by Cherry Potts
Walk away, she told herself. Walk, while you still can.
‘Brede spoke of you,’ Devnet said quietly, knowing the risk she was taking, but unable to keep silent.
Madoc saw the way Devnet’s eyes narrowed, the way her trembling stilled.
‘She said that you led the raid against the Horse Clans. She said you held her sister in captivity until she died and that you sold her next-kin to an inn-keeper.’
Madoc said nothing. Devnet waited for him to answer her accusation, and the moment stretched. She listened to the water dripping from the leaves about her and she stared at her hands, where they pressed against Madoc’s rib-cage.
Walk away, she told herself again.
Devnet did not look him in the eyes again. She took a careful step backwards, and withdrew her hands from Madoc’s body. A bloody palm print remained on the fabric of his coat.
‘You are not my kin.’ She turned away, feeling that sudden loss as a freedom. She walked between the trees, towards the faint noise of a river, listening, listening; waiting for Madoc to come after her. She held her head high, expecting a blow to her unprotected back. It did not come, and the sense of freedom grew and the trembling tension loosened her limbs, until Devnet felt she might fly. She did not look back.
When next she woke, Brede was alone. The pain was slightly less. She moved cautiously, testing her limbs, trying to work out what was injured, and how badly. One arm seemed usable. Brede ran her unimpeded hand across her body, telling over broken bones and bruising and worse, and wondered at her waking. She longed for enough light to see by. Her seeking fingers found the string of stones. She clutched them compulsively.
There was a greater pain then, a wave of desolation, threatening to drown her. The hollowness inside her, the aching silence that should contain Sorcha. In the darkness Brede could find nothing to cling to except those stones and she held them tightly; feeling them bite into her flesh, and in spite of herself remembered the touch of Sorcha’s skin against hers.
Well then, she told herself.
She stared into the pressing darkness, building a picture in her mind with slow deliberation. She put together impression after impression, the tangle of Sorcha’s hair in the mornings, the way the light fell across her shoulders on one particular evening, the touch of her hand, the touch of her lips on Brede’s closed eyelids – Brede cursed. Nothing could make her believe it. She would not believe it.
She peered at the stones in her hand. She tried to remember their colour. Blue, she decided, concentrating on the texture of the surface. Not all quite the same colour, shading into almost grey, dusty looking. She rubbed her thumb across them, feeling the slight variation in size. They were in the wrong order. They had been taken from their string, and rethreaded without care. She tried to tease the knot loose, using her teeth. The leather thong came loose only gradually. She was tired. The knot untied, there was no way of keeping the stones safe whilst she sorted them. She could get them off the thread, but would not be able to put them back, nor retie the knot. Brede leant her head back, wrapping the end of the thong around her finger, and let tears roll down the side of her face.
Kendra felt threatened now, and protected the boundaries of her domain. Only someone who knew for a certainty that her woodland existed would find a way into the green dusk of her land. None of the many search parties that Lorcan sent after the Dowry blade could find a way in, and only Madoc remained to disturb Kendra’s uneasy quiet.
In time, Madoc believed he understood this place. Devnet’s theft of his horse helped determine his continued search. The gorge was full of sounds, but no voices. It was not Madoc’s natural habitat and he was made uneasy by it. He liked voices, preferably loud ones. Trees and rivers and small animals and birds made him feel isolated, and when Madoc was isolated he feared, and what he feared, he wanted to destroy; but there was still the sword. Madoc’s certainty that the sword lay somewhere in that gorge kept him there, searching.
Brede believed she had allowed herself enough time to heal. She had unbound her ribs; she had stretched and strengthened her damaged arm. She strengthened the muscles in her back and arms much as a fledgling bird prepared its wings for flight, with furious bouts of determined exercise. She had been patient, but time was an uncertain thing in the darkness. She balanced her craving for light and certainty against the pain – diminished, but still there, gnawing at her.
