by Anna Kendall
‘That will do no good, Roger. Stephanie must revive sometime.'
I whipped around and there she stood, at the edge of a grove of pine trees, and with her a dark fog that raced towards us, obscuring that first sight of her slim figure and her shining crown. The dark mist obscured too the three men I had seen with her. In a moment that dark mist rising had reached us, and I could see nothing at all. But I could hear my sister's laugh, which pealed towards us from the fog, high and shrill and mad.
50
I groped in the fog, which was so thick that I lost all sense of direction. My good hand clutched air, but the stump of my wrist whacked painfully against something solid and hard: Tom. I cried, ‘Do you have the princess?' But before he could answer – there was no time, when time had been all we had until a moment ago – I felt Jee's arms around my waist. Tom had been holding Stephanie's limp body; he must still be holding Stephanie—
I grabbed onto his bulk and bit my tongue, and we all crossed over. Perhaps my sister expected this, for she went on laughing, the last sound I heard before
Darkness—
Cold—
Dirt choking my mouth—
Worms in my eyes—
Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs–
And we were through, standing knee high in snow, with brilliant sunlight piercing our eyes and an icy wind blowing the bare mountain trees.
Tom shouted something, his words borne away by the wind. Almost I expected to see my sister appear beside us. But she could never do that. She was marooned in the Country of the Dead and we were safe, I had done it, had brought Jee and Tom and Stephanie back over bodily.
Another figure materialized in the snow. Another. Then a third.
The three men who had been with my sister. Hisafs, holding knives. They stood less than ten yards from where we huddled against the cutting wind. Tom dropped Stephanie onto Jee and sprang in front of me. His stolen weapons had been left in the Country of the Dead, along with our cloaks, but he had his own two knives at his belt. He hurled one at the closest man.
The hisaf vanished.
He had crossed over, of course. I saw Tom's expression through the white cloud of his breath as the knife buried itself in a bank of snow. The second hisaf stood, grinning at him, then at me. He shouted something I could not hear for the wind. Older than my father, he had a thick black beard, bald head, and eyes that—
Before Tom's second knife reached him, the hisaf vanished.
How long? How long to cross through the grave, take a breath, inflict minor pain on himself, then again traverse the crumbling barrier of cold and darkness and return to us to—
‘Behind ye!' Jee shouted. He dropped to the ground on top of Stephanie, shielding her with his body. Tom whirled around. The third hisaf now circled Tom, knife in hand. I grabbed one of Tom's knives from the snow and tossed it to him. I barely had time to find the other knife before the bald, black-bearded hisaf reappeared, fifteen feet from us. Sunlight reflecting off snow glittered along his blade.
Tom lunged at the third hisaf. Younger, bigger, stronger and not unskilled in fighting, Tom managed to knock the blade from the man's hand. Immediately the hisaf vanished, just as the first one reappeared right next to him.
Tom dodged. The hisaf 's knife glanced along his left side, but Tom didn't seem to notice. He concentrated utterly on his opponent. Even the hisaf must have felt the fury in that huge powerful body because, instead of attacking again, he vanished.
The black-bearded hisaf ran towards me through the snow.
Tom was faster; he reached me first and leaped upon the man. They struggled briefly, and then the hisaf melted from Tom's grasp and was gone.
‘What are they?' he screamed at me.
‘ Hisafs! Like me!'
Tom groaned. ‘Stand back to back!' he yelled at me over the wind. I clutched his other knife, knowing that I was too clumsy to use it – Peter One-Hand – but with no choice. All of us were without choice. These hisafs could now cross over and back in body, as I had. We must kill them and send them quiescent to the Country of the Dead, or we would all four of us go there ourselves. No, three of us, for then my sister would have Stephanie, and I did not think that her handlers would want Stephanie quiescent and mindless when she could instead be put to use.
Jee and Stephanie lay between us at our feet. The third hisaf vanished without attacking – why? We waited for the men to reappear. The wind howled and froze my face. The hisafs did not come. Minutes dragged by. What if they just let us freeze here until—
Two of them appeared on either side of me, close enough for me to feel the warmth of their bodies, and the third a little way off. Then one had me by the neck with his knife at my throat. Tom spun around to face us.
