Chosen by Fire

by Harriet Locksley

  “If you let us go in peace, he will not hurt you!” shouted Kaetha. “But if my wolf sees that I or any of my friends are threatened, I will not be responsible for the lives he takes.”

  “Go. Deal with that beast!” called McDonn to his guards.

  Tam prowled, hackles raised, eyes fixed on the guards. One sword cleaved the air above him and he dodged it, sinking his jaws into the guard’s leg before circling to a defensive position again. The guard dropped his sword and hobbled away.

  Kaetha led her group forwards, taking the ground that Tam had gained for them. However, the mob simply targeted the unguarded people at the back, hurling mud at first, then stones, and Kaetha was sure they would not stop there. So much power, she thought, feeling the force of anger and hatred from the people. It gripped and boiled and tore through the square.

  A crow squawked as it flew from the gallows and Kaetha thought of the crow flying in the mountains, the energy of its cry redirected.

  She broke away from the group and away from Tam’s protection.

  “Where are you going?” shouted Mairi.

  “She’s abandoning us,” said one of the released prisoners.

  Kaetha raced up to the scaffold and climbed it, drawing the attention of those who weren’t fighting.

  “People of Creagairde,” she called. “Listen to me!” More turned to face her. “These people are not your enemies. They are your healers. They are the ones who helped your mothers through their birth pains to bring you into this world. They are your neighbours, your friends, ordinary people who have worked and lived beside you. They are the ones you turn to when the physician’s ignorance makes your loved one’s illness worse. They just want to do good. They don’t have the power or desire to curse, to cast spells, they mean you no harm but there is someone here who does.” She heard her voice growing louder, stronger, as if it were a stranger’s voice. “Someone here has, year upon year, cursed you with poverty whilst he grows richer and richer. His spells are demands for unfair taxes, for rents that mean your children go to bed hungry. He bewitches you by saying that these innocent people – your own people – are the cause of your hardships, when it is he who is the cause.” She pointed an accusing hand at McDonn. “I ask you, what kind of witchcraft is more real than that?”

  McDonn whispered something to Roy Macraith as people in the crowd responded to Kaetha’s words. ‘A broken arm I got, last time I couldn’t pay— My lad got ill because I couldn’t afford to feed him properly— He doesn’t care about the clanland, only himself— He taxes people until they’re forced to steal, then he cuts off their hands— Damn him and his thugs! McDonn can go to the devil!’

  Though heartened by the swiftly kindled anger towards McDonn, Kaetha also felt a sickening dread as Roy Macraith swept towards her, robes billowing in the wind, a twisted smile on his pale lips. He mounted the scaffold, a hand falling soft as a caress on the gallows. She stepped back, considering whether she’d be any safer amongst the crowd than up here. She hesitated and Roy Macraith grasped hold of her. He towered over her, flaunting his strength.

  “You will hang for this, witch,” he hissed.

  Many were swarming up the steps to the entrance of the town hall and she saw McDonn’s white face cloaked in shadow as the heavy oak doors shut him safely inside. Fists pounded at the doors and Kaetha sighed with relief when she saw that enough people were directing their fury at McDonn that her group now had the way clear to the docks. It had worked. She watched as a young man kissed the forehead of the old woman who lay dead on the ground before following the group. It wasn’t right that they were forced to leave her like that. She could only hope that some in town would have the decency to give her a proper burial.

  Roy Macraith addressed the crowd. “I have never before seen anyone more likely to be a dangerous witch than this young woman.”

  “Your mouth’s full of arse-haggis,” she retorted. This received some sniggers.

  “She’s the devil’s whore, I tell you! Shall we see if she bears his mark?” This remark gained interest from the people and Kaetha felt sick at the bawdy comments and cheers from several lecherous men in the crowd. The witch hunter ripped off the clasp of her cloak and she struggled as his clammy hand slid over her neck to her shoulder, pulling at her clothes. The colour rose to her face and her eyes stung as shouts and whistles rose up from the crowd.

  “Get your reptilian hands off me!” she yelled, struggling all the more.

