Land of the Silver Dragon (22 page)

I shouldered my satchel and turned for home. I was dressed in my own clothes, and I had bundled up my new gown and apron into a tight roll, which I'd tied on top of my bag. With no idea of how I'd begin to explain my finery, I hoped nobody would see it and ask where it came from.

I was heading for home, but I wasn't going to tell anyone what had happened. I'm not sure why: I was obeying an imperative instinct that was commanding me not to reveal where I'd been and what I had learned. Somehow I knew this wasn't over. For one thing, this Skuli, who had been so desperate to find the shining stone that he had been prepared even to kill, was still out there. The thought had given me a shudder of fear, although Thorfinn and his tough band of warriors had promised that they would be watching over me.

Thorfinn had held me by the shoulders as we'd said goodbye on board Malice-striker, staring down intently into my eyes. ‘We shall meet again,' he had said. I believed him.

There was still something he wanted from me, although he had not told me what it was. Now, trudging home to my village, I felt as if I were on some secret mission for him. I didn't mind; in fact, I relished the prospect. It appeared that, some time over the past days, I had come to trust him. With any luck, my family would assume I was arriving home from Cambridge, and I would let them. It wouldn't exactly be lying; merely allowing them to believe something that wasn't actually true. I thought I could probably cope with that.

My homecoming was exactly as I had foreseen it. My father's face lit up in his usual smile of pleasure when he saw me. My mother, preparing food, remarked that, true to form, I had arrived just in time for a meal. But she also gave me a quick, tight hug.

Assuming, just as I had hoped, that I was fresh from Cambridge and my studies, my brother Squeak asked if I could turn him into a frog yet.

I stayed for four days – I was, after all, pretending to be on a visit to see my family, so I could hardly depart again before I'd spent some time with them – and I was constantly troubled by the vague, uneasy sense that I was waiting for something. My instincts told me that there were invisible patterns shifting just below the surface, and I did not understand. The one person I really wanted to see was Hrype, and he was not in the village. I spent a day with Edild, working on the suddenly abundant supplies of plants now available, and making large quantities of the remedies we used most. She was clearly on edge, although, when I cautiously asked, she gave me such a short answer that I did not dare pursue it.

I did screw up my courage and ask where Hrype was, to which a terse ‘No idea' was the reply.

Oh, dear ...

I was out searching for dew-fresh blackberry leaves – they stop wounds bleeding and are also useful to lessen diarrhoea – early the next morning, when it happened again.

Someone jumped me.

I could not believe it.

At first I was just so
angry
that it drove out fear. Whoever held me was yet another huge man, and when I beat my fists against his broad, bare arms, it felt like striking hard old oak.

He carried me away from the track into a small stand of hazel trees, my face thrust into his chest so that my cries were muffled and I could barely see. Just as on the previous occasion, he – they – had chosen the spot well: there was nobody around.

The man carrying me dumped me on the ground. I stumbled and fell, then leapt to my feet, spinning round to stare in panic at the circle of hairy, heavily armed giants surrounding me.

One of them had long, flowing hair and a thick, abundant beard. Both hair and beard were light, coppery red.

His blue eyes were on me and they burned as if he had a fever. Even in that very first moment, my healer's instinct told me there was something deeply amiss with him. Not thinking what I was doing – I was far too terrified to think at all – I sent out a feeler towards him, and in return got such a jolt of
wrongness
that it made me stagger backwards away from him.

He was like a flying arrow, directed with furious purpose in one direction. His fanaticism bordered on madness, and I was at his mercy.

A sob rose in my throat, and I only just managed to suppress it.

‘You know who I am,' he said, his voice a low, guttural growl. I nodded. ‘They have told you, my kinsmen, what I search for and why I want it.' Again, I nodded. He knew I knew, it seemed, so there was no point in denying it. The last thing I wanted to do was antagonize him.

‘I must get to Miklagard, you see.' Now he sounded reasonable, as if he was stating something that everyone ought to understand. ‘The Great City,' he added, ‘which you may know as Constantinople.'

