Soulvine 03 A Bright and Terrible Sword (32 page)

‘Charlotte? Sweetheart?’

She opened her eyes and clutched at him. What had she been dreaming?

‘It’s all right, sweetheart. I’m here. I must ask you about something that Jago said to you, at Galtryf.’

‘Jago? But he never—’

Over my father’s shoulder, his back to me, I nodded vigorously. So it all came to this: The fate of my plan depended on a gentle woman’s willingness to lie to her husband, and a ruthless man’s hunger for berries. I pantomimed beseeching.

Charlotte, despite her timidity, was not stupid. And she knew what Rawley planned. Maggie, who always dealt the truth around like so many playing cards, had told her. Charlotte continued, with only the smallest of breaks in her voice, ‘—never talked to me much.’

Rawley probed. ‘This was in the courtyard of the keep, when you were being led out to walk. Jago said something like “It isn’t just dogs any more”. Do you remember?’

I nodded vigorously.

‘Yes, yes I do,’ Charlotte said. Panic formed in her eyes.

‘Tell me exactly what happened. Every word. It’s very important.’

‘Y-yes.’

I pantomimed eating the berries and pointed at my father.

‘What did Jago say?’

‘He said … he said … I’m trying to remember, Rawley. Oh, look! Berries! I’m very hungry, aren’t you?’

‘No. Try to remember, Charlotte.’

‘Well, he said what you just said, about the … about the dogs. Now let me think ….’

She had no idea what to say next, and she had not Maggie’s wit to improvise, let alone her daughter’s. Probably to stall, she reached for the berries. Before I could intervene, she had taken and begun to eat a great handful.

‘Oh, these are so good! Please have some, Rawley!’

‘Charlotte,’ he said, and although his voice had not the flick of the whip he employed with me and his daughter, it held impatience. This flustered Charlotte even more. She quailed under his displeasure and looked helplessly at me. Tears formed in her eyes.

He saw them. ‘Oh, all right, if it will please you—’ He scooped up the rest of the berries and shoved them into his mouth.

When Fia had drugged me, and when Mother Chilton had, the potion had acted quickly. At least, I think so. Both times were a blur, although I remembered hallucinations. Rushlights and pine branches and Tom Jenkins had seemed to grow and shrink, grow and shrink. Flames had seemed to dance on Fia’s white arms, turning them pink and gold and orange. Fia had asked me to promise her something and I had breathed ‘Anything,’ just as I had done anything Mother Chilton had asked of me when she had given me this drug.

But Rawley had eaten only half the dose.

Charlotte said, ‘How strange you look! Your beard is afire … no, you do not have a beard …’ She giggled.

In that bleak stone house, half-lit, the giggle was as shocking as a scream. Rawley rose and stared down at her. But he, too, was beginning to be affected. He shook his head, tried to focus his eyes. Whatever he was seeing, he did not speak of it. With a huge effort of will, he turned to me.

‘You … Roger …’ He paused, looking as if he wanted
to be sure of my name. Then, ‘You … the berries …
Nell
.’

He fumbled at his belt for his knife. Even one-handed, I took it away from him easily. All his movements were slowed and clumsy.

‘Nell?’ Charlotte said. ‘Do you think she is prettier than I am?’

This, too, I remembered. The drug dissolved inhibitions. Those taking it would say aloud whatever lay in their minds. I was counting on that.

‘Rawley?’ Charlotte said. ‘Is Nell prettier than I?’

Rawley said nothing, glaring dazedly at me.

‘Was Katharine? Did you love her more than you love me?’

Katharine. Not my mad sister, but my mother. The question must have lain a long time in Charlotte’s mind, and never would she have spoken it aloud were it not for Nell’s berries. Rawley did not answer. All his confused attention focused on me. I needed him to be as suggestible as she was. Everything rested upon that.

‘Father,’ I said, forcing myself to the word, ‘sit down. There, on the bench.’

He did, stumbling towards it. Beside him, Charlotte struggled to sit up, and then leaned against him. They looked like two bewildered children – and it was that which hardened me.
Children
. What Rawley was prepared to do to children. I loomed over my father and said, ‘Your men, Rawley. They are waiting for you outside.’

‘My men,’ he repeated, and nodded. ‘Yes, my men.’

Charlotte, receiving no answer to her deepest fear, began to cry silently, tears coursing down her pale cheeks.

‘Yes, your
men
,’ I repeated, putting into my voice all the authority I could. ‘They await your orders. What is the command word of the day, Rawley?’

