Shadowfell (41 page)

Now, in the clear wakefulness of morning, I felt the profound truth of that dream, and knew that it had proved quite the opposite. He had not lied to me. He had never wished me ill. Always, he had been my protector and guardian, my friend and companion. He understood me. He even understood why I found it so hard to believe in him. I had fallen victim to the malady that beset all of Alban, turning neighbour against neighbour and friend against friend. After the massacre at Corbie’s Wood, I had been unable to trust anyone. In the years that followed, the years of flight and hardship, I had lost my clear-sightedness, the inner sense that allowed a person to know right from wrong. Flint’s honest eyes, his gentle, capable hands, his kindness and his courage were not parts of an evil plan to make me believe in him, they were real. If I had trusted my instincts I would have known this long ago. What had brought him walking through my dreams was no fell charm, but something quite different.

And now I must find him and tell him. I must give him the words he needed so badly to keep him warm through the long winter to come. It was a small enough gift after all he had done.

The passageway opened to an expanse of hard-packed earth surrounded by a high stone wall. Half the area was roofed, half open to the sky. It was bitterly cold. The six dead men lay in the covered part, each on a blanket. The sun was not yet up, but lanterns illuminated their still forms. Their faces were washed clean; their hair had been combed; cloaks wrapped their bodies, concealing the terrible damage of that hard fight. Beyond the roofed area, the lantern light caught, here and there, a softly falling snowflake.

Two silent guardians kept vigil over their comrades. Regan’s arms were folded, his eyes distant, his handsome features grim. Tali leaned on a spear. Her gaze was on Regan. While he guarded the dead, I thought, her job was to guard him. There was a look on her face that made me wonder if I had been wrong about her. Perhaps there was more to this warrior girl than hard edge and hostility.

I halted, reluctant to intrude on them. The dead men had fought their last battle alongside Regan and Tali. They had likely been good friends, for the community at Shadowfell was small. That dining area would accommodate forty people at most. Not a great army. At least, not in numbers.

I cleared my throat. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you,’ I said. ‘I was looking for Flint. Milla said he might be here.’

Regan’s shrewd blue eyes and Tali’s fierce black ones turned toward me in unison. There was a moment’s silence. Then Tali said, ‘Flint’s gone.’

I felt my heart skip a beat. Gone? He couldn’t be gone. But my mind showed me the dream, and Flint heading back along the valley toward the Three Hags without saying a word to me. ‘It’s not even light yet,’ I found myself protesting. ‘He wouldn’t leave without telling me.’

‘He said not to wake you.’ Tali’s tone was flat and final.

‘But why? Why so soon? He came all the way up here to talk to Regan, what difference would it have made to wait just a little longer?’

‘Some information was found on one of the dead.’ Regan spoke evenly, as if practised in calming the agitated. ‘Flint believed it best that he head straight back to Summerfort. He’s been gone some time now.’

No. Wrong. This couldn’t happen. He couldn’t go, I hadn’t said what I must say, I hadn’t spoken the words he needed to hear. ‘I can catch up with him, I’ll run all the way,’ I babbled, trying to remember how to get out through the branching passages. ‘I must speak to him, I won’t hold him up, I’ll just –’

‘He’ll be far down the mountain by now.’ There was no sympathy in Tali’s voice; this was a plain statement of fact. ‘Well out of sight. He moves fast when he’s on his own. You won’t catch him.’

‘I will. I must.’ I turned tail and fled before either of them could speak again. I ran this way, that way, blundering down wrong turnings, almost bowling an unsuspecting man over. I found the chamber where I had slept last night, slept all too long and soundly. I ran past the doorway and down the passage toward the outside.

There were guards at the entry, of course. They stepped out and blocked my headlong flight before I could reach the open air.

‘Let me through, please!’ With every passing moment, with every breath I took, Flint was moving further away. Heading out into the cold, cruel world that was Keldec’s Alban; walking straight back to his perilous, lonely life as a spy at the heart of the king’s court. Facing choices fit to break the spirit of the strongest man. Without a single kind word, I had let him go. ‘I must catch up with Flint, I must talk to him!’

The guards looked me up and down. ‘On a day like this, with no cloak?’ one of them asked, not unkindly.

‘Flint’s been gone a good while,’ said the other. ‘You’ve no hope of catching him now.’ Neither of them moved. Both were big, solid men.

‘Please,’ I begged, beyond caring what anyone thought of me. ‘Please let me try. It’s important, or I wouldn’t ask.’

They looked at each other. ‘No going in or out without Regan’s say-so,’ one of them said. ‘And certainly not on your own, dressed for indoors. That would be foolish.’

