What of your sister? You said she was on Ramidan.
My sister is real. I told you of her because I didn’t want everything I said to be a lie. I implied she was on Ramidan but the truth was that I wanted to go there to see Alene soulweaver.
You told me when we talked last that the Chaos spirit believed you would reveal the Unraveller?
It did. It also said that the Unraveller was here on Keltor. I … I think he might have crossed when I did, and that’s why the Chaos spirit didn’t know about me.
The Unraveller! But Glynn …
I know what you’re going to say, but he’s here. I am sure of it. When I was darklin thralled two nights ago I had a vision of Coralyn saying that the Draaka had said that the Chaos spirit had told her he was on Iridom.
Iridom, but why would the Unraveller go there? And when were you darklin thralled?
The Draaka sent me to Tarsin with a gift of a darklin and he took it into his head to make me invoke it. As to the Unraveller being on Iridom, I know it sounds mad, but Iridom is closer to Darkfall than Ramidan. She thought of Aluade, and it occurred to her to test the veracity of the remainder of the darklin vision. I saw other visions, too. I saw that the Prime was actually working for you or the Shadowman.
That was a true seeing, Solen said, sounding startled.
Oh god, then the rest of it might be true. Solen … I … saw her killed in a haven ceremony because the Chaos spirit had found out the truth. We have to warn her. Thank goodness the delegation is still confined to the apartment because nothing can happen until they are free to move about. She hesitated, trying to think how to tell him the rest, but he spoke first.
Glynn, last night, Tarsin summoned the Draaka to him, and this means that although there was no formal ceremony, the formalities are complete and she and all of her party are now free to do as they wish and go where they will on Ramidan.
Oh no. Solen, you were in the vision too. You were tied up on the altar and they meant to sacrifice you. Solen, you have to get away from Ramidan … Oh, but you can’t leave because of the Edict bell.
The Edict bell rang again last night to allow Fulig to land. So anyone may now travel. But Glynn, even if I could bring myself to flee Ramidan, it is said that the swiftest path to disaster is to try to evade a soulweaving.
But Solen, I am afraid for you. To her horror, Glynn realised that the link was weakening.
Solen said, We must ask Alene soulweaver for advice. You are …
No! Glynn said, cutting him off firmly. If the Unraveller is here, he will most likely be with her, and I can’t risk leading the draakira to him. I have to get away from Ramidan and go straight to Myrmidor. The connection began to dissolve. Solen!
Come back to the city, Glynna-vyre, Solen sent, but the words were faint. I will have someone watching at the tide gate at dawn tomorrow. Look for a closed carriage with a waterflyt painted on the door.
Then he was gone.
It was good to feel him, the feinna sent, and only then did Glynn realise that it was awake. Belatedly she understood that the link had held as long as it had only because the feinna had delicately strengthened it. That must be why they had only been able to speak and not see one another.
We longed for him, sisterling, the feinna explained, and again the sweetness of its compassion rolled over her.
There was a terrible accident … Glynn began.
I saw in yourmind, the feinna sent gravely.
You are well?
I must now find food for I should have nourished myself sooner. I am very weak but soon I will be well.
You … you know what sort of food you can eat? Glynn asked. She had half-expected to have to explain about foraging, which would have been difficult given her lack of success so far.
I know from my dam and also I will learn what will nourish, it sent, clearly amused at her question. It spoke as if it were soothing a child. And the humour in its tone! Its mother had not understood humour at all. I am not my motherling, the feinna sent, reading her thoughts. Rest. I will forage for sisterling also. Rest.
Glynn understood then what she ought to have done immediately. The feinna was now mature. She ought to have known it from the increasing complexity of its communications. The birth bond was gone. They were linked only because the He was maintaining contact; maintaining it out of concern for her. And just like that, she understood that the moment had come for them to part. That was why it had connected her to Solen, because there would be no more mind-reaching without it. That must also be why it had withheld itself from the communication. Glynn crushed sorrow and sent firmly but gently, No, you must go and seek out food and also others of your kind, beloved brotherling. Our ways lie apart now.