‘Attack and Roger dies!' the man shouted above the wind.
Tom hesitated.
In that moment of hesitation the second hisaf lurched forward. His knife flashed. A gust of wind blew snow in my eyes, blinding me, and I could not see what happened until the gust passed and the hisaf was falling to the ground, Jee's hand on his ankle. Jee had tripped him. Tom fell to his knees and plunged his own knife into the man's chest. Blood jetted forth in a fountain, turning the white snow bright red.
But Tom had fallen to his knees, not leaping on the hisaf but rather —
And then I heard my sister's voice inside my head – and I was not asleep and dreaming. ‘Don't kill Roger! Take him! Take him!'
The hisaf holding my neck chopped with his other hand at my wrist. My knife dropped into the snow. The remaining hisaf, the bald black-bearded one, moved leisurely towards us. At my feet Tom raised his eyes to the approaching man. Tom's eyes were unfocused, almost dreamy. Abruptly his gaze sharpened and he tried to rise to his feet. The black-bearded man stopped several feet away, smiled and raised a gun.
Then my sister screamed again. ‘No!' she cried, her fury a seething red cloud in my brain. ‘He is not the one! Roger is not the one!' She shrieked, and I raised my good hand to clap it over my ear, as if that could have shut her out.
Not the one.
The hisaf holding me hesitated. Did he hear that voice too? I had felt him preparing to cross back over, had felt the shift in his body against mine as he imprisoned me, the change in his breathing. He was going to carry me back with him. But he hesitated when my sister screamed in my head – and in his? – and at that moment the shapes fell out of the sky.
Two of them, falling with immense speed. For a moment I thought they were cloaks, but a moment later they were birds. Enormous dark birds, hurtling through the blowing snow – no, neither falling not flying but diving, as raptors dive for prey. But eagles and hawks and even owls dive with talons extended, and these huge birds dived beak first, one at each hisaf. They dived straight for the two heads.
I was shoved away as my hisaf raised his knife, the other his gun. Neither was fast enough. The birds' beaks struck the men's skulls. Then the talons were out, fastened on the men's shoulders as beaks jabbed into screaming faces, again and again and yet again. Screams, howls of pain. One beak pierced an eye and the spurting blood stained the white ground red.
I took a step forward, too sickened and fascinated to know what I did. Tom staggered to his feet. A few moments more and it was over. One hisaf lay dead from Tom's knife, the others from the monstrous birds, which abruptly vanished, leaving two women panting on the snow, their faces contorted with the effort to breathe. One was the white-deer woman who had brought us food, and the other was Alysse.
I had no time for Tom's gasp of recognition. Three hisafs had accompanied my sister in the Country of the Dead, and all three lay dead at my feet. My sister was alone. Only I could cross over to stop her from doing this again: recruiting more hisafs, tracking me and Stephanie and anyone else with wild talent, sending killers after us bodily through the Country of the Dead. Only I.
Filled with more rage than I had ever thought possible, not quite sane with it, I crossed over.
51
Darkness—
Cold—
Dirt choking my mouth—
Worms in my eyes—
Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs–
My sister stood at the edge of the pine grove no more than twenty feet from where I crossed through. Fog swirled around her. Through that dark mist we stared at each other, and all at once and for the first time her name was in my head. My mother's name.
I called, ‘Katharine!'
Her eyes widened. Mad she might be, and filled with anger – ‘She's angry at Roger for living,' Stephanie had said – but she had wit enough to recognize fury even greater than her own. She was without protection, and I was finally without fear. She turned and ran into the trees.
I raced after her. The dark fog rose around me, thickening until I could see nothing. But I could hear, and I followed the sound of breaking branches and crushed undergrowth. She was a solid living body even as I was, and like me she stumbled in rhe fog.
‘Katharine!'
