‘Neryn.’
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Not Flint’s voice, but that of someone smaller and stranger. ‘No!’ I whispered. ‘Not now!’
‘Now, yes, now!’
‘Quick, before he comes back!’
Faces peered from the cover of the thorny plants. Eyes peeped out from the chinks and cracks of the hillside. Voices spoke from pools of rainwater. From the time Flint brought me here, I had seen not a trace of the Good Folk. Now they were everywhere. ‘Now, now, talk now!’ they pleaded. ‘Now, while he is not near.’
‘Shh!’ I hissed. ‘Keep quiet and stay hidden. This is not the time.’
‘Danger! Peril!’
‘Hide yourselves now!’ I ordered.
And now the wind brought voices from down the hill, Flint’s and that of a younger man.
‘. . . early,’ was all I caught of Flint’s speech. You’re here early. The boy. It was only the lad come before Flint expected him. I breathed again.
‘. . . message . . . coming up toward the pass. Many . . .’
‘How long . . .’
The men’s voices faded; they had moved away. The Good Folk had obeyed my command and merged back into the land, invisible to human eyes. I knew they were still there watching me. My skin prickled with their closeness.
I waited, crouched in my bolthole and growing colder by the moment. I imagined myself walking in Corbie’s Wood. I pictured myself kneeling by Farral’s grave – a grave marked by a pile of stones placed there long after the Enforcers had moved on, satisfied that the place had been cleansed of both the smirched and the rebellious. We had come out from hiding then, we sad survivors, and laid our dead to rest. We had hidden the pieces of our broken lives in our hearts and crept away. In my mind I sang the old song for my brother. Hag of the Isles my secrets keep; Master of Shadows guard my sleep.
‘Neryn.’
Flint was here. I struggled to my feet. My cramped legs did not want to hold me. He caught my arms to stop me from falling.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I did not mean to be so long. It’s safe now. Come, let’s get you home.’
‘Home,’ I croaked. ‘I’d laugh at that, if I was capable of it.’ Gods, my legs felt like jelly. I clenched my teeth and took a step.
‘I’ll carry you,’ Flint said.
‘No! It’s only a cramp.’ I made myself move forward. ‘Is he gone?’ I murmured as we headed back down to the hut.
‘Mm.’ Flint’s answer was not much more than a grunt. After a moment he added, ‘We’ll talk inside.’
Once in the hut, with the door closed behind us, I resisted the urge to sink down on the bed. I hung up my cloak, then went to sit on the bench by the table. I wanted my strength back. I wanted the old Neryn back, the one who could walk many miles between sunup and sundown, and make her own fire, and catch her own supper.
Flint was a sombre-looking man at the best of times. Right now he was grimmer than usual, his mouth a thin line, his jaw tight, his eyes forbidding questions. He put a log on the fire, filled the kettle, set it to boil. He took off his cloak – the silver stag gleamed in the firelight – and hung it beside mine. He came to stand by me, arms folded. Neither of us had said a word since we came in.
‘I thought I heard you talking to someone up there.’
I had not expected this. He must have exceptionally sharp hearing. The voices of the Good Folk were small, and I was sure I had not spoken above a whisper. ‘I was saying a prayer for my brother,’ I told him. A half-truth.
‘Mm-hm.’ Flint just leaned there looking at me.
‘Was that the boy who usually comes here?’ I asked.
He nodded.
‘What did he want?’
‘Nothing important,’ Flint said.
Now that was more than half a lie, I thought. ‘I heard him say something about someone coming up toward the pass.’
‘I could deny that, as you denied that you were talking to someone. We could keep playing this game until time caught up with us.’
I said nothing. His approach to information was to share only what he thought I needed to know. He did not need to know about the Good Folk.
‘You look tired,’ Flint said. ‘You’d better rest.’
