Failing to spot its assailant, the beast settled once more on seeking its easy prey. It swung around, responding to the alluring call of the ailing doe.
It rushed yet again towards the excitedly waving Imp. And, yet again, her father leapt up from his hiding place amongst the green foliage.
He’d positioned a number of the huge hooks around the area, ready for him to grab and utilise. They were there too to help trip and foul the beast, should it run into their path. Picking up the great hook he’d left here, he swung it with all his might. Curling it around his head, he aimed it once again for that temptingly softer spot lying between leg and body.
This time, unfortunately – perhaps because his timing was a little off, perhaps because the beast wasn’t quite as witless as Jarek had presumed, and it had deftly sidestepped the expected blow – the hook swung clear of the buisoar’s flanks. Caught in the unstoppable momentum of his own violent swing, Jarek continued to spin around on his increasingly unsteady feet.
Completely unbalanced, he fell, legs crossed and ungainly, back into the grasses and bushes.
The beast whirled on its hind legs. With a triumphant snort, it lowered its head, readying itself for goring and trampling the helpless Jarek, seeking revenge for all its torments.
And Imp was too far away to do anything about it.
*
Chapter 10
1,000 Years Later
It was a festive atmosphere in the square. Everyone was excited by and wanted to be involved in some way with the elaborate preparations for such a large hunt.
The lords involved were dressed in much finery, their horses decked with gorgeously colourful if somewhat impractical trappings. The brightly painted lances were topped with long, fluttering pennants, many graced with the lords’ particular emblems of swans, bears, nightingales and other creatures, or weapons such as maces, hammers and swords.
Food sellers and entertainers were out in force, moving amongst the crowds, shouting out cries hailing the tastiness of their wares, the amazing feats they were about to perform.
Desri’s thoughts, however, were purely upon how she would fulfil her intentions to sabotage the hunt. Or, rather, upon the problems she faced in fulfilling them: such as the unfortunate fact she owned neither horse nor hunting dog to ensure she could get ahead of everyone else. So how was she supposed to warn the beast that he had to flee the neighbourhood?
At first, she didn’t notice that a far section of the crowd was gradually becoming even more excited than before. She looked up at last, however, when she began to pick out evermore repeated cries of ‘Thank the great good reason of Her Most Knowing Majesty!’
As others picked up on this, adding to the spreading of the excitement with their own elated cries, the whole crowd rippled. Everyone stretched up on their toes, or craned necks, to get a better view of the queen’s entourage slowly weaving its way towards the square’s centre.
The colours and pennants of the newcomers outshone even those of the lords preparing to hunt. Gold, silver and amber glittered everywhere. Peacock and leaping trout emblems didn’t just grace banners and shields but also rose up high on elaborately decorated helmets.
Most resplendent of all, of course, was the queen herself. Seated astride a towering, great white stallion, she herself was strewn with white veils that streamed out behind her, as if she were a stretch of flowing water come to life, a lake-sprite made real. Her red hair was the sunset, the sun ablaze as it lashed out with scarlet rays, lighting everything up as if threatening to set it all aflame.
The crowd rippled again as it parted to allow free passage for the queen and her caravan. The crowd’s wave-like movement was now unmissable, even to those busy harnessing horses and controlling wayward dogs. Both Barane and his father looked up as one, their momentary frowns of dismay – the queen would doubtlessly wish to take charge of their hunt – immediately replaced with more politically expedient warm, pleasantly-surprised smiles.
Desri grinned – then instantly frowned in dismay.
If she sabotaged the hunt now, it would be treason.
*
Chapter 11
1,000 Years Earlier
Stop!
Don’t kill my father!
So horror-struck she was unable to speak, Imp could only scream out in her mind.
Everything happening around her suddenly seemed to slow down.
Everything seemed to freeze.
The beast had stopped just an arm’s length from her father. Its head was still down, ready to gore him.
The dust around its hooves was moving however, swirling about its legs in a vast, rapidly expanding cloud. Time hadn’t stopped; it hadn’t even really slowed down, except in her swiftly whirling mind.
Yet the buisoar had really come to a sudden halt in its charge.
It was confused. It didn’t know why it had stopped. It just Knew it had to.
He still wanted to kill this creature that had caused him harm. This sad, little animal that was cowering before him, thinking its time was near.
A man; that’s what they called themselves – man.
This man was staggering, disbelievingly, to his feet. Wondering, no doubt, why he was still alive.
Imp could see the surprise on her father’s face. She could see it clearly, because he was looking straight at her.
Because she was seeing him through the eyes of the buisoar.
*
Chapter 11
1,000 Years Later
As she rode through the forest, the queen looked more magnificent than ever.
She rode her stallion as if she were a part of it, or it a part of her; it was hard to tell exactly which.
It was as if, in fact, their minds were one, rather than separate. They moved together, flowed together, each movement effortless and ultimately satisfyingly graceful. They – or should that just be a simple she? – could have easily outrun everyone else there if she had put her mind to it.
