by Anna Kendall
‘They are alive!'
‘There was no assurance of that when they set out to perform their rescue.' Mother Chilton hobbled past me. Painfully she lowered herself to the ground beside Stephanie. I remembered what both Alysse and the white-deer woman had said to me about the princess:
‘ Better she should have been shot.'
‘Don't touch her!' I cried.
Mother Chilton kept her gaze on Stephanie, but her words were directed to me. ‘Don't be ridiculous, Roger – Stephanie is in no danger from us. The situation is different now. When she was Tarek's prisoner, there was no way to reach her and control her talent, which in any case we vastly underestimated. It is different now. You have done at least that much good in bringing her to me.'
‘You could have gone to her!' I scarcely knew what I was saying, except that it distracted me for a little longer from Tom's body slumped beside me on the ground. Tom, gone, among the Dead ...
‘No,' Mother Chilton said, ‘I could not have gone to her. I could barely come here. I am very old now, my years given to saving Tom.'
‘You lie!' I cried, furious at her, at the world. Both worlds. ‘You could have become a ... a ... .whatever animal you can become!'
‘Not in front of the savage soldiers, I could not. They would have killed us both on the spot from terror of witchcraft. This was the best I could do, and it has cost me. Everything has a cost, Roger Kilbourne – when will you learn that? These adepts in the soul arts are paying the cost of your rescue, just as Tom Jenkins has paid it. To save you, Alysse and Elaine both took the form of raptors, which was neither of their spirit-sharers. We each do what we can, and we each pay as we must.'
‘Spare me your cant! Tom—'
‘Is as safe as the Dead can be. Soulvine Moor will not harm him in the Country of the Dead.'
‘You cannot know that.'
‘Yes. I can. Take from it what comfort you will. Ah, the apprentice stirs.'
She meant Stephanie. The princess opened her eyes, put her hand to the bruise my fist had left on her head and began to cry.
‘Stop that,' Mother Chilton said, so firmly that Stephanie, starting in surprise, did so at once. ‘You are now an apprentice in the soul arts, my child. We do not cry.'
Jee said fiercely, ‘She be the princess of The Queendom!'
‘That too,' Mother Chilton agreed. ‘And you, Jee, are her most faithful servitor.'
He looked confused – perhaps he did not know the word – but his fierce stance beside the princess did not change. ‘My lady, be ye warm enough? Closer to the fire.'
She groped for his hand, but her eyes were on Mother Chilton. The two stared at each other, and in that deep gaze something passed between the child and the crone, something beyond either words or my understanding. I did not care what that something was. I turned back to Tom.
He lay face up on the snow, the faint smile still on his lips, his eyes gazing at pine branches but seeing nothing. Gently I closed his eyes. How would I do without Tom? Without his courage, his cheerfulness, his endless energy? I strangled my sobs and turned my face away.
Jee's attention was given to Stephanie, as was Mother Chilton's, and it was the deer woman who struggled to put her thin cold hand into mine. It brought no comfort. I had never had a friend before, and I had none left now.
I was alone, and my friend had gone to the Country of the Dead.
We buried Tom in a little dell behind the pine grove. The ground was softer there, warmed by a thick pile of dead leaves blown in by the vagrant patterns of autumn winds. We had no winding sheet and could not spare either of the cloaks, one of fur and one of hide, but I did not want to wrap his body anyway. Tom Jenkins had lived full tilt, with no artificial barrier between him and whatever he encountered, meeting experience eagerly at every turn. Let him meet the grave in the same fashion. And, beyond the grave, he was safe. So Mother Chilton told me, and although I did not understand what she meant, I believed her because it would be unbearable not to.
We dug the grave deep, Jee and I, using stout branches as shovels, and covered it with stones as large as we could carry, against wild animals digging at it. This took hours, until sunset. I welcomed the labour. It kept me from thinking about Katharine and what I had done to her on the other side. It almost kept me from thinking. Almost.
