Soulvine 03 A Bright and Terrible Sword (5 page)

He was a
hisaf
.

I must have gaped at him because a smile flickered on that scarred face, curving up the one side of his lips that could still move. ‘Close your mouth, Roger.’

‘You are—’

‘Even as you are, yes. You cannot escape me by crossing
over. And I am still waiting for that assurance that you will not harm me.’

It suddenly seemed ludicrous. Here we stood, two living men in the Country of the Dead. Both with talent far beyond what ordinary people could command, both knowing that the Dead go on, although in a form neither of us relished – one no longer even assured since the war began – and we argued over bodily harm from a weapon foreign to both of us. If Leo Tollers had planned to shoot me, he would already have done so. I could not escape him, so I must put up with him. Although why he should believe my assurances, I didn’t know.

I said, ‘I promise I will not harm you.’

‘Good.’ He lowered the barrel of his
gun
, but did not replace it on his back. I suddenly saw what was slung there, which he must have been carrying when I first glimpsed him: a lute. He looked around and said, ‘I don’t like it here. I never have. Let us go back.’

‘Yes.’

Darkness—

Cold—

Dirt choking my mouth—

Worms in my eyes—

Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

I was the first to appear in the land of the living. Hunter had curled up on my cloak and gone to sleep. Some protection he was! For a moment I wondered if Leo would actually follow me back but a moment later he appeared, pale and looking ill.

‘I
hate
that.’

I said nothing. Of course he hated it; I could not imagine any
hisaf
enjoying the passage through the grave. But Leo seemed far more affected by it than I had ever been. Sweating, his free hand on his concave belly even as the other clutched his
gun
, he seemed to be fighting nausea.
I watched, taking his measure: a naturally squeamish and timid man who had steeled himself to this task involving me. Whatever it was.

Eventually he regained command of himself, and I risked a question. ‘What do you want of me?’

‘To give you a message. First – have you water?’

I handed him my goatskin bag, filled at the spring that gushed a mere few feet behind him. He was clearly not accustomed to travel; no one sets out on foot without a waterbag. He drank deeply, water dribbling from the scarred side of his mouth, and swiped his hand across his lips. ‘Thank you.’

‘You are welcome. Now – who sent you?’

‘I belong to the Brotherhood of
hisafs
, those fighting Soulvine Moor. As I suspect you already know.’

He did not look to me to be a likely fighter. ‘How did you know where I am?’

‘They knew.’

‘
How?
’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did they tell you why you should follow me?’

‘To give you a message from your father.’

It was like a blow. Watching me, Leo again gave that faint, twisted-lip smile from half his ruined face.

I said, ‘My father? In …’

‘Yes. He is still imprisoned in Galtryf. As was I, but I escaped. Rawley could not.’

Rawley. It was the first time I had ever heard my father’s name. Rawley and Katharine. Who birthed Roger and the second Katharine, the half-sister I had killed. Rawley, who had abandoned my mother and who had abandoned me. Twice.

‘Roger?’ Leo said.

More harshly than I intended, I said, ‘I want no message from my father.’

‘That’s too bad, because he sent you this.’ Leo drew from a small bundle from his pocket, wrapped in the same rough cloth as his tunic, and held it out to me.

I did not take it. ‘If you escaped from Galtryf, why can my father not do so?
Hisafs
can cross bodily now—’ as we had both just done ‘—so how can stone walls hold him? How can they hold any of your Brotherhood?’

‘Stone walls cannot. When the bodily crossings became possible – and I think you know how much you had to do with that change, Roger Kilbourne – many of us escaped, including me. But Rawley was held by the threat of harm to your mother if he left Galtryf.’

‘Harm to my mother! My mother is dead!’ I wanted to strike him for even mentioning her. My mother, whom I had last seen in the Country of the Dead, in the centre of one of those cursed circles.

‘And you of all people know what can be done to the Dead, don’t you? You have done it to many. The rogue
hisafs
threaten to carry your mother back to the land of the living, where she would have a fortnight before she crumbled into nothing, losing all chance at eternity. Just like the Blue army you brought back, like Lady Cecilia—’

‘Stop!’

