A Bright and Terrible Sword Read online

  Only afterwards, as we lay close together in the darkness, did I remember her condition. I whispered frantically, ‘Maggie! Should we have … you gave birth not so long ago!’

  ‘I wanted to,’ she said simply.

  ‘But did I hurt you? Did anything … anything ….’ I knew little of women’s insides.

  ‘I’m all right. I’m strong, Roger, and it was a very easy birth. The midwife would scarcely believe it was my first.’

  All at once I was hungry for information about the child I would never see. ‘Tell me about him. Please. Everything.’

  ‘He is beautiful. Strong, healthy. With your brown eyes but fair hair, although not much of that. He nurses well … oh, Roger, the women who took him promised a wet nurse but he needs his mother!’

  There was nothing to say to that. ‘What is his name?’

  She hesitated. ‘I know it’s odd, but there was a friend of yours whom I treated badly even though he was only trying to help me … He brought me to you, or tried to, but I was so upset at the time that I never appreciated his kindness and so … well, I named the baby “Tom”.’

  All at once I saw Tom Jenkins, brash and kind and feckless, with his great height and his fresh blue eyes and his bright yellow hair. The only friend I had ever had, and I the cause of his death. He died helping me, as he had tried to help Maggie. My throat closed, but I managed to get out, ‘How did the web women take the baby?’

  This time she paused for a long time before answering. Painful memories. But Maggie could always face truth. ‘It was at night. My sister had given us, Tom and me, a stall in the stable to sleep in. She counted me a disgrace to her, unmarried with a child. But the stable was warm and the Widow Lampthol, in the next cottage, had given me a blanket and bits of old furniture, so we were comfortable enough. Long before, Tom had brought me some baby clothes – I don’t know from where – and I still had them. That night I heard my brother-in-law’s horse neigh and stamp; it woke me. Moonlight came in the window and I saw three mice creep towards my pallet. Then all at once they turned into three women.’

  Maggie shuddered at the memory – Maggie, who feared almost nothing! But she went on.

  ‘One of the women was quite old, the other two mere girls. The old woman said that on the morrow some evil men who could cross over into the Country of the Dead were coming to take away my babe. That little Tom had special talent, beyond even what his father had shown. How did they know who his father is, Roger?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, although I did. Mother Chilton would have told them.

  ‘How did they become … I know I saw them first as mice … how do they …’

  ‘That I truly do not know.’

  ‘I think,’ she said, with a flash of her old tartness, ‘that you know considerably more than you are telling me.’

  ‘Later,’ I said. ‘Go on about the mice women.’

  ‘They said that the men sought to kill my infant because he is yours, and that my only chance was to let them take him. I refused and picked up Tom and started screaming for help. And then – I don’t know how it happened – everything went black. When I came to, I was alone in the stall and Tom was gone. But this was in my hand.’

  She groped at her gown, still rucked up as high as her knees, and put something in my hand. In the darkness I couldn’t see what it was. But I felt it: a willow whistle, with rough letters carved onto one side. I laid the whistle on Maggie’s breast so that I could trace the carving with a finger on my one hand: JEE.

  Maggie said with desperate hope, ‘They might have stolen it from him – but who would bother to steal a whistle from a child? It wasn’t stolen, was it? Jee sent it, so I would know it was good people who took Tom?’

  ‘Yes, Maggie, yes. Jee is with Mother Chilton, and she sent the web women that took Tom.’

  ‘That’s hardly reassuring to me! I don’t want our baby caught in those women’s schemes!’

  ‘Better their schemes than our prison here.’

  That quieted her for a moment. Finally she said, ‘Where is Jee? He left The Queendom with you and Tom Jenkins … where is Tom?’

  ‘Tom is dead. Jee is at court with Princess Stephanie.’

  Maggie caught her breath. ‘With the princess? Jee? How did that happen?’

  ‘It’s a very long tale,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me. All of it. Leave nothing out. Start with those “web women” – how do they change into mice like that?’

