A Bright and Terrible Sword

by Anna Kendall

  Again the vanished image burned in my mind, as clear as when it had come to me a moment ago. A small snake, grey as the rocks it slithered among, small enough to glide unnoticed to an ankle above a leather boot, to a wrist resting on a rock, to a neck backed up against a cliff face. To strike from a crack in the rock, from beneath a clump of gorse or bracken, from behind a pile of rubble slid off the tor. A small grey snake with a thin white line down its back, its little fangs filled with lethal and instantaneous poison. A dozen small snakes, that only yesterday had been guised as the women’s own soul-sharers, patiently moving unseen beside Lord Robert’s army, waiting for the necessary moment. And when it came, all the web women became snakes, slithered between and among the rocks and gorse, and struck. Again and again.

  The soldiers panicked, but so good was Lord Robert’s discipline that none fired upon the girls that now appeared, strewn around the moor like so many cut flowers. Most of them gasped for breath, pale as summer clouds, and I saw that one had already died.

  Everything has a cost, Roger Kilbourne – when will you learn that?

  ‘Snakes?’ Lord Robert said. His men stood with raised weapons, gun or sword or knife or bow, looking wildly around for something else to shoot, their faces twisted with terror and uncomprehending anger. ‘I said hold your fire!’

  Two women climbed down from the tor, unaffected by their return to human form. One was Nell.

  Lord Robert scowled at Nell, whom he knew only as Charlotte’s serving woman. She strode up to him, fearless, and said, ‘Well done, Lord Robert. Where is Rawley?’

  He was there then, beside me, Rawnie racing to keep up with him. Nell said to my father, ‘You are an idiot.’

  He said coldly, ‘We thank you for your assistance. Now you may go.’

  Rawnie said loudly, ‘But Papa, what happened?’

  Nell said, ‘Do not do this thing, Rawley. We will stop you, if we must.’

  My father said, ‘You cannot.’

  Rawnie said, ‘Stop what? Roger, what happened?’

  Jee grabbed Rawnie and pulled her aside. She struggled but I heard him hiss, ‘Stop! Have ye no sense? Come away!’

  Lord Robert said, ‘I will have an explanation, and I will have it immediately. Roger?’

  Everyone looked at me, and in the eyes of my father and of the two women I read warning: Say little. This is not Lord Robert’s war.

  But it was. Children had been stolen from The Queendom, their lives extinguished to feed the immortality so ruthlessly sought by Soulvine Moor. It was Lord Robert who had rescued Rawley from Galtryf, and the men of his command who lay dead on the ground around us and in the foul mire. Lord Robert had a right to know what had occurred here. Curse this eternal secrecy among those who should be allies!

  Or was I merely eager to defy my father?

  I repeated, ‘They were snakes, Lord Robert. All these girls and women. They are … are women of the soul arts, which I think that Queen Caroline may have mentioned to you. They can guise themselves as animals, and these women you see became small poisonous snakes that all at once, upon a signal, struck at the Soulviners as you fought this morning.’

  He gaped at me. I saw the word form on his lips: Witches. I saw the word die, perhaps too inadequate to be uttered aloud. I saw his mind seize on the one thing he could, as a soldier, understand.

  He said, ‘I neither heard nor saw any signal!’

  It had been the image in my mind, that hard and clear image of a snake. And I knew it had come to all of them at the same moment, thus coordinating the attack, through the only means possible for such complex communication. The image had come to each of the web women, and to me, through the conduit: my infant son.

  But I could not tell Lord Robert that. Not only had I strained his belief too far already, I would do nothing to alert anyone else to the existence of Maggie’s and my child. All at once I became aware of her by my side, clutching my good arm.

  I said, ‘I am not privy to the methods of the women of the soul arts.’

  Lord Robert said harshly, ‘Nor are you in your full wits, Roger, a thing I have always suspected. You talk nonsense!’ He glared at me, then turned to my father. ‘What happened here?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Rawley said.

  ‘You, woman – where did you come from? You and these other maids?’

  Nell gazed at him and said nothing.

