Soulvine 03 A Bright and Terrible Sword (34 page)

Despite himself, the
hisaf
shuddered. I saw that he hated doing so, that he considered the shudder a sign of weakness. But I remembered the terrible dreams my mad sister had sent me, and I understood his shudder. The first time it happened, I had felt not only terrified and bewildered but also invaded, the wall of my mind breached by someone else.

The youngest
hisaf
pushed towards me, stepping on the hand of one of the tranced infants. I knew, however, that the child felt nothing. The boy cried, ‘If he be lying, let us get the truth from him! Here, or there!’ He raised his fist.

‘Stop,’ said the man who had grabbed me. ‘We have our orders, Hal. Do naught to him.’

‘But he—’ The boy stopped.

Everything stopped.

In that land of silence, how can one discern an even deeper silence? But we all did, a sudden profound pause in the very air. My breath tangled in my throat. And then the ground heaved beneath us, throwing me off my feet. A sharp
crack!
filled the air, as of lightning right beside me, where there was no lightning. Someone screamed. The youngest
hisaf
vanished, fleeing back to the land of the living. A moment later the other three followed him.

I stayed. I wanted to see … I must know … I could not gather all seven infants to me, there was no time and I had but one hand. But I grabbed the closest two, clutching at some parts of their little bodies, I had no idea which. The ground gave another great heave, tossing us all into the air. Another great crack, and the sky above split and something roared from the great rent, something I could not really see but could feel in every shiver of my bone and every jangle of my teeth, something bright and terrible beyond belief—

The sword.

I never did really see it. Instead I crossed back over, the two infants squashed against me, and emerged beside a settlement of wooden huts. The other
hisafs
lay shaking on the ground, in a warm rain. Two of them shouted incoherently, and people burst from the huts and ran towards us through the rain.

I did not shout, did not get up, did not look to see who raced towards me. Instead I looked at the two children lying beside me, and the other five scattered over the sopping ground. All seven screamed in fear, wet and squirming and squalling and alive, alive, alive.

‘Alice!’

‘Dick!’

‘Peter!’

I looked up at that, but it was not Peter One-Hand that was meant. One of the babes was named Peter, and his mother grabbed up the shrieking bundle and crushed it to her. She was a withered hag, used up by a hardscrabble life in this grindingly poor village, but not even Queen Caroline had been so beautiful in her joy.

People running, shouting, milling around, hugging the recovered children. A man seized me, a toothless and bearded man of such powerful build that his grip wrenched my shoulder. His country accent was so thick that I barely understood him.

‘What did ye? What happened?’

How to explain? I could not. So I offered the simplest lie. After all, it had served me well before. ‘The witches have untranced your children, and we brought them back to you.’

We were heroes. Old women rushed to fall on their knees and kiss our hands. My father’s men liked this as little as I did. Too shaken to rejoice, they muttered something no one understood and tried to walk resolutely away along the narrow, faint track that led from the village. The leader thought to toss over his shoulder, ‘More children to rescue!’ and that released us.

When we were out of sight of the border settlement, the
hisafs
turned on me. ‘What happened, young Kilbourne? And do not lie to us as you did to those villagers! What did Rawley do?’

What did Rawley do
? Rawley, not me! A hot retort rose to my lips, but I must have learned some good sense in the last years, because I stifled it. This was my passage out. If I wanted to be able to slink back to obscurity with Maggie and our son, I must not take credit for the rescued children. Must not name little Tom. Must not explain
what had happened in the Country of the Dead.

What
had
happened in the Country of the Dead?

All at once,
I had to know
. That bright and terrible rending of the sky … the sword …

So I said to the
hisafs
, ‘I don’t know what my father did. He keeps his plans close to his chest, even to me.’ That sounded like Rawley. ‘I know only that he wished to have as many tranced children as possible cross over as soon as possible. I was on my way to a cottage with such a child when … when
that
happened. More, I do not know.’

I watched them considering, weighing, finally accepting my story. The leader said, ‘Then we will go to Hygryll and ask Rawley.’ His face darkened. ‘There is still the old man to dispose of.’

