A Bright and Terrible Sword

by Anna Kendall

  ‘Rawley sends you this command through web women who have finally decided to work with us against the Brotherhood. The command word of the day is “Hartah”. Here is what you must do, immediately.’

  The brusqueness, the sound of authority, might have come from my father himself instead of being crafted by Nell with the last of her strength. Had I been one of Rawley’s hisafs, I would have instantly obeyed.

  The rain lessened. My mind emptied. I looked down, and I saw that Nell was dead.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there, in the damp and chill, holding her. It was Maggie who eventually found me. Maggie, usually so jealous of any other woman, who this time seemed to grasp the difference. She took Nell from me into her strong arms and then laid her upon the peat and moss. I realized the drizzle had ceased.

  ‘Roger,’ Maggie said with the gentleness that I saw only rarely, but always when it mattered, ‘what have you done?’

  ‘It is not done yet,’ I said, before I knew I was going to say anything.

  She knelt beside me and took my hand. ‘What must I do to help you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. But Maggie was not capable of doing nothing. She got me to my feet; I nearly tumbled over from sitting so long cramped in the crevice. She led me to another stone hut, blessedly empty of people. She spread a blanket from beneath a stone bench upon it, pushed me onto the bench, wrapped me in the blanket. I hadn’t realized I was shivering.

  ‘Now tell me,’ she said. ‘It can’t be long now before Rawley’s remaining men set him free.’ But still I could not speak. The words would not come. I was too exhausted, too filled with doubt. What right had I to think that this insane plan would work? Just because once I had done … had once seen …

  I could not stay here. I had to know: had Nell and I succeeded after all? Was there a chance? I was on fire to know what would happen – not here, but in that other realm, where it counted.

  ‘Maggie … please … wait here. Please.’

  I left her and crossed over.

  Darkness—

  Cold—

  Dirt choking my mouth—

  Worms in my eyes—

  Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

  I stood in the Country of the Dead, among the low hillocks that, in the land of the living, was Hygryll. Fog drifted around me, for which I was grateful. I was taking a chance that hisafs of the Brotherhood were not waiting here to grab anyone crossing over. Although this was not as much of a chance as it would have been yesterday. If Nell and I were succeeding, the Brotherhood would have other concerns to occupy them.

  Through the fog I glimpsed the boulder, as big on this side as on the other, where I had held Nell in my arms. From the boulder I set out southwest. I knew where I was going. I had been here before. Soon I came to the large circle of Dead, the one I had seen after Cecilia’s death. The biggest of the circles, and the one with no spinning vortex in its centre. Instead, my mother had sat there, tranquil in the mindless calm of the Dead, with fresh blood inexplicably staining her lavender gown.

  The circle was gone. So was she.

  I almost cried out. Had Soulvine Moor taken her – destroyed her to suck the power from yet one more person? If so, I would never know. She would not exist anywhere, her chance at eternity gone to feed the monstrous desire of men like Harbinger to live for ever.

  I could not bear it. But perhaps she had not been destroyed but only moved, perhaps even by my father …

  And then I was running through the fog, searching, heedless of who might see me. My feet left no mark on the grey grass. I darted here and there, without plan, running – for how long? I didn’t know. Time, like distance, is different on the other side of the grave, and impossible to gauge when light neither wanes nor waxes and no sun ever rises. Time here can stretch or shrink.

  Eventually I came to a place where the fog had lessened and lightened: pale drifting wisps rather than dark shrouds. I could see better here.

  If I crossed back over now, my father might already be free. Rawley’s men, tired of waiting for him in the prison hut, would go searching for him. They would find him and Charlotte and Rawnie bound in the hut where supposedly I lay asleep, but they would not find me. Not until I could see, without interference from Rawley, what Nell and I had accomplished. If we had accomplished anything.

  So I walked north, or what would have been north in the land of the living, towards the border of the Unclaimed Lands. I walked a long time. This was the route I had once taken with Cecilia, and again with Tom Jenkins. It had not changed much.

