Dark Mist Rising

by Anna Kendall

  I moved closer, to peer at her face. She showed no shrinking, no fear. Under the hood of her white cloak, her face was neither young nor old, plain nor pretty, and her eyes were green. I said, ‘You're one ... another one of the women of that shadow web, those who use soul arts—'

  ‘I am a witch. Why can you not use the word?' she said impatiently, and I recognized the tone. It was Mother Chilton's tone, Alysse's tone, even Fia's tone – all the web women who had scolded me for not doing as they instructed.

  I said, deliberately avoiding the word witch, ‘I am not a traitor. I merely need food for—'

  ‘We know why you need food. Here.' She thrust the bundle into my arms, then leaned close to me. Her breath came frosty from between lips thinned with anger.

  ‘You are a traitor, Roger Kilbourne, whether you know it or not. You were told to not cross over again and—'

  ‘My father, a hisaf, said that I—'

  ‘—yet you have not only done so, you have brought with you three from the land of the living. Do you suppose your father ever imagined you could do such a thing? That if he had ever imagined it, he would not have warned you not to? You have even brought one with great and untaught talent, and now—'

  ‘I tried to get Alysse to help me rescue the princess, and she said that the princess did not matter!'

  ‘We did not know then all that Stephanie is, or how she might be used. But I am concerned with you, Roger Kilbourne. You were told how Soulvine Moor seeks to destroy the web that threads together the living and dead. You were told. Yet you have immeasurably damaged that web by your reckless actions. Three living brought into the Country of the Dead, three who are not hisafs, when just one born there has made possible such havoc! How can we make you understand what you have done?'

  ‘The savages were going to shoot them,' I said, and despite myself it came out like a sulky boy, not a man rescuing his sovereign and his friends. Always the web women did this to me – reduced me to an erring child. They rescued me, seduced me, scolded me, reproved me. I was weary of it all.

  ‘Yes, the savages were going to shoot them, and do you not think Stephanie would have been safer in the trance of the Dead than as your mad sister's tool to destroy both living and dead? You were told that once before. She would not be quiescent for ever, you know. Better she should be dead.'

  Her callousness angered me. Or perhaps it was not callousness but, rather, an ability to look further ahead than I ever could. She would not be quiescent for ever. But Stephanie would have been so for a very long time, and she would have been deprived of her life here, in the realm of the living – a little girl, six years old. She might even have ended up in one of the circles of the Dead destroyed for ever by a whirling vortex from Soulvine Moor. I saw Stephanie's thin sweet face, eyes with their dark shadows of sleeplessness framed by lank brown hair, and everything in me recoiled from this web woman's pragmatic and far-seeing willingness to sacrifice the princess, and with her both Tom and Jee.

  I said, carefully spacing each word, ‘I ... would ... not ... let ... them ... be ... killed.'

  ‘No, you would not. And as a result, Soulvine Moor has acquired more power from the damage you have done to the natural divide between life and death. You must stop crossing over. Do you even understand what your actions have enabled? It is partly because of you that hisafs can now cross bodily and not merely in essence. How you could take it upon yourself to—'

  A shout from the shuttered hut. Sudden light spilling from an open door. The crack of a gun.

  Immediately I bit my tongue and crossed over. But not before I saw a white deer, almost invisible against the snow, bound away from the chicken house and into the winter woods.

  49

  The web woman's bundle contained bread, cheese and dried cherries. Tom, Jee and Stephanie ate eagerly, too absorbed to even ask how I had obtained such riches, although Jee glanced at me sharply. Stephanie's lips turned red from cherries, a bit of colour in her pale face. Tom got crumbs in his beard.

  But I, despite hunger, could swallow nothing. My belly churned, already full of doubts, questions, horrors real and envisioned. Was I really a traitor, aiding Soulvine Moor in its quest to rob the quiescent Dead of whatever should come next for them? Had I really made things worse in this war?

  Things did not look worse in the Country of the Dead. They looked exactly the same: light patches of pale fog motionless over the ground, low even light, stillness and quiet and very few Dead in these high mountains. But more must be happening beyond my sight. How had the web woman known of those happenings – or indeed where I was in the Country of the Dead? Web women were not hisafs; they could not cross over. I did not understand what they could or could not do.