I barely knew it as anything. It was a word on Gurdyman's map. ‘Yes,' I whispered. It sounded more like a whimper.

‘I cannot make the journey without the stone,' he went on, pacing to and fro before me as if he could not contain the destructive energy coursing through him. ‘My grandfather tried, you know, and he failed. He is no more now than a name on the stone that marks the death place of so many brave men.
I will not be one of them!
' he shouted, his voice rising alarmingly. ‘I will not,' he added, softly now. ‘But I need the shining stone. It is mine – it should have been passed down to my grandfather and my father, and, had events turned out as they should, it would now be in my hands.' He raised those great hands, turning them this way and that, then clasping them close together as if they held a round object. It did not take much imagination to know what that object was.

His eyes were on me again, burning into me. ‘You know where it is,' he said, and the sudden chill in his voice made me shiver. ‘You will take me to it.'

‘I can't!' I cried. ‘I don't know where it is – truly, I don't!'

Slowly he shook his head. ‘I do not believe you. My kinsmen did not go to all that trouble with you merely to have you tell them
I don't know where it is
.' His parody of my high-pitched voice, shaking with fear, was cruelly accurate.

‘But I—'

He cut off my protest. ‘I do not know where Einar took you, but it is not important. You have revealed to them everything you know, no doubt convincing them that the precious object is perfectly safe wherever it is that it lies. Now you will tell me, and then we will go to where my stone is hidden and I will take possession of it.'

‘I don't know
anything
!' I squeaked. ‘I can't find the stone for you because I have no idea where it is.'

If I'd believed repetition would work, I was wrong. Skuli drew a long knife from his belt and slid his finger along its brilliant edge. A thin scarlet line appeared in the fleshy pad of his fingertip. I felt sick.

‘I could cut you,' he mused, ‘or I could cut that pretty little brother of yours – Leir, I believe, is his name. Or, tenderer flesh still, your baby nephew, the child that your brother and his dark-haired wife dote on.'

He knew all about us!
Well, I thought, my mind racing, of course he did. He had broken into all our homes. Searched the graveyard where he thought my Granny Cordeilla lay interred. Killed my sister's mother-in-law and my aunt.

‘I cannot tell you what I do not know.' My mouth had gone so dry that I could hardly get the words out.

He moved as fast as a snake. His arm was round my chest, the knife tip pushing into my face just under my left eye. I froze.

‘Thorfinn was treated by a young woman who lived here-abouts,' he hissed right in my ear. ‘She was a kinsman of yours. He left my stone in her care.'

And Skuli had burst into the places where my family lived, searching for what he believed was his, not caring what he broke, whom he hurt or killed, in the process.

The sharp little point was a constant pressure against my skin, not exactly hurting but, as it were, just about to. Quick as a flash, he moved it to my right eye, then back to the left. Into my mind flew the dreadful image of what it could do to me if he pushed a little harder.

‘I don't know who she was,' I whispered. ‘I've been trying to work it out,' I added in panic as I felt the muscles tense in the arm that was holding the knife.

‘Try harder,' he commanded.

‘I believe the healer might well have been an aunt of my mother's,' I said, the words tumbling out of me. I thought I was about to wet myself. ‘But I don't know who she is or where she lives!'

There was a moment of utter stillness. I closed my eyes, committing to memory what might be my last sight of the world. Then, as if my own terror had somehow made him do what I so desperately wanted, the knife point was lowered. He removed his arm from my throat and shoved me away from him, so hard that I fell flat on my face.

I lay panting, trying to work out which part of me hurt the most and if any bones were broken.

Then he spoke. ‘Find out where this woman is,' he ordered. ‘Then go and fetch my stone.'

I tried to get up on to my hands and knees, but the pain stopped me.

I felt a foot in the small of my back. ‘I will be watching you,' he said, the cold words like a judgement. ‘If you fail or if you try to deceive me, I will cut off your baby nephew's face before his parents, bring your little brother's eyes to you, and then I will kill you.'