She removed the splints from her mangled leg; she tested her joints, flexed and stretched her injured limbs. The pain made her dizzy; she sweated with the effort it cost her to make those small movements. She shook helplessly with fatigue, but gradually, as days stretched into weeks, it took less and less effort, to bring her knee to her chest, or any of the other tasks she set herself. She was afraid of the uncertainty of time here. She didn’t know how long she had lain in the darkness. She knew only that she had neither hungered nor eaten. She wondered if this was what lay beyond the Gate, if this was, in fact, death. Only the pain persuaded her otherwise.
Brede used her voice less and less, in deference to Kendra’s silence. The silence gave her too much space to think, and she filled her time with her desperate exercise, and with learning the signs she needed to speak to Kendra.
The shapes and signs that Kendra made on her hands, slowly impinged on Brede’s brain, and she repeated and elaborated on those signs, until she could ask questions and understand the answers. In the darkness, those signs were read by touch, and Brede was astonished at the roughness of Kendra’s skin, which was as creviced as the bark of an ancient tree, and made the gentleness of her touch all the more remarkable.
In her mind, Brede called Kendra Tree, despite having found that the sign for Kendra’s name wasn’t the same. Discovering that her own name sign meant Strength made her wonder whether Kendra chose that sign for her as encouragement.
Once Brede had achieved her ambition, and threaded the Singer stones back onto their thread in the correct order, she tied them into the hem of her shirt, and put them, and Sorcha, from her mind.
Kendra’s hold on her territory was firm, and Madoc had no hope of finding the cave, any more than he had a hope of seeing Kendra when he looked straight at her. He only sensed a strangeness, a disjointedness, as though shadows fell where there should be no shadow. He was drawn to watch those uncertain places where the trees weren’t quite as they should be, where there was a silence in the constant roar of wind through the branches, but there was nothing to see.
Kendra was aware of the watcher, aware of every bough he broke, every twig he burnt, every fish he stole from the waters of her river. She watched as he searched, and recognised him. She remembered him sniffing the air like a questing dog. Kendra saw how he recognised the confusions she set him, not for what they were, but for their existence. She wondered if she drew him towards her with those disguises, and so she set arbitrary confusions all about her domain, finding spots where the light fell strangely, where silence gathered, encouraging Madoc to spread his search, to spend hours staring at an uncertainty in the air that hid – nothing.
Kendra wasn’t immediately aware of Brede’s first faltering attempts to stand. It wasn’t until Brede fell and Kendra felt her cry of pain and rage and despair that she broke her communion with the earth to seek out her foundling.
Brede was hardly aware of the arms that gathered her up and laid her gently back on to the makeshift bed, as though she were no more than a child.
She turned her head away from Kendra, feeling betrayed by her body, and angry at her own weakness.
Kendra forced Brede’s fist loose, and spoke on her fingers, Too soon, and closed Brede’s hand back into its fist.
She watched the tears running back from Brede’s eyes into her hair. Brede coughed, and wiped her nose angrily on her sleeve.
I know, she signed, then let her hand drop limply onto her chest, too worn to even pretend she was not crying.
Kendra stepped away into the darkness, unwillingly reminded of something
that might help. She returned, carrying an object that she held awkwardly. She placed it beside Brede, wiping her hands against her legs.
Brede turned her head, not understanding what it was that lay beside her. She reached her hand to touch, and recoiled from the coldness of metal.
The Dowry blade.
Of all the things she had hoped never to see again. The cold of metal clung to her fingers, and she closed her hand, trying to warm her fingertips, but the icy sensation crawled through her arm, across her chest and clutched at her heart, a caress of darkness, a hand catching her lower ribs and tugging sharply. Brede gasped in shock and flung herself away from the sword. She sat up, twisting round to get her legs over the side of the bed.