Was there? That, too, I needed to know. But not yet. I was on fire to cross over and see what had happened to the Country of the Dead. Would these men never leave!

The leader said, ‘You can travel with us to Hygryll, young Kilbourne.’ The youth glared at me, then lowered his eyes lest I see. He was easy to read. Jealous of me, Rawley Kilbourne’s favoured heir. He knew nothing, the stupid oaf.

I said, ‘My father told me to go to a particular cottage. I think I must, at least to see if what occurred here has happened to other babes as well.’

‘Aye, that is sense,’ the leader said. ‘Anyway, Rawley can tell us more. Then travel easily, young Kilbourne.’ He turned to stride back down the track and the others followed.

But I wanted to give Nell her due. Nell and all the other web women who had died for this redemption. So I called to the men’s departing backs, ‘I do know one thing more! My father is grateful for the cooperation of the women
of the soul arts. He told me that whatever happens next, it would depend upon them!’

The youngest
hisaf
turned to glare at me once more.

When they had disappeared through the trees, I bit my tongue hard and crossed over.

Darkness
—

Cold
—

Dirt choking my mouth
—

Worms in my eyes
—

Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs
—

Tranquillity. Calm. Nothing of upheaval or fog. And nothing of that bright and terrible sword. The trees, still and dim, did not rustle above my head.

No path here, but I walked through the woods back to where the settlement had been in the land of the living. There were Dead here; probably families had lived in this little hollow a long time. The Dead sat quietly, singly or in one small circle. No fog around their heads, no vortexes stealing the power accumulated by their long-waiting souls.

‘
We have only conjecture
,’ Nell had said to me, with great reluctance to share even the conjectured lore of the web women. ‘
The sword … It guards death itself, a way to keep the web of being intact. To keep the balance of power, when the Country of the Dead is too profoundly disturbed
.’

So I had deliberately disturbed it as profoundly as I could. And the sword had righted it. Death had, however belatedly, guarded its own.

27

It was a day’s journey back to Hygryll. I needed to rest often. Hunger gnawed at me, despite the roots and berries I found, and the occasional nut overlooked by squirrels. I did not pause to set snares, and anyway I had never been very good at it. By nightfall I had still not reached Hygryll. I spent a miserable night in the rain, huddled beside a great tor.

I reached Hygryll just as everyone else prepared to leave it. Only a few people remained in the stone village. Some laden ponies stood by the flat rock where once I had lain bound and moments from being murdered. Even now I could not suppress a shudder when I glimpsed it. But then Maggie was running towards me, and all shudders were over.

‘Roger!’

She threw herself into my arms, and we both lost our balance and tumbled onto the wet peat. Not a heroic reunion. But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that she was with me, her sweet body in my arms and her straggling fair curls shoved into my mouth. I spat them out, pulled her upright, and murmured into her ear, ‘Tom?’

‘I don’t know. There is no one to ask.’

No one to ask – of course not. Nell was dead. But why had not Mother Chilton or Stephanie tried to reassure me that Nell and I had succeeded, that Tom was all right?

Sudden fear swamped me, so strong that I went cold and then hot. I had never thought – what if the sending
of so many simultaneous visions to so many
hisafs
had the same terrible effect on little Tom that it had had on Nell and the web girls? What if, in winning the war on Soulvine Moor, I had harmed my son? What if he were now—

My child, whom I had never even seen. If he lay dead by my own hand—

‘What is it?’ Maggie said. ‘Why is your heart racing like that? Roger – is it
Tom
? What have you done?’

‘It is nothing,’ I said. ‘I have no news of Tom. Truly, Maggie – I would tell you if I did. I know no more than you. Where are you going now? Those ponies are laden for a journey. Where is Rawley?’

‘He left yesterday with all his men. The tranced children are all restored to life – but you already knew that, didn’t you? I see it on your face.’

‘And the old man?’

Maggie’s eyes searched mine. ‘Dead. He was found dead in the stone hut, without a mark on him. That was before the reports began to come to Rawley about the restored children. And
I
have been waiting! For you, for news of my baby, for someone to explain all of this to me!’

Any other woman, faced with so much uncertainty and fear, would have burst into tears. Maggie glared at me and clenched her fists. I took her again into my arms.

