A Bright and Terrible Sword Read online

  Then, all at once, I was back, myself, Roger Kilbourne, with a jolting wagon firm beneath my back, my body so thin that even through the several thick blankets on which I lay, my spine seemed to touch the wagon bed. But I was back.

  Sleep.

  ‘I think his breathing is more even.’

  ‘Aye, child. He will live.’

  Sleep.

  ‘How much longer, Jee?’

  ‘Be two days more.’

  ‘It’s so by damn slow! And no one will let me ride a horse?’

  ‘They care for the horses.’

  Sleep.

  ‘Why don’t they kill him now? It makes no sense?’

  ‘Hush, Rawnie. You’ll wake Roger.’

  ‘Nothing wakes him! He was more interesting when he was—’

  ‘Hush! I mean it, young woman!’

  Sleep.

  Another awakening, and this time I knew I would live.

  I lay on the bed of blankets, and above me arced a small canvas tent held above the wagon bed by bent and tied saplings. The wagon had stopped. Light rain pattered on the tent, and the fresh, sweet smell of rain-wet air drifted in the opening at one end of the wagon. Charlotte sat beside me on a low three-legged stool, reading a book. Where had she found a book? Where was I?

  Not in Galtryf. Although it was difficult to sort the true experiences of my illness from what must have been either fever delirium or Jee’s drugs, I was certain that I had flickered in and out of the Country of the Dead. Infant hisafs did, since they had not the will to control where pain sent them. I, too, had lost will and control, and that told me how close I must have been to death. Had I remained in Galtryf, the puzzling and complete barrier would have kept me from crossing over even involuntarily. I – we – had been travelling. Who? To where? And why?

  Charlotte had not yet noticed my open eyes. She looked thin and worn. Was my father here, too? Rawnie? It seemed I had heard Rawnie during my illness, but it also seemed I had heard Tom Jenkins, and Fia, and my sister Katharine too, none of which was possible. I did not know how much time had passed.

  Charlotte turned a page of her book and glimpsed my face. Her voice came soft as breeze: ‘Roger?’

  I tried to nod, could not, managed to croak, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, thank the skies. We thought we had lost you!’

  I tried to ask ‘Maggie?’ but was too weak to form the word. The next moment I was asleep.

  When I woke, Maggie was there. The wagon moved again, slow as a funeral procession. Rain still pattered on the tent roof. Maggie smiled at me, tears in her grey eyes, and her fair curls fell over her forehead just as I remembered. ‘Roger. I’m going to give you something to drink, and you must swallow it. No arguments.’

  As if I were in any condition to argue! But now I vaguely remembered the taste of what she placed between my lips; I must have been forced to swallow it in my delirium. It was a medium-thin gruel, not unpleasant, but with the bitter undertaste of herbs. I guessed that the gruel, both nourishment and potion, was what had kept me alive after my wrenching return from the moor cur. Mother Chilton had been right. Hisafs had no business trying the arts of web women.

  ‘Did he take it all?’ said someone behind Maggie. Charlotte. And then Rawnie was there, too, pushing her freckled face between the two women, her red braids dripping rain upon my blankets.

  ‘Yes, he took it all,’ Maggie said, taking my hand in hers. ‘Rawnie, stay back!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Charlotte said. ‘Rawnie, you heard Maggie – stop dripping on Roger.’

  ‘I can’t help dripping,’ Rawnie said, ‘if I’m going to see him close enough to see him. Roger, I’m glad you’re not dead. But you’ve been sick a long time, and so much has happened! Do you want me to tell you about it?’

  ‘Y … yes.’

  Maggie rolled her eyes. I saw her disapproval that Charlotte could not control her daughter. My son, Maggie’s eyes said, will never be allowed to behave like that. I wanted to ask Maggie about our son, but I could not – no one must know about him. But she leaned close to me and, under guise of kissing my brow, murmured into my ear. ‘He is safe.’

  Rawnie crowed, ‘He wants to hear me tell it!’ I did. Rawnie would know more than Maggie or Charlotte, who both had probably spent most of this journey nursing me. Rawnie always knew more.

  Charlotte gave up in defeat, moving off the three-legged stool. Rawnie plopped herself on it, ignoring Maggie, who kept hold of my hand. Her fingers felt warm and solid.

