Daughters Of The Storm (64 page)

Finally, she began to feel Bluebell was close. But closer still was Wylm, her stepbrother. Ash knew immediately that he intended to kill Bluebell, but there was no mind left for her to worry or wonder. She dropped the bright ball just outside the dark house he hid in. Elementals in the area came cautiously close, and she pulled them closer and held them with her mind. She felt a great, gleaming pair of eyes watching her from across miles and mist. An echo of her dream of Becoming. She held back any fear, using her energy instead to hold the elementals close, despite the wave of formless exhaustion that threatened to pull her down to the undergrowth. Ash waited.

Bluebell arrived at Sabert's farm as the afternoon shadows were starting to grow long. Her back ached from a long day in the saddle, but her blood felt electric as she dismounted outside his house. Everything seemed very quiet, but she told herself not to worry. There were many reasons a house might be quiet. She tried the door and found it swung open easily. Not locked.

There were many reasons a house might be unlocked.

‘Saba?' she said as she entered. ‘Eni?'

The smell told her immediately Sabert wasn't here, and that he had been gone a long time. A rotten piece of meat sat liquified on the bench, surrounded by chunks of mould-covered bread. She opened the little door to the bedroom, peering in at the bed where she and Sabert had so often taken their pleasure. Nobody there. No Sabert. No Eni. Just the smell of old piss.

So perhaps Wylm did have Eni. But where was Sabert? Bluebell started looking in cupboards and nooks, then outside the back door in barrels and troughs, realising that she was now searching for a body. Sabert's greatest fear was to die and leave his boy unprotected, and now it seemed that had happened.

A whistling sound rushed past her ear and something thudded into the wooden wall beside her. Bluebell had her sword in her hand before she'd even glimpsed the knife sticking out of the wall, before she'd even turned to see who had thrown it.

It was Wylm. And he had Eni held tight against his body.

‘Eni!' she called.

The boy looked around sightlessly, his mouth upside down with frightened sadness. This expression enraged her, even more than Wylm's useless attempt on her life.

‘What the fuck are you doing?' she asked Wylm.

With his free hand Wylm drew a gleaming sword from its sheath, then held the cruel edge of it against Eni's neck. ‘Drop the
Widowsmith,' he said, in a slow, measured voice that told Bluebell he was shitting himself and trying not to show it.

‘Prepare to die,' she said.

He leaned gently into the blade, breaking the skin on Eni's neck and releasing a thin trickle of blood. ‘Drop the Widowsmith,' he said again.

She dropped it. She had a knife in her belt, another at her ankle. There would be a chance to kill him yet.

‘Let the child go.'

‘Is he important to you, Bluebell? Do you love him? I find it hard to believe that there's a heart inside you.'

‘He's the son of one of my friends,' Bluebell said. ‘I won't let you hurt him.'

‘Ah, your
friend.
He was the thick-necked farmer I killed.'

Her gut clenched. There was no time now for sorrow. ‘What do you want?'

‘I want you to fear me, Bluebell, for Hakon calls me the
kyndrepa.
This sword, forged with my own blood, was given to me by his randrman. Its name is
Griðbani.
Do you know what that means?'

She spread her hands as though nonchalant and exaggerated a shrug. ‘Limp dick?'

Wylm laughed bitterly. ‘I see I can't threaten you. I'll tell you this then: I want you to promise me that you won't hurt my mother. Then Eni will be safe and so will you.'

Fuck.
She should have known this would be his demand.

‘If I hear you've hurt her, I'll kill this child,' he said.

‘And when do I get Eni back?'

‘When my mother and I are safely back in Tweoning.'

She looked at Eni's face; she thought about Sabert, about her long-dead friend, Edie. ‘Very well,' she said.

Wylm started to back up, gestured with his head towards the door. She backed out and he followed her, half-dragging poor
Eni. He pointed to a gap in the hedge that surrounded the garden. ‘Go. That way. Don't look back.'

She spread her hands in front of her, smiling, and continued to walk backwards.

‘Turn around!' he demanded.

‘Back off then.'

He shuffled away a few feet, pulled Eni roughly against him. ‘Turn around!' he cried again, his veneer of calm beginning to crack. ‘I'll kill him.'

Eni began to sob: big open-mouthed sobs. ‘Rabbit,' he cried mournfully.

Bluebell's heart started. She turned and ran for cover, intending to vault over the hedge. She felt movement behind her, was achingly aware of her unguarded back, her vulnerability, half-turned then stumbled at the hedge and landed hard on her stomach. Bright-hot disbelief flooded her. It was happening. She was down, unarmed. She flipped over in time to see Wylm standing over her with Hakon's sword in his hand. She could see the strange rune markings on it glowing with preternatural pale fire, and she almost laughed at the idea that mighty Hakon might yet have his revenge on her via this slippery eel of a young man. No well-placed kick, no late-minute gathering of a knife from her ankle could help her now. He was too close and she was on her back. The moment was bright and heavy. Eni ran away towards the house, whole and unharmed. Motherless, fatherless. She looked up at Wylm again, her face twisting with anger. Her heart was beating so hard that it seemed the ground was shaking underneath her. She ripped open her tunic and said. ‘Through my heart. Make it quick.'

He smiled at the sight of her breast. ‘Ah, they aren't made of iron after all,' he said, raising the sword.

