Soulvine 03 A Bright and Terrible Sword (7 page)

I said, ‘What have you done here? Tell me or I will kill you.’

He
smiled
. A feeble smile, barely a bending of his lips
between the black beard and bristly black moustache, but a smile nonetheless. His green eyes shone with contempt. And I understood. He did not think I was capable of murder.

He was right.

I had killed Hartah, but that was in the heightened passion of fear and unexpected grief after he had just slain my Aunt Jo. I had killed my sister, but she had caused the deaths of two people I cared about, menaced me and threatened my son. To drive my knife into the throat of a stranger – I could not do it. I was either not hard enough or not courageous enough, and I could not even tell which.

So instead I said fiercely, inanely, ‘What did you do here that depleted you so?’

Again that contemptuous smile.

‘What did you do to those infants in Stonegreen?’

This time he turned his head away from me. It took all his strength, and his eyes closed in exhaustion.

I tied him hand and foot with what was left of Tom Jenkins’ rope; the odious children of John the Small had stolen most of it for their games. Too bad those children had not been tranced into quiescence!

The
hisaf
did not rouse as I bound him. I was just wondering what to do with him now when another sound took me. Something crashed through the underbrush across the stream – something moving fast where nothing should move at all. Once before I had heard such a sound, right after I hurled my sister into the vortex. I did not know what it had been then, although I assumed it was more
hisafs
coming to rescue her, and I did not wait to see what it was now. With both hands I seized the inert body of the bound
hisaf
, bit down on my tongue so hard that blood filled my mouth, and crossed over.

We emerged inside a structure. Dim light, even dimmer
than in the Country of the Dead, filtered through two very dirty windows. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that I stood inside a mill, undoubtedly built beside the swift stream I had noted on the other side. The great millstone did not turn; the mill was empty; the door wide enough for wagonloads of grain was closed. But outside, loud enough to be heard above the mill race, people shouted and screamed.

‘The babes!’

‘—witched—’

‘Help me! Help my child – someone, anyone! Oh please help!’

So it had happened here, too. The black-bearded
hisaf
had stolen children, as he had done in Stonegreen, and left them neither dead nor alive. At that moment, I could almost have killed him – except that these villagers would do it for me, as was their right. But if I were caught with him, they would kill me, too.

I spat out a mouthful of blood and turned to the two dirty windows overlooking the stream. I unlocked one, shoved open the casement, and climbed through onto a narrow shelf of land between the building and the mill race. The red of a summer dawn streaked the sky. There was no way to move away from the mill without being seen except to descend into the water, crouch between its banks, and waddle along until I reached the cover of a wooded bank about a quarter mile upstream.

The water, icy from the mountains, came to my waist. Gasping with cold, I held my pack above the stream, cursing each time it was splashed by water breaking on a rock. By hugging the closer bank, I made it to the woods. The whole way, the wails and shouts of the villagers followed me, grief become heart-piercing sound.

I hoped they found the bound
hisaf
before he revived enough to cross over.

I shivered in my wet clothes. It would be at least an hour before the sun shone warmly enough to dry me, and I dared not risk a fire. The best I could do was shed my sodden tunic, breeches, and small clothes, pour the water out of my boots, and wrap myself, naked, in my dry cloak from my pack. I wasn’t as far from either the village or from Leo Tollers as I wanted to be, but cold kept me from going any farther.

It turned out not to matter. Something thrashed through the underbrush to the east. Moments later Hunter ran up to me. He licked my hand, leaping and frisking like a demented thing, and shortly after Leo followed him.

‘Roger, you moron – you cannot rest here! Don’t you hear them? The villagers? If they find us—’

I looked up at him from where I sat huddled in my cloak. Slowly I said, ‘How did you know something had happened in that village?’

‘I came that way! Hurry, get up!’

‘You did not come that way.’

‘Yes, I did – I circled back to avoid the town. Get up!’

