Tamlyn (3 page)

T
he journey back to Greystone Harbour turned me blue with cold, even though the storm clouds were mostly gone by the time the dinghy bumped to a halt at the jetty. Villagers were venturing tentatively from their doors, no doubt pleased to be free of their homes for the first time that day. When they saw us, though, they stared with sullen, worried faces, and mothers called their children back inside.

‘They witnessed this morning's fighting,' said Tamlyn. ‘Hallig and his companion forced me back through the village.'

I imagined them hacking at each other with their swords. No wonder the villagers backed away. As we passed one circle of men, their backs turned to us, I heard someone mutter, ‘Wyrdborn'.

‘We'll get no help from these people,' said Tamlyn who had heard it as well.

‘The Widow Wenn will take us in,' and I pointed towards the house where I had slept the night before. It was further round the edge of the harbour, almost the last house before the cliffs that marked the end of the village.

Mrs Wenn had the door open for us before we'd even started up her front path. ‘There was fighting after you left this morning,' she said, but then she saw how utterly soaked we were and the way I shivered uncontrollably. After that, there was no more talking until she had us inside.

‘Where's your little baby? Goodness, he's not lost at sea, is he?'

Her hand went to her mouth at the thought of such a tragedy. She was a kind soul, Mrs Wenn.

‘Yes, but not the way you fear,' I told her. ‘He was stolen from me by that rogue who brought us to Greystone. He called himself Miston Dessar, but he was Lord Coyle, Wyrdborn to the king.'

‘And my father,' said Tamlyn with equal parts anger and shame.

Mrs Wenn wasn't slow to see what this might mean. ‘Are you Wyrdborn also?' she asked.

Tamlyn didn't answer, but let his head droop forward so that he no longer faced her. It wasn't the
usual response of a Wyrdborn who had been challenged so openly. Mrs Wenn could have expected the back of a hand across her face from any other of his kind.

‘Tamlyn's not like the rest,' I told her. ‘He … he cares for Lucien, and for me,' I dared add. It had been on the tip of my tongue to say he loved me, but that was more a hope than a fact I could claim out loud.

‘If that's true, then he's the first I've ever heard of who cared for anyone but himself.' Mrs Wenn looked from him to me and I could guess what she was thinking — that he'd conjured a spell to win my heart, just as Coyle had done to Nerigold.

She was good to Tamlyn, all the same, in the wonderful way that commonfolk have of overlooking a man's faults when he's in need. She led us both upstairs, me to the room where I'd slept only hours before and Tamlyn to her own room. When I saw him again, he was by the fire, wearing dry clothes that were meant for a shorter man. His ankles and a good stretch of his calves jutted out comically from the trousers and his torso looked constricted inside the shirt and jerkin. I had done a lot better, with a yellow dress Mrs Wenn had worn when she was many years younger and a great deal slimmer than she was now.

Our own clothes were laid out in front of the fire and we pulled our chairs close to them to enjoy
the same heat. It was so good to feel warm again. Mrs Wenn waved my thanks aside and went into the kitchen to make us something hot to drink. While she was gone, I told Tamlyn of my days travelling with his father, when I'd known him as Miston Dessar.

‘I was such a fool,' I kept saying, as if confessing my faults would excuse them. ‘I should have seen through him, especially when he tried so hard to convince me of your betrayal. I'm sorry, Tamlyn, truly I am. Please forgive me — not just for handing Lucien to him the way I did, but for doubting you. I see, now, that it was all lies and I didn't want to believe him anyway. I fought it, but he seemed so …'

I trailed off, and waited in dread for what would come from Tamlyn's beautiful mouth. In trying to justify my actions I had managed to humiliate myself even more. I'd let him down; I'd believed Coyle's lies instead of what I had learned about Tamlyn during our days together. He had every right to be angry with me.

When he spoke, though, it was to say something I wasn't expecting. ‘Why didn't you get into the dinghy with my father? There was time for you to step aboard. Instead, you waited for me on the jetty, yet, if his stories about me were true, I would have cut you down in an instant.'

Why had I stayed on the jetty? Where my answer came from I don't know, but I heard my voice say, ‘My head believed you had betrayed me, but not my heart. I stayed because … because I would rather die than discover that you had been loyal to me all along and I hadn't done the same.'

‘Then you have been as true to me as I have been to you, Silvermay.'

