Their eyes were full of sadness.
‘We’re all bairns of Alban,’ said Sorrel eventually. ‘We live in the same world as you, lassie. The world of the king’s brutes, the world of the poxy mind-scrapers with their fell tricks. As for that other place, aye, it’s real. It’s a hidey-hole. There’s more than a few of our kind went away there when they saw your king’s mischief at work. Sorrel and Red Cap and I, we could do the same. But we’re small folk. Most times, we pass without notice.’
A shiver went through me, not so much cold as foreboding. ‘I’d best move on as soon as I can, then. Being with me puts you in danger.’
‘Because of your gift, aye.’
‘That’s what keeps me running. We were warned long ago, my father and I, that the Enforcers might be looking for me. So we learned to lose ourselves in the woods or in the mountains. We learned to hide, to be invisible, as far as an ordinary man or woman can be. A few times they nearly caught up with me.’
‘So we’ve heard,’ Sage said. ‘Makes a body wonder what gift it might be that they’re so interested in. Not that the Cull doesn’t stamp hard enough on anyone with a spark of canny knowledge, but this . . . it’s different.’
If she’d been a human woman, I’d never have spoken of this. But I was beginning to think Sage could be a friend. And it seemed she knew a lot about me already, without ever being told. ‘My gift is to be able to see your kind, even when you are merged into rocks or bushes or water. I know most people can’t see you unless you choose to come out and show yourselves. It’s a simple enough gift.’
‘Simple, that’s what you think?’ Sage lifted her brows at me.
‘I don’t see how it could be dangerous. I don’t understand why the Enforcers would especially want to find me.’ I remembered the day we had heard they might be looking for me. Shocking news, that had been, sickening, fearful news. But Father and I had been numb from our losses, and we had simply thanked our informant for the whispered warning and slipped away. ‘They may still be looking for me, so I must keep moving on. But you’re right, it would be foolish to rush out there without a plan. If you think my things will dry . . .’ I eyed the tiny fire.
‘They can’t get any wetter,’ observed Sage. ‘Spread yon big cloakie over the rock, hook the shawl on a branch, and sit you down a while longer. Then we’ll go higher and take a look.’
‘How did you come by that?’ Sorrel asked, looking at the cloak.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Doesn’t seem quite right. Something about it.’
‘It’s a man’s cloak. A stranger gave it to me, back in Darkwater.’
‘Oh, aye.’ That was all the creature said, but I saw his eyes move to the dark swathe of wool from time to time, as if trying to work out what it meant.
They had questions, then, and I offered answers where I could. I told them about the urisk, and how I had made myself lie still as a log on the ground until the sun had lightened the darkness of the forest. I told them how all my sorrows had come back to me, hearing that mournful voice, and how I had made myself remember something good, so I would not give in to its pleading. I did not speak of Flint. I did not mention Shadowfell.
When my account was finished, my three listeners exchanged looks that were heavy with meaning. Sage held up seven fingers; Sorrel held up two; Red Cap nodded. But when I asked them what this signified, they busied themselves with tending to their fire and had nothing to say.
In time the rain ceased, patches of clear sky appeared, and watery sunlight filtered down between the branches of the oaks, where leaves clung in last defiance of the turning season. My clothing dried – perhaps I should not have been surprised that my companions’ little fire did the job so well. At one point Sage went off into the woods, returning some time later with a bunch of the herbs that had eluded me. Red Cap brewed a tea to soothe my aching throat.
‘You’ll not get far with that cough,’ Sage observed, watching me drink the draught. ‘If you can’t keep quiet, how can you hide from folk who mean you harm?’
‘I’ll keep away from the farms until my cough is gone.’
‘There’s not a lot of eatables to be gleaned up the Rush Valley,’ Sorrel said.
‘I’ll be all right for a while. You’ve fed me well today.’
Plain on their faces was the conviction that I would be far from all right, but nobody said a word.
‘I can fend for myself,’ I said firmly. ‘You said we could go up and take a look out over the valley. Can we do that now?’
‘Aye, we will.’
