Fell (The Sight 2) (3 page)

“There now, that’s better. Where’s that damned food, Mia?”

Mia came back into the middle of the room and placed a bowl of steaming broth carefully on a low three-legged table next to her uncle. As the old shepherd sat up and leaned forwards, Mia almost gasped. She was looking at the wooden chest, and could see the corner of a parchment peeping from the lid. She hadn’t put it back properly.

Malduk and Alina might have noticed it too, if the door hadn’t opened again and, from the growing blizzard outside, an old woman bustled noisily into the shepherd’s hovel.

“Wife,” grunted Malduk, “Mia has had to warm my soup, and she’s hardly old enough.”

Ranna’s head was heavily shawled, and she was carrying a bundle of firewood in her spindly arms.

“Which will teach the child the meaning of hard work,” snapped Ranna irritably. “I’ve had to carry this on my back half a mile or more, husband, and in a snowstorm too. Stop your griping.”

The old shepherd fell silent before his angry wife. Ranna was far more capable of carrying wood than he, and in truth he was frightened of her.

“And what’s the changeling doing standing there idly?” said Ranna, moving over to the simple kitchen area, where she dropped the wood on the floor. “Shouldn’t she be out in the barn by now?”

“Yes, Ranna. I’ll send Alin out soon enough,” answered Malduk. “You know they saw wolves last week, close to the village.”

Ranna swung her head. “And they’ll be down hunting soon,” she said.

“Indeed, wife. That black loner has been seen in the forests again.”

Alina Sculcuvant looked up immediately. There was a new dream that came to her in the night, and it had been growing stronger and stronger in the past few months. The dream of a lone, black wolf.

“But with these raiders from the East,” said Ranna, “we’ve worse things to worry us now than wolves.”

Turks from the Ottoman lands had been raiding again, plundering homesteads and setting fire to the wooden churches that dotted the countryside. They had grown bolder and bolder after their great victory over the Christian stronghold of Byzantium in the East, twenty-five years before.

Mia was listening nervously, but Ranna’s words about Turks made Alina stand a little straighter.

“The shepherds say we’ve nothing to fear from raiders, Ranna,” she ventured, hoping to reassure the old couple, “and that the King will drive them off. The King, or the Order of the Griffin.”

Mia’s ears perked up. She had heard rumours of the secret Orders in the lands beyond the forest, like the Order of the Dragon and the Order of the Griffin, many tales good and even more bad, and she wanted to hear more.

“And Lord Vladeran’s strength and cunning protect all the lands down to the great river too,” Alina finished. “That soldier said so.”

Ranna swung round, a murderous look in the old woman’s eyes.

“What soldier?” she snapped.

“I was talking to him at market. One of Lord Vladeran’s men.”

Ranna was always furious at Alina for speaking out of turn, but the mention of a soldier and Lord Vladeran, whose palace lay far to the Northwest, had an especially strange effect on the adults. The couple cast each other a secretive glance, and Malduk put a hand on the chest he was sitting on, almost protectively. Little Mia shivered as he nearly touched the parchment poking from the lid.

“Do adults need the words of a servant to reassure us?” snapped Ranna scornfully. “Mind your tongue, changeling.”

“I was only trying to …”

“Ranna’s right,” growled Malduk, standing up. “Now go to the barn, and get some rest, and I’ll wake you well before sunup. You’ll have a long day tomorrow, with this weather worsening and wolves to watch for.”

Alina shrugged, but she turned to leave.

“Wait, girl,” said Ranna suddenly.

The old woman bustled over to the stove and poured some hot water into a wooden bowl, then pulled a pouch of herbs down from a cupboard, which she opened and stirred carefully into the bowl. She added a thin drizzle of broth, then turned and held it up to Alina with sparking eyes.

“Take that to warm you,” she said in a softer voice, but with a sly, menacing smile. “Your favourite brew, my dear. To protect you from
them
.”

