Authors: Anna Kendall
My very bones ached with weariness. More than once I thought I could not go on, that my legs could carry me no further. The savages made me continue, however, and at an even quicker pace as the land grew flatter. We were now well within the borders of The Queendom. Through twilight gloom I glimpsed prosperity all around me in this fertile valley. Even more, I smelled it and heard it. Here, cattle dung fertilized a field, the pungent odour carried on the evening breeze. There, frogs croaked beside a mill pond. The scents of mint and thyme drifted from an herb plot. Geese, penned for the night, squawked and settled.
Finally we came to a village. Although the summer night was warm and the moon full, the cottages were all shuttered and barred. No women gossiped at the well, no lovers strolled hand in hand, no young people danced on the green. We walked past gardens set behind painted gates, the hollyhocks and delphiniums and roses silvered by moonlight, and entered one of the cottages.
Two more men waited there. And I lost my last chance of not being recognized.
My mother in a lavender gown
...
Maggie safe, or bound and helpless in an upstairs chamber
?
Moths circling rush lights set into holders on the walls
.
A man coming toward me, wiping ale from his mouth with
the back of one hand.
My skittering thoughts settled on the man, who walked towards me with a pewter tankard in his hand. He peered closely into my face, but there was no need. ‘
Ven
,' he said to the others. Yes. And to me, in my own language harshly accented, ‘Roger the queen's fool.'
I said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Two and a half years since I had last seen him, and he had been a boy then, a singer with a voice as powerful as a war drum. I had watched him sing Lord Solek's army into the throne room of the palace, the savages marching into Queen Caroline's presence in seemingly endless numbers, pounding their cudgels on the floor and chanting a battle song. Later I had seen him sing that army into battle against a rival queen's soldiers, a battle the savages won easily with their
guns
and their superb training. The young singer had worn twigs braided into his hair and red dye on his face, as I had worn the yellow dye of the queen's fool.
He was a singer no longer. No dye, no twigs, no music. He had become a warrior. But I was still a fool.
‘
Tel mit
.'
The singer-warrior's lieutenant seized me and dragged me to a narrow steep stairwell. The two men who had brought me here remained below. On the floor above we passed two chambers, both with open doors, both empty. Maggie and Jee were not in the cottage. In a third, only slightly larger bedchamber at the end of the corridor, the lieutenant pushed me into a straight-backed chair and expertly bound me to it with rope. I could move neither arms nor legs. The singer-that-was followed at his leisure, still carrying his tankard. He drained it and set the mug on a polished oak chest. He searched for words in the language not his own.
‘You ... kill ... Solek.'
‘No.' I had not been the one to thrust the swords into Solek's body, not the one to cut off his head and set it on a pike over the east gate of the city. The Blue army had done the first, Lord Robert Hopewell the second. But I had brought the Blue army, which the savages thought of as magic illusions, to the palace. I had brought them from further than anyone, including me, had believed possible: from the Country of the Dead.
‘Yes,' he said. ‘Now Tarek son of Solek son of Taryn ...' He lost the words. But I knew who he meant: the Young Chieftain, who wanted revenge for his father.
Hope is a strange bloom, struggling to survive in even the rockiest soil. Bound to a chair, facing the murderous blue eyes of the singer-turned-warrior, I still hoped. I hoped that revenge would not be exacted this moment. Hoped that Tarek son of Solek son of Taryn would wish to watch me die. Hoped that the Young Chieftain was not in this village and that tomorrow we would travel to wherever he was, and so give me a few more days of life.
Below me, in the kitchen, I heard the two savages who had brought me there talking and laughing and drinking. The scent of smoked ham drifted up the staircase. Disbelief seized my mind. Surely I was not going to die with the good smell of ham in my nostrils; surely I was not going to die in this small chamber with its polished oak chest and bright quilted bedcover;
surely I was not going to
die—
Then the older warrior took something from a fold of his shaggy tunic. I had never seen such a thing before, but it had been described to me once, three years ago, by an apprentice stable boy. And I knew that indeed I was not going to die, at least not right away, but that, instead of this, death would be welcome.
‘No!' The scream came out of me unbidden, even as I was ashamed of it. But it would not be the last. The device was simple, a knotted cord tied in a circle, with a stick bound into it. The older savage fitted the cord tight around my forehead. He twisted the stick a half-turn, and the hard knots cut into my skull.
I cried out again. The pain was excruciating.
‘You kill Solek son of Taryn,' the singer-who-was said.
Another twist of the stick. I writhed and screamed. My bladder let go.
‘You kill Solek son of Taryn.'
If the stick were twisted long enough, it would force my eyeballs to pop from my head.
‘You kill—'
I escaped the pain the only way possible. I crossed over.
Darkness—
Cold—
Dirt choking my mouth—
Worms in my eyes—
Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—
But this time, for the first time, I did not mind those terrible sensations. They were preferable to the agony I had left behind. For several minutes I sat in the Country of the Dead, gasping with remembered terror but not with pain. I could feel pain here, but only from injuries inflicted here. However, although it did not hurt, the knotted rope still bound my skull, and my arms and legs were still tied to the chair, since whatever I wear on my person travels with me. Never before had I crossed over wearing a chair.
A short distance from me sat one of the Dead, a gentleman dressed in an old-fashioned slashed doublet, full short breeches and green hose, but of course he took no notice of me whatsoever.