Kendra watched, puzzled. She reached for the sword, meaning to offer it once more. As her hand closed over it she felt the calling in it. Kendra dropped the blade at once. Her eyes met Brede’s. She raised her hands to try to warn, to explain what the sword was, and could find no words. Brede ignored those hesitantly raised hands. Slowly she pulled the blade to her once more, feeling the cold as a comfort, a right-ness. She hefted the sword, and placed its point against the earth by her feet. If Lorcan could only see his precious sword being used as a crutch.
Kendra stepped away from the unsheathed blade.
Brede hooked the belt over her shoulder, so that she couldn’t lose the sword, then, centring her weight on her stronger leg and the hilt of the sword, she stood.
Her balance had changed. She wobbled dangerously, accommodating that unexpected imbalance, and put her foot to the ground. Even with the support of the sword, she could put no weight on the leg. The slightest pressure, even the fact of being upright, set pain clamouring through her, in a way that she hadn’t imagined possible. It was worse than the initial pain of the injury.
Brede collapsed back onto the bed.
Too soon, she signed, reluctantly.
For all that, she would not give up, and gradually, the leg healed enough for her to walk, after a fashion. It took weeks before she could walk far enough to leave the cave, but there was a need in her now, a craving to move, to be gone.
Madoc had forgotten his purpose; he watched now, for the sake of watching, half mesmerised by the ways of this place. He had no understanding of how long he had waited, there was only a certainty that there was something here that he wanted, and that if he waited long enough, he would discover it.
When Doran at last found him, he scarcely recognised his general. The metal of his armoured coat was rusted, the leather cracked and mouldering. Madoc’s hair had been allowed to grow unchecked by comb or braid, into a tangled mass full of twigs and dead leaves. Were Doran not appalled at the change, he would have laughed.
‘General?’ he asked cautiously.
Madoc had not seen his approach, had not heard his horse’s hooves on the mossy rocks beside the river. He had become so used to listening for silences, that he did not recognise the sounds for what they were.
Madoc blinked at the sight of bright mail. He stared at Doran without recognition.
‘General.’ Doran tried again. ‘Have you found the sword?’
Madoc tipped his head back. The sword? He began to laugh, softly at first, but soon the noise bounced back from the great rock wall above the river.
‘The sword?’ he asked.
Doran lowered his head, and pretended an interest in his gloves, waiting for the laughter to die.
‘No.’ Madoc said, the splash of a stone into water.
Doran raised his head and smiled.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Let Lorcan wait, let him hire all the witches he can find to search for his precious blade. There are friends searching for you, General: friends who no longer look to Lorcan for leadership. You have many friends.’
‘Witches?’ Madoc’s eyes seemed to focus on Doran for the first time. Under that steady regard, Doran wondered if they had made a mistake. Madoc’s hand rubbed against his face, thoughtful; and Doran remembered Lorcan’s mailed fist striking Madoc. No, they hadn’t made a mistake. Madoc nodded.
‘Lorcan, without the Dowry blade – yes,’ he agreed. ‘If he is asking witches for help he must be desperate.’
Doran reached down a hand to help Madoc to the back of his horse, and tried not to flinch as the smell of decay invaded his nostrils. Madoc caught the look on his face.
‘Don’t wince at me, Doran,’ he said.
Doran did not reply. He turned the horse and retraced his route beside the river. He looked at the glittering sun-splashed water and wondered why it had taken five days for him to find a way into the woodland. Madoc glanced back, seeing one more shimmering doubt in the air. The witch was still here, somewhere, and so was the sword. Well, it could wait. When he had Lorcan, he would come back for the sword. He would burn down every tree if necessary, but he would find the blade.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Brede chose night for her first foray, fearing the brightness of day after so long underground. Even so, the moonlight seemed harsh, making her feel exposed. She shivered at the stirring wind, after the still closeness of the cave. Strange to feel the cave as safety, after years of longing for the wide sky of the Plains. She gripped the hilt of the sword, adjusting her awkward hold, so that she could put more weight on it and ease her leg slightly.