  I did not understand anything.

  ‘By damn, that tasted good,' Tom said with deep satisfaction. ‘I'm ready now to walk ten miles, see if I'm not. And to carry you the whole way, Your Grace.'

  ‘I will walk with Jee,' Stephanie said. The circles under her eyes were darker than ever, the tender flesh looking far too bruised for a child, but her cherry-stained lips smiled. The smile brought me no cheer.

  I, Roger Kilbourne, aiding Soulvine Moor. And if – when – I brought three mortals back again to the land of the living, would I aid it still more?

  Better she should have been shot.

  No. Not better. No.

  ‘Let us go,' Tom said. ‘We must— What is that?'

  One of the Dead walked towards us from the trees.

  It was an old woman dressed in a gown so frayed and worn that patches of the skirt had weft but no warp. Her eyes were open but unseeing, and she walked in strange jerks, not with the tremors of the very old but rather as if some foreign power moved her unwilling legs. Her arms dangled loosely at her sides. Her face was serene.

  Tom reached for the bow and arrow stolen from a savage soldier.

  ‘No!' I said. ‘She's not dangerous, she's—' What? Dead. She was supposed to be dead. The Dead did not behave like this. ‘Stay here, all of you.'

  They did not, of course. Jee remained with Stephanie but Tom followed me, even as I followed the dead woman. She lurched with that jerky gait across the hilltop and into the trees. There was no trail here. She stumbled in a straight line through undergrowth, across a shallow stream, under a stand of high pines. When she fell over, she righted herself. The falls did not tear her gown nor scratch her face.

  After perhaps a half-mile she came to a group of Dead. They sat in a circle, seven strong. Before she could become the eighth, I grabbed her with my one good hand, turned her to face away from the circle, and shook her hard.

  ‘Mistress! Mistress!'

  Slowly her eyes focused, and behind me I heard Tom draw a sharp breath. He had not seen this before. But always it is old women who are most willing to talk to me.

  ‘What want you, lad?' She spoke in Tarekish, and I switched to that guttural language.

  ‘Where are you going?'

  Puzzlement came into her watery blue eyes. She looked at me, at the countryside, at the featureless sky. ‘I am dead.'

  ‘Yes. Where are you going?'

  ‘No place. Where would a dead person go? I am here.'

  Tom demanded, ‘What does she say?'

  She turned towards his voice and saw the circle of the Dead. Her puzzlement deepened.

  I asked, for the third time, ‘Where are you going?' My belly tightened. If she could actually tell me ...

  But she could not. Old women of the savage mountains were no different from old women of The Queendom. If I had wanted her to talk of her childhood, she might have done so. But the Dead are not interested in talking about the present, not even their own present, not even enough to stay roused. The old woman's face lapsed back to tranquillity while her feet tried again to move towards the circle.

  ‘Tom,' I said, ‘tie her to that tree over there. Tightly enough that she cannot escape.'

  ‘ Tie her? A dead woman?'

  ‘Yes. Tear a strip off
the bottom of her gown if you've nothing else.'

  ‘But why, Roger? She can't harm us!'

  ‘She can harm herself.'

  Tom planted himself firmly in front of me, the old woman between us. Her feet kept moving, although my one good hand easily restrained her frail body. Tom said, as he had once before, ‘I do nothing more without answers, Roger. Tell me about this.'

  I gazed at his troubled face. He meant it. He would obey no more orders without more information. Even though I doubted that he would accept my answers, or believe them, or be reassured by them.

  ‘Soulvine Moor is waging a war with all the rest of us, Tom. With The Queendom and the Unclaimed Lands and Tarek's kingdom. That is the real war, not any rebellion against savage rule. The war is being fought both in the land of the living and the Country of the Dead. Soulvine Moor wants to break down the barrier between the two realms and channel the power of death into themselves, so they can live for ever.'

  Tom's face flashed through several emotions and finally settled into pity.

  ‘Roger,' he said gently, ‘that don't make sense. How can death have power? Why, the woman's dead and just look at her! A limp rag that can't go nowhere.'