They led me to a vantage point shielded by great stones. From here I could look down over the broad valley of the Rush. The river slowed its breakneck pace on this last part of its course, dividing into three separate streams that flowed into Deepwater. And there, on the far side of those streams, close by the loch shore, was Summerfort: a formidable fortress of stone. A wall enclosed both the keep and various other buildings, sufficient to house a large contingent of warriors as well as all the folk required to maintain a royal household over the summer. There was no banner flying atop the keep. I breathed more easily for that, for it meant the king was not in residence.
When we had first left our home village, or what was left of it, Father and I had fled down the valley of the Rush, up into these woods and away. I had not expected to pass this way again. Stunned by shock and grief, I had thought only of running, hiding, putting as many miles between myself and Corbie’s Wood as I could. When Father and I had looked down on Summerfort, warriors had been performing complicated manoeuvres on horseback, moving across the expanse of hard-packed earth that formed the keep’s practice ground.
‘Getting ready for the Gathering,’ Father had muttered. ‘Even that, Keldec’s made his own. Set his stamp on the very heart of us. Celebrations? Games? It’s all blood and fear now, and the sort of games no man would play if he had any choice. Come, Neryn, let’s walk on.’ We had passed by like a pair of ghosts, silent and wary. I had not asked for further details and Father had not offered them.
Well, Father was gone now, and here I was, on a journey I had never thought to make. There would be no slipping by Summerfort under cover. Some time in the last three years, the area all around the fortress walls had been completely cleared of trees. Where beech and birch had stood, softening the grim stone, there remained nothing but a scattering of stumps. One or two had sprouted hopeful clusters of new leaves, which now shrivelled under autumn’s cold fingers.
‘Not a lot of cover in those bittie trees,’ put in Sorrel helpfully. ‘Besides, the water’s up. No getting over the ford, not on foot. You’ll have to cross the king’s bridge up there.’
It was true. The rain had swollen the Rush. Here and there the flow had broken the banks, and the three streams looked both broad and deep. To attempt to wade across would, at the very least, make me a target for the sentries atop the Summerfort tower. More likely I would be swept downstream and drowned. From where we stood we could not see the king’s bridge, but I knew it was always guarded. When Father and I had come down the valley, the sentries had waved us across. That seemed altogether remarkable to me now, though at the time I had been too wretched to think much of it. Perhaps Father and I had looked the way we’d felt: powerless, incapable, numb with grief. No threat.
‘Best have a story ready,’ suggested Sage, ‘and brazen it out. Walk on the track, hold your head up, and when you get to the bridge, don’t let on what you’re thinking. It’ll be risky, mind.’
‘Risky, aye,’ put in Red Cap. ‘But not as risky as trying to slip by unseen and being spotted. If king’s men catch you, it’s all up.’
‘Is there no other way across the river?’
My companions exchanged a look, but did not speak.
‘Another bridge, higher up? A different path that will lead me to the Three Hags?’
Sorrel cleared his throat. ‘There might be.’
‘How do I reach it?’ What was it they were not saying?
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‘You’d go up this side of the Rush, half a day’s walking,’ Sorrel said. ‘There’s a track. Folk live up that way, here and there.’
‘Where does the track lead?’ I asked, hearing the reservation in Sorrel’s tone. Sage’s eyes were troubled. Red Cap was scratching his furry head, as if wondering whether I was crazy. Clearly there was a reason why this way had not been mentioned earlier.
‘Nowhere,’ Sage said flatly. ‘You wouldn’t be wanting to go that way. Folk don’t cross the Rush up there. Your kind of folk, I mean.’
‘But there is a bridge?’
‘Oh, aye. If you can call it that.’ There was a weighty pause, then Sage added, ‘Do what you think best, lassie. You can go by the big track and hope nobody stops you. Or you can take the wee bittie path and hope it’s not a foolish risk.’
‘Which way would you go?’
‘Ah,’ said Sage. ‘It’s not for me to choose.’
Time was passing. If I did not move on soon, I could be stuck out in the open at nightfall. I must get past the farms by dusk. ‘I’m not asking you to choose, I’m asking for your advice!’ I heard how sharp that sounded. ‘Please,’ I added more softly.
