The Hawk And His Boy (5 page)

She heard the scrabble of claws somewhere behind her and a hoarse breathing that shuddered through her. Memory flooded her mind with a rush. Her thoughts drifted by.
I remember now. I’ve been here before. In my nightmare. I wish I was sleeping still.

And she slammed straight into a wall. Wood. Stars burst across her sight. She felt splinters in her face, and her left hand burned with a heavy ache. She could not close her fingers. She nearly collapsed with the pain of it, but her other hand caught on the wooden rungs. She had run right into the ladder leading up to the hayloft. Frantically, she began to climb, clinging with her right hand and hooking her left elbow over the rungs.

Up.

Up. The ladder under Fen shook as the animal threw itself against the supports. The thing made no sound except for the harsh breath rasping in the darkness below. Her body cringed in anticipation of claws tearing at her, of teeth pulling her down flailing from the ladder to fall and fall and fall. She found herself over the top, sobbing and face down in the straw that littered the hayloft.

Fen turned and looked down. Below her, a pair of eyes stared up from the darkness. She could make out the shape of the hound—the lolling tongue and jaws of gleaming teeth, the head, the shoulders bunching and tensing. Tensing to jump! She threw herself backward, scrambling in the straw for anywhere, nowhere to hide. Fire shot up her arm as she fell on her injured hand. The hayloft trembled with the impact of the beast. Splinters and straw flew as claws raked the planks at the edge of the loft, scrabbling to gain a hold. Fen could smell the stench of the thing—a musk of decay mixed with a strange, sour damp. With a snarl, the hound fell away. She heard the thump of its body landing on the ground below.

And then only silence. A complete and awful silence. She strained her ears listening, but everything was quiet. That was even worse than hearing the hound, that dreadful breathing from her nightmare. Her thoughts raced through the silence.

Was there another way up onto the hayloft, a way she had forgotten? What was the hound doing? What if the other creature—that strange man with his sword in his hand—what if he was standing in the darkness below? Staring up, silently beginning to climb the ladder?

Fen crawled as quietly as she could to the edge of the hayloft and peeped over. Nothing. Only shadow. She peered out a little farther. And the hound surged up out of the darkness. Fangs snapped in her face. The thing’s breath stank of death and blood and sour rot. Claws raked down the side of her arm. She screamed and flung herself back. The beast hung over the side, eyes staring and tongue lolling from gaping jaws. With a tremendous scrambling heave it kicked its way up onto the loft.

For a second there was silence. Fen was caught within the beat of her heart—a knell that paused in the midst of its toll, lingering in the act of being as if there was no need to beat any more. She stared at the beast, and it stared back at her. Saliva gleamed on its lips, illumined by a moonbeam.

The hound leapt.

It would only take a heartbeat. One more heartbeat.

She stumbled backward.

I hope it’s quick,
she thought.

So it won’t hurt.

Please, no.

And then she was falling.

The trapdoor over the haymow. Someone left it open.
Papa will be furious.
Magwin fell through here when she was small and broke her leg.
Fire lanced through Fen’s thigh. She shrieked. Slammed down on her back. Musty hay. Alfalfa dust choking in her throat. Agony.

Fen looked up. Her vision was dizzy and muddled with white spots blooming in the darkness. Long, thin, curving spikes obscured most of what she saw. Red eyes glared down at her from high overhead. There was intelligence in them, assessing and weighing the situation.

She tried to get up, but the instant she moved her leg, she almost blacked out from the pain. One of the spikes sprouted from her thigh like the tendril of an obscene plant, transformed into steel and slick with blood. She had fallen between the spikes of the harrow. They rose up around her, protecting her, claiming her for their own, anointed with her blood like some strange, ancient altar of thorns.

Dimly, from far away, she heard a whistle. Darkness claimed her and she knew no more.

CHAPTER SEVEN

DARKNESS AND WATER

Jute woke to find himself alone in the room. A candle guttered on the table, melted down almost to its base. As there was no window, he was not sure how much time had passed. An hour? Another day? He tested his limbs. They ached, but no worse than a beating from the Juggler. He sat up and almost passed out. Dizzily, he forced himself to his feet.

Trust no one.

He glanced around, startled. But there was no one in the room, only the voice inside his head.

Trust no one.

“Even you?” he said. “Who are you?”

There was no answer. He tiptoed to the door, pressed his ear to the wood, and listened. Every house has its own sounds: the sigh of wood beams shifting slightly under the onslaught of wind and sunlight and time, the creak of a stone fireplace cooling around embers, the scrape of tree branches against a window, the stately tick of clocks. And then there are the human sounds: voices, footfalls on stairs and hall floorboards, the settle of a body’s weight into beds or chairs, and the whisper of knives in the kitchen, punctuated by clattering pots and pans.

But there was nothing at all. Jute strained to listen, but there was only silence. He was afraid, for the silence held an anticipation, not unlike a ward—a coiled expectancy seeking its moment of violent release. He touched the door handle, expecting the tremble of a ward spell infused through the iron. There was nothing. However, the door was locked.

He turned out his pockets, but he did not even have a bit of fluff, let alone a piece of wire. Someone had emptied them. He frowned at that, for he had a habit of keeping his pockets stuffed full of interesting things that he collected: perhaps a polished mouse skull, some walnuts if he felt hungry, a ball of string, the remains of an expired ward that Lena had proudly given him, and always a piece of wire. But his pockets were empty now.

He examined the bed, but it had been made by a craftsman with no love of metal, for there was not a single nail in its frame. The chair Severan had sat in and the table by the door were no better. They looked to have been built by the same hands—notched and grooved with wooden joints.

