Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (11 page)

Had the Raven intervened? Teia did not know. Certainly some of the clanspeople said She had and had given thanks and made sacrifices in Her name. Others said She had not, that the plague had simply spent itself. Now the Speakers would importune Her again, not just on behalf of four clans this time but on behalf of all seventeen, and the outcome would decide the future of all of them.

In her mind’s eye, Teia pictured them. Seventeen women, dressed in fox-fur robes and carrying tall staffs, arranged in a circle around a brazier set on a low cairn. She saw them quite clearly as she beat and arranged the cushions on the tent floor. Seventeen still, remote faces, each one different, all somehow the same in their agelessness and intensity.

One of them would lead the weaving and make the sacrifice. In Teia’s mind it was Ytha who stepped forward and drew a knife from her belt. The blade was as long as her forearm, single-edged and glinting. She raised it, resting across her open palms, chanting. The other Speakers lifted their staffs and echoed the chant. In the background bleated a tethered kid that would shortly be offered up to the goddess.

Teia realised she was standing still, bent over the last of the cushions. Knuckling the small of her back, she straightened up and stretched her spine as far as she could with all the bruises. She felt stiff and tired, although she had only been working a little over an hour; some air would refresh her. She stepped outside the tent and stopped dead in astonishment. The camp was gone.

Teia gaped. She could see all the way to the shores of the lake across a sea of silver-beige grass, swaying in the perpetual wind. There were no tents, no cook-fires, no animals. She could smell water and earth, but none of the stink of human occupation. The Gathering might as well never have been.

The only people in sight were the Speakers and their chiefs, in two circles around the cairn. One of the chiefs held a struggling kid between his knees, lifting its head up as Ytha approached with the long knife. Down it flashed. Teia looked away.

Yelling children played tag around the clusters of tents. Cook-fires smouldered. Women gossiped and glanced fearfully at the lowering sky; men mended harness or fashioned arrows and the air rang with noise. Teia swung around, but she could not see the Moot ground through the haze of smoke. She turned back to the guards outside the tent, but they looked as indifferent as men could without actually being asleep. One leaned on his spear and absently picked his nose whilst the other was ambling back from the latrine, fastening his trews.

Confusion clouded Teia’s thoughts. What had she just seen? For a few seconds, the camp had not been there, or else she had not been in the camp. Then she heard the chanting again and realised it was not in her imagination this time.

She could not make out the words, only the feel of it. Rhythmic and insistent, it pulsed in her head with the beat of the blood passing through her brain. She had been aware of the summoning six years ago only as a vague restlessness, like a day when the winds changed and made the children whoop and run like hares. This time it had a quality as urgent as the force of life and its pull was irresistible. Of their own volition, her feet took the first few hesitant steps towards the Moot ground.

Suddenly frightened, Teia groped for the music inside her, hoping to be able to pull herself free. Instead she was snatched up by a sweeping current the like of which she had never before experienced and was carried away.

Images filled her mind. Ytha, bloody to the elbows, casting the kid’s heart onto the brazier where it smoked and blackened. Ytha dipping her fingers in a bowl and marking the forehead of each Speaker and her chief with blood. The chant grew stronger, a rhythmic repetition of a single phrase over which Ytha declaimed the summoning. The smoke from the brazier began to twist into strange shapes, influenced by neither heat nor wind. Sparks danced through it, first white, then yellow, then deepest red, forming a cloud that thickened and grew.

Overhead, the sky pressed down, such a deep grey it was almost blue. Abruptly the wind died. The children near Teia fell silent, and mothers glanced around anxiously before shooing them inside. Men exchanged wary looks, then put down their work and went to be with their families. In the pens, horses stamped and whinnied as the weight of the summoning settled on the whole camp.

Teia swallowed hard. The lump in her throat was as large as a fist; it was hard to inhale past it. Her breath came in tight panicky gasps and her insides felt about to turn to water. Yet still her feet kept carrying her towards the Moot ground, and no matter how hard she fought the pull of the summoning she was as helpless as a fish on a line.

The cloud of sparks glowed fiercely, hotter and brighter than the coals in the brazier. All that remained of the kid’s heart was a cinder. Ytha was hacking out the animal’s liver now, butchering the beast with casual efficiency. Every Speaker had her staff planted on the earth in front of her as the chant drummed on. As she came closer, Teia realised why they needed such support: the earth was trembling underfoot. With each gobbet of flesh Ytha tossed onto the coals the cloud of sparks grew brighter and the pounding in Teia’s head increased.

The Speakers’ weaving had caught her up and drawn her in. On the periphery of her vision she saw a handful of other girls, one of them no more than six or seven years old, also stumbling towards the rite. They too must have the Talent. The ritual had sucked in every scrap of it that could be found, in order to give it strength. Surely the child was too young to withstand it? Teia herself could barely think for the beating in her mind. What must it be like for one so small, so much younger than she had been when she first experienced a summoning? But there was nothing she could do. The child was twenty paces away and Teia could not break from the course her feet had set.

Ytha offered up the last shred of liver with a triumphant bark. The cloud of sparks leapt, flaring, and a black rent appeared in the smoke. The other Speakers redoubled their efforts, raising the chant to an even higher pitch, although their voices were already ragged. With an overhand blow of the heavy knife, Ytha clove the kid’s skull and tossed its brains onto the brazier.

The noise that followed was a mountain falling, or a thousand thousand voices roaring a name in unison. The earth lurched, spilling Teia from her feet, and the rent in the cloud vomited forth a dark shape.

A figure, curled up like a newborn. Slowly it unfolded itself, stretching and straightening as if waking from a long, long sleep. Its outline was blurry and indistinct, seemingly fashioned from dense black smoke, but it had arms and legs, a long cloak, a spear in one fist and a shield on its arm. Reaching up with its shield arm, it pulled off a grotesquely horned helmet and shook loose a mane of dark hair. On the shield, a painted sigil glimmered dully.