We did not let Stephanie attend Tom's burial. Her head ached from the blow I had given her and we left her by the fire with the web women. Jee and I rolled Tom into the hole we had dug, covered him over and said a few words. I didn't remember what was said. It didn't matter. No words could have been sufficient tribute to the life-loving vitality that had been Tom Jenkins.
Before he went into the ground, Mother Chilton reached into Tom's pocket and pulling out something small. When she caught my gaze, she opened her wrinkled old hand. On her palm lay the miniature of Fia.
‘It's a marker,' I said. ‘That's how my sister and her hisafs knew where we were.'
‘Also how we women of the soul arts knew,' Mother Chilton said tartly. ‘Do not think always of the evil side of things, Roger.'
Stupid advice. It was all evil: my sister, the breach in the wall between life and death, the rogue hisafs, the savages' expedition to abduct Stephanie, who since I had hit her was afraid of me.
Mother Chilton added, ‘An axe may be used to cut wood for warmth or to chop off a man's legs. The evil lies not in the axe but in how it is used.'
‘You do not yet know what evil I have done.'
Her old eyes sharpened. ‘What? What is it you have done?'
I told her. For the first and last time I saw bewilderment in Mother Chilton's face. She quavered, ‘What does it mean?'
She was asking me? I said angrily, the anger a mask for anguish, ‘It means I have killed my sister! It means I am a murderer. It means Katharine is no longer a threat to me and mine.'
‘Yes, but the web ...'
All at once I did not care about the web. I did not care about Mother Chilton or Alysse or Stephanie or even Jee. I wanted Maggie, yearned for her with every sinew in my exhausted and murderous body, longed for her as a ship in a storm longs for nothing but the safety and peace of a sheltered harbour.
‘Roger—'
‘Leave me alone!' I stalked away from her twisted bony hand on my arm. I fled from Tom's grave, from everything that had happened in that pine grove, clear to the far edge of the snowy meadow. The wind had stopped but it was bitter cold. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself.
In the valley below an army moved.
I could see horses, men and then a purple banner, from this distance a thin thread against the snow. Staggering through snowdrifts, I raced back to Mother Chilton. ‘An army! Coming here!'
She didn't seem surprised. ‘Ah, then they are a day ahead.'
‘You knew? Who is it?'
‘Lord Robert Hopewell.'
‘Lord Robert?' I had last seen him in the palace dungeon, had assumed he'd been executed as Tarek's army pulled out. But no. I knew Tarek better now. To execute a vanquished rival would be to admit that the rival might not be completely vanquished. It was an admission of weakness. Or perhaps Tarek had been more subtle: I had been taken in order to teach him to bring an army back from Witchland. Tarek wanted Lord Robert alive to face that witched army under savage command, as Tarek's father had once faced a witched army fighting against him. Or perhaps the Young Chieftain had some other reason for sparing Lord Robert that I did not understand at all; I was only a hisaf . Or perhaps Lord Robert had fought his way free of the dungeon with the knife I had left him, stolen from the Country of the Dead. My mind seized on that idea. I wanted so desperately to have done some good to someone, somewhere.
My sister—
‘His lordship's army marches to rescue the princess,' Mother Chilton said. ‘They will be very pleased to have to travel no further than this and not be required to attack Tarek's forces. They will take Stephanie back with them, to resume her reign under Lord Robert's pro-tectorshi
p. I will go with Stephanie, at her insistence, as her nurse. And young Jee will go as well. She will make him a page.'
‘Lord Robert will not permit that.' I argued, from resentment. Mother Chilton was disposing everyone as if they were dishes on her cupboard shelf: This one here, that one there. ‘Pages are nobly born.'
‘Nonetheless, Jee will be a page.'
‘He will hate it.'
‘He will not. It will let him serve Stephanie and stay beside her.'
‘You can see the future then?' I said sarcastically. ‘I suppose that someday she will choose him as consort?'
‘No one can see the future. I tell you what will happen tomorrow, which is only the unfolding of today, and even then not a certainty until it happens. Do not be childish, Roger.'
