Shadowfell (37 page)

Tali’s expression changed. The bitterness and hurt were replaced by the look of someone who is thinking hard. ‘But –’ she began. ‘Doesn’t that mean you can –’

I realised what had occurred to her. ‘Maybe,’ I said, my heart beginning to race. I looked over toward the great prone form of the stanie mon and the little group crouched by the trapped man. ‘I didn’t use the rhyme
fa’ doon deid
– I could hardly tell the stanie mon to kill himself. So perhaps I can get him to stand up again.’ At Regan’s soft whistle I added, ‘I don’t promise this will work. As I said, I’m new to doing it. But I will try.’ I never wanted to use my so-called gift again. I did not want the power of life and death in my hands. But I must try this. If I did not, that man would die or, at the very least lose his leg. And what about the stanie mon? He might lie there for hundreds of years, unable to move until another Caller came to chant a new rhyme in his stone ear.

‘Gods save us,’ murmured Regan. I saw him thinking,
What if it goes wrong, what if this ends with more deaths, more injuries?
But he did not say it. He glanced over toward the trapped man again. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’d best try this charm.’

Folk were busy all around the open area, dealing with the aftermath of the battle. Flint was by another dead Enforcer now, kneeling again, his face ashen white. As I watched, he reached with gentle fingers to close the eyes of his fallen comrade. He was murmuring something. Words of farewell, I thought, and words of regret. There were ghosts in his eyes. Understanding came to me. How crushing a burden Flint must bear as he lived his double life, friend turning to foe as he crossed the line from one loyalty to the other. I did not know how a man could rightly bear such a load. No wonder his head was bent. No wonder his shoulders were bowed. No wonder his face bore an expression that jolted my heart. My own misgivings were nothing to his.

‘It’s hard for him,’ said Regan quietly, following my gaze. ‘Neryn, will you try this now? We must get our wounded away quickly if we’re to reach Shadowfell before dusk.’

I eyed the great pieces of the fallen stanie mon. It seemed impossible that any force could ever shift them.

‘You’d best clear everyone well away,’ I told Regan, ‘in case something goes amiss.’

Regan looked at Tali, and Tali, after giving me a sideways glance, went off to issue a few crisp orders. The area cleared immediately, the rebel forces moving well away from the rock fall. Flint rose slowly to his feet. He looked straight at me, and I looked back, my feelings in turmoil. I dropped my gaze; I must think of nothing but the stanie mon, the call, the opportunity to put right a small amount of the damage I had done.

‘We’re ready,’ Regan said.

There was nobody close now except him and the trapped man. And one more: for beside the prone form of Garven, Fingal still crouched, one hand holding the warrior’s wrist, the other laid on his brow.

I asked a question with my eyes. Regan answered it with a slight shake of the head.

‘You should move back,’ I said, and the rebel leader did so without a word.

I tried to clear my mind of everything: Flint’s white face, my guilty conscience, Tali’s scorn, the carnage of the battlefield. I tried to find the part of me that could reach out and touch the heart of a stanie mon. I had wronged this peaceable creature. His life moved with the long, slow order of stone; his great shoulders bore the summer sun, the winter snow, the storm and sleet and rain of this lonely place; he lived with the thunder and the torrent and the high, sad cries of owl and eagle. I had made him kill. I must not leave him lying here, sprawled and broken. I must see him safely back to his rightful place.

‘Help him, Neryn.’ Fingal spoke softly from where he crouched beside the injured man, right by the massive stones. His dark eyes met mine without a trace of fear.

I gave him a nod; drew a long breath; summoned the strength deep inside me. I should be explaining to the stanie mon, expressing respect, gratitude, apology. But I couldn’t. What I had to say must be contained in the brief lines of a rhyme, or he would not understand it. ‘Stanie Mon, Stanie Mon, fine and braw,’ I chanted, ‘Stanie Mon, Stanie Mon, stand up ta’!’

Nothing stirred. I kept my gaze on the fallen stones, but I sensed the silent audience of rebels behind me, perched up on the rocks and watching with some fascination. I made myself breathe steadily.

A subtle creaking. A shudder in the ground beneath my feet. The stones began to move of themselves, rumbling, rolling.