If this thought had come from my own mind, I would have rejected it as the easy forgiveness that the weak grant themselves. But it was Tamlyn who said it and so the words were light in my ears. He offered me a glimmer of the happiness I'd never thought to feel again. But even that seemed treachery of a different kind.

‘Poor Ryall is dead,' I said. ‘Coyle told me you killed him. It was the last straw, the thing that finally made me believe him, yet it was the biggest lie of all. It was Hallig who killed him. Somehow, he'd got hold of your dagger, the one you gave to Ryall to help him protect me.'

Tamlyn said nothing; he simply stared at me until I became uncomfortable.

‘What is it?' I asked. ‘I thought you would at least praise Ryall's sacrifice.'

His face became even more solemn. ‘He was a brave young man, Silvermay, and he still is.'

At first I thought he was speaking like the poets, about the spirit of the dead that remains with us. It was his unshakable gaze that made me think otherwise. ‘Are you telling me …?'

‘Yes, Ryall is still alive.'

‘Oh, Tamlyn, that's wonderful news.' This was something I could celebrate, no matter what else had happened that day. ‘Where is he? I want to see him.'

Again, Tamlyn didn't respond as I thought he would and I felt the dull weight of dread on my shoulder. Why wasn't he overjoyed like I was?

‘What happened? Why do you look sad? Is this some cruel lie?'

Tamlyn shook his head. ‘Ryall is alive, but only just. He has suffered terribly. Hallig found him in the woods, as you guessed. The cruelty of his Wyrdborn nature made him toy with Ryall for sport rather than killing him instantly. It is not a sight any woman should see.'

‘I want to see him. I don't care what a shock it is.'

‘I found him in the forest only yesterday, while I was searching for you,' Tamlyn explained. ‘He'd been left for dead. You must steel yourself, Silvermay. He's in a bad way. I carried him to a shepherd's cottage and left him in the man's care while I continued looking for you. It's in the hills above the ocean shore, not far from here.'

 

Tamlyn insisted we eat before going to find Ryall, and with my stomach rumbling I didn't object. But as soon as we were full of bread and a creamy chowder of clams and mussels, I tested the cloth of my dress, eager for it to be dry.

‘That yellow dress of mine is better than the rags you've been wearing, for weeks on end, I'll bet,' Mrs Wenn said. ‘Keep it, Silvermay. You look so pretty in it,' she added.

Even though her comment didn't sound like a compliment, I blushed, which made Tamlyn laugh. Mrs Wenn ignored my half-hearted attempts to refuse her offer and so I left her cottage in a better dress than I had ever worn in my life. I felt Tamlyn's eyes upon me every time he looked my way, and it wasn't an unpleasant feeling.

Despite Tamlyn's assurance that the shepherd's hut wasn't far, it took us almost an hour to reach it and much of the way was uphill. I was exhausted by the time Tamlyn knocked at the door, bringing the shepherd's wife to greet us warily.

Tamlyn had warned me, but what I saw when we entered the cottage still wrenched a terrible cry from me. Even in the half-dark, I could see the livid cuts
to his face, which still bled in places. The shepherd's wife had done what she could, with strips of cloth for bandages, but all were stained red and in need of changing.

‘Oh Ryall, what have they done to you?'

The sound of my voice roused him. He turned his head to find me and I saw that one eye was mostly closed by the angry swelling of his cheek. ‘Silvermay, I knew you'd come,' he said and managed a grotesque smile. There was no question of him standing up to share a hug, let alone walking, and when he did shift painfully on the pallet where he lay, his left arm seemed entirely useless.

‘We'll beat them,' he whispered, but after this flash of defiance he lapsed into the sleep of someone who simply didn't have the energy to do anything else.

‘He can't stay here, he needs care,' I said.

The shepherd kindly unearthed a wooden handcart he no longer used and we lifted Ryall, groaning through his sleep, into it and set out with Tamlyn at the handles. It was a roughly made cart, and the track back to Greystone was even rougher, which meant poor Ryall was soon forced awake by the constant jerks and buffeting. By the time we were once again at Mrs Wenn's door, he'd gone as pale as a corpse. Although his eyes remained open and his mouth tried
valiantly to smile, I knew the journey had brought him a step closer to death.

‘I've sent for the apothecary,' said Mrs Wenn once we had him settled near the fire on a mattress brought from upstairs.

