by Kim Wilkins
‘You might have died, Ash, or been nothing but a breathing corpse for life. You simply cannot do something so dangerous.’
‘I had to.’
‘I tried to tell you this yesterday, but you wouldn’t listen. Perhaps now you will.’ His voice grew softer. ‘You can’t live in two worlds. If protecting your sisters — and I note you have four and they are all trouble-prone — means performing such dangerous magic, then you need to think very clearly about what you are risking, and what you are gaining. Life does go on beyond this house, Ash. It does. But we are not part of it any more. To try to be both the old Ash and the new Ash means you will literally be split in two.’
Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, searing her eyeballs.
Unweder, uncharacteristically tender, stroked her hair. ‘Ah, there,’ he said. ‘What you did was brave and you demonstrated enormous power and ability. But no more of that now. No more of that.’
Ash sniffed back the tears. Unweder was right. She had to sever that last connection or go mad. Her Becoming was not to be with her sisters; she had to let them go. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘no more of that.’
He smiled, suddenly bright. ‘In a good turn of events, though ... No, I will show you myself.’ He helped her to her feet and led her to the door.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘You will see.’ He opened the door.
She did see. Outside his house, a riot of plants had sprung to life. Vines and leafy trees, flowers and deep hedges. As she watched, she could almost see it growing, inch by inch. The dead zone was no more.
But then her second sight shifted and she saw them. Thousands upon thousands of elementals, amassed like an army outside her door, looking at her expectantly with their wild pagan faces. As though waiting for orders.
She gasped.
‘What is it?’ he said, his good eye urgent.
‘You can’t see them?’
‘See what?’
‘There are so many! Thousands!’ She remembered bidding them to help her, enslaving them with the force of her mind. ‘It’s an army. I’ve summoned an army by accident.’
His eyes widened, but he was still smiling.
Ash thought about her Becoming, her fear that she was doomed to take innocents with her. Who was to say this multitude of elementals wouldn’t take the least glimmers of her mind and turn it into action? Was this how it was to unfold? A careless thought, an army of magical beings to make it real? Panic shimmered through her veins. ‘We must get away from here, Unweder.’ And then an idea. The dragon in her dream; the dragon in Unweder’s aspirations. ‘We will go west. We will hunt that dragon.’
‘You would help me?’
‘Yes, I would.’ Not so that he could take the dragon’s body. So that she could kill the creature and reclaim her Becoming.
He nodded, hooked his arm through hers. ‘We’ll leave tomorrow,’ he said.
‘No,’ she replied. Tomorrow wasn’t soon enough to start the process of cheating her own fate. ‘We leave today.’
Just inside Blicstowe, on the first laneway past the guardhouse, there stood a blacksmith’s shop where Seaton, Sabert’s brother lived. Sabert and his brother didn’t get along — Bluebell corrected herself, hadn’t got along — but his wife had never borne a child who survived past the age of five and she had taken an interest in Eni’s welfare. Bluebell knocked on their door with Eni under her arm just as the sun was setting behind the giant’s ruins.
Seaton’s wife opened the door. The clang and hiss of the forge echoed out into the laneway.
Seaton’s wife curtseyed. ‘My lord.’
‘I come as Sabert’s friend,’ Bluebell said. ‘He is dead. There is nobody to take his son.’ She thrust Eni forwards. ‘He doesn’t know much, but he needs to be loved.’ Bluebell’s voice almost broke and she kicked herself inside. ‘Will you take him?’
The woman took Eni’s hand. ‘Yes, of course. For how long?’
‘I don’t know. Forever, if you’ll have him. I’ll make sure there is money given to you every month to help with his keep. But he is clever enough to learn a few small jobs.’
‘Forever?’ Seaton’s wife glanced around. ‘I’ll have to check with Seaton.’
‘Take him tonight. Feed him and give him a soft bed. Talk to your husband. I will be back tomorrow to hear your answer. You’ll have to forgive me. I can’t stay. I have to go and kill someone.’
She nodded nervously.
Bluebell crouched in front of Eni, touching his soft cheek. ‘All will be well for you now, child. You aren’t to worry.’
