‘They’ve escaped,’ she said. If I hadn’t been staring right at Mother I wouldn’t have noticed it, but I was and I did. A tiny flicker in the corner of her eye. Not a look of surprise or consternation. A look of relief.
‘Can’t you pursue them?’ Daddy said.
The world flashed orange, then red. ‘It’s not that simple. They have a hostage.’
‘A hostage?’ Daddy said.
‘The Crown Prince,’ said N’tombe. ‘Your son.’
Mother swayed and would have fallen but for the press of the crowd. Owein put his arm around her, supporting her as she wilted, turning her face into his shoulder.
‘How?’ Father asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ N’tombe said, not looking at Mother. ‘The guards were drunk, the cells empty. The locks didn’t seem to be forced.’
‘Sorcery!’ Owein gasped.
My tutor shook her head. ‘If it was sorcery, I would know. As would the Guardian. We both felt nothing.’
‘I’ll come,’ said Father, his face flashing white in the shower of sparks that burst over the balcony.
‘And I,’ said Owein, still holding Mother.
Mother shook her head. ‘No! They’ll kill him!’
‘I need Dana,’ said N’tombe.
‘Dana!’ Owein said. ‘But she’s just a girl!’
N’tombe smiled, her teeth flashing white against the dark of her hood, ‘I, too, am just a girl.’
He swallowed.
‘Besides, we can travel unseen. They won’t see us coming.’ N’tombe took my shoulder. ‘Come. Don’t worry,’ she added to Father, ‘I will bring her back.’
And I went, turned inside out, disappearing like the sparks above. The last thing I saw was Mother’s pale face, staring at me.
I felt queasy. ‘What did you do?’
‘There are gaps in reality,’ she said calmly, as though discussing the weather. ‘I stepped through one.’
‘Can I sit down?’
‘Of course.’ The sky lit briefly in a flash from the fireworks, and I felt the shock of the thudding explosion through the tree trunk I leant against. Trees. She’d brought me to the pleasure wood.
‘What are we doing here?’
‘This place seems to work for you.’ She pushed back her hood.
‘We’re supposed to be chasing them,’ I said, sinking down. I shook my head, trying to clear the nausea. ‘What happened?’
‘The cells were empty,’ she said. ‘And there was no guard. The prisoners were gone.’
‘No guard?’
She nodded. ‘I need you to feel for Alden.’
‘Alden and I aren’t the best of friends.’
‘Blood calls to blood,’ she said firmly. ‘Just find him, Dana.’
I settled my back against the hard wood of the oak tree. She was right, I always felt relaxed here in my own private woodland kingdom. Nearby would be the sandy arena, with its straw-leaking dummy and multi-coloured roof. I sighed, wishing Will was here, that we could return to training and carry no thought in our heads but the flash of blade, the next strike.
The grass was damp with dew and smelt of soil and growing things. Beneath, the life-giving loam was full of small crawling insects, creeping blind, weaving paths through the dark. I thought of those tunnels, and their small makers, each with their own role in the great play of life.
Like unlocking a door, the world swung open and welcomed me in.
I stepped into the brightness, seeing again the golden lines, swaying, leaping from tree to tree, into the ground, arching across the ramparts to join with the singing song of the wild forest.
‘Alden?’ said N’tombe, a swirling mystery of light beside me.
Alden. I tried not to think of the pretty boy with the golden hair, but of the man who loved games and merriment, dancing and flirting, the one who’d fought with me and lost, laughing even as he failed.
In another world, another reality, lights exploded from the Castle, showering improbable colours overhead, pale reflections of the glory that surrounded us.
Alden? Where are you?
It was a waking dream. As Rinpoche had taught me, I leapt into the brilliance.
‘Dana?’ A whisper of sound, like the sigh of the breeze, but it was enough. I reached for the man who called my name.
N’tombe, cloak spread out behind her like wings, flew beside me in the night. We raced on currents of air, following a heart with a beat like mine.
