.'

Unweder nodded. ‘I won't stop you.'

Ash left the house, trembling with fear. The danger was so close to her sister now, and she had no idea. No idea at all. She went out
of the dead zone and down across the stream to the densest part of the wood, where she knew the elementals were thick in the trees and on the ground. She sat on a rock and focussed herself, closing her eyes and taking note of the movement around her. She had a little sprig of angelica that she'd pinned to her dress earlier in preparation, and now she crushed its oil onto her fingers and wiped it across her eyelids, and on her temples. She breathed. The elementals gathered at a distance, curious but wary.

‘Keep my body safe,' she said, and felt their grudging compliance in the way they moved in closer, sitting around her ankles.

Ash put her hands on her temples, gathering her mind between her fingers.
There it is. There.
She lifted her hands and pointed them south, towards Bluebell. She felt the pull and snap as her energy, her focus, her talent with elementals left her body as a bright ball of light and went rocketing through the woods. In her inner eye, she could see the trajectory it took as a dreamlike journey among magical beings. Tiny creatures with leaves for eyebrows, cracked rock for mouths, twigs for hands, stood to watch. And whenever the bright thing slowed, she would order an elemental to pick it up and propel it forwards again, south, the force of her mind too much for them to resist.