Carefully I rocked my chair until it tipped over. Then I wriggled my body like some sort of clothed and booted earthworm, until my one good hand closed on a stone. Not really sharp, but it would do. Patiently I worried it across the rope around my arms. This was made easier because the savage had not been able to bind me at my wrists – the stump of my missing hand would have slipped out too easily from the bonds. So he had tied me to the high-backed chair at my shoulders, and I could bend my good arm at the elbow. Still, it took a long time to cut my upper body free of the chair.
When my hand was free, I tore the knotted rope from my skull and threw it to the ground. Gingerly I fingered my temples, where the knots had been. My fingers came away bloody. Rolling onto my side, I cut my ankles free of the chair.
For several more moments I lay still, breathing heavily, wondering what would happen if the savages killed my body in the land of the living. My guess was that I would not be able to return. But would I lapse into the unknowing serenity of the rest of the Dead? Or – terrible thought – would I stay as I was now, the only person awake and moving in the Country of the Dead?
For ever?
A shudder ran through my entire body, convulsing limbs already stiff from their imprisonment on the chair.
Slowly I stood and looked around me. Since I had come here a fortnight ago, something had happened to the Country of the Dead.
Not storms, winds and quakes such I had caused here two years ago. No, this was different. Sky and landscape lay as quiet as ever. The mill stream, without the mill or its race, flowed placidly. The trees under the featureless sky did not rustle their leaves. But a little distance off, low to the ground, floated a patch of motionless grey fog. My legs almost gave way again. I had seen such a thing once before. But perhaps I was wrong. Cautiously I approached the cloud.
In the land of the living, this valley was fertile and fair. People had lived there for a long time, which meant they had died there for a long time. Many Dead dotted the landscape. Some, like the gentleman in doublet and hose, were alone, gazing serenely at the ground or the sky or a flower or a stone. But since I first crossed over at the age of six, many of the Dead I had seen had sat in circles. It was around one of these circles that the fog had coalesced. Three women and two men sat facing each other, not touching, staring fixedly at the centre of the circle, which held nothing except more pearl-grey fog. The same fog enveloped each of the motionless figures, but so lightly that I had no trouble seeing their faces and clothing. All were young men and women, and their dress said they had died in different eras. Their circle looked like those I had seen for over a decade, but the fog was new.
I moved closer.
Two years ago I had crossed over while upon Soulvine Moor and had found that a grey fog had accompanied me: a crowd of the men and women of Soulvine, invisible but somehow
there
. I had felt them, pressing close to me like heat, until I screamed and ran. A few steps and I had been out of the fog, but the fog itself had remained. The Soulviners could not manifest their solid bodies here, as I could, could not move about the countryside, could not talk to the elderly Dead. They were not
hisafs
. But in some strange sense they had crossed over with me, and their shadowy presence had taken the form of a dense dank dark-grey fog.
This fog was neither dense nor dark but merely wispy grey. And we were a long way from Soulvine Moor. Perhaps I was mistaken and this was just fog. But the Country of the Dead had no weather, not before my meddling and not after. I had not meddled now. For over two years I had not crossed over at all, until the brief crossing at Two Forks pasture. Whatever this fog was, it was not my doing.
What was it?
I reached out my hand and placed it within the fog, resting my palm on the head of one of the Dead, a man dressed in the rough tunic and leggings of a farm labourer. He, of course, did not stir. My hand felt nothing, not even the moistness of natural fog. I moved closer, knelt down, moved closer still, until the dead labourer and I were pressed against each other and my head, as well as his, was enveloped in fog.
Did I feel a faint sensation in my mind? I wasn't sure. The slight quickening within my head might be due merely to the hard beating of my heart and rapid breathing of my lungs. The labourer, of course, moved neither heart nor lungs. His body was neither warm nor cold. He just
was
, and whether anything at all was happening in his brain, I could not know. If anything was happening in the Country of the Dead, I could not know that, either.
One thing I did know, however. If this fog was not natural, if it was indeed some sort of shadowy presence here of those who lived in Soulvine, then the only way it could have crossed over was in the company of a
hisaf
like me. And I had not brought this fog with me. I had brought a chair, some rope, a cruel instrument of torture and a bloody head, but no fog. So who had? Was there another
hisaf
here?
The only other
hisaf
I had ever heard mentioned was my father, who had left my mother and me before I could remember him. But a green-eyed old man on Soulvine Moor, the leader at Hygryll, had once told me what my sire was: ‘
Your father be
hisaf.
Or you could not be
.'
Carefully, as if I might break, I pulled myself away from the dead labourer, out of the fog, and up onto my feet. I turned around slowly, studying everything I could see. Grass, a small wood, a pond, some boulders and bushes and weeds and the Dead. At the very edge of my vision there was a faint shimmering in the still air. I walked towards it.
It was another circle of the Dead, this time ten people, one of the largest circles I had ever seen. Wispy pearl-grey fog hung around each figure, with a patch of fog in the middle of the circle. Again I knelt beside one of the Dead, an old woman, and put my head close to hers. Again I seemed to feel that faint tingle in my mind, too unlike the strong fog presence I had felt on Soulvine Moor for me to be sure I felt anything at all.
It is old women who are most willing to talk to me. I pulled away from this one and shook her roughly until she roused.
‘Lord-a-mercy, lad, what the dung d'ye think ye be doing? Leave off!' She pushed me hard, and I tumbled back onto the grass. She might be dead, but she was strong.
‘Good madam—'
‘Aye, and ye'll call me by my name, if ye call me at all!'