Daughter of the Dark: Shadow Through Time 2

by Louise Cusack

  Kert turned back to Lae who simply stood with eyes closed, swaying. He wondered if she was even awake. ‘Come traitress,’ he said softly, and tugged on the rope. Like a sleepwalker she set off on his trail and they wended their way down narrow tunnels to the dank and musty lair of the dungeon master.

  ‘My Lord Sh’hale,’ he said heartily, resplendent in his coat of woven hair and with a wide smile in his toothless mouth. Then his eye lit on Kert’s captive with her distinctive right-face tattoo. His smile faded. ‘Our Lady of Be’uccdha?’ he said.

  ‘A hostage,’ Kert replied, handing the rope into his large, fleshy hands. ‘Her father, The Dark, killed our King Mihale and may try to take the Volcastle. Her presence here, alive, will buy us time.’

  ‘Our Lord and King Mihale is dead? By The Dark’s hand?’

  Kert nodded, noting how this unwelcome news brought a flare of hostility to the dungeon master’s eye as he glanced again at Lae. ‘Alive and unharmed,’ Kert reiterated, nodding at the girl, then he turned to make his way to the Great Hall where the remaining Royal Guardsmen, those who had not accompanied their king to the shrine, would be awaiting his commands.

  Behind him, Lae called, ‘He may have agents in the Volcastle. Find them before they find Ghett.’

  Kert quickened his pace, giving no acknowledgment to her warning, but again in his mind came the small voice of reason, asking why she would say such a thing if she still served her father.

  For questions such as these Kert had no ready answer, yet his resolve towards Lae did not weaken. It would be a better fate to die in Haddash than risk his new king’s life on the word of a Be’uccdha.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘She’s such a quiet baby,’ Sarah stared down at Glimmer lying in her new bassinette. The child gazed solemnly back at her. ‘Why doesn’t she cry?’

  ‘To what purpose?’ Pagan said from the chair at her side where he bent to tie his boot laces. ‘We feed and change her when it is required.’

  ‘And that’s another thing …’

  He knotted the last lace and straightened in time to see Sarah’s gaze skid away from him and onto his rumpled bed. A pained expression came to her face and she closed her eyes briefly before turning back to him. Pagan made a mental note to tidy his room before breakfast in future.

  ‘… She wets her nappy five times a day,’ Sarah went on, pretending nothing had bothered her. ‘Regular as clockwork. And I’m sure if I held her over the toilet at seven each night we wouldn’t need to deal with the messy one either.’

  Pagan shrugged. ‘Then by all means, let us do that.’ He stood and gathered his dagger which he then secreted in his boot, the only weapon Sarah would allow him to keep on his person. His sword remained hidden beneath his bed but he kept it sharp.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said as he straightened to look at her again. They’d known each other only a week, but already he recognised that frustrated tone.

  ‘I understand that you are worrying over matters which can only benefit us,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not worrying. I’m just … commenting.’ She tried to keep frowning but he smiled at her and eventually she wore an exasperated smile of her own. ‘All right, I am worrying, but she’s so different, and I don’t even know what to do with normal babies.’

  ‘I will be working in the vegetable garden this morning,’ he said, deliberately changing the subject as he strapped on the baby sling, then slotted Glimmer into it, snuggled against his chest.

  ‘Do you remember which insects to avoid?’ Reminding Pagan he had let a huntsman spider walk over the child.

  Sarah herself had told him that this particular variety of insect did not bite unless provoked and Pagan had wisely chosen not to provoke it. Yet rather than applauding his common sense, Sarah had been angry watching it scuttle off the baby’s arm, then infuriated when Pagan had reminded her it was harmless. Though only certain insects were deadly, to Sarah’s mind all were to be avoided, for reasons he could not begin to fathom.

  Seeing how upset the incident had made Sarah, Pagan considered it fortunate she had not come upon them seconds earlier when Glimmer had used her power to regrow the spider’s missing leg. Pagan had seen a crippled butterfly land on her hand the day before, only to rise and fly away, its gossamer appendages full and straight. He’d wondered if perhaps the wing he’d thought crippled had simply been yet to unfold completely. But the spider had been missing a leg, and Pagan had seen it sprout and regrow as it stood on Glimmer’s arm. She had healed it, but he had said nothing to Sarah, fearing that knowledge of Glimmer’s powers would frighten her.

