Dark Mist Rising (33 page)

‘Tarek, I would interrupt.'

It was one of the Young Chieftain's captains, an older warrior with a short feathered cape thrown over his fur tunic and urgency in his face. Our lessons were never interrupted. The Tarekish word for ‘interrupt' was, in fact, the same as ‘attack'.

‘
Klef
,' Tarek said.

‘Mar-gar-ait is dead.'

Lady Margaret. Dead.

Tarek said, ‘Murdered?'

‘I cannot tell.'

Tarek said, ‘My queen?'

‘Not harmed.'

The two looked at each other. Their impassive faces nonetheless communicated much that I knew I could not discern; I was not one of them. But I did realize that Tarek would not have been interrupted for the death of a ‘slave' unless something else had occurred. He said, ‘I will come.' Then he looked at me. ‘And you will come too,
antek
.'

Tarek and his captain strode from his tent. His guard formed around him, falling into perfect step. I followed, immediately accompanied by my own startled guard. As the Young Chieftain paced through the camp, soldiers fell silent and sprang to attention, left fists raised in the air. The very cook fires seemed to not snap. Thus Stephanie's high hysterical screams rang clearly through the night air.

Outside her tent Tarek gave an order and his guard fell back, as did mine. The captain remained in the doorway, his knife drawn. Only Tarek and I could enter the tent of his child bride.

She sat on the carpeted ground, shrieking, trying to get her thin arms around the corpse of Lady Margaret. The nurse crouched beside both, ineffectively saying, ‘Your Grace,
please
now. Your Grace ... Lambie ...' There was no blood on Lady Margaret's gown, no injury that I could see to her head or limbs. But her face was contorted into a look of horror.

How long had she been dead? If I crossed over right now, before she lapsed into the mindless serenity of the Dead ...

I did not cross over.

Tarek said sharply, ‘Staif-ain-ee!
Ka!'

The little girl looked up at him, shrieked louder than ever, then buried her head in the nurse's shoulder. Her thin body shook uncontrollably. She did not cease screaming.

Tarek said to me over the noise, ‘Translate. Ask the slave what occurred here.'

I stepped forward and put a hand on the nurse's shoulder. She looked up angrily, saw who I was and fell into confusion. She breathed, ‘The witch fool ...'

There was no time to argue with her name-calling. I said, raising my voice to be heard, ‘His lordship wants to know what— Your Grace, please stop that shrieking!'

My words had no more effect than had Tarek's. Impulsively I sank to the floor, pulled the princess from her nurse's arms – how did I dare to do such a thing! – and said quietly into her ear, ‘I know what you saw. Do you hear me, Stephanie?
I know what you saw
. You are not alone with the monster.'

I did not know what she had seen. But my words made a difference. She still shook and sobbed, but her screaming ceased. Being alone is so often the worst part of pain. The princess clung to me, her tears wetting my tunic, her hair in my mouth.

Tarek said, somewhere between relief and disgust, ‘Good,
antek
. Now discover what occurred here.'

Over the princess's shaking shoulders I asked the nurse, who eyed me with jealousy even as she poured out her story. ‘Lady Margaret and I put Her Grace to bed, and then Lady Margaret lay down on her pallet, she was that exhausted, and I was just washing out Her Grace's things—'

A water-filled basin sat in one corner, with a small pile of sodden white linen spreading a stain on the ground.

‘—when all at once Lady Margaret sits bolt upright on her pallet and cries out – her, that never complains nor makes a noise about how we have to live on this unholy journey – Lady Margaret cries out “No! No!” And my lambie wakes up at the same moment and screams, “No!” The exactly same moment! Then my lady slumps over, dead as a bucket of stones. And Her Grace goes screaming.'

I translated, and Tarek turned to his captain, still standing just inside the tent flap. ‘For this you bring me here, Sufgek? For the death of a slave woman that frightened a child?'

The nurse demanded, ‘What did he say?' I ignored her.