‘I am not a child.'
‘No,' she said, and I heard despair in her voice, ‘you are not. But you must not be here when Lord Robert's army arrives. They will not thank you for rescuing Stephanie, not when they know how you accomplished it.'
Witchcraft. That's what Mother Chilton meant. She was right, but nonetheless her words stung. ‘And do you then propose to tell Lord Robert that the princess, a crone, two sick women and a ten-year-old boy just chanced to stroll out of Tarek's camp and cross the mountains in winter?'
‘What I tell Lord Robert is no longer your concern. You must leave here, Roger, for your own safety and ours. You must leave now. I will take care of the others.'
I wanted to leave, and now that I could turn the care of Jee and Stephanie over to Mother Chilton, relief rose in me like a great wave, cresting from gut to belly to heart. I was free to go to Maggie.
‘But before you go, I must give you three things,' Mother Chilton said, and despair was back in her face.
I did not understand that despair. Nor did I want to understand it. My own heartsickness was enough for one person.
Mother Chilton continued, ‘One thing I would give you is material, two are knowledge. First, this.' She handed me the white fur cloak.
I glanced at the fire. Stephanie and the two women lay asleep and uncovered on the hide, warmth from the flames dancing on their faces. Jee crouched nearby, like-wise fire-warmed. And Lord Robert would arrive in a few hours.
‘There is a pocket,' Mother Chilton said, ‘with Tom's knives and some money. Take the water bag, and after I tell Lord Robert that you are dead, I think you may pass through The Queendom untroubled, provided that you do not venture too close to the capital.'
‘Thank you. What are the two pieces of knowledge?'
‘The first is this, and you must listen carefully, Roger Kilbourne. When power flows along the threads of the web of being, when it is made to flow unnaturally from death back to life, there must also be a flow in the opposite direction. Or else the whole web will become more and more disturbed, until it is destroyed. There are terrible times coming. More terrible than you can imagine. So if you never listen to me again, do so now. Until we know the consequences of what you have done to Katharine, you must not again disturb the web of being. I will not ask for your promise because you have broken so many before, but do not act again as a hisaf, nor communicate with other hisafs.'
‘You distrust them because they are men.'
‘Perhaps,' Mother Chilton said. ‘And perhaps we have reason to distrust even good men. Perhaps you do too. I notice that you have said nothing about trying to rescue your father from Galtryf.'
‘My father made no attempt to rescue me.'
‘Enough.' She held up her bony hand. ‘I do not want to hear it. The hisafs are deeply mistaken about this war, and it is well that you do not attempt to go to Galtryf.'
I scowled. Now that my father could cross over bodily, how could he be kept at Galtryf? And when I had broken my promises to not cross over, it had been for good reason. If I did not wish to rescue my father, it was because such an attempt was both unearned by him and futile. But the truth was that Mother Chilton's words did not touch me deeply. I was done with the web of being, done with the women of the soul arts, done with the hisafs on both sides of this war. ‘Well, what is the second piece of knowledge? Be quick, Mother Chilton; there is an army on the move.'
‘You intend to go to Maggie at Tanwell, do you not? I know that nothing I can say will deter you. But after you have reclaimed Maggie, keep a constant watch on her and the child. Do not let any stranger approach him, especially if they approach through you.'
‘I can take care of my wife and son.'
‘She is not your wife. That is a fiction Tom Jenkins created, remember? You have not married Maggie.'
‘Not yet. But I shall. And this is none of your concern, Mother Chilton.'
‘Nothing on either side of the grave is more my concern than your unborn child. Nothing.'
The words were said quietly, without looking at me. All at once the fight left me, replaced only with a sick coldness that reduced my voice to a whisper. ‘What is he?' I whispered. ‘What is my son?'
‘He is our last hope.'
‘He is but an infant! Not even that yet!'