His fear seemed real. Perhaps he
had
circled the village to reach me when Hunter finally sniffed out my trail. And perhaps his fear was what it seemed: terror of having to cross over to escape a band of furious men hunting whoever had tranced their children. But even though singing seemed the last thing on Leo’s mind at the moment, I nonetheless seemed to hear the words of his song in my mind:

Never, never will I cease

To follow where you go,

And ever, ever will I be—

Hound
. I looked more closely at Hunter, studying him
even as Leo dug frantically in his pack for something I could wear. The dog looked like all the others sent to save me over the last months: grey coat, big snout, short tail, green eyes brimming with doggy devotion. But no two living things can ever be completely identical. I had memorized the small white patch on Hunter’s left hind leg, the scratch on his haunch where he had tangled with a thorn bush, the way one toe grew slightly over another on one paw. This was not Hunter.

And ever, ever will I be

The hound upon your doe
.

6

We walked away from the village as fast as I could travel. Exhaustion kept me from talking, even from thinking. There was only the road, dusty and too bright on my tired eyes. When we halted at mid-morning, I fell asleep so swiftly that I didn’t even remember lying down.

I dreamed. Not of crossing over, but of … I wasn’t even sure what. Vague shapes, vague animal smells, a greyness that was not fog but wasn’t anything else, either. The dream felt disturbing enough to wake me.

‘Good morrow, sleeping lad,’ Leo said mockingly. ‘You left me to do all the work, you know.’

I sat up, my heart still thudding from the dream. It was twilight, still warm, and Leo had made a fire. The good smell of roasting meat banished the scents of my dream. Hunter, who was not Hunter, had caught a brace of rabbits. Leo had even gathered wild strawberries, which astonished me until I realized I was lying on a bed of them. All he had to do was reach out his hand. The fire burned in a little clearing ringed by birch and oak.

‘Thank you, Leo,’ I said. ‘Are you sure you’re not tired from such extensive labour?’

He laughed, and for the first time I almost liked him.

‘Don’t burn your fingers. Here, Hunter, have some rabbit. You earned it.’

Did he really not know this wasn’t Hunter? I ate greedily but my mind was not on the food. When we finished and were sucking our fingers while the dog crunched rabbit bones, I began.

‘You said you circled back through that village and so knew what was happening there.’

‘Yes.’ He unwrapped his lute.

‘No music, Leo. I want to talk.’

He ignored me, strumming softly. ‘You can ask, Roger, but I told you: I know very little.’

‘Not as little as you profess, I think.’

‘You’re wrong. I know exactly that little.’ He began a lilting air I had heard at court. Queen Caroline and her ladies had danced to it.

‘You know at least what you heard in the village. What happened there?’

‘The same thing as in Stonegreen. You were there, Roger. Babies vanished from their cradles and were found at dawn, as tranquil and mindless as the Dead.’

‘Where were they found? What exact spot?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe somewhere near the stream you waded along.’

‘Listen to me, Leo. When I crossed back over from the Country of the Dead, I found myself inside the village mill, beside that same stream. On this side was the circle of tranced babies, on the other side I saw a circle of the Dead. And those Dead just vanished. They were sucked into a sort of spinning grey vortex. Do you—’

‘They were what?’ Leo looked up, startled and then afraid. ‘The Dead were sucked into something? That’s impossible!’

‘No. I saw it.’ More than once.

‘I don’t believe it. The Dead never go anywhere! They’re dead!’

I believed him. His whole body had gone rigid with shock and fear. Leo hated to cross over; probably he had never seen the vortex, or even the fog that formed it. He knew nothing. And in talking to him, I knew no more than before.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let us forget that I ever spoke of it.’

‘Gladly. I think you must have dreamed all that, Roger. You were dreaming today, just before you woke. You called out a girl’s name.’

Alarm shot through me. ‘What name?’

‘Maggie. Who is she?’

I managed to grimace and shrug. ‘A girl I once bedded. The only girl, in fact. She was a kitchen maid.’

He nodded, not very interested. ‘I have never had a girl.’

‘Oh.’ I didn’t know what to say. This was the reverse of Tom Jenkins, who had boasted to me of his many conquests.

‘What girl would have me?’ Leo said bitterly. ‘Look at me. Puny and weak and scarred. Even my Lady Judith was only kind to me from pity.’ He struck a harsh chord on his lute and reached for its wrappings.

‘Leo—’

‘Shut your mouth, Roger. I’m going to sleep now. You clean up.’ He rolled in his cloak beside the fire, face turned away from me.