I felt her in my mind then, a great shrieking that went on and on. Almost I stopped pursuing her – anything to get that monstrous noise out of my brain. The terrible din made it harder to hear her passage, just as the darkening mist made it impossible to see her. So it was sheer luck that the stump of my wrist brushed against her body, and I grabbed wildly with my other hand. I had her.
‘No! No! No!'
It was the scream of a terrified little girl, and the body flailing against mine was slim and light – ‘ Eleven years dead' – that of a child. But she had killed like the most ruthless soldier and she was not what she seemed. None of her acts had been childish. Desperately I named those acts in my mind, to keep my fury hot enough to do what I must.
Lady Margaret, murdered in her sleep.
Stephanie's nurse, murdered.
My father, captive somewhere.
Fia, crumbling and melting grotesquely in my arms.
‘ Die die die ...'
‘No!' Katharine sobbed. ‘Roger, No!'
I flung her over my shoulder and carried her through the grove of trees, back towards the hill where Tom and I had seen her appear. Once we were free of the grove, the fog lessened a little. I could see where I was going. My sister beat her fists ineffectively on my back. The shrieking in my mind went on and on, so intense that it almost blinded me, as if sound were just more dark mist. But the actual fog disappeared as I rounded the base of the hill.
Here was the circle of the Dead that had so frightened Stephanie. All the mist here had been drawn into the rotating centre fog or else onto the heads of the Dead. All fifteen heads vibrated. I could not stop to think who they might be, these men and women about to lose eternity to the greed of Soulvine Moor, because I could not rescue them. Already the turning fog was becoming a vortex, humming loudly, whirling faster and faster.
‘ Your sister is at the centre of the web,' Alysse had told me. ‘ The hisafs seek to kill her. They must not succeed. The flow of web power – the strongest force in the world – must not be so abruptly and greatly disturbed. '
But I was not going to remove Katharine's power from the web; I was merely going to disperse it, spread it out among many, like a raging river diverted harmlessly into the greater immensity of the sea and so unable to bury villages, knock down trees, kill the innocent.
‘No, Roger! No!'
I broke through the circle of the Dead and carried my sister to the edge of the spinning vortex, even as its humming rose to an ear-shattering shriek. Her slight body writhed in my arms. Katharine beat on my back. I pulled her from me and lifted her high, higher than I thought possible with my one good hand and the stump of my wrist.
I could not do it.
She was but a girl, a child, mad through no fault of her own but rather through the horrors of her birth. She was my sister, however ill-begotten. And I was not a murderer – I was not. I could not do this monstrous thing, could not murder my sister no matter what she had done. My arms ached with holding her above my head and I cried out, a wordless noise like an animal in pain, in rage, in frustration. My sister ... I could not do it.
Then Katharine stopped sobbing and shrilled, ‘Your child is the one! Your son! And I will have him!' And she laughed.
It was the laugh that had shivered along my bones, terrorized my dreams, ... that laugh ... and she wanted my unborn son.
Before she could unbalance me, before she could give again that cry that might make me change my mind—
She wanted my unborn son.
—I lunged forward and threw her into the vortex.
A huge clap of sound, like lightning striking the ground. I was blinded, deafened, knocked off my feet. When I could see and hear again, when I could rise, the fifteen Dead in their circle were gone. The fog was gone. Katharine was gone.
The grass was not even scorched.
I stood in the tranquil and empty countryside, and knew that I had won. My sister, along with the other fifteen, had been drawn into the fog of watchers from Soulvine. However she may have strengthened them, she could no longer terrorize me. Nor Maggie, nor my son. As a separate entity, Katharine had ceased to exist. I had won.
I stood on the lifeless grass and wept.
After a time, I don't know how long a time, I heard something come crashing through the trees of the little grove on the other side of the hill. Another rogue hisaf, come too late to rescue my sister? I did not wait to find out. I bit my tongue and crossed over. At the last possible moment I saw that it was no hisaf rounding the base of the hill but instead another of the grey dogs, which had no business existing in the Country of the Dead.
Nor, any longer, did I.