She had half-expected, perhaps had even hoped, that the feinna would disagree and beg to stay with her, but the animal actually crooned its approval. Glynn was humbled, then, at the realisation that she had been so certain of her superiority that she had thought the feinna would need to be instructed to go and find its own kind. Instead it had not been certain that she would be adult enough to accept their parting.
What if there are no others of your kind? Glynn asked, fighting tears.
I will be lonely and my life will be unnatural, but I will live and learn and I will seek out the beloved manthing and we will be pack when you are gone to the othersisterling who smells of death.
Glynn licked her lips at the accuracy of its description of Ember. I love you. I wish we had more time.
The feinna made no such human declaration. Instead it rubbed its chin firmly over her hand, marking her with its scent. You bear my scent and I yours, it told her. Then for one last moment, a surge of its incredible compassion ran through her like gentle fire, and the little animal was gone with barely a rustle of leaves.
Glynn wept then, but as much out of gladness and admiration for the radiance of the feinna’s spirit as out of grief at knowing that she would not see it again nor feel it in her mind. The feinna part of her rejoiced in the new maturity of the feinna; and her own maturity.
‘I grew because of knowing you,’ she whispered aloud; it was true, but she suddenly felt almost drugged by weariness and, lying down, surrendered to sleep.
When she opened her eyes, it was cold and it was night. Unexpectedly, she felt both refreshed and healthy. All of her pains seemed to have vanished, including the ominous stabbing in her abdomen. She groped for her ankle and found the swelling gone, the makeshift bandage loose. Unwinding it, she tucked it thriftily in her pocket, then she felt her forehead and discovered that the wound there had stopped bleeding. Somehow, the feinna had healed her. That was the only answer. It was its parting gift. She tried to be glad, but she was too conscious of the silence of her mind and the dulling of all of her senses. She would have to get used to being only herself again.
She rose. The sound of water nearby told her that a stream was close. It was a wonder that she had not noticed it the night before when her senses had been enhanced by the feinna link, yet she heard it now. Making her way towards it, she came upon a swift but deep stream that was probably part of the same stream that had flowed through the gorge where the carriage had crashed. She knelt and splashed water on her face, then she drank her fill before rising and trying to make out the silhouette of Skyreach Bluff against the stars to get her bearings.
‘There!’ cried a man’s angry voice and she froze.
A heart-stopping moment passed before she heard more voices and realised that the man’s voice was perhaps half a kilometre away. A trick of the wind or water must have carried it to her so clearly. She squinted about until she spotted light flaring against the treetops here and there, and guessed there must be a whole mob of men with torches crashing about in the undergrowth. She would have heard them at once with her feinna hearing.
Cursing her weak human senses, she crouched down and began to move very quietly along the bank of the stream. If the worst came to worst, she would jump in and take her chances with the current
. She was startled to hear the unmistakable sound of hoofs pounding at a reckless gallop and realised that the road must have doubled back on itself. There were more sounds and she gathered from it that there were several carriages approaching as well as the men pushing into the undergrowth.
The pounding hoof beats slowed to a stop, and then there was the sound of an exchange, sharp and urgent, though she could not make out any words. Obviously the two groups had converged and were consulting one another.
Please let them all ride on, Glynn thought.
Suddenly she heard the sound of a horn and the chilling, unmistakable baying of trakkerbeasts. Then, very near, over the shouts of the men and the baying of beasts, came the sound of running footsteps.
Someone was running directly towards her!
Before Glynn could think what to do, a boy pelted out of the trees. She had time to notice that he wore expensive clothing, and was running as hard as he could, looking behind him, before he crashed into her. He fell backwards under the force of their impact and then gaped up at her in astonishment to see her grasping her belly and trying to get a breath. Glynn noticed that his trews were torn and filthy and one leg seemed to be covered in blood.
