Arrow (Knife) (2 page)

‘Mallow’s attitude is the least of our concerns,’ Queen Valerian said. ‘What we need now is to determine our next course of action. Once we have finished arming and preparing the Oak against attack, what then? Garan, your thoughts?’

‘As long as the Empress is still mustering her forces,’ Garan said, ‘the Stone of Naming is our best weapon against her. I believe we should send emissaries to all the Wylds within flying distance, and free as many of the Empress’s subjects as we can.’

‘I agree, but we will have to move carefully,’ said Rob. ‘I can tell you where most of the Wylds are in this part of England, but I also know that the Empress has spies and lieutenants in every one of them. Our emissaries will have to be not only persuasive, but also discreet. And they will need to be skilled in self-defence, or the Stone may be taken from us before we can use it.’

‘Any of my people would be capable,’ replied Garan. ‘But give me a little time, and I will find you the best. There is only one thing I ask: that when we offer the Stone to those enslaved by the Empress, we do so without condition. The gift of Rhys the Deep cannot be bought or bargained for, and it was his teaching that faeries should be generous with one another.’

‘Maybe that works in those Green Isles of yours,’ Thorn said. ‘But here, we bargain. And there’s nothing dishonourable about that. Every faery knows that if you want something valuable, you have to be prepared to give something equally valuable in return. Otherwise, what’s to keep us from being cheated?’

‘Besides,’ Rob added, ‘you gave up the right to control the Stone of Naming when you gave it away to Linden. We owe you a great debt, but—’

‘I gave Linden the Stone,’ Garan said, ‘because I knew that she had been raised among humans as well as faeries, and so would appreciate the nature of a gift
.
And I think that Timothy knows that some things are too precious
not
to be given away.’

Timothy did, but he could also see why Rob and Thorn were concerned. He was just about to say so when Valerian spoke:

‘This is too deep a matter to be settled by debate. As your Queen, and the only one here who is gifted with the Sight, the final decision about how to use the Stone, and the consequences of that decision, should be mine.’ Her searching grey eyes moved from Thorn to Rob, and finally to Garan. ‘Will you allow me to bear this burden?’

It was hard to argue when she put it like that. After a brief hesitation, all the commanders nodded.

‘But if we do not send out the Stone quickly,’ said Rob, ‘we may not have the chance to use it at all. It is not in the Empress’s nature to be indecisive, or over-cautious. As soon as she is able, she will strike.’

Garan nodded. ‘Then we must be sure the Oakenwyld is warded on every side, and watched by night and day. Our resistance may be feeble, but at least the Empress will not catch us unawares.’

‘Well, aren’t you two cheerful,’ said Thorn. ‘Nice to know my fellow commanders take such a positive view of our chances. Wither and gall!’ She shoved her chair back from the table and stood, glowering. ‘Even without her magic – even
human –
Knife is worth ten of you. She’d take on the Empress single-handed if she had to, and not waste a moment complaining about it.’ Then she stomped out.

‘It appears,’ said Valerian, ‘that our discussion has come to an end.’ But she did not seem distressed by Thorn’s reaction. Timothy suspected that the Queen also regretted that Peri could not lead the faeries into battle, but they all knew that would never work. The Oakenfolk were still uneasy with the choice Peri had made by becoming human to marry Paul, and few of them would be willing to follow her orders.

The Queen dismissed the council, and they all headed off to their various duties. But as Rob passed by Linden, he whispered something in her ear that made her blush and smile. And when Timothy glanced at Garan, the blonde faery’s brow was furrowed, as though something troubled him.

‘What is it?’ Timothy asked, when the others had gone.

‘It may be folly even to say it,’ replied Garan, ‘for it is no business of mine. Yet I cannot help wondering why Rob takes such an interest in Linden. Not that she is unworthy of his notice,’ he added hastily, ‘but they are so different.’

‘I asked him that myself, only a couple of days ago. He says that he finds her lack of cynicism refreshing. But if you’re worried about his intentions, I wouldn’t worry too much.’

‘Why is that?’ asked Garan.

‘Because,’ said Timothy, ‘Linden is Knife’s foster-daughter, and if Rob so much as hurts her feelings, then Knife will skin him and leave him for the crows.’

