Silvermay (22 page)

Ansuela came scurrying in her nightdress and carrying a candlestick in each hand. The anguish in her face didn't exactly quell my own fear.

‘Take the child,' Theron ordered and, before I quite knew what was happening, Ansuela had placed the candles on a table to one side and slipped Lucien from my arms. I wouldn't have given him up so easily to anyone else.

‘Treat him well. His second mother may soon be as dead as his first,' Theron said coldly, without bothering to glance my way.

Light flooded the room now, but only managed to chill me all the more. The room was as bare and cheerless as any other belonging to its master, except that this one was furnished with a special task in mind. The ropes that
had brought us here drooped from beams above our heads, and I saw on the table to the right of the door an array of implements used for things I didn't want to think about.

Theron saw the horror in my face. ‘Yes, stare all you like. Imagination is a better torturer than any of those tools. I'd hoped to learn why the child is so valuable without resorting to this room. Coyle has offered the boy's weight in gold, and if that miserable fiend has offered so much, the child must be worth a lot more. My story of the bronze medallion was meant to win your confidence.'

‘It gave you away,' I said. ‘You shouldn't have tried to describe it.'

‘There is no talisman,' Theron growled.

‘Not one made of bronze or gemstones. You're right,' I said. ‘But there is a talisman, and you have it with you, Theron. You've kept it all these years, without knowing it.'

‘Now you've gone crazy, girl. Why would I keep something that my family wished only to forget? Haylan Redwing was an embarrassment to all of us. We abandoned his name, we suppressed that mocking song, so we were hardly going to keep any symbol of his weakness. I'd have killed him, too, like my father did, if I'd been old enough to wield a sword.'

I didn't doubt a word of his savagery, but all he'd done was persuade me even more that I was right.

‘Your mother gave you the talisman,' I said.

My goading had begun to unsettle him, but at this he put his hands on his hips like a man watching a jester entertain a crowd in the marketplace. If a Wyrdborn was capable of genuine mirth, then this was it.

‘How could she give me some keepsake when I was a baby no bigger than the boy downstairs? All I cared about then was a full stomach.'

‘She gave it to you just as she gave it to your father.'

Theron took a step towards me and pressed his face close to mine. I could smell the sweat on his skin and the mustiness of his shirt and, despite myself, I thought of Tamlyn, who had stood this close to comfort me. Theron's only aim was to intimidate. And he was doing a good job of it, too.

In case I missed his purpose, he said, without a flicker of shame or regret, ‘My father killed my mother. Did you know that, Silvermay? It was a warning not to give up my powers as Haylan had done. Otherwise he would do the same to me and not feel the faintest stirring in his heart. Just as I will kill you if you don't tell me why Coyle wants this child.'

If I stopped now, though, I'd never know if I'd guessed the truth about the talisman.

I took a breath and, using lips and a tongue suddenly gone drought-dry, I said, ‘He killed her because she'd given him the talisman. Your father had a tattoo, didn't he?'

‘Several,' he answered, unperturbed. ‘They're hardly uncommon.'

‘But there was one he wasn't proud of, one he kept hidden beneath his clothes whenever he could.'

Theron had batted away each of my theories — until now. His eyes darkened, the lids pressing low as he glared at me. ‘It's not true.'

But it was. This was the idea that had come to me from the old woman's story. How else could a woman ensure the ones she loved carried the special talisman that would keep them alive in Erebis Felan? Like the love-struck girl in that faraway land, she had tattooed the symbol onto the skin of those she wanted to save. Once in place, it would remain for a lifetime.

‘Your father didn't want the talisman tattooed onto his skin, so your mother did it while he was senseless with drink. And what mother would love her son any less than her husband? You have that same tattoo, Theron. She put it on your body when you were a tiny boy. Where is it? On your arm, or the calf of your leg? Do you keep it hidden like your father did?'

To my astonishment, Theron rolled up the sleeves
of his shirt, first one, then the other. He held both arms out for both Ryall and me to see. ‘Nothing,' he sneered. ‘There's not a mark on my body. Search the rest of me if you like, but you'll have to kill me first.'

His laugh filled the room as though this was the greatest joke ever told, and while he shook with delight at his victory, I had to accept defeat. Wyrdborn or not, he was telling the truth.

‘Enough of your stories,' he said. ‘Why does Coyle want your baby so much?'

‘He's not my baby,' I reminded him. ‘His mother was a woman named Nerigold, but Coyle himself is the father. He wants him back to raise as his own.'