  ‘Well,’ Rawnie began importantly, ‘there was a most wonderful battle at Galtryf. After you brought us there, Lord Robert’s men all rushed around the castle, securing it, and I rushed right after them, helping.’

  I remembered the guard restraining her in the doorway, but even if I could have spoken, I would not have. Let her tell the story her own way. Later I could sift truth from embroidery.

  ‘It was easy for Lord Robert to win the battle, with all his soldiers. Some people were afraid that the bad hisafs might kill Mama and Papa and Maggie, but I thought they would keep them alive to bargain for their own lives with, and I was right. The only ones of our side who got killed were one soldier and Joan, and Joan was killed way before, after she let me out of Galtryf.’

  Rawnie fell silent for a moment, her small face uncharacteristically grave, and I wondered what she had heard of Joan’s death. How had Joan died? Had that tormented woman, still grieving for Cecilia, been tortured for aiding Rawnie to escape? Even if I could, I would not have asked Rawnie. I could not bear to know.

  Rawnie plunged ahead. ‘Lord Jago was killed, I don’t know how but I hope Lord Robert ran him through with a sword. Leo was killed, too, and I wanted his lute but I didn’t end up getting it. Our army found Mama and Papa and Maggie and let them out of their cells. Papa was so happy to see me! Then we had to bring the old man with us. Papa said. Nobody will tell me why, or his name. I’ll find out, though.’

  Maggie tensed beside me.

  What old man? And then I remembered the excitement and deference when someone had arrived at Galtryf, and later a figure standing above me in the pit, everyone again curtseying and bowing. A white beard, green eyes, a long white robe … All at once I realized what I had been too fearful, and too busy, to realize in the pit: I knew him. He was the old man who had led the ceremony at Hygryll when I had nearly been murdered and devoured. He had held the knife above my heart as I lay bound on the flat rock, and only the arrival of Tom Jenkins and then my father’s dogs had saved my life. ‘At first,’ Rawnie went on, ‘Papa wanted Lord Robert to stay at Galtryf, but Lord Robert wouldn’t, and they had a huge argument about it. I was hiding in a broken cabinet and I heard the whole thing. Lord Robert started like this!’

  Rawnie jumped up, knocking over her stool, which fell onto me. Maggie snorted in annoyance and moved the stool. Rawnie, as Lord Robert, puffed out her chest, lowered her voice, and sent her eyebrows rushing together in a scowl. It was a performance that would have done Leo proud.

  ‘“I will linger here no longer, Rawley. I was told by Her Grace’s page” – and Roger, you should have seen the angry way he looked at Jee! – “that this place was the source of the witchcraft that lies upon the infants of The Queendom. The page convinced Her Grace of this, she ordered me here, and I am bound to obey Her Grace’s orders. But the witchcraft has not lessened!”’

  Rawnie gestured with her left hand as if slapping a bunch of papers in her right. ‘And then Lord Robert said, “My couriers’ reports! The witchcraft has not lessened! Children are still being tranced all over The Queendom. Taking this ruined outpost has done no good at all, and here I am at the ass end of the world instead of protecting the capital! The Young Chieftain prepares for war to recapture Her Grace, after that tawdry farce of a marriage ceremony with him, and I, commander of Her Grace’s army, am here with—Fauugghh!” And then, Roger, Lord Robert got quiet and said, “We march tomorrow.” And we did.’

  Rawnie looked thoughtful for a momen
t. ‘He’s a good man, I think, but he’s stupid.’

  Maggie said sharply, ‘You know nothing of the matter.’

  Rawnie said, ‘I’m talking to Roger, Maggie. He asked me to, remember? Anyway, Roger, Papa didn’t like the way Lord Robert was talking to him, I could tell. Like Papa was a servant. But Papa didn’t say anything. Then there was this big argument over who would leave Galtryf and who would stay. I didn’t get to hear all of it because it was going on in different rooms and I can’t be in more than one place at a time, can I? One problem was the old man, because Papa insisted he come with us and everybody is afraid that bad hisafs will rescue him. I don’t know why they would bother, he doesn’t look like much to me. I don’t like those green eyes, and when he eats he gets crumbs in his beard. I saw it. Do you know who he is, Roger? Never mind, you can’t tell me right now. It’s just as bad as when you were a moor cur.’