  Listening to her fears now, he knew he had made the right decision.

  ‘Nothing will hurt Glimmer,’ he said, assuaging his pride by telling himself Sarah did not realise her constant questioning of his abilities was an insult to his training and his Guardian birthright. She’d called him a puppy once, commenting on the size of his feet, and although Pagan had not understood the reference, he had heard the affectionate derision in her voice. She was a matron, and he only barely a man. Naturally she would think of him as inexperienced, and just as naturally that made Pagan want to prove himself to her all the more. ‘And I will make our lunch when I return,’ he said.

  ‘Not for me,’ she replied. ‘I’ll be out until two. The Wiltshire funeral is on this Saturday and old Mrs Wiltshire can’t decide on the font she wants for her husband’s memorial booklet. The font, I ask you.’ Sarah shook her head, looking relieved to have a change of subject. ‘She doesn’t care what flowers we have, I can pick any hymns I like, and the standard prayers are fine. But the booklet is too plain. She wants it … fancier. I tell you, the sooner the Catholic church finds a replacement for Father Thomas the better. Let the Mrs Wiltshire’s of the world harass him for a change. I’ve got enough on my plate already. Three funerals this week. Three. And one family have decided they want special clothing on the body when I’ve already dressed and prepared it. Now Mrs bloody Wiltshire and her font, when the booklets aren’t even my job.’ Sarah ran out of breath, finally.

  And though he knew it would infuriate her, Pagan smiled. Despite her complaints, most of which he did not understand, Sarah loved her job and felt affection towards even those who made it difficult, therefore he felt no need to sympathise. ‘You will be like her when you are old,’ he said and Sarah raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Lucky you’ve never met her,’ she replied, ‘or I’d be miffed. There are feral pigs who look better than Mrs Wiltshire.’

  Pagan’s smile widened. ‘I meant that you would be difficult with people because of the perversity of your nature. Added to the fact that you find honesty difficult, and take pleasure in meaningless banter.’

  She shook her head. ‘Assassinating my character after only a week. How will you be treating me in a month?’

  ‘With gratitude and kindness,’ Pagan said, knowing from her expression that she had taken no offence. ‘If I cannot make your lunch, will you let me make dinner?’

  She simply gazed at him for a moment before saying, ‘The perfect guest.’ Yet her tone was not one of appreciation but of sadness, and Pagan was sure he knew the cause.

  ‘If not for this,’ he said and pointed at his bed.

  Sarah said nothing, yet he was sure he saw a faint blush rise from the collar of her shirt. Was it embarrassment at him uncovering her concerns?

  ‘I know I am not tidy,’ he went on. ‘and I apologise for that. It is a failing my father worked in vain to eliminate, and I fear it will take further diligence on my part to correct it.’

  She shook her head and took a step backwards into the hallway, ‘It’s your room. You …’ she waved an arm around it, ‘… keep it however you want. I don’t mind.’ Yet her gaze strayed again to the unmade bed and Pagan found he did not believe her reassurance.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said when she would have walked off. She turned back but did not look at him. ‘Something worries you, yet you pretend it does not. Will you tell me
—’

  ‘No,’ she said clearly, and surprisingly loud. Then she met his eyes. ‘Just … no.’

  Pagan nodded. ‘I will respect your privacy,’ he said softly.

  She gazed at him a moment longer, her expression haunted as he’d never seen it before, even when she’d been frightened of him. Then she turned abruptly and left.

  Pagan looked down at the babe strapped to his chest, her lolling head supported by the sling’s quilted backing. ‘I fear I have troubled her, yet I do not know how,’ he said. Glimmer gazed back at him with interest, her small hands bunched into fists at her chest. Pagan nudged one, and the tiny hand opened to grasp his finger. ‘I wish you were older so I could begin to teach you the warrior way.’ he said. But it would be at least a year before Glimmer had the coordination necessary to stand and wield a sword, even a tiny wooden practice sword such as he had been trained with.