Theron thought about this for a moment. ‘You're lying, girl. Wyrdborn don't love their children, not like commonfolk. Sentimental fools, all of you. If he's ready to part with a bucket of gold, the boy is a prize of some kind that will earn Coyle a hundred times as much.'

My flimsy lie had been brushed aside like a reed. There was nothing more to say so we fell into a stubborn silence. And, as we soon discovered, the Wyrdborn don't like stubborn silences.

‘Tell me,' he bellowed, slamming his hand down on the table so hard the knives and hooks and thumbscrews jumped inches above the surface before clattering to rest again on the rough wooden planks.

No matter how desperately I wanted to defy him, I cringed and cowered backwards a step, betraying my fear. Ryall had done the same, which was some consolation for my own cowardice, I suppose. For Theron, though, we'd responded just as he wanted. He was already breaking us down and all he'd done so far was slam his hand onto the table.

A knock intruded upon the excruciating quiet that had once again enveloped the room. ‘Master, you wanted to know when the hawk returned,' came Marelle's muffled voice through the door. ‘It has just taken its perch in the loft.'

Theron glared at us briefly, then made up his mind. Moving towards the door, he said. ‘Take a look around while I'm gone. This room is full of delights. You can avoid their pain just by telling me what you know.'

The door closed behind him and a loud click quickly followed.

I
looked at Ryall. Did the terror show in my face as plainly as it did in his?

‘You should have gone back to Nan Tocha when you had the chance,' I said.

‘Yes, I suppose I should,' he replied without the least embarrassment. ‘Then you wouldn't have made it to Ledaris at all. You wouldn't be in this room, either.'

I struggled with tears when he said this. He was going to die with me, yet he was thinking of how I might have survived if he'd taken the easy way out and left us at the diggings.

‘You've grown up a lot since you joined us,' I told him.

‘As much as I'm going to grow,' he said grimly. ‘When Theron comes back, he'll start using all these tools of his trade.' He turned a circle where he stood, taking in the ropes and the table of ghastly implements.

‘Tools of the trade,' I murmured. I'd heard those words before and on the same lips. In my mind, I saw Ryall standing on the trail where we'd first come across him using the skills his dead uncle had taught him.

‘Ryall,' I said, without any real idea of what I was going to suggest, ‘these ropes. Could we use them?'

He looked at me as though I was mad. ‘We kind of missed our chance, Silvermay. The window's barred, same as our room downstairs.'

‘No, not for climbing,' I said. ‘Back in Nan Tocha, you had all sorts of ropes hanging from your belt. You called them your tools of trade.'

‘Yeah, for making traps,' he said, still not following me. ‘Could you make a trap out of these ropes?' I asked, touching one that dangled close to my face. ‘Something that would tie Theron up long enough for us to escape?'

‘Like a bear trap?'

‘Yes, a bear trap.'

Ryall looked at the many ropes hanging from the beams above our heads, some of them as thick as my wrist. ‘To catch a bear, you don't use rope, Silvermay, you
use a steel trap. And a Wyrdborn is ten times stronger than a bear.'

I'd sparked his own thinking now, though. He went to the window and, reaching through the bars, unsnibbed the frame to push it open. Immediately, the monotonous music of the waterwheel filled the room.

‘I don't know about a trap, Silvermay, but that waterwheel gives me an idea. If we could snag a rope on one of its buckets, the force of the water might pull these bars out of the wall.'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘Those bars look sturdy to me. And besides, even if we do manage to climb down the outside of the house, Lucien will still be inside. I'd rather die than leave him behind.'

‘Sorry, I'd forgotten about Lucien.'

That was that, then. Our desperate hope had burned itself out.

We went back to fretting until Ryall muttered, ‘Ten times stronger than a bear.' I couldn't see a reason for this repetition, but when I looked at his eyes, the spark was spluttering into life again.

‘What are you thinking?' I asked.

‘That maybe you're right, a trap is what we need. It wouldn't be so hard to loop a rope around Theron's legs. That's the simplest trap of all.'

‘But we're no match for his strength,' I said, worried that this new plan was no better than the last. ‘You said so yourself just now: Theron is ten times stronger than a bear.'

‘Yes, but a waterwheel is twenty times stronger.'

I didn't have a clue what he had in mind, but that didn't stop him. He climbed one of the ropes like a squirrel and, leaning out, managed to untie a couple just like it from the beam.

‘Bring me the biggest hook you can find on the table,' he ordered as he scrambled down.