From the mouth of the cave, Brede surveyed the immediate territory, setting herself tasks. If she could walk to here, there was a boulder to rest against: to here, a convenient tree. She sat on a massive tree root, and planned her small battles, her fragile victories.
Brede laid the sword beside her and rubbed abstractedly at the scar across the back of her hand, the slight ridge, the momentary smoothness of scar tissue, pale even against the pallor of her sun-starved skin. Rhythmically she traced the length of that mark, trying to remember a time without pain, flinching from the memory buried in that scar and its sudden painless healing. She blanked her mind to the remembered touch of Sorcha’s hand on hers, holding that torn flesh together. Brede clasped her hand against her chest and sighed, a soft uncertain noise in the shadows.
The air stirred and Brede glanced back into the cave.
Kendra stood in the entrance, her head almost touching the rock that arched above Brede. She glanced about, watching for the searching man, the watcher who had invaded her world.
Brede at last saw her silent companion in light. What she saw didn’t surprise her, as it might once have done. Kendra was at least two feet taller than Brede. Her body must once had been lithe and strong, but she was old now. Her joints were gnarled, awkwardly twisted, but she still walked with grace, still stood with her back straight. Her skin was a silvery brown, and seemed so old, so used up and dried, that Brede winced, and rubbed her hand against her own forearm. Kendra’s hair was as grey as willow leaves. The slight breeze rustled about her. Looking at her, Brede no longer wondered at the choice of the sword as a crutch.
Kendra closed her eyes, not wishing to meet the mortal’s gaze, feeling herself reflected there, as she did not wish to be. When she opened her eyes, she gestured to Brede, the latest of her foundlings, her strong one.
Walk for me, she suggested.
Brede picked up the sword, and hauled herself to her feet. Slowly, laboriously, she walked the few steps to the boulder that was her next landmark.
Kendra couldn’t bear to watch that painful journey. It took too long, this healing. She covered the same ground in two strides, and gathered Brede up into her arms. Brede moved to protest, but Kendra ignored her.
After the initial shock of Kendra’s arms lifting her, once the fear of falling had subsided, Brede enjoyed the feel of the bark-rough skin against her, it was a safe feeling. Kendra felt Brede relaxing into her clasp, and smiled. She carried Brede to the river that ran through her domain, and set her gently down.
There was a small still pool where the current had forgotten its urgent shifting, where Brede might strengthen her leg more swiftly, less painfully.
Brede stared at the water. It was so still, so quiet; but it was a river. Brede hesitated. Rivers had never held much luck for her, even in times of drought. Her mind flickered to another river, its waters tugging at her as she waded the shallows, the current trying to pull her further into its depths. She pushed that thought away, only to have another catch her, the noise of a horse racing through that same river, the bite of the spray thrown up to spatter her – and the warm body leaning against her; an incoherent jumble of thoughts dripped into her brain. Brede shuddered.
Precious, they whispered in astonishment and gratitude, at the waters-edge of her memory.
Lost, Brede screamed back across the distance of time, and closed her mind.
The stones were slippery; Brede gazed miserably at the expanse of rock for a while. Realising that she should not have taken Brede by surprise before; Kendra waited to be asked before she carried Brede to the pool’s edge.
The coldness of the water closed around Brede with a suddenness that made her wince and she clung to Kendra’s arm, suddenly afraid. Kendra stood patiently, awkwardly bent, until Brede understood that the water was shallow, that she was safe, and loosened her hold.
Kendra sat with her feet in the river, whilst Brede cautiously tested her muscles against the drag of water, breaking the stillness of the surface.
Kendra stayed motionless, save for her eyes, questing about in the darkness. There was no sign of Madoc, no scent of him. Kendra listened, tuning out the noise of the river, of the birds and animals, even their breathing, even their heartbeats – nothing. The man had gone. There was no need to fear for Brede’s safety.