  ‘I must be patient,’ he said. The time would pass quickly if he filled it constructively. Yet how he longed to be reunited with Lae whom he had last seen in the hands of attacking Raiders. Long nights he had lain abed convincing himself that she lived. In his mind Lae waited for him in the Volcastle gardens, all restless energy and mischief, as likely to scold him for his tardiness in returning as she was to welcome him with a kiss. And though she was as unpredictable as the wind. Pagan didn’t care to change her.

  It would be at least fourteen years until he saw her again, yet Pagan knew he would remain faithful to their betrothal vow. Only three years for Lae, but would she wait?

  SHE THINKS OF YOU EVEN NOW, the voice inside his mind said and Pagan felt his breath catch. The Great Guardian spoke to him of Lae.

  ‘Is she to be my wife?’ he said aloud. ‘Will she wait?’

  SHE WILL WAIT.

  Calm washed over Pagan, dissolving the anxieties that had eaten at his heart. Lae would be his. The stone certainty of the Great Guardian’s pronouncement had left no room for doubt. He need not fear that she would forget him and find love with another. The destiny that had seen them exchange insults for endearments would not be denied. He must simply discharge his duties as Glimmer’s Champion and love would be his, though not contentment, he feared, remembering Lae’s pranks. He did not doubt that she had come to love him — more, he flattered himself, than she had loved his cousin Talis before their betrothal had been broken — but that love would not still her sharp tongue if she felt the need to berate him. Still, Pagan had the remedy for that. When she had last seen fit to snap at him he had kissed her, and in wonder at that first kiss she had innocently pledged herself to him.

  He smiled to remember her wide eyes and the way her hand had risen to cover her lips in shock, although the kiss had been brief and awkwardly met. How he longed to see the expression on her face after he had kissed her properly. And now knew that he would.

  Glimmer’s tiny hand squeezed his finger and he looked down into her eyes again, ‘I’m going to marry your sister,’ he told her, and the words were a reminder to Pagan that one day he must tell Glimmer that she too was a daughter of The Dark, the man who had killed their king. He must teach her not to trust him, for surely when Pagan returned Glimmer to Ennae to fulfil her destiny, The Dark would be there waiting for them.

  Would Lae be at his side? She had sworn that her love for her father was dead, yet she had not killed him when she’d had the opportunity, nor told Noorinya he was at the royal enclosure where a quick stab of the Plainswoman’s curved knife would have ended all their woes. Did Lae still harbour some attachment to him?

  ‘When I kill The Dark, as I must to avenge the king’s death, will Lae hate me?’ Pagan asked the Great Guardian, for he feared that future.

  ONLY A CHILD CAN COME BETWEEN YOU.

  A child? Pagan waited, but there was no more and he wondered what the Great Guardian meant by these words. Would his position as Champion to The Catalyst distance him from Lae even when they were reunited?

  Glimmer pulled on his captured finger and Pagan refocused on her. Time was passing and he had work to attend to. Keeping busy had stopped his thoughts straying towards loneliness, and an aching body at the end of the day fell more readily to sleep. He didn’t want to disrupt that pattern. ‘Let us concentrate on Magoria,’ he said to the babe, wiggling her hand with his finger and smiling at her, although she simply continued to gaze at him intently, the processes of her mind hidden by her immature body.

  ‘Perhaps we will discover new colours to add to our tally,’ he said, ‘if not in the garden, then among the thin parchments left in the letterbox each afternoon.’ Although Pagan would be careful to avoid the lingerie catalogues in future. At least while Sarah was watching. The disruption that innocent mistake had made wasn’t worth repeating. However, Pagan had to admit that the amount of bared flesh allowed among the women of this world both shocked and delighted him.