Alina stared at the broth. The old witch on the mountain had first given it to her, as a charm to help protect her from discovery by the fairy people of the forest. She was none too fond of the strange herbal concoction and its sharp, acrid taste, although Alina did admit that it made her feel stronger for a while, probably because she was given so little to eat. It always made her sleep deeply too. The girl hesitated.

“Do as you’re told, Alin,” ordered Malduk. His face softened a little. “You know it’s for your own good. Like a magic cloak.”

Alina felt Malduk and Ranna’s eyes watching her closely, until she had drunk the whole draft. She put down the bowl again to wipe her mouth, but it slipped from the edge of the table and clattered to the floor.

“Stupid girl,” snapped the old woman.

“I’m sorry, Ranna, I …”

“Give me that,” said Ranna irritably, looking at a handkerchief poking from Alina’s pocket. Alina pulled it out and Ranna snatched it away from her, bending down to wipe the floor.

“Let me, Ranna,” said Alina.

“Oh, get to bed with you.”

Alina hovered there still.

“What’s wrong with you now, changeling?” said Ranna, standing straight again.

“Please, Ranna. May I have some food, first?”

Ranna frowned, but went over to a cupboard and pulled out some stale bread. Alina looked imploringly at Malduk’s delicious bowl of mutton soup, but Ranna just broke the bread in half and handed a piece to her with a grunt. Without another word the young woman turned and disappeared through the cottage door into the falling snow.

“And Mia,” said Ranna, turning to her little niece, “put your coat on and fetch me that axe at the back. And some kindling too, from the edge of the forest. We’ll stoke the fire. It’s freezing in here.”

Outside the snow was falling thickly, and Alina pulled her tunic tightly about her. She realised she had left her dagger on the chest inside but decided to get it in the morning, then ran towards the little barn beyond the yard, where she slept alone each night. The wooden doors were banging on their creaking hinges. There was a break in the cloud above and Alina looked up sadly at the moon. Often in the darkness she would spy shapes in its shining surface and wonder what it really was. It had almost seemed a friend to her, and whenever Alina was troubled by confusion or doubt, by fear and sadness, she would look up and hold onto it like a truth, while the moon would often seem to look down kindly too and whisper—“
Hold on, Alina. Keep on trying
.”

Mia emerged from the house, and Alina smiled at her friend across the yard, then sighed and pulled the barn door fast behind her. The door blocked out most of the wind, although it still whistled mournfully through the rickety slats.

Alina shivered and felt a familiar loneliness and resentment deep in her heart. It wasn’t only that Malduk and Ranna were so terribly hard on her. She had been with them for six or seven long years—she hardly remembered now—and had come to know most of the villagers and shepherds who cultivated these hills. Yet Alina was still treated as an outsider.

The other boys thought “Alin’s” ways strange, for he had a much softer, finer quality than they, and his piercing eyes frightened them, while they often teased him for his red hair. The rumours about goblin origins were bad enough, but Alin was often daydreaming too and asking about the world beyond the village, which they all resented. Alina’s only real friend was Mia, but although Alina was desperately fond of the child, little Mia was only nine, so how could she really share the feelings and hopes that were coursing through a growing girl’s blood?

Alina cast her huge, clever eyes cheerlessly around the scrubby barn. It was so familiar to her now, this gloomy place, that she could see her way around it in the dark, yet a barn had never felt like a real home.

She thought a little jealously of the blazing stove that the couple would soon be warming themselves by that night, and wondered if the hopeless feeling in her stomach would ever leave her. Alina longed to have proper friends, to talk and dream with other girls her own age, yet her endless chores and thoughts of her origins kept her apart. Perhaps she really was a changeling, and not meant to be amongst humans at all.

Then what of this human life? It was all right, tending sheep, better than much of the hard work about the farm, and Alina had grown very close to Malduk’s two sheepdogs, Teela and Elak. Just as she loved the animals she saw running free in the forests and the mountains. The lessons that she had been learning from Malduk and the others about shepherding had strengthened her natural instincts as a tomboy too. Yet she felt that there must be more to life than dreaming alone on a mountainside and watching sheep, especially for a fairy child.

