“Twenty-one slaves are more than enough plunder,” she growled. “Now turn this place to ash before I lock you in one of the rooms with the rest of the scum.”
Rough hands grabbed Ailsa and forced her arms painfully behind her back, so they could bind her hands with rope. She watched as they did the same to the people around her: the barman, some musicians, a little girl who was sobbing and desperately reaching for one of the figures on the floor.
Ailsa was pulled to her feet and shoved through the front door and out into the night. The fresh smell of saltwater hit her, and she thought of Harris back up in her room. Is he dead? Wounded? Will he get out before the inn was incinerated?
She watched helplessly as the last of the Avalognians left the building, carrying a lantern and half a bottle of whisky. The man grinned at the weeping crowd before turning and smashing the bottle onto the wooden floor, followed by the glass lantern.
No, Harris!
The alcohol immediately roared with flames, which licked at the wood underneath. In a few breaths, the fire was consuming the room, aided by all the bottles of spirits and flammable furnishings. They waited a while and Ailsa wondered why, until she heard the first screams coming from inside the building. Ailsa craned her neck, desperately looking for anyone who might escape. Every crumbling beam of wood looked like a figure, until it was eaten by the flames. The Avalognians around seemed satisfied and finally pressed them on, towards a larger group of raiders and their captives.
Her stomach heaved as she staggered forward. He’ll be okay, you’ll see. He’ll get out. Believing otherwise was not an option.
The homes and shops they walked past had also been set alight; it was a massacre. The crackling of the buildings was drowned out by the wailing of the other Eilanmòrians, whose lives, loves and freedom had been snuffed out in one night.
As they were pushed out of the village and towards the path, Ailsa caught sight of a slight figure darting between the buildings. It seemed that not everyone in the village had been captured. She watched as the child crept through the shadows, following the progress of the captives. Maybe their family has been captured? Before they cleared the ruined village, the group was halted.
“I think we left someone behind.” The man from earlier strode towards the nearest building and pulled the child out from behind it. The boy’s tiny fists pummelled the large man’s back as he was thrown over a shoulder. One of the captured women gave a sob.
“Room for one more?” asked the man, walking back to his fellow Avalognians. Though he addressed all of them, it was clear he was waiting for the woman, Brenna’s, response.
She crossed her arms and regarded the little boy as he struggled. His sandy blonde hair flopped back and forth across his head as he struggled to pull himself free.
“I think we have enough. Kill him.”
Horror froze Ailsa’s throat. She threw herself forward, but her captor held onto her wrist bindings tightly. The woman beside her howled and Brenna’s attention snapped to her.
“Does this one belong to you?”
“Please—” she sobbed. “He’s my son!”
Brenna showed her teeth in a smile.
“Good.” She knelt before the boy, cocking her head. “Boy. You will come with us and work hard. If you don’t, your mother will die. Understood?”
Screaming. All she could hear was screaming.
The boy whimpered but stopped struggling and he was deposited beside his mother.
The noise in Ailsa’s ears suddenly stopped and a strange sense of calm washed over her. Despite the confusion and terror—despite the gnawing loss and emptiness—one thing was clear: she would make these Avalognians pay.
Chapter 65
The slave caravan slowly worked their way towards the coast, further away from hope. They had been marching south since first light, working their way between abandoned farms and smoking villages. The Avalognians had already been through here.
They hiked over a hill and Ailsa fought the urge to be sick.
In the glen below, hundreds of raiders were converging, all pulling captives behind them. They had congregated in a camp of sorts, turning the landscape to mud beneath their feet. The cold afternoon air was punctuated by screams.
Her captors led her group into the rabble, pulling on the ropes that bound them and laughing whenever anyone fell. How far had they walked now? Ailsa tried to calculate it in her head. With their slow pace, six miles last night? Maybe ten today? Her hips ached from the marching and cramps.
They had killed off one of the older musicians this morning. He had sustained an injury from the carnage and was starting to show signs of fever. The raiders had neither the time nor the patience to heal him.
The others had pushed on after that, fear snapping at their feet, but their tiredness bled through. The young girl who had been hysterical earlier had stopped crying, her tears mostly dried up, but every so often her body was wracked by involuntary sobbing noises. Ailsa heard her fall to the ground behind her for what seemed like the hundredth time.
“Get up,” snarled one of the Avalognians, a towering brute of a man.
“I can’t,” she moaned. “My legs—”
The leader, Brenna, turned from the front of the group and stalked back to where she lay. “You get up,” she snarled, “Or you die.”
The girl broke into fresh keening as she attempted to pull her legs underneath her. She slipped around in the mud, failing to stand.
“I guess you die,” voiced Brenna, raising her knife.
“No,” shouted Ailsa, stepping between them as best she could with her hands still tied to the group’s rope. “She’ll stand.” She just needed time.
“Oh?” asked Brenna, her lips pulling back from her pointed teeth. “And what of you, girl? Do I have to kill you?”
Ailsa stood straighter, staring the woman down as she listened to the child slip in the mud behind her. If she could just keep them talking…
“You won’t kill me,” she told her with more confidence than she felt. “You want me to suffer more than that.”