  There is a limit to what a man can accept. Lord Robert had been ‘witched’ from the banks of the River Thymar to Galtryf, far out on Soulvine Moor. He had been forced to accept me, the erstwhile queen’s fool, in the body of a moor cur, and then had seen me returned to my own form, nearly dying in the effort. He knew about hisafs crossing from the land of the living to the Country of the Dead. He had seen reports of the tranced children, perhaps even seen some of the babes for himself. But he could go no further. The web women and their guising arts were new territory for him, and he could not make himself enter it. So do some animals stake out their hunting or mating grounds, and then never go beyond them. I saw the moment that Lord Robert rejected Nell, Rawley, me as completely as if we did not stand before him under the fast-rising summer sun.

  He pointed southwest. ‘My men and I are returning to The Queendom. You and your troupe of half-wit actors may do as you choose. We travel at your pace no longer. I have duties to my sovereign, Her Grace Queen Stephanie, and I will return to her to perform those duties.’ And to his men, ‘Bury the dead. We march for home within the hour.’

  Lord Robert strode off, and his men, after exchanging stupefied looks, sprang to follow his orders. I could feel their relief, like a ripple of wind in tall grass.

  My father said, ‘They will find it difficult to bury the dead in peat.’

  Nell faced him. ‘You must not kill him, Rawley. You must not even think of it.’

  My father snapped, ‘I have thanked you for your assistance. You may go.’ He turned his back and walked away.

  Nell started after him. I caught her arm, afraid that she might turn back into a snake and slay him right then and there. ‘Wait, Nell! Let me try first!’

  She glared at me, but nodded.

  I ran to catch up with my father. ‘I would talk with you for a moment!’

  ‘What is it, Roger?’ He did not slow. I caught his sleeve and yanked him to a stop.

  ‘Rawnie says we journey to Hygryll. Why?’

  ‘That is not your concern.’

  ‘I say that it is.’

  He looked at me then, truly looked at me. His face, so like my own, took on an expression so intricate and layered that it was like the riddle boxes I had seen at court: box within box within box, all connected by delicate wooden levers without which the whole would come apart. On my father’s face I saw – or thought I saw, for I too was part of the boxes and levers – a profound sorrow housed by guilt housed by a ruthless determination to accomplish his own ends by his own means. And all of it coloured by something in his eyes that did not look quite sane.

  More shaken than I wished to show, I repeated, ‘Why are we taking this old man to Hygryll?’

  He did not answer, striding off alone in the direction of the tor. Behind me, I felt Nell’s eyes watch him go.

  24

  Lord Robert left us two wagons, one containing Harbinger, but it did us little good since he left no horses. When he found it impossible to bury his dead soldiers in the springy peat the remainder of his army piled their dead, wrapped in blankets, into the other two wagons and had all four horses draw them. The ponies carried their supplies. We watched Lord Robert march his men away, towards The Queendom.

  Jee went with them. ‘I maun return to my lady,’ he said to me.

  ‘I know you must,’ I said.

  Maggie reached out a hand to grasp Jee, thought better of it, let her hand drop. She said, ‘Thank you, Jee. I can never thank you enough.’

  ‘When ye be home, send a courier to me,’ Jee said, in the strangest mixture of his old loyalties and his new cour
t life that I had heard yet. Maggie smiled, nodded, and kissed him.

  Rawnie barrelled up. ‘Jee, do you march with Lord Robert?’

  ‘I do. Good day to ye.’

  ‘Good riddance,’ Rawnie sniffed, and flounced off. She had never liked Jee upstaging her, just as once she had disliked me for the same reason.

  Maggie and I rested in the sun, on the south side of the tor. On the other side, in the shade and hidden by the rock, lay the web women who had become snakes. Two had died; I don’t know what Nell and her companions had done with their bodies. The others seemed to be recovering quickly. Maggie had organized food and water for them. Charlotte had taken Rawnie to hunt for grouse eggs not far off. I did not know where my father was.

  Not that there were many places to go. The desolate moor stretched away in all directions, rising land to the south and undulating scrub everywhere else. The scrub was dotted with grey boulders, rocky tors, and the deeper green of bog pools and mires. Nothing moved under the morning sun except the retreating army.