  But time had. More time must have passed on the other side, because shortly after I left the moor and reached the pine and birch woods of the Unclaimed Lands, I saw it happen.

  Something materialized beside me. Four men, their arms laden. Immediately one of them shoved his bundle into the arms of another and seized me. ‘I have one!’

  ‘I am Roger Kilbourne!’ I cried. ‘Rawley’s son!’

  That stopped them. I did not know any of the four. The man who held me turned my face towards him and studied me. He said, ‘Could be – there is a resemblance. But perhaps only by chance.’

  I said, ‘I know what you are doing. With the babes. Rawley sent a message through the web women to do it. With the command word “Hartah”!’

  ‘Aye, he knows,’ another said, and the man released me.

  They carried sleeping infants. No, not sleeping: tranced. Three of the men carried two babes apiece, and the one who had grabbed me had carried one, now thrust unceremoniously atop another child, covering its face. It made no matter. These children could not be smothered, nor killed.

  The men laid their burdens on the ground. As they bent, I saw the distaste on the face of the youngest hisaf, barely past boyhood himself. The one who had grabbed me demanded, ‘Were ye with Rawley when he sent this order two days ago?’

  Two days ago. Time had indeed shrunk here. What answer would be safest? I said, ‘I was in Hygryll, yes, but I was not with him at that moment.’

  ‘And what does he mean by it? It makes no sense!’

  Now all four glared at me, ignoring the tranced infants lying at their feet. I shrugged. ‘He did not tell me.’

  ‘Do ye know nothing, then?’

  I shrugged again. But I knew what my father, unlike the Brotherhood, had not known. The Brotherhood had understood the web of being. Rawley had been blinded, just as Nell said, by his own rigid idea of a breach in the fortifications between the living and the Dead. Jago, and Harbinger, and even vain and hapless Leo had understood the idea of balancing the powers of life and death. But I knew – better than most! – that solid bodies, not only the vivia of souls, could change the balance. I had learned that when I brought back from the Country of the Dead the bodies of Bat, of Cecilia, of the Blue army. My theft of bodies that belonged on the other side of the grave had so disturbed the Country of the Dead that it had nearly been destroyed.

  And now my father’s hisafs, unwittingly, were bringing over bodies that I hoped would disturb it again.

  All over The Queendom, all over the Unclaimed Lands, every one of my father’s hisafs were carrying tranced infants through the grave into the Country of the Dead. The men had stolen them in the night from cottages and manor houses and perhaps even from Glory itself, materializing as easily inside dwellings as once the Brotherhood had done to steal the children in the first place. So many infants, taken from their grieving parents. Taken, then returned in circles on the ground, as empty and mindless as the true Dead. Those little bodies balanced the soul power sent to the darkened Galtryf in the Country of the Dead, which in turn balanced the power taken from the Dead to go to the living men and women of Soulvine Moor. A delicate balance. A web of being.

  Which I was now deliberately breaking apart.

  All at once there came to my mind the image of the spider web in John Small’s cottage, which had trapped a thrashing baby mouse all those months ago. The web straining under the mouse’s effort
s to free itself, until the wild Small children had seized the whole and swept away the web completely.

  ‘I asked ye a question, young Rawley,’ the hisaf growled.

  ‘My name is Roger!’

  ‘Whatever yer name be, I asked ye a question. What is your father doing?’

  ‘I told you that I don’t know.’

  The man stepped closer. ‘I don’t believe ye. Ye were with him at Hygryll, and we were on our way there when this … this message invades our heads …’

  Despite himself, the hisaf shuddered. I saw that he hated doing so, that he considered the shudder a sign of weakness. But I remembered the terrible dreams my mad sister had sent me, and I understood his shudder. The first time it happened, I had felt not only terrified and bewildered but also invaded, the wall of my mind breached by someone else.

