Soulvine 03 A Bright and Terrible Sword (30 page)

If he registered that I called him by his name instead of ‘Father’ he gave no sign. ‘Yes. And so are you.’

We stared at each other. Then Rawnie came crashing through the heather, the two women more sedately behind her. There was only time for him to say, ‘If you are not with me on this, Roger, you are against me. There is no middle ground in this war.’

I did not answer.

Rawnie crashed up to her father. ‘Are we nearly there, Papa? Mama says we are going to a place where there are wild ponies! Is that true?’

She stood hopefully before him, and not even Cecilia could have looked as artless and innocent. This, then, was where Rawnie had learned to play-act to get what she wanted. Despite himself, Rawley’s face softened. He said, ‘Perhaps. But now we must go, kitten.’

If this man had never left my mother, if he instead of Hartah had raised me, would I too have learned fawning and sweet, false deference as the only means to sway that stony will? Perhaps so. One thing both Rawnie and I had learned from our very different lives: how to survive the
people who controlled us. I had survived Hartah, and Queen Caroline, Solek and Tarek. More: I had ended up, however blunderingly, defeating them all.

I did not see how I could defeat my father. The conviction was growing upon me that Rawley, whatever he once had been, was now so consumed with his goal that he had lost sight of its cost. But how could I, one-handed and seventeen years old, oppose him and his army?

And then, days later and just before we reached Hygryll, a plan was given to me. Not made by me, but given to me, and by the most unlikely person of all persons I had ever known.

Since, for one thing, he was dead.

‘We must rest again,’ Maggie said firmly. ‘Charlotte can go no further.’

Rawley turned to his wife. ‘Charlotte?’

‘I can … manage,’ she said, although clearly she could not. She would have tried to walk across the open sea if Rawley had asked it, but she was not bred to this. So pale that the smudged skin under her eyes looked like ash, she swayed on her feet. Beside her Rawnie looked indestructible. Even Maggie, who had given birth less than a month ago, seemed sturdy as rock beside Charlotte.

Maggie said, ‘Sit here, Charlotte. Rawnie, give her a drink from your waterbag. Rawley, surely another half hour can’t matter to our arrival. Be reasonable!’

The last thing my father was, was reasonable. He was on fire with his monstrous mission. But after scanning the horizon in all directions, he nodded curtly. ‘Half an hour, then.’

Maggie settled Charlotte on a blanket where she promptly fell asleep. Rawley took his daughter a short way off for a private talk, followed by all three dogs. I leaned against a large grassy tussock.

Maggie said gently, ‘You are very troubled, Roger.’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me what troubles you.’

I reached for her hand. But the words would not come. If my father carried out his plan, Maggie would witness it soon enough. If I told her now, I did not know what she would do. Scream at Rawley? Attempt to nag him? Neither would work. So I spoke not the first truth in my mind but the second one, also a reality. I said, ‘I want to see our son.’

She believed me instantly, since for her this was the first truth. ‘I know! I think of him constantly. But I’ve come to believe he is well cared for. And perhaps it will not be long before we are all three together.’

Maggie, hopeful and loving. Then, a moment later, Maggie managerial and practical. ‘I have been thinking, Roger. When this is all over, we can find another cottage like the one at Applebridge and open another inn. It may take a year or so of work to save the money, unless Jee asks the queen to loan it to us. Do you think she would? I thought perhaps somewhere to the north, closer to Isabelle’s queendom, since there—’

She talked on. I listened, but not well. It was the sound of her voice I wanted, not any specific course for the uncertain future. Above us, grey clouds moved in a slow wind. My head fell back against the tussock. My limbs felt heavy with the weariness I had been denying; it had not been that long ago that I lay dying. Maggie’s voice faded, and I slept.

I dreamed.

Not a dream from Mother Chilton or Stephanie. Not a dream sent through my son, the conduit for dreams. Not one of the terrifying dreams I once received from Katharine, my mad, murdered half-sister. This was an ordinary dream, yet clear and bright, as some ordinary
dreams are. And like some of those, it began as memory and then grew into something more.

I walked with Tom Jenkins, the only friend I had ever had,
through the Country of the Dead. Around us were the eerie stillness of the place, its drifting fog, the circles of the Dead in their mindless calm. Tom – courageous, feckless, life-loving Tom – had for the first time in his life confronted something that neither courage nor ale could conquer
.