  Jee pointed south. ‘Ye be no more than a day’s walk to the border of The Queendom. If that be where Rawley wants to take ye.’

  It wasn’t, but I would burden Jee with no further knowledge. ‘Thank you. Good-bye, Jee.’

  ‘I maun go to my lady, or I would stay to aid ye.’

  ‘I know you must. Keep well, Jee. We will meet again.’

  He ran across the moor, expertly keeping to the hummocks and other higher ground, following Lord Robert’s army. I watched until he, and they, were out of sight.

  Maggie put her hand in mine. ‘Nell still will not tell me where Tom is!’

  ‘Better that you not know,’ I said.

  ‘How can you say that, Roger?’ But the words lacked conviction. The attack by Soulvine warriors had badly shaken her. Maggie was meant for small, efficient, bustling worlds that she could control: a kitchen. An inn. A cook house. A farm. In these larger affairs her courage never failed her, but her assurance did. And she had just seen what the web women could do. They were better protection for our child than were his stranded parents or ruthless grandfather.

  Which raised a question in my mind: Did Rawley even know Maggie and I had a son? I didn’t think so. Nell certainly would not have told him.

  As I sat on the moor trying to decide what we should do next, Nell ran full-tilt from the other side of the tor towards the tented wagon. When I saw her face, I knew immediately where my father was. ‘Stay here!’ I said to Maggie, who called after me but, for once, did not follow.

  Nell leaped over the wagon box and hurled herself under the tent. I climbed after her as fast as I could. At the back of the wagon, my father held a knife at the throat of the sleeping old man. Perhaps the attack had made him reconsider, or Nell had. But he had decided not to wait for Hygryll. Before Nell could reach him, Rawley slashed the blade across Harbinger’s wattled neck.

  No blood. No cut. The knife might as well have been made of air.

  Both Rawley and Nell stared. Rawley turned pale as the sun-bleached canvas above him. Nell shuddered and whispered, ‘So they have succeeded.’ And a moment later, ‘See what you hisafs have done?’

  My father rallied. ‘We have not done this, woman. Don’t be so stupid.’

  ‘It is you who are stupid, all of you men who think that killing can mend what killing has created. If your son had not brought the Dead back to the land of the living, the web of being would not be so strained. If you had not created those dogs, crossing into beings that have their own separate nature, the web of being would not be so strained. If you hisafs could not cross bodily now into the Country of the Dead – and that, too, is Roger’s doing – the web of being would not be so strained.’

  He turned to face her, the knife still in his hand, and at his look I shrank back. He said, ‘There is no “web”. That is a notion you women of the soul arts have constructed in your mind. We hisafs know better. We know there is a wall between the countries of the living and the Dead, a barrier, because we – and only we! – have crossed it. Your knowledge is all conjecture, while ours comes from experience. That wall has been breached, and the only way to prevent further destruction of it is to kill the destroyers. Before all of them become like him!’ Again my father pointed his knife at the sleeping Harbinger.

  ‘And I can see how successful your effort to kill him was.’ Nell’s voice dripped sarcasm.

  ‘It will be.’

  ‘How?’

  He didn’t answer, but she must have known more of his thinking than I did because she said, ‘You cannot do that. We will not let you.’

  My father hurled the knife to the wagon bed, where it stuck in the wood, vibrating. ‘You will not “let” me! How will you stop me? Become snakes again and poison me? And perhaps Roger as well? Why not Rawnie, too? She has no talent for soul arts, so perhaps she will grow up to champion the hisaf cause! Why not eliminate that threat now, you who claim to abhor killing but who just slew a small army of Soulviners?’

  ‘It was necessary,’ Nell said. The skin at the hollow of her throat beat hard and fast. She was controlling herself only by an enormous effort of will, and Rawley fought to do the same.

  ‘So the killing you deem necessary does not affect your “web”, but killing by hisafs will destroy it. Very logical.’

  ‘I did not say that. Of course we have strained the web, you half-wit! But nothing compared to what you will do if you carry out this insane plan! Was it not enough that Roger here nearly tore the whole web by killing Katharine? Twice?’

