The Hidden Coronet #3

by Catherine Fisher

  He rubbed his hair with his hands, silent, annoyed she could see he was scared, annoyed with himself.

  They watched the gate. When Galen came through it he hobbled away up the road ahead of them, ignoring them. The woman whipped up the reins and the marset stumbled off, Raffi grabbing tight. They soon passed the keeper. On the ice the cart ran smooth, but when the wheels hit the rough track the lurching began, a giddy swaying up the treeless slopes, down splintering ruts. The road was bleak, all its vegetation seared to blackness by the relentless frosts, except that halfway up, a small, bent patch of bramble thicket clung on. The woman stopped the cart there, and they waited for Galen.

  He walked easier now, the limp reduced to normal, and when he came up he dumped the peddler’s tray and the pack with relief among the wool-bales, brushing ashpaste out of his hair in disgust.

  Then he looked up at her.

  “You must be in sore need of a keeper, Majella Caxton.”

  “I am, master. Believe me.” She said it calmly, her shrewd gray eyes on his. “Or I’d never have run the risk. Yours or mine.”

  For a moment he studied her. Then, as if a question had been answered, he nodded and climbed into the back, stretching his legs out among the wool-bales. “Is it a relic?”

  “God knows.” She started the marset moving. “It terrifies the beasts, fills me with dark horrors I wouldn’t try to describe. We’re haunted by something, master. We can’t even live in the house anymore. And if you don’t get rid of it, it will surely kill someone.”

  Galen didn’t answer, though Raffi knew he was intrigued. But the woman was busy now with the driving; ice made the rough track treacherous. Twice the marset slipped, its hooves clattering, and she had to urge it on. “Come on, my darling,” she crooned. “Up you go.”

  Turning, Raffi saw the Frost Fair already far below them, a squalor of stalls and pens and smoke darkening the pure lake, and beyond it at the northern shore the quenta forest, dark and ominous, its strange tangled trees forming impenetrable thickets.

  He also saw the gallows.

  Galen was looking at them too. The keeper’s black eyes were angry and thoughtful; as Raffi watched he fished among the trinkets of the peddler’s tray and brought out the awen-beads, jet and green, slipping them on over his head. He held out Raffi’s and Raffi took them, the two blue and purple strands of the scholar, wishing Galen would say something about the gallows. When he was silent he was planning, and Raffi feared that.

  Slowly, the cart rocked to the top of the hill.

  The way down was less steep; the woman took a breath and said, “Now. You want to hear all about it.”

  “It would help.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him as he leaned among the soft bales.

  “Well, we moved here two months ago. We’re Watchtenants. We had a farm up north, but then out of the blue they moved us. No explanations. When I saw this place I was amazed. It’s old, you’ll see that. Far too good for me and a dozen farm men. Lots of the rooms are empty.”

  “What’s it called?” Galen interrupted.

  “Halenden.” She flicked the reins. “For a fortnight it was all right. Then the trouble started.”

  “Noises?”

  She shrugged, uneasy. “Hideous sounds. First time it brought us all hurtling out of our beds. I thought some beggar-band was burning the place around our ears. Howling, echoing deep down. Max—the foreman—swears it’s some Kest-ghost, trapped under the place. He’s a loudmouth, and I’d sack him, but I need him. Most of the others have left.”

  The cart jolted; Raffi clung on, feeling sick.

  “What else?” Galen murmured.

  “Things move. Around the place. They’re never where you left them. Doors won’t open; then they open on their own. Plates smash. Voices talk in rooms where no one is. But last week, that was the worst.”

  She stopped the cart suddenly and turned to face him, her broad face red with the cold. “I’m not a woman who scares easily, master.”

  “I can see that,” he said.

  “Then you’ll know that I’m scared now.” The wind gusted sleet in her eyes; she rubbed it away. “Last week, on Agramonsday, I was alone in the house. The men were in the fields. I was sure I heard something moving down below. There’s a cellar, a deep cellar. It sounded like . . .” She shook her head, impatient with herself. “Flain knows what. I’m not good with words. A dragging sound. Cold. Heavy.”

