A Bright and Terrible Sword Read online

  ‘Is it him? Is it him?’ He shook me roughly, like a terrier with a rat.

  ‘No, be ye daft, this one’s got but one hand!’ Someone said behind me.

  The man let me go and ran to another cottage. As soon as he opened the door, screams poured out. The old woman still slumped motionless in the rain, her face a mask of dripping grief. I grasped her arm.

  ‘Mistress, you should go inside.’

  She looked at me but I knew she was not seeing me but rather some horror. All at once her knees buckled and I caught her. People continued to rush past, but none came to her aid, or mine. The woman sagged against me, a dead weight on my good arm. I could not leave her there in the mud of the road so, not knowing what else to do, I pulled her towards the shelter of the nearest cottage.

  The door opened directly onto a kitchen with a stone floor, trestle table, herbs hanging from ancient beams. The room was jammed with cottagers, grouped around something I could not see on the hearth. A middle-aged woman spied us and elbowed her way through the moaning people. ‘Mother! Thank you, lad, she was … it is ….’ The woman began to cry. But she took her mother from me and eased her onto a settle before turning back to me. ‘It is the shock … we … so many of them!’

  So many of what?

  I said as gently as I could, ‘What has happened here, mistress? I just arrived on the western road, looking for an inn …’

  She nodded, distracted, and then abruptly focused her attention on me. ‘The western road? Did ye pass anyone?’

  ‘No.’ Few travelled in the rain, and fewer still from the western mountains.

  ‘You are certain? You didn’t see a big man with a black beard and green eyes?’

  Green eyes. My spine went cold. ‘I passed no one. Was … was someone like that here?’

  ‘Yes. He – all the poor infants – oh!’ She put her fist to her mouth and began to sob.

  I elbowed my way through the crowd, which had begun to turn ugly.

  ‘—find him and—’

  ‘—can’t have gone far—’

  ‘—get Jack and Harry and Will and—’

  The men began to pull away, organizing their hunt. A few glanced at me suspiciously but looked away as soon as they saw my one hand. The women continued to cry, their murmurs between sobs, almost incoherent. But I caught one word:

  ‘—witchcraft—’

  I pushed to the front of the crowd.

  On the hearth sat a young woman, her face gone numb with grief, holding a baby in swaddling clothes. I thought at first that the baby was dead, so motionless was it, its blank eyes staring at nothing. But then I saw that the child breathed. All at once the mother shook it, crying, ‘Wake up! Wake up, Neddie! Oh, wake up!’ She shook the baby harder, until an older woman stepped forward and stopped her.

  ‘There, Mary, leave off, it does no good, my dear—’

  The girl crumpled, sobbing hysterically. The older woman took the infant from her. Another woman sat beside the girl, who in her wild grief shoved her comforter away.

  ‘So many of them,’ the woman on the road had said to me. I turned to the nearest person, a small fierce woman with red curls under her faded cap. ‘There are … there are more babies like this in the village?’

  ‘Aye, five of ’em, all under a year old.’ Her gaze sharpened. ‘Do you know anything about this, lad?’

  ‘No,’ I said, trying to look stupid, ‘unless … could it be plague?’

  Of course it was not plague: wrong season, wrong symptoms, wrong victims. The red-haired woman’s interest in me vanished. It should not have.

  I was the only person who understood what we all looked at it. No, that was wrong – I did not understand it, not at all. But I had seen it before: the blank stare, the inability to be roused, the breath without active life. I had seen it all my life, but not here, not in The Queendom nor in the Unclaimed Lands nor in the savage western mountains.

  In the Country of the Dead.

  Seven infants alive but not alive, five in the village and two more on outlying farms. By evening the local men, their hunt turning up nothing, had returned to take what comfort they could in the taproom of the Blue Horse. The rain had stopped but a dank chill outside made the innkeeper build up the hearth fire until it roared. Or perhaps it was a need greater than mere cold.

  I had taken one of the small, clean, comfortable rooms upstairs, had paid for the luxury of my first hot bath in months, had slept off my weakness all afternoon, had eaten a hearty dinner. Now I sat at one of the taproom’s long trestle tables, a tankard of ale in front of me, as the villagers came one by one to the room.

