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This was the moment she could tell him everything, and he’d listen. The voices, the stranger, all of it. He’d listen. She shrugged in turn. “I don’t do well in the dark.”

Footsteps crunched over the lake shore towards them. Deliberately noisy footsteps, unless Alwenna missed her guess. Weaver jumped to his feet, reaching for a sword he wasn’t carrying.

It was Erin. “My lady? Drew’s asking for you.”

Alwenna’s initial suspicion the girl had been spying on them faded as she saw her serious expression. “What? Is he worse?”

“He has a fever, my lady.”

Weaver helped Alwenna stand, lending his arm for support as she hobbled back to their campsite. The servant girl had already run on ahead. The silence stretched between them.

Drew was fretful when they returned to the camp. “My lady, when I saw you gone… I realised Jervin will have had no word from me in days – he’ll be worried.”

“Jervin? I don’t know him, I think.”

“He might be angry with me – he didn’t want me to leave. You will explain it was necessary, won’t you?” He caught hold of her sleeve, his grip strong. “You will tell him how it is, won’t you? He doubted me when I said how important it was. But… Gwydion chose us. I should have told him sooner.”

“Of course, I’ll explain everything. But you’ll see him yourself soon enough.” She tried to smile reassuringly, but was assailed by a terrible sense of dread.

“I… I fear it may be too late for me.”

“Nonsense. You feel bad now, but you’ll soon heal.”

Drew gave her a wistful smile and sank back on the folded surcoat that pillowed his head, closing his eyes. She hadn’t convinced him, she could sense the sombre direction of his thoughts.

Erin wrung out a cloth in cold water and pressed it over his brow. “I beg your pardon for interrupting, m’lady. He woke almost as soon as you left the fireside.”

“There’s no need to apologise. You did the right thing.”

The girl glanced up as Weaver approached, then busied herself mopping Drew’s brow.

“An infusion of these leaves will help bring a fever down.” He handed her a small fabric pouch. “Steep them in boiling water for five minutes. Enough for him to drink and to bathe the wound.”

“Of course, sir.” The girl jumped to her feet and hurried away to stir up the fire and boil water.

“Tell her there’s no need to call me sir, could you?”

“You could tell her yourself,” Alwenna murmured, taking Erin’s place beside Drew. His eyelids flickered as he responded to some dream or vision. A dark one, by the way his features contorted.

“I thought she might take it the wrong way if I said it.”

“How?” Alwenna looked up at Weaver, frowning. “Oh. I see what you mean.” She wrung out the cloth again and replaced it on Drew’s forehead. “I don’t think she’s sweet on you. She just hasn’t worked out where you fit in all this.”

“That makes two of us,” Weaver muttered.

“What do you–’ She didn’t need the answer to that question. “That reminds me. Who’s Jervin?”

Weaver rubbed the back of his neck. “A trader in Brigholm. Likely he’s given Drew work.”

“Work? Drew seemed to think he’d be concerned about him. Isn’t it rather more than that?”

“Well, the lad hasn’t spelled it out, but I’d say you’re right.” Weaver rubbed the back of his neck again.

“I’m glad, if that’s the case. I only hope he makes a good recovery. He needs a healer.”

“We should reach Brigholm tomorrow afternoon.”

“It’s serious, isn’t it?”

“It’s too soon to tell.” Weaver’s expression was sombre by the firelight.

Alwenna wished she could have stayed down by the lake shore. As the fire faded the trees pressed in around her, closer than before.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

They were perhaps half a day’s ride from Brigholm and had halted in woodland to water and rest the horses. Drew’s condition had not improved. The arrow wound was inflamed and the fever left him weak and sometimes rambling. As she helped Erin cleanse and re-dress his wound, Alwenna noticed the jewelled hilt of the knife stuck in his belt. She knew it straight away, even though the stones were dull and lifeless now. Those stones had glinted in Garrad’s hands as he plunged the blade into his own throat. A thousand voices seemed to clamour at once and the scene played out again in her mind: the floor pitching, choking dust rising all around. She snatched up her stick and hobbled away to the riverbank, seating herself on a fallen tree trunk. The chatter of water usually helped to lull the unwanted voices, but it couldn’t drown the tormented memories. Not this time.

