Dark Mist Rising (19 page)

A grey shape hurtled towards the warrior. It caught him in mid-air and they crashed to the ground.

Then, as I blinked in disbelief, there were two of the grey shapes, three, a half-dozen. They did not run in from the moor; they were just
there
, as air is there.

Or fog.

‘Peter!' Tom cried from somewhere on the ground below me. The warriors screamed. Tied to the rock, I could see little but hear everything: the human shrieks of agony, the inhuman snap of jaws on flesh, the sudden howl of an animal, sharp and shrill with pain. Above all, a gurgle I cannot forget, as blood and air mixed from throats torn out. I could not see it happen, but I saw it in imagination, and that was the more terrible of the two. The carnage seemed to go on for ever, but of course it did not. It lasted only a few minutes. The landscape of horror, like that of the Country of the Dead, distorts time.

Then silence.

‘Peter.' Tom rose beside me, blood streaming down his clothes and his face ashen. ‘Are you all right?'

I couldn't speak. My helplessness seemed to steady Tom. Colour flooded back into his face. His hand did not shake as he cut my bonds.

I sat up on the rock. Young men and women lay dead or dying all over the ground. A few moaned. Amid the carnage sat a single large dog.

Shadow.

Shep.

My voice came out shaky. ‘There were many dogs ...'

Tom looked puzzled, but only briefly. ‘Must have run off. Come, Peter, we have to get away from this cursed place!'

The dogs had not run off. Lying helpless, my pre-ternaturally sharp hearing attuned to the brutish killing around me, I had heard and seen many dogs, and I had not heard them leave. I choked out, ‘Did you see—'

‘Come on, Peter!'

Tom grabbed me by the hand and pulled me forward. I looked back over my shoulder at the round stone house. No one had emerged from it. The elders of Soulvine Moor sat in their drugged state, watching someplace, somewhere in the Country of the Dead.

I ran with Tom until I could run no further. When I faltered and fell, he caught me. We rested briefly in the darkness, and then he made me start again. I lost track of time, place, everything but the terrible pictures in my head.

My mother, fresh blood on the lap of her lavender gown—

A crowned figure in the fog—

‘Come on, Peter!' said Tom.

‘
You don't belong here, not like this. But soon
.'

Boom boom-boom-boom booooom ...

The snap of jaws on flesh and bone—

My mother, fresh blood on the lap of her lavender gown—

‘Come on – just a little further.'

We went a little further. Further still. We stopped. I tumbled to the ground in the greatest exhaustion I have ever known and then I was asleep, and mercifully without dreams.

The scene was so quiet, so mundane, that unreality took me. Had I really seen last night's horror at Hygryll? Had I really lain bound, ready to be killed while the elders of Soulvine Moor waited for my flesh? Had a pack of dogs really materialized from nowhere and—

Nothing could materialize from nowhere, and I knew only one place from which a solid body could be brought from empty air. But that required being brought by a
hisaf
, and anyway there were no dogs in the Country of the Dead.

The dog wagged his tail and brought me a stick to throw.

Tom had got his fire going. He said, ‘You slept a long time. Shep here already brought back a fat rabbit – didn't you, boy, good old dog! Well, I guess you needed the sleep, after what almost ... Peter, I owe you an apology.'

It was the last thing I expected. I blinked at him. His face was solemn.

‘You see, I thought you tricked me. After you left, letting me think you were afraid of the savage soldiers, I decided that you told me a flock of lies and ran off yourself with Fia. So I tracked you. But you didn't go away with her, did you?'

‘No.'

‘So where is she?'

His face wrinkled with pain. For the first time I considered that Fia might have been to him what Cecilia had been to me. Not just a possible bedmate, but a lost love. I said, and they were among the truest words I had ever spoken, ‘I don't know where Fia went.'

Tom's gaze dropped. I knew he was not seeing the fire, nor the skinned rabbit beside him, but only his loss. Despite all else, it moved me.

He said, ‘She wanted to go to The Queendom. I suppose she went. But I would have taken her there, or anywhere else she desired!'

‘I know,' I said gently.

‘The worst is, I couldn't track her. I followed her easily enough to a little dell full of wildflowers, but then the trail just disappeared. I found a lot of other tracks, though. Savage soldiers.'

So they had come as far south as the dell where Fia's time had ended. I must have missed them by only a few hours. And their blundering about had covered my trail. ‘Tom—'

‘She left me this.' He held out the miniature, smaller in his huge palm than it had ever looked in mine, and Fia's face gazed back at me. But I knew that, if I squinted, I would see not only Fia but also Cecilia.

Abruptly Tom said, ‘If I didn't know better, almost I would think that she met those savage soldiers there by design. That she
wanted
to go away with them.'

‘I don't think that, Tom.'

He shrugged, and now his eyes were hard, and the pain gone from them. ‘It could be so. You can't trust women, after all. They are fun to bed, but they ain't men.' He shrugged again, thrust the miniature into his pocket and laid the rabbit on the fire.

Did he mean his words – were women to him a pleasurable distraction when present but dismissible when not? Or was he only telling himself that in order to lessen real hurt over Fia? Watching him cook the rabbit, whistling tunelessly as he poked at the fire, I genuinely could not tell. Tom Jenkins was so different from me that he might have been another form of creature altogether. I did not know what he was.

The dog solemnly watched us both. I did not know what he was either. But I did not think he was Shep, although he looked as much like him as Shep had looked like Shadow.

Grey dogs, materializing out of the fog
.

