Dark Mist Rising (Crossing Over)

by Anna Kendall

  No. Not possible.

  But many things had happened that did not seem possible, and none of them were coincidences. If this was indeed my father, he had come or been brought here for some purpose. Why?

  The courier said, ‘Do you know him?'

  I gazed at the unconscious face beside me. This was the man who had abandoned my mother and me. Who had left her to be taken by whatever man had begotten my sister upon her. Who was thus indirectly responsible for my mother's death, and directly responsible for the miserable childhood years I had spent with Hartah and Aunt Jo. This man, who even now was probably crossed over, engaged in some terrible business in the Country of the Dead.

  The courier repeated, ‘Do you know this man?'

  In the corridor the torch flickered one last time and went out, its pine pitch consumed. I spoke into total darkness. ‘No,' I said without even trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. ‘I do not know him at all.'

  It had been evening when I was brought to the dungeon. For that whole night nothing happened. In the dankness my wet clothing could not dry but it did turn slightly less damp, smelling of wool and sweat. I could not sleep, but the others snored steadily, even – eventually – the terrified young courier. Every so often I groped around in the total darkness for the shoulder of the prone man and shook it hard. Once I slapped his face. He never stirred.

  In the morning I was going to die, the Young Chieftain's vengeance for the death of Lord Solek. When the torturers had finished with me, I would cross over for the last time and sit in a circle somewhere in the Country of the Dead, to be used by Soulvine Moor as just one more wellspring of power in their bid to live for ever. Dark fog would shroud my head. I would vibrate like a hive of bees, and then I would be cheated of eternity. Whereas if I crossed over now—

  I had sworn to Mother Chilton that I would not cross over ever again. ‘ It is more important than you can know. Promise me!'

  But I had no idea what would happen if my body died in the land of the living while I was in the Country of the Dead. Would death take me just the same, so that I simply sat down in that thickening fog and lapsed into the same mindless serenity as all the other Dead? Or, being a hisaf, would I stay awake for eternity in that shadowy realm, as my sister had? My sister was mad.

  I had promised Mother Chilton.

  I did not think I could face torture.

  When she extracted my promise, Mother Chilton had not known that I would be captured and would face torture. She probably thought I would do as I was bid and go back to Maggie and Jee. And I noticed that she had escaped torture for herself handily enough, by turning herself into a frail and ancient crone not worth bothering with. Why should I have to face what she had not?

  But I had given my promise.

  Somewhere tantalizingly close my father walked in the Country of the Dead. I could finally have the answers that not even Mother Chilton had given me. How dare she deprive me of them? She had told me much but not all. Not about my father, nor why he was ‘different' from other hisafs.

  And so my thoughts went back and forth, around and around, like a donkey lashed to a millstone and just as helpless to break free. All the while rage built in me: at Mother Chilton, at my father, at the savages, at the world. Both worlds. I was in this state, choked with both anger and the fetid smells of the cell, when Lord Robert Hopewell spoke to me out of the darkness.

  ‘Roger the fool.'

  ‘Do not call me that!'

  ‘I will call you whatever I choose. I have something to say to you.' His voice could have frozen the River Thymar in high summer.

  ‘I am not interested in anything you have to say.'

  ‘You will hear it anyway,' he said, and I recognized a rage as great as mine, and under better self-control. ‘You are the cause of all this.'

  ‘I am not,' I said loudly, not caring if I woke the others, not caring if I woke the entire treacherous and stinking palace. ‘Your lover was the cause of this. It was Queen Caroline who tried to cast the savage army against her mother's Blues, as if men were so many dice. She used the savage army, she used me, and she used you, my lord. Lay blame on the grave where it belongs!'

  ‘Close your lying mouth or I will kill you.'

  He said it calmly but I knew he meant every word. Despite myself, I inched away from him towards the cell door.

  ‘Do not mention her name again,' Lord Robert said in that same even voice. ‘You understand nothing. But it is not of her that I would speak now, but of the Princess Stephanie.'