‘Bluebell,’ he said, and Bluebell couldn’t stop herself from smiling.
Willow found the millet farm as night was closing in. She was exhausted, filthy, stained with blood and dirt, but the worst was the voices in her head. Echoing voices bouncing around like mirrors within mirrors. Some of them loved her, some of them hated her, and she didn’t know who they belonged to. She cried out in her head over and over for Maava’s guidance, but it didn’t come. Just this confusion of worship and abuse, until she didn’t know herself. All she knew was that she had to find Wylm and Eni. Wylm could make the bad voices go away, she just knew it.
She tied the horse to a beam and dismounted. The door was wide open so she went in. ‘Wylm? Are you here?’ she called.
‘Whore. Murderer.’
Her blood fluttered. She needed him. ‘Wylm?’
She went through to the back door, then looked out into the garden. A dark shape on the grass. She cried out.
‘Wylm! Wylm!’ She ran towards him. A rook, which had been sitting on the hilt of the sword that protruded from his chest, took to the sky with clatter of its wings. She bent over him. Blood. So much blood. ‘Oh, Maava. Maava, no. Don’t let it be true!’
She laid her head on his chest and wept, calling over and over in her head for Maava to help her, to stop her from losing her connection to the world completely. But the voices were gone now. There was just the sound of crickets and her own ragged sobs.
‘Good to see you, my lord.’
‘Blicstowe has been too empty without you and your father.’ ‘My lord, may I talk to you briefly about my case with my neighbour?’
Bluebell left her horse with the gatekeepers and stalked through town. From Seaton’s forge to the family compound, she had to fend off the greetings and supplications of many people. She stopped them all with a gentle wave of dismissal and a promise that she would be able to talk to them soon. Not now. Not now. The rage was boiling inside her. Gudrun had started this. She had poisoned Bluebell’s father and then the woman’s son had nearly killed her. Gudrun wouldn’t be closing her eyes to sleep in her soft bed tonight. She would never sleep again.
Bluebell didn’t go round to the gate, climbing the fence into the compound instead. Father’s hall stood tall and mighty against approaching dusk. A shiver of night on the wind. There was the bower she’d had Dunstan set up for Gudrun. Bluebell drew her sword, hungry for the kill. Nothing and no-one could stop her now. Not Wylm’s pleas for mercy. Not Willow’s schemes. Not even Rose’s veiled appeals to her inner sense of good and right. Her heart hammered a steady rhythm in her chest; the surge of her blood made her feel more alive than she had ever felt. Clear. Bright. Juicy.
The padlock was not on the door.
Bluebell’s guts contracted. She kicked open the door. No padlock, but still Gudrun was here, sitting on her bed, packing a bag. She looked up and saw Bluebell and shrieked, scrambling up on the bed and whacking her knees on the post.
Bluebell lifted her sword and advanced, point first. ‘I know what you did,’ she said.
But then the sharp point of a sword was in Bluebell’s own back, pressing against her spine. Enraged, she swung around, flipping her wrist and bringing the sword up to cut the head off the bastard who was trying to take her moment from her. The clang of steel on steel as his sword stopped hers with such force that she caught her breath.
‘Father?’
<
br /> ‘Put it away, Bluebell. That’s not how to fix anything.’
In her tunnel-visioned moment, Bluebell hadn’t seen them here in the bower: Æthlric and Yldra. Her heart thudded, her sword still pressed down against his. A moment passed, and then another. He was old; he had been asleep for weeks. He was no match for her unwell. He may not even be a match for her when he was well any more. The desire to kill Gudrun was so fierce that a fog of it had clouded her mind.
She glanced at Yldra, who raised an eyebrow. In challenge, perhaps?
Then back to her father, who met her gaze with his own. Her father, her lord, her king.
Sick with it, squashing down a rage that wouldn’t fit behind her ribs, aware that Yldra was watching her and judging her.
Bluebell dropped her sword.
Thirty-four
Bluebell let herself into the state room. She and her father had spoken barely a dozen words to each other since the day she had arrived back in Blicstowe, but he had sent Dunstan to tell her she had to meet with him. Dressed in her mail, freshly oiled by her steward, with the king’s colours on her sash. She veered between apprehensive and defiant, but ultimately his word was her directive.
