Dark Mist Rising (Crossing Over) Read online

  ‘And what is that?' My heart had begun a slow thud, painful as stones being dropped on my chest one by one by one.

  The provincial lord was becoming impatient with talking to a country innkeeper as if to an equal. But he answered me. ‘Don't you know? The savages were promised the Princess Stephanie in marriage to their chieftain's son. Three years ago, before Queen Caroline was burned for a witch. Now they are coming for the princess. The army is led by Lord Solek's son, the Young Chieftain.'

  ‘But—'

  ‘Please see to the lamb stew!'

  ‘Yes, my lord.' I turned to stumble back to the sheep shed, and Carush Spenlow's last words caught me as I walked out into the sunlight. Their tone was apologetic; he regretted his rudeness to me. He was a good man.

  ‘The runner from my neighbour's manor said, too, that the savages seek someone else besides the princess. They questioned servants, including my cook. Who knew nothing, of course. Brutes!'

  My heart stopped all motion.

  ‘Who ... who do they ...'

  Lord Carush shook his head. ‘I don't know. Now, please, that lamb stew.'

  3

  I slaughtered the lamb. Jee could not be spared to run for the midwife, so I went myself, since I am useless in the kitchen. Maggie made the stew, the travellers ate it at midday, and before the shadows lengthened on the grass, they were gone. Mistress Johns ate the rest of the lamb stew in the deserted taproom, sitting at the trestle table with Jee, Maggie and me. The room, with its thick walls and stone floor, was cool and dim. Gravy ran down Jee's chin. He sopped it off with a piece of bread.

  ‘That girl, Lady Joanna, will die,' Mistress Johns said.

  ‘There was nothing I could do.'

  Maggie nodded. She had tidied her hair and changed her apron. She wore her master-and-commander look. I tried to avoid looking at her.

  ‘'Tis a pity, really,' Mistress Johns said. ‘She seemed a nice enough little thing. No strength, though. Not made to bear children. Now you, Maggie, you could bear a dozen and still run the inn besides.'

  I ate faster, my eyes on my plate.

  Mistress Johns chewed regretfully on her last chunk of lamb and smacked her lips. ‘You're a fine cook, Maggie, my girl. I daresay you could cook for such as that there lord. Did you know his own cook died on the journey here?'

  ‘No,' Maggie said. She stacked the empty plates.

  ‘Just beyond Applebridge, at Two Forks. They paid the Smallings to bury the poor woman – no time to do so themselves, with poor Lady Joanna so ill.'

  ‘What did the cook die of?'

  ‘Burns. In the fire she tried to save her special spices.

  All the way from Benilles, they was.'

  Maggie made a face. I knew she had seen too much of death and danger to risk a life for spices, no matter how exotic or expensive they be.

  ‘But the cook was old,' Mistress Johns added, with the comfortable tone of one who had barely reached middle age. ‘I daresay her time would have come soon anyway. We all must go eventually, and that is no more than stone truth.'

  Jee looked up. Recently Maggie had cut his hair, and short soft strands blew in the fresh breeze from the open door. His dark eyes turned to Maggie, whom he wor-shipped. And with good reason: she had rescued him from hunger and poverty and a father who beat him. He said, ‘Maggie, be we fleeing the savage army, like those travellers?'

  ‘No,' Maggie said.

  ‘Yes,' I said.

  Mistress Johns looked from one of us to the other. She drained her mug of ale. ‘Well, I am not leaving Applebridge. My cousin at Starbury, she heard from her sister-in-law at Buckhurst, who had it direct from a villager where the savage army passed through, that the western warriors be not harming country people. Didn't touch so much as a hair on any virgin's head, not so much as a single hair. No burning, no thievery. It's just the nobility they're revenging themselves on. Nothing to do with us.'

  I had heard the same thing from Lord Carush. I opened my mouth to say, ‘But who's to say the savages will stay with that plan?' but Maggie got there first. As always.

  ‘That's right,' she said eagerly. ‘Their groom told me the same thing, when he was having his breakfast in the kitchen. We at Applebridge are perfectly safe.'