  “Stop!” cried Donnan but he was separated from her by the crowd around the scaffold.

  She was surprised that a man as scrawny as Macraith could be so strong. She kicked at him and spat in his face, refusing to let him reveal any more of her flesh. “Go to hell!” she growled as she kneed him between the legs. He cried out in pain, doubled up but still grasping Kaetha. Roy Macraith’s cry of fury had a backdrop of raucous laughter. He threw Kaetha hard onto the boards of the scaffold. Flat on her back, winded, she heard the scrape of metal. Laughter faded to an unnerving hush. A long dagger glinted in his hand. He loomed over her, finding his smile once again as he stared at her with his cold eyes.

  “Death on the gallows or by the blade, it’s all the same to them,” he said and Kaetha knew as she lay there, immobilised, that there was nothing she could do to stop him. “They came to see death and they will.”

  He raised the blade but his smile buckled. He opened his mouth to speak or scream but emitted only a strangled, guttural splutter. Something was poking through his chest. His knife clattered to the floor and he dropped to his knees, then onto his face, right beside her.

  She drew in a shaky gasp when she saw the sword in his back and Mairi standing behind it, her hands trembling. The crowd stared in silence as blood dripped from the scaffold. Kaetha snatched up the witch hunter’s knife and stowed it in her belt. Donnan appeared beside them, a streak of blood from a wound on his head tracing the side of his face.

  “It’s about time we left,” he said, leading them through the stunned crowd to the docks.

  “Effie!” called Margaret and she enveloped Gilroy Baker’s little sister in a hug when she ran up to them.

  The child sniffed. “I’m going to miss you.”

  “You know, you can come with us,” said Asrid. “We’d look after you.”

  Effie smiled sadly. “I want to carry on Gilroy’s business. I think he’d want me to.”

  “We wish you good fortune,” said Kaetha, giving Effie a silver coin from their purse. “You can buy plenty of flour with that.”

  “Aye, I could. Thanks.”

  “Look here!” called the boatman, striding up to them. “Can you stop your lot coming aboard without paying? You said I’d get paid plenty this evening. I can’t afford to work for nothing you know.”

  “Here,” said Kaetha, handing him a pile of coins.

  “What—?” Mairi squeezed her arm but she ignored her.

  “This should cover a boat load down to Doonby, shouldn’t it?”

  The boatman scratched his beard and chewed his lip. “Since I’m feeling generous. Usually get more, mind.”

  “When your passengers are loading your boat with heavy cargo, of course they pay more,” muttered Donnan.

  “Can’t take more than eight, mind,” said the boatman as he pocketed the coins.

  “You tell us that now?” said Kaetha. She turned to Mairi and Donnan. “There are seven of them.”

  “We should let them all go,” said Donnan.

  “I suppose we’ll be walking then,” said Mairi with a sigh, “unless any of these lovely townsfolk will sell us horses, for whatever little is left in that purse. Somehow, I think not.”

  As the boat cast off, Kaetha caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of her eye. She squinted up at the steep hillside of the town. “Perhaps we won’t be walking after all,” she said. Through the deep blue of twilight, the people of Neul Carraig were making their silent progression through the central street of the town, a trickling stream of dusk-gr
ey robes.

  TWENTY EIGHT

  Seeing Things

  The sight of the Appointed snaking their way silently downhill stilled the voices of the townsfolk. Aggression was replaced by wary curiosity.

  Kaetha watched as groups of Appointed lined the lochside, orderly as ranks of soldiers, lowering rafts. Here amongst narrow, cluttered streets and crooked buildings, no longer with the backdrop of vast stone halls, caves or mountains, their presence was incongruous and unsettling.

  Spying Naru, she rushed over to him. Darkness was drawing in now but she saw enough to make her shudder. “What happened?” she said, running her eyes over the cuts on his face, the swollen flesh around one of his eyes and the torn patches of his robes.

  “We were attacked. Branna is dead and Deorsa and many others. Near half our numbers. How they found their way into Neul Carraig, I do not know.” His voice was strained.