  The wind was icy. Raffi shivered, tugging his hands up into his sleeves. In all the bleak land around him nothing stirred, the hedges gnawed down to bare thorn.

  “You went down?” Galen asked, his face intent.

  “I did.”

  “Not many would have.”

  “Keeper, I don’t like mysteries. I’m a plain woman; I trust what my senses tell me. I took a lamp and went down the cellar steps.” She paused. Raffi felt a threat of terror break out in her, the shock of it stirring the small hairs on the backs of his hands.

  Then she said, “I saw it. A shadow. Something evil. A terrible . . . venom seemed to come from it. I knew it was alive.”

  The marset whinnied, impatient. Sleet was coming down heavily now, a white sheet of weather slanting out of the west.

  Galen didn’t move.

  The woman turned back to the harness. “That’s all I can tell you. It vanished. I was outside, shivering, when the men came back; can’t even remember how I got there. None of us will stay in the place now—we’ve fitted up a barn a few fields off and even the dogs creep in with us at night.”

  The cart’s wheels began to turn, crunching down into the ruts and up again. “Can you help us?” she asked quietly.

  Galen leaned back. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

  “No,” she said, too quickly.

  He gazed at her broad back. Then he said, “I can only do what the Makers wish.”

  For the rest of the journey he was silent, and glancing back Raffi knew he was meditating, gathering strength, sending sense-lines out into the frozen land, waking stones and soil and the bare trees, searching for any Maker-life, any energies.

  Raffi was quiet too. After the strain and racket of the fair, weariness washed over him like a wave. Despite the cold he dozed, slumping against the woman. As the cart hit a stone he jolted awake, muttering, “Sorry.” She grinned at him. “My lad was like you once. Eat and sleep. That’s all boys are good for.”

  He smiled, wan.

  The evening closed in. Above in the darkening sky the seven moons brightened, the crescent of Cyrax far off on the horizon; glinting through torn cloud above the black land. Stars were suddenly there too, vast scatterings of light, brilliant in the frost-cold.

  The road ran down, into a hollow. Raffi felt trees, dark shapes on each side, old hollies and some yew, the faint turpy smell of their needles crushed under the wheels.

  The track ran smoother. The trees closed in, became a dim avenue, their branches tangling overhead. Bats flitted in a narrow strip of sky.

  And then he felt the house.

  His eyes widened; the skin crawled on his neck. Behind him, he heard Galen scramble up.

  Halenden was dark; a cluster of roofs and gables rising above the trees. He could see windows, most of them boarded up, and a great mass of ivy and spidervine that sprawled over half the façade, smothering walls and chimneys.

  As they drove up to it, the house seemed to grow. Owls called in its leaves; a skeat answered in the woods, and then a whole pack of them was howling, the farm dogs barking furiously in return.

  The cart creaked to a halt.

  Galen climbed out, stiff, then stood tall in his dark coat, looking up at the building, noting the battered, rainstained door, the high windows, some with broken glass, glittering with reflections of the climbing moons.

  The dogs went quiet with a yelp, as if he’d ordered them to.

  Raffi stood behind him. The stillness of the place made him wary. The woods were infected by its gloom
; the house had eyes inside, and for a second he looked through them, seeing himself and Galen and Majella from some high place.

  “Come around the back,” the woman said, climbing down awkwardly.

  But when Galen turned, her face went suddenly still because there was something changed about him, some power that crackled in the air; his face was gaunt and his eyes dark in the shadows.

  “I know,” he said.

  Barely breathing she mumbled, “Keeper?”

  He stepped toward her. Now he was the Crow, the dark energies moving in blue sparks through his fingers. “I know. The Makers have told me. The very trees have told me. Do you believe you could really hide this from me?”

  The woman gasped. For a moment Raffi thought she would kneel down in the mud, her fingers making the half-forgotten signs of honor. But then she looked up boldly, her face set.

  “You’re right. I should have told you.”

  “Told us what?” Raffi blurted out. He couldn’t bear it. “Is this a trap? Are the Watch here?”

  Galen grinned sourly. “In a manner of speaking. What she hasn’t told us is that this is the house of a Watchman. Her son’s house. Isn’t that so?”