I crossed back into the land of the living upon the cold plain. Noon sunlight had replaced the blowing snow, bouncing off drifts to blind the eyes. Tom, Jee, Stephanie, Alysse and the white-deer woman were all gone, leaving only the three dead hisafs half-covered with snow.
52
As my vision adjusted to the wintry brightness, I saw that light glowed in the pine grove where, in the Country of the Dead, I had chased my sister through the fog. A fire burned there. Shivering, stumbling, I trudged towards it.
Jee and Tom huddled close to the fire. Between them lay Stephanie and the two web women, lying on a white fur cloak with another over them of white hide. A white rabbit, a white deer, two cloaks falling from the sky ... The women lay gasping still, chasing each breath, their faces contorted and ashen. Stephanie was still unconscious from my blow. But when Jee looked up at me, it was of neither the princess nor the web women that he spoke.
‘Tom be hurt.'
‘Pi-piss pots,' Tom said. ‘It's ... nothing.' He toppled over onto his right side, clutching his left. It was sodden with blood. The hisaf 's knife had found its mark after all. Between Tom's fingers the blood, which must have slowed in the cold of the open meadow, oozed red in the firelight.
‘Tom!'
He gasped for breath, sounding like the web women.
‘Tom, how bad is it? Oh, how bad?'
‘Bad ... enough.'
I tried to look beneath his bloody fingers and slashed tunic, but all I could see was red. Frantically I shook Alysse. ‘Help him! Help Tom!' Once Mother Chilton had cured me of the poison on Solek's knife, had cut off my hand without killing me, had healed me. ‘Help him!'
She opened her eyes and seemed, through her gasps, to understand. Faintly, as if it might break, she shook her head.
‘But you are healers! You can heal!'
She said something too low to hear. I put my ear to her mouth and she repeated it. ‘Nothing ... left ...'
The web women had no power left. They had used it all to become the monstrous birds that had saved our lives. But I didn't care that they had risked their lives, perhaps would still lose them, to rescue us from the traitor hisafs. They could not – only in my roiling mind it became would not – help Tom. Tom, whose strength and loyalty and courage I had relied on again and again. I could not do without Tom.
She did nothing. Tom, oblivious to his one-time bedmate, groaned. His gaze fastened on me.
‘Tom, try – oh, try!'
‘Can't.' His eyes never left mine, as if he could anchor his life to another's and so not slip away. ‘Going back ...'
‘No!'
‘Country ... Dead.' And then, with a huge effort, ‘Tie me to a tree there. I don't ... want ...'
‘Tom!'
‘Bye, George.' He grinned then, for half a moment the old Tom, jaunty and fearless. Then his throat gave a terrible rattle, his body shuddered, and he was gone.
I let out an enormous howl. I would have crossed over to get some last few moments with him, but Jee was on me, his small face pushed up to mine. ‘No! No! Don't go over, Roger! She be there.'
I ignored him. He grabbed my tunic, still half frozen, and hung on. I tried to knock Jee off me. He clung like pine pitch.
‘She be there. She will kill ye!'
‘No! She can't!'
‘No! Ye maun not go!'
‘The boy is right,' said a quiet voice behind me. I knew that voice. In grief and loss and fury, I turned my head, Jee still clinging to me and Tom dead on the snowy ground, and faced Mother Chilton.
It was only her voice that I recognized. This was not the woman of the apothecary tent in the capital of The Queendom, nor of the cliff above the pebbled beach where my Aunt Jo had died. This was the crone Tom had described, looking older than anyone I had ever seen. Her body bent forward, both spine and neck curving so much that were it not for the staff she leaned upon, she must have toppled over. Sparse grey hair straggled from under her hood. Her face, with shadows on it from the dancing fire, creased into wrinkles like the ravines of the Unclaimed Lands. But her grey eyes met mine clearly, filled with pity.
The deer woman on the ground, still panting, nonetheless smiled.
Mother Chilton said, ‘Roger, there is no point crossing over after Tom. It is too dangerous, and too late. I'm sorry you lost your friend, but that is the cost you must pay. As these women are paying theirs.'