  ‘She is Queen Stephanie now,' I said meanly, to hurt him. ‘She was crowned at the same time the Young Chieftain was given the Crown of Glory, and married to him as well.'

  ‘So I expected. And now she must be rescued. And by you, who have brought things to this pass.'

  Rescued? By me? He must be as mad as my sister.

  I gasped, ‘How?'

  ‘The only way you can. You have that obscene talent at your disposal; the queen made use of it often enough. I witnessed that. And you brought back the army of Blues from ... from that place. You can do so again. Bring another army, and I will lead them.'

  ‘I cannot do so again,' I said hotly. ‘This time there is no army awake in the Country of the Dead.'

  ‘I do not understand that.'

  ‘You understand nothing,' I said, giving him his own words back. ‘I can bring no one back again.'

  ‘Then you can at least bring back weapons to get us free of this dungeon.'

  I had not thought of this. In my rage at my father, my fear of torture, my indecision about my promise to Mother Chilton, I had not thought of the simple expedient of robbing the Dead of weapons. Now my mind leaped forward. Throughout history there must have been large battles on this island where the palace had stood for so long. The Dead would have swords, knives, even guns. Perhaps I could even find among them something to cut through chains.

  I said, ‘I cannot cross over.'

  ‘Yes. You can. You owe this debt to the princess.'

  I did not owe the princess anything. But his certainty provided the final ounce on my invisible scales. On this side of the scale, my rage and my fear and my desire – my right! – to confront my father. On that side, my promise to Mother Chilton. Lord Robert's certainty added to the first side, not because he was persuasive but because I was looking for that extra ounce. We can always find reasons for what we wish to do anyway.

  ‘Yes,' I said, bit my tongue hard and crossed over.

  Darkness—

  Cold—

  Dirt choking my mouth—

  Worms in my eyes—

  Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs–

  The fog, thicker and blacker than ever, did not obscure the figure waiting for me. He sat on a boulder right beside the place where I'd crossed over, and his green eyes gazed steadily into mine.

  ‘What delayed you so long?' my father said.

  31

  I stared at him for a long moment, two moments, three, unable to speak. Choked with astonishment and rage. Those befuddle a man, so that the first thing I blurted out – of all the things I might have said to this man – was, ‘Was it the dog collar in my pocket?'

  He smiled faintly. ‘How did you know?'

  ‘Mother Chilton said, long ago ...' I could not go on. Two and a half years ago and I a much different Roger Kilbourne, starting out to look for Cecilia, and Mother Chilton scowling at me: ‘ Give me that gold piece in your pocket and Caroline's ring too. How stupid are you, to carry markers like those two around with you? ' Shadow's collar was also a marker. It was how Mother Chilton had found me on the tiny pebbled beach. This had all come to me during the long wagon ride to the palace. Not even Joan Campford's fierce hasty scrubbing had dislodged the collar from my pocket. The collar was how my father had known where I was, guessing further that I would be taken to the palace dungeon.

  He said, ‘You are quick, Roger. You will need that, where you are going.'

  ‘Where I am
going is here, permanently! After torture and—'

  ‘No. The savages do not torture. They consider it beneath them.'

  ‘I happen to know otherwise!'

  His face changed then. All at once he looked older and sadder, and yet impatience was there too. ‘You mean the knotted cord in the cottage at Almsbury. We could not get the dogs to you fast enough. And we trusted that the singer-warrior would carry out his orders, instead of what he chose to do. He was sent to bring you to the Young Chieftain, no more. But Solek was his war-father and he is young and hot-blooded. He has himself in control now, and already anticipates what trouble that knotted cord has brought upon himself from the Young Chieftain.'

  ‘And you know all this about the savage army?' I said bitterly. ‘Do you work for them then? Have you betrayed your queendom as well as betraying my mother?'

  His mouth tightened. ‘I am not a subject of The Queendom, and we will not talk of your mother.'