‘
What’s the good of being dead, Roger? If all you do is sit around for ever like some rock? For that matter, what’s the good of being alive, if this is where you end up? You and me and George and everybody – just lumps sitting around in this awful place? Tell me that!
’

‘
Tell you what?
’

‘
What good is it? Death, or even life? Why bother?
’

‘
Tom,’ I said softly, ‘have you never considered such thoughts before?
’

‘
Of course not! Usual people don’t think about such things! They think about hunting and farming and their dinners and bedding women and … and usual things! But then this is where it all ends up! Here! I wish you hadn’t brought me here!
’

‘
But then Tarek would have killed you, and you’d have ended up here anyway
.’

Tom groaned, the anguish of a man who truly never thought beyond the next dinner or the next girl and now was being forced to do so. I owed Tom my life; I must do better by him
.

‘
Tom, this is not all there is. Not here, I mean
.’

‘
There is what else? You have no answer! There ain’t no more. This is the end – sitting around like lumps, everything inside us gone. I’d rather not have been born
.’

‘
No.’ I must give Tom some comfort, and it must be what he wanted. ‘I don’t think this is the end, Tom. Someone very wise once told me that the Dead are waiting
.’

‘
Waiting for what?
’

‘
I don’t know. I wasn’t told. But that there is more, eventually. First you will have a long and rich life, with all kinds of girls. And when you do die someday, and come here, it will only be temporary. Like a … a
…’

‘
Like an inn on a journey?
’

‘
Just so
.’

‘
Some inn!’ He snorted and looked around in disgust, which the next moment brightened into hope. ‘You mean that after this, there’s another place?
’

I would not lie to him. ‘I don’t know
.’

‘
But you think so?
’

‘
I don’t know
.’

‘
But it’s possible?
’

‘
Tom, anything is possible
.’

‘
Then in that next place, there might be all the good things? Food and hunting and girls?
’

I chose the safe answer. ‘I don’t know
.’

‘
But do you think—
’

‘
I don’t know!
’

‘
Well, don’t shout.’ He brooded for a long moment. ‘I think I better ask your mother
.’

Memory, already altered by those last two words, ended, and into my dream
came my mother as I remembered her, dressed in a lavender gown with lavender ribbons in her hair. She walked between me and Tom, taking each of our hands in hers. Her fingers curled warmly around mine. Tom said, ‘Roger is troubled
.’

My mother turned to me. Her voice, though sweet, was oddly cool and detached, like those of the old women I sometimes roused on the other side of the grave. ‘You are looking in the wrong place, Roger dear,’ she said. ‘Do not look to Rawley, nor Hygryll, nor me, nor even Mother Chilton. Look to the sword
.’

‘
Yes,’ Tom said. ‘By damn and piss-pots, yes!
’

‘Wake up!’ Maggie said, and then it was her warm fingers around mine, not my mother’s. Maggie’s
concerned face above mine. Behind her, Rawley demanded, ‘Get up, Roger. We move on.’

He strode off. Maggie said, ‘Can you stand?’

‘Yes.’

‘You called out something, I couldn’t tell what. Were you dreaming?’

‘Yes,’ I repeated, getting to my feet and pulling her up with me. And it
had
been a dream, not any sort of visitation from my mother, nor from anyone else. By now, I knew the difference. Her presence had been created by my own mind, just as the memory of Tom Jenkins had been.

And now I knew what to do when we reached Hygryll.

25

Hygryll had not changed. It looked as it had on my first visit, when I’d been treated as an honoured
hisaf
, and on my second years later, when I had nearly been killed and devoured. The village still consisted of round stone huts, windowless and partially covered with earth, grouped around a central flat rock. The peat still felt as springy beneath my boots. The moor stretched away in undulations of gorse, heather, and low mosses. Boulders dotted the bleak landscape.

Rawley’s men held Hygryll, but not only them; there were far too many men here to all be
hisafs
. And not all men. As we approached the village, accompanied by an outlying guard, Nell walked towards us. She was beautiful and implacable as ever, her green eyes hard as stone. Rawley turned angrily to the guard.

‘What is she doing here?’