‘Look out!’ said N’tombe, covering me with her cloak. A darkness, a fist-shaped hole in the light, stretched towards us and we dived together.
‘Faster,’ she said.
We flew low, just above the trees, hiding in their brightness.
‘The ferry will never take them,’ she said. ‘They are trapped.’
But the ferry had brought them here.
‘They have my brother.’ We travelled fast, but ahead the darkness tumbled faster than the wind; it was like following all the shadows in the world. How could these people move so quickly?
‘They’re on the river,’ said N’tombe, suddenly. I blinked. She was right — it was hard to overlay the geography of the everyday on this uncertain world of billowing light, where everything seemed to shift and change.
‘If they’re on the river,’ I said, ‘they have a boat. They won’t need the ferry.’
The speck of black moved south, travelling on the wide waterway that linked the Castle to the sea. Instead of the Crossing and the ferry, they were making for the Fens.
One did not think of a river as alive, but as a means to carry goods, or power a mill. Not a thing existing of and for itself. But there was power beneath its smooth surface; this river could break its banks and sweep away a bridge or a house or a city. Swooping above the water, I reached down, trailing my fingers and leaving a white wake behind. The energy of living things is a most potent weapon.
The water fizzed against my hand, cool and damp. Hanging above it like a cloud, I cupped my hands, scooping it up, putting it to my mouth. It tasted of life and green things growing. I reached for more, not because I was thirsty, but because the river felt like an ally; it did not seem to like the boat that passed through it like a knife through flesh. The water did not flow from my fingers but stayed, cuddling into my warmth. I stretched it, shaping it as a cook pulls dough, pulling it longer and wider, until it would no longer fit in my hand but stayed between my cupped palms, a skein of red-gold wool.
What to do? As Rinpoche had taught me, I followed my instinct. Like a fisherman casting a net, I reached out, throwing the river’s mass at the darkness. A wave of light crashing onto the ship, that lifted it, spinning, then ploughed it under.
‘Alden!’
‘Dana!’ an answering call, suddenly cut off.
I followed his voice as quickly as thought, reaching for the boat.
The water roared its anger around the small craft, upturning it like a children’s toy. Alden’s sodden head lifted suddenly above the foam and he coughed, spluttering, stretching for air. I pulled him over to the bank, sharp with stones and gravel, and he lay there like a beached fish, his sides heaving. The water running off him looked like liquid gold.
As I solidified beside him, the world returned to black and sober grey. Off in the distance, fireworks still glowed; small sparks lighting at intervals. Here, the world was dark. N’tombe settled beside me and touched me on the shoulder.
‘Well done,’ she said, removing her cloak and settling it over Alden, who shook and shuddered with cold and shock.
‘It’s alright, brother,’ I said, sitting beside him. ‘It’s only me.’
‘Dana?’ he sounded surprised. ‘Have I been asleep? I had the strangest dream.’
‘Shh,’ I whispered. ‘You’re alright now.’
Coughing weakly, another form crawled from the water, floundering on the bank. I pulled my table dagger from its sheath. Not as good as a fighting blade, but at least it was sharp. But I had no need of a knife; t
he creature collapsed with a sigh and lay still.
In the joy of finding Alden I’d forgotten there were others in the boat. I tapped the head of the body on the beach; no response. This one was no threat, then. But what of the warrior? He was the one who most worried me, with his curved sword and bleak eyes.
N’tombe stood up, sniffing the wind. He’s here, she whispered in my mind. I can feel him.
I followed her, my table dagger at the ready. This was my land. I could feel the strength of the forest, the thunder of the river; the Kingdom had never been kind to invaders. I could still win.
A whiff of decay was the only warning I had. Down from the tree dropped the rag-swathed form of the soothsayer. He hissed as he fell, his fingers outstretched, ten bronze-tipped daggers seeking N’tombe’s throat. But she was too fast, dropping into the ground, disappearing into the soil, emerging a second later to one side.