  “Who did this?” she asked as Mairi and Donnan joined them.

  Naru shrugged. “They were organised, well trained fighters.”

  “But whose?”

  He shook his head. “There was nothing to identify them. They were,” he paused, “as shadows. Stealing into our hall, our home.”

  “I hope your people killed plenty of them,” she said.

  He sighed. “Enough died tonight.”

  “So, now you’re going downriver, like us?” said Donnan. “Did you know about the king’s decree?”

  Naru hadn’t heard so they informed him of what they’d found out in Nuckelavee.

  “If you didn’t know about the decree,” said Mairi, “why did you decide to head downriver?”

  “Before Meraud disappeared, she spoke to me, although Branna had commanded that she return to her silence. She warned me that the water had shown her a danger approaching. She said that leaving the mountains was the only way we would find safety.”

  “Branna dismissed her vision as a fabrication but, when the attack came, I realised she was telling the truth. So, rather than rebuilding our defences, I led the survivors here. With what you tell me of the king’s decree, the safety Meraud spoke of becomes clear.”

  “So it seems,” said Kaetha, surprised that Meraud would show concern for the Order. She turned to face the rafts along the riverside. “I don’t suppose you have room for three more?”

  Despite all he had gone through that night, Naru slipped into his accustomed grin. “Seeing as it’s you.”

  Steadying herself on the back of a raft, Kahina at her side, Donnan and Mairi ahead of them, she took up a paddle and tried to keep as close as possible to the precise, rhythmic strokes of her silent companions.

  Water swirled black and silver with every dip of her oar and she found herself thinking once again about Princess Rhona and the night she escaped assassination, sailing away on the ship Aedan had found for her. The picture of the princess’s half brother, Svelrik, which she had built up in her head, did not tally with this new decree – this act of mercy. She’d positioned him as the ambitious usurper, willing to have Rhona and their father murdered, as well as anyone who got in the way. But what if others orchestrated the coup that night? Perhaps he hadn’t intended to be king at all. Maybe others manipulated him to make harsher laws against healers and users of magic and this new decree represented a more tolerant attitude towards people like her. He now showed compassion, allowing for mercy within the framework of the law. Might such a king show clemency to her father? ‘Hold onto hope’ had been her mother’s message to her before she died. Could she afford to hope that her father was, even now, a free man?

  Her paddle hit against the one in front, so she focussed again on the steady motion of paddling, on the resistance of the water which reflected the darkening sky and the awakening of stars as they floated downriver.

  Woodsmoke curled through the air, a comforting fragrance in a strange, remote place. Chattering died down as more fell asleep by the fire or under shelters made with the rafts but Kaetha and Kahina were awake, sitting together by the river. The water was blacker than ink, with threads of cold white moonlight skittering across it.

  “Will you look into the water for me?” Kaetha asked. “Will you try to see where he is?”

  “If the Water wishes for me to see.” Kahina’s cool hand softly clasped hers as they sat there quietly.

  “Kahina,” she whispered, hoping to hear her thoughts, to glimpse what came to her mind. For a while, all she heard was rustling tendrils of willow trees on the bank.

  “I see darkness,” said Kahina.

  Kaetha held her breath. Was it the darkness of night she saw . . . or of death? “Now a flicker of torchlight,” said Kahina.

  She tightened her grip on Kahina’s hand. She saw it too. The light was dim and distant, falling on stone, bars blocking out strips of it.

  “There are chains on the floor,” said Kahina. The smooth shine of metal in link after link, a clasp around a wrist, an ankle. “I’m sorry, Kaetha. I know that’s not what you wanted me to see.”

  “It’s alright. He’s alive,” she said. “He’s alive.”

  She asked Kahina to seek others too. She saw Jean Moray waking to nurse baby Kitty, Dermid stirring beside her. Elspet and Cailean slept by the fire, Baird between them, resting his head on his paws. Nannie sat in her room at the monastery, moonlight through the window catching on the wool she was spinning, Kintail curled up on her lap. Rorie was sleeping on Cannasay beach, a blanket of stars above him. Finola lay in his arms. This shocked Kaetha like a slap around the face. “Thank you, Kahina,” she said, making sure her voice sounded steady. Alone, she walked over to the fire and lay down. She closed her eyes but that didn’t stop tears from escaping. A crushing pain spread within her chest.