The man arrived soon after, but I quickly decided his haste was because of the money he hoped to make from the strangers in town. He wore a grubby apron over his shirt and trousers, like a blacksmith, or worse, a slaughter man. He'd brought with him a bag full of bottles that clacked against one another as he set it down. This was more encouraging because it reminded me of my mother's sack full of wonders that cured so many ills in our village, but that was where the comparison ended. This charlatan was little more than a seller of potions, and when I heard him muttering strange verses over Ryall's damaged body I realised he hoped witchcraft would mend him.

‘Get out,' I told him. ‘I'll heal him myself.'

When we refused to pay him for coming, he gave himself away even more starkly. ‘Your friend is as good as dead. You might as well dig his grave because he won't last a week. Not even the greatest doctors in the land could save him.'

It was foolish of me to boast of healing Ryall myself. All I knew about healing came from watching my
mother. She hadn't studied the great books of anatomy as a doctor would — like me, my mother couldn't read — but I would match her against the best healers in the land. The apothecary's dire words helped to confirm what had been in my mind from the beginning.

‘He needs Birdie. We have to take Ryall back to Haywode.'

Tamlyn cared for Ryall as much as I did, but he was a Wyrdborn who put practical matters before sentiment and blind hope. ‘Don't you remember how far you've come from home, Silvermay, and how many weeks we've travelled? Look at how weak he is after just an hour in a handcart.'

I am commonfolk and I don't surrender hope so easily, but I could see Tamlyn was right. The journey on the rough roads would kill Ryall long before we arrived in Haywode.

Mrs Wenn helped me cut away the bloodied bandages and apply new ones, but Ryall needed more than that — more than I could give him. I could see now why the helpless resorted to empty witchcraft: it wasn't for the patient's benefit, but for the grieving friends and relatives who needed to believe there
was
a chance and that
something
was being done.

It was when I turned to admit as much to Tamlyn that I realised he had gone. He returned an hour later,
and I had already launched into questions about where he had been before I saw there was a man behind him. A doctor, my mind begged, a real doctor, not a quack more interested in squeezing money out of us. But one look at him told me he was nothing of the sort. Judging by his heavy guernsey and boots, his face weathered by sun and sea spray, he was a fisherman, like so many others in the village. How could he help Ryall any better than I could?

‘I've been to the Jolly Fisherman,' said Tamlyn in answer to my question, and I recognised the name of the inn. ‘This man captains a ship that arrived off Greystone after the storm. He's going to take us south —'

‘But we can't just leave Ryall here to die,' I cut in.

Sometimes I despaired that Tamlyn would ever overcome his Wyrdborn nature and learn the value of human life. But he already had, as his next words taught me.

‘We're not. We're taking him with us. The ship will set us ashore as close to Haywode as the ocean reaches, and from there we'll find another way to transport him. If your mother is the only one who can save him, Silvermay, then we cannot delay another hour.'

H
is name was Jerbarle — that was all — no last name, or maybe that
was
his last name. We waved goodbye to Mrs Wenn from the jetty in Greystone Harbour and let the sullen captain row us towards his ship. He watched Tamlyn with a mixture of fear and resentment, and if he thought for one moment that he could make a run for it and live to boast afterwards of how he had defied a Wyrdborn, he would have done it, I'm sure.

Once we cleared the seawall, Tamlyn spoke up. ‘Here, man. Let me.' And he put his Wyrdborn strength to work, propelling us through the gentle swell at three times the speed.

It wouldn't be right to say that his offer was gratefully accepted by Captain Jerbarle, because he did everything Tamlyn commanded out of fear, but
the gesture softened his face. I could see him thinking,
What Wyrdborn ever took the burden from the shoulders of a commonfolk sailor?
It was the first step in a change that would progress steadily during the voyage until by its end he would be addressing Tamlyn almost as a friend.

‘Do you think we'll come across Coyle's ship?' I asked Tamlyn once we were on board Captain Jerbarle's vessel.

‘The ocean is larger than anything you can imagine,' he said with a regretful smile. ‘And there are no roads to follow like there are in a forest. No, we won't find Lucien out here. Besides, Coyle has every point of the compass to choose from.'

‘Where do you think he will go?'

‘Somewhere with no prying eyes would be my guess. An island, perhaps. There are hundreds dotted around the coast of Athlane.'

