Shadowfell

by Juliet Marillier

  ‘I see. Are there Good Folk across the border? Folk that are known to you?’

  ‘Maybe there’s folk there will help you,’ Daw said. ‘But we cannot be sure of it. And there’s no sending a message to seek their aid.’

  ‘But you can fly, can’t you? Or send a bird to be your eyes? Couldn’t you –’

  ‘There’s no flying over or burrowing under or using magic to pass across,’ Gentle said. ‘The law’s the law. It’s akin to the old customs and the old songs. When you’re in the dark, you need a lamp. The law is our lamp.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said, my heart heavy. I had travelled alone before. Why did this feel so hard? ‘I can do it. But I’m weaker than I should be after my illness. I wonder if . . . Gentle, could you give me some of the cordial to take with me? I would use it sparingly. With that, I’d have some hope of reaching the place.’ Even now I could not bring myself to speak the name Shadowfell.

  Gentle shook her head. ‘No, lassie, I canna. ’Tis a powerful brew, and effective, aye. But the more ye have, the more ye crave. Already I give ye three cups, and ye can feel that need in ye, the wanting, for the brew gives a rare feeling of wellbeing, a sense that all’s well and ye can climb mountains. A lassie could die for the wanting of more. It’s best ye move on without such help, for if ye have more it’ll be no boon, but bane.’

  There was no answer for that. I felt the craving in my stomach, not so desperate that it would drive me to beg or steal, but a warning of what might have happened if these folk had not been so wise. I could not blame Gentle for having offered it, for without the brew I might not have reached this place of safety. Tonight I would sleep in shelter. I would lie down among friends. Tomorrow lay before me, full of shadows.

  I don’t think I can do it, was in my mind, but I did not say it aloud. It came to me that courage might be my only weapon once the Good Folk left me, and I could not afford to throw it away.

  ‘There is another answer to this.’ The voice was that of a creature who had thus far been silent, a little wizened thing with a face like a dried-up turnip, and dark liquid eyes. It hobbled forward, gnarled hands on a diminutive ash stick. Its body might have been of any shape; it was shrouded in a faded patchwork garment that swept down to the floor. Its hair was white as swansdown and stood up in tufts. ‘There is another path.’

  Silver subjected the being to a withering stare, which it met without flinching. After some time, the sylph sighed and nodded. ‘Tell her, then,’ she said. ‘Neryn, this is Blackthorn. He is the elder of our clan. We have debated long over you. If you are a Caller, and if you can be trained adequately, then you could wield considerable power. You understand, I think, that while that power could be used to do great good, it could equally be the source of great evil.’ She did not need to add that this was why she doubted me so; my wary trust in Flint must seem to her an indication that I would easily slip down the latter path. ‘Blackthorn will present you with another choice. A safer choice.’

  What could be safe in Keldec’s Alban? ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Please tell me,’ and I inclined my head courteously to the tiny being, showing the respect due to an elder.

  ‘When it became plain this king meant to crush every drop of goodness out of Alban and its people,’ Blackthorn said, his voice remarkably deep and resonant for such a small being, ‘the Big Ones went away. Away down, away in. And so did many of our people, the great and the small, the powerful and the weak. Many are in retreat. Only a few of us choose to stay here in the sad and sorry place that Alban has become under this king of yours.’

  ‘Not mine,’ I protested.

  ‘Keldec is of humankind, as are you. But he is no Caller, and though he is a man of power, a power he wields with cruel force, there are some weapons he does not yet have at his disposal. You are one of those weapons, Neryn, or you will be if you follow the path of a Caller. That makes you valuable. And it makes you dangerous. As Silver said, we have spoken of this, seeing your bond with this Enforcer. Some of us think you should not go on.’

  I sat bolt upright, shocked. ‘I must go on!’ I exclaimed. ‘I can’t give this up! That would be letting Keldec have his way – it would be giving up the fight for Alban!’

  ‘Bide awhile, lassie,’ Gentle said. ‘Hear Blackthorn out.’