  The youngest hisaf pushed towards me, stepping on the hand of one of the tranced infants. I knew, however, that the child felt nothing. The boy cried, ‘If he be lying, let us get the truth from him! Here, or there!’ He raised his fist.

  ‘Stop,’ said the man who had grabbed me. ‘We have our orders, Hal. Do naught to him.’

  ‘But he—’ The boy stopped.

  Everything stopped.

  In that land of silence, how can one discern an even deeper silence? But we all did, a sudden profound pause in the very air. My breath tangled in my throat. And then the ground heaved beneath us, throwing me off my feet. A sharp crack! filled the air, as of lightning right beside me, where there was no lightning. Someone screamed. The youngest hisaf vanished, fleeing back to the land of the living. A moment later the other three followed him.

  I stayed. I wanted to see … I must know … I could not gather all seven infants to me, there was no time and I had but one hand. But I grabbed the closest two, clutching at some parts of their little bodies, I had no idea which. The ground gave another great heave, tossing us all into the air. Another great crack, and the sky above split and something roared from the great rent, something I could not really see but could feel in every shiver of my bone and every jangle of my teeth, something bright and terrible beyond belief—

  The sword.

  I never did really see it. Instead I crossed back over, the two infants squashed against me, and emerged beside a settlement of wooden huts. The other hisafs lay shaking on the ground, in a warm rain. Two of them shouted incoherently, and people burst from the huts and ran towards us through the rain.

  I did not shout, did not get up, did not look to see who raced towards me. Instead I looked at the two children lying beside me, and the other five scattered over the sopping ground. All seven screamed in fear, wet and squirming and squalling and alive, alive, alive.

  ‘Alice!’

  ‘Dick!’

  ‘Peter!’

  I looked up at that, but it was not Peter One-Hand that was meant. One of the babes was named Peter, and his mother grabbed up the shrieking bundle and crushed it to her. She was a withered hag, used up by a hardscrabble life in this grindingly poor village, but not even Queen Caroline had been so beautiful in her joy.

  People running, shouting, milling around, hugging the recovered children. A man seized me, a toothless and bearded man of such powerful build that his grip wrenched my shoulder. His country accent was so thick that I barely understood him.

  ‘What did ye? What happened?’

  How to explain? I could not. So I offered the simplest lie. After all, it had served me well before. ‘The witches have untranced your children, and we brought them back to you.’

  We were heroes. Old women rushed to fall on their knees and kiss our hands. My father’s men liked this as little as I did. Too shaken to rejoice, they muttered something no one understood and tried to walk resolutely away along the narrow, faint track that led from the village. The leader thought to toss over his shoulder, ‘More children to rescue!’ and that released us.

  When we were out of sight of the border settlement, the hisafs turned on me. ‘What happened, young Kilbourne? And do not lie to us as you did to those villagers! What did Rawley do?’

  What did Rawley do? Rawley, not me! A hot retort rose to my lips, but I must have learned some good sense in the last years, because I stifled it. This was my passage out. If I wanted to be able to slink back to obscurity with Maggie and our son, I must not take credit for the rescued children. Must not name little Tom. Must not explain what had happened in the Country of the Dead.

  What had happened in the Country of the Dead?

  All at once, I had to know. That bright and terrible rending of the sky … the sword …

  So I said to the hisafs, ‘I don’t know what my father did. He keeps his plans close to his chest, even to me.’ That sounded like Rawley. ‘I know only that he wished to have as many tranced children as possible cross over as soon as possible. I was on my way to a cottage with such a child when … when that happened. More, I do not know.’

  I watched them considering, weighing, finally accepting my story. The leader said, ‘Then we will go to Hygryll and ask Rawley.’ His face darkened. ‘There is still the old man to dispose of.’

  Was there? That, too, I needed to know. But not yet. I was on fire to cross over and see what had happened to the Country of the Dead. Would these men never leave!