  I said, ‘But who's to say the savages—'

  ‘Perfectly safe!'

  We glared at each other. Jee looked bewildered and shrank against Maggie's side. Mistress Johns stood. ‘I'll just be away now. I'll say this for that Lord Carush, he warn't mean. Burned out and ruined like they are, he still paid me thrice what I usually get.' She opened her broad red palm to show us the silver coins reposing on it.

  Maggie demanded fiercely, ‘So you are not fleeing Applebridge, Mistress Johns?'

  ‘No, no, child, I told you. No need.'

  ‘Is your daughter's family fleeing?'

  ‘No.'

  ‘Are the Smallings or the Staffords or the Trentons?'

  ‘No. Good morrow, my dears.'

  Mistress Johns left, and Maggie stared at me triumphantly.

  I said, ‘I must see to the sheep.'

  ‘Peter—'

  I strode from the inn. But I knew it was only a temporary reprieve; she and I would have it out tonight.

  Meanwhile, I checked the combs in the beehive – too early in the season for honey, as well I knew – brought water from the well to the sheep and mucked out their pen. They should have been taken to pasture today, but with all the business of the travellers, had not. I would take them now. In pasture they would meander aimlessly, chewing and chewing, starting at every strange sound or smell, taking flight and making me run after them. Maggie would disapprove, saying it was too late in the afternoon for pasturing sheep. However, I needed to be away from the cottage.

  Lord Solek's son, leading an army to claim his child bride, Princess Stephanie. By now Lord Robert Hopewell, who was not only lord protector but also commander of the army of The Queendom, must know of the invasion. The savages had guns; The Queendom did not.

  No concern of mine. Maggie had said so.

  I led the sheep further afield than they wanted to go, to the pasture above Two Forks. Dusk found us beside the Apple River. Lilies and green rushes grew thickly on the banks, and the meadows blazed orange with mari-golds. The silver-green leaves of poplars quivered in the warm breeze. A frog, startled when I sat on a grassy hummock, splashed into a marshy pool. The long summer afternoon stretched golden around me, fragrant with clover and wild mint and the clean sharp smell of the river.

  One of the ewes bleated piteously, either because it was exhausted or because I had slaughtered its other lamb. The ewe had not yet forgotten.

  And I could not forget, either. Not anything, neither present nor past. The present was Maggie, waiting for me at the inn, ready to argue, undoubtedly getting more and more angry at my absence. Maggie, whom I had bedded once and once only, and who now believed she owned me. And the past was all else.

  I could lie to Maggie. I could also lie to myself, but not for very long. It was not by chance that I had dragged the stupid sheep as far as Two Forks. It was here that Lord Carush Spenlow's cook had died of her burns, here that the Smallings would have buried her. ‘The savages also seek someone else,' Lord Carush had said. ‘They questioned servants.'

  No, I was not here by chance.

  I was going to cross over.

  It had been over two years since my last time. But everything in me – nerves, bones, the prickling over my skin – remembered the ability I had been born with, and had used since I was six years old. No, that was not true – I had not used my ability. Others had used it, and me, for their own ends. Or else they had forced me into circumstances where I must perform or die. But not now. Here, now, in the Two Forks pasture above the Apple River, I would choose for myself to cross over to the Country of the Dead.

  What if I could no longer do it? What if maturity, or lack of practice, or some other unfathomable agent had decayed my talent? That was what Queen
Caroline and Mother Chilton had both called it: ‘your talent'. I had hated that talent, and used it to stay alive, and finally abused it to rescue Maggie. After that, I had hated it all the more. But it was mine – was me – and life at Applebridge had sharpened my need for it again.

  Pain is required, pain and a letting go that is, para-doxically, a matter of will. I tied the sheep to a hickory tree, lay down on the grassy hummock, and with my good hand drew my knife. Quickly, quickly, before I could change my mind, I drove the point of the knife into my thigh, and it happened.

