A Bright and Terrible Sword Read online

  There was no moon, but the stars shone brightly: the Weeping Woman, the Cat, the Wagon Wheel, the Southern Star. Leo, exhausted by the day’s hurried pace, slept deeply. His concave chest rose and fell; a soft whistling noise came from his thin nose above the mangled lips. Hunter, too, slept, curled up tightly as a coil of rope. But I knew that the second I stepped on a twig, or perhaps even rose, the dog would wake. So I left the only way I could. I jabbed my small shaving knife into my thigh, willed my passage, and crossed over.

  Darkness—

  Cold—

  Dirt choking my mouth—

  Worms in my eyes—

  Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

  And then I stood in the Country of the Dead. The landscape seemed exactly like the one I had left, except for the light fog, and even that seemed to diminish as I moved towards the road – or where it would be if this place had any roads. My plan was to walk for several hours across country. If Leo woke, he would not know in which direction I had gone in either landscape, even if he could steel himself enough to cross over after me. And by the time I returned to the land of the living, I would be too far away for Hunter to sniff me out.

  As soon as I emerged from the woods onto a broad field, I came across the Dead. Widely scattered in ones and twos, they sat in the places where they had died. They gazed at nothing, their faces tranquil and calm. None of them were old women, who were usually the only ones I could rouse, and anyway they would not be able to tell me anything I wished to know. I trudged on.

  The Country of the Dead is perpetually silent. Ordinarily I don’t mind it; ordinarily I don’t even think about it. But now the quiet felt leaden, as oppressive as the low grey sky and the dim, even light. I began to hum, and then to sing, and the words were the troubling ones of Leo’s song:

  Never, never will I cease

  To follow where you go,

  And ever, ever will I be

  The hound upon your doe.

  Well, I had shaken my hounds – both of them – and in another week I would be with Maggie. I would hold her in my arms, feel her fair curls against my cheek, endure the deserved tongue-whipping she would give me for abandoning her – probably many tongue-whippings – and then we would make our life together with our son. Maggie, who had always loved me better than I deserved and—

  Something flickered at the edge of my vision.

  I stopped and peered through the pale fog. An object appeared on the ground in the middle distance, disappeared, appeared again. A small object, no larger than a pie. My heart began a low, hard thumping in my chest.

  Should I cross back over? But I might not have walked far enough to be beyond Hunter’s ability to find me.

  Cautiously I approached the object. Again it flickered out of existence. When I reached the place it had been, there was nothing there.

  But there had been. Here, where nothing ever appeared except—

  ‘Waaaaahhhhh!’

  My heart nearly jumped from my body as the thing reappeared, and this time there was no doubt what it was. A child, red-faced and screaming. Its blue eyes glared at me, the smell of its full diaper hit my nostrils, its indignant yells pierced my ears, and then it was gone again. And I understood.

  This was an infant hisaf, unable as yet to control its coming and goings across the barrier of the grave. When I had been such a babe, such crossings had probably happened mostly in my dreams. Back then hisafs had not been able to cross over bodily. There must have been times when my infant self lay asleep, restless and feverish from some childish illness, pain in my head or belly or throat. That’s what is required – pain, plus a kind of letting go that, paradoxically, is also an act of will. Babes cannot control their will, and I did not remember crossing over until I was six years old.

  But this child was not six, nor anywhere near it, and it was awake. Awake and in infant pain from hunger or its bowels or fear. And the abilities of hisafs had grown with the growing breach between the land of the living and the country of the Dead.

  What was this babe’s mother seeing, as she cared for it? Did she know what her child was? Could she accept it? I could imagine the terrible pull between love of one’s child and fear of witchcraft. But, no – this baby’s father must have been a hisaf, too. The mother, like mine, must have known what her son would be.

  I reached out my good hand towards the child, who screamed louder and then vanished. It did not reappear. His mother must have risen from her sleep, stumbled to the cradle I could not see, and tended to her son. On this side there were few Dead in sight; the parents of the little hisaf lived isolated from other people, perhaps the better to protect their child. So must my mother have once protected me.