  ‘Yes, by damn, we will!' I shouted. ‘You left her and you left me and then some other man ... did you give her to him? Is that another of your filthy customs on Soulvine, where—'

  He was on me so fast that I did not see his fist until it had connected with my jaw. I went down, tripping over one of the Dead. Uselessly I flailed with my one hand, pushing at the serene dead soldier until I flipped over onto my back, my father looming over me in the drifting fog. My one hand snaked out towards the Dead, searching for a weapon.

  ‘You know nothing,' my father said, and I became motionless when I saw that it was taking every last ounce of will he possessed to control himself. ‘You are an ignorant boy. Get up.'

  I did, but only because it was worse to lie there at his feet. My father's green eyes glittered. His body, taut as a line about to snap, leaned forward slightly on the balls of his feet.

  ‘Listen to me, Roger. We have not much time, so I will tell this briefly and only once before I do what I came here for. I loved your mother and she loved me. I did not “betray” her; I left both of you because my presence at her side put both your lives at risk. Even then Soulvine Moor had begun its monstrous quest to steal eternity from the Dead and give it to the living. Do you understand me? This war began when you were an infant in Katharine's arms, and there is more at stake than you can imagine. I left Katharine for her own safety, and yours, and what happened four years later ...'

  He turned away until he had mastered himself and could continue. Now his voice was dry and hard, a soldier's voice. ‘You came here to take weapons from the Dead. Do not do so. If you attack the savages, they may very well kill you from necessity. If you do not attack them, they will not harm you. At least, not now. The Young Chieftain has something else in mind, and we can turn it to our advantage. There is a task for you to do. That is what I came here to tell you, what I risked my own life to tell you. You will—'

  ‘Don't tell me what I will and will not do!' And then, because I sounded like a sulky child, I added, ‘Why should I believe you? Mother Chilton told me to go home. If I had some large “task”, she would have told me so.'

  ‘The women of the soul arts are not soldiers. They do not really understand the situation.'

  ‘Neither do I!' Caught somewhere between tears and fury, I folded my arms and made a pathetic attempt to look demanding. ‘Explain it to me.'

  Carefully my father scanned the landscape. There was nothing to be seen but the Dead. ‘Then listen well. There is a natural wall between the living and the dead and that wall is the grave. A hisaf can pass through that wall. You know this.'

  Dirt choking my mouth – worms in my eyes – earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

  ‘Yes,' I said. ‘I know this.'

  ‘Soulvine Moor is chipping away at that wall. The first chink was created when your sister was born bodily in the country of the Dead. Such a thing had never happened before. Then when you brought back first that sailor, then a woman, then an entire army—'

  I grimaced, but he was relentless.

  ‘—you widened that chink in the barrier more than you ever knew. It is like a fortification around a castle – once the wall is breached, each object or person forced through that gap widens it more. The soul-arts women do not seem to understand, or perhaps just accept, that hisafs' crossings are different. That we are different.'

  ‘ You are different from the others, because your father is different from other hisafs,' Mother Chilton had said. But she had not meant what my father meant now. I said, ‘But just the same, I was told to—'

  ‘Forget what you were told! The soul-arts women and my hisafs both fight against Soulvine Moor and the rogue hisafs, but we do not fight together. The women are not soldiers. They have their uses but are badly organized and ineffective.'

  Mother Chilton had never seemed ineffective. ‘But—'

  He seized me by the shoulders. ‘Roger, I do not have time to argue with you! Do you not hear that noise?'

  And now that he had mentioned it, I did hear it: a faint baying, as of royal hounds on a stag hunt. But there were no royal hunts in the Country of the Dead, no stags, no noise. I did not know what I was hearing.

  My father put his mouth close to my ear. ‘You will be taken with the princess over the Western Mountains, to the Young Chieftain's kingdom. He wants the “magic illusions” that he believes you created in order to defeat his father. He believes not only that you are a witch but also that you can teach him to become one too. Go along with this idea. Do whatever you can except bring anyone or anything back from the Country of the Dead to the land of the living. Pretend to teach the Young Chieftain, for that is the only way you can remain alive until we can rescue you. And I will rescue you; you have my solemn promise. We—'

  ‘Rescue me now!' I said, and it was the sudden cry of a child to a parent. Instantly I regretted it. My face grew warm with shame.