  She nodded bleakly.

  Raffi was aghast. “We’ve got to get out!”

  To his horror Galen just laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t think he even knows.”

  “He doesn’t.” She looked up at him, her small eyes measuring his anger. “He’d have us all killed if he found out.”

  “Your own son!” Raffi couldn’t believe it.

  “My own son.” Watching Galen she said, “The keeper knows. He knows we don’t stop loving our children, however they turn out. Yes, my son is a Watchman. He wasn’t taken as a child; he joined them of his own will. He enjoys power. He hates the Order. You’ve even seen him, lad. He was the one who searched you back at the checkpoint.”

  Raffi’s chest was tight with fear. “We have to go. He’ll recognize me!”

  But Galen was watching the woman, his face unreadable. Finally he asked, “Will he come here?”

  “Unlikely. Not while the fair is on. He’ll want to see the hangings.”

  Galen nodded. “Then listen to me. Tonight, if I can, I will break your house of its spell. But in return, if I survive, I want your help. Your son has a spare uniform, insignia, papers. I want them.”

  “What!” Raffi grasped the keeper’s arm. “Why?”

  Galen shook him off ferociously. “Because if we do nothing, there are ten people who’ll hang on those gallows. And one of them is a keeper. I intend to get him out.”

  Chilled, Raffi stared at him in despair.

  And instantly, from behind them in the house, an eerie, throaty cry rose up, as if it were his own fear given voice, an echoing howl from some creature trapped in unendurable darkness and pain, so terrifying that Raffi’s hands went cold and all his sense-lines stirred in a web of dizzying sickness.

  It lasted long seconds. When it had ebbed, all three of them were still, shadows among shadows.

  Then the woman nodded, white-faced.

  “All right,” she said. “Anything.”

  3

  One day Soren was walking in the Fields of Eldaman when she saw a tiny flower under her foot. “What are you called?” she asked. The flower said it had no name. Soren picked it and wove it into a crown. She took it to Flain. “In our work,” she said, “we have overlooked the least and smallest of lives.”

  Flain ran his fingers over the flowers. “From now on,” he said, “all men will know you. You will teach the highest how to be humble.”

  Book of the Seven Moons

  THE ROOM WAS VERY DARK. Galen would have only one lamp, and that was standing in the middle of the floor. Its yellow glow threw a great shadow over the keeper’s shoulder, edging his face with slants of light. Around it he was arranging the awen-beads, seven circles of green and jet, a peculiar formation new to Raffi.

  Squeezed into the corner, his back against the dusty paneling, Raffi sat hugging his knees, then laid his forehead on them wearily.

  The woman had fed them. A good meal—soup, mutton, and cheese, the best he’d had since they left Sarres, and despite his worry he had been hungry for it. She’d cooked it in the old kitchen below, where broken spits hung askew under the vast sooty throats of the chimneys, and she’d waited while they’d eaten it. But even Raffi had sensed the stifled fear in her, heard the small, impatient creaks her chair had made. She was desperate to get out.

  At last Galen had cut a slice of cheese with deliberate care and said, “When you go, lock the doors from the outside. Whatever sounds you hear, whatever strange sights you may see, you stay away. Neither you nor anyone else is to come back to this house until full daylight. Do you understand that?”

  Relieved, she had nodded, but at the door had turned and said, hesitating, “I could take the boy with me. Is it right to put the boy in danger?”

  Galen hadn’t even looked up. “The boy is a scholar of the Order. How else will he learn?”

  When she’d gone, they’d come up here, to the highest rooms; Galen had taken his time choosing this one. Raffi broke mud-clots off his boots nervously. He wished he were back on Sarres, or anywhere, even at the fair. At least that had been out in the open; he could breathe or run. Here he felt as if the ancient house was stifling him, all its shutters tight, the carpet of dust, the webs, the mildewed walls. It was quiet, all the sense-lines were still, but there was something wrong with them, bizarrely wrong—they were warped, as if something else was here inside them, bulging them out.

  He wondered if Galen could feel it too.