‘I will be strong enough,’ I muttered, not sure if I was angry with Flint, or with myself, or with King Keldec and the whole benighted realm of Alban. A day, I thought. Just one day when I don’t have to think about any of it. One day when I can go outside and walk around and feel the sunlight without looking over my shoulder. One day when I can talk to Flint, and talk to the Good Folk, and talk to anyone who comes by without guarding every word. It didn’t seem much to ask. But it was. It was impossible.
‘Rest first,’ Flint said. ‘We’ll have another walk later. But . . .’
‘But what?’
Now there was a look on his face that really troubled me. It was an Enforcer look, and his tone matched it. It was all hard edges. ‘Tomorrow I must be away all day. I need a promise from you, Neryn. You mustn’t leave the hut while I’m gone. Not even out to the privy – you can use a bucket. If anyone comes, if you hear anything at all, you must stay inside and keep silent. Not a sound. Do you understand?’
‘I understand why people are afraid of Enforcers,’ I said, making myself look him in the eye. ‘Where are you going? It’s because of that boy, isn’t it? The message he brought?’
Flint sighed. ‘You need not know the details. Just as I need not know exactly what you were doing before, when I left you on the hill up there. I find myself hoping . . .’ He lost the thread of what he was saying, or perhaps thought better of it. ‘I’ll brew you a herbal infusion. Warm you up.’
‘Whatever the message was, it’s upset you. Is someone coming here? Someone who is a threat to me?’ I thought again. ‘Or to you?’
He was setting cups on the table, his movements precise. For a man with such big hands, he was remarkably deft. I liked watching him work. ‘You understand why I cannot tell you that,’ he said.
I did, of course. What I didn’t know, I couldn’t pass on. ‘If you can’t tell me that,’ I said, ‘tell me what you were going to say before. I find myself hoping . . . Hoping what?’
He kept his attention on the brew he was preparing. ‘Hoping for one day, a single day, with the world to rights. A day when I need not worry about whether you are safe; a day when I can open doors and shutters and let the sun in. A day when there are no battles to be fought, when right and wrong are as clear-cut as light and dark.’ Flint grimaced. ‘It will be a long time before we see such a day. Never, perhaps.’ He went to fetch the kettle from the fire.
I considered this remarkable speech while Flint finished making his brew and set a cup before me on the table. It startled me that his thoughts had run so close to mine. He seated himself opposite me, his own cup between his palms. He was avoiding my gaze.
‘Right and wrong are clear-cut,’ I said eventually. ‘Aren’t they?’ But in my mind were the times I had stolen food to keep myself and my father from starving, and the night Father had wagered me away. I saw an image of myself running over Brollachan Bridge and leaving my friends behind, at the mercy of my pursuers. I heard Sorrel screaming.
‘I have not always found them so.’
‘What about when you were a child, Flint? Children see things clearly and simply. Until . . .’ Until they witness the unspeakable, and the conviction that right will always triumph fades away forever.
‘That’s irrelevant.’
The most formidable of shutters had closed over his features, forbidding further comment. I had never seen a look like that on anyone’s face, and it chilled me. He was too young to wear such a look, surely. He had been a child once, with a child’s innocent delight in the world. This was the face of a man who had forgotten the meaning of joy.
I sipped my drink, which was a healthful concoction of various green herbs, and said nothing. The fire’s warmth was spreading through the hut now, chasing a
way the chill. Flint sat staring into space. The silence drew out.
‘I want to make you a promise,’ I said.
‘Promise not to go out the door tomorrow. That’s all I need.’
‘What you said . . . I had been thinking something very like it. About a day when all is to rights, a day that is a perfect gift. You’ll have that day eventually, Flint. And I’ll have the day I wish for, a day without fear, a day of sunshine, a day of open speech.’ Suddenly it felt desperately important that he should believe this. ‘That was what my brother died for. I’m afraid of death. I’m afraid of a lot of things. I don’t know if I can be as brave as Farral was. But I do have hope. Without hope, I don’t see how anyone can keep on going. You will have your day of freedom, and so will I. Maybe we’ll wait a long time, but that day will come.’ After a silence, I added, ‘Perhaps I’ve said too much. Perhaps not as much as you wanted.’ I had no idea what he thought of my speech.