  I nodded, though my heart was cold. The Good Folk did not believe in my mission. Even they did not think I could do it.

  ‘We can offer you a place to go, a safe place deep down among our kind,’ Blackthorn said. ‘There you can live with no fear of this king, for it is beyond his reach, hidden by ancient magic. It is a good place, Neryn. There are no other human men or women there, but you would have our kind as companions, and I do not think that would be unwelcome to you. You could live out your life safe in the knowledge that Keldec could never use you as a tool for ill. I see doubt in your face, and I understand that. Know that what we offer is a great privilege. Perhaps once in five hundred of your years is a man or woman given a place amongst us. Choose this and you may not keep Alban safe, but you would be safe, Neryn, and you could not be the instrument of Alban’s final downfall.’

  ‘If I agreed to this,’ I said, feeling suddenly old and tired, ‘would the rest of you, those who did not go into hiding, keep fighting for freedom? Would you band together and perhaps join the struggle alongside any of my own kind who might try to rebel against Keldec?’

  In the silence that followed, the Good Folk exchanged glances that told me the answer more eloquently than any words could.

  ‘It depends on a Caller, doesn’t it? Just as it did with the Sea Folk and the brollachans. Without a Caller, Good Folk and humankind won’t work together and the Guardians will stay in retreat. And that would mean Keldec would rule unchallenged.’

  ‘And his son after him,’ Daw said with some bitterness. ‘A wee lad made in his father’s mould, no doubt.’

  This was a dark choice indeed.

  ‘I would say, take your time to decide.’ There was compassion in Blackthorn’s voice. ‘But there is only until dawn. If you choose to go on, you must go swiftly.’

  It was little enough time to choose the path of the rest of my life. But in the stillness of the firelit cavern, I knew I needed no time at all. ‘I respect your offer,’ I said shakily. ‘I am honoured by it. But I can’t accept. The place where I’m going – I think you know what it is, though I won’t speak its name aloud – it may be the only place in all Alban where folk are attempting to stand up for what is right. I wanted to go there even before I knew I was a Caller. It seems to me now that I might have something to offer them, something more than just thinking the same way they do. You’re wrong to doubt me. I would die before I let the king use me for ill purposes.’ I looked around the circle of small folk and thought perhaps they were not surprised. ‘I’m going on. My brother died in the fight to bring justice to Alban. I know the risk is high, but I must do this.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Blackthorn. ‘That’s what we expec–’

  Light flickered across his face as something flashed at the tunnel entry. His eyes widened, and in an eyeblink every one of my companions vanished. I scrambled to my feet, my heart pounding. There by the entry was Flint, a patch of dark on dark. He had entered this secret place without a sound. The firelight glinted on the silver stag brooch that fastened his cloak.

  I stared, frozen with shock. Flint stared back, his face white as linen. His mouth was bracketed by grooves that suggested a long, hard journey. Shadows danced, sending a wavering pattern across his features.

  ‘You’re alive,’ he said. He did not look at the clutter of minuscule cooking pots on the coals, or at the tiny woven baskets that had held nuts or berries or grain, or at the marks on the earth where many small beings had been seated only moments before. He only looked at me. ‘You’re safe,’ he said, and I heard in his voice the smile his exhausted features could not summon.

  An incoherent sound came from my lips. I took a step backwards. Safe. The man must think I w
as stupid.

  ‘Neryn, you can’t imagine I would . . .’ He lifted both hands, palms toward me, a gesture of surrender. ‘You promised you’d stay,’ he said. ‘You broke your word.’

  I found my voice. ‘Where are they? Your troop of Enforcers, the men you went down the valley to fetch this morning? Outside in the cold, waiting for you to hand me over? Or are they in the tunnel listening, just as you were? How dare you try to lull me into thinking you’re a friend? How dare you talk about promises?’ I would not let these tears fall. I would be strong. I would be brave. No matter what came next.

