A Bright and Terrible Sword Read online

  I lay as far away from John as my chain would allow and thought of Maggie and my son. I would never see either again. I would never hold my child. Did he look like me, with my nondescript brown hair and eyes, or did he have Maggie’s fair hair and grey eyes? Was he, in infant hisaf dreams, flickering back and forth between the land of the living and the Country of the Dead? How was Maggie keeping that from her sister? Was she—

  Rawnie’s pack stirred. Her mouse crept out.

  I reached for it with my one hand, stirring the chain between John’s wrist and mine, but before either he could awake or I could grab the mouse, it was no longer there. Instead a woman lay full length beside me on the wagon bed.

  ‘What—’

  She clamped a hand over my mouth and scowled, as my dazed mind tried to capture this new truth. Rawnie’s mouse was a web woman. As Mother Chilton had become a black swan, as Alysse had become a white rabbit.

  I whispered, inanely, ‘But you were with her so long—’ Two months, Charlotte said, Rawnie had had her mouse – two months before this journey even began! Why wasn’t the web woman weak and nearly dying, as Alysse and that other girl had been when they became raptors and—

  All at once I understood. A bird had not been Alysse’s chosen ‘soul sharer’; a rabbit was. This woman was naturally a mouse. The word turned me giddy – ‘natural’ to become an animal! To become a—

  ‘Hush,’ the woman repeated, still scowling. ‘I must go. I cannot enter Galtryf with you. That would be possible only if I had assumed my soul-sharer shape while on the castle grounds, which I did not. But before I leave, I would tell you some things.’

  John stirred in his sleep. By the fire Leo plucked a few notes on his lute, tuning it. I held my breath, half expecting the web woman to vanish. But then John only snored more deeply. And so we lay side by side in the wagon bed, stretched out under the stars above Soulvine Moor, the woman a slender half-glimpsed shadow against the rough side of the wagon. Only her hair, unbound and flowing towards me, seemed solid and real. Her words, too, showed me shadowy realities, glimpsed before but never understood, and beyond her words and woven into them was Leo’s music.

  ‘You have made grievous errors, Roger Kilbourne. You were told last winter not to cross back over, and yet you did so. You destroyed your sister. Katharine was—’

  ‘She was going to kill my son!’

  ‘—was the conduit,’ the woman continued, as if I had not spoken. ‘It was through her that the accumulated power of the Dead first could flow into the Soulvine watchers in their vortexes. Those living and those dead are connected, of course – how could it be otherwise, when the Dead were once alive and the alive must someday join the Dead? When Soulvine, with the help of the rogue hisafs, began to pervert that connection, it was through Katharine that the balance was maintained, because the life power of newborn babes could flow in the opposite direction, from the land of the living to the Country of the Dead. When you—’

  ‘That is not true!’ I whispered hotly. ‘My sister was not this “conduit”! She couldn’t have been because now she is gone, but the robbing babes of their souls still continues! I have seen it!’

  ‘You don’t know what you have seen, and you must stay quiet now and let me finish. I have not much time.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Hush!’ she said, at the same moment that Leo began to sing.

  Although you to the hills do flee,

  My love you can’t escape.

  ‘When you threw Katharine into the vortex, first we feared the entire web of being would break. When it did not, we thought as you do. It is over, we thought, and rejoiced. But Soulvine Moor has learned much, and the circles of Dead continued to disappear, and infants to be robbed of their life force. The web is further strained, almost to the breaking point.

  ‘And the hisafs, on both sides, have made it worse with these dogs. Soul arts grow and change, Roger Kilbourne, like all the rest of life. Thus your father was able to combine the gifts of a hisaf and the training of a woman of the soul arts, and so inhabit the dogs. But not all growth is necessarily good. It may instead be stunted, misshapen, a tumour upon the intentions of life. As is Soulvine’s quest to life for ever, and as are those dogs. A hisaf has no calling to cross into animals. The hisafs should keep to their gift, and we of the soul arts to ours.’

  Your heart, my sweet, belongs to me

  Though you may change its shape.

  I said, ‘Are you sure you are not just jealous, now that hisafs are using your art?’