Sufgek betrayed no emotion, but he said, ‘Both awoke in fear at the same moment. It may be witchcraft.' His eyes shifted to me.

Tarek's gaze also turned to me, sitting on the floor with a terrified child shaking in my arms. For a moment the brilliant blue eyes turned speculative.

‘No,' he finally said. ‘This is nothing more than women's
blimct
. Sufgek, you should not have attacked my instruction.
Klef
.' He strode from the tent, the captain stepping hastily aside to let him pass. Over his shoulder Tarek said to me, ‘
Antek
, return to your fire.' The tent flap fell.

I had only a few moments. To Stephanie I murmured, ‘What did you see in your dream?'

‘No! Don't go!'

She was preparing to shriek again. Hating myself, I said quickly, ‘If you make noise, Tarek will come back. You don't want that, do you?'

‘No.' And then, a suppressed wail: ‘You said you know what I saw.'

I was threatening to take away the reassurance that she was not alone. Quickly I said, ‘You saw a girl with a crown, didn't you? And she said something bad?'

Her arms tightened convulsively around me. The tent flap rose. My guard, his face averted from the women within, said loudly, ‘
Antek
.
Klef. Klef
.'

‘Don't go!' Stephanie wailed.

‘I must.' If I were dragged from the tent, she would scream even worse. ‘But I'll come back tomorrow. And remember, you are
not
alone. I can fight the bad girl with the crown.'

I stood, and the nurse took her from me. My guard had actually advanced into a tentful of women, a measure of how far he would go to carry out orders. Yet he did not touch me. I followed him back to our fire. The Young Chieftain was probably disciplining his captain, whatever that involved, and so I was saved from proving myself until tomorrow night.

Tarek was more intelligent than his skittish captain, and he had already begun to doubt my supposed powers. He had apparently acquitted me of witchcraft in Lady Margaret's death. In this instance, he was both right and wrong. Lady Margaret's death might indeed have been due to soul arts, but not mine.

Both Tom and Jee waited at the fire. Tom, wide-eyed, said, ‘The princess ... Her Grace ...'

‘Be she hurt?' Jee demanded fiercely. His whole skinny body strained forward.

‘No, Jee, she's not hurt. But Lady Margaret is dead – she died in her sleep. The princess was upset, is all.'

He relaxed; Lady Margaret meant nothing to him. Nor to Tom, who launched into a long recitation of the death-while-asleep of an elderly aunt of some girl in Almsbury. But Lady Margaret had meant something to me. Again I saw her at court, scolding Queen Caroline's ladies into order. Playing a lute by the hearth on a winter's night. Finding me unconscious in a corridor of the palace and bringing me to the safety of her rooms and the nursing of her own serving woman. I saw her at Stephanie's monstrous marriage, defying the bridegroom by walking with dignity from the throne room in pursuit of the nurse. With the little princess by a mountain fire, urging me to ‘help Her Grace'. And now Lady Margaret had, by some fearsome art I did not understand, been murdered by a dream.

Be tranquil, my good lady, there in the Country of the Dead
.

‘Peter,' Jee said softly, under cover of Tom's cheerful babble, ‘I did so. I saw Alysse. She sent you this.' His small warm hand closed briefly on mine, and then I held a packet wrapped in leaves and tied with vine.

As soon as I unwrapped the leaves, the scent told me what lay inside. I wrapped it again and waited until Tom and Jee slept. Then I opened the bundle and pretended to nibble on the little cake within, letting tiny pieces instead slide inside my tunic. I was careful not to swallow even a crumb, but it was difficult. The cake's honey and nuts would have been hard enough to resist – long ago the army had run out of sugar stolen from the palace – but what made the mouth fill with sweet water and the tongue waggle in anticipation was the cake's aroma. The drugs Alysse used, that Fia had used, smelled like every dream of food a hungry man ever had.

Tom had gobbled Fia's honey cake and slept like a stone. I had eaten mine, spiced with a different herb, and could not remember my own name, nor the proper shapes of tree branches, nor why I could not bed that bewitching girl ... But that second drug was not what Alysse had baked into this cake.