Alina thought suddenly of King Stefan Cel Mare, of Lord Vladeran, and of the famous Order of the Griffin. She loved to hear tales of the secret Orders, but even more of the King, who in her mind was a strong and protective presence, almost the father figure she lacked. She often pictured him on a fine horse, wielding a sword to defend justice and the right. She often wondered too what it would be like to ride into battle serving a proud monarch, or one of the King’s brave liege lords in the lands beyond the forest, like Lord Vladeran.

Alina sighed, walked over to the pile of dank straw at the back of the barn, and lay down cheerlessly in the growing darkness, drawing a thin, dirty blanket over her shivering body. On the floor beside her was more of the muslin cloth that she used to bind her upper body under her shirt, to help conceal the fact of her sex from the outside world. It made her almost ashamed to be a girl, let alone the child of goblins.

She was very cold, but the herb drink was working warmth through her veins, and bringing that familiar headiness that made her eyelids feel like leaden weights. Alina gave a loud yawn, wondering if the mixture really protected her from the spirits of the forest, and lay back, trying to keep her hazel eyes open. She was wondering fearfully what sleep would show her this time, or if the goblins would come in the night and tell her the truth of her changeling past.

IN THE HOVEL OLD RANNA WAS GLARING angrily at her husband, and the light from the kitchen fire sent sinister red shadows dancing about the walls. They were both standing by the kitchen now and whispering darkly together, as Alina lay in the barn and tried to sleep.

“You heard what she said,” hissed Ranna. “She was talking to one of Vladeran’s soldiers. There’ve been several around of late. If the girl remembers anything, we’ll—”

“Of course she won’t remember,” snapped Malduk. “Do we have to go through this again, woman? What about the potion?”

Ranna cast a nervous look at the locked chest, which Malduk had sat on earlier, and on which now sat Alina’s knife.

“Perhaps you’re right,” she muttered. “And I’ve always told them you’ll beat them both, if they go near the chest.”

Ranna seemed a little reassured, but then her cruel eyes darkened again.

“But what if someone recognises her, husband? One of his soldiers.”

“Why do you think we make her cut her hair and dress as a boy?” answered Malduk. “Besides, you see how she’s really changed. Nothing like she was.”

“It’s the change in her I’m worried about, fool,” grumbled Ranna. “We can’t keep her nature a secret much longer. She’s growing up so fast. Others are married far earlier than a girl like her, and there are already rumours about it in the village. I’ve heard some of the women muttering, busybodies that they are, and now Lord Vladeran’s men are nosing about. What about Mia? She’s always chattering.”

“How could I foresee that your sister and her husband would drop down dead,” growled Malduk accusingly, “and we’d have to take her in.”

“It’s going wrong,” said Ranna fearfully. “I always warned you it would come to no good. After you found her.”

“Oh, stop your whining, Ranna. And what about all the work she does? She’s a help to us, ain’t she?” Malduk said. “Humble Vlak shepherds with a servant, and a Saxon servant too,” he added proudly. “That’s rich. How the others marvelled at us when I found her. Or him. A Saxon waif, eternally in the debt of good old Malduk and his dear, kind wife, Ranna.”

Malduk chuckled and rubbed his hands, thinking of something else too.

“Bogdan’s as jealous of us as ever,” he said with satisfaction. “Always calling Alin a warlock, and saying he’ll bring the devil down on us. It’s only because he wants a servant himself.”

“Bogdan,” snorted Ranna. “I saw him just now, lurking about near the end of the farm again.”

Malduk scowled. They both hated Bogdan, because he had a claim on part of their land, while he and Malduk were always arguing furiously about rumours that Malduk had eyes for his wife.

“I’ll fix him one day,” said Malduk angrily.

But Ranna was thinking of Alina again. “More than just any Saxon though,” she said sourly, “if that parchment in the chest means what I think it means. How could you take such a risk with the likes of them?”