Instead, the queen simply kept to the head of the main pack of hunters, looking for all the world as if she were performing the easiest of canters rather than a fierce charge through a tangled wood of hanging branches, fallen stumps, and rocky, uneven ground.
Desri rode with her, virtually alongside her for most of the hunt so far.
Her horse wasn’t anywhere near as gorgeous as the queen’s, naturally. Yet it was still an expensive, incredibly beautiful and powerful mount, having come from the royal stables.
The queen herself had loaned it to her; indeed, insisted she take it. To prove to everyone crowded into that square that day that Desri wasn’t scared of any buisoar: even one with the arrogance to come walking into town on a night.
The queen, as expected by every person there, had announced that she would be taking charge of the hunt. Far stranger, though, had been the way she had referred to the previous night’s attack by the beast. Choosing her words carefully, she had virtually challenged Barane to contradict her when she said the girl involved was obviously no more scared than the boys who had fled. Therefore, the queen had added, she had little doubt that the girl was probably as eager as anyone to take part in the hunt.
At this point, the queen’s eyes had sought Desri out from amongst all the others there. Locking those glittering eyes onto hers, the queen had old Desri to come forward, to prove her bravery.
What choice had Desri had?
She’d announced that, Yes, she’d help them hunt the beast down!
She had hardly ever ridden a horse before; something else she hadn’t considered when she’d first put together her simple, ill-thought out plan to sabotage the hunt. Yet the horse the queen had given her was so well trained, it flowed with her every move. Her intelligent mount made up for her own inexperience, her own ill-considered moves.
The dogs were equally well trained, running ahead through the undergrowth, picking out a trail through scents alone. They moved swiftly, a river of browns and blacks coursing through the greens of
leaves and tall grasses.
At this rate, Desri feared, they would soon track the beast down.
Yet she couldn’t see any way of preventing it. Or avoiding having to watch the hounds tear the poor beast apart.
*
Chapter 12
1,000 Years Earlier
Jarek’s joints and choice cuts of meat were once again famed and desired throughout the town.
He had even won back some of the contracts for supplying some of the town’s official bodies, though the local Council of Knowing still eluded him.
His meat was of prime quality, taken from mature, thoroughly enraged buisoar. It had all obviously been butchered deftly and expertly, and well within those crucial time periods.
The producers of related products also sought him out once more: the tanners, for a leather that emanated a strange air of confidence around its wearer: the candle and lamp makers, for tallow and oils that gave of calming, thought-inducing perfumes; furriers, for skins that were both incredibly warming and soothing; farmers for a grounded-bone fertiliser that produced amazing results; even jailers, for guts that, stretched into a binding, eased a convict’s struggles.
Helping butcher, box and carry the huge buisoar joints had created an impressive array of muscles throughout Imp’s previously scrawny body. She wasn’t in anyway as muscular as Hoak had been, yet she more than made up for this with an easy flow to her every action that both created and utilised its own momentum. She was lithe, incredibly supple. She could run smoothly, effortlessly, amazingly swiftly. She could leap up high from a stationary position; she could back-flip in mid-air.
She could plunge home a blade or knife as if it were a part of her, rather than a separate instrument.
It wasn’t Imp’s growing strength and hunting prowess that had brought Jarek’s business back to life, however.
It was the talent she had discovered that day when she had prevented her father from being killed.
The beast had frustratedly pawed the ground, watching the man nervously backing away from it with curiosity; Why wasn’t he chasing this man? he wondered.
Imp had sensed – no, she had experienced – the beast’s bewilderment with its own strange inaction. Although calm and stilled on the outside, inside the beast’s mind was a raging turmoil of conflicting emotions; confusing thoughts, all fighting to be heard, many contradicting each other.
It was like, Imp realised, being in the middle of an angry, protesting crowd, but a crowd with no common purpose. A crowd consisting of people protesting only about the views of their nearest neighbours, each one seeking to be the one whose own view was the one adopted by everyone else there.
Stranger still, the thoughts were perplexingly human, rather than the more bestial, immediate concerns she would have expected.
How was that possible?
Is that what made the buisoar’s meat so uniquely potent?
Or was this particular buisoar unusually intelligent, perhaps because it had indulged in cannibalism, eating one of its own and thereby assuming a higher if greatly confused level of reasoning?
Imp had directed the beast to walk off, to leave her shocked father to run towards her, where they hugged each other in relief. Separating a little from her, he had eyed her suspiciously, yet smiled. He realised that he had just witnessed some use of the Knowing; far from being angry, however, he was both grateful and intrigued, seeing here a possible solution to his problems.
The problem, of course, was ensuring that the buisoar was killed while it was enraged, not in a stupor. But Imp had already seen the frustrating confusion of their minds; so she made sure she continually added to this confusion, sending them careering around the maze of strewn nets, adding to their anger with her own – and thereby their own – wails of growing anxiety.
She always took care, of course, to never completely slip inside their minds again. She couldn’t face the idea that they were killing a highly intelligent animal, one that could master a limited ability at reasoning things through.