‘The command word …’

‘Yes, the
command word
. For your men. What is it?’

‘I—’

‘
What?
’

He said nothing. It seemed to me that his face, turned up to mine in the rush-lit gloom, lost some of its confusion. He was fighting hard against the drug. He half rose, but fell again onto the bench.

I seized his shoulder with my one good hand. ‘The command word! What is it!’

‘There are no moor ponies out there!’ a voice cried behind me. Rawnie tore into the hut and hit me hard on my shoulder. ‘You lied, Roger! You lied!’

Rawley said, wonderingly, ‘You
drugged
me.’

Charlotte put her hands over her face and wept.

And my great plan dissolved like mist on the dawn moor.

26

Rawnie stopped hitting me and stared. Her parents sat side by side on a bench, her mother crying and her father dazed. Fear crossed her face – these were the two people who kept her world together. But Rawnie was not her father’s daughter for nothing. And Nell had been teaching her about plants. She looked at the stone bowl stained with unnaturally bright berry juice; she looked again at her usually indomitable father, red juice on his lips; she looked at me.

She said, ‘You gave them something bad!’

‘Rawnie, get out,’ I said. To Rawley, trying to keep desperation from my voice, ‘Tell me the command word of the day!’

‘What did you give them?’ Rawnie demanded. ‘How did you know to make it? Where is Nell?’

‘Here,’ she said, appearing from a shadowed corner, where she had been … whatever she had been. At the same moment Maggie, breathless and frowning, ran into the hut.

‘Rawnie! You terrible girl, you can’t just—’ Maggie stopped, gazing around in bewilderment, trying to grasp the strange scene around her.

Rawley repeated, ‘You … drugged me.’ The muscles of his face were still slack but his eyes were recovering focus, and they were harder and more immovable than the largest boulder on Soulvine Moor. He rose from the bench, stumbled, caught himself. And then he was on me, both hands around my throat.

Had he been completely himself, I would have gone permanently to the Country of the Dead. Or, had he been completely himself, he would not have attacked me at all. But he was half under the influence of the berries, and there was not enough strength in his hands to kill me. Maggie and Nell pulled him off me. Then Maggie hit him with the stone berry bowl, and he went down.

‘Rawley!’ Charlotte screamed.

‘Papa!’

Maggie said, ‘He was going to … I was just … he hurt Roger!’

But it was Nell who knelt beside Rawley, pried open his eyelids, felt his wrist and neck with her long fingers, listened to his chest. ‘He will live,’ she said, just as Rawley opened his eyes.

Maggie had recovered herself. ‘Rawnie, give me that rope. I’m going to tie him. No, Rawnie, leave me alone. He attacked Roger!’

‘Don’t you dare tie Papa!’

‘Rawnie,’ Nell said, and there it was – the note of authority I had not been able to summon. ‘Stop that. It is only until he recovers from the drug. You don’t want him to hurt himself or anyone else, do you?’

‘But why did you drug him? No, he said Roger did! Roger, I hate you again!’ She kicked me in the shin, hard.

Charlotte, from her share of the drug, had slumped sideways on the bench into sleep – and that, too, I remembered. Perhaps Rawley would do the same. Certainly he now seemed quiescent, saying nothing as Maggie tied him with enough rope to hold a wild boar. Rawnie made up for both her parents’ silence by flailing about in Nell’s restraining arms and shouting at me.

‘Why did you do that? Why? Papa is trying to save us, and he did save us, he brought us here where it’s safe and –
why
? Are you that jealous of him because he’s
powerful and good and he has two hands and you’re a cripple? That’s it, isn’t it? You can’t ever be what he is or have what he has and … and … you don’t really want the command word of the day! I know you don’t! It’s all jealousy and … I’ll prove that you don’t have a good reason for tying up Papa and drugging him – no you don’t, hateful Roger! I’ll prove it! I’ll give you the command word! I heard Papa give it to his captains this morning, when he didn’t know I was listening! No, I won’t give it to you, you’re a terrible monster! I won’t tell you anything, ever! So there!’

A sharp intake of breath from Nell. She let Rawnie go. ‘You know the command word for Rawley’s
hisafs
? Give it to me.’

‘No!’

Maggie turned on me. ‘What is happening here!’

Nell did not waste time arguing. She vanished, and a lethal grey snake slithered on the floor towards Rawnie.

She screamed and backed into a corner. I had just wit enough to say, ‘She will do it, Rawnie, she will bite you and you saw what happened on the moor.’