  He had promised himself that championing Glimmer would mature him, that he would return to Lae a better man, his womanising ways a distant memory, his heart and soul fixed on just one woman. But would it take him the whole fourteen years to muster the same discipline for his eyes?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ellega of Verdan awoke with the sensation of lying on a rough stone floor yet with one leg hanging over vacant air. Her head throbbed and it was a moment before she remembered being locked out of the Volcastle and stumbling around in the dark. Her foot had slipped on loose stones and …

  A sudden stillness of fear came over her. She opened her eyes to blurred vision and a stabbing pain in the temples which did nothing to dull her panic. Her breath came in short gasps until finally her sight returned and through her dishevelled braids she saw rock beneath her. When she turned her head the rocks ended, the cliff face fell away and far below she could see mist blanketing the lowlands. Cold, like the bitterest winds from the north, sucked at her heart. The open air around her seemed to pull her towards the edge and primitive fear took hold of her entrails, making her moan deep in her throat.

  Her childhood spent in the close confines of her family hold deep beneath the waters of the Verdan Loch had not prepared her for a life outdoors, yet Ellega had tried, for Mihale’s sake, to become accustomed to moving in open expanses. She had gazed upon this very vista of the mist covered lowlands many times from her Volcastle rooms, yet always with a hand firmly gripping the window casing. Never freestanding. And certainly never overhanging the edge of a precipice.

  Fear paralysed her limbs, yet she had wit to see that this very immobility would likely save her. Soon they would come looking for her and if she could remain still she would cheat death and live. Live … while her beloved Mihale lay dead. Could she live without love? For surely she could never love another. There had only ever been Mihale in her heart, and how full that heart had been when he had finally sent word that he would take her to bride. Full to exploding, and yet the utterance of a few terrible words had stolen that joy and now her heart ached with emptiness and unfulfilled dreams of the child between them that would never be.

  The child her beloved had apparently given to a servant.

  That thought caused so sharp a pain in her heart that she curled around it, cushioning it with her thin limbs. A flurry of rocks slid over the edge, skittering down the mountainside below, and this frightened Ellega. Yet rather than endangering her, the act brought her more fully onto the ledge she occupied. Timidly, she raised her head and looked beyond her. Only a few solid stones lay between herself and the forest. A few steps and she could be back in the Volcastle to safety and … the vision of Mihale’s child growing in another woman’s belly.

  Ellega closed her eyes, moaned again, softly, despairingly. What would she do? Whatever she attempted must be done quickly before the Volcastle guard found her.

  It was painful to move at first. Her head ached, her joints were stiff from sleeping on the rough ground and her muscles were tensed from fear. Her gown had twisted around her legs and the open air around her seemed to suck at her, affecting her b
alance as she scrabbled towards life. Yet at last she reached the first large boulder and pulled herself up on it, lying still then, panting for breath, for calm in a breast that thundered with terror.

  ‘I will live,’ she whispered, and the sound of her own voice, however tremulous, gave her courage. She repeated their family motto, ‘My enemies will not defeat me,’ this time imagining her brother smiling at her, encouraging her. She reached for the next handhold and dragged herself up. placing her feet carefully so they would not catch on her gown and cause her to slip. ‘I’m coming, Barrion,’ she whispered, imagining him waiting above, his hand held out to her, his large bearded face tilted towards her, shaggy hair falling about his shoulders like a coarse thread collar.

  ‘I am here,’ she said as she pulled herself up over the last boulder and rolled onto the lush grass of the forest edge. ‘I am here.’ But Barrion did not answer her, and in the cool morning breeze Ellega felt more alone than she ever had in her life. ‘I will go to my brother,’ she said between breaths, and the idea formed in her mind that this could be done.

  Had she not travelled to the Volcastle when news had come of Mihale’s proposal? Admittedly she’d had maids to serve her and an entourage, but she knew the way. A two-day journey through forest and mountain grandeur. Then she would be home.

  Home. How sweet that word sounded in her heart. And how sweet to hold her brother again in her arms and hear his rumbling voice, to feel his beard tickling her nose as he kissed her forehead. A faint smile touched her lips, and drawing on the strength of the hope that blossomed within her, she rose awkwardly and brushed dirt from her hands and then her gown.

  Her gown. Her wedding gown. Ellega’s hands stilled on the soft fabric and began to tremble. Soon the trembling gripped all of her and great sobs welled in her throat, yet she swallowed them back. If despair overcame her again she would not reach her brother. She must reach her brother, for if she was returned to the Volcastle and made to watch the child of her beloved born to another, she would surely go mad.