Dark Mist Rising

by Anna Kendall

  I could stay here, on the southern edge of the Unclaimed Lands, build a shelter and eke out some sort of living by hunting and gathering plants. In two years I had learned much about living off the land – from Jee, from Maggie, from Tom, even from Fia. That might suffice for summer, but eventually winter would come. I did not know how to survive a winter in the wild.

  No, I must find people who would take me in as the lowliest kind of labourer. I must find these people in the Unclaimed Lands, mountain folk who kept to themselves and would be unlikely to give me up to savage soldiers. But mountain folk lived so poor, on such hard-scrabble farms, that they were unlikely to need extra labourers. And I had but one hand.

  Lying under my deadfall, I felt tears spill from my eyes, mingling with the rain. I had but one talent, and I was afraid of that too. As a child I had lived, under Hartah's brutal direction, by crossing over and selling to grieving women whatever information I learned from old women in the Country of the Dead. The thought of doing that again filled me with horror. And now I was afraid to cross over, afraid of that crowned figure in the fog, whispering my name. And I had promised Fia.

  ‘ They are almost ready,' she had said. Ready for what?

  I had no answers, not to anything. But I must at least have breakfast. My stomach ached with hunger.

  I found a stream, and with Fia's carved fish hook and a line of stout vine caught two fish. Gutted with Tom's knife and cooked over a fire, they would at least give me strength to further contemplate my misery. I was searching for dry wood when I heard voices.

  Guttural. Loud. Calling to each other, the words unknown. Savage soldiers.

  Wildly I looked around. The stream flowed shallowly through the large clearing, and there was nowhere to hide. Any moment the soldiers might break through the trees and raise their deadly guns. I ran.

  I gained the woods and was several yards into the trees when I heard their shouts. They had discovered my fish on the bank of the stream. But they did not know which direction I had gone. Standing still, afraid to call attention to myself by even the slightest motion, I listened intently, trying to discover by the different voices how many they were.

  At least three. The Young Chieftain was serious about capturing me.

  Carefully and slowly, raising one foot and then setting it down, I moved deeper into the woods, looking for another deadfall, a cave, anywhere I might feel safe. I didn't find it.

  Neither did they find me. But they hunted me, fanning out and spiralling in, driving me as a wolf pack drives its prey. Had the savages been Tom Jenkins, they could have followed my trail, but these were no trackers. They relied on numbers and their guns, and all day they drove me relentlessly south. I had slept but not eaten, and I could feel myself weakening. I hid when I could, but no hiding place felt safe enough.

  Each hour the pack drew closer.

  Finally, at dusk on that agonizing day, desperate and starving and exhausted, I came to the border of Soulvine Moor.

  This was not the place where I had entered Soulvine two years ago, but in its great sweep of empty land and huge sky, the moor everywhere looked almost the same. Ground springy with peat under my boots. Outcroppings of rock, ranging in size from mossy stones the size of my head to great naked tors jutting up against the sky. Patches of purple heather, patches of wet and treacherous bog, patches of acidic soil either bare or barely nourishing poor grasses. I stood in the last stand of trees before the border, heard the soldiers shout behind me and knew that I had run out of choices. In a few more minutes they would be on me. I sprinted across the open space to the nearest large boulder, a quarter-mile away, and dived behind it.

  More shouts, fading away. Did they know where I was? I couldn't tell. But they did not enter Soulvine Moor – from fear, from military orders, from who-knew-what. I sat with my back pressed against the side of the granite, trying to hurry darkness. Night would hide me.

  The first bright stars came out. Then the second group, less bright. The stone at my back lost what little warmth it had held from the fitful sun. I peered cautiously around the boulder and saw a campfire at the edge of the woods. The savages were not going away.

  But if I made no fire, at least the Soulviners would not find me. My belly groaned with hunger. My clothes were still damp with the morning's rain. The summer night was warm, but not warm enough. I must keep moving. At full dark I would move – crawling if necessary – across the moor and re-enter the Unclaimed Lands at some point east of the savage encampment. Perhaps that way I could escape.