‘It’s your own path that lies before you,’ Sage said. There was a weariness in her tone. ‘You’ll make your own choices, for good or ill.’
‘If you wanted my advice,’ put in Sorrel, ‘I’d bid you take the three of us along with you. Any path’s easier when you’re not on your own.’
Tears welled in my eyes, and I blinked them away. ‘You mustn’t leave the safety of these woods. Where I’m going there’s scant cover, it’s all rocks and open hillsides. It’s cold and bare. And while I might pass for an ordinary traveller, the first sight of you would tell any sentry that you’re . . . Other.’
The three of them hooted with laughter.
‘Shh!’ I hissed. Gods, they’d alert every sentry in the valley at this rate.
‘You forget,’ Sage said, ‘we have the knack of blending. An ordinary man might look at us and see only stones or water or leaves in the sunlight. If we couldn’t blend, we wouldn’t have been in Alban since long before your grandmother’s great-grandmother was a bairnie in the cradle.’
There was no disputing this. Most men and women in Alban had never seen one of the Good Folk. Most people were not like me. ‘Sometimes I think my gift is a curse,’ I murmured. ‘All it seems to do is bring down trouble. Please don’t come any further up the valley – being with me must put you in danger.’
‘True, no doubt,’ said Sage. ‘We know you’re set on going forward alone, and perhaps that’s the way it has to be. Go safely, and find what you’re searching for.’
They were fading before my eyes, blending into the shadowy hues of the forest.
‘Goodbye,’ I said, shouldering my bag. ‘Thank you for your kindness.’ But they were already gone.
I chose the path on the near side of the Rush. The smaller bridge, the one the Good Folk had not seemed to want to talk about, was a lesser terror than the king’s bridge with its guards, and this track a more likely prospect than the broader way on which I would be visible to all who rode by. The dark grey of Flint’s cloak should blend well with the stony terrain beyond the forest fringe. Unlike the other path, this one lay somewhat above the valley floor, following the natural curves of the hillside. That would allow partial concealment from watching eyes down below. Of course, if sentries were posted to observe comings and goings in the Rush Valley, this would be a good position for one. I must be prepared for anything.
Smoke was rising from hearth fires somewhere up ahead. Perched in unlikely spots on the rocky hillside were meagre dwellings, low to the ground as if hunkered down against wind and rain. They looked smaller and poorer than the farmsteads dotted across the valley floor. Down there I could see cattle grazing in walled fields, and well-tended vegetable patches. People, too: a girl herding sheep with two dogs working to her whistled commands; a man with a cart piled high with bulging sacks, heading back toward Summerfort. I tried to be a shadow, a nothing, a mere alteration in the colour of the rocks. Don’t see me, I willed them.
I walked for some time, passing one modest habitation after another, dodging behind a shed when a woman came out to throw scraps for a flock of scrawny chickens, hiding between rocks when a man rode by on a stocky farm horse, with a child perched in front of him. I waited until he was out of sight, then crept out and went forward again. I saw the king’s bridge in the valley below me: guards at either end and a trickle of folk crossing over.
Later, a band of Enforcers appeared below me, moving down the valley toward Summerfort. They rode in a precise formation of pairs, and I crouched behind a tumbledown outhouse until they had passed, fearful that one of them might glance up and spot me. Thank the gods I had not chosen to go that way. They carried the shadow with them, those men. Just so had they departed my home village three years ago, a tidy, orderly group, turning their backs on the chaos they had wrought. Turning their backs on the bones and ash, the blood, the twisted bodies and tangled minds that were all that was left of a place where folk had lived and worked and raised their families for countless years. It was because of her that they did it, because of Grandmother and her canny gift. So I had hidden, and watched, and witnessed the unspeakable. If I was caught today or tomorrow or another day, if I came face to face with an Enforcer, I must lock that memory away so tightly that no trace of it could show in my eyes. I must shut it in so deep that no vestige of it could tremble in my voice. I must lie as I had never lied before.
