Silvermay

by James Moloney

  ‘If he cries, she’ll want to feed him. We can’t let it happen, Tamlyn. Look at her — she’s a skeleton. I swear, he’s stripped more flesh from her bones since this morning. Any more and she’ll die.’ I picked up the burbling baby and faced Tamlyn. ‘We have to decide what to do before she wakes up.’

  When we returned to the tents, we found the area crowded with miners who’d finished their day’s work. Arnou Dessar was there, too.

  ‘We can’t let them overhear us. Where will we go?’ I asked.

  I was surprised when Tamlyn said, ‘The chamber inside the diggings.’

  ‘No,’ I snapped instantly. ‘I don’t want to see those pictures ever again. I don’t want to think about what they mean!’

  ‘That’s exactly why you have to see them again.’

  He walked off to beg a torch from the miners. As soon as he returned with it spluttering into life, he marched straight past me. What could I do but follow, with Lucien in my arms?

  The chamber was bigger than I remembered, perhaps because there were only three of us to fill the space, and Lucien hardly took up any room. He was content to gaze up at me, snatching at my hair with a fist of pink fingers.

  ‘Silvermay, come here,’ Tamlyn called from where he’d begun to examine the mosaics again.

  I spread Lucien’s blanket over the soft dust and laid him gently in the middle. The scallywag rolled over and tried to push himself up onto hands and knees, another milestone he was far too young to reach. He flopped down again, not quite able to crawl.

  ‘Look at him,’ I said. ‘Is there anything more innocent than a baby lying on his blanket? He doesn’t belong in this terrible place, Tamlyn. It was a mistake to come.’

  I was on the verge of snatching him up and heading for the door when Tamlyn spoke firmly from across the chamber. ‘Forget what he is now and look at what he’ll become.’

  It was horrible. These images shocked me even more a second time. The glittering red stones were so dense in some places they seemed to flow like a river. Skilled hands had pressed the chips and flakes into the mosaic. From a distance, some of the faces were so real I expected them to cry out in agony.

  ‘We can stop this before it begins,’ said Tamlyn.

  ‘He’s an innocent child.’

  ‘Better one than thousands,’ he persisted.

  ‘No!’

  Tamlyn led me along the wall, daring me to look, but my heart wouldn’t give way. What I saw instead were Nerigold’s eyes fixed on mine as she’d pushed me away. I wanted her love and friendship again and the only way was to abandon this shameful scheme. I grabbed the torch from Tamlyn’s hand, which put me in charge. I would scoop Lucien up with my free arm and take him back out into the fading light and Tamlyn would have to follow.

  But I didn’t. My body turned to stone like the room around me and for a few moments I was a statue, rigid and immobile. The torch had thrown its light onto a patch of wall I hadn’t inspected closely before. It picked out a face, or at least my eye picked out a face from among the rest. It belonged to one among many dead lying in a hideous pile.

  ‘What is it?’ said Tamlyn, still startled from the way I’d wrenched the torch from his grip. He looked at the lifeless faces until he saw the one that had stopped me in my tracks. ‘Nerigold.’

  I turned quickly to throw the light onto the large portrait that dominated the far wall. There was the other face of Nerigold, eyes open, body lithe and healthy, the newborn in her arms. Yet here she was again, her body emaciated, just as we’d left her minutes before. Here she was in death.

  I stood back a pace to let my torch illuminate the rest of the death scene. A familiar figure stood triumphant, helmet shielding his face, but his armour unmistakable. This was the Wyrdborn monster that rampaged across these walls worse than any plague, worse than an invading army, worse than the fiercest storm the skies could rain down to smash the earth beneath. Sword raised, he stood unrepentant over this pile of the dead, his own mother among them. This is what my Smiler would become: his mother’s murderer who would glory in what he had done.

  ‘We can’t let it happen, any of it,’ I said, sweeping my arm savagely towards the gut-wrenching scenes.

  ‘Then you agree?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said quickly. ‘Do it, Tamlyn. You’re Wyrdborn. I’ve seen you kill things before.’

  ‘The hawk,’ he said and, although the light was poor, I saw his face lose its colour.