‘Nonetheless,' Mother Chilton said, and said no more. I wouldn't have listened anyway. I was going home to Maggie, to tell her I loved her. We would marry, and then I would take her and my son away from all this strife, from the war fought on both sides of the grave, from anything that would threaten them. Finally I knew what precious good I had in Maggie, and I would not lose her again.
Mother Chilton turned her old face away from me and towards the fire. ‘Ah,' she said, a soft desolate sound in the piney darkness.
53
I left before Lord Robert's army arrived, with no further warnings or scoldings or strictures from Mother Chilton, no more telling me where I should go, where I must not go, what I could or could not do, how I had failed in my duty as a hisaf and my obligation to the forces aligned against Soulvine Moor. Looking at her, so frail and bent that walking seemed a torture, I wondered how she could carry out her own task of tutoring Stephanie in the soul arts. But I did not doubt that she would do so. If Lord Robert Hopewell, who again would be lord protector, discovered what Mother Chilton was about, the battle between them would be epic.
Almost I could hear Tom's voice saying, ‘Three to one on your grandmother, Peter.'
I said goodbye to Jee as he huddled beside the fire. ‘Jee, I cannot go with you to the palace.'
His small face was solemn. ‘I know. Ye maun go to Maggie.'
‘Yes. And you must tell no one at court about Maggie, not ever. Not even the princess.'
‘I know. They maun not find ye.'
‘That's right.'
‘Roger,' he said thickly.
I peered at him more closely. In the fitful light from the fire his small face contorted with anguish. Jee put one hand on my good arm and I had the sense that he did not even know he was doing so. He burst out, ‘I maun go with my lady!'
‘Of course you must. Princess Stephanie needs you.'
‘But Maggie ...'
Now I grasped his struggle. I said gently, ‘You think that by going with Princess Stephanie, you will be deserting Maggie.'
Jee's fingers tightened on my arm.
‘Hear me carefully, Jee. Maggie loves you and she will miss you. But she does not need you in the same way that Stephanie does. Maggie will have me. Stephanie will have Mother Chilton, but you can see how very old she is. Look at her. There will be much that Mother Chilton is unable to do. And you are the only one who understands what Stephanie has had to endure in the Country of the Dead. Who else could understand? Whom else could she talk to about that? The princess needs you, Jee. You must go with her, and I will see that Maggie understands that.'
It was the reassurance he wanted, and the excuse. His face relaxed, and in the firelight I saw his rare smile.
At least I had been able to ease the heart of one child.
And so I set out. I had a white fur cloak. I had Tom's knives, Jee's snares, a water bag and both gold and silvers from Mother Chilt
on, more money than I had ever possessed in my life before. But both coins and the fur cloak could be markers, and I intended to shed them as soon as I could. I wanted neither web women nor hisafs tracking me. This journey would be mine alone.
Floundering through the snow, screened by trees, I skirted the meadow and climbed the next hill to the north. Now I could see all the way to the vast plain of The Queendom. Far below, the advance guard of Lord Robert's army rode hard, with the main body marching one valley behind. They would reach the pine grove before nightfall. Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after to allow for rest, they would return east to the capital.
I would travel in the same direction as the army, towards Glory, but by a slightly more northern route, and much faster. An army escorting a princess is a more cumbersome thing than a lone traveller. And perhaps I could buy a donkey along the way. Maggie would find good uses for a donkey.
In the near distance rose the smoke of an isolated farm. It was as yet only the beginning of winter, and the farmhouse would hold preserved meat, dried fruit, stored cheeses. I would wait until I saw the farmer and his sons, if he had any, leave the cabin, and then I would deal with his wife. I would buy provisions, and I would trade my white fur cloak for something simpler and unmarked. The farmwife would be at least half savage, but she would sell me what I needed. It is old women who are most willing to talk to me.
‘ There are terrible times coming,' Mother Chilton had said. ‘ More terrible than you can imagine. '
But not for me. What I had done to Katharine would stay with me all my days. but now I was going home to Maggie and my son.
I started down the snowy hill towards the farmhouse.