Garan’s mouth curled in a reluctant smile, and too late Timothy remembered that the Children of Rhys had a hard time seeing humour in violence. He was about to apologise when Garan said, ‘It is not merely concern for Linden that moves me, I admit. It is that when I look at her and Rob, I am reminded of some things I left behind, when I came here from the Green Isles. Things I did not even realise I would miss, until they were gone.’

Timothy was about to say
I know what you mean
, but he swallowed the words. Yes, he missed his home in Uganda, where his parents still lived as missionaries – but at least there was a chance that he could go back there some day. Garan and his fellow exiles didn’t have that option. By helping the Oakenfolk against their Elders’ will, they had cut themselves off from their homeland and people forever.

It was probably better just to change the subject. ‘That reminds me,’ Timothy said. ‘We’ve all been talking about using the Stone of Naming to free the Empress’s slaves, but your people weren’t exactly happy when they found out you’d taken it. What are we going to do if they decide they want it back?’

‘The Children of Rhys will not come after the Stone,’ said Garan. ‘To journey so far onto the mainland would expose them to all the violence and corruption they have pledged themselves to avoid. Besides, my people are sworn to peace, and pursuing the Stone would bring them into conflict with us, if not with the Empress as well. Naturally they grieve the loss of such a precious artefact, but to fight us for it …’ He shook his head.

Timothy knew he ought to be relieved. But with an evil faery Empress plotting his death and the deaths of all his friends, it was hard to be happy about anything. And if they ever lost the Stone of Naming…well, all of them might as well just give up, because there was no way they could win this war without it.

‘I hope you’re right,’ he said.

‘Rhosmari! Look what we found!’

Rhosmari daughter of Celyn stood on the front steps of the House of Learning, smiling as the faery children pelted over the grass towards her. The sea wind blew loose spirals of hair about her face, and automatically she undid the clasp at the nape of her neck and twisted the clove-coloured strands back into submission again.

She had only just finished when her students came panting up the steps and crowded around her, pressing shells and bits of sea-glass into her hands for her inspection. Fioled trailed after them, dishevelled and looking exhausted. ‘Your turn,’ she said.

‘Come inside,’ Rhosmari told the children. ‘It’s time for a story.’

Soon they were all settled in the Teaching Room, the students wriggling like seal pups on the carpet by her feet while Fioled arranged their newly gathered treasures on the shelves behind them. ‘I have exciting news to tell you,’ she whispered to Rhosmari, ‘but it can wait.’

Rhosmari folded her hands together, assuming her most scholarly posture. ‘Today,’ she told her students, ‘we are going to learn about the Rhysian Games, and how they came to be. None of you are old enough to compete in them yet, but—’ A small hand went up, surprising her; it was not like any of the children to interrupt. ‘Yes, Bleddyn?’

‘Did Garan really steal the Stone of Naming and give it away to strangers?’

For a moment she was speechless at the question. She glanced back at Fioled, but the other girl was absorbed in picking seaweed off a piece of driftwood and did not meet her gaze.

‘Yes,’ said Rhosmari at last. ‘But we aren’t here to talk about that right now—’

‘My father said he and the others left to join a war,’ said another boy. But before Rhosmari could intervene, the girl next to him demanded, ‘What’s
war
?’

It was the wrong time to be discussing this, thought Rhosmari helplessly. They were too young for such dark subjects. But how could she blame them for being curious about what Garan had done, when half the population of the Green Isles was talking about it?

‘It’s when faeries disagree so strongly, they take up weapons against each other,’ she said.

‘Like in the Games?’ asked the smallest of the girls, her nose wrinkled in confusion.

‘No, Merywen, not for sport.’ Rhosmari could hear the strain in her own voice now; it was an effort to keep it level. ‘To hurt, and to – to kill.’

‘Are Garan and the others going to be killed?’

Very likely
, thought Rhosmari, but she could not bring herself to say it. ‘I hope not.’

‘Will we ever see them again?’

The soft voice belonged to Cudyll, the youngest of Garan’s cousins. She wanted to change the subject, but this child at least deserved an answer. ‘If Garan repents and brings back the Stone before anyone is hurt,’ she told him, ‘then the Elders may give him another chance.’