‘He went that way. Get him! And this time, hobble him, you fool!’ a man shouted.
Hearing this, the boy struggled frantically to rise, but whatever strength he had possessed had been used up. He gave Glynn a look that contained many things, but not fear. ‘I do not know how you are here or why, myrmidon, but if you are not a dream, then help me,’ he whispered urgently, and with a faint but definite lisp. ‘The men looking for me are green legionnaires with trakkerbeasts. They have been holding me prisoner and now mean to kill me.’
Glynn thought that if there was a blackwind, it had surely made her its special pet. Then she stepped forward and ripped away part of the boy’s bloodied trouser leg. He gasped, but Glynn wasted no time in explanation. Taking him under the arms, she lifted him and ran ten paces away from the river. Ignoring his stifled groans of pain, she heaved him into the sturdy lower branches of a tree, knowing that her own scent would be of no interest to trakkerbeasts if they had been given a specific scent to follow. She ran back to where the boy had fallen and trailed the bloody scrap of cloth along the ground towards the river and along the bank for some way then hurled it into the water. It snagged on a root then swirled away only to catch more securely on a spiky green water plant a little downstream on the other side.
‘This way!’ a man shouted.
Knowing she had only seconds to hide herself, Glynn turned and hoisted herself up into the nearest tree. It was thin and had too little foliage, but she shinned up and out along a branch hanging over the water, until she had a clear view of the tree where the boy was hidden. She then made a screen of leaves for herself by bending and weaving branches into a hide, crossing her fingers that the boy would not faint from loss of blood and fall out of the tree on top of his pursuers.
The trakkerbeasts were first to come hurtling out of the trees – three of them. Glynn had not seen the beasts before, but they were very large and stocky and looked to be a cross between pig dogs and wild boars, containing the most savage aspects of both animals from her world. They sniffed the ground where the boy had fallen and then they followed the bloody trail she had laid to the water’s edge, whining and snarling and pawing at the water. A man appeared, crashing through the trees after them. Although clearly not a legionnaire, he was obviously Iridomi and Glynn guessed that he was the handler or trainer of the trakkerbeasts. A green-clad legionnaire burst through the trees after him and then another and then three more. In a few minutes there were fifteen men standing along the bank of the river, peering in.
Glynn wondered what on earth one skinny boy could have done to warrant such a pursuit, and so far from the citadel. Had he stolen something of great value, perhaps? But why would they first imprison him and then decide to kill him? Unless he had been exaggerating in order to gain her sympathy. Glynn considered this only a moment before dismissing it. Whatever else the boy was, he did not have the eyes of a liar.
‘Looks like he fell in,’ the handler said to the legionnaires. He pointed downstream, to the scrap of cloth Glynn supposed. ‘He was going fast enough and there is a strong current.’
‘Perhaps,’ the older legionnaire began looking around.
Glynn watched him and wondered uneasily what these men would do to her if she was discovered in the vicinity of the missing boy. She was sure to be regarded as some sort of accomplice and the only way to save herself would be for her to tell them she served the Draaka. Whereupon she would be taken to the Draaka. And they would want to know what had happened to Aluade …
She cursed under her breath. What an awful irony to be captured simply because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although from the boy’s point of view, she supposed that she had been in the right place at the right time.
To her dismay, the leader of the legionnaires was now ordering his men to fan out and search thoroughly. Fortunately the legionnaires seemed to assume he meant to look along the bank, but the animal handler had returned to the place where the boy had fallen and was staring down, frowning. If he knew anything of tracking, he was sure to see her own tracks, though she had tried to leave no obvious marks.
The older legionnaire was pacing about, fortunately over the place where she had stood, looking fed up. ‘If we go back without a body as proof that the boy is dead, we will all suffer. She will see to it.’
