The Shamer's Signet

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  “I just want an answer.”

  “Ye want an answer? Here it is: Skaya are not sheep stealers nor ever have been. Good day.” He turned his back on Callan and went to mount his waiting horse.

  “Not so fast, Skaya.”

  At first I thought Callan had spoken, but this was a different voice, hoarser and more hate-filled. A rider had entered the Falconer’s Court, an old man who could only be Evin. His long white hair stuck out all over the place, and there was still a bit of blood encrusted in his beard and an angry dark cut on his forehead. His horse was soaked in sweat both before and behind and looked to be only moments away from collapsing. But it still obeyed him and walked a few staggering steps so that Evin could look down on Astor Skaya.

  “Evin.” Callan put out a hand to stop him, but Evin had eyes only for Astor. From the blanket roll at the back of his saddle he drew a sword—a sword so ancient that it was black with age.

  “Look yer fill, Astor,” said the old man. “This sword was my father’s, and his father’s before him. It has tasted Skaya blood before. And it will again when I catch the bastard who shot my Mollie.” And then he spat Astor Skaya in the face.

  For a moment, we all sat completely stunned, except for Evin, who turned his tired horse around and left, without another word spoken.

  Astor Skaya put a hand to his face as if he didn’t quite believe what had happened.

  “Mollie?” he asked, sounding momentarily more astonished than angry. “Who is Mollie?”

  Callan cleared his throat. “The dog. The one that was shot.”

  Astor Skaya stared at Callan, and now the fury rose in him in a visible wave.

  “A dog?” he said in a voice trembling with rage. “He insults me, he threatens me, he spits on me—because of a dog?”

  “He was very fond of it,” Callan said, for once looking uncertain. It had not gone quite as he had planned, this visit to Skayark.

  An embarrassed groom handed Astor Skaya a rag, and he wiped his face carefully.

  “I see. Ye have run yer errand, Callan Kensie. Now go home. And go swiftly. From tomorrow at sunrise no Kensie is welcome in Skaya lands.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We caught up with Evin not far from Skayark. His poor horse was walking so slowly that he would have been better off on foot.

  “Evin,” said Callan, “that was not a wise thing to do.”

  Evin’s face remained closed and stubborn.

  “It was my right.”

  Callan sighed. “Only if a Skaya did this. And even then… Evin, do ye really want Skaya and Kensie at war? Do ye really want men to fight and kill—over a dog?”

  “Aye,” said Evin, and rode on.

  The ride back was a long one. Horses and men had already had to endure more than was good for them, but no one doubted that Astor Skaya was deadly earnest: come sunrise, no Kensie would be safe in Skaya lands. We had had to leave Evin’s horse behind, or we would never have made it out of Skaya before dawn. He now rode double with Black-Arse, who was the lightest of us.

  By the time we reached the cairn, night had fallen, cold and bright with stars, and more than one rider had been on the point of toppling from his horse from sheer tiredness. But it was easier to go on to Killian’s than to make camp in the dark, and so it was in the hay of Killian Kensie’s barn that I could finally let myself drop, so weary that I could barely hold my head up.

  And yet, once there, I found I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing Astor Skaya’s furious face, and Evin’s, blood-encrusted and pale with hatred.

  “Black-Arse?” I whispered. “Are you asleep?”

  “Not quite,” he answered in a sleep-slurred voice. “Why?”

  “Do you really think there will be war between Kensie and Skaya?”

  “I do not know.” The hay rustled as Black-Arse turned to face me. “I hope so. Skaya deserves it.”

  I was suddenly angry at Black-Arse. He had no idea what he was talking about. War—that meant people dying. War meant coming home to a blackened ruin and a lot of butchered animals, like at Cherry Tree Cottage. We had done it once. I could not bear to think of having to start over again. And this time without Dina.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, but I don’t think he heard me. At any rate, he didn’t answer, and a few moments later he began to snore.