‘You are right to wait—’ As if she had any choice! ‘I’m certain Mother Chilton will send a web woman about Tom. The war with Soulvine Moor is over. And we will go …’

Where? I had nowhere to take Maggie, no home, no money. And I did not know where my son laid his downy head. For me, the war was not over.

‘Roger!’ It was Rawnie, barrelling out of a round stone hut towards the ponies. ‘You’re back! Where did you go?
Did you hear the news? I forgive you for tying me up. Papa explained why it was necessary. I would forgive Nell, too, except she’s dead.’

That sobered her. To my surprise, the soberness lasted for more than a moment. Something dark rested in Rawnie’s eyes that had never been there before. Not fear, for she was still incapable of more than momentary fear. But her eyes held sadness. She had seen and experienced too much for a little girl.

‘Roger,’ Rawnie said, ‘Do you think Nell is happy in the Country of the Dead?’

No one wished to stay in Hygryll. For what was left of the day we journeyed north. In the evening we camped on the moor, perhaps two dozen of us: Rawnie, a very pale Charlotte, Maggie and I, plus a small band of men from The Queendom. I did not see the woman who had lost her child and then cared for the Soulviner children my father had been prepared to torture. I asked Maggie about her.

‘When the first report came that the tranced children had been restored, she left with the first group of Rawley’s men to go to her own baby,’ Maggie said, her tone implying that I should have already guessed this. ‘Most of the parents did.’

‘And the children of Soulvine Moor that Rawley held at Hygryll?’

‘Some women of the moor arrived just before you did. Ragged old women, no one that we could possibly see as a threat. They begged for the children and of course I gave them.’

Maggie gave them. I could easily picture it: Rawley and his men gone, Charlotte bewildered and uncertain of what Rawley would want, Maggie assuming charge. She would have been glad to give the children back, thinking
all the while of her own babe but not giving way to tears or losing hope. Not my Maggie. She hoped for the best now; I could feel it in the grasp of her hand. And if the worst came, she would face that, too.

We sat around an immense peat fire, blazing on Soulvine Moor as if to announce to the sky that the war was over and we had won. Nonetheless, grey dogs patrolled the edges of the camp, along with men in rotating shifts. I did not expect an attack. The Brotherhood might chase Rawley for revenge, but they must also know he was not here. And without him to imprison, they had no use for Charlotte or Rawnie.

And me? I didn’t know if they knew where I was. But the Brotherhood would now be in disarray, their war lost, their prize of immortality wrenched from their grasp. All this they would impute to Rawley, not me. If they could muster their fleeing group enough to attack, it would probably focus on my father, not me.

I had eaten for the first time in nearly two days. That and sleeplessness sapped my energy, but there was something I must do first. Having convinced myself that I was at no risk, I determined to take a risk. Just as I had to see whether the sword had righted the Country of the Dead, this was something I must do. Something I must know.

Maggie, however, would not let me go. She had waited too long. ‘Come away from the fire, Roger.’

‘It isn’t time to—’

‘Yes, it is! Come!’

There was no flouting that tone. I took her hand and we stumbled to an outcropping of rock. Maggie pulled me down and we sat with our backs to the cold stone. I put my arms around her.

‘No, Roger, no kissing. Not now. Tell me!’

‘Tell you what?’

‘Everything. Everything you … have left out since we met.’

It was the catch in her voice, the little sob on the word ‘you’ that undid me. That and the desire to finally trust, to be known, to love. I had been a long time coming to that. So I gave what she asked: everything. I told her about my mother, Aunt Jo, Hartah. About the wreck of the
Frances Ormund
, Mistress Conyers, Cecilia. Everything about Cecilia. And then about Mother Chilton, Queen Caroline, Tom Jenkins, Tarek son of Solek, Princess Stephanie, Lady Margaret. Everything I had learned from Alysse and the mouse-woman and Nell. And finally, all I had done to right the balance between the living and Dead, this realm and that other, Galtryf and the sword. Only one thing did I hold back: the part played by our son, and what he was. I talked until my throat was raw, and the blazing campfire visible across the heather had died to a ruddy glow in the darkness.