  ‘It can’t be like that,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you, one Wyrdborn alone cannot kill another unless he uses something of his victim’s.’

  ‘He’s a baby. He doesn’t own anything,’ I snapped. Already, I wanted to stop this madness. If we hadn’t been in this chamber I would have done just that. Instead, I forced my eyes towards the face drawn so exquisitely by the coloured stones. ‘His blanket,’ I said. ‘Birdie gave it to him, as a gift.’

  There was no need to explain how Tamlyn should use it.

  ‘I can’t stay. I can’t be here while you do it,’ I said.

  Tamlyn nodded and, though I could feel his eyes on me all the way into the passage, I didn’t look back.

  Only the merest hint of light seeped from the chamber into the mine. I couldn’t bear to hear even a single sound, so I moved away as far as I dared, until I was in almost complete darkness. Yes, I thought, just where I should be. I would live with this darkness in my soul for the rest of my life. How long would it take? Was Lucien already dead? Best not to think about it, but what else was there that deserved a single thought at that moment?

  Movement came from the passageway that led into the chamber. I hurried back the way I had come, the pale yellow light from the chamber growing stronger with every step. At last I drew level with the opening and saw Tamlyn standing there, head and shoulders bowed, the blanket bunched in his hand.

  He sensed my presence and looked up. As he’d placed the torch against a wall in the chamber, his face was in shadow and difficult to read.

  ‘I couldn’t do it,’ he said. ‘Not alone. You have to help me.’

  ‘No, I can’t. It’s impossible. I —’

  ‘Nerigold will die. All those people,’ he added, shrugging his shoulder towards the chamber behind him. ‘A thousand for every body we saw lying there. If we do it together, we’ll take strength from each other.’

  Every part of me rebelled. Run! a voice screamed in my head. Get out of this awful place. Go back to Haywode and pretend three strangers never appeared out of the haze that morning.

  I didn’t run. The sight of the helmeted warrior had hold of me and, against my will, I imagined a face emerging through the steel, handsome as all Wyrdborn were, but repulsive because of what it lacked, the least hint of compassion, of care, of love. It was a face that had long since forgotten how to smile at anything but the misery it caused. If it had once been my Smiler, if it had once been named Lucien, it was neither of those now.

  I took a step towards Tamlyn and, relieved, he took my hand and drew it to the blanket in his own.

  ‘Take strength from each other,’ I said, repeating what he’d promised.

  ‘Together,’ he said, as we knelt in front of Lucien.

  Yes, together we’d do it, but in seeing our hands so close, grasping the rumpled blanket, I glimpsed the rift this act would split open between us. For the rest of our lives, we wouldn’t be able to look at each other without remembering what we’d done — together. A monster would die so that countless others were saved from misery, but I would lose Tamlyn forever. The agony of those thousands would become mine alone.

  I couldn’t look at him. I looked down at Lucien instead. He smiled. Oh, could this be any harder? I had taught him to smile. He had given his first to me and, with a thud in my chest, I knew he was giving me his last. We lowered the blanket onto his face and began to press down.

  ‘Get away from him!’ came a shriek from the passageway and, before we could even turn around, a body flew across the chamber, knocking us both to the g
round.

  It was Nerigold. Where had she found the strength? Sprawled in the dust after her desperate leap, she pushed quickly up onto her knees and attacked again, slashing with her nails like a tiger. She didn’t seem sure which of us she was trying to strike. Her only aim was to keep us away from Lucien.

  We backed away in shock, even Tamlyn who could have thrown her back against the wall with a single nudge of his arm.

  Nerigold crawled forward until she knelt between us and her son, who had begun to cry in fright. Those cries told her he was alive and that was all she cared about. I imagined her waking to find him gone, staggering out into the camp to be told we’d borrowed a torch. She would have guessed, then, what we were going to do. What horror must have driven her steps. Oh, Nerigold, forgive me, I wanted to shout.

  No one moved. Lucien’s cries died away, leaving only the deep rasp of Nerigold’s breathing. She had used everything left in her to reach her child and fight off his murderers and, with that task achieved, her spent body simply collapsed beside him.