  But it did not happen like that. Instead, lights bobbed towards me from deeper into Soulvine. At first I thought they were merely marsh gas. Then I knew they were not. They headed unerringly towards my boulder.

  Impossible. The inhabitants of the moor could not know I was here. This was coincidence: a hunting party or else some peculiar ritual, nothing to do with me ...

  The lights came straight towards my boulder.

  I dashed away in the dusk, running east, trying to keep from the bogs that could mire me to the waist. But then figures also loomed ahead of me, and I changed direction. More figures, then shouts from the savage camp, and then a body hurled itself on mine. We went down. I struggled, but I was no match for him, a strong young man with two good hands. I struck out blindly, he struck back, and everything went black just as the first guns sent shots over our heads and someone screamed.

  I came to in a place I knew well. A low windowless round room built of stone. A fire smouldered in the centre, the smoke going up through a hole in the roof. Torches burned in holders on the walls. Stone benches heaped with fur blankets ringed the central space, with baskets resting under each bench. The only other furnishing was a large drum. When I had been here two years ago, the stone room had held many men and women, and they had—

  Don't think of that.

  —had crowded the space. I had sat with them on furs thrown on the floor. Now I lay bound on the stone, and a single man was with me. He sat on a bench, gazing down at me. It was the ancient white-bearded man with the same green eyes as Cecilia, as Fia.

  ‘So, hisaf,' he said gently. ‘You return.'

  I strained against the ropes that bound me. The ropes held.

  ‘No one returns to Soulvine Moor,' he said.

  But I was a hisaf ! They killed foreigners, but two years ago they had not killed me because I was a hisaf. So at least one rule was different for hisafs and surely other rules would go on being different, the old man didn't mean to imply—

  ‘I am a hisaf !' I cried.

  ‘Yes,' he agreed. ‘And because that is so, your flesh will give us great power.'

  And then there was no telling myself not to think of it, no holding the memory back. The roasted meat, succulent and greasy, my eating it while the fire blazed with the sweet-smelling powder thrown onto it ...

  Cecilia ... Cecilia ...

  ‘Do not wail so,' the old man said, his wrinkled face wrinkling even more with disgust. ‘You are a hisaf. You should find it in yourself to die like one.'

  22

  It was my dream come monstrously true. I lay on the flat upland moor outside the round stone house. A torch stuck into the ground beside me burned brightly, and beyond the circle of its light moved inhuman things – men but bent on inhumanity.

  I was tied on a broad flat stone, face up to the starlit sky. The ropes that held me circled the stone. Someone had moved the drum outside, and now the drummer began a slow steady rhythm: boom boom-boom-boom booooom. One by one, the older men and women, middle-aged or more, came up to me and stared deeply into my eyes. The torchlight cast weird shadows on their faces. All their eyes were green.

  ‘I thank you for your flesh,' each said solemnly, ‘which will gain me the power of your soul.'

  ‘You will gain nothing!' I screamed. ‘You know that! You have been in the Country of the Dead in the dark mist – you know you cannot have my soul!'

  Boom boom-boom-boom booooom ...

  ‘I thank
you for your flesh,' said the next one, a wrinkled and bent woman, ‘which will gain me the power of your soul.'

  ‘It does not happen that way! You know that!'

  Boom boom-boom-boom booooom ...

  I squeezed my eyes shut, so that they could not gaze into mine. The next person pried them open.

  ‘I thank you for your flesh, which will gain me the power of your soul.'

  ‘But I am a hisaf !'

  ‘I thank you for your flesh, which will gain me the power of your soul.'

  Boom boom-boom-boom booooom ...

  I strained against my bonds. As my head thrashed from side to side, I saw a fire burning beside the stone house, and over it a large iron pot.

  For me.

  ‘I thank you for your flesh, which will gain me the power of your soul.'