  ‘They are not “using” it, they are perverting it. Animals have their own web of being, and it must be respected. Try to understand, you obstinate boy! The—’

  ‘I am not a boy!’

  ‘—centre of the web is Galtryf. That has always been so. We women of the soul arts originated there, long ago when Galtryf was a force for good in the world. As did the hisafs. The city is very, very old. Now it lies in ruins, city and castle both, but it was the original source of all the transcendent arts, great and small. Galtryf is the shadow of The Queendom, that dark part that the oblivious farmers and blacksmiths and wheelwrights and courtiers have chosen not to acknowledge. Nonetheless, the shadow is there, in all of us. And in Galtryf, now, the perverted use of the soul arts is the shadow of the shadow.’

  Never, never will I cease

  To follow where you go,

  And ever, ever will I be

  The hound upon your doe.

  I said, ‘But … but why can the circles persist and the babes be robbed when my sister is gone? I murdered her, I—’

  ‘I told you, Soulvine moor has learned to do many things, things no mortal should do. We do not know. But all may change again when your son is born. Your father had unusual powers from his mother, your grandmother. She was a very great practitioner of the soul arts. You have proved to be nothing unusual, but your son may be. We have reason to believe so. He is our last hope, because Galtryf is winning this war.’

  Do what you will and what you can,

  Employ the arts you know—

  Ever, ever will I be

  The hound upon your doe.

  My grandmother was a web woman. I had not known that – how could I? My son was a ‘last hope’. My mind reeled. I started to say, ‘My son has been born,’ because clearly the woman did not know this. She had, after all, been a mouse for the last two months. But before I could speak, someone outside the wagon thumped it hard, crying, ‘John should hear this, he loves music – John!’

  John awoke. And there was no one else beside me, just a small brown mouse, disappearing over the edge of the wagon with a flick of its long pink tail.

  12

  Rawnie was inconsolable at the loss of her mouse. Her grief took the form of rage. She pounded on the wagon bed and screamed until John casually reached out his huge hand that was not chained to mine and cuffed the side of her head. Rawnie stopped in mid-yell, stared at him with wide shocked eyes, and began to cry.

  Charlotte leapt at John like an enraged she-bear. ‘Don’t you touch her!’ She pounded ineffectually with her soft fists on John, who looked at her with the astonishment of a man whose hat has been blown off by a slight breeze.

  The din attracted Leo. ‘What goes on here? Charlotte, stop that. No, John!’

  John had reached out to cuff Charlotte as he had Rawnie. At Leo’s command he halted, looking confused. He lowered his hand, raised it again, held it halfway to Charlotte’s head and gazed piteously at Leo. All at once I knew why John had never been selected to cross over into one of the dogs. The dog was smarter.

  Charlotte cried, ‘He hit Rawnie!’

  Rawnie, as if cued, sobbed harder. ‘He lost my mouse!’

  ‘Mouse? What mouse?’ Leo said. ‘John, you know that striking any of them is forbidden.’

  Forbidden by whom? Why? Did that include me?

  Rawnie said, ‘My pet mouse! Tickles! He was in my pack and John let him go!’

  ‘I never did,’ John s
aid.

  ‘Yes, you did! You did, or Tickles would still be here!’

  Leo said, somewhere between amusement and disgust, ‘Well, stop crying. We’ll get you another pet. How would you like a … a baby curlew?’

  ‘It would fly away!’

  ‘Then … a kitten?’

  Rawnie stopped crying. Her face brightened so quickly that suspicion took me: had the tears been an act? No, she had genuinely wanted her mouse. But now that it was gone, little schemer that she was, she seized the opportunity to endear herself to Leo. And under her adoring and hopeful gaze he visibly expanded, like bread dough rising on warm air. He was the hero of the moment, even if the next moment he might execute us all.

  ‘A kitten!’ Rawnie breathed. ‘Oh, could I? Where would you get a kitten?’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Leo said. ‘But no more screaming, there’s a good child. And Charlotte and John, no more fisticuffs.’ He swaggered off, having restored order to the Fiefdom of the Wagon Bed. His back turned, Rawnie stopped beaming and gazed after him thoughtfully.