The candle. It sat on a copper plate. Wax had run down and built up on the metal in draperies. The candle would not come unstuck from the plate when he tried twisting it, and he ended up splashing hot wax on his fingers. The flame went out, plunging the room into darkness.

He did not mind darkness. He never had, even when the Juggler had locked him in the basement for the first time. That had been years ago. He had been smart enough then, as a young child, to pretend terror and tears for the Juggler’s satisfaction. Being locked in the dark had become the Juggler’s favorite punishment for him. That and beating him. He’d choose the darkness over a beating any day.

Never mind that now. The candle.

He froze, unsure if the voice was sounding within the room or from within his head. The skin prickled on the back of his neck.

“Who are you?” he said.

I told you before, boy
.
There’ll be time for that later.

The voice subsided into silence. Jute shivered, despite the stuffy air in the room. The candle came away from the plate in his hand in one wrench. His fingers found what he hoped for: a metal spike protruding from the center of the copper plate, ideal for impaling candles. Ideal for picking a lock. He bent the spike back and forth until it broke free from the plate.

It took him a while to pick the lock, for his hands were shaking so badly that he dropped the spike twice and had to fumble in the dark for it. But the tumblers of the lock were simple, and the door creaked open.

A glow flooded into the room. He peeked out into a gloomy hallway stretching into shadows on either side. High on the wall hung a lamp glimmering with pale light. The light flickered as if something moved behind the glass. A dark spot appeared on the lamp and then grew outward, no thicker than his finger, wavering toward Jute. He slammed the door shut.

An understandable response, but too late.

“What was that?”

A very nasty spell. Run!

Jute flung the door open and darted out into the hall. He had one glimpse of rippling, black tendrils wriggling toward him, with the lamplight streaming from their midst. But then he was running down the hall and into the shadows. A flight of stairs. His foot slipped on the first step and he caught at the banister to steady himself.

The stairway descended down into a high-ceilinged chamber shrouded in shadows. There was no way to tell whether someone or something lurked below, but Jute didn’t care. He hurtled down the steps in panic. He turned at the bottom of the stairs and looked back up. A light shone at the top, and then a dark blotch spilled like fog over the highest stair. With a whimper, Jute plunged away into the darkness.

He tripped over a chair and fell. Bit his tongue and tasted blood in his mouth. He stumbled to his feet, disoriented. Felt the smooth wooden top of a table and skirted it. The shadows were thickening into almost discernable shapes. The moon bloomed through one water-streaked window. It was raining outside. Behind him, the sea of darkness flowed down from the last step and surged forward. Frantically, he looked around for a door.

“Dispel!” said a voice. The darkness vanished and ordinary shadow reclaimed the room. Two quick steps sounded and a hand grabbed Jute by the throat. He found himself staring up into Nio’s face.

“How’d you get out?” said the man.

Jute could not answer. Nio’s fingers tightened around his throat, choking him.

“I want answers,” Nio said. “Now. Tonight. If I have to flay them from your flesh, one by one. I can’t wait any longer on the qualms of my tiresome old friend.”

Nio dragged him down a flight of stairs into a cellar. Water dripped from the stone walls onto a floor of mud and broken flagstones. The man flung him to the ground.

“The wind blows us where it wills,” he said, his voice harsh. “There’s no stopping it, no matter how we duck and hide.”

He strode to the far end of the room, stooped over the ground, and levered up a grate set into the floor.

“Come here, boy,” he said.

Trembling, Jute crept closer. The man grabbed him, once he was within reach, and pulled him to the edge of the hole. It was rimmed in stone and revealed a well of darkness. The noise of rushing water echoed up from far below.

“What do you see?” said the man.

“Nothing,” said Jute, his voice shaking. “Darkness.”

“Aye,” Nio said. “Darkness. And there’s water as well. Both restless and both in abundance. A quick lesson in wizardry, boy. Much of it is only the manipulation of what already is, of naming things and calling their essence, their
feorh,
to heel. In air, water, earth, and fire are the four ancient
feorh
—the stuff of creation itself—though there is a fifth of an even more ancient sort in darkness. When any of the four mix with darkness, there is unrest and pain.”

The man spoke into the hole, three words of a strange language. The sound of rushing water stilled for a moment and then something rose up from the hole in the ground. It was the figure of a man, a grotesque parody with limbs that moved oddly, as if they had extra joints. It was formed out of water and darkness that swirled together. Gaps opened and closed in it with wet, sucking sounds. A chill exuded from its dark substance.

The man spoke again, a sentence in the same strange-sounding language, and the thing moved. It shambled straight at Jute. The boy stumbled away, scrabbling against the mud and flagstones for balance. The thing did not seem to move quickly, but wherever he turned it was there, sprouting extra fingers and limbs to hedge him in. Nio watched, his face expressionless.

The thing cornered Jute against the wall and descended on him in a dark, watery wave. He screamed, but immediately choked on water. Ice crept into him, soaking into his body. His bones ached with the cold. He could hardly move, even though he frantically strained to thrash his arms and legs. He could not breathe. He was weighed down, drowning. Darkness welled into his mind.

Nio snapped a word, and Jute felt air on his face, as if he had surfaced from being deep under water. He gagged.

“You’ll talk, and talk freely,” said the man. “This thing is hungry and wishes to feed.”

“Yes, yes!” sobbed Jute. “Please take it away!”

“Not just yet.” The thing tightened its grip on Jute. It was as if an icy hand held his entire body and was constricting its fingers. His limbs were numb.

“I would learn of you, boy.”

Through a haze of pain, Jute heard himself begin to speak. Words tumbled out, one after another. Disjointed phrases gasped. Hissed through clenched teeth. Sobbed. His life was ripped from him, word by word.