  ‘Maggie,’ I said, with the same resistance I had always felt to her probing. But now my resistance was untinged with resentment. She was Maggie. She would always question everything, and I would always resist, and that was part of the preciousness of our bond. ‘I cannot explain the soul arts. I cannot explain my own talent. I cannot explain even what I do know because we have no time. But you must tell me this about our son. Did he ever flicker in and out?’

  ‘Did he ever what?’

  ‘Flicker in and out of existence. One moment be in your arms, the next moment vanish, the moment after that return. Did he?’

  ‘No.’ Her tone said I had taken leave of my senses. Unlike me, she had not seen the infant hisaf flickering in and out of the Country of the Dead.

  ‘Did he ever do anything unusual?’

  ‘No! He is – was – is a normal baby, and so good, he hardly ever cried …’ She was crying now, with the desolation of bereavement.

  And I was helpless. I could do nothing to restore our son to her, or to rescue her from Galtryf, or to prevent my own terrible death on the morrow. The web women who might have saved us could not penetrate the blockage and corruption that was Galtryf. My father was as imprisoned as I. His hisafs were losing the war with Soulvine.

  ‘Tell me all you do know,’ Maggie said through her tears. ‘Everything, from the time you left me.’

  I began. But despite what she had told me, Maggie must have still been weak from childbirth, from her abduction to Galtryf, or from both. For the next moment she was asleep, despite her best inquisitive intentions. I pulled the blanket up over her and nestled her against me. If this was the last night of my life, it was also the sweetest, with her warm body in my arms and her living breath against my cheek, all the night long.

  The next day they took me to the pit.

  16

  ‘Get up, Roger Kilbourne,’ Leo said, unlocking my cell door. ‘You too, slut.’

  Maggie, who either woke quickly or was already awake, got wordlessly to her feet. The silence was so unlike her that instantly wariness penetrated my dread. What was she going to do?

  ‘I said get up!’

  Staggering to my feet, I glanced at Maggie. She held both hands at her sides, concealed in folds of her gown. I transferred my weight to the balls of my feet, shifting my feet in my boots. My knives were gone.

  It burst out of me before I even thought: ‘Maggie! No!’

  Too late. She darted forward and thrust both pathetic knives, my tiny shaving knife and Rawnie’s small trinket, at Leo’s chest. Rawnie’s ‘weapon’ missed. The shaving knife penetrated Leo’s thick leather doublet about half an inch. He looked down at it, surprised, and gave a roar of laughter. His arm came up and, spindly though it was, knocked Maggie across the face hard enough to send her staggering sideways.

  I was on him in a moment. My one hand slammed into his belly and doubled him over. But John came through the door and plucked me off Leo before I had gotten in more than the one blow. John, grinning, pinned me easily against his massive chest. ‘Ye be peppery this morning, Roger?’

  ‘Take … him …!’ Leo gasped, his face purple with pain or rage or both.

  Maggie hit John from behind with the wooden chair.

  He turned ponderously, like a great millstone on its axle. If Maggie had been taller and able to reach his head, she might have felled him. As it was, the chair had crashed across his broad, muscle-padded shoulders and not even dazed him. One arm still pinned me; with the other he grabbed Maggie around the throat
and squeezed.

  ‘No! She … must … watch ….’ Leo wheezed. The words seemed to take a long time to reach John, as if they – or he – moved not in air but in some thicker substance, molasses or tar. Maggie’s eyes bulged in their sockets and her feet kicked frantically, uselessly, against the floor. When John finally opened his fingers, she crumpled like a doll.

  ‘Maggie!’ I cried. ‘Leo, let me … please for sweet pity’s sake …’

  ‘Take … him …’ Leo said. The fury in his dark eyes did not even seem human. But as John dragged me from my cell, I saw that at least Maggie still breathed.

  The courtyard was deserted. No maids at the well, no boys attending to horses, no Joan, head bent and figure hunched, hurrying on some errand in her enforced slavery. After my dim cell the light seemed blinding, even though the sky was grey with clouds. The wind smelled of rain. A gull wheeled overhead, crying. All my senses sharpened almost to pain, to blot out the pain of knowing I would soon die.