He was young, no older than I, and he stammered. ‘Sh-sh-she is—’

‘I know what she is.’

Nell said, ‘We are your allies, remember, Rawley?’

He said, ‘You will not stop me.’

Nell said nothing. Her eyes met mine. Under her probing gaze, I gave the tiniest of nods. Yes.

Yes, I will join you.

Yes, I will betray my father.

Yes.

Nell showed no reaction. Maggie’s scolding voice leaped into the silence. ‘For sweet skies’ sake, Rawley,
Charlotte needs to rest. Roger, too. Where can I take them before it starts to rain?’

Not the least of my reasons for loving Maggie was her complete lack of fear of my father.

A woman came up to us. To my surprise, I recognized her. She was one of the women who had wailed and cried outside the mill with the dirty windows, the terrible morning when I had seen both the
hisafs
of the Brotherhood trance babes and the gasping
hisaf
who had just returned from inhabiting a grey dog. Suddenly I understood: These people who had taken Hygryll for my father were from The Queendom and the Unclaimed Lands. They had lost children to death trances, or were from villages that had. Rawley had recruited them in his fight against the Brotherhood. Lord Robert was doing nothing to avenge their children so they joined the outlaw who was, directed here by the couriers following Rawley’s command word of the day. Not even fear of setting foot on Soulvine Moor had kept them from their hopes of revenge.

Had my own babe been tranced, I might have done the same thing.

The woman did not recognize me. Possibly she had never even seen me that morning. She took Charlotte’s arm, half supporting her. ‘Come with me, then. You, too, child.’

Rawnie, who always hated being called a child, scowled fiercely and opened her mouth. At a look from her father she closed it again and followed Charlotte. Maggie led me after them. I glanced sideways at Nell, whose tiny nod echoed my own.

The stone hut was as austere as I remembered, identical to although much smaller than the one where I had once eaten of what Hygryll offered. Then a fire had burned in a central brazier and pungent powders had been thrown
on it, inducing trance. Now, in summer, the brazier stood empty. Stone benches ringed the walls, with baskets and bundles stowed beneath them.

The woman pulled out blankets, spread them on a bench, and helped Charlotte lie down. All the woman’s movements were abrupt and jerky, as if she were under great tension. She did not speak. As soon as she had gone, Maggie rummaged in the other baskets, producing berries and the kind of flat, coarse bread that is baked on hot stones.

‘Rawnie, are you hungry still? Eat this. Charlotte, can you eat a little? Roger?’

‘I need to find the piss pit,’ I said, inelegantly but accurately.

‘How can you need to when you haven’t even drunk any – oh, all right, we’ll wait here. Charlotte? A few bites of bread?’

I left them, pushing aside the leather flap that served as a door. As I’d hoped, no one was about. Probably Rawley was making a report to his men, or receiving reports, in the large stone lodge I remembered all too well. Moving neither fast nor slow, I walked to the nearest large boulder, trying to look like a man in need of relieving himself.

Nell waited half hidden in a shallow crevice on the far side of the giant rock. I didn’t know if she had gone there as snake or woman, but it didn’t matter. Far out on the moor my father’s guards prevented attack, and here we were unobserved.

The web women never bothered with niceties. Nell said, ‘Did you persuade Rawley?’

‘No.’

‘He is
still
going to make Harbinger’s own Soulviners kill him?’ Her voice held outrage.

‘Yes. But we are going to prevent it.’

She stared at me. ‘We are?’

‘Yes.’ I wished I felt as confident as I sounded. ‘But first – and quickly, Nell, I haven’t much time – tell me what is “the sword”.’

‘You should not even have heard of the sword!’

‘But I have. I think I have seen it.’

‘That is not possible.’ She shook her head, but her green eyes – Cecilia’s eyes, Fia’s eyes, the old man’s eyes – had gone round and wondering. ‘No, that is not possible.’

Somehow, web women were always telling me I was wrong. ‘I saw it! We do not have much—’

‘What is it you think you saw?’

‘It happened when I brought the Blue army back from the Country of the Dead. Just as I crossed over with them the sky shrieked and … and split open. Something roared out of that rent, something bright and terrible – I couldn’t see it clearly. But it was real, and I – we – just escaped it. Was that the sword?’