‘Promise me you’ll stay in the hut while I’m gone,’ Flint said. ‘Say it, Neryn.’
‘I can’t promise. Anything could happen. What if the place caught fire?’ And, when he glared at me, ‘I promise to apply common sense. I know I shouldn’t go out on my own. I’ll use your wretched bucket.’
The hard frost in Flint’s eyes thawed slightly. ‘I can see that’s the best I’m going to get from you. Now rest. Don’t argue about it, lie down on the bed and shut your eyes. When you’ve slept and eaten we’ll go out again.’
I slept, and dreamed of Flint. Flint seated at the table, writing. Even in the dream I thought that was odd – where would he procure parchment, ink and quill? How was it that a man like him knew how to read and write? He laboured over the task as if he found it not only difficult but distasteful. When it was done he packed his materials away, rolled up the parchment and sealed it with wax melted over a candle flame. He put the scroll into his pack, blew out the candle, sat awhile with his eyes on nothing in particular. There was a new look on his face, a look I thought I might see on the features of a man edging ever closer to an abyss.
The dream changed. I was on a rocky island, a wild, lovely place where sea and sky formed a perfect unison, a landscape made up of myriad shades of grey and blue and green. Seals basked on a promontory; gulls wheeled overhead. A little boy of five or six was playing alone on a beach of pale pebbles. His dark hair was ruffled by the wind. His grey eyes were all concentration as he balanced stones in a circle atop a flat rock. Stanie Mon, Stanie Mon, stand up ta’; Stanie Mon, Stanie Mon, doon ye fa’! His arm swept across, sudden, brutal; the stones clattered and fell. The boy crouched there a moment, as still as if he, too, were of stone. Then he began to set his men upright again, each in its turn. A cloud covered the sun, cloaking the child in shadow.
When I woke, the fire had been built up and Flint had a meal ready. My dreams clung close. There were questions I wanted to ask. Had he been raised in the western isles? Who had taught him to read? A man who had become an Enforcer must have many ghosts in his past. His memories would be hard to carry. A man could not do the king’s work and stay whole in mind and spirit.
I ate; I could not do otherwise when Flint was watching me with a hawk’s keen eye. Later we went out walking again and he showed me where the track to the north began, at the upper edge of the band of woodland. I sensed that the Good Folk were close by, but Flint’s presence kept them in hiding.
When night fell I slept the sleep of complete exhaustion, and if I dreamed, those dreams were fleeting fragments. I woke soon after dawn to find Flint fastening the straps on his pack. He was already in his cloak and boots. The bucket stood in the corner and a pot of porridge steamed by the fire. I sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
‘I have to go.’ He came over and crouched down in front of me, taking my hands in his. ‘I will do my best to be back before nightfall, but if I’m not, don’t be concerned. There’s sufficient food here for a while, and I’ve brought in a supply of firewood.’ He hesitated. ‘If . . .’
‘What? If you don’t come back?’ It was too early for this. I was half-asleep, unable to mind my words or school my features as I should.
‘I will come back,’ Flint said. ‘I give you my word.’
I looked into his eyes and could see no trace of uncertainty there. ‘Be careful,’ I said, realising that only a matter of days ago I would not have dreamed of speaking to him thus.
Flint’s mouth twitched. It could have been an attempt at a smile. ‘Careful,’ he echoed. ‘I am always careful, Neryn. You, I think, are more impulsive. Please keep your promise.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I must go. Be safe.’
After Flint left, I did as he had told me and barred the door. The shutters were closed fast. By the light of the oil lamp I ate my breakfast, washed the dishes, tidied the bed, put more wood on the fire. The stack Flint had left me looked sufficient for days. I shivered. How could he be so certain he would come back? Out there, anything might happen.