Brenna stepped forward, crowding her. She still held the knife in her hand.
“You’re right,” she finally said with a wicked grin. She raised the knife and cut through Ailsa’s bindings. “I think I’ll start now.”
Brenna dragged her down the hill and into the camp. Instead of taking her into the heart of it like Ailsa thought she would, she was brought to a tent, tall enough to stand up in, and was shoved inside. Ailsa landed hard on the ground, which was covered in bamboo mats. Brenna followed, pinning her down with a knee on her stomach.
“And how should I start?” she crooned, lifting her knife again. “Perhaps I should remove your lips? Or…” she smiled. “I could carve out a piece of flesh for every one of my brethren who has been killed by your people.”
Ailsa curled her lip. “If you didn’t invade us, we wouldn’t kill you,” she said sweetly.
In answer, Brenna slammed Ailsa’s head into the ground, causing stars to appear in her vision. She slid her knife to Ailsa’s mark, contemplating the red skin there.
“The Eilanmòrians are scared of people like you,” said the raider. “They say you are a changeling,” she grunted. “Superstitious sheep. You are just a girl with an unfortunate birthmark. There is nothing special about you, except a good throwing arm. And you don’t have your axe anymore.”
She moved the knife from her left cheek to her right; to the unmarked skin.
“I said I wanted you to suffer and suffering is for the living,” Brenna snorted a laugh. “And I’m going to make sure you have a long life, girl. You’ll work for me and I’ll put those muscles to good use. Chopping wood, cleaning clothes. Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll let you inside every now and then to gut my kills?” She looked her up and down. “But you are an awful sight to have around the house. That mark is fairly distracting.” She eyed Ailsa’s left cheek. “I think you need to be evened up.”
She
pressed harder on the knife and Ailsa could feel blood trickling down her cheek. Pain lanced through her and, as the knife cut deeper, she struggled to hold in a scream. Her hands clawed at the bamboo under her fingers. Finally, after she felt like her whole face may have been sliced off, the knife was lifted away from her skin.
“There, much better.” Brenna grinned sadistically. “But we can’t let that get infected. You’re no good to us dead, after all.” She held Ailsa’s head down and poured from a flask at her side. Salt water. This time Ailsa did scream.
Finally, Brenna let her go. It took a moment for the burning to subside but when it did, she looked at the raider, who had rocked back on her heels to survey her handiwork. With a final smirk, she stood and made to leave.
“Thank you,” croaked Ailsa.
Brenna stopped and turned, looking at her incredulously. “What the hell for?”
Ailsa raised herself up so that she was leaning on her side. Drops of blood fell on the ground beside her hand.
“Now, when I look at myself in the mirror, I’ll remember how I survived this. I’ll know that I’m strong and that is infinitely better than beautiful. But mostly, I’ll remember how it felt to kill you. To see the light drain from your eyes. So, thank you.” She spat into the sand.
“Big words. We’ll see what you say when you’ve lost all of your fingernails from scrubbing.” Brenna narrowed her eyes and stalked off, allowing some guards from outside to take her place.
In the middle of camp, the other prisoners were thrown into wagons which served as cages on wheels; it seemed that they would no longer be walking.
Ailsa was jammed in with fifteen other people, all with rope binding their ankles. Some of them were older than her, but none looked beyond middle age. Most were younger, nothing more than terrified children. One boy had begun to cry when the wagon shuddered forward, but after a few hours, his sobs were silent. They were pulled along by cattle, clearly stolen, and it felt like the stink of sweat and manure permeated every pore of her body by the time they were halted for the night. The raiders left them in their prisons while they set their fires and made camp.
When the call for food started, some of the wagons were opened and Ailsa watched in terror as some of the children were pulled out.
Avalognians were cannibals, she remembered.
But the children were merely shoved in front of the fires, given pans and sacks and told to make dinner. The adults left in the cages watched in a mixture of worry and hunger as they cooked. Ailsa didn’t think she or the other captives would be offered any. She closed her eyes in an attempt to sleep, trying to forget her pain and grief.
The sun was about an hour from setting when she was pulled from her dozing by a hand on her shoulder. She jumped, expecting to see Brenna or another raider, but instead met the gaze of a petite woman.
“That mark,” she whispered, eyeing Ailsa’s left cheek in awe.
Ailsa’s hand flew to the side to her face. “Who are you?” she asked.
The woman was a slight creature, with eyes that seemed far too big for her face. Her strawberry blonde hair was knotted and messed from walking and labouring. The Avalognians must have mistaken her for a child, but her face and the pain there were almost ancient.
“You’re a changeling,” she said, and Ailsa frowned. She was done with people telling her that.
“You were left by the faeries.”
“And how the hell do you know?” snapped Ailsa.
Surprise flickered in her unfathomable eyes for a moment, before she lifted a hand slowly from her side, to sweep back her hair. Ailsa watched as she revealed her ears, which were almost normal, save for the way they pointed at the top.
A faerie.
A real faerie.
The woman blushed but continued. “I can feel the power contained inside you.” She raised her hand to touch her arm again. “It wants out.”
“And what power would that be?” Ailsa asked, watching her warily.