  Now the Relic Master sat back on his heels, the hook of his nose shadowed. Without looking at Raffi he said, “You knew a keeper was among the prisoners, didn’t you?”

  Raffi clenched his fists. He’d been waiting for this.

  “I heard something,” he muttered.

  “And you didn’t tell me.”

  “I thought you’d have heard it too.”

  Galen glared at him. “And if I hadn’t? You’d have waited till they were dead, would you, before you cared to mention it?”

  Raffi looked away, hot.

  “For Flain’s sake, Raffi, when will you learn to have faith!” Galen’s fury was always sudden, an explosion of temper. “All the study you’ve done, all the things you’ve seen! Can’t you understand yet that the Makers are guiding us? We weren’t called to this place by accident! It’s not coincidence that one of the few keepers left alive is one of their prisoners. This is Flain’s will, as clearly as if he appeared and told us “Rescue them!”

  He tugged the dirty string out of his hair angrily. “And you try and ignore it!”

  “Because I never know what you’ll do,” Raffi said despairingly.

  Galen laughed, scornful. “Rubbish. You know very well. And that’s what scares you.”

  He rubbed a dusty hand through his hair, scattering the remnants of ash. Raffi was silent. He knew it was true. Bitter shame broke out in him. “Perhaps I’m not fit to be a keeper,” he snapped, his face hot.

  Galen snorted. “That’s for me to say. I haven’t wasted all this time on you for nothing. You’ll be a keeper if I have to beat it into you. Now pick up that lamp. We need to look at this house.”

  Raffi scrambled up and snatched the lamp. He wanted to march out with it boldly, down the stairs, into all the dark corridors, flinging open the doors, as fearless as Carys would have been. But he knew he’d falter at the first corner. In some ways learning the powers of the Order, sensing Maker-life in the land, the energy fields of people’s dreams, of trees and stones and creatures, just made things worse. Carys couldn’t feel all that. Perhaps that was why it was easy for her not to be scared.

  Though Galen never was either.

  As the keeper walked out onto the dark landing, Raffi followed him close. Together they looked over the banister, seeing the vast stairwell curl down into blackness, its walls staine
d with slow-growing lichens and the velvety mounds of mold that spread like vivid green stars.

  Below, in the emptiness, nothing moved.

  They could hear water dripping. Then a shutter banged. The house seemed immense, a labyrinth of rooms and courtyards and sculleries, buried in drifts of dust and memories, its timbers worm-gnawed and decaying. Raffi sent delicate sense-lines into it, infiltrating the whole tilted structure, scaring the slender-legged harvestmen that scuttled from its ceilings. Two floors below, a rat sneaked from a sooty hearth into a hole. The farther down his third eye searched, the uneasier it made him. Just as he was getting dizzy Galen said, “Stay close. Keep the lines out.”

  They went down, step after step. The lamp sent vast wobbling shadows up the walls. On each floor, Galen walked stealthily along the corridors, opening doors, gazing into chambers that were empty but for a fireplace and high windows, mostly patched and shuttered. But outside a room on the first floor he paused, his fingers on the handle. Raffi felt it too, the faintest shiver of Maker-power. Galen glanced at him.

  Then he went in.

  The room was black. In the doorway, Raffi held up the lamp.

  To his astonishment a small circle of flowers lay on the bare boards. There was nothing else. No one stood in the shadowed corners, though as he moved the lamp, vast darknesses flickered and jerked.

  After a second, Galen went and kneeled over the garland, Raffi close behind, glad to shut the door.

  The flowers were yellow; they were the sort known as Flainscrown, as bright and fresh as if they’d just been picked. Raffi stared in amazement. “Where did they come from? It’s winter!”

  Galen turned a frail stem in his fingers. “They’ve been put here in the last few minutes.”

  Rooms below, something slammed. Raffi froze, listening so intently it hurt. Then he whispered, “What if it gets upstairs?”

  “That’s what I want. The awen-beads will draw it to the top room . . . Haven’t I taught you the spiral yet?”

  Raffi shook his head.

  Oddly stiff, Galen’s voice said, “Shine that light back here.”