  I had expected Mama to be angry, or at least upset. I knew that I should have told her myself that I was going with Black-Arse and Callan, instead of leaving Rose to do my dirty work. But as soon as she heard Falk’s hoofbeats, she flung open the door, and I barely had time to dismount before she threw her arms around me, hugging me tightly.

  “Davin,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time. “Look. Look what the Widow has sent me!”

  She dangled something in front of my face—a pewter pendant on a leather thong.

  It was Dina’s signet.

  DAVIN

  Hopes, Fears, and Oatmeal

  Every thought of war and dead sheep flew right out of my head.

  “Where did she get this?” I asked.

  “A man sold it to someone who—no, you’d better read the letter yourself.” Mama gave me a small sheet of thin parchment. Tiny letters filled very inch of it, and there were creases where it had been wrapped around Dina’s signet.

  “Dear Melussina,” it began. “I have news for you which is mostly good. We think Dina is alive, and we think we know where she is….”

  I suddenly felt as if I needed to sit down. The tiny letters wouldn’t stay still, and after those first few lines, nothing else made sense. I was never very good at reading, but right then I seemed to have forgotten the trick entirely.

  “Won’t you read it?” I asked Mama. “It’ll take me forever.”

  “Perhaps you should practice your letters more,” said Mama with something of her old sharpness. “Weapon skills are all very well, but being able to read and write would do you no harm either.”

  “I can read!” Just not right now.

  Mama put her hand on my arm. “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m snapping at you like this. It’s just… suddenly everything is upside down, and one minute I’m crazy with joy, and the next I’m scared out of my wits. Here. Give it to me. I’ll read it to you.”

  And so it was on the day after the sheep raid that I learned that my sister was probably alive after all. The Widow told us how she and the Master had begun to gather people who “feel like we do,” as she cautiously put it. People who were tired of having Drakan for a lord and wanted to put an end to the Order of the Dragon.

  “There isn’t much we can do at the moment,” she wrote, “except get together, gather a few weapons, and keep our eyes and ears open. We count men. We count swords. We find the strengths and weaknesses of the Dragon.”

  One of the strengths was apparently Dracana, a completely new town where Drakan’s people were somehow using the power of the Eidin River to weave cloth and forge swords faster and in greater numbers than anybody had been able to before. The Widow and the Master were keenly interested in Dracana, for Dracana’s secret was the reason Drakan had been able to raise such a large force so quickly.

  Unfortunately, it was not a town just anybody could walk into. Only men of the Order of the Dragon and their families lived there, and it was the wives and the children who worked the looms and did much of the work in the forges, while the men served in Drakan’s Dragon Force.

  “We talk to people from Dracana whenever it is possible, which is not often. The town is governed by a certain Valdracu, a relative of Drakan on his mother’s side, and he rules his people with a ruthless hand. A woman we know bought this Shamer’s signet from one of Valdracu’s men. I think it might be Dina’s. And there are rumors that Valdracu has a girl with the Evil Eye in his service. We are trying to find out more, but it is not easy—I fear that one of our people, a friend of Martin’s, may have been caught, as we have not heard from him for many days now. So, Me
lussina dearest, a hope has been kindled. But a hope surrounded by fear and danger. If it is she, she is alive—but captured by the Dragon.”

  Persuading my mother to let me go took some doing. At first she wanted to go herself, but I came down hard on that idea.

  “They burn Shamers down there. Didn’t you hear what the Master said?”

  “She’s my child, Davin. And so are you. How am I to sit here idly waiting, while you are both in terrible danger?”

  “You will just have to,” I said harshly, “because we would be up to our necks in it the first time you looked at anybody.”

  She knew I was right. I knew that she knew.

  “But Davin, do you have to go?” Her voice was completely different from how it used to be. Smaller. More afraid. It hurt me to hear it. “Let Callan do it,” she begged. “He would if I asked him to, I know he would.”

  Now that war with Skaya threatened, Maudi needed Callan. Yet I still think my mother was right. Callan was no longer completely a Kensie man. The day he had come home without Dina, a part of him had become the Shamer’s. If my mother asked him to do this, he would. Whatever Maudi said. I wondered if Maudi knew that.

