Shadowfell (16 page)

‘Up! Move!’ Cruel hands seizing my arms; someone hauling me up to stand. Groggy and confused, still half-asleep, I would have fallen but for my captor’s hard grip. Where was I? What had happened?

‘Give us your name! What are you doing here?’ the man snapped. A second man stood nearby with a pitchfork in his hands, the prongs aimed at my chest.

‘N– nothing, I – I –’ The well-prepared story –
My name is Calla; I am an orphan –
would not come out. The barn . . . I had fled in here for shelter. Now it seemed to be night outside. My neck was on fire with pain, my limbs were numb, my head throbbed. I could hardly draw breath, let alone say anything coherent.

‘What do you mean, nothing? How did you get up here? Who sent you? Where are you going?’ My captor shook me; my head wobbled like a ragdoll’s.

‘Calla,’ I managed. ‘Stonewater. Just going . . . move on.’

‘Stonewater? No Stonewater in these parts. You’re lying.’ Another shaking, harder than the last. There were others here: a third man, with a length of sharpened wood in his hands; a grim-faced woman; a boy of six or so, holding a lantern.

‘Account for yourself, girl, and tell the truth this time,’ my captor ordered. ‘If you needed shelter, why not come to the door and ask?’

No good answer for this. Say what I knew was true – that there was nobody in all Alban who could be trusted to offer a wayfarer a safe bed for the night – and they could call it speaking out against Keldec’s rule. I stared down at the floor, thinking vaguely that I must be quite ill or I would be able to tell better lies. I had often done so in the past to secure a night under cover.

‘Her shoes.’ The woman spoke in a stunned whisper. ‘Finnach, look at those shoes. If that’s not uncanny stitching, I’ll eat my grandmother’s bonnet.’

All of them looked at my shoes. In the uneven light from the lantern, their faces were uniformly pale, their eyes dark with horror.

‘Smirched.’ The man with the pitchfork spoke the word as if it tasted foul. ‘She’s smirched. Gods have mercy on us. You know what happened to the folk up at High Reach Farm when they were caught with one like her in their house –’

‘How dare you come in here?’ The woman stepped toward me, her voice quivering with fury and fear. ‘How dare you? Every moment you spend under this roof puts us at risk! Get out! Take your filthy self off and your tricky shoes with you!’ She spat at me. I felt the spittle dribble down my cheek. With my arms pinioned, I could not wipe it away.
Do what she wants
, I willed my captor.
Let me go
.

‘No, no,’ said the man named Finnach. ‘Think, woman. We should turn her in. She’s the one they want. She’s the lass that’s running from the Enforcers. There’ll be silver in this.’

‘Turn her in?’ The woman’s voice was sharp. ‘Let the Enforcers know we’ve been harbouring a smirched girl in our barn? What do you want, to see the whole place go up in flames and all of us with it?’ Beside her, the child stood immobile, his eyes fixed on nothing in particular.

‘Didn’t you hear what that fellow said earlier?’ Finnach looked at the others, as serious as a lord pronouncing judgement. ‘
Come and fetch me the moment you see her.
Those were his words. It’s all very well to talk about flames, but what if we don’t tell him and he finds out about it? We’ll be strung up in a neat little row and saying our last goodbyes, that’s what. Tie the girl up, then go and fetch the man in the cloak.’

‘Me?’ asked the fellow with the pitchfork.

‘Yes, you, Ollan.’

‘What, now? In the dark?’

‘Aye, now, in the dark, you lumpie.’ Finnach shifted his grip on me. ‘And be quick about it, before she can get up to any tricks. Light another lamp, and away up to Seven Pines Farm with you. That’s where he’s staying, isn’t it?’ A pause. ‘No, wait. I’ll go up. You tie the girl and guard her until I get back. There’s a good payment in this if we do it right.’

His hold slackened. I made a wild dive for freedom, my mind filling with those last images of my grandmother.
No, please, no . . .
Terror gave my limbs a momentary strength, and surprise made the men slow. I was almost at the entry when my legs gave way and I fell heavily to the earthen floor.