  ‘Neryn.’ Flint ran a hand over his head, making his short hair stand up on end. ‘I’m by myself. There’s nobody waiting out there. Neryn, I thought you were . . . I thought you might be . . . hurt. Injured. Alone in the dark, up on the fells with no shelter. What possessed you to go off on your own? I told you to stay in hiding!’ He glanced around the cave now, as if he had only just noticed its oddities.

  ‘Is that true?’ I challenged. ‘Are you really alone?’ The expression on his face, the tone of his voice, warred with the stark fact of his betrayal. He sounded like a man telling the truth. He looked just as he had not long ago, when he had been my friend.

  Flint sighed. ‘It’s true. I’ve been tracking you for some time, thinking any moment I’d find you lying under a rock somewhere, breathing your last. I have nobody with me, I swear it.’ He looked at the pots and pans now, each no bigger than a child’s cupped hand. ‘Unlike you. You have your own cook, it seems, and someone to cover your tracks. I nearly lost you.’

  There was a silence, in which I wondered how much he had heard, how much he had seen before the telltale glint of flame on silver had given him away. I wondered if there was any point at all in pretending.

  ‘I have a supply of food,’ Flint said. His voice was under better control now. He sounded like a traveller making a polite offer of help to a new acquaintance. ‘My pack is outside. I see you have a fire of sorts. Are you hungry?’

  It came to me that in the long time of my illness I had become used to his voice, the changes in it, the light and shade of it. I could tell when he was holding something back. I could tell when he was hiding something. He was not doing that now.

  ‘What I want,’ I said, ‘is a proper explanation from you, an honest one. Cook supper if you want, but talk to me while you’re doing it.’

  ‘What about –’ Flint cast his gaze about the cavern, where not so long ago the Good Folk had sat in solemn council.

  ‘We’ll be on our own,’ I said. ‘You’re carrying cold iron. In this sort of place, that’s not likely to make you friends.’

  ‘Didn’t you have a knife? I seem to recall giving you one, long ago.’

  ‘I seem to recall being apprehended and handed over to you as a captive,’ I said. ‘They took the knife along with most of my other possessions. And before that, I . . .’ No, I would not tell him how I had sheathed the knife in such a way that uncanny folk were shielded from its destructive influence. ‘I kept it hidden,’ I said.

  ‘Mm-hm. You promise not to disappear while I fetch my pack?’

  I sat down by the fire, wondering at myself. He had gone along the valley to meet his comrades; the Good Folk would not lie to me. He had ridden back with them. How was it that even now I wanted to trust him? I longed for an explanation that would set all to rights. ‘I will be here,’ I said. ‘Fool that I am.’

  He cooked. I watched. If the Good Folk were watching too, from within the walls of Howling Rock, they were doubtless thinking, I told you so. As for Flint and me, for a long time our conversation was limited to the occasional wary glance.

  ‘You thought I would bring men here to take you prisoner,’ Flint said when his pan had been bubbling on the fire for some time. He was hunkered down watching it, the firelight lending his wan face a deceptively cheerful glow. ‘You believed that of me.’

  ‘How long were you here before I saw you?’ I asked.

  ‘You mean, what did I hear? A little. Not a lot.’

  ‘What, exactly?’

  ‘You were offered a refuge and you turned the offer down. A response that was exactly what I would have expected from you.’

  I stared at him, and he looked back across the fire, his eyes giving nothing away.

  ‘Your friends doubt me,’ he said. ‘So you doubt me.’

  ‘You’re saying I’m mistaken, then.’ I felt anger rising in me, overwhelming my long-practised caution. His being here was a disaster. Why, then, did it feel so good to see him? ‘You’re not working for the king. You didn’t look after me so I could be handed over to him in good health. You didn’t charm me into thinking you were my friend. You didn’t go down the valley to talk to your fellow Enforcers. You didn’t lead them on to Corbie’s Wood.’

  Flint’s gaze was on the task in hand: transferring half the contents of his cook pot into a bowl for me. The meal looked identical to the one he had prepared the night we first camped under the open sky together. My gut was churning with anxiety; food was the last thing on my mind.