Rawnie cried, ‘The word today is “Hartah”!’

Hartah. My brutal step-uncle, who had raised me along with Aunt Jo. From what twisted motives of remorse or anger had Rawley chosen such a command word? For a moment I saw Hartah before me as he had been on that stormy pebbled beach, the night the wreckers had crashed the
Frances Ormund
. Rain streaming from his greasy hair, his face alight with unholy triumph, his knife bloody from sailors he had just killed. I pushed the image away, to be confronted by a sobbing Rawnie, broken down – finally – by fear and anger and Nell’s betrayal.

So I was going to win by terrorizing children after all. Just like my father.

We had not much time. Eventually my father’s men, waiting for him at the hut holding the imprisoned elders of Soulvine Moor, would tire of the delay and come to seek their leader. We must be ready. Five or six men here in Hygryll – but an army of
hisafs
throughout The Queendom and the Unclaimed Lands. I was going to make use of them all.

‘Extinguish the rushlight,’ I said to Nell. ‘We need the men to be at a disadvantage. And when you strike, can you, can you …’ I didn’t know the words.

‘They will not die,’ Nell said. She had resumed her human form, and I was shocked to see it. Even though the snake was her soul-sharer, crossing in and out of it so often was taking a toll on her. Her face look ravaged, and her hands trembled. ‘
Everything has a cost, Roger Kilbourne
.’

Maggie, hands on hips, demanded, ‘Tell me what is going on!’

I said to Nell, ‘So your women – they can regulate the amount of venom? And where
are
they?’

‘Yes. And you will not see them until it is necessary.’

‘Roger!’

‘Maggie,’ I said desperately, ‘I can’t explain now. Please give me your trust on this. Tie and gag Rawnie so that she cannot make a sound. Please, sweetheart!’

Immediately Rawnie screamed and bolted for the door. Maggie caught her, pulled a cloth from a pocket in her gown – an apron or sleeve or something else, I know not what – and stuffed it in Rawnie’s mouth. Between us we wound rope intended for the non-existent moor ponies around the girl’s writhing body, pinning her arms and legs. Rawnie struggled, but I knew how strong Maggie was. I had always known. I depended upon it.

‘Roger, you had better explain all this!’

‘I will, Maggie. Soon.’

My father’s eyes watched us with impotent, dazed hatred. His eyes were the last thing I saw before I extinguished the rushlight.

Then we waited. The wait seemed long, but probably was no more than ten minutes. Maggie, Nell, and I did not talk. Rawley, Charlotte, and Rawnie could not. I was aware of Nell’s laboured breathing, but there was no remedy for that. My plan needed Nell.

Voices outside the stone hut.

Nell’s hoarse breathing stopped.

The first of Rawley’s men raised the door flap and entered, making a small wordless exclamation at the lack of light. Before his eyes could adjust enough to see, a small grey snake had slithered forward and struck at his hand. He barely had time to shout before he fell.

His shout brought the other four rushing in. And each fell, although this time I did not see the snakes. It was over in a moment. The door flap still rippled in place before each dark silhouette lay still on the hut floor, and three web women lay beside them.

Maggie fumbled with one rushlight, and then another. I stared at the floor, covered with bodies. Nell, gasping even more loudly, bent her head.

I said, ‘You did not say – you didn’t tell me—’

‘You … asked if the … men would survive. Not … if we would.’

‘But before … on the moor when they bit the Brotherhood …’

‘Did you think,’ she said with sudden fierceness, ‘that they … could go on doing that indefinitely? I … could barely … two with enough strength left … They knew they would not survive. So your plan had better succeed, Roger Kilbourne!’

If it did so, it would be because of her. I did not say this. Sorrow flooded me for these three additional deaths
I had caused, but there was no time for sorrow. There was no time to think of Rawnie. Maggie would attend to her, to Charlotte, to Rawley. I could trust Maggie’s competence.

‘Roger!’ Maggie said dangerously.

‘Soon. There is more I must do. Please, Maggie.’

Wordlessly I helped Nell, even weaker than I had thought, to her feet, and we went outside to change the balance of the world.

It had begun to blow and spit rain. Not a storm, just the usual fitful moor weather, the clouds hanging grey and low. I helped Nell back to the shelter of the large boulder, on the side farthest from Hygryll. In some of these huts were more of my father’s recruits, guarding Harbinger and the Soulvine children. I did not want us to be seen.