The chant cracked and faltered. A surge of power swept through Teia, draining her as it swelled the chant again. Ytha’s voice continued above it all, concluding the summoning in firm, clear tones. She spread her arms wide, basin in one hand, bloody knife in the other. Silence fell.

Teia heaved herself up onto her knees, one hand pressed to her side. The silence was the kind that follows an ear-shattering noise, tense and ringing. The air bulged with it; her eyes felt too large for their sockets.

The creature in the fire heaved a breath, then another, savouring the air.
Who are you?
it rasped.

Moaning, Teia clapped her hands over her ears but it was too late. The voice was already in her head, scraping around the inside of her skull like bloody fingernails.

‘I am Ytha, Speaker of the Crainnh, the Wolf Clan of the people of the Broken Land.’ Ytha bowed low from the waist with her arms still outstretched. ‘I bid you welcome amongst us.’

The creature rested its helm on its hip and tossed back its hair, rendering its face somewhat more distinct though no more detailed. A suggestion of eyes, mouth, teeth. Teia had no doubt that this was Maegern. She knew it as she knew of her own existence, as deeply and intimately as she knew she was a woman. Dread rose up inside her and soured her throat.

It has been a long time
.

Maegern looked around Her at the ring of Speakers and frowned, and as one they fell to their knees. The chiefs behind them were already down, although Drwyn was making a brave effort to meet the goddess’s eye.

‘It has been too long, great one. More than a thousand years since we were taken from You,’ Ytha said.

Maegern waved a gauntleted hand dismissively.
I neither know nor care how you reckon the passing of time. I care only that you have woken me. Free me, and I will reward you
.

‘Are You not free? I thought the summoning—’ Ytha faltered.

The goddess laughed harshly, and the sound rolled around the horizon like thunder.

This? You imagined this petty magic would be enough? Not yet, little women! Not yet! You have not a fraction of a fraction of the power of those who sealed me away, but you have done well, for all that. If you can do better, you shall have your reward
.

‘What must we do? We would have You walk amongst us once more. We have need of Your aid.’

To what end?

Ytha straightened her spine, held her head up. On her knees she might be, but she would not grovel, not even before a goddess. ‘To return us to our home,’ she said. ‘To purge it of the usurpers who stole it from us.’

Maegern sneered.
I have no interest in your squabbling for land. If you cannot take what you want by force of arms, you are not worthy of my aid
. She made to turn away.

‘Please, great one, do not abandon us the way the faithless abandoned You!’ Impassioned, Ytha spread her arms wide, and emotion throbbed through her words. ‘They turned their backs on the old ways. They gave up their freedom and swore themselves to servitude under the yoke of the same powers who exiled You.’ Snarling, the goddess swung to face her again. ‘The portents are favourable for Your return to us. If You ride with us, we can retake our ancient lands. Ride with us, and You will have Your revenge.’

A silence spread over the circle as the goddess considered. It was the silence between do and do not, the weight of possibility teetering on a knife’s edge, ready to come crashing down and become reality.

Maegern’s head tilted slowly to one side. Her posture shifted, a subtle rebalancing of weight and tension, like a serpent’s restless coiling as it poised to strike.
Vengeance
, She hissed.

‘Yes, great one.’ Ytha’s voice was pitched low and hungry. One of the Speakers behind her let out a low moan, quickly stifled.

‘Long have I waited.’ The goddess curled Her fingers around the shaft of Her spear, lingeringly, almost sensuously, as if taking a lover’s hand. ‘Long have I dreamed of it.’

‘Help us throw these usurpers back into the sea they sprang from, and it can be Yours.’

The silence stretched ever thinner. Waiting.

I have a test for you. Prove yourselves worthy and I will aid you
.

Something like a sigh raced around the Speakers and their chiefs. No one moved, no one spoke, but there was a palpable easing of tension, like a slow exhalation after a breath long held.

‘Name it,’ said Ytha, exultant, her eyes shining in the brazier’s glow. ‘We are Yours to command.’

Find the key that was used to lock my prison. That which it closed, it may also open. Demonstrate your fealty and a bargain will be struck between us
.

‘We will end Your exile, great one, but what do we seek? Where will we find it?’

You will find it in the city of the seven towers, guarded by seven warriors. It has burned in my dreams all this time, but that is as much as I can feel of it. It has not moved since my prison was sealed
. She motioned with Her spear towards the distant mountains, where the moons set.
It lies yonder. I will send my Hounds to guide you, but the rest is up to you
.

Raising Her hand, She put it to Her lips and blew a piercing whistle. It shrieked along Teia’s nerves, making her sob aloud and clamp her hands even more tightly over her ears. Deep in the furthest recesses of her mind, she sensed a place of uttermost blackness suddenly stir with hot breath and rank fur.

Your power is fading, little women
, Maegern told them scornfully.
You are weak
.

Hectic colour burning in her cheeks, Ytha met the goddess’s eye. ‘We are strong enough to find Your key, great one. I swear it.’

Maegern’s lip curled.
We shall see
.

With a sweep of Her arm, She clapped Her helm back onto Her head and turned away. At once She dissolved into the flaming cloud. The brazier died and Teia’s thoughts were extinguished with it.

8

CAT’S PAW

Two hundred-odd Nordmen feasting was a cacophonous affair. Ale-horns banged on tables and hugely bearded men in furs roared at each other, arguing or telling jokes – in their guttural language it was hard to know which was which. Fires blazed in each of the three great pits at intervals down the hall to add to the stench and the heat, and through it all came battalions of servants with platters of burned-bloody meat that they slammed onto the tables without a care for what they spilled, splashed or spoiled in the process.