She closed the door behind her. Æthlric sat at the table in the middle of the room, his hands folded in front of him. Around him the walls were hung with rich furs and elaborate tapestries, gold and silver, and amber and garnet objects befitting a king. His hair was clean and combed, his grey beard trimmed close to his face. He was dressed beautifully in a deep red tunic and yellow cloak. Nothing about his body or face hinted that he had been so long out of the world. But the deep line etched between his brow told of the wife he’d had to send home to Tweoning in disgrace. Try as she might, Bluebell could not feel sorry for him.
Try as she might, Bluebell could not feel the overwhelming joy she’d expected to feel when he was well again.
‘Thank you for coming, Bluebell. Are you well?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Any news from your search party?’
She had deployed a group of three men to search Ælmesse for Willow, who had disappeared after trying to set fire to the stable with Bluebell in it.
‘No. She isn’t anywhere to be found. I’m not concerned.’
‘You think she’ll turn up?’
Bluebell shrugged. She wasn’t concerned because if Willow was dead, that would save her some trouble. She couldn’t put her own sister to the sword, but for treason the girl would rot in a jail for life. Less pleasant.
‘Don’t stop looking for her.’
Bluebell opened her mouth to say, ‘Perhaps we should let her disappear or die,’ but of course she couldn’t rely on her father to make sensible decisions about those who tried to kill them. ‘They will find her,’ she said instead.
He nodded, then tilted his head to the side and said, ‘You have been avoiding me.’
‘I have not.’
‘You have. You make excuses when I enter the room, you don’t show up for meals. Dunstan said you ran away from him when he saw you in the hall the other day.’
‘I didn’t run from him. I was late. I was meant to be at Seaton’s house for a meal, to visit Eni.’
He ignored her excuse. ‘I realise that you and I disagreed over Gudrun, but you understand that it looked bad enough that you killed her son.’
‘I was defending my own life.’
‘I know that. But your reputation hangs in the balance. Those who hate you would gladly see you as a monster, one who kills off members of her own family. Killing a woman of nearly sixty winters while she was unarmed? You don’t want that hanging around you forever.’
‘That’s not why you stopped me,’ Bluebell said. ‘You stopped me because you still loved her. Even though she tried to kill you.’
His body sagged, almost imperceptibly. ‘She did not intend to kill me.’
‘So you’ve said. So she said. She intended to get you to turn on me.’
He waved away her remark, regaining his kingly bearing. ‘She is gone. I have put her aside, and she has returned to her home and she has to live forever with what she has done, and how it led to the death of her son. That is punishment enough.’
Blood would have been nice. ‘If you say so, my lord. I have something to ask you.’
‘What is it?’
‘I want to take my hearthband and get out of Blicstowe. I want to retire poor Isern and have a new horse. And I want a remote post, maybe up at the Lyteldyke garrison. I need time away from ...’ She dropped her head, choosing her words carefully. ‘... from the family.’
He smiled tightly. ‘I’m afraid you can’t. Not just yet. You have to represent Ælmesse at Ivy’s marriage next week.’
‘Me? Why me? Nobody wants me at a wedding.’
‘Who else can go? I have already been away so long from matters of state. Willow is missing, Ash has taken herself off among the undermagicians and Rose hasn’t returned from taking Yldra home.’
Bluebell winced as she remembered Yldra’s last conversation with her. ‘I see you do whatever he says. I don’t think I’ll stay here in Blicstowe after all.’ She had demanded a cart and a retinue, with Rose to keep her company. No more travelling fluidly and swiftly in the night as she had with Bluebell and then, of course, with Æthlric. Just a crippled old woman who seemed determined not to reconnect with her family. She hoped Rose would stay a little while with her, and they could be of some use or comfort to each other.
‘So will you go?’ Æthlric said.
You do whatever he says. She nodded her head. ‘You are my lord and king. If it is your wish that I should go, then I will go.’
‘Bluebell,’ he said, his voice soft, ‘I am your father. I ask you as my daughter. I don’t order you as your king.’