What she did not add was that if Garan or any of his men had shed blood, no penance would be enough: they would be barred from the Green Isles forever. And that after the harsh things he had said to the Elders, he might as well have committed murder in their eyes.

‘But what if we don’t get back the Stone? Will other faeries be able to see our islands? Will they come here and try to fight us too?’ The questions flew at her from every side, so quickly that she could not tell which of the children had spoken. Had they been plaguing Fioled like this all morning? No wonder she looked tired.

‘No,’ said Rhosmari with all the firmness she could muster, ‘the
Gwerdonnau Llion
is still safe. The Stone’s power is only to give new names to faeries who have had theirs taken away, and no one is going to do that to us. The Elders keep watch over our people, and maintain the wards that protect us. And you all know about the herb we call Rhys’s Blessing, which keeps our islands invisible to strangers. The Stone is very precious and we are sorry to lose it, but no enemy can hurt us here.’ She regarded them levelly. ‘Now, are you ready to get back to our lesson?’

The children nodded, but they did not look satisfied. And though they stayed quiet after that, Rhosmari could tell that they were not really paying attention to her stories about the Rhysian Games. At last she gave up and sent them outside to play.

As their chattering voices faded, the House of Learning settled back into its usual tranquility. Even Fioled had disappeared for the moment, and Rhosmari was alone in her favourite place: a low-ceilinged rectangle of weathered beams and plastered stone, open windows brimming with sunlight, curtains rippling in the ocean breeze. All around her, on shelves and pedestals, were the marvellous objects that the Children of Rhys had brought back from their visits to the human world: a jellyfish sculpted from iridescent glass, a slim book of poetry bound in tooled leather, a silken scarf dyed all the colours of flame. And on the far wall, just beside the doorway to the Archive, hung a harp, light and elegant as a gull’s wing.

Her father had brought back that harp from Milford Haven when Rhosmari was a small child, and for a few glorious hours he had remembered how to play it. She had sat beside him all the while, entranced by the notes rippling like magic from her father’s fingertips – and when the music ended, she had wept. It seemed so cruel to her then that faeries had no creativity of their own, and that the talents they absorbed from their visits to the human world could not last once they returned to the Green Isles. But her father had cupped her chin in his hand and brushed away her tears, and told her that he had put all those songs into a loreseed for her, so she could listen to them again as often as she liked…

The floorboards creaked behind her, and Rhosmari turned. Fioled had come back, in fresh clothes and hair still damp from her bath. ‘Are you all right?’ the other girl asked. ‘That can’t have been easy for you.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Rhosmari. ‘But if the children are talking like this, then their parents must be as well. Have our people become so ignorant about what the Stone of Naming is? Do they really think we’re in danger without it?’

‘I don’t know.’ Fioled wrung out the end of one pale braid and tossed it back over her shoulder. ‘But everyone’s been shaken up by what Garan did. Taking the Stone was bad enough, but flying off to the mainland and taking half the single males in the
Gwerdonnau Llion
with him? It’s the biggest shock we’ve had since…’

She stopped before she could say the words, but to Rhosmari she might as well have shouted them.
Since your father died
.

‘So of course people are upset,’ Fioled continued, reddening a little, ‘and afraid that something even worse is going to happen next. That’s only natural. What I don’t understand—’ she gave Rhosmari a sidelong look— ‘is how you can be so calm about it. Especially after what Garan did to you.’

Rhosmari pressed her lips together in annoyance. Why did everyone want to talk about that? He was gone, and there was nothing she could do about it. ‘You said you have exciting news?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes!’ Fioled was instantly transfigured. ‘Lady Arianllys told me this morning that I’ve been chosen!’

There was no need to ask what the other girl meant. Every month the Children of Rhys cast lots for the privilege of going to the Welsh mainland, to buy goods from the humans and witness their amazing powers of creativity. Only five or six Rhysians were sent each time, and they never stayed longer than a day, but even a brief visit to the human world was said to be an unforgettable experience.

‘I’m happy for you,’ Rhosmari said, and meant it, because if someone had to take her place she would rather it be Fioled than anyone else. But it was hard to hide the bitter knowledge that her name had been drawn first, and then for some reason the Elders had forbidden her to go.