  The old woman's feet kept moving, her bare toes brush-ing against my boots. I wanted to make her stop; I wanted to make Tom understand; I wanted to stop explaining what he could never understand. I was exhausted and irritated and afraid.

  ‘That's the best I can tell you,' I snapped. ‘Believe it or not, as you choose. But this war is why Stephanie is having nightmares and why Lady Margaret and the nurse were killed and why I could bring you and Jee and the princess across the grave to this place. You remember the grave, Tom? You remember crossing over? Make sense of that.'

  He did remember. I saw it in his eyes – the darkness and worms and his fleshless arms and legs flailing helplessly – and I felt ashamed. I owed Tom as much as he owed me. But I could not give him explanations I did not have. I knew death had immense power – something bright and terrible rending the sky – but I did not understand how Soulvine Moor was channelling that power. I was a hisaf and I crossed over, but to do something is not necessarily to understand how it is done.

  Tom said, ‘If this old woman sits in that circle over there, it aids ... it aids Soulvine Moor?'

  I nodded. This he could understand: us against them.

  Tom took the woman from my grasp, produced a rope that must have been yet another of his thefts from the Dead, and tied her firmly to a stout oak. His broad face was very pale. Then he dragged two more Dead from the circle and tied them to trees.

  ‘That's enough,' I said, not knowing if it was or not. ‘The circles need at least ten to ... to work. Save some rope.'

  ‘I will,' Tom said grimly. Colour had returned to his face. He had a task to perform. Tasks always steadied him.

  We walked back to Jee and Stephanie, neither of whom asked any questions. I don't know what Jee had told the princess. Then we resumed walking, Tom and Jee carrying the rest of the provisions on their backs. We saw no more circles this high in the mountains, but each time we came to a lone Dead, Tom solemnly tied him or her to a tree.

  One, three, five Dead – out of all the centuries of those who had lived.

  ‘George would be proud of you,' I said, to say something.

  ‘Tell him when you see him,' Tom said, not looking at me. Nor did he smile. His words might have been sarcasm, or not. I could not tell. And I did not ask.

  Stephanie dreamed.

  We could not keep her dreamless for ever. The snatches of sleep she was allowed were not enough, not for anyone. She began to whimper and fuss. The skin beneath her eyes looked so bruised that an observer, had there been one in the Country of the Dead, would have thought we beat her. Nor could Tom, Jee and I keep walking for a whole ‘day' and then do without sleep as, each in turn, we watched over Stephanie to keep her from dreaming. Even Tom's great strength grew less, and we were only, as best I could judge, halfway down the eastern slope of the mountains. As we neared The Queendom, fog grew in the Country of the Dead – not yet thick, still just light wisps drifting across the landscape – but the fog too seemed to trouble Stephanie. She would stare at a drifting patch of grey mist and bury her head in Tom's shoulder or against my side.

  She was stumbling along, holding my good hand, when we came upon another circle of the Dead, and Stephanie broke.

  There were fifteen Dead, and they all held hands. For the last quarter-mile the fog had disappeared almost entirely, and now I saw why: it had all been concentrated in this circle. Fog obscured each of the fifteen heads. If I laid my hand on one of those heads, I knew, it would vibrate like a hive of bees. And in the centre of the circle was a dark dense patch of mist, slowly rotating.

  Tom and Jee froze, staring in horror at a thing they had not yet seen. I had, and yet a shiver ran through my belly and spine. That dark rotating mist was made of watchers from Soulvine Moor, and if the mist did the same thing I had seen once before, those dead men and women would soon be—

  ‘No!' Stephanie shrieked. ‘Make it go away!'

  ‘My lady, my lady,' crooned Jee, unfreezing and hanging over her, his small dirty face mirroring her distress.

  ‘Look away, Your Grace, and we'll go on just like it ain't there!' Tom said, but his false cheer rang hollow to even a child. Futilely he tried to turn her face away from the circle.

  ‘It's there!' Stephanie cried. ‘It's there! I want to go home! I want my nana!'