  ‘The truth can be so easily twisted,’ he said.

  Now I was angry, too angry to watch my words. ‘Gods help us, Flint! Enforcers destroyed my family! They laid waste my home and everything I held dear! I’ve been running from them since I was twelve years old. I’ve seen what people do in the king’s name. It’s taken the whole time since we first met for me to be able to trust you even a little bit. And now this. What do you expect from me, that I should accept what happened today and act as if it’s nothing? You’ve offered no explanation at all. Of course I doubt you. I know where you went this morning and whom you met with. I know that meeting was on good terms. I know you rode back up here with them. And I’ve been told you were sending out messages all the time we were in the hut together. Trust goes two ways. If you expect me to have any faith in you, it’s time to give me the truth.’

  My whole body was shaking. My heart was pounding. How could I have let myself speak like that? I had always been so careful, holding my secrets close, saying only what was strictly necessary for safe passage from one place to the next. The risk I had just taken could cost me my future, my freedom, my chance to do some good with my gift. I looked at Flint and he gazed steadily back at me, his eyes the colour of a storm at sea. In his plain features I saw nothing but honesty. They imbibe deception with their mother’s milk.

  ‘I went down the valley to meet with them,’ he said quietly. ‘The boy brought a message that they were coming. I spoke with them. The purpose of that meeting I cannot tell you, but it was not to make arrangements for you. I had no choice but to ride back in their company; to do otherwise would have aroused suspicion. That is the truth. As for my tending to you in your illness, is it so hard to believe a man might want to help a friend in trouble?’

  Struggling for a response, I blurted out the first thing that came to me. ‘Did the hut burn down?’

  Flint passed me the bowl of porridge. ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘I saw smoke. I thought they had come up and burned it.’ After a moment, I added, ‘That made me sad.’

  He raised his brows in surprise. ‘Sad? You developed an attachment to that place?’

  I did not reply, for I could not think how to explain the way I felt. That modest hut had been a haven of safety in Alban’s madness.

  ‘It was still standing when I left to search for you. Some burning was carried out, yes. Not there.’ He grimaced. ‘No thanks to you, I should add. The pot you left on the fire was scorched black.’

  ‘I left in a hurry.’ I remembered the care with which I had prepared that meal, almost as if it were a magical charm to bring him safely back. Gods, what a fool. And now here I was, eating his porridge again and still not getting proper answers. Absently, I dipped my spoon into the bowl and took a mouthful.

  ‘So did I,’ said Flint. ‘Finding you gone . . . well, never mind that. You are alive.’

  ‘I need more from you,�
� I said.

  Flint waited.

  ‘That night at Darkwater, the night my father died, had you been sent to look for me? What did you know about me then? Did you know the Enforcers were coming to raid the settlement?’

  He drew in a long breath, as if to steady himself, then let it out in a sigh. ‘You don’t pose easy questions,’ he said. Then, after a glance around the cave, ‘Are you quite sure we will not be overheard?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But I am sure those who might hear us are friends and will not use what they learn to ill purpose.’

  ‘Very well. You may not like my answer to the first question, because it is both yes and no. Yes, along with my regular duties as an Enforcer I had for some time been looking for a vagrant, a man in impoverished circumstances who was skilled at games of chance and a little too fond of strong drink. With him, the rumour went, travelled his daughter, fifteen years old. It was not the gambler the king was interested in, but the young woman, as certain rumours about her had reached his ears. Folk were whispering that she might have an unusual gift.’ Perhaps seeing me stiffen, he added quickly, ‘Do not judge until you hear me finish, Neryn. You sought the truth, and that is what I am giving you, as far as I can. I had been tracking you for some time, following one lead after another, but you proved unusually hard to find. When I did catch up with you, the circumstances were unfortunate. A raid was imminent. The way it fell out, I had time only to get you off the boat and into safety. I regret that I could not save your father.’