Tom felt a chill that wasn’t the night air and he felt insignificant and small.
“Let them go.” Hullworth’s voice was little more than a whisper, and he met no-one’s eye.
Hands escorted them out of the city and left them limping through the dark towards the forest as the storm finally broke and drenched them in sheets of rain.
“We should burn that city to the ground.” Brega had to shout over the downpour. She and Tom were carrying Dank as best they could between them. The boy was strengthening but still needed help to walk.
“No,” Tom said. “Hullworth is angry. He’s just angry at the wrong people.”
She grunted. “You want me to feel sorry for him?”
Hullworth had tried to see them dead. Tried to hand him over to Regent. But Tom couldn’t be angry. “Maybe.” Crippled and burnt, forced to accept Western rule. Was Hullworth really the enemy? Or was he like that Erhenni, forced to do a task or lose his life? “He doesn’t seem happy with the way things are.”
“Maybe he should try fighting the enemy instead of his allies.”
Tom thought of Six and Katharine. It wasn’t always as easy as that.
The walk through the forest was long, far longer than Tom remembered.
“So what now?” Brega said. “This was a failure from start to finish.” She sounded exhausted. But she was right.
“Rest,” Tom said. “Regroup.” For Tir. That’s what the Erhenni had said. It felt like an oath. A promise to a dead man. “And no more chasing after Gerwyn.”
Brega let out a sharp laugh. “That’s your best plan so far.”
Chapter 13
Tom had never been so pleased to see the grey fog of the Between. As soon as they stepped through the Faerie Circle the fay were all over them. Puck cavorted and pranced around them, begging for a chance to go and make merry mischief amongst the Erhenni. Fenoderee took Dank, lifting the boy with ease and cradling him like a babe.
“Thank Eirwen’s grace you are well,” the fay gurgled. He looked troubled. “What happened?”
“You don’t know?” Tom asked. Relieved of Dank’s weight, Brega immediately turned and lifted his arm. A sharp pain made Tom hiss.
“You were lucky.” She tugged his shirt, which in turn tugged his skin. “This could have claimed your life.”
She fetched her supplies, cutting off Tom’s shirt and cleaning his wound while he told Fenoderee what had happened. The fay sat by Dank, now sleeping, holding the boy’s hand. “You were lucky to escape,” Fenoderee said when the tale was done.
“We were.” Tom nodded at Dank. “Will he be okay?”
Fenoderee nodded. “Iron armour would have undone a fay. But Dank has a mortal body. Rest will see him restored to his old self.”
“Undone?” Gravinn asked in a small voice. Tom had thought her sleeping.
“The worst fate for a fay, ho ho!” Despite being forbidden to punish Hullworth, Puck was still in fine spirits. “The closest we come to death, ho ho!”
“Death?”
“It’s only temporary,” Fenoderee assured her. “We disappear for a time. We return.” He stroked Dank’s hair. The boy moaned in his sleep. “But he will be fine when he awakes.”
Awake. Sleep suddenly seemed so inviting. “Are you done?” Tom said to Brega.
“Do you want it to keep bleeding?”
“No.”
“Then wait.”
He wasn’t sure whether to be grateful for the stitching. The needle was sharp, the sensation of catgut being pulled through his skin was sickening, but it kept him awake. When she was done his flesh was throbbing. But he made sure to say, “Thank you.”
She waved him away.
“Do you need me to do anything for you?”
“I think you’ve done enough for one day.” But there was a tired smile in her eyes as she lay on the ground. She folded her arms over her chest.
“How do you know which way to face?” he asked her.
“I’m sure Angau doesn’t mind.” Her tone said she didn’t much care if he did. If Tom felt tired, how must she feel? Yet she still lay down to say her prayers? She must have the stamina of ten men. “Don’t watch me,” she said.
“Sorry.” He lay down. No need for a blanket or a cushion of any kind. The ground in the Between was soft enough. He closed his eyes and it was all too easy to let go of his aches and pains and sleep.