Every point of the compass.
How would I ever find my Lucien amid such a vast expanse of land and sea?

 

Aided by winds in our favour, the voyage took three days, and I wonder if the gods will ever grant me another three like them. I fretted and paced the deck at times out of worry for Ryall, who lay below fighting death with his will alone. I couldn't forget my Lucien, either. By myself, I would have gone mad with thinking
about these things, but Tamlyn was with me, and when I managed to push Ryall and Lucien from my mind for a few minutes, I had never been happier. That was how I travelled south: in despair one minute; the next, filled with the deepest contentment.

On board that ship I discovered that words are sometimes unnecessary between two people. I didn't dare say,
Tamlyn, I love you
, and he didn't say to me,
Silvermay Hawker, my heart is yours.
That is the stuff of the daydreams that girls conjure for themselves on solitary walks in the forest or when they chatter with friends about love-struck princes too perfect to exist. But those days on the wide ocean were real and so are my memories of them. There wasn't a single cloud above us while we stood in the bow of Jerbarle's ship. If there had been, they surely would have spelled out the words we didn't utter.

The first day, I sat for over an hour beside Ryall's bunk to be sure he wasn't disturbed by the creak and sway of the ship. When finally he slipped into a deep sleep, I went on deck to find Tamlyn watching the crew aloft among the sails that were already bulging like a rich man's belly.

‘I'm glad you've come,' he said when I joined him. ‘We can look out together at the sea that tried to kill us only this morning.' He swept his right arm gracefully
over the expanse of blue as though he had commanded its pristine colour just for me. ‘I couldn't let it have you, Silvermay — not because of the vow we made to Nerigold; not even for your own sake, I'm ashamed to say. I fought the sea because you are so precious to me.'

And then he did something he had never done before, unless it was to warm my shivering body — he put his arm around me. His hand at my waist gently pressed me to his side while we stared, silently and together, towards the horizon.

That night I heard him call out in his sleep. The cabin he shared with the captain was next to mine, which I shared with Ryall since I needed to be near him as much as possible. Amid the unfamiliar blackness, I awoke to groans and then a sharp yell.
It's Ryall!
I thought at first.
He must be in the grip of a fever.
But no. Through the wall, I heard Jerbarle's voice growl in complaint and tell Tamlyn to be quiet. After that, there were no more disturbances.

 

In the morning, Tamlyn seemed uneasy, so when he took his bowl of porridge onto the deck, I followed.

‘What is it? Did something happen during the night?'

He was reluctant to admit it until I told him of the cry I'd heard.

‘I've never known anything like it before,' he said, finally giving in. ‘Some of it was disturbing and yet …' He stopped and offered a boyish smile. ‘And yet other parts were very pleasant.'

‘What are you talking about?' I asked. ‘What was disturbing, what was pleasant? Did the captain see what happened?'

‘Of course not! There was nothing to see, or at least only I could see it.'

‘Ghosts?' I asked, for I wasn't entirely sure they were simply made up to scare little children.

‘No, no, it was pictures in my own mind, of terrible things — monsters, the dogs my father blinded and set against us … It was as though we were back in the forest again, fighting them, and I was wrestling with Hallig.'

Ah, nightmares. Yet he'd said some of the pictures were pleasant. ‘And what did you mean by parts being very pleasant?' I asked, reminding him.

The day before, I had turned crimson when Mrs Wenn had complimented my dress. Now it was Tamlyn's turn. His face glowed enough to rival the morning sun and he looked away rather than let me see his embarrassment.

‘There were other pictures,' he said eventually, after much goading from me, ‘not of monsters at all, as different from monsters as they could be. I saw you,
Silvermay, and I could smell things, too. Can that be right? Can you smell something while you sleep? How strange. I smelled the sea spray as we stood together on desk last night watching dusk descend over the ocean.'

‘They were dreams, Tamlyn. That's all. Nothing so strange.'

‘Dreams,' he said. ‘I've heard of them, of course —'

‘Heard of them! But everyone has dreams.'

‘Not my kind, Silvermay. The Wyrdborn don't dream. What about the dogs and the other horrors?' he asked. ‘I always thought dreams sounded like happy things. Can there be bad dreams?'

‘Nightmares,' I told him.

‘Ah, a better word. Where do they come from? Is it the gods playing tricks?'