  ‘And yet your web seems to continue,’ my father said. He had winced at the sound of my sister’s name, and the wince seemed to further enrage him.

  Nell’s hands clenched into fists. ‘You understand nothing! Can you not suspend your own idea of a “wall” for long enough to see the larger truth?’

  ‘Can you not suspend yours long enough to see the truth of actual experience?’

  Their eyes locked and they glared at each other, both their hands curled into fists. Web, wall – was this then a battle of images? Or of men’s gifts against the talents of women? And I – I did not know what I believed. Both seemed to be right, to me, and both filled me with dread.

  I said to Rawley, ‘What is it you are going to do in Hygryll that she objects to so much?’

  Slowly both their heads turned towards me. Evidently they had forgotten I was there. Beneath them the old man slept on, his drugged breath turning musky in the close air. His flesh had gone even slacker, as people’s do in sleep, and blue veins traced patterns across the wrinkles of his eyelids.

  ‘Rawley,’ I repeated, refusing to call him ‘Father’, ‘how are you planning to kill someone who cannot be murdered?’

  Perhaps Nell scented an ally. She said, ‘Your father has a desperate idea, Roger. Desperate and dangerous and stupid. He knows now that he cannot kill Harbinger himself, neither in this realm nor that other. He has not the power. But he believes that others might. That those in Hygryll, the Soulviners most advanced in their obscene quest and so close to reaching immortality themselves, can still kill each other and perhaps Harbinger too. In other words: the only thing which can destroy power is more power. It is the sort of thinking that has brought us to this pass in the first place!’

  My mind struggled to keep up, to sort this into sense. ‘And … and is it true? Can others in Hygryll kill this old man?’

  Nell was silent.

  ‘You see,’ my father said, ‘she doesn’t know. The truth is that no one knows until it is tried. But it is our best hope.’

  Nell said despairingly, ‘It may destroy us all. It—’

  ‘Now you say “may”! A moment ago it was “will destroy us all”!’

  Nell ignored him, speaking directly to me. ‘We do not know. There is no precedent for any of this – how could there be? But consider, Roger. When you threw your sister into the vortex of watchers from Soulvine, we expected her power to be dispersed among the watchers. It was not – sh
e entered one of the unnatural dogs. When she was killed by … by that stray moor cur in the pit at Galtryf, we expected her vanished power to tear the web of being. Instead, it was dispersed among the Soulviners there, because they had learned to absorb it. They have also learned to drain babes of their vivia, using it to balance that taken from circles of the Dead. We did not expect that, either. But in each of these instances, the balance has been maintained, the flow of power between the land of the living and the Country of the Dead. What Rawley proposes will completely upset that balance. Where will the immense, dark power of soul around Harbinger go? It cannot go into any of us – power cannot be transferred among living men and women. Think, Roger, where will it go? And what will that do to the web of being?’

  ‘This is all nonsense,’ Rawley said. ‘No more substantial than the light from marsh gas. We kill the enemy, they relapse into mindless tranquillity on the other side, and their “power” is gone. We are safe from them. It is my duty to protect The Queendom and the Unclaimed Lands, and I will do whatever is necessary to safeguard both.’

  In my mind I heard Queen Caroline, three years ago, say the same thing: ‘I will do whatever is necessary to rule my queendom well, for the greater good.’ Perhaps all in command had this same rigid determination, or they would not be in command. Certainly at this moment Nell’s face and Rawley’s resembled each other, both harsh masks of complete certainty.

  Only I felt swamped by doubt.

  I said to my father, ‘But how will you persuade the Soulviners of Hygryll to kill Harbinger? He is their leader, and they are warriors. Won’t they die themselves before murdering him?’

  Silence. Then Nell said spitefully, ‘Tell him, Rawley.’

  My father gazed at me with no lessening of harshness. He said, ‘People will do anything under torture, Roger.’

  ‘You would torture people?’

  Nell said, ‘And if that does not work – and I think it will not – he and his hisafs will torture their children in front of them, until they trade Harbinger’s life for their children’s lives.’