  “You can’t do that to him,” I said. “You shouldn’t force him to go against Maudi’s word. And there are other reasons I’m a better choice. For one thing, I don’t sound like a Highlander every time I open my mouth.”

  “There are others who don’t.”

  “Mama. There is another reason. The most important one.”

  “And what is that?”

  “If I don’t do this, I’ll never be able to look you in the eye again.”

  She looked utterly dismayed. “Davin… Of course you will. Always. You’re my son!”

  I shook my head. “It’s not something you decide. It’s not even something I decide. It’s just the way it is.”

  She was quiet for a very long while. Her hands rested in her lap, open and empty, looking strangely helpless. One rarely saw them so still. They were always working, or dancing in the air as she spoke. They would smooth Melli’s hair, or scratch Beastie’s ears until he sighed with delight.

  “All right,” she finally said in a very low voice, looking at her empty hands. “Go if you must. But Davin…”

  “Yes?”

  “Promise to come home again. No matter what.”

  I nodded. “I’ll do all I can.”

  “No,” she said. “No matter what.”

  If I die, I thought, my ghost will have to come home. It was not a voice one could refuse.

  I borrowed a horse from Maudi, a stolid brown mare of no particular beauty. Hella, she was called. I would rather have had Falk, but I dared not risk anybody recognizing the Shamer’s horse the way they had at the White Doe in Baur Laclan. The good thing about Hella, except for four sound legs and an easy temper, was the fact that she had not yet been branded with Kensie’s clan mark. Maudi had only just got her in exchange for some young rams.

  “I’m sorry I cannot let Callan come with ye,” she said. “But I cannot spare him, the way things are with Skaya.”

  “I know,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.” Although to be perfectly truthful I would have liked to have Callan at my back, Callan with his unflustered strength and calm good sense. “Well, then.” She patted my shoulder a couple of times. “Good luck to ye, lad. Ye be careful, now.”

  “I will.”

  I checked the straps of my pack one last time and swung myself onto Hella’s comfortable back.

  Mathias, the Lowlander who had brought the letter and the Signet, sat up a little straighter on his dun gelding.

  “Ready?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  And off we rode, headed for the Lowlands, and Dracana.

  There was a sharp crack from the bonfire, and a burst of sparks took flight, riding the smoke as birds ride the wind. I just lay there, rolled up in every blanket I had brought, and felt the heaviness of sleep creep over me. On the other side of the fire, Mathias was still awake—I could see the glitter of his eyes in the glow from the flames. Next to me, snoring comfortably, was Black-Arse. I was still a bit surprised at that. Shortly after we had set out, he had come chasing after us at a gallop, hollering like a madman.

  “Wait!” he yelled. “Wait for me!”

  He had decided to see me on my way, he said, “at least as long as ye’re still in the Highlands.” He made it sound as if a single breath of Lowland air would poison him on the spot. But I was very glad to see him. Maybe we were closer to being real friends than I thought, despite my being a Lowlander and all. And in any case, riding next to Mathias, whom I didn’t know at all, had been an odd and silent experience. He didn’t say much, the good Mathias—if he had suddenly been struck dumb, I think it would have been weeks before anyone realized. When he wanted you to do something, like gather the firewood, he just pointed. If he thought you had fallen too far behind, he turned and looked at you with those weird yellow eyes of his, and you knew that you had better make your horse catch up.

  He was tall and skinny and so long-legged that his feet hung quite a bit below the belly of the dun. But there was nothing clumsy about him despite his lankiness. Every move he made was precise, as if he had decided to be as sparing with his strength as he was with his words. He looked a bit like a large bird of prey, I thought, with those yellow eyes and the wary way he cocked his head. If I wasn’t careful, I could easily have become just a little bit scared of Mathias.