  As the Soulviners left me, each entered the round house. A scent floated towards me from within, sweet and pungent. I had smelled that powder thrown onto fire before, two years ago, when I had sat inside the stone house, feasting on meat ... greasy and succulent—

  All at once I grew calm. This, then, was how I ended in the land of the living. It was no different for me than for anyone else; death must claim us all. And if in the Country of the Dead I lapsed into mindless tranquillity, at least I would be free of the memories and dreams that tormented me. But if I could not escape death, I could at least escape the pain of dying.

  The old man with white beard and Cecilia's green eyes was the last to come to me. He held a long curved knife with a carved wooden handle. We gazed at each other, and in the shifting torchlight I seemed to see strange shapes deep in his eyes. I bit my tongue hard and, to the beat of the unseen drum and without so much as hesitating about my promise to Fia, I crossed over.

  Darkness—

  Cold—

  Dirt choking my mouth—

  Worms in my eyes—

  Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

  Then I was in the Country of the Dead, and the drum beat had stopped. It was the upland moor swaddled in fog, even denser and thicker than before. Blindly I stumbled forward, senselessly fleeing the round stone house. But of course there was no stone house here. Nothing but fog and the circles of the Dead.

  I came across the first one almost immediately. It was huge, perhaps thirty Dead. Soon I might be one of them.

  The Dead held hands. Each head was shrouded in opaque dark mist.

  ‘You are monsters!' I shouted, but not to the Dead. To whom, then?

  I charged towards the middle of the enormous circle. There would be a humming mist there, a collection of watchers from Soulvine, made up of the men and women now sitting in the round stone house. Breathing the drug thrown onto the fire. Preparing themselves to feast on my flesh. I could not reach them in the land of the living, but here I would – what? I didn't know. I only knew an insane rage to destroy that mist, to somehow beat on it, to—

  There was no mist in the centre of the circle. Instead a single figure sat there, and all around it the fog had dispersed, leaving a clear area of almost bright air. The single figure was one of the Dead, and she sat with her hands folded in her lap, her legs tucked under her, her head slightly bent.

  It was my mother.

  Vertigo took me. For a moment I could neither see nor hear. Then my head cleared and I lurched forward, falling to my knees before her motionless figure.

  ‘Mother!'

  She wore her lavender gown, and lavender ribbons bound her hair. A slight smile curved her pale lips. She was just as tranquil and mindless as the rest of the Dead. I clasped her to me. When my embrace did not rouse her, I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Mother! Mother!' When that did not rouse her, I hauled her to her feet, and her folded hands, with their long lace-trimmed sleeves, fell away from her lap. Blood soaked the front of her gown.

  I eased her back to the ground and stared. This was not old blood, brownish and dried. This was fresh, bright red, and now I could smell its coppery scent. When I touched my fingers to her gown, they came away smeared with blood.

  ‘ Mother! '

  ‘Roger,' said a woman's voice, ‘you are here.'

  She moved towards me in dark mist, and other figures moved with her. I could see none of them clearly. Through the fog a crown glinted.

  ‘Who are you?' I cried.

  ‘Eleven years dead.'

  ‘ Who? ' I clutched my mother tighter, as if I could somehow protect her, she who was already Dead!

  The crowned figure gave the laugh that shivered along my bones. And then, ‘You don't belong here, not like this. But soon.'

  And all at once I was not there. I was back on Soulvine Moor, tied on the flat rock under the stars.

  But I had not sent myself back. It did not happen like that; always I had chosen to return from the Country of the Dead; always I had had to inflict some slight pain, concentrate my will, and only then pass through the grave with flesh gone from my bones. Always I had a choice.

  ‘You do not escape that way,' the old green-eyed man said. More shapes moved behind his eyes. He raised his knife and carefully cut open my tunic. Cool night breeze played across my bare chest. The drum had fallen silent.

  I cried, ‘What happened to my mother!'

  It was as if I hadn't spoken, as I were already dead. He whispered ritual words in a language I did not know and raised his knife over my body. I closed my eyes.

  The crack of a gun. My eyes flew open in time to see the old man's look of surprise, just before his body tumbled back out of my sight.