‘Hold still, friend,’ said Fingal, and moved to kneel over Garven, making of his own body a fragile shield. Tears sprang to my eyes. I scrubbed them away. I would not attempt another rhyme. I must trust that the stanie mon could get himself up without doing any more damage.

‘Move back, Neryn!’ That was Regan, calling from some distance away. But I did not obey. I stepped forward and crouched down close to Garven, taking his hand in mine.

‘You’ll be all right,’ I muttered, praying it was true. ‘We’ll get you out.’

‘
Neryn!
’

That voice was not Regan’s. I heard running footsteps, and then Regan saying, ‘No. Wait.’

For the stones were assembling themselves in some order, creaking up from the ground, forming themselves into a great figure with stocky limbs, a slab of a body, a chunky square head with holes for eyes, a slit for a mouth, a look that was neither smiling nor frowning, simply . . . there. As the pressure lifted from his leg, Garven let out a howl of pain.

‘All right, lad.’ Fingal’s voice was remarkably steady. ‘Lie quiet.’

The stanie mon raised himself to his considerable height, looming above us. He lifted one massive arm and touched his lumpish hand against the spot where his heart might be, if such a being had a heart. The eyeholes seemed turned in my direction.

I got to my feet and copied his gesture, laying my hand on my heart, then bowing my head. I hoped he understood, for I hadn’t another rhyme in me.

He took two lumbering steps. The ground shook under his great feet. He seemed to lean into the rock wall, in the place where it was gouged and broken, and ease himself against it, and with a knitting and a mending he became once more part of it. A few shards of stone tumbled down; a small cloud of dust eddied up and dispersed. The stanie mon was gone.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A
FTER THAT,
everyone was busy. Fingal splinted Garven’s leg. My offer to help was politely declined; there were plenty of folk to place the lengths of wood and wind the bandages while Fingal held the bones in position. Whether the limb would mend straight, whether this young warrior would ever use it again, I did not know. It seemed to me the bones might be so shattered that no healer could mend them, but Fingal evidently thought it worth trying.

As for those others who lay broken on the ground, I made myself look at their pitiful remains. I made myself bear witness to what my gift had wrought.
You will remember this
, I told myself.
You will see it night by night, in your dreams.
And I looked across to where Flint was standing a short distance away, watching me. I wondered if this image had the power to displace the false thoughts he had put into my mind. I did not know which would be worse. I wondered what horrors walked through Flint’s dreams.

Suddenly I was so weary I could hardly stay on my feet. I sat down on a stone, watching as folk gathered the enemy corpses into a heap. The rebel dead were securely tied into cloaks or blankets, ready to be carried home. Folk were slinging packs on their backs, gathering weapons, getting ready to move on. A makeshift stretcher had been assembled for Garven, who now lay white and silent with his leg neatly strapped.

A steady stream of folk came over to thank me for what I had done, and, I thought, to get a closer look at me. Tali was not the only woman among the fighters; at least three more introduced themselves. Everyone seemed to think I had won the battle for them. There would be a welcome at Shadowfell, no doubt of it. The end of my long journey was in sight. I should have felt happy, but all that was in me was a deep weariness, as if my bones were those of an old, old woman.

Regan was busy giving orders. Tali was supervising the passage of the dead, the wounded and the supplies up over the rocks. I judged that she was Regan’s second-in-command. I wondered where she had learned to fight as if she did not know the meaning of fear. It was people like her the rebels needed, people who were all courage. People who did not doubt; people who did not make mistakes.

Someone was standing beside me. He had come up with barely a sound.

‘Move away,’ I said, not looking up. ‘I can’t talk to you.’ In my heart a small battle raged, for all I could see was his blanched face, his haunted eyes, the gentleness with which he had bade his comrades farewell and safe journey. But he was an Enthraller, and that sickened me.

Flint drew in a sharp breath and let it out slowly. ‘I didn’t intend you to see this,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s why I told you to wait – to get this over first, so I could bring you to Shadowfell in safety. Why did you –’

‘I can’t do this,’ I said. ‘I can’t talk to you as if everything was the same as before. How can I ever –’ I stopped myself from saying the rest.
How can I ever trust you, now I know what you are?
It was not fair to judge him thus. Yes, he was a worker of magic, a man who meddled with other folk’s minds. He had used his canny gift for a destructive purpose. But so had I. I had done the same thing he had, and for the same reason: because I wanted Alban to be free.

