Soulvine 03 A Bright and Terrible Sword (24 page)

‘But consider further. Even if I were to convince Lord Robert Hopewell that The Queendom is in danger from Soulvine Moor – and I could perhaps do so – his army must first travel to Galtryf. They must cross a third of The Queendom, climb through the Unclaimed Lands, ride or march across Soulvine Moor itself. The Brotherhood and Soulvine have so few people at Galtryf because they are spread thinly across the countryside. The Brotherhood steals children. The Soulviners gather as watchers, to form what you call “vortexes”. Both groups have spies everywhere. Lord Robert’s army would be seen before it had so much as crossed the River Thymar. Long before it could reach Galtryf, Rawley and Charlotte and Maggie would have been murdered. And you, Roger – how long can your body stay alive in Galtryf while you parade across three lands in that animal guise you have so unwisely adopted? You, too, would be dead before Lord Robert’s army reached Galtryf.

‘I am sorry, children. It cannot be done.’

Silence, heavy and terrible as the grave pressing on me when I crossed over. I was being made to cross now, into truth. Mother Chilton spoke truth. The thing could not be done.

Rawnie burst into wailing tears and flailed her arms, her fists harmlessly glancing off Jee, who still shielded
Mother Chilton. He pushed her away and she fell to the ground, sobbing. Jee knelt beside her, making soft ineffectual noises of consolation. Mother Chilton watched me.

‘Roger Kilbourne, you have fought well, if mistakenly, for what you love. I am sorry it must end this way. I must return now to Stephanie, who may say her good-bye to you in a dream. Or not – she has enough control now to use the conduit, even though he himself still has none.’

None of this made sense to me, and I didn’t care. I cared only about Maggie. I could not rescue her, and I myself must die soon.
Maggie, Maggie, once more I failed you
… But such thoughts were intolerable. Better to think of something else, anything else! So I looked at Mother Chilton, and something in my stance must have conveyed information to her, because she said, ‘You do not know?’

Know what?

‘No, you do not,’ Mother Chilton said. ‘I thought that Stephanie might have … I am losing control over what she dreams to you. As I said, she is growing stronger in her arts. But only when she uses, as we all do, the conduit that replaced Katharine. Do you not remember, Roger, that I told you once she was the conduit for Soulvine Moor? Her unnatural living presence among the Dead made it possible for Soulvine Moor to begin their unnatural quest. Now they are strong enough to do so without her. But we, too, have our centre of power, one such as is born once in a thousand years. He can affect nothing himself, no more than can the centre of a spider web move into action. But all strands of the web flow through him. He is the conduit for others’ power. He is our last hope.

‘Do you really not remember this, Roger, even in your
current form? I have told you before, and so did Alysse. The conduit is unclear still because he is so young. He is your son, Roger. He is the one. As I have told you before.’

The skiff had left, Jee poling silently through the marsh and then rowing upriver in the growing darkness. Numbly I watched the little craft, its tent hiding Mother Chilton, grow smaller and smaller on the black waters, until I could see it no longer. Rawnie still lay on the ground, sobbing. Mother Chilton had tried to persuade her to go with them to Glory – ‘What will happen to you if you stay here, child?’ – but she had refused, kicking so hard that even Jee had given up. He had left her a bundle taken from the tent. He had also bent to give me a look of compassion so painful I had run off into the trees rather than endure it. But now I was back, having no place else to go, and not caring much if I had.

My son, the centre of Mother Chilton’s web. Maggie, whom I could not help and would never see again. Myself, soon to die when my body expired in Galtryf. And then I would sit mindless in the Country of the Dead, until I was devoured by Soulvine Moor.

My son, the centre of Mother Chilton’s web. Maggie, whom I could not help and would never see again …

An owl hooted in the willow above. The river lapped gently at the shore. Frogs splashed into the water. A hundred night sounds came to me, a hundred night scents. And soon I would experience none of them, and neither would Maggie. Unless she was already dead.

Rawnie had stopped crying; perhaps she had sobbed herself to sleep. The night was warm enough that I did not try to cover her. This might be my last night alive. I fought to stay awake so as to miss none of it. And yet I could not really see it, really hear it, really smell it while my thoughts tumbled in their bleak pain.