He rolled, leaping to his feet with surprising grace. Sparks shot from his fingernails, hissing and fizzing in the darkness. She pulled light from the trees, shaping it to a disc, holding it in front of her, deflecting his blows so they shot off the golden shield and fell on the ground. He shouted in rage and pushed bolts of light at her, faster and faster, shafts of energy, so cold it burnt. Her shield seemed to soften and bend and she sank to her knees, still holding it above her head.
‘No!’ I shouted.
Like an arrow released from a string, or a rock from a catapult, golden light poured from my hand. For a strange moment there were two people standing in the golden light — N’tombe, in her ragged skirt and boots, and a little man with a fat, naked tummy and a warm smile. Rinpoche. I’d never seen him in the world of everyday. He smiled and lifted a hand to me, even as he dissolved, wafting into the air like a shower of sparks that spread and widened until they were all about us like fireflies.
As though in a dance, the sorcerer flapped his rag-wrapped arms about him, lifting first one foot, then the other, as Rinpoche’s lights settled on him, glowing where they landed, so the enemy seemed outlined in faint pinpricks of gold. The sorcerer shrieked as they moved up his body towards his neck, where they formed a chain that glowed, tighter and tighter. Even from here I could feel the heat pouring from the sorcerer as he writhed and twisted, trying to pull the living shackle from his neck.
N’tombe rose to her feet, her face calm. ‘Do you yield?’
He answered by pointing his hands at her, shaping cold light between his fingers into a spear. But the chain arced, wrapping his neck and his hands, binding his wrist, bending him over. The weapon he was building soared into the air, mingling with the fireworks from the Castle, faint specks of light in the night.
N’tombe was on him in a ball of sizzling energy that even I, now back in the everyday world, could see. He screamed, a terrible sound of fear and agony, convulsing as though she’d struck him with a spear.
I tried to calm my breathing, to soothe my mind enough to enter the golden light. I must have slipped partly into the changed world, for I could see what N’tombe was doing. She had her hands wrapped around the foreign magic worker’s head, and, like a woman unravelling a weaving, she pulled greasy smoke from his head, pouring it onto the ground where it lay, steaming briefly before it vanished.
It takes a time to tell, but it took her only a heartbeat to pull the man’s thoughts from his head and return them to the world that birthed him. The world didn’t seem that appreciative; the grass around the sorcerer was singed and smelt faintly of decay.
I looked down at my hand. In the dimness it looked the same; all fingers intact. Yet there was something missing. The circlet of copper. Where had it gone?
‘Rinpoche?’ No answer, just a faint sigh of wind on my face. Above me, sparks twinkled like stars, then faded into the cloud.
‘Dana?’ said Alden.
‘I’m here.’
He pulled himself onto his elbows and looked around. ‘Where is here, exactly?’ His voice was frail.
‘Near the Fens.’
He touched the tousled hair of the body that lay below us on the bank. ‘What’s this?’
I’d forgotten her. Or was it him? Hard to tell in the darkness. I stood up, feeling as battered and tired as Alden’s voice, and turned the body over on its back. It moaned and lifted a hand in supplication.
‘It’s alive,’ I said, surprised.
‘Well,’ said N’tombe in a grim voice. ‘This might be useful.’
‘What did you do with the … the other one?’ I asked. I didn’t want to name him. Not when she’d killed him in front of me. There was no trace of where he’d been, just a smell of rot.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, wiping her hands on her dress.
‘What of the warrior?’ I said.
‘You won’t catch him,’ said Alden in a bleak voice. ‘He can swim.’
N’tombe nodded. ‘He is not important.’ Her head was a dark shape against the greying sky.
‘Sunrise,’ said Alden. He sounded surprised, and relieved, as if he’d never thought to see daylight again. He stared up at N’tombe. ‘Thank you.’
She looked down at him absently, her thoughts elsewhere. ‘You’re welcome.’ She scanned the sky again, as though seeking something.