It would be unbearable to think, of course, that they were killing a fully thinking creature.
*
Chapter 12
1,000 Years Later
The hounds were barking wildly, excitedly. They streamed through the bushes, picking up pace, seemingly unstoppably surging on.
‘They must have the scent!’ the cry went up.
Urging their mounts into bursts of extra speed, the riders followed the pack, leaping over hedges, ducking low beneath sweeping branches.
‘We’ll have it soon!’ a lord shouted, already readying his lance to strike it home, to split flesh and bone.
The queen smiled at Desri as, riding alongside each other, they smoothly took the obstacles lying before them. In avoiding these fallen trunks, these hollows, the wider, deeper parts of the streams, they were both drifting towards the edges of the hunt.
They ducked in their saddles as they wildly careered through a copse of tightly packed if small trees, the narrowness of the track they were following forcing them closer towards each other. The thunder of the hooves, the cracking of the branches, the jangling of the harnesses, all added to Desri’s sense of danger and exhilaration.
She wondered – no, she Knew – it would be safer to slow down, that they should slow down before either of them suffered a serious injury. Yet it was as if they were taking part in an unofficial race, one in which great stakes were dependent on the outcome.
The pace increased, the blaring of the hunting horns spurring them on. They briefly crashed against each other, their mounts snorting in shock and irritation, only to painfully rub alongside each other once more.
Letting go of the reins with one hand, the queen reached out towards Desri – and abruptly pushed hard and brutally against her shoulder, sending her spinning out of her saddle.
Desri seemed to briefly whirl around confusedly in the air. She crashed to the ground amongst a clump of tangled ferns and heather that fortunately broke her fall. She rolled off to one side, where she lay dazed and shocked as the queen and even her own horse hurriedly rode on through the trees.
Everything that a moment ago had been rushing past her, everything that had been so noisy – galloping horses, baying dogs, shrieking horns – was suddenly stilled, almost silent. The sounds of the hunt were rapidly fading, replaced by a twittering of birds, the buzz of busy insects.
Desri slammed a hand down hard amongst the grasses, angered and frustrated by her own naivety.
‘Damn! Idiot, idiot!’ she exclaimed, admonishing herself for her own stupidity.
The queen Knew, of course!
Naturally, the queen would have Known of Desri’s plans.
Hadn’t the queen looked deep into her eyes when she’d been a part of the crowd?
How much had she revealed to ‘Her Most Knowing Majesty’ in that brief interchange?
Absolutely everything, probably!
The queen now probably Knew more about her life than even she could accurately remember–
What’s that noise?
Not far from her, coming from just below the earth’s surface, there was a scratching. The sounds of moving soil, lightly tumbling rocks, a shaking of the covering of undergrowth.
A badger, maybe? Or possibly a fox? Digging their way up from out of their den.
The earth shifted, rose in a mound.
There was also an incongruous, hinge-like creaking. The hollow slap of something like a hand smacking against the smoothed wood of a door.
More of the earth rose and shifted, falling back as a trapdoor was flung open.
The head of the beast appeared at the opening.
He chuckled richly as he stared in the direction the hunt had taken. The sounds were now little more than irritating blares of a horn, and even those were swiftly fading.
Desri gasped.
The buisoar’s head whirled. His eyes opened wide in surprise.
‘Desri!’ he said.
>
*
Chapter 13
1,000 Years Earlier
Imp woke, her mind throbbing. She had been confused by the intrusion of a dark, bizarre dream into her real world of a small bedroom, even smaller bed.
No, not a dream: this, too, was reality.
She hadn’t heard them, naturally. They were too expert, too experienced, to make such an elemental mistake as making any sound.
They had even taken the precaution of suffusing the whole house in a Cloud of unKnowing, a means of ensuring no one would be aware of their presence.
And yet she had detected them.
She Knew they were there.
Six of them. Six assassins. Stalking through their shop, their house.
The cost of one assassin was expensive. Six was exorbitant, beyond the reach of any but the very richest people.
Obviously, her father’s success had engendered bitter, wealthy rivals. Perhaps they’d combined resources, taking a loss now to ensure future profits.
Naturally, Imp wasn’t wasting any time simply working out the possible reasons behind the presence of the assassins.
Her mind was split into compartments, each segment concentrating on the task she’d set it. Some, of course, remained in contact with the other sections of her thinking. Others were deliberately closed to all the others. One had already created its own Cloud of unKnowing, throwing out waves of reverberating thought, like the waves of a sea curling back on themselves, negating any sense of specific progress. Another was supposedly Imp still asleep, there to be sensed by any curious assassin, checking on her whereabouts, her state of mind.
Most of her thought was focused on rising quietly, moving stealthily to the door, heading out into the narrow hallway.
There was no point listening for any movement: there wouldn’t be any noises. All she had to sense was the thought processes, the abrupt fluctuations in thought that occur when someone makes a change to their carefully arranged plan: the breaks and points of directional change in an otherwise invisible line.