  Darkness—

  Cold—

  Dirt choking my mouth—

  Worms in my eyes—

  Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

  But only for a moment. I was not, after all, actually dead. The taste of death lasted only for the brief moment of crossing, the plunge through the barrier that no one except a hisaf can penetrate, not even the Dead themselves. A heavy barrier, solid and large as earth itself, the barrier of the grave. I tried to cry out and could not for the dirt clogging my mouth. I tried to flail my arms and could not for the lack of muscle and flesh over my naked bones. Then it was over. The dirt gone, my bones restored, and I had crossed. I stood and gazed around me.

  The Country of the Dead is like our country, but weirdly stretched out and sometimes distorted. A few steps in an upland pasture might be half a mile here, or two miles, or five. Or it might be the same. Sometimes our rivers and forests and hills existed here, but sometimes not. The Country of the Dead is vaster than ours and I think it changes over time, just as ours does, but not in the same way. It is our shadow made solid. Like a shadow, it shrinks and grows, but from some unseen influence that is not the sun. There is no sun here.

  There is light, an even subdued glow, as on a cloudy day. The sky is always a low, featureless grey. In that cool light I saw the river, the pasture, the marshy pool where the frog had splashed. But here was no frog, of course, nor my sheep. Nothing lives here; there are only the Dead.

  A few of them sat or lay scattered around the meadow. They never move far from where they died. They were doing what the Dead do: nothing. They sit – for days, years, perhaps centuries – gazing at emptiness, and on each of their faces is complete calm, a mindless tranquillity that never changes. Only the old can be roused at all, and then only briefly before lapsing back into their trances.

  And tranced, too, was how my own body must look now, back in the land of the living, until I returned to animate it once again.

  I made my way along the river towards where the Smallings' graveyard would be in the land of the living. I knew I had reached the right place not only by the marker of a great old oak, but by the greater numbers of the Dead. People had been buried here for a long time. The burial grove had stretched to accommodate them all, becoming almost the size of a respectable small forest. Some of the Dead sat in circles, as they often do; I don't know why. I walked among the trees, studying faces and clothing.

  Lord Carush Spenlow's cook was not hard to find. Someone had dressed the body in the same brown dress and embroidered cap as Lady Joanna's nursemaid, and thus had the Smallings buried her. Now she sat gazing at a wildflower. Her wrinkled old face looked tranquil, with no sign of burns; the Dead do not bring their injuries or illnesses with them. Somewhere, just this mindless, my mother sat in the Country of the Dead. Once I had wanted desperately to find her, but that had been before I owed Maggie my every action, my every breath.

  ‘Mistress,' I said to the cook. She didn't stir. But it is old women who are most willing to talk to me, if I persist hard enough. I knelt on the grass beside her, seized her shoulder, and shook it. ‘Mistress Cook!'

  Slowly the old eyes focused on me, then all at once snapped into awareness. ‘What is wanted? Is it the rosemary bread again? I told them— Oh!'

  I saw it come to her all at once, the awareness. But it didn't scare her; it seldom does.

  ‘So I'm dead, then?'

  ‘Yes, Mistress.'

  ‘The bread—' She blinked once, then began to slip away from me. The Dead are not much interested in their recent lives, not after the first time they slide into tranquillity. That is what their loved ones left behind do not, cannot, understand. To talk at all to the Dead, you must either discuss their childhoods, which seem to stay with them better, or else be very quick with your questions. I was quick.

  ‘Mistress, wait! The savage army—'

  ‘Stop shaking me, young man! Leave me go!'

  ‘I'm sorry. But the savage army that burned Lord Carush's manor.'

  ‘Lord Carush,' she said experimentally, as if trying out a strange language on her tongue.

  ‘Yes, the manor. The fire. The savage soldiers were looking for someone and they asked the servants about him. Who was it?'

  She was sliding back into mindless tranquillity. I shook her shoulders so hard that her head bobbled and the embroidered cap slipped sideways on her grey hair. The Dead cannot be hurt, but they can be annoyed. ‘Leave me go!'

  ‘I will stop as soon as you tell me who the savage soldiers sought. Who?'

  She frowned in concentration. ‘They wanted ... they wanted ...'

  ‘ Who?'