‘Iron,’ said Finnach as the other men dragged me up again. I hung between them, limp as a sack of grain. ‘Rope’ll be no use. Whatever stitched those shoes could unravel a rope and set the girl free in the twinkle of an eye. A body such as her will have uncanny friends in every corner. Fetch that chain from the hook over there, and some iron tools. Bind her and fence her in. That should hold her until I bring the Enforcer.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
HEY SAT ME ON A
stool and bound me to the post behind it with ropes. They took the chain down from the wall. Perhaps it had been used to hang up dead things. Now they wound it about the post and around me. It lay heavy on my shoulders and pressed tight on my chest. They fenced me in with a makeshift barrier constructed from iron implements: scythes, axes and the like. They went through my bag and took away the knife Flint had given me. ‘Stolen,’ I heard one of them mutter. ‘Has to be. What would a girl like her be doing with a weapon like this?’

The woman had gone, and the boy with her. I could not blame her for her hostility. I could not blame any of them. For their own survival, these folk had no choice but to hand me in.

I could not stop shivering. I saw Grandmother, sitting straight and proud, and two Enforcers coming to tip her head back, force her mouth open and pour a potion down her throat, a mixture that would send her into a deep sleep. From my hiding place in the wall, through the chink, I saw the Enthraller coming in, a man with deep-seeing eyes and a soft, terrible voice. He had tiny glass vials strung around his neck, one for each victim, to hold what he had stolen from them. I did not hear the charm he sang over her that night, for while he worked his magic I stopped my ears with my fingers, as she had bidden me do in those desperate moments between their arrival at Corbie’s Wood and the hammering on the door. I did see her wake. I saw the change in her face. I heard her stumbling, slurred words. I saw her wise, bright eyes turned dull and lifeless. Gone. Gone forever. Dear gods, let me face this with the same dignity and courage as she did. I fought down a longing to die now, quickly, before this mind-scraper came to take me away. That was a coward’s wish.

‘Weapons sharp. Backs straight. Hearts high,’ I whispered to myself, trying vainly to control the tremors that coursed through me. What if there was an Enthraller up here in the valley and they did it to me this very night? By daybreak I might be another like poor Garret, only I would have no loving family to tend to me. Or the mind-scraping might work as it should and I might wake up as an obedient servant of Keldec’s will. It was unthinkable. ‘Weapons sharp. Backs straight. Hearts high.’

‘Cease your muttering, girl,’ snapped one of the men. ‘We’ll have none of that canny stuff. This is plain folk’s land.’

There was no point in trying to reason with them, no point in defending myself. I could not give my true name. I could not tell them where I’d been going or why I’d had to shelter in their barn. They feared for their safety, for their farms and livestock, for those they loved. All Alban lived in fear. ‘I mean you no harm,’ I murmured.

‘Hold your tongue!’ the fellow responded, making a sign of ward with his fingers. ‘I won’t listen to your wicked lies.’ The two of them were half-turned away from me, as if they thought I could work a charm on them merely by looking in their eyes.

We waited. The barn was full of cold draughts. The two men blew on their fingers, and one went to fetch a couple of sacks, which they wrapped around their shoulders. I sat trembling on my stool, weighed down by iron, watching the shadows move in the lantern light. Deep inside me, silently, I sang the ancient song.
I am a child of Alban’s earth . . .

After a long, long time, men’s voices came from outside. I tried to breathe slowly. I tried to sit up straight. I hoped I could look into the Enforcer’s eyes and answer his questions with some semblance of calm. Tomorrow I might be a witless cast-off, a ruin of a girl who needed help to use the privy, to put on her clothes, to use a spoon. Today I would be someone my grandmother could be proud of. I sucked in a gasping breath and willed myself to stop shaking.

Finnach entered first, bending to get under the opening in the barn wall, coming through with a lantern in his hand. After him came a man in the dark cloak of an Enforcer, a man wearing boots and gauntlets. He straightened, and the stag brooch that fastened his cloak glinted silver in the lantern light. The king’s token.

‘The girl’s here, as you see,’ said Finnach. ‘Is she the one?’

The Enforcer stepped closer, scrutinising me. The light touched his features: deep grey eyes, a nose that had been broken in the past and had mended crooked, a scar here, a scar there, dark hair severely cropped. He folded his arms, and his steady gaze met mine, shocking in its familiarity.

‘That’s her,’ said Flint. ‘Get those bonds off and find me a blanket. The king won’t be well pleased if the girl perishes from cold before she can give any answers.’