She’d not been there long before Weaver joined her. “Something is troubling you… my lady?”

Alwenna noticed the pause, absently. “It’s fair to say many things are troubling me, Weaver.”

“It might help to speak of it.” He seemed to have guessed she’d deflected his question. He sat down by her side, as he once had before, at the Holy Well at Vorrahan. Scant weeks ago, yet it seemed like an age. How far they’d travelled since then, only to return full circle.

Weaver plucked a length of grass and began picking the individual grains from the seed head. He was restless. Alwenna studied his profile. Several days’ growth of beard covered his face, but didn’t disguise the hollowness of his cheeks, a legacy of his sojourn in the dungeon at Highkell. She was distracted briefly by the thought that even the dungeon must have collapsed in the landslide.

The landslide. Her landslide. Had she willed it? She thought back to the moment the floor tilted. Before that. Garrad’s scorn. His hatred of her simply for being born who she was. And in the end, perhaps, she’d earned it.

“Do you believe I did it?” She blurted the question before she changed her mind.

Weaver turned towards her, frowning. “Did what?”

“The landslide. Do you believe I caused it?”

“Ah, that.” He turned his attention back to the seed head in his hands, and stripped the remaining grains with a single swipe of his thumbnail. He twisted the dry stem about his finger before glancing sideways at her. “Would you like me to say it’s impossible, and nothing but superstitious folly?”

Of course she would. She needed that reassurance – something stable in a world that had changed beyond recognition. Weaver believed none of that, after all. If he couldn’t touch it with his own hand, see it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t believe it.

But he hesitated. Too long.

“I see.” He, too, believed she was some kind of monster. She gathered her feet beneath her, ready to stand.

Weaver reached out and set his hand on her forearm. “Wait.”

“What?” She pushed herself to her feet, leaning heavily on the stick.

“Don’t you want to hear my answer?”

“No. I can see I shouldn’t have asked.” She began to hobble back to rejoin the others. Weaver threw the grass stem to the ground and walked alongside her.

“I was about to say there have been plenty of landslides at Highkell in the past. The road has been washed out several times over the years – it’s common knowledge.”

“And the last time was when I arrived there as a child.”

“Nothing more than coincidence. The real wonder is the road didn’t wash out again until now.”

Too little, too late. “They did a lot of work to strengthen it.”

“That might have diverted the water under the tower instead. Water’s powerful stuff.”

He made it sound almost plausible. If his response had been immediate she might have been convinced. She stood still. She had nothing to lose by asking. “Drew’s carrying a dagger, an ornate thing… do you know where he got it?”

“Ornate? He favours plain and lethal, balanced for throwing.”

“There’s one in his belt. With gemstones set in the hilt.”

“I don’t–” Weaver frowned. “Wait – he picked one up from the rubble. Near where we found you. Why?”

“No reason.”

“There’s always a reason.”

“It looks like–” The voices began again, and she felt as if the ground was pitching beneath her, and her nostrils filled with the smell of blood mingled with dust… She clenched the fingers of her left hand until her nails dug deep into her palm. The voices faded. “The one Garrad had. The blade he turned against himself.”

“Garrad was another madman who finally overreached himself.”

She would have loved to clutch at the straw he offered. But in her heart of hearts she knew it was not the case. “According to you the world is filled with madmen. He would have attacked me with that dagger if I hadn’t invoked the Goddess.” She didn’t tell him how the jewels had shone with a strange light – it might, after all, have been an effect of the meagre daylight breaking in through the gaping wall.Or how the wall fell away after the dagger rolled against it from Garrad’s dead hand. How the floor… She stopped her thoughts pursuing that line any further as the voices began to murmur again.

“If Garrad was close by it’s no great surprise Drew found it as we moved the rubble.”

His words made perfect sense, as always, but it was Drew who’d been struck by the archer’s arrow when they were almost out of range. “If it’s the same one, I think it’s an ill-omened thing.”

“What, do you believe Garrad is a great loss to the world? You could as well believe it to be lucky – what if that arrow had been destined to kill Drew outright? It’s a dagger, no more, no less. It’ll be valuable. By all means stow it away in a bag, to be sure he doesn’t injure himself in his fever.”