  The creases on her face became ravines, hillocks, an entire landscape devoted to the effort at memory. Finally she brought out, ‘The witch boy. The one who ... who led the army of magic illusions against Lord Solek. Who killed his savage lordship, when Queen Caroline reigned. They seek ... they seek ...'

  I stopped shaking her.

  A final spasm passed across her face and triumphantly she brought out the name: ‘Roger Kilbourne!'

  I let her shoulders go. Immediately she lapsed back into the calm of the Dead. I stood gazing down at her, and then gazing at nothing at all.

  I remembered the past, but so did the savage army. They too remembered the battle at the palace, where their leader's blood had spurted red on the green tiles of Queen Caroline's courtyard. They remembered the army I had sent into that battle that the folk of The Queendom had called ‘magic illusions from Witchland' but that I knew were actually soldiers I had briefly brought back from the country of the Dead. Those soldiers could not be killed again, and so had killed with impunity. The savage army remembered their losses, and their chieftain's death, and now they sought not only the princess promised them in marriage but also revenge.

  They sought me, Roger Kilbourne.

  4

  I did not linger in the Country of the Dead. Crossing back to the land of the living takes far less pain than travelling the other way; I don't know why. It hurt enough to make me clamp my teeth lightly on the inside of my cheek.

  Darkness—

  Cold—

  Dirt choking my mouth—

  Worms in my eyes—

  Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

  Then I lay again on the grassy hummock in the Two Forks pasture. The sky had turned dark blue. Time, like landscape, can stretch or shrink on the other side, and I had been gone for hours. The first stars appeared. The new moon was a thin crescent, cradling the old moon in its shining arms.

  Something crashed through the rushes at the water's edge.

  I leaped up. The ewes bleated and the lambs, who had fallen asleep at their dams' sides, mewled and tried to stand. The wolf that had taken Samuel Brown's lamb? I drew my knife, knowing that I was a fool to bring Maggie's tiny flock out this far, this late. No time to make a fire, and Peter One-Hand was no match for a wolf.

  It was not a wolf.

  A dog bounded from the rushes. It raced right up to me and licked my hand. A big dog, with short grey fur, a small tail and a huge snout. I glimpsed the double row of sharp teeth, but with its big pink tongue slobbering joyously over my fingers, it was impossible to be afraid of the beast.

  ‘Hey, boy, hey ... .'

  A ewe gave a shrill, terrified cry. Her lamb rose to its wobbly feet and began to sob.

  ‘No, it's all right, you stupid beasts. See, it's
a good dog, aren't you, boy?'

  The sheep continued to make noises I had never heard any sheep make. The dog ignored them. The younger ewe, her silly face contorted, ran, leaving her lamb behind. The ewe was much faster than I expected. I raced after her – Maggie would kill me if I lost one fourth of her prized flock – and tackled the idiot animal. It was like jumping on a blanket laid over moving stone. We rolled over each other on the spongy grass, sheep and man and then dog, who happily jumped aboard.

  ‘Off! Get off!' I yelled. To my surprise, the dog did, lying down obediently a few feet away.

  I tied a rope on the still terrified lead sheep, slung her lamb over my back (not easy to do one-handed) and started for home. The second ewe and lamb followed. The dog trailed several lengths behind, although not far enough to keep the sheep from occasionally taking fright all over again and racing ahead, dragging me along. I was no longer a hisaf who could travel beyond the grave; I was an inept one-handed shepherd making his stumbling way home in the dark, back to the inn to face Maggie.

  She said nothing until very late. All evening local folk thronged the taproom, chewing over news of the invasion.

  ‘The savages don't touch common folk, everybody says so.'

  ‘Just the same, I be hiding my grandmother's pewter plate.'

  ‘Best hide that pretty daughter of yours, Jack.'

  ‘They don't touch common folk.'

  ‘They want the princess. Like the young queen promised.'

  ‘That witch! They were right to burn her!'

  ‘Burned that nobleman right out of his manor. Killed his sister, too – a woman!'

  ‘They want our princess to live away from The Queendom!'

  ‘That be not right. Queens stay and rule; men defend.

  Savage bastards!'

  ‘They're savages, Hal – what can you expect?'

  ‘I hear they can turn into wolves by the full moon.