  Tamlyn and I came forward on our knees, like penitents before the ancient gods, to see a skeleton lying beside the robust child she had given life to. Her eyes were open and moments later she found the strength to turn her head to look at me.

  ‘I know why you were trying to kill him,’ she said. ‘This room tells its story plain enough. The boy in my arms becomes the fiend. That’s what it says, but listen to me, both of you. It doesn’t have to be that way. Those pictures are made of stone. My Lucien is living flesh. The two don’t have to become one. My son doesn’t have to live out a destiny laid down for him before he was even born.’

  She rolled her head a little to find Tamlyn. ‘Those were your mother’s words. Now they’re mine. Mothers, both of us. You know better than anyone that we’re right,’ she said, though she could manage little more than a whisper. ‘You’ve defied your Wyrdborn blood. No one has ever done it before, but you …’

  ‘Leave him in my care, Nerigold. I will look after him,’ said Tamlyn. It was a plea as much as a promise.

  ‘Not you alone. Promise me, both of you. Let him live.’

  I looked across at Tamlyn. The answer was already hard as granite in my throat. I could never force myself to hold that blanket to Lucien’s face again.

  ‘I promise,’ I said and immediately my wretched spirit began to lift.

  ‘As do I,’ said Tamlyn firmly.

  Nerigold watched us for a long moment. I thought at first she was judging whether she could trust our promises, but this wasn’t the reason. She drew breath slowly, with an effort of will now. ‘I want a second promise,’ she said and somehow the feeble voice had grown strong again. ‘Free Lucien from the curse that hangs over him.’ With a languid gesture, she pointed to the mosaic all around us. ‘Together, you must find a way.’

  In the midst of such horror, and with my friend so weak and barely holding on to life, I was touched by the deepest joy. It didn’t seem possible, and it certainly didn’t seem right, but I couldn’t deny the response of my own body. Minutes before, Tamlyn and I had seemed doomed to live forever separated by murder. Now, if we made this pledge to Nerigold, we would be bound together instead.

  ‘You have my word,’ I said without another thought.

  ‘And mine,’ said Tamlyn, just as readily. Had he seen in those words what I had seen? I didn’t dare look at him.

  Nerigold’s eyes barely shifted in their sockets, but she took hold of our promises in the same way she had clutched Lucien when I’d first accused him of killing the fawn.

  ‘Where is he?’ she begged.

  I picked Lucien up from the dusty floor and held him out, but she couldn’t take him. The last of her strength was long gone.

  ‘No, keep him in your arms, Silvermay. You are his mother now.’

  The tension left her body and, with it, the fear that had driven her to this chamber. Only her love for Lucien remained. I pressed the baby close against her so that she could hold him one more time, but it was too late. The last breath had left her body. Nerigold was dead.

  16

  The Story of Haylan Redwing

  Death had never once asked for my attention in the sixteen years I had spent learning to love the people closest to me. Now it demanded its due in one unbearable charge. Rage took hold of me. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair, that someone as good as Nerigold could be snatched away, that all the years of love and kindness she would have given to the world would never be lived. If my eyes stayed dry as I leaned over her body, it was because I was willing her to come back and live those years. The fight wasn’t over, it couldn’t be over. I wouldn’t give way to the hopelessness of death. Open your eyes, Nerigold. Lucien needs you. I need you. Our friendship had barely begun, and had a lifetime to run because I still wanted it. I wasn’t dead.

  Or maybe I was. A guilty voice whispered that I’d died a little myself when I held the blanket over Lucien’s face.

  A tear fell, darkening the dust on Nerigold’s dress. Was I crying, after all? Was I so numb from head to toe that I was unable to feel the tears? I touched my cheeks and found them dry. My eyes weren’t swollen and my vision didn’t seem blurred. Where had the tear come from?

  I looked up and saw Tamlyn quietly weeping as he stared down at Nerigold’s lifeless body. He sensed me watching him and turned his head. What’s happening to me? his bewildered eyes asked.

  ‘Haven’t you ever shed tears before?’ I asked.