  The leader said, ‘You can travel with us to Hygryll, young Kilbourne.’ The youth glared at me, then lowered his eyes lest I see. He was easy to read. Jealous of me, Rawley Kilbourne’s favoured heir. He knew nothing, the stupid oaf.

  I said, ‘My father told me to go to a particular cottage. I think I must, at least to see if what occurred here has happened to other babes as well.’

  ‘Aye, that is sense,’ the leader said. ‘Anyway, Rawley can tell us more. Then travel easily, young Kilbourne.’ He turned to stride back down the track and the others followed.

  But I wanted to give Nell her due. Nell and all the other web women who had died for this redemption. So I called to the men’s departing backs, ‘I do know one thing more! My father is grateful for the cooperation of the women of the soul arts. He told me that whatever happens next, it would depend upon them!’

  The youngest hisaf turned to glare at me once more.

  When they had disappeared through the trees, I bit my tongue hard and crossed over.

  Darkness—

  Cold—

  Dirt choking my mouth—

  Worms in my eyes—

  Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

  Tranquillity. Calm. Nothing of upheaval or fog. And nothing of that bright and terrible sword. The trees, still and dim, did not rustle above my head.

  No path here, but I walked through the woods back to where the settlement had been in the land of the living. There were Dead here; probably families had lived in this little hollow a long time. The Dead sat quietly, singly or in one small circle. No fog around their heads, no vortexes stealing the power accumulated by their long-waiting souls.

  ‘We have only conjecture,’ Nell had said to me, with great reluctance to share even the conjectured lore of the web women. ‘The sword … It guards death itself, a way to keep the web of being intact. To keep the balance of power, when the Country of the Dead is too profoundly disturbed.’

  So I had deliberately disturbed it as profoundly as I could. And the sword had righted it. Death had, however belatedly, guarded its own.

  27

  It was a day’s journey back to Hygryll. I needed to rest often. Hunger gnawed at me, despite the roots and berries I found, and the occasional nut overlooked by squirrels. I did not pause to set snares, and anyway I had never been very good at it. By nightfall I had still not reached Hygryll. I spent a miserable night in the rain, huddled beside a great tor.

  I reached Hygryll just as everyone else prepared to leave it. Only a few people remained in the stone village. Some laden ponies stood by the flat rock where once I had lain bound and moments from being murdered. Even now I could not suppress a shudder when I g
limpsed it. But then Maggie was running towards me, and all shudders were over.

  ‘Roger!’

  She threw herself into my arms, and we both lost our balance and tumbled onto the wet peat. Not a heroic reunion. But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that she was with me, her sweet body in my arms and her straggling fair curls shoved into my mouth. I spat them out, pulled her upright, and murmured into her ear, ‘Tom?’

  ‘I don’t know. There is no one to ask.’

  No one to ask – of course not. Nell was dead. But why had not Mother Chilton or Stephanie tried to reassure me that Nell and I had succeeded, that Tom was all right?

  Sudden fear swamped me, so strong that I went cold and then hot. I had never thought – what if the sending of so many simultaneous visions to so many hisafs had the same terrible effect on little Tom that it had had on Nell and the web girls? What if, in winning the war on Soulvine Moor, I had harmed my son? What if he were now—

  My child, whom I had never even seen. If he lay dead by my own hand—

  ‘What is it?’ Maggie said. ‘Why is your heart racing like that? Roger – is it Tom? What have you done?’

  ‘It is nothing,’ I said. ‘I have no news of Tom. Truly, Maggie – I would tell you if I did. I know no more than you. Where are you going now? Those ponies are laden for a journey. Where is Rawley?’

  ‘He left yesterday with all his men. The tranced children are all restored to life – but you already knew that, didn’t you? I see it on your face.’

  ‘And the old man?’

  Maggie’s eyes searched mine. ‘Dead. He was found dead in the stone hut, without a mark on him. That was before the reports began to come to Rawley about the restored children. And I have been waiting! For you, for news of my baby, for someone to explain all of this to me!’