Malduk’s dark eyes flickered. The suspicion of who the girl really was had begun to haunt Malduk’s mind. It was hinted at in the parchment he had found on the soldier seven years before, when he had stumbled on Alina in the snow. He had sometimes hoped that he might use it one day to make himself and Ranna a real fortune, yet with that greedy hope had come a terrible fear of the man who had written it, and memories of something the parchment had said. He could never let it be discovered who she really was, or their part in her survival.

Suddenly there was a hiss from Ranna. She was staring in horror at the wooden chest. She hadn’t noticed it before, but now she could see the parchment poking from the lid.

“Look, Malduk. The letter.”

“What the devil?” cried her husband, and the old shepherd began fumbling in his jerkin. “The key, Ranna. It’s gone.”

Ranna hurried into the kitchen and started looking frantically amongst the bowls where she had found the herbs. At last she pulled out another key, exactly like the one Mia had in her pocket, although covered in dust, and handed it to her husband. Malduk put Alina’s knife on the milking stool, thrust the key into the lock, turned it, and threw back the lid. He snatched up the parchment from a pile of threadbare linen.

It was the letter, along with a bag of gold, he had discovered on the sodiers dead body, lying next to his dead horse, with Alina nearby unconscious. The letter Mia had seen that very morning, when she had found the key on the ground outside the hovel and opened the chest in secret.

After Malduk had first found Alina, and her shock had begun to wear off, she had sometimes asked the couple what was inside the chest, but she had long since lost interest, and so the old couple had almost forgotten to worry about it. But for a girl of Mia’s age, it had held irresistible secrets.

“Someone’s opened it and looked, all right,” growled Malduk, glaring at the paper. It was covered in writing and at the top was a red crest, finely drawn, showing an eagle with open wings just like the mark on Alina’s arm. It had already convinced little Mia that the parchment was something terribly important. Mia couldn’t read, of course, but she had recognised the mark immediately.

“Alina must have stolen your key and looked inside,” said Ranna.

“And she acted very odd when I came in. Perhaps she meant to return the key later.”

“Wicked sprite. Do you think she could read it?”

The shepherd wondered to himself.

“Perhaps. A girl like her may have learned Latin letters with the monks.”

“Then she knows,” hissed Ranna, looking truly terrified now.

“Maybe she didn’t understand what it really means,” said Malduk doubtfully, “or realise that it speaks of her.”

“And maybe she did. It may not name her, but she’d recognise the crest. Maybe that’s why she was talking to Vladeran’s men.”

The old couple stood there in the flickering shadows, and both were shaking terribly with the revelation.

“What are you thinking, wife?” said Malduk, after a while. He knew his wife was much brighter than he.

“I’m thinking how vulnerable the girl is,” answered Ranna. “She’s often alone with the sheep on the mountain, ain’t she, and with wolves prowling and the snow coming thicker and thicker, who knows what might befall a helpless shepherd boy out there? They’ll only say the fairies took Alin back again.”

Ranna’s eyes twinkled, but something confused came into Malduk’s face. He had saved Alina from the snows once, and somewhere he even felt a fondness for the girl because of it, and he still feared to have the sin of blood on his hands, and his conscience too, feeble as it was.

Ranna suddenly saw Alina’s antler-handled dagger lying on the milking stool and snatched it up, as her head swung towards the door.

“What are you going to do, wife?” whispered Malduk.

Ranna looked back coldly at her husband, and her eyes glittered viciously.

“Do, man? Do what you should have done seven long years back,” Ranna answered murderously. “Kill the changeling, of course. Or even better, turn the whole village to the job of murdering Alin Sculcuvant for us.”

Alina Sculcuvant’s sleepy eyes were growing heavy in the freezing barn, blurred by the witch’s brew. She felt as if she were floating, and fairy arms were carrying her away into the forest. The herb potion, which she had just told herself was really honeydew, was hanging heavy in her blood, and her thoughts were already beginning to roam towards dreams.

“Roma,” she whispered suddenly, rolling the word around her tongue, as if she was eating something tasty. Alina had been thinking of that woman of her dreams, with curling black hair, and the night before in the barn a name had come to her in her sleep. “Roma” was another word for Tsingani, the gypsies in the lands beyond the forest, and it seemed somehow fitting for a goblin or fairy mother. But Alina sighed. Roma wasn’t right, and the memories just wouldn’t come.