  Longing to see her again – alive as I remembered her at six years old, not as she was now – hit me so hard that my eyes watered. Then the longing for my mother, unseemly in one my age, became renewed longing for Maggie. Soon.

  Another mile or two and the Dead became more numerous. There must be a village here, on the other side. Then, beside a swift downhill stream, I came to something I had seen before and hoped never to see again.

  A large circle of the Dead, thirty or thirty-five, all facing inward towards the centre of the ring. The Dead wore clothing from many different eras and seasons: coloured wool, linen shifts, heavy crude furs, old-fashioned farthingales, bronze armour, tattered night shirts. Old men, little girls, young women, half-grown boys, soldiers – each of their heads was densely shrouded in dark fog, obscuring their faces. In the middle of the circle spun a vortex of even darker fog. Faster and faster it spun, now starting to hum, now the hum rising to such a loud pitch that I clapped my hands over my ears even as I started to run forward.

  ‘No! Don’t!’ I screamed the words, but of course there was no one to hear. And the words were stupid anyway – as if I could stop the horror about to happen! The vortex spun faster, there was a huge clap of sound, like lightning striking the ground, and all the Dead disappeared, along with the vortex.

  Gone. Just gone.

  I sagged to the ground. The light, pervasive fog over the landscape had also disappeared. I could see for miles, along the mountains and valleys of the Country of the Dead. But there was nothing to see where these Dead had sat awaiting eternity. The grass was not even charred. It was as if nothing, and no one, had been here at all. The men and women of Soulvine Moor, present in the vortex in ways I did not understand, had sucked the power of the Dead unto themselves. They had annihilated bodies and souls both, so that these Dead existed no longer anywhere, their chance for eternity lost for ever.

  Just as I had hurled my mad half-sister into such a vortex, depriving her of her own eternity. But that had been different. My sister had been used by Soulvine Moor to kill innocent people, and would have been so used again. She had been stalking my unborn son. The people who had just vanished into the vortex had, in contrast, been blameless, tranquil and mindless Dead who threatened no one.

  I don’t know how long I sat on the ground, gazing as sightlessly as the Dead themselves, but eventually I pulled myself together and stood. Behind me someone moaned.

  I spun around so fast that I nearly lost balance. ‘Who’s there?’

  Another moan, from close by. I followed it to a man lying behind a bush. I could not tell if he was asleep or very ill, but one thing was certain: he was not dead. I drew my big knife. If he was here and alive, he must be a hisaf – but for which side? A deep groan and he opened his eyes. They were bright green.

  ‘A big man with black beard and green eyes … He witched our babes in Stonegreen …’

  The bearded man stared at me and groped for his weapon, but he could barely move his arm. I knelt beside him, swiftly found and confiscated two knives, and put my own blade at his throat. ‘Who are you?’

  Glaring at me with hatred, he tried to speak but managed only a hoarse, unintelligible whisper.

  Unbidden, words of Mother Chilton’s floated into my mind: ‘Everything has a
cost, Roger Kilbourne – when will you learn that?’ She had meant the web women who became birds to rescue me and nearly died from their transforming effort. But hisafs could not become animals. Of what action was this man paying the cost? No hisaf was necessary for the spinning vortex to rob the Dead; I knew that much.

  I said, ‘What have you done here? Tell me or I will kill you.’

  He smiled. A feeble smile, barely a bending of his lips between the black beard and bristly black moustache, but a smile nonetheless. His green eyes shone with contempt. And I understood. He did not think I was capable of murder.

  He was right.

  I had killed Hartah, but that was in the heightened passion of fear and unexpected grief after he had just slain my Aunt Jo. I had killed my sister, but she had caused the deaths of two people I cared about, menaced me and threatened my son. To drive my knife into the throat of a stranger – I could not do it. I was either not hard enough or not courageous enough, and I could not even tell which.

  So instead I said fiercely, inanely, ‘What did you do here that depleted you so?’

  Again that contemptuous smile.

  ‘What did you do to those infants in Stonegreen?’

  This time he turned his head away from me. It took all his strength, and his eyes closed in exhaustion.