She? Glynn wondered. Did they mean Coralyn? It seemed likely, for who else would command that tone of uneasy respect from her legionnaires? But what interest had Coralyn in this lisping noble lad? Glynn noticed that the animal handler had begun to drift towards the tree where the boy was hidden.
‘What about one of us getting that bit of cloth as proof?’ one of the legionnaires suggested.
‘She will want the body,’ the other said sharply. ‘A bit of bloodstained cloth will not do.’
‘Water looks clear. Nobody there,’ said one of the legionnaires, peering in. His superior gave him a look of fury and booted him in the backside, sending the man headfirst into the icy stream.
‘Ahjhjh!’ he cried, choking and spluttering as he fought to rise in the powerful current. ‘It’s freezing.’
‘Make yourself useful. Look for the boy while you’re in there,’ his captain snapped. ‘And get that piece of cloth.’
The others began to laugh, and the commotion distracted the handler, drawing him away from the boy’s tree, but Glynn noticed with cold fear that one of the trakkerbeasts had begun to snuffle about under it. Worse, she was horrified to notice a dark and unmistakable trickle of blood making its way down the trunk of the tree! Within seconds, the trakkerbeast would scent the blood and begin to bay.
Remembering the ease with which she had been able to soothe the half-drowned aspi, Glynn desperately shaped a desire to run free and unfettered and pushed it at the trakkerbeast. She had little hope of affecting it without the feinna link, but she could not bear to do nothing. To her astonishment, the trakkerbeast ceased its frantic sniffing and looked unerringly in her direction. Heart in her mouth, she did not understand how it had become aware of her, but rather than howling its triumph, it went on staring and her amazement turned to bewilderment because she now thought that she could feel the animal’s puzzlement.
Now she realised, almost as clearly as if she had been told by the dry voice of the feinna link, that the trakkerbeast was not naturally savage, but had been drugged into a killing rage that would enhance its tracking skills. Glynn was vaguely aware of the wet legionnaire being helped up the steep bank, but she kept her mind and attention focused on the trakkerbeast, letting the feinna part of her mind guide her. Clearly she did retain some vestige of her feinna abilities, and so now, rather than trying to control the trakkerbeast, she found herself instinctively offering it her own fear of discovery. It was a plea of sorts and gradually she felt the animal?
??s positive response. It did not know what she was, but her ability to communicate her emotions seemed to make the animal feel that she was pack. The feinna too had spoken of pack, which seemed to mean something far deeper to animals than it did to humans.
‘So, Belar,’ grunted the green-clad handler, coming to the trakkerbeast and slapping the creature’s meaty rump. Glynn held her breath because, if he glanced sideways, he would see the blood, but despite the danger she was in, part of her rejoiced at the idea that she had not lost all that the feinna link had brought her. The older legionnaire suddenly called all of the men to him and when they were assembled he said, ‘It is too dark to see properly, even with torches. We are going to have to camp back on the road and search this area again in daylight. We will start here in the morning and fan out in both directions. I will leave a marker and we will send word back that the gates will have to be watched constantly. There must be no chance for the boy to get back into the city.’
Glynn could have groaned because it meant that she could not head back to the citadel to meet Solen. And she had no idea if she still had the means to contact him mentally to let him know what had happened now.
‘What if we do not find a body?’ the animal handler asked the legionnaire captain as they began to move away.
‘We must catch the boy or find proof that he is dead. The chieftain will accept nothing less.’
So it was Coralyn, Glynn thought, wondering again what on earth the boy had done to incur her wrath to make her want him dead. This thought preoccupied her without result for some of the hour she waited in the tree before daring to move. She wanted to be certain no one had been left behind to spy, and no longer trusted her human senses enough to accept the evidence of her ears and eyes. She tried without success to reach Solen, but realised that, while her mind and senses were vastly less powerful than they had been when she was birth linked to the feinna, they were nevertheless still better than her old ordinary human senses.