My son, the centre of Mother Chilton’s web. Maggie, whom I could not help and would never see again
…

No creature can hold off sleep for ever. I had travelled hard all day. Despite myself, my despair slid into sleep. The moonlit grotto formed by the willow faded around me, the coarse river grass beneath me, the rustling leaves above me. Into the void of their passing came Stephanie’s dream.

And all changed yet again.

20

Swirling colours, vague shapes
. But I was half awake under the willow, or perhaps I dreamed that I was half awake, or perhaps both were true at once. At any rate, a part of my mind understood that the shifting colours and half-distinguished shapes were in the infant mind of my son, through which the dream came. The conduit.

A figure emerges from the bright swirl, a small figure with something bright on her head. A crown. Stephanie’s voice comes shockingly clear and unchildlike – shockingly because, for the first time ever, she sounds as commanding as her dead mother. I had not thought that possible. ‘Roger,’ Stephanie says, ‘wait there. Do not leave. I so order
.’

I try to answer, but no words come from my moor cur throat, and so—

‘Roger!’ Rawnie screamed in my ear. ‘I dreamed!’

The scream sent me leaping to my feet, teeth bared. Rawnie ignored my teeth, my raised hackles, my attack crouch. She threw her arms around me and went on screaming. ‘The queen said to wait here! I think they’re coming!’

One should not throw arms around a confused moor cur. Only with the greatest difficulty did I jerk my head to the side so that my teeth closed on air rather than on her arm. This, too, Rawnie ignored.

‘Did you hear me, Roger? That little queen sent me a dream and told us to wait right here! They must be going to send an army after all!’

Even with my wits once more assembled, this did not
seem likely to me. Stephanie might have meant … oh, anything. That she would send more food, that she would send soldiers to claim Rawnie. This last seemed most probable. I was going to die, and without help Rawnie might, too. Or so Stephanie, delicate and usually timid, might think. (But, some part of my brain whispered, she did not sound timid in
your
dream.)

It was not yet dawn. The moon had set and a thousand stars danced on the dark river. On the opposite north shore, a distant light bobbed as some boatman or fisherman made an early start on the water. I could barely see Rawnie in silhouette, but I could smell her joy.

‘I’m so hungry! Oh, look, that boy must have left this bundle last night – do you think there’s food in it?’

Of course there was food in it. Not only could I smell it, during the night I had growled sleepily at one badger and two squirrels who had approached the pack. Rawnie tore it open.

‘Bread and cheese and oh, look! Meat tarts, you shall have one too, silly Roger. Probably we will set out today for Galtryf and you will need your strength. Here, you may have the biggest one – aren’t I thoughtful of you? Here’s something! Trousers and a tunic! Mama would never let me dress as a boy no matter how much I begged her but I see that old woman knew better, or maybe it was the boy. What a strange boy! He hardly spoke at all. Oh, there’s ants on the bread, they get into everything, no matter, I can brush them off … How long do you think it will be before the army arrives?’

For once, I was glad I could not answer. Not that Rawnie would have listened to my nay-saying anyway. She believed what she wished to believe.

Throughout breakfast she went on prattling. The east brightened and then the sun rose. It would be a hot, clear day. Rawnie changed into her boy’s clothing, first making
me turn my back. She made a neat pack of the remaining food, her warm cloak, and the rest of her meagre belongings. Then she sat on the riverbank, boots off and toes dangling in the shallow water, to wait for the army that would not come. I lay beside her, dreading her inevitable disappointed rage.

As the morning wore on, boats crowded the river. Barges were pulled upriver by horses or mules on the opposite bank. Skiffs and wherries were rowed by stout men. Pleasure craft drifted downriver or were poled closer to shore, although not so close as the wide, marshy shelf of land before Rawnie and me. When a craft came close enough, she hallooed and waved, while I shrunk back into the brush. Nearly always the people aboard hallooed or waved back.

So much peace and prosperity, and The Queendom at its loveliest summer best. Was all this to be destroyed by Soulvine Moor, in their unnatural quest to live for ever? I did not know what the Moor and the Brotherhood would do next. Perhaps destroying enough of The Queendom’s children would gain them their aim, perhaps not. How many children would be required? And had they some further means of harvesting more of them, once their power had grown sufficiently? My killing Katharine – twice – had apparently not even slowed this monstrous war.

No country can survive without its children.