  ‘Peter!' a voice cried. Tom Jenkins. And then he was running towards me out of the darkness. But so were men and women – not the middle-aged and old, who sat drugged in the round stone house, but the able-bodied young of Hygryll. The warriors. They rushed out of the darkness with knives drawn, shrieking, their faces contorted with shock and ferocious rage. A young woman threw herself on the fallen old man. The rest made for Tom, just visible at the edge of the circle of torchlight.

  He stopped, his face confused and uncertain. Then he began firing. But he had told me that a gun could shoot only three times before more bullets needed to be fitted into it. Tom fired twice more and reached for a second gun from the sling on his back. I could see that he would never make it. A warrior leaped towards him. Tom Jenkins would join me in the Country of the Dead.

  A grey shape hurtled towards the warrior. It caught him in mid-air and they crashed to the ground.

  Then, as I blinked in disbelief, there were two of the grey shapes, three, a half-dozen. They did not run in from the moor; they were just there, as air is there.

  Or fog.

  ‘Peter!' Tom cried from somewhere on the ground below me. The warriors screamed. Tied to the rock, I could see little but hear everything: the human shrieks of agony, the inhuman snap of jaws on flesh, the sudden howl of an animal, sharp and shrill with pain. Above all, a gurgle I cannot forget, as blood and air mixed from throats torn out. I could not see it happen, but I saw it in imagination, and that was the more terrible of the two. The carnage seemed to go on for ever, but of course it did not. It lasted only a few minutes. The landscape of horror, like that of the Country of the Dead, distorts time.

  Then silence.

  ‘Peter.' Tom rose beside me, blood streaming down his clothes and his face ashen. ‘Are you all right?'

  I couldn't speak. My helplessness seemed to steady Tom. Colour flooded back into his face. His hand did not shake as he cut my bonds.

  I sat up on the rock. Young men and women lay dead or dying all over the ground. A few moaned. Amid the carnage sat a single large dog.

  Shadow.

  Shep.

  My voice came out shaky. ‘There were many dogs ...'

  Tom looked puzzled, but only briefly. ‘Must have run off. Come, Peter, we have to get away from this cursed place!'

  The dogs had not run off. Lying helpless, my pre-ternaturally sharp hearing attuned to the brutish killing around me, I had heard and
seen many dogs, and I had not heard them leave. I choked out, ‘Did you see—'

  ‘Come on, Peter!'

  Tom grabbed me by the hand and pulled me forward. I looked back over my shoulder at the round stone house. No one had emerged from it. The elders of Soulvine Moor sat in their drugged state, watching someplace, somewhere in the Country of the Dead.

  I ran with Tom until I could run no further. When I faltered and fell, he caught me. We rested briefly in the darkness, and then he made me start again. I lost track of time, place, everything but the terrible pictures in my head.

  My mother, fresh blood on the lap of her lavender gown—

  A crowned figure in the fog—

  ‘Come on, Peter!' said Tom.

  ‘ You don't belong here, not like this. But soon.'

  Boom boom-boom-boom booooom ...

  The snap of jaws on flesh and bone—

  My mother, fresh blood on the lap of her lavender gown—

  ‘Come on – just a little further.'

  We went a little further. Further still. We stopped. I tumbled to the ground in the greatest exhaustion I have ever known and then I was asleep, and mercifully without dreams.

  23

  I woke in a forest, under a huge oak tree. Beside me slept a large grey dog. Tom crouched over a pile of kindling, blowing gently on sparks struck from his steel and flint. He couldn't stop blowing long enough to speak, so he waved one hand at me. The dog stirred, stood and stretched. A bird sang, stopped, sang again.

  The scene was so quiet, so mundane, that unreality took me. Had I really seen last night's horror at Hygryll? Had I really lain bound, ready to be killed while the elders of Soulvine Moor waited for my flesh? Had a pack of dogs really materialized from nowhere and—

  Nothing could materialize from nowhere, and I knew only one place from which a solid body could be brought from empty air. But that required being brought by a hisaf, and anyway there were no dogs in the Country of the Dead.