Dark Mist Rising (37 page)

Tarek did not break stride as he pushed aside the tent flap and went in, trailed by his captains. The three soldiers remained outside. I followed Tarek, Tom stumbled after me, and no one stopped either of us. So Tarek
wanted
Tom here. Why? What would we find inside that could—

We found Jee.

He stood defiantly in the middle of the tent, which was warm from the fire pit, his cloak discarded in a corner. He held Princess Stephanie's hand. Jee's eyes were wet, but at the sight of me the tears vanished, replaced by anger.

‘You did naught to help her! Naught! So I maun – I maun – make them let us go!'

‘Jee.' I thought I had known fear before, but it was nothing compared to this. He had ... done what? My mind scrambled to keep up. Drugged the guards, yes. So Alysse had sent more than one honey cake and Jee had kept them. All along he had hoped to ...

‘You rescued Maggie but not Her Grace!' Jee accused me. Stephanie started towards me, but Jee drew her back to him. She stood tethered by his hand, reaching towards mine, staring at Tarek in complete terror. Tarek, her husband.

The Young Chieftain said to me, ‘Has the witch boy defiled her?'

I turned. His eyes were blue ice. ‘Defiled? My lord, he is ten years old!'

‘He is from Witchland. You told me so yourself.'

And so I had, in the effort to convince Tarek that I was an
antek
. I gasped out, ‘He is but a child.'

Stephanie struggled free of Jee's hand and ran to me. Tarek said to her, in our language, ‘Stop.'

She stopped as if shot, halfway between me and Jee. Jee stepped towards her and again took her hand. I don't think she even realized he had done it, paralysed with fear as she was.

Then Tom – fearless, bumbling, ignorant Tom – let out a great bellow, lurched forward and swept both children into his arms. Jee and Stephanie had no more hope of stopping that great sweep of huge arms than of stopping an avalanche. What scared me was that neither Tarek nor his captains stopped Tom either. The three savages stood in the doorway, and I with them.

‘You piss-pot bastards!' Tom brayed. ‘Making war on children! I'd like to—'

‘Be quiet, Tom! Now!' I turned to face Tarek, my back to the other three.

His brilliant blue eyes glittered with anger, but he had not yet given orders to his men. In that delay I saw our only chance. I began to talk, very fast and low, frantically groping in that guttural language so unsuited to words of leniency or compassion.

‘He – the boy – he is a child, he did not touch her – I can make him go away – there will be no attack.' Why did Tarekish contain no word for ‘trouble' other than ‘attack'! ‘It is finished – I will send the boy away – the princess – I mean the queen, she is your queen – does nothing and is not disciplined – it is finished now.'

‘It is finished,' Tarek repeated meditatively, gazing at me.

Behind him one of the captains spoke. I did not understand everything, but I caught ‘witch child', ‘danger' and ‘attack'. More, I caught the captain's expression, which transcended language. A universal expression, the same everywhere on a certain kind of person with power.
End
the trouble by ending the troublemakers
.

Tarek was of a different mould. He listened as I raced on, and his eyes studied the children in Tom's arms. I could not see them behind me, and all three stayed silent, but I knew what Tarek saw. An indignant giant bound at the ankles, a trembling six-year-old girl, a defiant urchin who might be a witch child but who was also only a deluded little barbarian imagining himself in love with a queen. Three such as it would shame a great warrior to consider worthy enemies. I babbled, and I saw the blue eyes make his decision, and the captain behind Tarek said no more, somehow knowing he had already lost.

‘Bring back the queen's woman,' Tarek snapped, and one of the captains immediately disappeared to fetch Susannah. And to me, ‘Tell your
nel
to put down the—
Jai axteb!'

I had never before heard an oath from Tarek. Stephanie screamed. Something snarled behind me, and then a grey shape hurtled past me towards the Young Chieftain, who went down. A shot shattered the dawn.

It had all happened so fast that I stood gaping, my mind trying to catch up. Tarek lay half in and half out of the tent, and atop him lay the body of a huge grey dog, its teeth still fastened in the Young Chieftain's arm. As soon as I saw that, time slowed, and each event, each thought, became separate and distinct in my mind, as each step becomes distinct to legs moving slowly in pain.

Soldiers rushed into the tent.

Stephanie went on screaming.

A soldier pulled the dog's carcass off Tarek. The dog that had materialized, in the savages' view, from nowhere.

My father saying to me that there was no danger in my
crossing over, only in bringing something back.

The dog's teeth had torn flesh from Tarek's arm and blood gushed forth.

Alysse saying to me, ‘We are those who strive to preserve life.'

Tarek struggled to rise.

The fireplace bellows I had brought back from the Country of
the Dead, yes, but also my shaving knife, clothing, boots, even a
chair – things that had crossed with me time after time.

Guns
were raised and pointed at me and at the others behind me, the blue savage eyes above each weapon filled with fear and hate. All the repressed vengeance these men felt for me erupted now that my witchcraft had harmed another of their leaders.

Tarek rose his feet, his face rigid with the effort to deny pain, his lips parting to give an order.

My shaving knife, my boots, a chair, the bellows
...

Alysse: ‘Bringing anything back from the Country of the Dead
disturbs the natural order of the sacred landscape
.'

The wall between the living and the dead eroding ... the
threads of the web pulled and destroyed
...

Preserve life, preserve life
...

‘Fire,' the Young Chieftain gasped.

But I had already turned, thrown my arms around Tom with his burden, bitten down hard on my tongue and willed.

Nobody had ever said anything to me about taking things
into
the Country of the Dead. With Tom, Jee and Stephanie in my arms, I crossed over.