‘Here.’ A voice spoke behind me, and I felt a thick cloak drop around my shoulders. The voice was Tali’s, crisp and authoritative. ‘It’s all right, Donnan, I’ll go with her.’ She stepped past me, giving me a sidelong look. ‘Fasten that cloak and put the hood up; it’s cold out there.’

She still had her spear; it had been joined by an axe on her back and a knife in her belt. She looked sufficiently menacing to scare off a horde of enemies.

‘Thank you,’ I murmured as we made our way out.

‘He’ll be too far ahead, I told you.’ Tali set a fast pace; I scurried to keep up. ‘There’d be no point in lying about a thing like that. But there’s a certain point on the hillside where you might catch a glimpse of him. If anyone can spot him, I can.’ A pause, then she added, ‘I have sharp eyes. Sharp enough to cause me trouble in certain quarters, if it’s noticed.’

So she, too, had a canny gift. If I stayed here, I would probably find that Shadowfell housed a number of unusually talented men and women. Sula with her ability to draw heat into water; Tali, not only a fearsome warrior but possessed of unusual eyesight. And Flint, a mind-mender. ‘I must talk to him, Tali,’ I said as we crossed the Folds. This morning, under the falling snow, the place seemed no more than the featureless fell on which we’d emerged the day before. No traps, no tricks, no sudden sharp descents. An easy passage. Had my urgency communicated itself to the very earth beneath our feet? No human woman had so much power, surely.

‘It’s not going to happen, Neryn,’ Tali said bluntly, not looking back at me. ‘It’s too late. And maybe that’s just as well.’

‘What do you mean, it’s just as well? He needs to hear this, it’s important –’

She stopped walking and turned abruptly, and I almost crashed into her. ‘There’s something you should understand,’ she said. There was a new look in her dark eyes now, not quite compassion, but the very slightest softening of their combative glint.

‘We must keep walking! Don’t just stand there!’

‘You listen first, then we walk on.’ She folded her arms. ‘This is a war. A long, hard war. When you’re fighting a war, there’s no place for softness. There’s no time for personal feelings. When you do the work we do, you can’t afford to develop attachments. That kind of thing must wait until the war is won. A wife, a husband, a sweetheart, a child, each of those is a chink in a warrior’s armour. Each is a weapon in the enemy’s hands, a key to extracting vital information. A man like Flint will sacrifice his life before he gives up secrets. He might not be so ready to sacrifice yours.’

Great gods. How long before this war was won, half a lifetime? ‘Tali, please walk on,’ I said. ‘I understand. I’m not about to make some kind of declaration to Flint, I just need to . . .’
I need to put my arms around him and tell him that it will be all right. I want to kiss him on the cheek, and hold him for a little, and share some of my warmth. I want to say thank you. I need to see that terrible sadness leave his eyes
.

She walked on and I followed. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I am nothing like a sweetheart to Flint. We are friends, that’s all. Comrades of the journey. Now that I am safely delivered here, he can forget me.’

Tali turned her head to give me a penetrating look. ‘You didn’t hear him last night, telling Regan the story of your journey all the way from Darkwater,’ she said. ‘You didn’t see the look in his eyes. And you can’t see the expression on your own face right now. Come on then, let’s make this quick.’

It had seemed to me we were walking quite fast already, but she picked up the pace. By almost running, I managed to keep up. Snow was falling lightly, a scatter of dancing flakes across the open ground. Here and there, a small drift had formed at the base of a stone or around the gnarled roots of a lonely tree. The air seemed alive with magic; I felt it in every part of my body. Somewhere very close at hand there was a gathering of Good Folk. Their presence seemed to hang over the whole of Shadowfell, and whether it was protective or menacing or simply indifferent, I could not tell. But they were here. Here in force.

‘Tali,’ I said, a little breathlessly. ‘Are there – uncanny folk, Otherworld folk, at Shadowfell?’

She did not answer straight away. When her reply came, it was unusually tentative. ‘There must be. The place is . . . well, you can see what it is. And from time to time we get . . . help. Supplies of one kind or another. Useful changes to the way things are organised. But they don’t come out. We never see them.’ She turned her head. ‘It sounds as if you might be able to see them. Even talk to them.’

When I said nothing, she added, ‘Your gift could be critical to our winning this war, Neryn. I hope, for the sake of Alban and all of us, that you can bring yourself to use it again. It’s powerful. It’s what we need.’ Not a criticism this time, not a whipping for doing the wrong thing, but a statement, woman to woman. I had not expected this from her.

‘It’s only what you need if I know what I’m doing,’ I said. ‘And I’m not sure I can find someone to teach me.’