  ‘—cannot console her anyway, so thought I might as well hear what news to—’

  ‘—no change in little Bess and—’

  ‘—wanted me out of the way so she can—’

  But their excuses for leaving their grief-drenched cottages did not last long. These men had spent all day searching sodden fields and woods for something they did not understand. They had found nothing. Faces tight, eyes hard, they turned to me.

  ‘Ye say ye saw no one on the western road, lad?’

  ‘No. No one.’

  ‘What’s yer name, then?’

  ‘George Tarkington.’

  ‘Where do ye come from?’

  ‘From my uncle’s farm in the high hills.’

  ‘And what be yer business in Rivertown?’ This from the roughest-looking of the men, who wore a gun strapped to his back. Had the blacksmiths of The Queendom learned in the last months to make guns and bullets, or had this one been taken from a savage soldier in some local skirmish before the invaders left The Queendom? I had been away since autumn; there was so much I did not know. The cottager eyed me suspiciously.

  But I have had much practice both in lying and in looking innocent. ‘I’m travelling to Fairford. My—’

  ‘Where be this “Fairford”?’

  ‘Near the capital. My uncle died and left me our farm. I sold it to Samuel Brown and now I travel to live with my other uncle, my mother’s brother. He will apprentice me as an apothecary.’

  ‘Yer old to be an apprentice.’

  ‘I know,’ I said humbly, ‘but there is little else I can do.’ I raised the stump of my left arm. I could feel tension ease around the table.

  ‘So the sale of yer uncle’s farm is where ye got the money to travel?’ another man asked. This one had a more kindly expression.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, if ye go on spending it on hot water for baths ye won’t have much left for yer apprentice fee.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘It was only this once. I had such a chill from the rain.’

  Easily chilled, one-handed, too stupid to hoard my farm-sale money. They lost interest in me. I sat quietly, sipped my ale, and listened, to learn what I could.

  The seven infants had all disappeared from their cradles during the night. The cottage doors had been barred from the inside, and the bars not disturbed. No windows had been forced open. But in the poorest and meanest of the cottages, where the parents slept in the loft and four children huddled on straw pallets before the warmth of the fire, a small boy had stirred. He heard something, or glimpsed something, or felt some movement by the baby’s cradle. Or maybe it had been merely a fancy, or a dream, or even a lie; the boy was but five years old and given to telling tales. Anyway, the men reasoned, gripping their tankards of ale and shooting furtive looks at each other, how could a stranger have broken into the cottages without using the windows and doors?

  At first light, when the cottage women arose to start the fire and put on hot water for gruel, the thefts of the infants had been discovered. Wives screamed; children cried out in fright; men rushed in from the bedchamber or down from the loft or in from the well house. Then all seven babes were discovered lying in a circle on the village green, wrapped in their rain-soaked blankets. They had not been there long; none had even caught a chill. But the babies—

  ‘Dead and not dead,’ one
man said starkly. His hand shook as he lifted his ale to his lips.

  ‘They might yet come from their trances and be well,’ said a very young man.

  ‘They can’t eat, Will!’ said a third. ‘If a child can’t eat …’

  The oldest man, surely a grandfather rather than a father, spoke to me. ‘In yer travels, lad, have ye seen or heard of anything like this?’

  Yes. ‘No.’

  ‘The only thing we can do,’ said Will, ‘is wait. The children may become themselves again. If not—’

  ‘If not what?’ shouted another man. In the hushed tap room, the noise was shocking. ‘Ye all know what happened! That green-eyed stranger, the one we all sat with here last night – and clever we thought ourselves to let him buy us all ale – he witched them all! Jack, ye bragged about yer fine new son, ye know ye did! Ale loosened all our tongues, and so that bastard knew – he knew–’ Abruptly he hurled his tankard across the room, where it clanked against the stone siding of the fireplace and rolled onto the floor. He put his head in his hands.

  Will said unsteadily, ‘I have no belief in witches.’

