‘Please sit down,’ I said, and settled myself on the floor. After a moment they sat, forming a somewhat restless circle. ‘Now tell me.’
‘No time to waste!’
‘Pack up and flee! Come with us!’
I lifted a hand and they fell silent. ‘You said even now he betrays you. Tell me what you meant.’ I did not want to hear it but I must. I prayed that they were wrong.
‘We have seen him, Neryn.’ Silver’s calmly authoritative voice. She sat straight-backed and still, with her filmy cobweb gown lying around her in delicate folds. ‘Up the valley toward the pass, with a troop of his own kind. King’s men. Enforcers. They came through last night and made camp, waiting for him. He walked up this morning to meet them.’
CHAPTER TEN
‘You’re wrong,’ I said. How could I explain without revealing what must remain secret: that Flint was almost certainly some kind of spy, a rebel in the guise of a king’s man? I hesitated, and the silence drew out. I felt the weight of the Good Folk’s gaze. They were judging Flint, judging me, finding both of us wanting. ‘I know he is a good man,’ I added. It was not a strong argument. ‘He would have had his own reasons for talking to the Enforcers. He wouldn’t lead them to me. He has helped me, looked after me in my illness. If he was going to hand me over, he would have done it long ago and saved himself that trouble.’
‘You sound sure,’ said the bird-man. ‘But how can you be sure? What do you know of this fellow save what he himself has told you?’
‘Enforcers are expert liars,’ put in the man in the nutshell cape. ‘They imbibe deception with their mother’s milk.’
If this was not literally true, I recognised the general idea as something I had often considered when weighing up Flint. I tried not to think of that. But doubt had begun to creep into my mind.
‘If you had seen what we saw,’ said the bird-man, ‘you would know we speak the truth. You would not hesitate to pack your bag and flee.’
Now I was cold. My chest felt tight, as if a stone had lodged itself somewhere near my heart. ‘What did you see?’ I made myself ask.
‘They joked and laughed. They shared a meal by the campfire.’
‘That is no more than I would expect. Flint is . . .’ No, I could not tell them outright what I believed about him. This secret was not mine to share. ‘He is their comrade in arms. He is an Enforcer, yes, but . . . he means me no harm. I’m almost sure of it.’ I had thought it probable Flint had gone to meet a fellow Enforcer today to make a report or exchange news. A whole band, I had not expected. ‘He might be putting them off my trail,’ I suggested. Then, as Silver looked at the bird-man, and the twiggy creature looked at the wispy one, and all around me faces showed disbelief, I added, ‘A meeting doesn’t mean a betrayal. He’s my friend.’
A telling silence.
‘He is an Enforcer.’ Silver’s tone was calmly authoritative. ‘He cannot be your friend. After they had shared their food and spoken together, the group struck camp, mounted their horses and headed off. Not back toward Three Hags pass and the road to Summerfort, but on toward Corbie’s Wood. Your friend rode with them. Far from putting them off your trail, Neryn, he is leading them to you. If you do not leave here now you are a prize fool. It makes me doubt, yet again, that Sage’s claims about you can be true.’
Through the dawning realisation of a betrayal, I felt a rising anger. ‘If you doubt me, why are you here?’ I challenged. ‘Why bother coming to warn me? If I’m not a Caller, then it should make no difference to you whom I trust or where I go.’
‘Red Cap brought us the news that Sorrel was lost,’ the bird-man said. ‘Later, Sage came to fetch him. She told us something of your journey. Then the two of them were off again. They didn’t say where they were going and we didn’t ask. As for why we’re here, it was a bird brought me the news that you’d got a new friend, a fellow so hung about with iron that this place reeks of it, even while he’s not here . . .’ He hesitated, glancing at Silver.
‘What came to our ears was cause for concern,’ Silver said. ‘Make no mistake, I still doubt greatly that you are all you claim to be. I still believe Sage to be a muddled old woman. But you stopped to hear the warriors of Hiddenwater. You kept silent before the urisk’s pleas. You stood up to the brollachan. You came on up the valley and word soon spread that something of an unusual nature occurred in the defile. When that news came to our ears, we knew we could no longer afford to dismiss Sage’s claims entirely. We were taken aback to discover that you were keeping company with an Enforcer; shocked that you were sick, weak and confined in this hut with him, at the mercy of his hard fist and his persuasive tongue. While he was here we could not come close to warn you. Now we come almost too late. By allowing this man to befriend you, you have placed yourself in deadly peril.’