A note came on the wind though that filled the snowy air. It was the song that often came down from the mountains, with the darkness of the Transylvanian night, the call of the wild wolf.

Alina shivered, yet she felt her heart stir excitedly. So many times, as she laboured chopping wood, or sat with her crook in the fields watching over the bleating sheep, Alina had dreamt of climbing into the soaring mountains and hunting alone and free in the great valleys, or swimming in fresh rivers and bathing her face in new-fallen snow.

Dreamt of going out, alone and unchallenged by the shepherds and their stupid, fighting children, or the stern rules of the murderous old couple, to whom Alina believed she owed her life. Unburdened of her own dark dreams. She often wondered if it was her mysterious changeling origins that made her think so much of going into the wild, like a real goblin, and she loved listening to wolf song.

Alina yawned, as her huge hazel eyes closed, and immediately she was out there, running in her bare feet over grass and rock and stone. She felt like a wild animal herself, hunted by something she could neither see nor understand, and suddenly before her was the face she had seen more and more in her sleep. Not the face that came to drink a child’s blood—the vampire—but another face entirely. Its great yellow gold eyes looked back at her, with anger and hunger at first, but then softening to a strange, barely fathomable question. Eyes set above a row of sharp and shining teeth, in a muzzle of pure black.

As she stared at the black wolf in her dream, Alina heard a sharp creaking from across the barn and opened her eyes again to the real world.

“Who’s there?” she whispered, sitting up, and thinking nervously of the feeling she had had that morning. Over the years Alina had grown especially used to reacting quickly to sudden noises as she guarded the sheep on the mountain, and her eyes strained to see through the darkness.

Suddenly a shape was rushing at Alina across the barn, but her beating heart calmed as soon as she saw what it was. Malduk’s black-and-white collie Elak came bounding towards her, and jumped up, covering Alina’s face in warm, wet licks. It made her feel wide awake again, and sent the girl into peels of delighted laughter.

“Elak, stop it now,” she giggled, pushing him down fondly. “Shouldn’t you be in the meadow with Teela? Why did you sneak away, boy?”

The sheepdog whined softly and lay down beside her, his huge black eyes looking up guiltily and his tail wagging. He was often sneaking off to be with Alina. How different Elak was to the savage creature she had just seen in her dream, and how glad Alina was of it.

“You mustn’t run off like that, boy. Malduk will punish you, and me too,” whispered Alina tenderly. “But it’s so good to see you.”

The girl smiled and stroked the collie’s furry head. He felt so warm and soft, and she suddenly realised how desperately fond she was of Elak, and his sister, Teela.

“Dear Elak, you’re my friend, at least,” said Alina. “Animals don’t mind if I’m a changeling or not, do they? Not like the stupid villagers.”

Alina lay there stroking her friend, and she smiled to herself at her own foolishness.

“You don’t understand me, do you, Elak?” she whispered. “Oh, I know you and Teela answer the whistles Malduk taught me, but it’s not as if animals are like people, is it, really thinking and feeling, I mean?”

Alina sighed, wishing that people were as nice as animals, and Elak gave a whimper, but of course he said nothing. If little Mia had been there, she might have argued. She had said something to the older girl only two days before that Alina remembered now. “Not just anyone can reach animals like you, Alina, and not even the fairies know their hearts as well. Father always said animals sense what’s inside a person. That’s why they trust you.”

But Alina thought of a day in the little wooden church in Moldov, when the priest had talked so scornfully about animals. “The holy Church teaches that God made man above all the animals,” he had sermonised loudly, “and we must trust in His power.” The priest was a cruel man, very unkind to the dogs in the village, and Alina suddenly wondered if animals could really think like people, and if they could what it was they thought about.

“What do sheep dream about, Elak?” she asked the dog suddenly, but he just whimpered again and licked her hand.

“Nothing but grass, I bet, Elak, or warm milk and a hole in a fence?”