  ‘Then yer a fool,’ Jack said, ‘but witches be female. Always. And they do not trance infants.’

  ‘One just did!’ shouted the man who had thrown his tankard. ‘Can ye not believe what’s in front of yer damn eyes?’

  Jack rose, his fists clenched. The other stood to face him, so fast the heavy trestle table shook. The oldest man’s voice cut across the sudden silence.

  ‘Stop it, both of ye. That will not help us. Will is right. We maun wait to see if the babes recover. Meanwhile there’ll be no fighting amongst ourselves, and no murdering of the babes because they ain’t right.’ He stared hard at a man I had not noticed, a thin man with a face like a weasel, who sat nervously twisting an amulet between his fingers. The thin man dropped his gaze.

  After that, little was said. The men drank in silence. In more silence, one by one, they left the inn. I groped my way upstairs – no candle was offered – to my tiny bedchamber, barred the door, and lay in darkness on the narrow bed.

  Someone, or several someones, had entered the cottages without using doors or windows.

  The stolen babes had been left in a circle on the village green.

  They were ‘tranced’ – Jack’s word – and so ‘neither alive nor dead’.

  I could not get warm. I pulled my cloak tight around me and pulled my knees to my chest, but still I shivered. I had the chill that the tranced babies had not, but it wasn’t a return of my winter illness. I did not know why these children had been taken, but I knew how, and by whom. Memory shivered along my bones.

  A snowy mountain meadow, wind whipping the snow in my face and slowing my attempts to flee. A figure materializes in the snow. Another. Then a third. The three men who had been with my mad sister. Hisafs, holding knives. Tom Jenkins drops little Princess Stephanie and springs in front of me, and the hisaf vanishes. He has crossed back over. Back and forth they go, the rogue hisafs, crossing between the land of the living and the Country of the Dead, manoeuvring for position, until one of them appears right next to Tom and his knife finds its mark in Tom’s side.

  And it was I who had made that possible. I, by disturbing the Country of the Dead, who had so weakened the barrier between the living and the dead that now hisafs could cross over not only in trance, but bodily. Just as I could, had I not vowed never to do so again.

  Hisafs in league with Soulvine Moor had stolen those infants and had … what? It was the Dead who lapsed into quiescent trances, who sat in circles, who were being destroyed by Soulvine Moor. Not the living. I did not understand what had happened here in Rivertown. I only knew it terrified me.

  What if my own son …

  But no. Mother Chilton had told me to go home to Maggie. She would not have permitted that if it endangered Maggie or our child. I carried no markers, which meant that neither the web women nor the hisafs – on either side of the war – knew where I was. In fact, they probably thought I had died in my battle with my sister. We had been alone and only she would have known differently. And Katharine could never tell anyone anything, not ever again.

  In addition, Maggie would be well guarded by web women, although she would never know it. They would be there in Tanwell: the unobtrusive kitchen maid, the aged midwife, the white rabbit under the hedgerow, the hawk circling above the village. They would use their strange abilities to protect my son. ‘He is our last hope,’ Mother Chilton had said.

  But I pushed Mother Chilton’s bleak statement from my mind and clung to the rest. My son was well guarded. No hisafs knew where I was. No woman here in Rivertown had recognized what I was, as had Mrs John the Small. But Mrs John was country folk, closer to the old ways, and the recognition had been merely bad luck. No hisaf would come for me here in the dark silence of the night, materializing in this cold bedchamber to slide a knife between my ribs. What had happened in this village was frightening and terrible, but it had – for once! – not been caused by me. Nor was it my task to set it right.

  Idiot, my saner self whispered to me, not the entire army of web women and faithful hisafs have succeeded in setting it right.

  But that brought another thought, one that made me jerk upright in bed. They would be here soon, the web women. Whatever was happening in Rivertown, it must be a part of the war with Soulvine. The web women would come, and perhaps even hisafs. Why had I not realized this before? They might – would – recognize me. My obscurity, on which I counted, would be lost.