  He seemed startled at such an idea. ‘Never.’ Dabbing tentatively at a teardrop beneath his eye, he examined the end of his finger in wonder. ‘Wyrdborn aren’t known for their tears.’

  ‘They’re a sign of grief,’ I told him.

  And to know this kind of grief, you first have to love. That was another thing the Wyrdborn weren’t known for. The thought set my own tears flowing at last; I grieved for Nerigold because I’d loved her, too.

  Suddenly I couldn’t bear to be so close to her. I stood up and pressed myself against Tamlyn. That day, he was no more than a warm pillar I could cling to, someone who would let me cry for as long as I needed while I tried to let go of Nerigold. It took a long time. It is still going on, and maybe it always will.

  ‘We have to get her out of this chamber,’ I said at last, stepping back a little from Tamlyn’s hold. ‘We can’t let her spend eternity buried between these walls. Master Dessar was right: the pictures are a warning, not a fate.’

  Tamlyn and I had made a promise, and getting them both out of the chamber was the first part of making sure we kept it.

  In the last of the day’s light, we buried Nerigold in the woods beyond the miners’ camp and afterwards took Lucien to the scholar’s cabin. We’d left his blanket in the chamber; neither of us could look at it again without flinching in shame. We found him a new one among Arnou Dessar’s bedclothes and made him comfortable. Unaware of his mother’s death, he went to sleep, leaving me awake on the bed beside him, certain I would never sleep again.

  ‘What will I do when he wakes up?’ I asked in a sudden panic. ‘Nerigold can’t feed him any more.’

  I’d spoken without thinking and suffered the pain those words brought with them. It was all too much, all too quick, as though the night sky was closing in to crush me. Death again, black, unending, overwhelming. Nerigold had been alive only hours ago and now she was underground and I would never see her again, never talk to her, never share one of Lucien’s smiles with her. I was left alive, with Lucien all to myself and no one to help me care for him.

  ‘I want to go home. Lucien needs Birdie and so do I.’

  Tamlyn stared at me, too stunned to reply except with a slow shake of his head.

  ‘But Coyle’s men have already been to Haywode. They won’t look for us there again,’ I said confidently, as though this alone would make it true. ‘I don’t know enough about babies to do this on my own. I know we made a pledge but that doesn’t mean we have to do it all by ourselves. My father will help with th
at part.’

  ‘We can’t go back, Silvermay.’

  ‘You said I could, at any time, and you wouldn’t hold it against me.’

  Tamlyn thought about this for a moment while his eyes inspected me. That look was so different from the hard glare I’d seen from the grey-vested Wyrdborn who’d tried to steal Hespa away. There was cool calculation, yes, but softened by a compassion that seemed to spill over his entire face.

  ‘It’s grief that’s doing this to you,’ he said. ‘I feel it, too, even though you had to explain to me what it was. It muddles the mind, it hurts like nothing I’ve ever known. What it must be like for commonfolk I can only guess at, but I know enough to see what it’s doing to you. I wish I could take your grief into myself so you didn’t have to bear it, but there’s no magic I know of that can do such a thing. Each of us has to carry what we feel until it slowly floats off our shoulders. In the meantime, Coyle is still after us, there are men in Haywode who would betray us out of fear, and if your parents help us, they will die horribly.’

  ‘But Lucien needs milk,’ I protested.

  He held up his hand to stop me racing into another panic. ‘I will find a way. You don’t have to do everything on your own. You have me and I have you.’

  He moved to the bed and sat beside me cautiously so Lucien wouldn’t be disturbed. ‘Talk to me,’ he whispered. ‘Tell me everything you knew about Nerigold and I will tell you all that I remember, too. She’s not gone if she’s still alive in you and me.’

  The first words were excruciating, but one thought led to another and they all became words, washed free by more tears. I leaned against his shoulder and closed my eyes while I listened and even as I spoke.

  Somehow I slept.

  I awoke to find the cabin filled with morning light. It wasn’t the only thing that filled the space, either. There was a musty, animal smell and when I sat up on the bed where Tamlyn must have lain me down to sleep beside the baby, I gave a little shriek.

  ‘A goat!’

  ‘Shh,’ Tamlyn warned with a finger to his lips.