  She wished her father was safe at home, that none of this had happened.

  She wished that she was lying where Finola was, that Rorie had wanted her.

  “I said, anyone would mistake you for a silent one,” said Donnan a while after they’d set off the next morning.

  “Sorry, I didn’t hear you,” said Kaetha.

  “Everything alright?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she replied. “I could have slept better.” She kept her eyes on the river and concentrated on paddling.

  They passed fields and flocks and wound through moorland. A sweeping loch stretched silver alongside them and Kaetha started, a familiar prickling on the back of her neck. A Fuathan dwelt there. She saw that everyone in the Order had turned in the same direction. They bowed their heads and she found herself bowing too, ignoring Donnan’s questioning look.

  “I’ve never seen one,” said Kahina, still gazing wistfully at the loch. Kaetha had no wish to talk about the Fuathan she had seen, her memory was still haunted by those cold, black eyes.

  She kept up her paddling as the river followed a straighter course. “This feels different now, easier, almost like paddling through air,” she said.

  “I decided that my Appointed and I should speed things up a little,” said Kahina.

  “You’re doing this?”

  Kahina nodded.

  “If you could keep it up the whole way, we might get to Longmachlag with a day to spare before the ships sail.”

  Kahina smiled, shaking her head. “My Appointed would tire too much. But we’ll get there on time, don’t you worry. I’ve seen us reaching the ships.”

  They were close to Longmachlag and Ciadrath was not much further south. She pictured the tapestry map, imagining herself as a thread sewing its way closer to where her father was. “I will find you,” she whispered, though no one heard her but the river. “I promise.”

  Moorland merged into grasslands where cattle grazed, their long, russet hair whipping their faces in the wind.

  “We should be near Cattleford,” said Kaetha. “That is where we must part ways, I’m afraid.”

  Surprise registered on Kahina’s face.

  “Cattleford is near Feodail?” asked Mairi.

  Kaetha saw that her stepmother
looked tired. “Not too far. It’ll be quicker to leave the river and go by road from there.”

  Night had crept up on them by the time they approached the ford.

  “Let’s camp with the others,” said Kaetha, “and take the road south in the morning. She reached out, grabbing a tuft of long grass on the bank to steady herself as she got off the raft. A tingling trailed down her neck at the same time as a slosh of water broke the surface of the river like the flip of a fish’s tail. She gasped as something scratched her arm.

  “Careful there,” said Mairi, taking her hand. “I’ll help you.”

  “I’m alright,” said Kaetha, stepping onto the bank.

  “Did you sense that?” whispered Kahina.

  She shrugged, squeezing her arm, trying to stop it from stinging.

  The light of dawn was unusually bright and was hurting her eyes. It was hard to breathe. She tried to sit up but her limbs were too heavy. She pushed at her blanket. “Too hot. Too hot.”

  “What do you mean? I’m freezing,” said Donnan.

  “Why did we sleep on the beach?” she asked. “We should go home.”

  Donnan was looking at her strangely, then knelt beside her, putting his hand on her head.

  “Get off,” she said, trying to bat away his hands.

  “You have a fever.” He got up. “Kahina?”

  Kaetha rested her eyes again and was vaguely aware of people around her, of snatches of conversation.

  “But I can look after her. We’ll be fine.” Was that Mairi?

  “She needs Kahina.”

  “But Kahina needs to go to Longmachlag.”

  Kaetha decided to tell them that she was alright and that they could leave her alone to sleep but when she opened her mouth, she forgot what she was going to say. It couldn’t have been that important. But why did people sound so anxious?

  “We’ll lay her on one of the rafts,” came a deep voice.

  “And lengthen our journey? We could stay at an inn here and I’d nurse her, then we could carry on to her aunt’s house.”