The vomit rose in a hot surge, up my throat and into my mouth, and I retched into the grass. When it was over, I raised my head and wiped the tears away.

They had gone. I was all alone in the hazel grove, and I wanted to die.

It was a long time before I dared go home. I've seen the effects of shock in others, and I knew very well what I must look like. I made myself collect more blackberry leaves, the familiar, routine task helping to calm me, but still I did not dare risk my aunt's piercing glance. Like the coward I was, I waited till she was busy with a patient and left the basket of leaves by the door, calling out that I was off home now, to see my mother, and would return later.

It would be light for some time yet, and most of the villagers were still out working, up in the fields on the higher, dry ground or down by the water. Fortunately for me, in my family's house everyone was absent except for my mother. She sat by the door in the sunshine, spinning wool and watching her sleeping grandson.

I went to sit on the ground beside her, leaning back against the sun-warmed wall of the house and closing my eyes. I hadn't realized how exhausted I was. I could easily have fallen asleep, but I must not even think about it. I had a task to carry out; one which I dared not fail. I glanced over at the sweet little face of my brother's baby son, and had to fight down another bout of nausea as Skuli's words tried to force themselves into my mind. Ruthlessly I shut them out, and a spasm of pain shot through my head.

‘You all right, Lassair?' my mother asked.

I opened my eyes. She was looking down at me, an expression of concern on her face. If I'd thought that she was a safer option than my keen-sighted, professional-healer aunt, I had underestimated her. Or maybe it was just that I looked even worse than I thought I did.

‘I'm fine,' I said. ‘A bit tired. It's warm today, and I must have walked for miles.'

‘Yes, you were out a long time.' There was a pause. ‘Want some nice, cold water?'

It was a long time since my constantly busy mother had offered to get up and fetch me a drink. On the few occasions in the course of a day that she actually manages to sit down, she tends to stay there. I smiled. ‘You're occupied with your wool,' I said, getting to my feet. ‘I'll do it.'

I sat sipping at the water, working out how to ask her what I had to know without raising her suspicions. I must not let out even the smallest hint of what this was really about, for my mother would tell my father, he'd get a band of kinsmen and neighbours together, and the next thing we knew, there would be a battle between my family and Skuli's band of well-armed giants, and you didn't need rune stones to work out how
that
would end.

After a while, I knew what to do.

I said, putting concern into my voice, ‘Mother, we've had all these awful attacks and assaults on us and on Father's poor sister Alvela. But I've been thinking – do you know if any of your side of the family have also had their homes searched? After all, it's—'

My mother's scornful snort interrupted me. ‘Do you think
we
didn't think of that?' she asked shortly. ‘We've not been idle while you've been tucked up safe and sound in Cambridge with your wizard!' The irony of that, when you considered what had really been happening to me, struck me quite forcibly. I suppressed a wry smile. ‘We all realized that my kin would likely be also at risk too,' my mother went on, ‘but there's not many of them left now and nobody living that close.'

Yes. I brought to mind our family history. My mother had not originally been a local woman. Her family were all shepherds, living inland from the wet fenlands, on the firmer, dryer ground where the right sort of grazing is found. Her parents were long dead.

‘I've only the one brother,' she mused, ‘and he and his family live over to the east, out beyond Thetford. My aunt Ama, too – that's my mother's sister – moved right way, to Fulbeach.' She glanced at me. ‘You won't have heard of it – it's a tiny place, by all accounts, down south of Cambridge.'

I was tingling with excitement.
My aunt Ama
. Yes, Ama, that was her name; the name I didn't think I remembered. Well, I
had
remembered it. She must be the little healer – Thorfinn's saviour, the woman who brought him back when he was about to lose himself.

It
must
be her. Surely it was ...

Feigning nonchalance, I said casually, ‘I'm not sure I can picture her. Have we ever met?'

‘No,' my mother replied. She gave a short laugh. ‘And if you met her in the road, you'd never know she and I were close kin, it's that different we look.'