Then there was nothing to do but sit and think. Where had he gone? What was he doing? My mind went to the night he had purchased me from my captors and chosen to take me north, not south. To freedom, not captivity. It seemed he had been among those Enforcers who had pursued me through the defile and seen me vanish before their eyes. He had sent the others back and come on alone. Had he known then what I was? Perhaps he had known from the very first. Perhaps he had been sent to apprehend me that night at Darkwater, but had disobeyed his orders and saved me for some reason of his own. An act of direct defiance, an act that could see a man summarily executed. I wished I knew where he was. He might be in terrible danger.
This was driving me crazy. I was thinking in circles and going nowhere. I would work on getting stronger. Gods forbid that I should be a burden to Flint when we moved on. Nine days now. I must be ready in time. I would be ready.
I went through the sequence of exercises he had given me. I rested. I performed the exercises again, thinking that although my arms and legs ached, I could in fact complete the sequence more easily than I had a few days ago. Flint was a good trainer.
I boiled up the kettle and made a brew. Without thinking, I set two cups on the table. I sat and stared at them, imagining Flint as I had once dreamed him, riding down to Summerfort with a face like death. Let that not have been a prophetic vision.
I prepared a meal for later, using what I could find within the hut: barley, dried meat, herbs. I set the pot at the side of the fire to cook slowly. ‘Come home safe,’ I muttered to myself, ‘and you get a hot supper.’
I opened the shutters a sliver, trying to judge how much time had passed. Perhaps not so very much. I considered the fact that there was nothing to stop me from packing a bag and heading off for Shadowfell on my own. I realised that even if I had been completely recovered, I would not have done it. This was a development I did not want to think about.
While the food was cooking I lay down on the bed awhile, hoping I might sleep some of the long day away. I had just closed my eyes when a sharp rattling against the shutters brought me bolt upright, my heart pounding. A moment later something bounced off the roof with a thud. Then someone knocked on the door: a little knock, low down near the ground.
‘Neryn! Neryn, open the door!’
Not a sound, Flint had said. If a man or woman had come to hammer on the door, I would have kept silent. But that was no human voice. The tiny knocking was not made by human hands.
‘You can’t come in,’ I said. ‘Go away.’
‘Oh, no, no, no, no! Talk to us! Hear us! Danger! Peril!’
A chorus of voices now, high squeaky ones, lower, softer ones, sharp ones, hollow ones, all kinds. I did not hear Sage’s wise, droll tone among them.
‘I can’t open the door,’ I said. ‘I can’t come out. I promised.’
A silence followed this, then there was a dispute on the other side of the door, conducted in fierce whispers.
‘We can come in,’ someone said. ‘Open the door.’
‘We’d as soon not come in.’ That voice I recognised. It was Silver’s, Silver who had resolutely refused to believe I might be a Caller. ‘The warrior’s smell lies over everything. Leave your door bolted if you will. We will send one through.’
I had not considered the ability of the Good Folk to merge. The bottom of the door bulged slightly in one spot and then, in an eye blink, a small figure was standing there, inside the hut. I had seen this being before among Silver’s followers: part man, part bird, and standing about as high as my knee. He sketched a bow. ‘We bring a warning,’ he said, and glanced around the hut as if fearful that enemies might be concealed in a corner somewhere. ‘You must come with us. You must come now.’
‘Come now, come now!’ echoed a chorus of voices from beyond the door.
‘What warning?’ I felt cold. The Good Folk had a deep knowledge of the affairs of Alban. If they sensed something wrong, if it troubled them enough to bring them through my door despite their doubts, then I would be a fool not to listen. ‘I am safe here. And I promised Flint I wouldn’t go out. I’ve been ill.’
‘We saw, we saw. Do not trust him! Even now he betrays you.’
‘Betrays you!’ came the chorus.
I reached out, slid the bolt across and opened the door. ‘You’d best all come in,’ I said.
They entered in a silent line. Most of them were familiar from that remarkable night in the woods by Silverwater. The being with long stick-like fingers was here, and the wispy big-eyed creature. A number of others followed. Silver came in last, casting her gaze around the hut as if it harboured a bad smell. No Sage. No Red Cap.
When they were all in, I locked the door behind them. That set them shuffling with unease.
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