  Black-Arse, on the other hand, talked constantly, which was nice, as it saved me from thinking too much. Hella followed Mathias’s dun with the steadiness of a rock; riding her made no great demands on my attention. So if Black-Arse hadn’t joined us, I would probably have spent the entire afternoon throwing wary looks at Mathias and worrying about Dina. What did it mean that Valdracu had her in his service? I couldn’t imagine my stubborn little sister serving anybody, least of all a relative of Drakan’s.

  No, it was a good thing that Black-Arse was there. Even if he did snore and talk in his sleep. And even if his foot was digging into my back right now.

  Suddenly Mathias was standing over me. I could have sworn that he was still lying rolled up in his blankets on the other side of the fire, but either he was quicker than any magician, or else I must have dozed for a moment. He put his hand on my shoulder and jerked his head in a fashion that clearly meant “Get up!”

  “What is it?” I asked, or rather, I meant to ask him, but as soon as I opened my mouth he put a finger to his lips to stop me.

  My heart beat a little faster. What was going on? I freed myself from the blankets and got up. Mathias pointed at his own spot by the fire. No wonder I had thought he was still there: His blankets were wrapped around something, so that it looked like a sleeping figure. I took my pack and a log from the pile by the fire and tried to copy his handiwork. He waited for me, just outside the circle of light cast by the fire, and was already almost invisible. I pointed silently to Black-Arse, but Mathias shook his head. Apparently, it was to be just the two of us. He disappeared into the thicket, and I followed him.

  We had camped by a small stream not too far from the road, in a hollow overgrown with brambles and lanky birches. The pale trunks shimmered whitely in all the darkness. Mathias had made himself invisible simply by squatting in the brambles, and I got down next to him and looked at him questioningly. He held a hand to his ear. Listen, he meant. I listened. And now that I was a bit more awake, I heard it clearly: a great rustling and snapping of twigs, quite loud, in fact. Something was coming our way, drawn by the light of the fire. Something big. A bear, perhaps?

  A bear… and my bow was still by my pack near the fire, next to the shrouded shape that was supposed to be me. Callan would have made my ears burn. Mathias, of course, said nothing.

  Crash. Snap. The sounds were coming closer. The bushes moved. Then the crashing stopped, and the night grew quiet. So quiet that I was able to hear a sort of hoarse snuffling. Did bears sou
nd like that?

  We waited. I could see my bow from where I crouched. It might as well have been on the moon for all the good it did me. How could I have been so stupid?

  Black-Arse moved in his sleep and called out something slurred and incomprehensible—the only thing that stood out clearly was “blueberry pie.” He must be dreaming. Suddenly it felt very wrong that he should be lying there, defenseless and ignorant of his danger. If the bear suddenly decided to rush our camp, would we be able to stop it before it mauled Black-Arse?

  The bushes moved again.

  So did Mathias.

  There was a sharp cry and a lot of rattling and crashing and moving about. A little late off the mark, I stumbled through the thicket trying to come to Mathias’s aid. He had flung himself on something and was now thrashing about on the ground. In the dark, I could hear him better than I could see him, and I ended up tripping over him and whatever it was he was fighting. It wasn’t a bear, at any rate. Bears don’t have braids. Braids…

  “Rose?” I hazarded. “Rose, is that you?”

  “Let go of me!” yelled Rose. “Let go of me, you bastard!” And when Mathias didn’t: “Let go! I’m warning you, I have a knife!”

  Oh, it was Rose, all right.

  “Let her go, Mathias,” I said. “It’s my… it’s my foster sister.” I didn’t know what else to call her so that he would understand.

  Mathias let Rose get to her feet and pulled her out of the thicket and into our camp. When I turned to follow him, I bumped my shin on a huge basket of the kind some people use to carry firewood. A basket? It had to be Rose’s, but what was she doing with a firewood basket so big that she could barely carry it? I dragged it with me to our small camp, clanking and clattering as if she had an entire tinker’s stall in there.

  Rose looked terrible. Bits of leaves and little twigs were caught in her fair hair, and her hands and knees and one side of her face were covered in filth. Tears made pale runnels in the dirt, and the hoarse snuffling I had heard was the sound of Rose crying.