  ‘Rawnie!’ Maggie’s voice was like a whip. Charlotte, in the doorway of the wagon tent, made a soft, ineffectual sound.

  Rawnie said, ‘Nobody bad can hear me here! There’s a whole army out there protecting us! Anyway, Roger, I’ll find out about the old man. I can find out anything. Just yesterday I discovered Papa’s command word of the day. That’s the secret word that lets all the good hisafs know that an order really comes from Papa. There’s a different one for every day and yesterday’s was – no, I’m not going to tell you! It’s a secret. I was hiding in an empty ale cask when I heard a courier give it to a guard hisaf when the courier brought Papa a report. I don’t know where the courier came from, but not Galtryf. Papa gets just as many reports as ever Lord Robert did, and they’re all secret. Nell has secrets, too. She gets hers from Mother Chilton.’

  Mother Chilton? I had felt sleep coming over me again, either from bodily weakness or from drugs in Maggie’s gruel. But Rawnie’s words snapped me back to attention. What could Rawnie know of Mother Chilton? And who was Nell?

  Maggie, watching me, said, ‘Mother Chilton is not here, Roger.’

  ‘No,’ Rawnie said, with a resentful look at Maggie for the interruption, ‘but she sends couriers. Or something. I’m not too sure about that part, but anyway she tells things to Nell. Interesting things, and sometimes Nell tells me.’

  Maggie’s gaze met mine, and in her eyes I saw the sudden wariness that was always provoked in her by mention of my crossing over, of Mother Chilton, of anything to do with … I understood. Nell was one of the web women.

  Maggie said, ‘Nell joined us immediately after we left Galtryf. She is a healer, and she made the potions that saved your life.’

  ‘Mother Chilton told her how,’ Rawnie said, recapturing the stage by moving directly in front of Maggie in the narrow wagon. ‘That’s what Nell told me. But Nell knows all about plants even without reports from that old hag.’

  I could see it all. Nell had been sent, probably in the guise of her soul-sharer, across Soulvine Moor to meet us as soon as we left Galtryf. Mother Chilton directed her through dreams. And those dreams would now be sent not through Stephanie, who was but seven years old and could not dream anything as complex as the recipes for potions. No, the dreams would be sent through the new conduit connecting all the web women and me, too: my son.

  Nell would have also brought Maggie the news that little Tom was safe. But not, I would bet my one good arm, of what our son actually was.

  Rawnie burbled on. ‘There’s a great many things you can do with plants. Yew will poison a dog, did you know that? You should never let a puppy chew on a yew bow. Willow bark can ease a toothache. Selcane root helps you sleep. Holly—’

  I managed to get out, ‘Where is … old … man?’

  ‘He’s in the other wagon with a tent on it, and he sleeps all the time. Really all the time. Nell gave him a potion so he can’t wake up … Roger, are you listening? Don’t fall asleep yet, I’m not done!’

  But sleep pulled at me inexorably, a swift river current. Just before it pulled me under, I heard Rawnie’s words speed up in an effort to finish her story before I should be unable to hear it.

  ‘We’ve been travelling for over a week and Lord Robert curses because it’s so slow because of the moor. Two days ago the old man’s prison wagon got its wheels stuck in a bog and it took hours to get it out. Lord Robert hates this moor. A soldier fell into a bog hole and he sank up to his neck before they got him out – it was really exciting! However, in two more days we will be there.’

  Where?

  It was my last thought, and Rawnie’s next words the last I heard before the river of sleep took me.

  ‘What I don’t know yet,’ she said, ‘is why Papa wants to go to this place called Hygryll.’

  22

  When I next awoke, it was to darkness, and this time a strange girl sat beside me on the three-legged stool, visible in the light of a single candle. The wagon was not moving. Maggie lay on blankets near the tent doorway, taking up most of the rest of the space. She, or someone else, must have decreed that I should never be unwatched. Maggie would have organized the watches. Even when the watch was not hers, she stayed nearby.

  The girl knew the moment my eyes opened. In the flickering candlelight we studied each other, and my heart turned over. She looked like Cecilia. The same glossy chestnut hair, green eyes, small chin. But then I saw that this girl was older, firmer of mouth, steadier of purpose. She was what Cecilia might have become if Cecilia had been born with any talent for the soul arts and if Mother Chilton had trained her to use that talent.