I looked up at him. He had not lied to me, he had only held back what I need not know. Alban was a land of secrets, and both Flint and I were long accustomed to holding our secrets close. In the end he had confided the knowledge he knew might send me running. He had laid it bare before me, and for reward, I had turned my back on him.

‘Flint!’ Regan called. ‘Neryn!’

The rebel leader was standing with Tali over by the rocks, near where Fingal had been busy tending to the wounded: splinting a man’s arm, giving another a draught, wrapping a wound on a woman’s leg.

I walked over, and Flint walked beside me. I did not look at him. It made no difference; I felt his presence in every part of my body. It was a curious sensation, like being pulled two ways. I wondered about the charm of enthralment, and whether my confused feelings owed something to that.

‘Is all well?’ Regan asked.

Flint responded with a noncommittal grunt, and I saw the limpid blue eyes of the rebel leader fix on him with disconcerting directness. Regan, I thought, could see right inside people. He was reading Flint now, and did not like what he saw.

‘Pity you couldn’t have let us know part of your troop was following on later,’ he said. ‘Close thing. But for Neryn, we’d have been finished.’

‘There was no way to get the information to you. When I sent you the message to be ready for them, I knew only that Boar Troop had been directed to come on along the valley. And to disregard any orders I might give them to the contrary. That part I guessed. Someone at court suspects me. I got a veiled warning.’

Regan was looking grim. ‘You’ll be hard put to explain the disappearance of a whole troop when you return there.’ He gave me a glance, then said, ‘We’ll talk more of this later. Thank the gods Neryn came through this unscathed. Our secret weapon. We weren’t expecting her to turn up on the brink of the ambush, and on her own.’

There was an awkward silence.

‘If there’s a difference of opinion between you,’ Regan said slowly, ‘a disagreement of some kind, I want it resolved before we reach Shadowfell. You’ll walk together.’ And when I made to protest, ‘That’s an order.’

‘There’s something I must say first.’ I had to get this out before the door was thrown open for me and these people’s hopes rose too high. ‘I know you need me, and I understand that my gift could help you. I want to be part of the rebellion, I’ve wanted to join you since I first heard of Shadowfell. But I can’t use the Good Folk to kill and maim. Doing that would make me no better than Keldec. There must be some other way.’

‘So you’ll fight a war as long as nobody gets hurt?’ Tali held her voice quiet, but the anger vibrated in it. ‘What are you, a child of three? Besides, we have no alternative now but to take you with us. And keep you. You know our names and our location; you’re witness to what we just did here, to what Flint did. Do you imagine we’re going to send you off home with your little bag over your shoulder and that knowledge in your head?’

I made myself take a deep breath before I answered. ‘You seem to think I’m a halfwit,’ I said. ‘If you let me join you at Shadowfell, I will prove you wrong. I’ve been honest about how I feel. I understand how my gift could help you. I believe the Good Folk have a part to play in the fight for freedom, indeed, I don’t think we can win it without them. But . . . I wonder if there is a subtler way to involve them. Give me time and perhaps I can discover what that is.’ This was not the moment to tell them how long it might take me to travel three ways, find three powerful Otherworld beings who most likely did not want to be found, and persuade them to teach me the wise use of my gift.

Flint started to speak, then thought better of it.

‘You’ll come with us, Neryn,’ Regan said, as if that had never been in doubt. ‘If it helps, think of it this way: at Shadowfell you’re out of the king’s reach and he can’t make you into a weapon against us. That in itself is an achievement for us, never mind canny gifts or battles won. Perhaps you don’t realise how significant you are. What you did today – I’m still hardly able to take it in. It was an astonishing feat. We’ll speak more of it when we’re safely home, with our dead laid to rest and our injured tended to. Now we must move on. Don’t forget what I said. There’s no room for personal differences at Shadowfell. Sort it out, the two of you.’

I was going to have to tell them. ‘This is no small thing to be resolved in the space of a walk,’ I said. ‘Flint is an Enthraller. The vial around his neck has a lock of my hair twisted around it, hair he cut from my head with his own hands.’ My stomach felt hollow and sick; my words felt oddly like a betrayal. ‘I know he is one of you, but I’m not sure I can ever –’