  ‘Do you not think I would if I could? All those years I thought you had died when Katharine did, all those years of searching for you on this side of the grave—' The baying grew louder. My father's words tumbled out. ‘We cannot stay here any longer. Cross back over, Roger. Now.'

  A loud noise like a cliff falling, where there were no cliffs. I chomped hard on my tongue. Blood spurted into my mouth and I crossed back over.

  In the dark dungeon men stirred. I heard Lord Robert curse softly, and the country groom groaned with some unseen pain. Someone pissed into the tin slop bucket. But my father did not stir, not even when I poked him sharply. He had not come back with me from the Country of the Dead.

  My father.

  Even now I could not believe it. My head ached with all he had told me, as if the knowledge were raw splinters shoved into my brain. My mother and the ‘war' with Soulvine Moor. Hisaf disagreements with ‘the women of the soul arts', though both claimed to fight on the same side. My father had spoken of a ‘breach in the fortifications between the land of the living and the Country of the Dead, but Mother Chilton spoke of the ‘web of being'. I pictured a huge spider's web spanning the grave, woven alike of the living and the Dead, and in the middle sat the spider. She twitched on a silken strand and the entire web vibrated. ‘ You don't belong here, not like this. But soon. ' ‘ Eleven years dead.'

  ‘Light,' said Lord Robert's groom. A faint glow through the cell bars, growing stronger. A key scraped in the lock. More light, as a soldier of the Purple held up a flaming torch. Two savages strode into the cell, studied us all and hauled me to my feet.

  But not before I had, when there was just enough light to see, flung to Lord Robert the knife I had taken from the dead soldier on the other side. My father had not seen me take it then, and he did not see me give it now. It was a small stupid act of defiance towards the man who had abandoned me, come back to me, promised me a rescue that I wanted desperately to believe in. Yet why should I trust him, or his counsel, especially since it conflicted with Mother Chilton's? ‘ You must never cross over again, and you must go home. ' ‘ You may cross over as you choose, and you must
go with the Young Chieftain and teach him.' Who was right?

  I didn't know. But at least Lord Robert could use the stolen knife to defend himself, perhaps even to escape. Or, failing that, to choose for himself the time of his death. ‘ You must think of others as well as yourself.'

  The savage soldiers shoved me from the cell and locked the door behind us. The other prisoners were left behind. I was marched along the dank stone-and-earth corridor, up the steps, through the massive door and into the coach house. I gulped huge draughts of fresh air. The smells of horses and wheel oil seemed to me the sweetest I had ever known. I was still alive.

  And now I knew my mother's name.

  Katharine.

  32

  In what seemed to me a very short time, the stableyard was cleared of all horses, carriages and carts save one. This was a heavy high-sided wagon crammed with chests bound with iron. Someone had thrown a pile of straw and a few blankets into the small remaining space. Even I could see that none of horses in the stableyard was strong enough to draw the wagon. A pair of draught horses would be needed. The last of the grooms, shouting at each other, went off to commandeer such beasts. I was left alone with one savage soldier. He motioned for me to climb into the wagon, chained me to an iron bolt driven into one side and closed the wagon back. I heard his boots tramp away on the cobblestones.

  What was happening to my father in the Country of the Dead? What had that baying been, moving closer to us, and had he escaped it? Or joined it?

  I believed now that he had left my mother and me for my own safety – and yet that was not the whole truth. I had seen the quickening on his features as he faced whatever was coming at him in that other realm. I had seen the sudden sharp light in his green eyes. He was a hisaf, with a larger destiny to fulfil than merely living with a wife and child, and some part of him welcomed that destiny. Despite the real danger, despite the real anguish, despite the separation from loved ones. My father had left us with reluctance, but also with a heightening of his senses that was almost desire.