I sat frozen, my mind reeling. Flint. Flint who had helped me, Flint who had left me his cloak and his knife and his food. Flint who had told me he wanted me to have a choice. Flint, an Enforcer? How could that be? It made no sense. Why had he let me go that first time only to close the trap now?

He was taking coins out of a pouch at his belt and counting them into Finnach’s hand. ‘That’s for now,’ he said. ‘There’ll be more later provided I hear you’ve held your tongue.’ A grim glance at the other two men. ‘That goes for every person on this farm. You don’t talk. You don’t speak a word to anyone about me, or her, or what’s been said tonight. You never saw us. You never spoke to us. If I hear you’ve talked, it won’t be silver on the palm, it’ll be iron in the belly. Understood?’

A muttered chorus of ‘Yes, my lord,’ as the three men hastened to clear away the barrier, remove the chain and unfasten the rope that bound me. I had sat still so long in the cold, I could not get to my feet. Tears of pain and frustration ran down my cheeks. I hardly had the strength to feel anger, but it was there somewhere, deep down, along with the memory of the chancy-boat burning.

One of the men brought a blanket. Judging by the smell, it had last been worn by a horse. Flint shook it out, draped it around me, then scooped me up, one arm around my shoulders, the other hand under my knees, as if I weighed no more than a child. He took a step toward the opening in the wall, then turned back. The three of them flinched.

‘Don’t forget,’ Flint said. Then, without waiting for a response, he ducked under the opening and we were outside, where a tall horse stood waiting. An Enforcer’s mount, dark as night, saddled in good leather, with silver rings on its bridle.

‘I . . .’ I struggled to draw breath. ‘Where . . .’

I might as well have stayed silent for all the notice Flint took. He hoisted me up, a long way up, until I sat sideways in front of the saddle. I swayed, close to falling. ‘Hold on,’ he ordered. I clutched the horse’s mane, wondering if the plan was to ride all the way to Summerfort tonight. Flint swung up behind me, pulled me back against him and took up the reins. ‘Sit still,’ he said. At some signal too subtle for me to detect, the horse moved off, leaving the barnyard behind. No galloping; no wild flight. We went at a sedate walk, and when we got to the road, a pale thread in a night now full of stars, the horse did not turn south toward the king’s fortress, but north up the valley.

‘Wha . . .’

‘Quiet.’ It seemed Flint was not going to offer explanations. Perhaps I did not want them. My imagination could supply enough unpleasant possibilities. When we had gone on some considerable way, and I could see the lights of a dwelling drawing closer, he said, ‘Tonight, as far as the farm up there. Tomorrow, further. That’s all you need to know.’

I imagined a troop of Enforcers waiting at the farm, ready to prise answers out of me. I imagined a night spent in drugged sleep, while a mind-scraper turned my thoughts inside out. With Flint’s body warming mine and the horse moving steadily on in the darkness, I thought of betrayal and how it came so easily – in a word, a glance, a gesture.

Heads up. Weapons sharp. Hearts high
. I heard Sorrel’s hideous scream as the iron touched him. I saw his limp body, and Sage’s wise little face suddenly aged by grief. I considered how acts of kindness could spring from the unlikeliest sources. A woman whose husband’s misfortune had cut them both adrift from the fabric of community; a lonely creature under a bridge.
Courage
, I told myself.
Be that woman Grandmother said you must be.
In the back of my mind was the defile, and the rhyme, and the stanie mon. Perhaps it was true. Perhaps I really was a Caller. I wished I could slow my thumping heart.

We reached the farm and halted before the door. Flint dismounted and lifted me from the saddle. Something was wrong with my eyes; I could see two or three of him, and when the door opened and a shaft of light spilled out, I shrank back from it, my head shrieking protest. There was a terse conversation, Flint giving orders, someone murmuring agreement. Then I was in a big kitchen, and a grim-faced woman was stripping off my clothes, helping me into a tub of hot water, scrubbing me, washing my hair, speaking hardly a word save, ‘Lean forward,’ and ‘Lift your arm.’ I sat in the bath and let her do it. My body was a traitor, soaking up the heat, filling with a sleepy sense of wellbeing, despite everything. It was so good to be warm at last. My mind was a blank, drifting.