He was right, of course. And yet… “So many strange things have happened. Do you still insist there’s a simple explanation for all of them?”

Weaver hesitated again. “It was Drew who told us you were trapped. And he led us straight to the spot where you were buried.”

This was not the reassurance she sought. “And?”

Weaver folded his arms. “I have no way to explain that.”

“If you allow that, then you must allow the dagger could be ill-omened. You can’t have it both ways.”

“A blade is just a blade. Good or evil lies in the mind of the one who wields it.”

“What if I told you I saw the gemstones in the hilt gleam when there was no sunlight to brighten them? What then? If the world is filled with madmen, Weaver, what does that make me?”

Weaver’s mouth narrowed to a tight line. “I don’t know, my lady.” He turned and walked away.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

A servant opened the door in answer to Weaver’s peremptory summons. A tall, thin man, his eyes widened as he took in the dishevelled group waiting outside the door. But he confirmed this was indeed Jervin the trader’s house, and he would inform his master of their presence.

“Be quick about it then. Inform your master that Drew is one of our party, and badly injured. I doubt he would want him left waiting on the doorstep a moment longer than necessary.”

The servant ran suspicious eyes over the group again before closing the door. Drew, still slumped in the saddle, was hooded and wrapped in a warm cloak to protect him from the worst ills of his fever. Weaver would have lifted him down while they waited, but the servant’s manner left him doubting they’d be made welcome by Drew’s putative employer.

The sound of hasty footsteps came from within and the door was flung open by the servant, now flushed with embarrassment.

“My master bids you all welcome and please to come in. If some of you would be so kind as to lead your horses round to the stables, the head groom will make all the necessary arrangements.” He stepped back, gesturing them inside. Weaver and Blaine lifted Drew bodily from the saddle and carried him between them up the front steps. Alwenna hobbled behind, leaning heavily on her stick, but carrying a saddlebag slung over her shoulder. The servant cast a doubtful eye over her bedraggled gown, but he bowed and offered to take the bag from her.

She paused to look the servant up and down, raising one eyebrow. “That will not be necessary, thank you.”

Curtis and Erin led the horses round to the stable yard at the back of the house. The servant closed the front door behind the rest of them and they had a moment to take stock of their surroundings before a door burst open at the back of the hallway and a stranger hurried forward.

“My name is Jervin. I welcome you to my home.”

He was tall, of lean build, fair-haired. His eyes moved over them swiftly, coming to rest on Drew, supported as he was between Weaver and Blaine. “I knew this would end badly. What have you done?”

Drew summoned a weak smile. “I… foolishly stopped an arrow. But it’s just a bit of fever. Now I’m home…”

Jervin clapped his hands and half a dozen servants appeared. In an instant he had sent one hurrying to bring the healer, while two more took charge of Drew and carried him through to the room from which Jervin had emerged. He instructed the oldest servant, a man Weaver guessed to be perhaps in his mid-fifties, to arrange hot water for them all.

“You will be my guests tonight, I trust? I can only offer you space in my hall, but the day is well advanced and I am sure you are travel-weary. We will dine at sunset.”

Weaver glanced at Alwenna before speaking. She looked exhausted, but nodded agreement. As well for her that they rest here. “Thank you. We are happy to accept your hospitality. Might I request the healer attends the ladies once he has treated Drew? The road has not been kind to them.” He bowed then. “My name is Weaver.”

Jervin bowed in return. “You are welcome, Weaver. And this, I think, must be the Lady Alwenna?” Weaver was not sure he liked the way Jervin eyed Alwenna. Then again, Drew had galloped off whole to save her and returned broken, so perhaps his attitude was understandable.

She smiled politely – her court smile – and said what was proper. “I cannot thank you enough for sparing Drew to help us. Without him we would have been in a sorry state.”

Jervin bowed politely. Curtis and Erin emerged from another door at the back of the house and Weaver performed the necessary introductions before Jervin, clearly anxious to speak to Drew, left them. A servant led them through a door in one side of the antechamber to the great hall. A fire was already kindled in the grate and more servants were busy filling tubs with hot water in two small rooms off to one side. Whatever trade Jervin was involved in, it had to be a highly profitable one.