  I wanted to be alone, to think about what the web woman had told me. Since I could not be alone, I did the next best thing and feigned sleep. But Charlotte and Rawnie’s whispered conversation kept me from my thoughts.

  ‘Do you think he’ll really get me a kitten?’

  ‘I don’t know, Rawnie.’ Charlotte sounded close to tears.

  ‘There might be cats at Galtryf.’

  ‘How did you know we’re going to Galtryf?’

  ‘I listen,’ Rawnie said scornfully. ‘I learn things. Galtryf is a big, old, scary place. The bad hisafs there will torture Roger. Papa is there and they think they can make him help them, but I know that he would never do anything bad, so they’re wrong about that. And everybody here is afraid of somebody’s sword.’

  No response. Then Charlotte said in a strangled voice, ‘Never mention that again.’

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘Any of it, but I mean the … the last thing.’

  ‘The sword? Whose sword is it?’

  ‘You will heed me,’ Charlotte said in an entirely different voice, so firm and menacing that it silenced even Rawnie. For a moment.

  ‘Piss-pots!’ she finally said. ‘I’m not afraid of anybody’s sword. All it can do is kill me dead, and then Papa would come and get me from the other side.’

  A low despairing groan from Charlotte, who nonetheless did not correct her daughter. Charlotte, if not Rawnie, evidently knew that you could not cheat death for long.

  Although that cheat was exactly what Soulvine Moor was trying to do.

  No one else spoke that night. Perhaps they slept, perhaps not. I did not.

  ‘The bad hisafs there will torture Roger.’

  What was the sword?

  ‘Your son is our last hope, because Galtryf is winning this war.’

  Would my father join Soulvine Moor if the Brotherhood threatened to torture Charlotte and Rawnie? I did not know him, did not understand his mind. And Rawnie, for all her precocious plotting and listening, was blind where he was concerned. She thought him a hero, out of one of Leo’s plays.

  ‘Galtryf is the shadow of The Queendom.’

  Shadows and swords. Alysse had spoken to me of the sword. And three years ago, when I had brought the Blue army back from the Country of the Dead, something bright and terrible had roared out of the sky. It lasted only a small piece of a second, but my telling of it had made Alysse gasp. Alysse, who never showed any emotion towards me except impatience! She had called it ‘the sword’ but I had seen no weapon, merely glimpsed blinding light and heard wordless sound. The Dead awaited the sword, Alysse said. She had not said why. But none of this seemed of use to me now.

  ‘Soul arts grow and change, Roger Kilbourne, like all the rest of life. All may yet change when your son is born.’

  But he was already born, or so the little princess in faraway Glory had told me, and nothing had changed. I was still captive, headed for pain and death. Infants were still sent into trance, neither living nor dead, their life force sucked away. Circles of the Dead were still being sucked into vortexes of watchers from Soulvine Moor. The breach in the wall between the living and dead – in the image of the hisafs – grew wider and wider. Or – in the image of the web women – the web of being grew more pulled, torn, misshapen. Nothing had changed.

  ‘The bad hisafs there will torture Roger.’

  I lay awake for hours, but when I finally slept, I had a plan. It was not much of a plan but, facing agonizing death, anything is better than nothing.

  Perhaps.

  Or so I hoped.

  I made myself wake before dawn. There had been no dreams. Over a large hill to the southeast the sky had begun to pale, a chill grey like an icy sea, although the day promised to be warm and fair. Today we would arrive at Galtryf. I had not much time.

  Pulling myself to the limit of my chain, I peered over the side of the wagon. The moor curs were there, just beyond shooting reach of the Soulviners’ guns, or what I thought was their reach. Did the animals know that, or was it coincidence? I had no idea how intelligent moor curs might be. Yesterday I might not have been able to see them all, but at least this morning my vision was again clear. The headache was not as bad, either.

  Two – no, three moor curs. Did they travel in packs, then? How aggressive were they? Not that it mattered; I had little choice. These were waiting until the wagons moved on, to scavenge the bones and intestines of last night’s roasted rabbits, plus whatever else we had left. I picked a cur, stared at it, and made pictures out of mind and will.