She dropped her head and he stood and came around the table. One hand on her shoulder, his free hand under her chin turning up her face to meet his gaze. In his eyes she saw his love, his strength, but also his humanity. He had made mistakes. He didn’t always know what was right.
And yet, she didn’t have the give in her to excuse his behaviour. The way he had treated Yldra and Gudrun had made her doubt him. She didn’t want to be in a world where she doubted her father, but doubt him she did; and that made life smell different somehow. She felt uncertain, and he was at the heart of that uncertainty.
She forced a smile. ‘I am glad you are well again, Father,’ she said.
‘You will go to Netelchester for me?’
‘Can I drink too much at the ceremony and disgrace myself?’
He laughed softly. ‘Of course.’
Bluebell nodded. ‘Then, yes,’ she said, ‘I will go for you.’
Epilogue
Gudrun was woken by thumping, dogs barking. She sat up, pulling a shawl around her shoulders and listening fearfully.
Finally, the door to her bower opened. ‘My lady,’ a voice said.
‘Yes, Othilaf, what is it?’
‘A young woman stands at the entrance to the house. She won’t speak to anyone but you.’
Gudrun rose and came to the door of her bower. The dogs still barked. ‘A young woman?’
‘She won’t tell us her name.’
Gudrun shouted at the dogs to be quiet. ‘Stay close by me,’ she said to Othilaf.
‘I will.’
Across the cold floor and past the cold hearth. The open front door let in icy air. There would be snow before long. Outside stood a woman, her hood and cloak covering her from view. Not tall enough to be Bluebell. Gudrun let her body relax. Maybe she would eventually come to believe that Bluebell wouldn’t one day hunt her down to kill her.
‘Who are you?’ Gudrun asked.
‘Make your guard go away.’
‘I ...’ She turned to Othilaf, gestured him away with her head, but noted with comfort that he stood a short distance away, under the beam to the kitchen. ‘He’s gone,’ she said to the girl.
The girl pulled back her hood with one
hand. Gudrun recognised her at once.
‘Willow?’
‘I am not alone,’ she said.
Gudrun peered out into the frosty darkness. ‘What do you mean?’
And with her free hand she unfolded the front of her cape. Nestled in the crook of her arm was a tiny infant.
‘Oh! A baby!’ Gudrun breathed. ‘Come in. Come out of the cold. The poor thing must be frozen.’
Willow came into the house and handed Gudrun the infant, then collapsed to the floor and sat, rocking, holding her knees. The babe began to mewl. It was so very young. Weeks old, perhaps even days.
‘Is this your baby?’ she asked Willow, adopting the familiar rocking motion she had used nearly twenty years ago with her own infant son. A liquid pang, remembering he was gone.
Willow looked up and nodded. ‘Yes, but also yours, in a way. That is to say ... this is Wylm’s child.’
Gudrun’s heart stood still.
‘Will you help us?’
‘Of course,’ Gudrun said, words falling over each other. ‘You will both live here with us and the truth will come to light in its own time. My son! Oh, I am happy for the first time since I can remember. But nobody knows about the child but me? You haven’t told?’
Willow stood again, shaking her head. ‘No, nobody knows.’
‘Only as my grandchild, as Wylm’s child ... this baby couldn’t be more vulnerable.’
Willow smiled a hard smile, which gave Gudrun a moment’s pause in her joy and excitement. The younger woman peeled off her cloak and let it pool at her feet. Around her waist, she wore a sword-belt. ‘No, not vulnerable at all,’ Willow said, drawing the sword in the dim firelight. ‘For here is her father’s sword.’
Acknowledgements
This book has had a long and arduous voyage and it’s difficult for me to remember the many well-wishers along the way.
Jack Dann and Jonathan Strahan gave me a forum to first write about Thyrsland in Legends of Australian Fantasy. Crucial advice on the drafts came from Deonie Fiford and Paula Ellery. Valuable research assistance was provided by Heather Gammage, Marcus Harmes and Janine Haig. The people who loved the story and brought it to publication with their enthusiasm include Drew Keyes, Jo Mackay, Sue Brockhoff and Stephanie Smith.