He did, raising the
gun
again at my angry tone. Hunter woke and looked at me in puzzlement. The dog had not objected to Leo, which lent belief to his tale that he meant me no harm. But just as my dislike for him hardened, Leo’s face changed. The burning dark eyes softened into compassion.

‘I’m sorry, Roger,’ he said with more gentleness than I would have suspected him capable of. ‘I lost my mother, too, and not very long ago. Just before this was done to me.’ He touched the hideous scar on his face.

He was giving me a chance to shift the conversation
away from what pained me. ‘What was done to you?’

‘Badger baiting. Only instead of a dog, they used me.’

Badger baiting had been staged at the rougher of the country faires Hartah had once dragged me to. A badger was put into a small enclosed space and a dog dropped in to fight it. Wagers were laid. A full-grown badger, thirty-five pounds of terrified wrath with sharp teeth and powerful claws, would often win, killing the dog. Leo was larger than a dog but far less equipped to fight, even if he had been given a knife. I looked at Leo’s face. My imagination is too good; I could picture the scene in all its cruel horror. That, and the compassion he had shown me, wakened mine towards him.

I said awkwardly, ‘I am sorry you had to endure that.’

He shrugged. ‘In Galtryf, Rawley was kind to me. So I said I would carry this to you.’ Again he held out the small bundle and this time I took it, untied the string, and unwrapped the cloth.

A miniature portrait of my mother, just as I remembered her. She wore a lavender gown, with lavender ribbons in her hair. The same brown hair and eyes my half-sister had had, although my sister’s eyes had been darker. My sister—

‘Roger?’ Leo said softly.

‘I don’t want it. Here, take it back, I remember her well enough without this. Why did my father send it? We have no more to do with each other!’

‘Why do you hate him so?’

‘He promised me a rescue that never came!’

Leo’s face furrowed. ‘But he had been captured and so could not rescue you. Surely you make allowances for that?’

Yes. No. Of course a man who was in prison could hardly rescue one who was not … but I had relied upon my father’s promise, had held it to me during the long
weeks of being carted over the mountains towards the savage kingdom, forced to teach the Young Chieftain what could not be taught. All the fear and helplessness of those weeks I laid at the door of my father, who had insisted that I, a lad of seventeen, undertake this hopeless mission. And that mission had ended with Tom Jenkins, my only friend, killed in battle. I did not trust my father, who had deserted my mother and me, and I no longer believed his statement that he had done so only for our own safety. He was an adventurer, and we the victims of that lust for adventure. I could not forgive him, and I did not trust him. In memory I could still feel the blow he had given me in the palace dungeon.

I said, ‘The miniature is a marker, isn’t it? So that your “Brotherhood” will always know where I am.’

Leo looked surprised. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I thought you were a member of the Brotherhood.’

‘I am. That does not mean that I am told everything.’

I could believe that. Skinny, timid, huddled in his cloak against chill even though the summer night was not cold, Leo Tollers looked completely ineffectual, someone whom nobody would tell anything much. Probably he didn’t know if the portrait was a marker, and probably it was. I took one long last look at my mother, wrapped up the miniature, and handed it back to Leo.

‘What am
I
supposed to do with it?’ he said, and now compassion had been replaced by querulousness.

‘I don’t know.’

Hunter looked from one of us to the other and back again, puzzled by the sharpness in our voices. Then Leo’s demeanour changed once again. ‘May I sleep here tonight? Near you and your dog?’

‘I suppose so.’ We could just as easily part in the morning.

‘I’m afraid to be alone.’

‘All right.’ I felt uncomfortable with his timidity and abasement. My last camping companions had been Tom Jenkins, brash and confident, and Jee, who had the survival skills of a boulder.

‘Where are you going, Roger?’

‘East.’ That much was already evident.

‘But where?’

‘Go to sleep, Leo.’

‘Can I go with you?’

‘No.’

He looked at me bleakly, his ruined face grotesque in the moonlight. ‘I have nowhere else to go.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, but you cannot come with me.’

‘Are you going to find work on some farm someplace?’