Cold—

Dirt choking my mouth—

But not only mine. It was as it had been when I brought back Bat, brought back Cecilia, brought back the Blue army, and I was faintly surprised that it should feel no different travelling the other way. Beside me, Tom and Jee and the princess were prisoners of the dirt, were crawling with the worms, and though their fleshless bones could no more move than could mine, I somehow felt them and their tongueless screams. It went on for a long time, and yet even longer. Then we were through and tumbling onto the ground in the Country of the Dead.

With a great roar Tom tore away from me, dropping Jee. Stephanie still clung to Tom, her face buried in his neck. I staggered on the featureless grass, amazed at what I had done – and then uncertain of what I had done.

My own body was back in the land of the living, as always. But had I really brought these three bodily through the grave, or were their bodies dead on the other side, so that any moment now they would lapse into the mindless tranquillity of the Dead?

‘Where did everybody go?' Tom bellowed. ‘What did those piss pots do? By damn, there's the mountain shaped like an anvil, just like we didn't move, but where the swigging dung is the
tent
? Where is the
army
? Where are
we
?'

I had never seen anyone less tranquil.

The landscape looked closer to its usual state than at any time since the fogs had begun to form. When I had crossed over before, I had seen a patch of humming, dense darkness and a circle of ten Dead whirling into a spinning vortex until they were funnelled into pure power for Soulvine Moor. Afterwards, the Country of the Dead had resumed its former calm, and so it appeared now. We stood on the same western mountain slope as in the land of the living, with the same meadow and trees and rock faces and river valley below, but all else was gone. No tents. No fires. No Young Chieftain and his captains and savages. No
guns
raised at us. Merely a few random Dead, sitting serenely where once they had died.

And the three with me did not lapse into the quiescence of the Dead.

From Tom's shoulder, Stephanie spied her nurse. She let out a scream and wriggled so hard that she escaped Tom. The princess ran to her nana, and it was Jee who ran with her. Jee, who knew what I was and where we were, as the others did not.

‘My lady, my lady ...' I heard him croon, but whatever else he said to Stephanie was masked by Tom's bellow.

‘Peter! Where did everything go? By damn, I thought we were dead! Those
guns
—'

The dead nurse registered on his mind. He stopped, frowned, looked helplessly at me. ‘Peter ...'

‘Tom,' I said, ‘sit down.' For he had begun to tremble, this reckless giant whom I had never seen tremble before.

He remained standing. ‘Peter,' he said, and now his voice dropped to a whisper, ‘the nurse died. Are we ... are we all dead?'

‘She is; you are not,' I said. ‘Tom, sit.'

He did, cross-legged on the grass, and all at once I was reminded of the Young Chieftain during my instruction. Just so had Tarek dropped to sit when I brought back the bellows. What would Tarek now do to my body in the land of the living? Kill it, of course. ‘
Fire.
' And yet, if I were already dead there, why had
I
not lapsed into the mindless tranquillity of the Dead? Nothing made sense.

But it made even less sense to Tom, who repeated desperately what I had said to him, ‘The nurse is dead but we are not?'

I sat beside him. ‘No. But this is the Country of the Dead. I brought you here.'

‘You ... brought me here?'

Tom's face creased into valleys and ravines more complex than the mountainscape around us. Jee still murmured to Stephanie, who at least remained quiet, clinging to her dead nurse.

‘Tom, listen. I am a
hisaf
. You told me once that the old folk of Almsbury talked of the Country of the Dead, and those who could cross over to it. Those stories are true, and I am such a one. That was what Tarek wished me to teach him. I once brought back an army that attacked and killed his father and—'

‘That old story is
true
?'

‘Yes.'

‘That was you?'

‘Yes.'

‘You? Truly?'

‘Yes.'

‘That was
you
? Peter Forest?'

‘Roger Kilbourne,' I said.

‘But you really—'

‘
Yes
. Tom, we don't have time for this.' Which was a stupid statement because now all we had was time. An eternity of time, if we were fortunate. If not ...

Tom sat quietly, only his face wrinkling as his brain struggled to take in a situation that he could not have imagined, that until this moment he had not believed possible. But the brain of Tom Jenkins was an omniv-orous creature. It could digest anything, although nothing then stayed within it for very long. Eventually his face stopped working itself into whole landscapes, and he jumped to his feet. ‘Well then, we should get going!'

I looked up at him. ‘Going? Where?'

‘Why, to The Queendom of course! We escaped!' Suddenly he laughed, a great ringing noise that echoed off a nearby cliffside. Never before in the Country of the Dead had I heard anyone laugh, except for my mad sister, and her laugh— What would happen if she found us here? What if she found Stephanie, whose wild talent my sister had already used to kill two people?

Tom said, ‘Yes, we escaped Lord Tarek! The bastard must be wondering what happened, us just disappearing like that before his very eyes! Winked out like a candle! By damn but you're clever, Pe— Roger Kilbourne. I'll call you that now – you've earned it, haven't you? A
hinaf
!'

‘
Hisaf
.' I corrected, inanely.

‘Whatever you like, you clever lad. All right, we should get started. Where is— Oh good. Jee has got Her Grace in hand. We can take the princess back to The Queendom now, and then you can just wink her back inside her palace, and I daresay we'll all three be heroes. Ten to one odds. The palace girls will love us!'

‘Tom, wait.'

‘What? I don't see no problem here, Roger. Not as long as you can keep doing that crossing-over trick. You can, can't you?'

Could I? I did not even know if I were alive or dead back there in Tarek's country. Although if I were dead, wouldn't I have already lapsed into mindless tranquillity? Slowly I said to Tom, ‘That will not work. If I cross back over, it will be to return to where my body is, which is at the savage camp, or wherever Tarek takes me. My body is in a sort of trance back in the land of the living, and I cannot leave it more than a few days without food or water. Also—'