The faerie looked to the sky and at the last rays of sun. “I can feel your magic wanting to reach up there.” She fixed her with a glare. “It has been sneaky, trying without your permission. You have to control it.”
“What do you mean?” Ailsa tried to pull away, but the faerie just gripped her arm tighter, her little fingers sinking into her skin.
The woman tilted her head. “See that cloud up there? Move it.”
Ailsa’s found the fluffy cloud she’d indicated, the sun’s rays turning it a golden rose.
“That’s impossible.”
“Silly girl. Do it now,” commanded the faerie.
Ailsa gave her one final scowl and then turned her gaze to the sky. She concentrated hard on the puff of pink. She screwed up her eyes and directed her thoughts at the cloud: move. The wisps of water vapour stayed where they were. Ailsa wrinkled her nose and lifted her chin. In her head, she pulled together all her anger and commanded: MOVE. Still the cloud didn’t move an inch.
From beside her she heard a cackle. Ailsa grunted in frustration.
“Not like that,” the faerie huffed. “You would think you’d have some brains. How can you move something without giving it a push?”
“What like this—” Ailsa stopped and stared at the sky in shock. She had merely lifted her arm and poked her finger in the direction of the cloud—and it had moved. Not far, but it still moved.
She tried again. Reaching up, she lifted her pointing finger in front of the cloud. Then she dragged it to the left. The cloud moved along with her finger! It didn’t move quickly and felt heavy.
She turned to the woman in surprise, but the faerie was already moving away from her.
“Wait,” called Ailsa, but the faerie carried on. Ailsa returned to moving the cloud, watching in wonder. She moved her fingers around in bigger strokes, marvelling at the way the clouds were pulled slowly across the sky, just as if they were moving through thick treacle. She collected them to her right, in a cluster of wisps, marvelling to herself.
How was she doing this?
How could a human do this?
The answer came to her gradually and then all at once: a human couldn’t.
The clouds above her suddenly darkened.
She wasn’t human.
She wasn’t human.
Changeling they had called her.
And they had been right.
How could she not have known this?
Her blood felt like ice in her veins. Half remembered words, said in the cover of night, rang in her ears.
There’s a storm beneath your skin, Ailsa. A storm.
Harris had known.
Nausea roiled in her stomach and she had to angle her head out of the wagon. A few of her cellmates voiced their half-hearted complaints as she threw up whatever had been left in her stomach. And through it all, the truth made her insides clench.
Harris. He had looked right at her and understood.
She was the one changing the weather.
She wasn’t human.
It all started to make sense. Harris must have assumed she was human at first—that was why he wanted her to go with him to Dunrigh.
Because he needed a human to open the box containing the Stone of Destiny. But when he had discovered she wasn’t human, then he knew, he knew, she couldn’t be the one to open it.
That was why he had brought Angus along. He needed a human.
And Angus, he had offered to let her open it. Harris had stopped her. You should stay here and rest. Angus, it’s for your family, you take it.
She felt a wave of heat spreading from her toes, up her body, to the crown of her head, along with one word.
Changeling.
Chapter 66
Thoughts muddled Ailsa’s brain, like a mass of snakes, slithering and hissing in all directions; certainties and questions, following each other around relentlessly.
She was not human. Harris had known this, but had never mentioned it directly. Why hadn’t he told her? Had Iona known t
oo? Somehow, she didn’t think so. Harris had been playing a game, keeping his thoughts to himself. But to what end?
It doesn’t matter, she told herself. Harris could be dead, and she was worrying about his motives. He’s not dead, I would know it. She had to believe that, or she wouldn’t be able to carry on. And when she found him again, she would be sure to ask him herself, right after she kissed him senseless.
Ailsa stayed awake all night, listening to the shuffling of other people—of the humans—who surrounded her. She replayed moments over and over again inside her head in which Harris featured heavily, but so did her mother and brother. Maybe Cameron—if she could even find him—would have answers for her.
Most of the Avalognians had bunked down for the night, while an unlucky few still guarded the camp. She did her best to seem unconscious when they passed. When they weren’t there, she stared at the clouds through the slats of the wagon.
Raising a hand, she scrubbed at the sky, pushing cloudy wisps off to the edges of her vision, until finally she had a patch of clear; the stars shone brightly through the gap and she allowed herself to truly study the sight. She had sometimes wished that she could fall into the stars. Perhaps one day, now that she knew she was other, she could. Perhaps there, in the sea of twinkling lights, she would find peace.
A little after dawn, a horn sounded, rousing the camp and pulling Ailsa from her thoughts. She hadn’t slept at all. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Harris’s shocked face as the door flew open. He’s alive, she told herself for the thousandth time. It was inconceivable that such a light had been extinguished forever. Even if he had lied to her about her heritage, he was still a part of the strange, new family she had found.
The camp was dismantled and the wagons shuddered into motion again. They couldn’t be far from the coast now, thought Ailsa, sure that she could already taste salt on the breeze.
Around midday, they were handed food, bread and fruit the Avalognians had likely plundered. The sight of another burning village confirmed Ailsa’s theory; they hadn’t paused long enough to take survivors.
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