I had a story ready. I was an orphan, my fisherman father having drowned at sea not long ago. I was making my way to the home of my only remaining kinsfolk, who lived in a remote settlement in the north. My name was Calla, and the name of the place was Stonewater.
It was not so far from the truth, I thought as I walked on. Our village had been in the north, though not so far north as Shadowfell. But when we lost everything, Father and I had turned our backs on our shattered home. As for the time before the Enforcers came to our village, it seemed far away now, like a lovely dream or a wonderful bedtime story. I imagined Mother sitting beside my bed, humming an old tune as I fell asleep. Her hair bright in the lamplight, her eyes a tranquil blue, her face . . . I could not remember her face. Father had told me I looked like her, but the wan, gaunt features I sometimes glimpsed in the water as I bent to drink surely bore little resemblance to hers. If I had no clear vision of her, I did remember that she was a happy person, given to smiles and song. I could almost feel glad that she was gone, for the Alban of now was not the peaceable land of my early childhood, and if she had survived, she might have found little cause for joy.
My thoughts on Mother and what might have been, I rounded a corner and walked straight into a man coming the other way.
CHAPTER FIVE
He grabbed me, shouting – not words, only an agitated babble. His grip was strong as iron.
‘Let me go!’ I gasped. ‘Please.’
My captor turned me and pinned me against his chest, facing forward. His strange flat voice kept up its flow of sounds, as if he was trying to speak but could not make himself understood. Through my shock and fear, memory rose in me.
‘It’s all right,’ I said shakily, even as the man’s hands bit into my arms and his voice rose in a harsh wail of agitation. I struggled for a reassuring tone, the kind I might use to pacify an overwrought child. ‘I won’t harm you. I won’t harm anyone here. Please let go of me.’
A new stream of sounds issued from him, louder, wilder. Holding me as a toddler might a ragdoll, he started walking along the track. My heart pounded. I fought for breath. His arm had slipped up around my neck, and with each step he took, my feet left the ground. We were heading toward a cottage tucked into a pocket of flat land beside the path. Several other dwellings were strung out along the way ahead, and as the man continued to shout his nonsense, I saw a shutter open here, a door there, only a crack, as if folk wa
nted to know what was happening but were not prepared to come out and look. I did not call for help; could not, for I was half-strangled. My captor manhandled me up to the door of the cottage.
‘Mawa?’ he called. ‘Mawa, wha’oo? Fa gar! Gar!’ He crashed his shoulder against the door, making it shiver in its frame. The force of the blow jarred my whole body, making my head spin. Spots appeared before my eyes.
‘Mawa!’ he shouted. I heard anger and fear in his rough voice as he drew a great breath, readying himself for another assault on the door. Before he could throw himself at it, there was a sound of running footsteps from the path alongside the cottage, and a woman came into view, white-faced, holding up her skirt for speed.
‘Garret, no!’ she cried out. ‘Let her go! Friend, Garret, the lady is a friend.’
‘Gar!’ he said again, but his arms had slackened their death grip on me, and his voice was quieter. Girl. Found girl. Perhaps all his words made sense, if only one took the time to interpret them. Oh gods, I hoped I was wrong about him.
‘You can let go of her, Garret. She won’t hurt me.’
‘Huur . . .’ He had picked up only one word of the woman’s speech.
‘I won’t hurt her,’ I said, my voice coming out as a rasping croak. ‘And I won’t hurt you. Let me go. Please.’
The woman was beside us now, easing his hands off me, gazing up into his face, making sure he was listening. ‘Friend. No hurt. Garret, inside now.’ She opened the door, which was not bolted, and shepherded him in, then stood on the threshold glancing up the track to the doors and shutters from behind which her neighbours were no doubt watching everything.
‘I’d best go on,’ I muttered. ‘I’ll get you in trouble.’ A bout of coughing shook me.
‘Inside.’ She reached out and took my wrist, drawing me within the house and shutting the door firmly behind us. ‘I’m sorry. Did my husband hurt you?’
I must have gaped at that, for she drew her shawl around her and lifted her chin as if challenging me to make comment. She was young, perhaps not much older than I was, but her face was that of a person carrying a heavy burden.