He had just one dream. A castle, silent as the grave. Home only to dust and cobwebs and broken, rotting furniture. Made beautiful by the sunlight streaming through enormous windows of stained glass.
Tom woke to aches and pains. His joints were stiff. The wound in his flank throbbed. And he was cold, too; his torso was pale and goosebumped. He sat up with a groan, took a moment to find his bearings. Staggered over to his saddlebags and pulled out a shirt and a canteen. The water was warm and old but delicious nonetheless.
“Are you okay?” Mester Stoorworm’s rumble made Tom jump. He turned and watched the fay slither towards him, head down, hands clasped before him.
“Well enough, all things considered.” Tom forced a smile. But the fay seemed troubled, upset. “Are you?”
“We feel bad.” He wrung his hands, frowned at the ground as if it had wronged him. “You needed our help.”
“The iron severed Dank’s connection to you.”
“We know. But we wish we could have protected you. Like we were supposed to.”
The fay was like a big child. Tom reached up and patted one of the broad, scaly shoulders. “You would have done a good job,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”
That brought a smile to the fay’s lips. “We would have kept you safe,” he said, nodding his head. “You wouldn’t have got hurt.” The smile dropped away. “Does it hurt a lot?”
Tom lifted his left arm a little and the pain told him to stop. “Quite a bit,” he admitted. “But it’s not your fault.”
Stoorworm dropped his head again. “We will do better next time.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong this time.” All of a sudden he felt too tired to coddle this enormous fay. He patted his arm again and said, “Why don’t you see how Dank is doing?”
The fay nodded and slithered away. Body of a snake, head of a dragon, monstrous arms and the mind of a child. Tom shivered. He felt as if he should be haunted by the Erhenni’s sacrifice, by his final words. But he kept thinking of Mab-as-Dank’s words instead. You will dance to our tune, little man. You all do.
He tried to put on his shirt, grunted as his stitches tugged.
“Let me help you.” Gravinn appeared behind him, holding the sleeve so Tom could better slip his arm through it.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you,” she echoed, but with fervent emotion. When Tom turned she gazed up at him with huge eyes. “You saved our lives. The both of you.”
“Thank Brega,” he replied. “She did the real fighting. I’m lucky to be alive.”
But Gravinn shook her head. “I saw the proof with my own eyes,” she said. “Storrstenn didn’t tell me you were a great warrior.”
“I’m not.” But she shook her head, so he said again, “I’m not a warrior.”
She lowered her gaze, but Tom could tell she was humouring him. “I felt such fear,” she said. “Like the very flames of terror would consume me. It felt the earth had laid claim to my body already. And when I saw we had survived, I felt certain all my courage would fail me for the rest of my days, and I could not continue with our nightly activities. But if I think of you, running at two men amidst a hail of arrows, helm missing, roaring a challenge? Then I must find my courage again, for I dare not shame myself before the likes of you.” She laughed an embarrassed laugh. “Yet I tell you these things all the same. You must think me a coward.”
The likes of him. She thought him a hero. “I was terrified,” he admitted. “I was sure we were all going to die. And that it would be my fault.”
“It wouldn’t be courage if you weren’t afraid
.”
It wasn’t courage. Or that’s what he tried to say. But he couldn’t. And that heartened him. Perhaps he was brave after all. But he could say, “I’m not a hero, Gravinn. You don’t have to be afraid of shaming yourself. Not in front of me.”
She nodded. Hopefully that would be the end of that. “Brega still sleeps.”
“I’m not surprised.” He glanced over at her, a bundle of black a dozen steps away. “Dank too, it seems.” Fenoderee and Stoorworm watched over him. It was comforting to see how much they cared about the boy. It seemed Katharine was wrong. Dank wasn’t a slave. He was one of them. “Have you slept?”
“I can’t seem to settle,” Gravinn replied. “Every time I close my eyes, I see a man with a pike standing over my head.”
“I know the feeling.” He’d had similar nightmares about Topknot. “Perhaps we should rest a while. Get our strength back before we go back into the Kingdom.”