  ‘Come,’ John grunted when I sank to the ground. If I were an inert weight, maybe that would slow us down, postpone the inevitable, give me a few more precious moments to smell the wind and hear the gull … anything for a few more moments …

  John picked me up as if I were a child, slung me over his massive shoulder, and trudged on.

  We went out the gate and rounded the corner of the castle, towards the rubble that was the rest of the ancient city. John picked his way over the rough ground. Clasped tight against his shoulder, I could see nothing, but I heard the sounds of many people. Shouts, murmurs, laughter. Someone called, ‘Breathe your last, boy!’ More laughter.

  And so we came to the pit where I would die.

  It had once been a large underground room, a guardroom or storage cellar, under the keep’s vanished fortifications. Now it stood open to the sky, its stone walls grown with moss and weeds. The bottom of the pit had been cleared of rubble, exposing the original stone floor. Above the walls a few broken pillars jutted into the sky like accusing fingers. John dumped me into the pit. I fell heavily, amid cheers from the people, Soulviners and Brotherhood alike, ranged around the two sides closest to the keep. They had dressed again in their ‘finest’: soiled silks and velvets and brocades whose tatters stirred in the breeze.

  I rose to my feet and stared up at them, their jeering mouths and green eyes. Each person seemed etched against the grey sky, preternaturally clear. A young girl, lovely as Cecilia had once been lovely, her pink mouth twisted with hatred. Leo, recovered from my blow, watching with arms folded and bloodlust in his dark eyes. Hemfree, who had sold Cecilia in return for induction into the Brotherhood. Charlotte, tied to one of the stone pillars, weeping. Was Rawnie there, too? Would they make her watch this? I didn’t see her, nor Joan either, and Leo was somehow fond of Rawnie so maybe he would excuse her from—

  I saw my father.

  He was tied to another pillar, far from Charlotte. I recognized him instantly: the man I had met only once, in the palace dungeons last autumn. His was the older version of the face I saw whenever I had a mirror. He gazed at me with so much anguish that, for that moment at least, I could not hate him for his many abandonments of me. He made an odd motion of his mouth, and I knew what he was doing. He was biting his tongue, trying desperately to cross over. But none of us hisafs could cross over while in Galtryf, not even my father. Although with one last desperate effort, standing there in the bottom of the pit, I tried.

  Darkness—

  Cold—

  Dirt choking my mouth—

  Worms in my eyes—

  Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

  The grave, stretching on and on, while the darkness that was Galtryf, heavier than the world, would not let me cross further, pressing on me until I went back.

  ‘No path out that way, boy!’ someone called to me, amid laughter and jeers.

  Slowly the jeers quieted, giving way to murmurs. Heads turned. Someone else approached. I did not see him until he reached the edge of the pit, but I saw the crowd part for him. Women curtseyed, men bowed. Then he stood above me, an old man with a white beard, dressed in a long white robe, his face familiar if only I had had time to study it.

  I had no time. My eyes darted around the pit, searching for some creature I could use. A rat, there must be a rat, people were now sitting on the edge of the pit and passing cheese and bread back and forth, picnicking on my coming death. Where there was food there would surely be rats. If I could find a rat, a rabbit in the brush above – anything! But even the birds seemed to have left the sky.

  The people above shouted and pointed. Words drifted down to me.

  ‘Here she comes!’

  ‘—tear apart—’

  ‘—finally ready—’

  ‘—his blood—’

  The crowd parted again. Jago appeared on the rim of the pit, holding the leash of a huge grey dog. Its green eyes met mine and it leaped forward, restrained only by the leash. Grey lips drew back over white fangs, sharp as swords. From deep in the dog’s throat rose a sound that made the crowd draw back, and me turn cold and dumb.

  Katharine. She was finally ready.

  ‘We maun wait!’

  ‘Hold her, my lord!’