  I tied him hand and foot with what was left of Tom Jenkins’ rope; the odious children of John the Small had stolen most of it for their games. Too bad those children had not been tranced into quiescence!

  The hisaf did not rouse as I bound him. I was just wondering what to do with him now when another sound took me. Something crashed through the underbrush across the stream – something moving fast where nothing should move at all. Once before I had heard such a sound, right after I hurled my sister into the vortex. I did not know what it had been then, although I assumed it was more hisafs coming to rescue her, and I did not wait to see what it was now. With both hands I seized the inert body of the bound hisaf, bit down on my tongue so hard that blood filled my mouth, and crossed over.

  We emerged inside a structure. Dim light, even dimmer than in the Country of the Dead, filtered through two very dirty windows. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that I stood inside a mill, undoubtedly built beside the swift stream I had noted on the other side. The great millstone did not turn; the mill was empty; the door wide enough for wagonloads of grain was closed. But outside, loud enough to be heard above the mill race, people shouted and screamed.

  ‘The babes!’

  ‘—witched—’

  ‘Help me! Help my child – someone, anyone! Oh please help!’

  So it had happened here, too. The black-bearded hisaf had stolen children, as he had done in Stonegreen, and left them neither dead nor alive. At that moment, I could almost have killed him – except that these villagers would do it for me, as was their right. But if I were caught with him, they would kill me, too.

  I spat out a mouthful of blood and turned to the two dirty windows overlooking the stream. I unlocked one, shoved open the casement, and climbed through onto a narrow shelf of land between the building and the mill race. The red of a summer dawn streaked the sky. There was no way to move away from the mill without being seen except to descend into the water, crouch between its banks, and waddle along until I reached the cover of a wooded bank about a quarter mile upstream.

  The water, icy from the mountains, came to my waist. Gasping with cold, I held my pack above the stream, cursing each time it was splashed by water breaking on a rock. By hugging the closer bank, I made it to the woods. The whole way, the wails and shouts of the villagers followed me, grief become heart-piercing sound.

  I hoped they found the bound hisaf before he revived enough to cross over.

  I shivered in my wet clothes. It would be at least an hour before the sun shone warmly enough to dry me, and I dared not risk a fire. The best I could do was shed my sodden tunic, breeches, and small clothes, pour the water out of my boots, and wrap myself, naked, in my dry cloak from my pack. I wasn’t as far from either the village or from Leo Tollers as I wanted to be, but cold kept me from going any farther.

  It turned out not to matter. Something thrashed through the underbrush to the east. Moments later Hunter ran up to me. He licked my hand, leaping and frisking like a demented thing, and shortly after Leo followed him.

  ‘Roger, you moron – you cannot rest here! Don’t you hear them? The villagers? If they find us—’

  I looked up at him from where I sat huddled in my cloak. Slowly I said, ‘How did you know something had happened in that village?’

  ‘I came that way! Hurry, get up!’

  ‘You did not come that way.’

  ‘Yes, I did – I circled back to avoid the town. Get up!’

  His fear seemed real. Perhaps he had circled the village to reach me when Hunter finally sniffed out my trail. And perhaps his fear was what it seemed: terror of having to cross over to escape a band of furious men hunting whoever had tranced their children. But even though singing seemed the last thing on Leo’s mind at the moment, I nonetheless seemed to hear the words of his song in my mind:

  Never, never will I cease

  To follow where you go,

  And ever, ever will I be—

  Hound. I looked more closely at Hunter, studying him even as Leo dug frantically in his pack for something I could wear. The dog looked like all the others sent to save me over the last months: grey coat, big snout, short tail, green eyes brimming with doggy devotion. But no two living things can ever be completely identical. I had memorized the small white patch on Hunter’s left hind leg, the scratch on his haunch where he had tangled with a thorn bush, the way one toe grew slightly over another on one paw. This was not Hunter.

  And ever, ever will I be

  The hound upon your doe.

  6

  We walked away from the village as fast as I could travel. Exhaustion kept me from talking, even from thinking. There was only the road, dusty and too bright on my tired eyes. When we halted at mid-morning, I fell asleep so swiftly that I didn’t even remember lying down.