She nodded. “I thought of an easy target,” she said. “For when we’re ready. A town called Clederlor. There is a great forge there where they make these.” She lifted a hand and Tom saw a tiny gold bell in her palm.
“What is it?” He’d seen them on Six, as part of his new outfit. And bells seemed to be everywhere in the Kingdom.
“A symbol of ownership,” she told him. “An elf can wear one, or put one on his coat of arms, for each family that owes him patronage and each thrall he calls his own.” She picked it out of her palm with her fingers. “To a dwarf, it’s a symbol of our slavery. While an elf wears your bell, you do not belong to yourself.”
Of course. It had to be a bell. It had to be something that made noise, that drew attention to itself. That demanded everyone looked and admired how many people the wearer owned. “Did you take that from your master?”
“I did,” she replied. “After you killed him.”
Tom tried not to remember how it felt to cut that elf’s throat. “There was too much risk to leave him alive.”
“I know. I’m grateful.” She tucked the bell into a pocket. “You set me free.”
Her gratitude felt too heavy, like a burden. He cleared his throat. “So you would break this forge?”
“I would.” She looked up at him with a fierce smile. “I would see every bell in the Kingdom broken.”
Tom felt himself smile too. But before he could say anything, movement caught his eye. Fenoderee walking towards them, his expression sombre. “There’s trouble,” he said reluctantly.
“With Dank?” Tom asked. “Is he okay?”
Fenoderee’s neck cracked as he shook his head. “Six and Katharine are missing.”
Taken? Kidnapped? Killed? “Missing?”
“We sent Puck to check on the others. They were gone when he arrived. So were their horses.”
So they had left. “Where did they go?”
“No-one knows.”
No. Tom knew. Damn Six’s eyes. “Is everyone else safe?” He cast a glance at Brega. She still slept.
“Everyone is safe and well. Storrstenn is angry. He says Six is going to betray them.”
“Can we talk to them?”
“The nearest Circle is hours away.”
And Puck had walked that distance on Fenoderee’s orders? Tom found that hard to believe. “Is Puck still with them?”
Fenoderee nodded.
“He needs to tell Storrstenn to leave. Now. Get off the roads, stay away from the cities. Without Six to act the lord, they’ll draw suspicion.”
“Storrstenn doesn’t have the Second Sight.”
“Then tell Neirin.” He turned to Gravinn. “We need a map of the area. As detailed as possible.”
Fenoderee said, “The dwarf says he doesn’t need to be told that by the likes of you.”
The likes of him. “Then why is he still there?”
“Are we going to look for them?” Gravinn asked.
“We don’t need to look.”
“You know where they are?”
“I know where they will be,” he said. “They’re going to Tartos Valley. They’re going to ruin everything.”
There were no Faerie Circles inside Tartos Valley. The nearest one was three miles east. It had not been so long ago that the whole area had been unspoilt woodland. But when the West started binding dragons, the ground was cleared for five miles in every direction.
“For security,” Gravinn explained. “No-one can approach the valley unseen.”
“So how will we do it?” Tom asked.
“We won’t,” was her reply. She gave him a mournful gaze, sorry to contradict him.
“They will,” he replied. He pointed at her ill-gotten maps. “Six has local knowledge. Katharine is a Pathfinder without peer. They’ll find a way in. So we have to too.”
“Ho ho ho.” Puck had reappeared once Tom had said they were headed to Tartos Valley. “Such folly, Tom. We see no need to find a way in, not if we catch these little birds first.”
“We need to figure out how they plan to get in,” Tom replied. He didn’t have the patience for Puck. Every one of the fay’s ‘ho ho ho’s grated on his nerves. “We don’t have to get in ourselves.”
“Tom is right, Puck,” Fenoderee said. “How can we pursue if we don’t know which way to run?”
The sword was a drumbeat in Tom’s mind.
Find them. Catch them. Stop them.
“Let’s just run everywhere and hope we run into them!”
“That won’t work, silly Puck,” Mester Stoorworm said.
“It’s a Puck’s prerogative to be silly.”