  Cursing, I got up from bed and unbarred the door. Carefully I eased myself down the dark stairs. The taproom had closed for the night. The door creaked when I unbarred it but no one came. I slipped outside. I had no way to rebar the door, but I hoped that come morning the innkeeper would merely think I had wanted to get the earliest possible start on my journey and so had left before dawn.

  The rain had stopped. Wind had risen to send clouds racing across the patchy sky. By the intermittent light of a half moon, I made my way across the village green where the seven tranced babies had lain, neither alive nor dead. Was Will right, that the little bodies would wither and die since they were unable to eat? Or would the infants continue to breathe, as unchanging as the Dead in that other country on the far side of the grave? Unchanging for ever, rosy tranquil infants lying inert and unseeing in their cradles …

  A deep shudder ran along my whole body, which had nothing to do with the cold night. Under trees whose spring leaves still dripped with water, through air that smelled sweet and fresh as if horror had not happened here, I left Rivertown for the road east.

  3

  Long before dawn I could go no farther. Leaving the road, I plunged into a thick wood growing down the side of a steep hill. Parts of the underbrush were dense and tangled. I crawled into a clump of bushes, hoping to encounter nothing larger than I was, and fell asleep. When I woke, the morning was far advanced, another drizzly overcast sky. Good.

  What was happening in Rivertown? Had the infants come out of their trances, had web women arrived, had … But it was useless to speculate. My task was to get to Maggie, and the journey was still a long one. I crawled out from under my bushes.

  A dog sat waiting for me.

  For a long moment, dizziness took me, a vertigo born of fear. This, I knew well, was not a dog, or not merely a dog, no matter how much it looked like one. And it did look normal, sitting on its great grey haunches, wagging its short tail, its green eyes alight with friendliness. It even smelled like wet dog, a scent redolent of scampers through fields followed by cosy evenings by a hearth.

  But I had seen dogs like this before. I had seen Shadow massacre four savage soldiers by tearing out their throats. I had seen Shep leap at men who threatened me and Tom Jenkins, and tear them to pieces. I had seen a pack of such dogs race into the firelight on Soulvine Moor and rescue me from the people of Hygryll moments before a knife descended into my heart. And I had seen such a dog materialize from nowhere
, inside a tent, to take down Tarek son of Solek son of Taryn, before his soldiers shot it to death. Dogs like these had hunted food for me. They had been my guardians, my saviours, my salvation. And after a fortnight, each of them had vanished completely. They came from the Country of the Dead, and when the time allotted them in the land of the living had expired, they were gone.

  Someone had sent this dog to me. Someone knew where I was.

  The dog bounded over to me and licked my face. I pushed it away, got to my feet, and stood looking warily down at its hopefully upturned face.

  ‘What are you, boy?’

  Its tail wagged harder.

  ‘Who sent you to me?’

  It licked my hand.

  Not the web women. I remembered Mother Chilton saying bleakly, ‘Neither Fia nor the dogs are our doing.’ And my father, about the torture I had undergone in Almsbury: ‘We could not get the dogs to you fast enough.’ This dog had come from a hisaf, although not from my father, damn him for his promise to me of a rescue that had never come. So what hisaf? And how? Things could only cross over from the Country of the Dead when they were carried by a hisaf, and the dogs had always arrived alone.

  I did not understand. And I did not want this dog, marking my whereabouts as clearly as if I shouted my name to every traveller I passed: Here I am, Roger Kilbourne! Come and claim me!

  ‘Go away,’ I said to the dog.

  To my surprise, it did. But then it dashed back and laid a stick at my feet to throw.

  Memory pierced me: Tom Jenkins, the only friend I had ever had except Maggie, teaching Shadow to shake paws. Someone somewhere had taught this dog to fetch sticks. Who? Why?

  ‘Go away! Bad dog! Go!’

  The dog’s ears drooped. It looked at me reproachfully. It did not budge.

  There is no way to make a big dog leave you if it does not want to, short of rock or knife. I didn’t dare; I had seen what these dogs could do when angry. Besides, I have never hurt an animal in my life. The only weapon left was shunning. I picked up my pack, walked back towards the muddy road, and pretended the dog did not exist. If I ignored it for long enough, perhaps it would give up and go away.