  I dreamed. Not of crossing over, but of … I wasn’t even sure what. Vague shapes, vague animal smells, a greyness that was not fog but wasn’t anything else, either. The dream felt disturbing enough to wake me.

  ‘Good morrow, sleeping lad,’ Leo said mockingly. ‘You left me to do all the work, you know.’

  I sat up, my heart still thudding from the dream. It was twilight, still warm, and Leo had made a fire. The good smell of roasting meat banished the scents of my dream. Hunter, who was not Hunter, had caught a brace of rabbits. Leo had even gathered wild strawberries, which astonished me until I realized I was lying on a bed of them. All he had to do was reach out his hand. The fire burned in a little clearing ringed by birch and oak.

  ‘Thank you, Leo,’ I said. ‘Are you sure you’re not tired from such extensive labour?’

  He laughed, and for the first time I almost liked him.

  ‘Don’t burn your fingers. Here, Hunter, have some rabbit. You earned it.’

  Did he really not know this wasn’t Hunter? I ate greedily but my mind was not on the food. When we finished and were sucking our fingers while the dog crunched rabbit bones, I began.

  ‘You said you circled back through that village and so knew what was happening there.’

  ‘Yes.’ He unwrapped his lute.

  ‘No music, Leo. I want to talk.’

  He ignored me, strumming softly. ‘You can ask, Roger, but I told you: I know very little.’

  ‘Not as little as you profess, I think.’

  ‘You’re wrong. I know exactly that little.’ He began a lilting air I had heard at court. Queen Caroline and her ladies had danced to it.

  ‘You know at least what you heard in the village. What happened there?’

  ‘The same thing as in Stonegreen. You were there, Roger. Babies vanished from their cradles and were found at dawn, as tranquil and mindless as the Dead.’
<
br />   ‘Where were they found? What exact spot?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe somewhere near the stream you waded along.’

  ‘Listen to me, Leo. When I crossed back over from the Country of the Dead, I found myself inside the village mill, beside that same stream. On this side was the circle of tranced babies, on the other side I saw a circle of the Dead. And those Dead just vanished. They were sucked into a sort of spinning grey vortex. Do you—’

  ‘They were what?’ Leo looked up, startled and then afraid. ‘The Dead were sucked into something? That’s impossible!’

  ‘No. I saw it.’ More than once.

  ‘I don’t believe it. The Dead never go anywhere! They’re dead!’

  I believed him. His whole body had gone rigid with shock and fear. Leo hated to cross over; probably he had never seen the vortex, or even the fog that formed it. He knew nothing. And in talking to him, I knew no more than before.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let us forget that I ever spoke of it.’

  ‘Gladly. I think you must have dreamed all that, Roger. You were dreaming today, just before you woke. You called out a girl’s name.’

  Alarm shot through me. ‘What name?’

  ‘Maggie. Who is she?’

  I managed to grimace and shrug. ‘A girl I once bedded. The only girl, in fact. She was a kitchen maid.’

  He nodded, not very interested. ‘I have never had a girl.’

  ‘Oh.’ I didn’t know what to say. This was the reverse of Tom Jenkins, who had boasted to me of his many conquests.

  ‘What girl would have me?’ Leo said bitterly. ‘Look at me. Puny and weak and scarred. Even my Lady Judith was only kind to me from pity.’ He struck a harsh chord on his lute and reached for its wrappings.

  ‘Leo—’

  ‘Shut your mouth, Roger. I’m going to sleep now. You clean up.’ He rolled in his cloak beside the fire, face turned away from me.

  In the gathering darkness I buried what was left of the rabbit – not much, after the dog was finished with it – to keep predators from camp. Under the oaks I gathered more deadwood for the fire. Water was harder; I could find neither spring nor stream, which was probably why Leo had not filled the waterbag here. And he had not filled it as we walked earlier because water was heavy to carry. ‘Puny and weak’ he had described himself – he’d left out ‘lazy’. Which made it all the more puzzling that he was here, sticking to me like pine tar.