I didn’t answer, merely lay on the ground and pulled my cloak loosely over me. Nonetheless, tension shot through me like lightning. Leo’s questions implied that the Brotherhood of
hisafs
did not know about Maggie and my son. Was that true?

The web women knew: ‘
He is our last hope
.’ My sister, too, had known: ‘
The child is the one! Your son!
’ But my sister was gone for ever, and the web women and
hisafs
were at odds with each other over strategies to fight Soulvine Moor, none of which I understood. I believed that this Brotherhood was ignorant of my destination and my unborn child, but I waited in the darkness for Leo to say something that might contradict my belief. And if he did? What would I do then?

He said humbly, ‘Maybe you have other kin to take you in? An uncle or brother?’

‘I do not.’

‘Nor have I. Perhaps two maimed youths could better find work together than separately. We could offer two workers for one pay.’

He waited, then, for me to agree. I did not. The minutes
stretched out uncomfortably. I thought that he must give up and go to sleep, but instead he surprised me.

‘Would you like to hear a song on my lute?’

I could not say no, not after my much greater refusal to take him with me. Ungraciously I said, ‘All right’, and there was much sighing as he drew the lute from its oiled bag, plucked a few strings, tuned it. He began to play, and I sat up once more, in surprise, and stared.

His voice was astonishing: pure and clear, a man’s voice but with the sweetness of a girl’s. The plaintive tune of love’s loss was commonplace, but Leo’s singing of it was not. At court I had heard many musicians. He bested them all.

Although you to the hills do flee,

My love you can’t escape.

Your heart, my sweet, belongs to me

Though you may change its shape.

Never, never will I cease

To follow where you go,

And ever, ever will I be

The hound upon your doe.

Do what you will and what you can,

Employ the arts you know—

Ever, ever will I be

The hound upon your doe.

Leo raised his gaze and in the moonlight filtering through branches of the oak, his eyes met mine.
Never, never will I cease to follow where you go
… Still that steady gaze held mine, and I saw in them the same burning look as when he first trained his
gun
on me.
Ever, ever will I be the hound upon your doe
…

Then Leo laughed. ‘It’s merely a song, yes, Roger?’ He put away his lute, lay down, and went to sleep.

But I lay awake for a long time.

5

We travelled together one day more. I set a punishing pace, one that tested my returned strength to the limit. I wanted to tire Leo as much as possible so that he would sleep deeply. Before my illness I had been toughened by months of mountain walking; it was clear that Leo was unused to moving much at all. He was meant to be a musician or a scholar. Why had the Brotherhood chosen him to follow me? There must be a reason. I needed to know what it was.

‘That’s a village … ahead,’ Leo said, panting. ‘Could we stop … for ale?’

‘I have no money,’ I lied.

‘I have money.’

‘Then you may stop. I will go on.’

He scowled, his dark eyes flashing with the strong feeling that always seemed to lie just below the surface. I quickened my stride. He kept up, with difficulty, and so we passed through the tiny settlement, which did not seem to be having any trouble with tranced children.

The village was followed by fields, which gave way to sheep pastures thick with clover, and then to rolling hills dotted with great tracts of wood. Here the road, obviously less used, dwindled to a track. The long afternoon was warm and fragrant, and it was The Queendom at its loveliest. Wild cherries and plums blossomed pink and white. The nightingales had returned from their winter home. Finally, just as the sun set in tender pinks and golds, I left the road to camp by a noisy stream bordered
by bulrushes. Weeping willows grew along the bank, dipping their branches into the water and filtering the light to a green glow. I dropped my pack under a huge willow tree. Leo, groaning, sank to the ground.

‘Hunter, go find!’ I said. He bounded off. ‘Leo, gather some twigs for a fire.’

‘I can’t. I can’t move any more.’

I snorted and left the willow. When I returned with twigs Leo had unwrapped his lute and was strumming it softly. His whole body drooped with weariness.

‘Do you think,’ I said sarcastically, ‘that you can bestir yourself enough to skin a rabbit if Hunter brings one?’

‘You skin it, Roger, and I’ll make the fire.’

‘Don’t tire yourself too much.’

He raised those burning eyes to me. ‘I cannot help it if I am not strong.’