  ‘You are Nell,’ I said. The words came easily. Sleep had drained my body of the potions in the gruel, and I was determined to take no more of them.

  ‘I am Nell.’

  I sat up. That, too, was easier than I had expected, although for a moment it left me light-headed. The feeling passed. ‘Your drugs have saved my life and I thank you, but I—’

  ‘It was not done for your sake,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t think it was,’ I said dryly. ‘You, Mother Chilton, Alysse, Fia – you web women are all so eager to make it clear that nothing was done for my sake.’

  ‘What is at stake here is more important than any wayward boy.’

  ‘I am not a boy. I am a man, and a father.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and even as I disliked her – why did all these web women feel such a need to berate me? – I was glad we had found some point of agreement. I did not want to anger Nell. She could provide me with information far beyond the knowledge of Rawnie, Maggie, or Charlotte. So I made myself smile.

  ‘You have been teaching Rawnie about plants.’

  ‘Yes. She has no talent for the soul arts, but she can at least learn enough practical lore to become a useful woman.’

  Useful to whom? I did not say it aloud. Nell’s antagonism towards me, which she either did not or could not trouble herself to hide, was disturbing. Yet I needed her.

  ‘Rawnie says we are going to Hygryll.’

  ‘Yes. That is why I am here talking to you.’

  ‘To me?’

  She didn’t answer right away. Through the opening at the front of the tent I saw the moon rise, a thin crescent in a star-pricked sky. What time was it? The camp was not completely quiet; no camp of this size could be even in the deepest night. A horse stamped restlessly. A dog barked – was it really a dog, or one of the grey creatures from the Country of the Dead, carrying a hisaf? A soldier quite close to the outside of the wagon said something to someone, the words indistinguishable. Lord Robert would of course have night guards in and around the camp.

  Nell shifted on her stool and candlelight danced on her hair, bringing out glints of cinnamon, gold, copper. Again I thought of Cecilia. I loved Maggie, I had finally committed my heart to her, I wished to spend the rest of my life with her. And yet I knew that Cecilia would haunt me for ever, with pain and regret.

  Nell finally spoke. ‘Rawnie will have told you that Lord Robert and your father carry a prisoner with this army.’

  ‘Yes.’
/>   Again that long pause, as if she weighed how much to tell me. ‘The old man’s name is unknown to us. Even now. Soulvine Moor is careful with names, as if they believed words carry power. They do not, but the old man does. More power than you can imagine. And that is your fault.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘At least in part. Were it not for all your meddling, Soulvine Moor would not have been able to gain so much power, so fast. Now much of that power is concentrated in this old man. There is a huge darkness of soul around him, like that around Galtryf. A huge concentration of power stolen from others’ lives and deaths, including your sister’s. But not only hers.

  ‘Each time Soulvine Moor takes a circle of the Dead, their power is absorbed into the watchers at the centre of the circle. That is how the watchers gain strength. All the power that each dead soul has accumulated for years, decades, centuries – all stolen, and the Dead winked out of existence. Nothing can exist if robbed of its essence, which we call vivia.’

  I had never heard the word before. I had only seen the theft of it.

  ‘Accumulate enough vivia and, they are right, one can indeed live for ever – but at what cost!’

  Now she had gone beyond my understanding. ‘Cost? What cost does Soulvine Moor pay for living for ever?’

  ‘They do not. We do, all the rest of us, both here and on the other side.’

  I had seen that.

  ‘But since all souls are connected in the great web of being, Soulviners must ultimately pay the cost, too.’

  I had not seen that. I didn’t know if I believed it.

  ‘We call this old man “Harbinger”, since we must call him something. But none of us understand this great darkness of soul, nor why your father insists he be taken to Hygryll. Lord Robert has unwittingly supplied Rawley the protection to do that safely. When we reach Hygryll your father will kill Harbinger. We—’

  ‘That makes no sense,’ I said. ‘If my father wished to kill the old man, why not do so at Galtryf? Why take him on a long journey across Soulvine Moor, and so risk the chance of a rescue by the Brotherhood?’