In the gathering darkness I buried what was left of the rabbit – not much, after the dog was finished with it – to keep predators from camp. Under the oaks I gathered more deadwood for the fire. Water was harder; I could find neither spring nor stream, which was probably why Leo had not filled the waterbag here. And he had not filled it as we walked earlier because water was heavy to carry. ‘Puny and weak’ he had described himself – he’d left out ‘lazy’. Which made it all the more puzzling that he was here, sticking to me like pine tar.

But no longer. What had failed last night, I would try again tonight. I was leaving Leo Tollers and the dog that was not Hunter, as soon as the animal was asleep and so could not bark and wake Leo.

At the moment, however, the dog sat wide awake, gazing at me with its green eyes as I sat by the fire. Occasionally it licked my hand. The stars emerged in a deep blue sky but tonight their beauty captured me less than did my own troubled mind.

What had the stolen, tranced infants to do with the circles of the Dead? What was the connection? And why hadn’t the sucking of the Dead into vortexes disturbed the Country of the Dead? Three years ago I had begun to disturb that calm landscape. I had carried back first a half-wit sailor, then Lady Cecilia, and then over a hundred soldiers. My meddling had caused storms, earthquakes and withering in that landscape on the other side of the grave. Eventually it had summoned that bright and terrible thing, which I had merely glimpsed, to rend the sky. Later one of the web women, Alysse, had called that monstrous shining ‘the sword’, and she had turned pale with fear when she spoke of it. So why now didn’t the loss of so many Dead also disturb the landscape?

I had thought to leave all this confusion behind me for ever. I had thought to find Maggie and make a new life with her and my son. I didn’t want these questions, didn’t want any more—

Grrrrrrfffffff!

All at once the dog growled, leapt to its feet, and raced towards the oaks, barking frantically. Leo jerked awake and sat upright. In the starlight the scar across his face shone dully. ‘What? What is it?’

‘I don’t know! The dog just went mad!’ I drew my knife.

‘Stay here!’ Leo said, and somehow he didn’t sound like himself. I did not stay there. Leo ran into the trees but I, faster, got there before him. At first I could not see in the dimness under the canopy of leaves. Then I could, and I cried out.

The dog had caught a rabbit. His jaws with their vicious teeth closed on the rabbit’s neck. It gave a high, inhuman scream and then, even as I watched, the rabbit became human. A woman, and the dog’s jaws were closed on her neck. Blood spurted in a powerful jet high into the air. The dog shook her body as if were a rag, then dropped her.

‘Stay away!’ Leo cried.

I knelt beside the woman and turned her face upward. She was dead, and the dog had mangled her face. But I knew her. Alysse, the web woman who was Mother Chilton’s apprentice. She had come to me and to Tom Jenkins as we were being taken by savages over the western mountains. She had told me Soulvine Moor was destroying the web of being that weaves life and death together. She had reprimanded me for tearing that web, and when she was done scolding me and warning me, a white rabbit had hopped away from me into the moonlight.

Another life lost because of me, and another frustrating mystery: What had Alysse wanted to tell me that now I would never know?

I straightened and faced Leo. Bile rose in my throat. ‘You knew.’

‘Knew what? What are you talking about, Roger?’ He stared at the bloody pulp of Alysse’s face, then abruptly dashed behind a tree. I heard the sound of retching.

I was wrong –
wasn’t
I? How could Leo have known what Alysse was, or that the dog would attack her? But he had yelled, ‘Stay away!’ with something very like authority. And it was unlike his passivity to dash after the dog; it would have been more typical of him to huddle beside the fire,
gun
ready and face fearful. On the other hand, here he was vomiting at the very sight of blood – not the reaction of a man who anticipates a murder. I had
no real reason to believe that Leo ‘knew’ anything about this attack.

But the dog knew. It had made an unerring leap at the rabbit that was Alysse, and not with its usual joyful hunting of food for us to eat. This had been a snarling attack with bared teeth. Just as when other dogs had protected me: in a cottage in Almsbury, on a rock beside Hygryll on Soulvine Moor. But Alysse had been no danger to me. So why had the dog killed her?