I left the rest of the cake lying exposed on its broad leaf, and I pretended to sleep.

The guard was young, but he was a soldier. He did not touch the cake. From one half-opened eye I could see his nose twitch, and once his hand moved towards the leaf, but he withdrew it. If he should choose to eat it at the end of his shift and then simply fell asleep back at his own fire ... Why had Alysse sent only one cake? Surely she could have foreseen this problem?

The guard did not eat the cake. It sat there still, resting temptingly on its leaf and giving off its strong delicious aroma, when the next soldier on duty relieved the first. The savage fed the fire, settled himself beside it, inspected us three inert prisoners. Overhead the stars shone sharp and cold. Tom snored. The savage whistled under his breath, something I had never heard any of them do, a sweet and plaintive little air. Could all of them sing tune-fully then, just as all of them had blue eyes? The savage stopped whistling. A long suspended moment, and then he ate the honey cake.

Soon ... soon ...
now
.

He snored even louder than Tom. Surely someone else would hear? No one did. The only other guards were posted at the princess's tent, several hundred feet away in the darkness, and at the camp perimeter, further away still. Servants – now slaves – taken from the palace were not deemed worthy of being guarded. The chance of rescue from The Queendom was past, and there was nowhere for captives to run.

Slowly I sat up, watching the savage slumped beside his
gun
. In the dimness he looked like nothing as much as a furry boulder. In a few more moments Alysse slipped into the firelight, took my hand and led me silently to the quiet deep shadows of a clump of bushes between fires. Her fingers were cold in mine.

‘Who are you?' I whispered. ‘You bedded Tom to get to me, didn't you? Do you come from Mother Chilton?'

‘Yes. No. It is not like that.' Her voice was hostile, which first surprised me and then did not. She continued, ‘You were told to not cross over again. You promised not to do so, and you have broken that promise, just as you broke the one to Fia.'

Was there anything these web women did not know?

I said hotly, ‘A
hisaf
, my father—' how strange the words sounded, spoken aloud ‘—said there was no danger to anyone in my crossing over, so long as I brought nothing back!'

‘The
hisafs
have their beliefs about the Country of the Dead, and we have ours. Theirs are mistaken.'

‘But
hisafs
can actually go there, and you cannot!' Sudden doubt shook me. ‘Can you?'

‘No. Our knowledge comes in other ways. We—'

‘Who are “we”? What are you and Mother Chilton and Fia?'

‘We are those striving to preserve life.'

‘But are you women all witches or—'

‘Who we are is not your concern, and I am not here to argue names with you, Roger Kilbourne. I have under-gone considerable risk to talk to you, and that risk should convince you of the dire importance of what I have to say.'

‘Which is what?'

Her cold hand tightened on mine, hard enough that it hurt. She was much stronger than she looked. Her voice held an intensity made greater by the dark night.

‘I am here to tell you two things. The first is that no matter what the
hisafs
say, you must not cross over, not ever again.'

‘Why not?'

‘Will you not take my word on this?'

‘No. My father said—'

‘Damn your father! He now lies prisoner in Galtryf, that is all your
hisafs
have accomplished so far!'

‘How did you know that? How? My sister told me—'

‘Your sister is the real reason you must not cross over. You two are linked by blood. She is a great danger to you, and an even greater danger to the rest of the living.'

‘You tell me nothing I have not already heard,' I said acidly. ‘Surely you did not come here to say only that. Tell me exactly what she can and cannot do!'

Alysse's voice changed. She no longer scolded; now she was trying to convince me, and in her conviction burned desperation. She spoke slowly, and each word carried a terrible weight. ‘The grave is not really a wall between the living and the dead, as the
hisafs
conceive it to be. That is their mistake. Not a wall, not a moat, not castle fortifications. You must form a different picture in your mind. Those living and those dead are connected, as in a vast web. How can it be otherwise, when the Dead were once alive, and the alive must someday join the Dead?'