‘What have you told him?’ demanded the bird-man. ‘What does he know of your plans?’
‘Not much. I’ve been careful. Anything Flint knows, he knew before he rescued me in the valley.’ Oh gods, was this really true? Had he been lying all the time, lying so skilfully that I had come to believe every word? I remembered a dream in which he had knelt before the king and turned on Keldec a gaze so open that the most doubting person in Alban could not believe him a liar. Just so had he often looked at me; I had thought that gaze a measure of his true worth. The memory of it made my throat tight.
‘Rescued?’ Silver’s tone was all scorn. ‘If you still believe that man is your friend, he has indeed cast a spell over you. He has nursed you back to health for one reason only: because the king wants you whole and well and useful. If a chieftain is offered a prize pig for the midwinter feast, he does not expect it to be all skin and bone, halfway to death already. The warrior has waited until he could be sure you would survive the journey back to Summerfort, and on to the king’s court at Winterfort. He has fattened you up for the kill.’
‘Not for the kill,’ put in the little man in the nutshell cape.
‘It is a manner of speaking,’ Silver said lightly. ‘Neryn, this man has prepared you for the king. That is the plain truth of the matter. The king wants you. In his hands you will be a tool of destruction.’
A silence. I thought I could hear the beating of my own heart, where panic and grief struggled for ascendency. I must be calm. I must think this through. ‘You said before that you still doubted my gift. But you just contradicted yourself. If I’m not a Caller, I can’t become a tool of destruction. If the king wants me, either he’s making a big mistake or I really am what Sage believes me to be.’
‘I’d have thought a Caller might have the wit not to be captured by a king’s man and held by him in a place so full of iron that we could not come close,’ said Silver sharply. ‘If this rescuer of yours had not gone off this morning and taken his weaponry with him, you’d still have been here when dusk fell and he returned with his band to take you away.’
‘She’s right,’ said the bird-man. ‘Lucky for you that he left you alone, and that we were near at hand. Pack up now and come with us. We will lead you forward.’
‘But what if you’re wrong? They might be heading this way for some other reason. It might have nothing to do with me.’ Oh gods, perhaps they were riding for Shadowfell. Maybe this was a mission to attack and destroy. ‘It might be safer for me to keep my promise and stay here in hiding until Flint comes back.’ I heard myself babbling; saw the expressions on their faces. I had been fooled. Tricked. By an expert. And yet I could not quite make myself believe it.
‘Stay here and wait for this man at your peril,’ said Silver. ‘Have you forgotten what happened to your grandmother?’
Now I was as cold as ice. ‘No,’ I whispered.
‘This Flint is the king’s minion. The king would harness your gift and turn it against us. He would use his mind-scrapers to make you obedient to his will. You would call us to you. We would come because we cannot do otherwise. A Caller must be obeyed. Keldec’s henchmen would destroy us.’
I looked around the ci
rcle, taking in their diminutive forms, their small, earnest faces, and perhaps there was a question in my eyes.
‘Not all of our kind are small and weak,’ said the nutshell man. ‘Call now and you bring to your aid those who are close by, those who have chosen to remain in the forests and lochans and rocky reaches of the highlands. Call when you have learned more, and you bring out larger beings, a trow maybe, or a water horse. Call when your gift is stronger still, and you call a power from the ancient heart of Alban.’
‘You cannot be speaking of the Guardians.’
‘Aye, the Big Ones,’ said a dozen small voices.
‘It is said in the lore,’ added Silver in explanation, ‘that a Caller proven can summon even them.’
‘But they were immensely powerful, almost like gods,’ I protested. ‘And besides, from what I heard, they are long gone from Alban.’ Gone deep down, that was what Hollow had said.
‘Aye, they went deep,’ said the bird-man. ‘But not so deep a Caller can’t wake them and bring them back. Or so the tales tell us.’