How long would Theron stay away? We worked feverishly until the heavy ropes had been linked with knots fashioned by Ryall's nimble hands. Then he attached the hook I'd brought from the table to one end of a rope and fed it through the barred window so he could swing it back and forth to catch the wheel. Time and again the hook struck the dripping wood and bounced off. The room went blue with Ryall's cursing. Mine, too!

Then, at last, the hook caught. Ryall had already rigged the other end of the rope to one of the sturdy iron bars and he just had time to pull his head and shoulders back before the rope snapped tight. For a moment, I thought he'd been right and the force of the water would pull the bars free from the bricks around the window. But the bar bowed an inch and no more, and below, in the
neatly channelled stream, the wheel came to a halt, white water frothing angrily around the buckets that could no longer rise.

That was only one part of Ryall's ingenuity. He hadn't simply tied the rope to the bars as I'd thought. The complicated knot had a length of thinner rope dangling down the inside wall. When he saw me inspecting it, he smiled devilishly and said, ‘The trigger.'

He wasn't finished yet. Using a shorter rope, he laid out a loop on the floor where Theron would surely walk when he came back through the door, and tied its long tail to the rope that strained at the bar.

We stared at each other. ‘Will it work?' I asked.

Before he could answer, footsteps approached the door and the distinctive scrape of a key slotting into a lock made us back away. Ryall took hold of the thinner rope he'd called his trigger and held it behind his back. Our lives depended on the answer to my simple question, and suddenly the whole idea of trapping a Wyrdborn with rope and a waterwheel seemed ridiculous.

The door swung open and Theron appeared. He saw us pressed against the wall near the window and indulged in a smile that drained the warmth from my blood. One step closer and he would enter the loop that lay unnoticed on the floor between us. If he managed to take a second and third step closer, then our plan had failed.

Theron turned away from us. Away from the loop! He went to the table instead and, taking a dagger from his belt, stabbed it viciously into the surface. Wedged deeply into the wood, it stood on its own after he took his hand away, drawing our eyes to its gleaming blade. The steel was silvery blue and thinner at the hilt than my smallest finger, then tapered downwards to the deadly point now buried in the wood.

‘Since you are so interested in tattoos, Silvermay, I'll carve some into your hide,' he said. ‘Unless you answer my questions first, of course.'

He liked the way his dagger intimidated us and left it there as he crossed the room. He stepped into the loop and there he stopped, both feet within the circle of rope. He couldn't have chosen a better spot if we'd guided him there ourselves. I'd sworn I wouldn't give the game away by turning towards Ryall, but in my desperate excitement I did just that, in time to see him tug on the rope.

Nothing happened.

Theron had seen Ryall move, and he could hardly miss the thin rope that now drew a straight line between Ryall's hand and the bars in the window. ‘What are you up to?' he snarled. But he didn't go any closer to investigate.

Ryall looked helplessly at the rope in his hand.

‘Again,' I shouted. ‘Keep trying.'

He did, but the force of the waterwheel hauling on the heavy rope outside was too strong.

Theron would surely step out of the loop any moment, whether he guessed what was happening or not. I lunged at the rope, shouting, ‘Together! Now!' We pulled as hard as we could and, just as Theron saw the trap set to capture him, the trigger broke free.

All this happened faster than I could count to three, but what came after the trigger released was even faster. No longer restrained by the iron bar, the full force of the waterwheel took hold of Ryall's loop. It snapped tight around Theron's ankles and pulled his legs out from under him. It didn't stop at that, either. There was nothing Theron could do as he was dragged feet first towards the wall and hauled up to the window. At last he halted, with a sickening thud and a cry that mixed pain with surprise. I doubted he'd ever been overwhelmed by sheer force in his life. The relentless tug of the waterwheel pinned his boots against the bars and, though he grasped and pulled in a desperate struggle, Theron couldn't free them.

‘It worked!' Ryall crowed in triumph and began a victory dance.

Theron was certainly trapped. He bent double to clutch at the rope, the effort levering his body upwards
until he stood out from the wall as though the room had suddenly been turned on its side.

‘Watch out,' I called to Ryall.

Too late. Theron might be trapped by his feet but his arms were still free, and when Ryall got carelessly close, Theron grabbed him.

There was no release from the grip of a Wyrdborn, especially one as angry as this. Theron shook his captive like a rag doll and it was a wonder Ryall's neck didn't break in those first terrible jerks to and fro. But Theron wanted more than revenge; he wanted to break free of the rope.

‘Bring my dagger from that table,' he shouted.