I said slowly, ‘Tom, why weren't you afraid to go onto Soulvine Moor?'

He looked up and grinned. ‘Why, Peter, you don't believe those tales made up to scare children, do you? Old women talking.' His grin faded. ‘Although what was in that place was fearsome enough. Why were they going to kill you? Are they in league with the savage army?'

‘I ... I don't think so.' He utterly confounded me. Even the palace servants had been afraid to so much as speak the words ‘Soulvine Moor'. But the palace servants perhaps had more actual knowledge of the place. Could knowledge increase rather than lessen superstition? But no, the country folk of innumerable summer faires had believed all the old ways. This was just Tom: fearless, feckless, cutting his beliefs to suit his whim, unwilling to share beliefs held by old women.

He said scornfully, ‘I suppose you believe in witches too.'

Did I? What else to call Mother Chilton? But that was not what Tom meant. ‘No,' I said.

‘Well, come now, that's good at any rate. Still, you hesitated before you spoke, Peter. Next you'll tell me that you believe men can cross over to the Country of the Dead!' He gave his hearty laugh and turned the smoking rabbit on the fire.

I ate ravenously, slept again and ate again when I woke, this time fish caught in some mountain stream. Tom kept low the fire of some hard wood that smoked very little. Once I thought I heard
guns
in the far distance, but I could not be sure. By mid-afternoon, when the sun sent the oak tree's shadow long over an open patch of buttercups and daisies, I felt ready to travel again.

Tom looked at me expectantly. ‘Peter, what do we do now?'

‘Journey,' I said.

‘Why?'

‘There is a place I must visit, and someone I must see, but I cannot tell you more about either. If you are willing to travel with me in such a way, I am glad of your company. If you do not wish to come, I understand.'

His face clouded. ‘You do not trust me.'

‘I do trust you,' I said, and it both was and was not a lie. There was no one more loyal, useful and tireless than Tom. There was also no one more likely to commit some impulsive act that could get us both killed. ‘But nonetheless I cannot answer your questions. Will you come anyway?'

He chewed his thumbnail and stared at me resentfully.

‘You won't tell me?'

‘I can't.'

‘Is this more lies?'

‘No. I am telling you nothing so that I don't have to lie to you.'

He considered this, trying to work it out. Was I com-plimenting him or deceiving him? The workings of his slow brain were clear to me – clearer, in fact, than the workings of my own.

My mother, fresh blood on the lap of her lavender gown—

A crowned figure in the fog—

Fia—

And I had been
sent
back from the Country of the Dead. I had not chosen to cross back over; I had been yanked away, a thing that had never happened before. I did not know who could possibly possess such power, nor what was going on in the Country of the Dead, and I knew of only one person who could tell me for sure. But I had no idea where Mother Chilton was. That left only one other who might have any useful information. My plan – if it even deserved that name – was a desperate one. But it was all I could think of.

‘I will come,' Tom said and kicked dirt over the fire. He rolled up his cloak, in which I had been sleeping, and efficiently packed up knife, cook pot, tankard,
guns
. All packed, he looked at me expectantly.

‘Where are we going?'

‘East,' I said.

‘See, here are the Unclaimed Lands, and north of that is The Queendom. This is the sea, here to the east. We are heading towards the sea.'

‘Oh,' Tom said. He knew better, now, than to ask me why. Nor did he show much interest in my map. He could not read and had no interest in my teaching him letters. For Tom Jenkins, the world existed not in symbols, not in superstitions, not in memory, but only in what he could see and feel directly in front of him. He had never again mentioned Fia, nor had I ever seen him look at her miniature.

Sometimes I envied him.

‘When we reach the sea,' I said, pointing with my stick at the dirt map, ‘we turn north along the coast.'

‘Oh. Is there any rabbit left? Hey, Shep, you lazy dog, you didn't catch a big enough rabbit, you wastrel! Must do better tomorrow, Shep, old boy, old good dog!'

Shep, who was not Shep, wagged his tail.

The going became harder once we reached the sea. The coast was wild here, with deep hidden coves, high cliffs and no dwellings. However, as the land descended, rough tracks appeared, and then the occasional isolated cabin. The weather held clear and warm, and Shep found ample food. When Tom talked to cabin folk, they were suspicious and uncommunicative, but we did learn that the savage soldiers had not appeared in this remote area. At some point, unmarked, we passed from the Unclaimed Lands into The Queendom.

And then, after long days of hard travel, when a rich summer haze lay over the land, we came to a place I knew well. A deserted cabin in a clearing, with a track leading to a steep cliff above a pebbly beach. Huge, half-submerged rocks stretched out to sea. I stood at the top of that cliff, gazing at the calm blue sea, and the scene in my mind was different and terrible.

‘Peter,' Tom said, with one of his isolated, unexpected flashes of insight, ‘What is it? You look so ... so ...'

‘It is nothing.'

He said quietly, ‘You have been here before. And in that clearing with the cabin a rotted noose hangs from the oak tree.'

The body of the yellow-haired youth – his hair the same colour as Tom's – was long gone. It had been three years since Hartah and his murderous crew had wrecked the
Frances Ormund
on the rocks below and had been caught by the queen's soldiers. Now no ships sailed that quiet horizon, and the beach was lit by the sun, not the burning of a treacherous bonfire to make a ship think it a safe harbour in a wild storm. Somewhere on that beach, unseen, sat the Dead. Killed in the wreck, killed by Hartah's men, killed by soldiers. Plus one killed by Hartah, and one by me.