That was true. In the story Hollow had told me about Corcan and the war with the Sea Folk, he’d mentioned one of the Guardians, the Lord of the North. I did not remember Hollow saying this grandly named being had been summoned by Corcan, only that perhaps he’d been there and perhaps not. It was an old tale; there was no telling how much of it was true.
‘Daw speaks the truth,’ Silver said, nodding toward the bird-man, and thereby letting me know his name. ‘With the Big Ones at his command, this king of yours would have greater power than any man has enjoyed since the time of the oldest tales.’ Silver folded her graceful hands on her knee, turning her wide, lovely eyes on me. ‘Or so he imagines. That is why the warrior has not harmed you, Neryn. That is why he took time to win your trust. That is why he nursed you to health, bidding his fellow Enforcers keep their distance until you were ready for handing over. That time has come. In the king’s hands, your gift will be turned to great evil. Used for his purposes, you could be the bane of all Alban.’
‘Spoken with rare tact,’ put in Daw dryly. ‘We should be helping the lassie get away, not frightening her with tales of ill doing. Come on now, you pack her bag. You fetch her shoes. And you, fill up a water skin from the jug there and let’s be on our way. Lassie, you’ll need your warm cloak.’
I got to my feet. I would not cry. I would not shed one more tear. Flint. Flint, an enemy. Every gentle touch, every kind word had been a lie. I made myself walk to the peg, take the cloak, wrap it around my shoulders. Pride said I should leave it behind; common sense told me I needed its warmth for the journey to come.
I unbolted the door and opened it, feeling the cold air on my skin. Despite everything, the hut felt like home. It felt like a haven. I could not make myself take the first step away from its warmth and light.
A pattering of feet around me; the brushing of several small bodies against me. ‘Time to go,’ someone said.
Still I hesitated. Each time the Good Folk had offered to walk with me in the past, I had said no, for the sake of their safety and mine. This time felt different. Flint’s betrayal had laid a weight of sorrow on me, and I knew that even after all his work to get me well, I was not fully recovered from my long illness. Attempting to reach Shadowfell alone might stretch me to breaking point. If I could not go on, either I would die of cold or the Enforcers would find me.
‘You understand the risk you take if you walk with me?’ I asked quietly. I wanted them to come; I wanted their arguments and their gruff kindness and their little warm presences. If they were with me, perhaps I would not think of Flint.
‘We weren’t born yesterday, lassie,’ said Daw. ‘Now, which is it to be? Go, or stand on the doorstep until king’s men come?’
I closed the door behind me and walked away. The fire would die down. The supper would congeal in the pot. The lamp would run out of oil. Flint would come home to a cold, dark house. Home. To think of it that way was foolish beyond belief. Had my dreams turned me soft, making me long for a friend and a hearth fire more than I longed for justice and a way forward? I would not think of Flint. I would not think of him going down the valley to meet his cronies, and sharing a meal by the fire, and telling them how clever he’d been to lull me into trusting him. I would not think of him leading them back to fetch me while I made a fool of myself tidying up and preparing a meal for him. I would think only of setting one foot in front of the other and moving on.
We reached the band of woodland above the hut, passed quietly under the trees, and moved onto the track Flint had spoken of. My companions maintained a steady pace. As for me, fear was a sharp whip to keep me moving. If the Enforcers were on horseback, they could be here long before nightfall. Flint . . . I set my jaw tight, narrowed my eyes and walked on. Gods, it was cold out here. The ridge above us seemed impossibly high, the pathway that snaked up onto the fells dauntingly steep. How far was it to Lone Tarn? I thought I remembered the place, though Farral and I had given it our own name. We had skipped stones over the water. We had challenged each other to climb the rocks and jump down from ever-higher ledges. It seemed a very long time ago.
We climbed up over the fells. Here we were exposed to view. The valley lay below us, the Rush a strip of sullen grey under a sky of gathering cloud. There was Corbie’s Wood by the river, a black stain in its circle of leafless trees. Goodbye, I thought. Goodbye again. It was oddly hard to breathe.