By noon, Rawnie was restless. She waded in the marshy river, caught a frog, let it go. She washed the horse, tethered a short distance away, with river water, a task to which the horse objected. She made a daisy chain and tore the petals into tiny bits. She hunted, vainly, for a four-leaf clover among the coarse river grasses, which held no clover. Finally she burst out, ‘Where the by damn
are
they?’

I said nothing.

‘How far away is that stupid palace? You know how far, Roger, you’ve been there! Mama said so! Tap your paw for how many miles it is!’

I had no idea how many miles.

‘Stupid Roger. And Mama told me you had such wit! Of course,’ she added, in a generous attempt to be fair, ‘she didn’t know you were going to become a moor cur.’

The mention of her mother seemed to sober Rawnie. She sat on the bank, staring sullenly at the water. A skiff went by, hallooing and pointing at us, and she didn’t even respond.

The hallooing and pointing grew louder. And it was not at us, but a little way upriver.

Then I caught the scent. Men and horses.

By the time they reached us, riding over fields on our south bank of the river, I knew that they had not come merely to escort Rawnie to the palace. Fifty men fully armed, and at their head, two figures. One was Lord Robert Hopewell himself, mounted on his magnificent black charger. Beside him, looking small on a large roan and holding on for dear life, sat Jee.

Rawnie capered and yelled. I sat on my haunches in the shadow of a gorse bush, stunned. Had Jee not heard what Mother Chilton said last night? No army could approach Galtryf without causing Jago to kill Maggie, Charlotte, and my father and then flee. What had happened at the palace to bring an army here?

‘Look, Roger!’ Rawnie shouted. ‘Don’t they look fine!’

Lord Robert halted his men in the meadow behind the willow tree and beside the Albustrine, where Rawnie’s horse had been the sole contender for the field grass. He dismounted, lifted Jee from the boy’s uneasy saddle, and strode towards us. When I glimpsed Lord Robert’s face, I almost could feel pity. When I had known him, he had
neither believed in nor trusted what he called ‘witchcraft’. First I had challenged that stance and now, I guessed, Stephanie had. His handsome face had aged much in the past year.

Rawnie rushed forward. ‘You came! You, boy … what’s your name again?’

‘Jee.’ He gazed at Rawnie, in her boy’s clothing, with open distaste. Stephanie, dainty and small, always wore modest gowns and spoke in a soft, feminine voice.

‘Jee, thank you for bringing the army! Who are
you
?’

‘Lord Robert Hopewell, Regent for Her Grace Queen Stephanie and High Commander of Her Grace’s army,’ he said, somewhere between irritation and amusement. Rawnie’s mouth made a round pink O. Then, with some remembrance of the manners Charlotte must have desperately tried to fasten onto her, she made The Queendom’s most awkward curtsey, nearly tumbling over onto the grass.

But Lord Robert’s attention had already left her. His gaze found me, and now his expression was too complicated to read, although I would not have liked to encounter it over duelling pistols. He spoke to Jee. ‘This is really Roger Kilbourne, the erstwhile Queen’s Fool?’

‘It be Roger, my lord.’ Jee’s soft voice, still in the accent of the Unclaimed Lands that had bred him, held tension. And I could smell it on both of them. The lord regent, the most powerful man in The Queendom, and the upcountry page insisted on by the little queen, had clashed on this matter, perhaps on many matters. Life at court must still be as complex and faction-ridden as I remembered from Queen Caroline’s reign.

Lord Robert gazed down at me. ‘The same Roger Kilbourne that rescued Her Grace from Tarek’s army, the same that …’ Abruptly he swung to face Jee. ‘You are
sure
, page?’

‘I am, my lord.’

Rawnie said loudly, ‘Of course that’s Roger! That old woman knew it last night, why don’t you?’

‘Be quiet, child,’ Lord Robert said. ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’

Rawnie’s face went white, then red. She kicked Lord Robert in the shin. Outraged, he grabbed her, held her at arm’s length so she could not repeat the offence, and swatted her behind. She began to shout curses, so he swatted her again. Jee ignored all of this, dropping to one knee beside me and speaking urgently into my ear.

‘He did not wish to come to ye, Roger, but Stephanie made him. She be the queen, and she maun do what be best for The Queendom. I told her of Maggie in the fortress, and of ye witched into what ye be now, and of the babes being tranced like the Dead. Can ye believe it, Lord Robert had not told her! I learned of it in the city, and if it be not for me, my lady would never know aught. Lord Robert treats her like a child.’