  And then a storm of tears, greater for having been so long held in. Tom's face went stony. ‘Women's weapons,' he had once said of one of his bedmate's tears, Agnes or Joan or Betsy or Annie. Did he think that of the little princess, who was but six? But I was too weary to explore the corners of Tom Jenkins's brain; my only thought was to put distance between us and the circle. Tom would not be tying these Dead to any tree.

  ‘Carry Stephanie, Tom,' I said. ‘We must keep on.'

  ‘I cannot,' he said.

  Never before had I heard Tom say he could not do something.

  ‘I must rest at least a little while,' he said. ‘I ain't an ox, Roger. Though you think of me as such. Strong dumb Tom, who does your bidding.'

  ‘I don't think of you that way,' I lied.

  ‘It don't matter. But I must sleep, and I will. Over there.'

  He started off around the side of a hill, out of sight of the circle of the Dead. I bit back a sharp retort. Weariness had made us all quarrelsome, but I could not afford a quarrel with Tom. We needed him too much. Biting back my own resentment – if he thought it hard to be a follower, let him try to lead this sorry band – I followed Tom, dragging the sobbing Stephanie.

  All of us lay down. Immediately exhaustion took me.

  I said to Jee, ‘Can you watch Her Grace, Jee?'

  ‘Yes,' he said stoutly. And even though I saw that he too was tired, even though he was a child, I let him. I stretched out on the ground away from Tom, who even in sleep kept close the weapons he had stolen from the Dead: two spears, the bow, a quiver of arrows fashioned by different hands, the shield, a gun. Plus one of his own two knives in his hand. Within moments I slept, the deep and empty sleep that, amazingly, had not once been troubled since we crossed over into the Country of the Dead.

  And then Stephanie dreamed.

  It was her shriek that woke me, but it was Jee who lay asleep – no, not asleep. I jumped up and ran to him. No breath stirred his lips.

  ‘Jee!'

  ‘She came!' Stephanie cried. ‘The bad girl, she wants me to stay here.'

  ‘Jee!'

  I grabbed the slight body and shook it. Jee gave a single great gasp and then once again went limp. He was not yet dead but he would be soon, she was killing him.

  I dropped Jee, raised my good hand and struck Stephanie a blow on the head.

  She slumped to the ground before her small face could even show surprise. Tom yelled and the next moment I lay flat beside the princess, with Tom's knife at my
throat. His eyes glittered with rage, with astonishment, with instinctive defence of his sovereign.

  ‘Tom, does Jee live?'

  Confusion replaced all else. ‘Jee? You attacked the—'

  ‘She was killing him! With her dream.' It was not Stephanie I meant, but even if Tom did not understand, he turned his head to look at Jee.

  ‘Let me up!'

  Tom did, but not for my sake. In a moment he was kneeling between the children. I squeezed my eyes shut tight, suddenly afraid of what my sister had done, of what I myself had done ...

  A great ragged gasp, and then a hoarse cry, as from a throat bruised and scarred. But Jee lived.

  And Stephanie?

  ‘She breathes,' Tom said grimly. ‘But her senses have left her. You did it to stop her dream from killing Jee?'

  ‘Like Lady Margaret. Like her nurse.' I could still feel Tom's knife, and I put my hand to my throat. It came away bloody. ‘Tom, it was all I could do!'

  ‘She's but a little girl!'

  ‘It was all I could do.'

  Jee still lay gasping. Only that could have kept him from the princess. I crawled to him and touched his shoulder. His dark eyes fastened on mine. Slowly colour came back into his face and his breathing grew more regular. Then he started to cry.

  I gathered him into my arms. ‘Hush, Jee. She could not help it. She meant you no harm; it was another working through her dreams. Hush now.'

  He thrust me away, ashamed of having broken down in front of men. Anger was better than fear, so he became angry. ‘What other?' he demanded. ‘Ye be the witch. What other from Witchland kills by our princess?'

  Tom, cradling the unconscious Stephanie, looked at me hard.

  I said, ‘She is the queen of ... of the faithless ones. She lives here, in the Country of the Dead. And she is my half-sister.'

  Silence.

  The silence stretched on while Tom and Jee stared at me. And then another voice spoke into the stillness:

  ‘That will do no good, Roger. Stephanie must revive sometime.'