‘Teach yourself,’ Tali said. ‘That’s what I did. I surely didn’t learn to fight the way a boy does, from his father’s master-at-arms. See that outcrop over there, the one that looks like a crouching cat? That’s the spot. If we climb up, we might be able to catch sight of him.’

She went up ahead of me, agile as a squirrel. I followed, a little prayer repeating itself over and over in my head:
Let him be there. Let him still be in sight
.

Tali reached the top. I heard her suck in her breath. ‘Great Boar’s bollocks!’ she exclaimed. ‘Where are his weapons? And what in all Alban is
that
?’

My heart performed a somersault. He must be still within reach, perhaps close enough for me to call out to him and be heard. I scrambled up beside Tali, who was perched atop the rock formation staring down the hill, her expression pure amazement.

At the foot of the rocks, Flint’s pack and rolled-up cloak lay on the snowy ground. The hilt of his sword could be seen protruding from the concealment of the cloak. A mere twenty paces from his belongings was Flint himself, sitting on a large stone, deep in conversation with a small personage in a hooded green cape. Sage. Sage, here in the Watch of the North. Sage who had battled my enemies like a true warrior and lost her dear friend in the fight. Sage whom I had thought I might never see again.

There was no need to call out. The moment I moved, the two of them turned their heads and looked straight at me. Flint rose very slowly to his feet. He looked as pale as he had in the aftermath of the battle.

‘Neryn!’ Tali spoke in an undertone. ‘Is that one of the –’

‘She’s a friend,’ I said. ‘I’m going down to talk to Flint.’

‘Not on your own you’re not.’ She followed a step behind me.

‘If you’re coming, you’ll need to leave your weapons behind,’ I said.

‘My job is to protect you. Maybe I can do it bare-handed, but I prefer not to put that to the test.’

‘They fear cold iron. The Good Folk. It hurts them. No wonder you haven’t seen them at Shadowfell; the place is bristling with weaponry. Why do you think Flint set his sword and knives aside before he went to talk to her?’

We were climbing down the way we’d gone up, and for now were out of sight of Flint and Sage. My heart was drumming. I felt as nervous as if I were going to battle.

‘I need to be able to see you,’ Tali said. ‘I’ll keep my distance, but I’m not giving up my weapons for a . . . a whatever it is. I can’t do my job properly without them.’

So she had not been moved by sudden sympathy to accompany me down the mountain. She was here to guard me, under Regan’s orders. Because, after all, I myself was a weapon, a particularly valuable one. ‘Don’t frighten her,’ I said. ‘She’s come a long way to see me and taken a risk every bit as great as mine or Flint’s.’

We came around the base of the rocks and back into view. Tali gave Flint a nod, then stationed herself beside his belongings. I’d rather have done this without her shrewd eyes fixed on my every move. But never mind that, because Flint was here, he was waiting for me, and what I saw on his face made everything worthwhile. I walked down the snowy path toward him, hoping I could find the right words, hoping he would understand, hoping . . .

But first, there was Sage. I crouched down beside her. She looked tired; her eyes were less bright than I remembered them. Nonetheless, her sharp little features wore a look I could only describe as dauntless. The two parts of her broken staff were neatly strapped atop her pack. Where her cloak had been torn in the fight at Brollachan Bridge, it now bore lines of tiny neat stitches. The scorch marks still showed, but they were overlaid with delicate embroidery: a pattern of sorrel leaves.

‘Sage, I can’t believe you’re here,’ I said quietly, finding that my eyes were brimming with tears. ‘You’re over the border, in the Watch of the North. Why have you taken such a risk?’

‘What kind of a welcome is that, lassie?’ She held out her arms and I embraced her, feeling how fragile her little body was beneath the layers of her clothing, as frail as a forest bird’s. ‘Let me look at you.’ She subjected me to a long examination, at the end of which she smiled and nodded as if satisfied. ‘So you’re here at last. You found your way to Shadowfell.’ She glanced at Flint, who stood silent beside us; she looked up the hill toward the straight-backed, vigilant figure of Tali. ‘Why am I here? I heard a rumour. It’s being whispered that the Master of Shadows is back, and making mischief wherever he goes. If that might be true, you need to know it. Besides, it came to me that perhaps I was wrong about this fellow and I’d best give him a chance to explain himself. And as for the border, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time for a rule or two to be broken. We’ll get nowhere if we can’t even trust our own in this benighted place. I’m here to help you, lassie. You’ll be needing some guidance with the Master abroad. And since your fellow here’s leaving, it seems I’ve come just in time. If the folk of the Folds are not inclined to extend a welcome, I’ve a friend or two I can call in to speak for me.’