  A well. It extended deep below me, but only a metre of curving brick wall above. I was wedged against the stone, my back braced on one side, my feet and hand holding my body in place. From below came the scent of water, above was grey dawn sky and the sudden song of a bird. All was pictured in as much clarity and detail as I could manage. I climbed, inching my body upward. One tiny bit closer to the top, then another, and always with the act of will that I had used in crossing over …

  Darkness, cold, dirt choking my mouth—

  No! Not the grave! Climb upward, upward, out of the well, cross over into the moor cur—

  The grave disappeared. So did the well. Instead the world suddenly became black-and-white-and-grey, and infinitely strange. The air was layered in scents, richer than the dull sights, except when something moved – there, the flash of a curlew taking wing, and something in the distance was falling—

  The falling thing was me. My body hit the wagon bed with a thud that woke John. He glared at me, rose to his knees to survey the camp, found nothing amiss. Instantly he went back to sleep.

  I lay on the rough wood, Charlotte and Rawnie snoring softly at the other end of the wagon, and I squeezed my eyes shut in gratitude. I had done it. For just a moment, I had entered the mind of the moor cur and left my body behind. If I could do it with a moor cur, then perhaps I could do it with a rat, a bird. I could not escape death in Galtryf, but now at least I could escape the pain of torture. The Brotherhood would kill my body. But now they could not force me to talk, as men have always been forced under great and continuous pain to tell their secrets. When the pain became too great, I would cross over into any creature available, and so would not babble of Maggie and my son. I would not betray them. Nor would I tell Soulvine anything that would aid them in their war.

  But I must be able to sustain the crossing longer than a moment. I must practise.

  Again I rose to my knees, this time wedging myself in the corner of the wagon in such a way that my body would not fall. The moor curs were still there. I didn’t know why I could do this – it should not have been possible. My father’s dogs had all been animals born in, and sent from, the Country of the Dead.

  ‘Soul arts grow and change, Roger.’ The web woman had thought me ‘nothing unusual’ – but I had known web women to be mistaken before. The well, the climb upward, the act of will, and again I crossed into the moor cur. Of a
ll the strange sensations I had known on both sides of the grave, this was the strangest. I was the moor cur, and I was Roger Kilbourne. All I could see, hear, smell – and how keen were both hearing and smell! – came to me as the moor cur received them. And yet I knew I was a man, too. A man inhabiting an animal, but not bodily. My body stayed tranced in the wagon, as I used to leave it tranced when I crossed through the grave.

  I made the moor cur turn its head. It did, without resistance or protest. Was its own will thus gone? No, for I sensed its fright at my presence, but it was fright muffled and ineffective, as if a fly buzzed beneath a pile of blankets.

  A second moor cur approached me – us? it? – and sniffed. Had it sensed that I was somehow different? Apparently not, for the female stood beside me, her body relaxed. Was this my mate? I tried to reach the moor cur’s own mind – to reach beneath the blankets – and immediately found myself back in the wagon.

  Pain throughout my whole body. Weakness, gut-twisting hurt … I reached for the side of the wagon, to hang on to it, and my arms were too feeble to hold it. I did not have even enough strength to cry out.

  This, then, was the cost. This was what had weakened the hisaf I had found in the Country of the Dead, nearly dead himself. This was what Macon and Dick had risked to cross into the dogs guarding Leo’s wagons. This was the cost to the hisafs inhabiting Shadow and Shep and the other grey dogs that had rescued me time and again. I had not known. And I had crossed into the cur only briefly. Would practice make the return any easier?

  There was only one way to know.

  When the weakness and dizziness had passed, I tried again. This time I was not thrust out of the beast but instead chose the time to return, which was when I saw the first man stirring near the embers of last night’s fire. The eastern sky blazed pink and gold. I crossed back into myself.

  ‘Roger’s sick!’

  Rawnie, the first awake in the wagon. Her cry roused Charlotte and John. I slumped in my corner and believed I was dying. It would be better than this. A blaze of pain, like standing in a fire. I could not move my arms or legs. I could not force words past my throat.