‘No, not the gods. They come from your own mind — the memories that frighten you, the fears you can't quite keep at bay.'

‘They might come again tonight, then?' he asked, and I saw in his question a tiny crack of vulnerability. He had let me see such a thing before. It wasn't right to call it a weakness the way Coyle had taunted him from the ship. I could think of another name for it: humanity.

Tamlyn had honoured me by speaking so openly about his dreams and it made me want to sweep him up in my arms, the way I'd done so many times
with Lucien: to nuzzle him with my nose, to kiss him on the forehead and tell him it was all right, that his dreams couldn't hurt him, especially not when I was with him. With Lucien it would have been an act of mothering, but I knew my comforting of Tamlyn would be different — tender and heartfelt and much more grown-up.

‘You cannot control your mind while you sleep,' I told him. ‘You have no power over your thoughts then.'

‘No power,' he muttered. ‘I see now why the Wyrdborn don't dream. We never relinquish power over any part of our body, unless a greater power can make us do it, and that usually means another Wyrdborn.' After a thoughtful pause, he smiled and said, ‘Dreams, eh. More powerful than another Wyrdborn.'

‘Those dreams show you are changing, Tamlyn. They show how the good inside you is breaking through the Wyrdborn stain on your soul.'

‘Do you think so?' he asked eagerly, and it seemed my impetuousness had caused no harm this time. I was even glad of it when I saw his handsome face soften at my words.

 

That night I listened for Tamlyn's cries, but if they came I had fallen asleep and didn't hear them. Ryall stirred in the early hours, forcing me out of my narrow bunk
to mop his brow and dribble water into his mouth, and while I lay in my bunk afterwards, waiting for sleep, I listened to different sounds. A ship at sea, I'd discovered, is never quiet. It's not just the creak of the timbers and the wash of so much water only the thickness of the hull away from your ear; it's the movement of the crew about the deck, watching, checking, adjusting ropes, because the ocean doesn't sleep either.

There were noises closer by, too, outside my door. At first, I thought it was a sailor on his way to the captain's cabin, but there was no knock, no speaking on the other side of the wall. When the sounds repeated themselves soon after, I decided someone was lingering in the passageway and opened the door a crack to investigate. There was no light, except what found its way through the hatches from the moon so far above, but the man's silhouette I saw wasn't one I could ever mistake for another's.

‘Tamlyn,' I whispered.

He turned in surprise. ‘I'm sorry. Did I disturb you?'

‘Why are you out here? Did you have another nightmare?'

‘No, a dream. It's left me restless. I just want the morning to come so I don't have to make do with dreams.'

That made no sense to me. Intrigued, I slipped out to join him.

‘Come up on deck with me,' he said, ‘to where we stood last night.'

‘I can't,' I replied reluctantly. ‘Ryall is having a difficult night.'

‘Yes, of course, you have to stay near him.' There was no mistaking the disappointment in his voice. ‘We'll sit here, then, where you can hear if he calls out.'

I think he would have pulled me down to the floorboards if I'd resisted the tug of his hand. But, of course, I didn't want to resist. We sat side by side with our knees up because there wasn't enough room to stretch our legs across the passageway. Anyway, the night had grown cool and being tucked up tightly was better for warmth.

‘Do you remember how I sat like this outside your house in Haywode, in those days after your parents took Nerigold in?' he asked.

I was hardly likely to forget. It was on those nights I had first felt the attraction between us. In those days I'd thought he was pledged to Nerigold, so my girlish dreams were a secret betrayal and something to be ashamed of.

‘I was jealous back then,' I confessed. ‘It played all sorts of cruel tricks on my heart. I thought it was love
that brought you there each night and I dreamed that you might love me instead.'

‘Dreamed?'

‘A different kind of dream,' I said. ‘One that I had while I was awake.'

‘One you were in control of, then?'

How quickly he understood. ‘Yes,' I admitted, and surprised myself by feeling no embarrassment at all in saying so.

Our talking had brought Nerigold into the narrow passageway with us: a ghostly presence we couldn't see, but both felt all the same. We stayed silent for a moment out of respect for our dead friend.

Tamlyn reached out his hand to touch my face, just the pads of his fingers on my chin, enough to make me turn towards him. ‘You asked what dream it was that brought me out into this passageway,' he said, breaking the silence. ‘I'll show you.'

And then he kissed me gently on the lips.