“We should ask Herne for help.” Mester Stoorworm swung his enormous head towards Tom, who took a step back; he was too close. The fay bared his oversized teeth in a grin. “He’s good at finding things.” He frowned. “But he’s a bit scary.”
“No,” Fenoderee said. “This is not a hunt.”
“It sort of is.” Mester Stoorworm settled on the ground, resting his jaw on his hands and gazing up at Tom. “It’s sort of a hunt.”
“We’re not chasing down a deer,” Tom said. He’d seen Herne hunt before. By the time he was finished, the prey was unrecognisable. And Melwas was laughing. “This is a search. We need a Pathfinder, not a hunter.” He looked at Gravinn. “We need a way in.”
“You won’t find one.” She shrugged, helpless. “It’s the most secure place in Tir.”
“Katharine will find a way in,” Tom replied. He could see her now, reading the land, placing her feet, finding the way that no-one else had.
“It’s not possible.”
“You don’t know her.”
“I know this.” She held a map out to him. “You can walk to this Valley from any direction you choose and your fate will be the same: you will be spotted and you will be shot before you come anywhere close to the miles of wall around that place.
“Then they won’t approach overground.”
Gravinn looked like she didn’t have the heart to correct him.
Find them. Catch them. Stop them.
Tom pointed at her map. “What’s this?” he asked.
She looked and said, “A river.”
“And where does it go?”
“Underground.”
He turned to Fenoderee and asked, “Do the fay know where it goes?”
“They do,” he gurgled after a moment. His eyes asked Tom not to ask. Did he oppose this? Did he want Six to succeed?
“The river doesn’t go into the valley.” It was Dank that spoke. “But there are caves and tunnels.”
“They stretch for miles,” Fenoderee said. “Narrow, dark and cold. We could be lost down there for days. Longer.”
“Do the fay know the way through?”
Fenoderee shook his head. “We’ve never needed to.”
“You see?” Gravinn gave a helpless shrug and rolled up her map. “No way in.”
Tom squeezed Caledyr’s grip and felt the sword give him the answer. Not every hunt ends in bloodshed. “Fetch Herne.”
; “Tom?” Fenoderee reached out a hand but stopped short of touching him.
“He can find a way through.” Herne had an incredible sense of smell, not just for prey. Tom had watched him find a way out of a forest by smelling the difference in the air.
Fenoderee shook his head, but his eyes told Tom he was right.
“Ho ho ho.” Puck’s voice wasn’t a laugh at all. “You wound us, Tom, to pick that thing over us, your friend, your boon ally, your friendly Puck.”
Find them. Catch them. Stop them.
“If you can do what he does, Puck, by all means.”
“Whatever we do, we need to do it soon.” Brega was stood apart from them, by the horses. She wanted to go back to Neirin, but she knew his life was in far greater danger if Six and Katharine were caught by the West. “We’re losing ground.”
“She’s right,” Tom growled. He turned to Fenoderee. “Fetch Herne.”
The fay shook his head, neck grinding. “He will not help you.”
“Fetch Herne.”
“Remember what he’s like.”
“Fetch,” Tom said, “Herne.”
Fenoderee clasped his hands together and lowered his voice to a bubbling murmur. “Let this go, Tom. Let them go to Tartos. You know what they do is right.”
Find them. Catch them. Stop the enemy.
Tom drew Caledyr by an inch. “You will fetch Herne,” he growled. “Then you will go to Neirin and keep him safe.”
He had thought Fenoderee would plead or argue. Instead he dropped his hands and drew to his full height, cracking and popping as he did. A spider skittered out of a gap in his mouldy skin and under some moss. He nodded, and his body began to mist and swirl, dissolving into the fog. No, not all of it. Some of it shrank and hunched, and solidified into Herne’s sweating, stinking, squatting form.
“You summon us.” His mouth didn’t move, his voice coming from somewhere within that hart-skull head. It sounded like stones grinding together.
Tom’s anger shrank in a moment, replaced by uncertainty. Had he done the right thing? “I do,” he said, without quaver.
The Realm Rift Saga Box Set Page 53