The command wasn't meant for poor Ryall, who was almost unconscious. Theron was calling to me. I stayed where I was against the wall, as far out of reach as I could manage.

‘The dagger,' he cried again, ‘or I'll break his neck.'

He took hold of Ryall by one shoulder, his thumb sinking painfully into the flesh below his collarbone, the rest of his hand reaching onto the boy's back. Ryall groaned in agony. Theron's other hand threaded into Ryall's hair, the iron-hard fingers locked over his skull. One savage wrench and I would hear Ryall's neck break from where I stood.

‘Do it now, girl, or he dies!'

I hurried to the table and the dagger I'd imagined cutting into my flesh. I closed my hand quickly over its handle and worked it free of the wood.

‘Yes, bring it here. Cut the ropes,' Theron ordered, confident now that he would soon be free.

What would he do then
, I wondered. A broken neck, quick and final, might be a mercy compared with his revenge on us for trapping him. And what would happen to Lucien? Whether I told Theron of the mosaics, or he was traded to Coyle for his weight in gold, Lucien would become a monster and my pledge to Nerigold would have come to nothing.

‘Hurry, girl! The rope is crushing my feet.'

I stayed free of his reach and went instead to the wall, close by the window.

‘Cut the rope!'

Theron no longer held Ryall ready to snap his neck, but he wasn't foolish enough to let him go altogether. He watched me, his cloud-grey eyes full of anticipation now that he was so close to release. There was something else, too; something I'd seen in Hallig's eyes and in the eyes of the Wyrdborn who had so nearly stolen Hespa from our village. It was the naked evil that dwelt deep within the Wyrdborn, the hatred for all but themselves. It created a void that made them closer to wild beasts than human beings.

I looked down at the dagger in my hand. To free it from the table, I'd grasped it with the blade extending down from my fist. The stabbing grip. In the forest, while Tamlyn had struggled with his brother, I hadn't been able to stab cold steel into Hallig's flesh. But that was a week ago, time enough to become more desperate. Before I could let myself think any further, I moved like one of my father's hunters fixed on its prey, reaching Theron's side before he saw I'd moved. With the same forceful beat as a hawk's wing, I drove the dagger deep into his Wyrdborn chest.

To my horror, it wedged between his ribs and wouldn't budge. I staggered backwards, leaving it there with only the hilt visible above his shirt. There was no blood, and to kill something there had to be blood.

Theron gasped and stared at me. There was no sign of pain in his face, just astonishment that I'd dared defy him so utterly. Astonishment soon turned to fury and, as his face darkened, he let go of Ryall, who dropped to the floor moaning and fighting for breath.

His hands now free, Theron took hold of the dagger and used his unnatural strength to pull it free. There it was in his hand, ready to slice through the ropes binding his feet and, after that, cut me to pieces.

But he didn't reach for his feet as I expected. Removing the dagger had brought the blood my blow
lacked, a red stream that quickly spread across his chest and dripped down his sides. It pumped out in rhythmic gushes that I recognised. The blade had pierced his heart.

Theron looked for the first time at the dagger in his hand. ‘Mine,' he said. Finding me with eyes widened by the first fear they had ever known, he added, ‘You've killed me.'

The knife fell from his hand, his hand fell limp at his side and then his whole body slumped, his head striking the floor while the rest of him hung suspended by his ankles from the window. As though this were a signal that Ryall's wonderful trap had done its job, the rope finally snapped and, no longer pinned by the strain of the waterwheel, Theron's legs flopped to the floor as well.

I watched all this with my back still hard against the wall. The fiend was dead but my fear of him was still alive, made all the more unbearable by what I'd done. The taking of a life from such close quarters had shocked me in a way I hadn't counted on, no matter how much my victim had deserved to die.

It was a while before I was aware of anything else. By then, Ryall had recovered from his ordeal enough to climb unsteadily to his feet. He stood massaging one of his shoulders and working his neck tenderly from side to side as he looked down at Theron's body.

‘He's dead!'

‘Yes. I killed him.'

‘But how? Commonfolk can't kill a Wyrdborn.'

I picked up the dagger, now slippery with blood, and held it between thumb and forefinger, as though it was the foulest thing I'd ever touched. ‘We can if we use his own weapon.'

Ryall inspected the bloodstained dagger then looked at me. ‘You did kill him. We're free.'

‘Free, yes, but we still don't have what we came for,' I told him. ‘All this has been for nothing if we leave Ledaris without the talisman.'

‘You said it didn't exist. That it was just a tattoo on the skin.'