The ground shook again, and this time Bluebell knew it wasn't her heart. The movement was enough to knock Wylm off-balance.
He caught himself by plunging the sword into the ground beside him, shouting with a pain she didn't understand. It gave Bluebell enough time to sit up, but not to get up. He had the trollblade in a bloody hand in front of him a moment later, but this time the hedge began to shake, the long tendrils of marjory vine that grew over it standing erect as though lightning had struck the ground. He could have killed her then. He had time and proximity, but the vine's movement distracted him a half-moment more than it should have. A second later, the vine shot out and tangled around his ankles. He fell on his side, dropping the sword, breaking his fall with his arm, which twisted into a sick angle beside him. Bluebell had
Griðbani
in her hand in a second, standing above him. Their situations reversed exactly. Only Bluebell wouldn't delay with fancy speeches and observations. She drew up her arm and plunged the blade deep, deep into his heart. He had time to gasp, then to say, ‘Have mercy on my mother.'

He had time to hear her say, ‘Fuck you.'

Then the steel stopped his heart beating and he convulsed and went still.

Bluebell released the grip and stood back. The troll runes were useless now, already fading to dull steel. ‘And fuck you, Hakon,' she said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. She stood a moment, catching her breath, breasts still bare in the sunshine. The vine had withdrawn back into the hedge, the ground was still. Bluebell closed her eyes. ‘I love you, Ash,' she said, and she pulled her tunic back together and went inside to look for Eni, leaving Wylm's body for the ravens to relish.

Ash had sat for so long, mind and body separated, that the insides of her eye sockets had gone icy cold. She held out long enough to hear Bluebell's message of love, and then began to pull her light
back towards her. Only her light was not so bright any more, and she was weary from holding it apart from her. She sought out elementals, who began to pass her along, away and away from that field near Blicstowe, her home town.
I'll always love you, sister,
she said, though she wasn't sure if her lips moved here in the woods, or if she said it only with her mind, all those miles away. She fluttered in and out of knowing, finding her light on the ground and having to ask again and again for the elementals to pick it up, pass it along, send it shooting north to Bradsey. The elementals cared nothing for her; they only did something if ordered. If she blacked out for a minute, she would find herself once again dull and unmoving. Exhaustion overwhelmed her. She felt her mind and body drawing back together. Slowly. Too slowly ...

She didn't know how much time later she woke, on her blanket next to the fire in Unweder's house. Her head and eyes ached as though every inch of the inside of them were bruised. She could barely find the energy to move her eyeballs to find Unweder. Luckily he wasn't far away. Sitting on his stool at her side. When her eyes opened, he leaned forwards and put a cool hand on her forehead.

‘Close your eyes and stay very still,' he said.

‘What happened?' she mumbled.

‘You did dangerous magic.'

‘I saved Bluebell.'

‘You nearly lost yourself, though.'

Ash turned her memory over. ‘I sent my mind out.'

‘And you couldn't get it back,' he said. ‘I found you on the ground in the woods, breathing shallowly, but quite unable to respond. Lucky for you I'd seen such a thing before. I changed to bird form and flew around looking for your mind. A little glowing ball in the undergrowth just a mile south. I could have swallowed it whole but I didn't. I brought it back for you.'

Ash would have nodded, but she couldn't move her head. ‘Thank you,' she said.

‘You might have died, Ash, or been nothing but a breathing corpse for life. You simply cannot do something so dangerous.'

‘I had to.'

‘I tried to tell you this yesterday, but you wouldn't listen. Perhaps now you will.' His voice grew softer. ‘You can't live in two worlds. If protecting your sisters — and I note you have four and they are all trouble-prone — means performing such dangerous magic, then you need to think very clearly about what you are risking, and what you are gaining. Life does go on beyond this house, Ash. It does. But we are not part of it any more. To try to be both the old Ash and the new Ash means you will literally be split in two.'

Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, searing her eyeballs.

Unweder, uncharacteristically tender, stroked her hair. ‘Ah, there,' he said. ‘What you did was brave and you demonstrated enormous power and ability. But no more of that now. No more of that.'

Ash sniffed back the tears. Unweder was right. She had to sever that last connection or go mad. Her Becoming was not to be with her sisters; she had to let them go. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘no more of that.'

He smiled, suddenly bright. ‘In a good turn of events, though ... No, I will show you myself.' He helped her to her feet and led her to the door.

‘What is it?' she asked.

‘You will see.' He opened the door.

She did see. Outside his house, a riot of plants had sprung to life. Vines and leafy trees, flowers and deep hedges. As she watched, she could almost see it growing, inch by inch. The dead zone was no more.

But then her second sight shifted and she saw them. Thousands upon thousands of elementals, amassed like an army outside her
door, looking at her expectantly with their wild pagan faces. As though waiting for orders.

She gasped.

‘What is it?' he said, his good eye urgent.

‘You can't see them?'

‘See what?'

‘There are so many! Thousands!' She remembered bidding them to help her, enslaving them with the force of her mind. ‘It's an army. I've summoned an army by accident.'

His eyes widened, but he was still smiling.

Ash thought about her Becoming, her fear that she was doomed to take innocents with her. Who was to say this multitude of elementals wouldn't take the least glimmers of her mind and turn it into action? Was this how it was to unfold? A careless thought, an army of magical beings to make it real? Panic shimmered through her veins. ‘We must get away from here, Unweder.' And then an idea. The dragon in her dream; the dragon in Unweder's aspirations. ‘We will go west. We will hunt that dragon.'