I wondered which way Flint would think I had gone. He had told me he would take me this way, the more covert way, where we would be concealed from watchers in the valley once we crested this hill. But perhaps he’d expect me to go the other way, now that I had left him behind. Down into the valley, along past Corbie’s Wood, and then from farm to farm until I caught sight of Giant’s Fist. My steps faltered. I looked back down the hill and my companions halted in their line. The two who walked last held small boughs of pine, thick with needles. With these they swept the path behind them, erasing our footprints.
We had not come far. The roof of the hut could be seen below the little wood, nestled under its protecting rocks, with the bare birches standing guard. A thin thread of smoke arose from my fire. A group of rooks flew overhead and settled in the trees, cawing.
‘Move on,’ said Daw. ‘No time to stop and look. They will come.’
The cold air was hurting my chest. ‘Wait a moment,’ I said. I took off bag and cloak, then wrapped my shawl around my head and over my mouth and nose before putting the cloak back on. When I reached for the bag, I found that a pair of small beings was carrying it between them.
‘Still not yourself,’ observed Silver, scrutinising me. ‘You cannot walk far.’
‘I’ll walk as far as I have to.’
‘Hmmm.’ The tone was of extreme doubt. ‘Come on, then.’
The procession wound on across the fells. The track soon dwindled to a pebbly goat path. Above us the clouds darkened, their bellies heavy with rain. I tried not to think of my lonely, cold trip up the lochs. I was with friends. It was only a few days’ walk to Shadowfell. I could do this.
On the crest of the hill we crouched down behind a row of jagged rocks – or I crouched down, as the tallest of my companions was concealed even when standing. I looked back down the valley and saw, in the direction of Three Hags pass, a distant smudge on the road. Perhaps riders. Perhaps merely a herd of goats. It was too soon, surely, for Flint and his cronies to be in sight.
‘Come close,’ whispered Silver. The Good Folk bunched up tighter, so we were in a huddle behind the rocks.
‘If that’s the king’s men,’ said Daw, ‘they’ll be straight up to your wee house, and on after us.’
‘It’s a shame you cannot call something larger and stronger,’ observed a dog-like creature. ‘If you could bring out a giant, maybe, or a big monster of some sort, you could bid it carry you all the way to where you’re headed. With only us to aid you, you’ll be taken in a trice.’
‘Aye,’ sa
id a little man in a yellow scarf. ‘It’s a sad thing if you’re lost simply for want of time.’
I cleared my throat. ‘I did call a stanie mon,’ I said. ‘At least, I think I did. In the narrow part of the valley, coming up. The Enforcers would have taken me, but I . . . well, I spoke a verse, and the rocks moved over to hide me. And later, when it was safe, they let me go.’
Round eyes gazed at me.
‘She callit a stanie mon!’ someone muttered. A murmured argument broke out all around me. ‘That’s six of seven!’ ‘No, it isna!’ ‘Which one’s it supposed to be, then?’ ‘The one about bein’ brave, ye gomerel!’ ‘Stirrin’ up a big lump o’rock, that’s no’ brave, it’s foolish!’ ‘No, it isna!’
‘We heard that something out of the ordinary had taken place,’ said Silver, ignoring them completely. Her tone was as assured as ever, but the look in her eyes had changed. Was there now a reluctant respect there? ‘We had not realised it was . . . quite so unusual. This means you can call help. The kind of help that’ll make your journey a great deal easier. A strong creature to bear you along and frighten off your enemies. Did that not occur to you?’
There was a little war going on inside me. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ I made myself say, though the prospect tempted me. ‘I don’t know how to use my gift wisely yet. I was almost entombed in the rocks when I called the stanie mon. Besides, if something as big as that came out to carry me, we’d be seen for miles around.’
This was greeted with murmurs and nods, to my surprise.
‘She’s right,’ someone said. ‘A stanie mon might get a prize for strength or endurance. Not for a running race. And he couldn’t blend, not if he was carrying a lassie. Once, maybe. Not over and over.’
‘What about a loch beastie, then?’
‘A loch beastie? What are you thinking, laddie? We’re not at Deepwater now. There’s one wee tarn up yonder. Then nothing until she gets to the Folds. Any beasties up here will be like tadpoles with wee fangs on them.’