  ‘Blood—’

  Jago could barely hold the dog. Two of his men leaped to help, pulling the animal back from the edge of the pit. Again I searched frantically for a rat, a bird, anything living in order to escape the pain, even if I could not escape death. An image flashed in my mind: myself, sitting quiescent and mindless in the Country of the Dead, until one of the Brotherhood dragged me into one of the circles consumed by a vortex from Soulvine Moor.

  My father called something to me, of which I caught the despair but no words. He called again, but I didn’t listen. Turning away from the terrible sight of Katharine-as-she-was-now, I spotted the moor cur.

  It skulked in the brush on the other side of the pit from the ruined keep, attracted by the scent of food. No one looked in that direction; they all gazed at me or at the dog. I could see the moor cur only from the corner of my eye and only because I stood below it. It crouched in the shadow of rubble, waiting for scraps of offal or carrion.

  Relief struck me so hard that my vision blurred. I did not have to endure being torn apart by the dog, did not have to hear my bones break nor feel my throat spurt blood. There was a way out – not from death, which none of us can escape for ever, but from the pain of this particular terrible death.

  But I could not take it yet. If my body collapsed too soon, Jago and Leo might simply wait until I returned to it. I had no idea how long I could inhabit the moor cur – I could only hope that it might be long enough.

  And still the killing did not start. The dog strained at its leash, my father strained at his bonds, Charlotte wept, the crowd grew restive. What were they waiting for?

  A few moments later I had my answer. A Soulviner dragged Maggie to the edge of the pit and held her there.

  For a long terrible moment I thought they would throw her in with me. But no, the man merely held her so that she, too, would be forced to witness my death. Her mouth moved but I could not hear the words; perhaps they could not issue from a throat still damaged by John’s strangling her. I could not hear her words, nor make them out on her lips, but nonetheless I felt them. I love you, Roger.

  Jago bent to release the dog from its leash.

  It sprang forward, and for a long suspended moment as the dog hung in the air in its leap into the pit, it seemed to me that I saw Katharine in its eyes. Then I was gone, crossed into the moor cur.

  Confused jerks of a foreign body, sharp scents on the air, fear fear fear run run run—

  I was in the moor cur, and I was the moor cur. Growls from behind me: there was a pack out there. I was Roger, I was the moor cur … why could I not gain complete control? I was Roger, Roger was in my pack, I was the moor cur and a dog attacked me—

  Throwing back my head, I howled the signal, and we dashed tow
ards the pit.

  Roger’s body lay limp on the stone, a grey dog circling and snapping at it. I smelled the dog’s confusion, and into that confusion we attacked.

  Shouts, screams, snarls … some of the pack fled. But my jaws had closed on the dog’s throat and my mate’s on her belly. We bit and tore and the taste of blood was good was sickening was good I was Roger I was the moor cur …

  The crack of a gun. My mate fell to the stone. I leaped from the pit and raced away, flesh still in my jaws. More guns. They could not catch me … but now the Galtryf hunting hounds raced after me, baying. They leapt over the remains of ancient walls, over piles of rubble, closer, closer … The hounds were built for greater speed than I. Then the moor cur’s mind was gone and I was Roger, myself, in the body of the moor cur, and death that I had just defeated was gaining on me once more.

  No.

  I had come this far, done this unimaginable thing. No.

  The swiftest of the hounds now raced only a few yards behind me. Then his jaws snapped on my hindquarters. Pain flooded me. I had but one choice left. Using the pain, I willed my moor cur’s body and my human mind, and I crossed over.

  Darkness—

  Cold—

  Dirt choking my mouth—

  Worms in my eyes—

  Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

  And then I lay, panting, with my tail between my legs, on an empty plain in the Country of the Dead.

  Hours passed before I could rise.

  My cowering on the ground was not due to the moor cur’s body, which had not been damaged badly by the dog’s bite. It was Roger’s mind – my mind – that kept me whimpering. There is only so much strangeness that can be tolerated at once. In the last few years my life had been passing strange, but nothing such as this. Never anything such as this.

  I inhabited a moor cur.

  I had killed – for the second time – my half-sister.

  I could not return to my body. It must still live – or I would not, in any form – but my body lay limp in Galtryf, where there was no crossing over in either direction.