‘I thought I was going to die,’ said Alden suddenly.
I reached for his hand just as the figure on the bank coughed and rolled onto its knees.
‘Little sister,’ said Alden and stroked my cheek. ‘You know something? When I looked at you I thought I was looking at the sun. What happened?’
‘Hush,’ I said. ‘You’re safe now.’
‘That’s not true. We’re not safe yet, Princess,’ said N’tombe. ‘None of us are.’
33
The Stars Are Different
The Castle was a bedraggled mess. Scraps of paper, remnants of the fireworks, blew in the breeze and clung to the ankles of the guardsmen who held their weary-eyed watch at the gate house. In the centre of the courtyard the bonfire still smouldered, a drifting pall of smoke that seemed to follow me. No matter where I stood, there was always smoke in my eyes. Above us the clouds were thickening, shutting out the blue sky, and the wind was chill. It looked like the good weather was drawing to a close.
‘Alden!’ said Mother. In the morning light her face was drawn and tired. There was an air of wide-eyed desperation about her.
Father had removed his crown, replacing it with his battered tweed hat, but he still wore the dress uniform of the evening before. ‘Welcome back, son.’
Like the Castle, we were a ragged and worn out bunch. N’tombe and I shared a horse, a shaggy palfrey commandeered at the town. Alden sat astride a carthorse offered by a kindly ploughman. Our one prisoner, Fatima, was on a donkey. At first, Alden had wanted her to walk, but ‘I prefer her to be alive, Prince,’ N’tombe had said.
Alden had looked at the old woman properly then, and nodded. Fatima was ill. She coughed incessantly and rarely spoke except in mono syllables. Her husband, she said, had sunk to the bottom when the wave split the boat in two. Of the two servants there was no sign save their boots; whether that meant they were drowned or had been swept downstream, it was hard to tell. The warrior had disappeared into the swamp.
N’tombe dropped me at my parents’ feet. ‘Go get some sleep, lady,’ she said. ‘You look exhausted.’
She didn’t look much better.
‘I need to talk with the Guardian,’ she added, in explanation to my voiceless protest.
I nodded. She did need to talk to Rosa. ‘We have to find him,’ I said.
‘I tell you, it’s not him we need to worry about.’
‘Who should you not worry about?’ said Owein, coming out of the shadows of the gate house, a cloak wrapped around him.
‘Can we go inside?’ I said wearily. ‘It’s cold here.’
It was many hours before I could sink into sleep. First I had to tell my parents, Sergeant Ryngell, Owein, about our pursuit of Alden, about the fight and the cap
ture of Fatima. They listened intently and asked many stupid questions about how we had travelled so far so quickly.
‘It wasn’t that fast. It took hours to get here,’ I said.
‘From here to the Fens and back is a day’s ride,’ said Sergeant Ryngell.
I shrugged. N’tombe must have messed with the roads. I hadn’t noticed it, but then I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. I tried to speak patiently. ‘Well, we’re here now.’
Alden coughed, shivering under N’tombe’s cloak, which didn’t do much for his dignity. As she was wont to do, my tutor had shortened the end of it by cropping it into jagged strips so it didn’t drag in the mud.
‘Does it matter how we got here? Most important is that we are here.’
Footsteps clattered up the stairs, nails striking stone. N’tombe had finished talking to Rosa.
‘Why are you still here?’ she said, annoyed. ‘Look at her! Dead on her feet! And look at him,’ she gestured to Alden, at his limp limbs and pale face. ‘He needs rest.’
‘She’s right,’ said Mother, who’d been sitting in the corner, quietly listening. ‘We can ask questions later.’
N’tombe humphed. ‘What of the prisoner?’
‘In the cells,’ rumbled the sergeant.
‘Did you not think to feed her?’
He shrugged. ‘She’s a prisoner.’
‘She,’ said N’tombe, ‘is an old woman. Who may yet be useful.’
Despite my exhaustion it took some time to tumble into sleep. I lay on my bed, fingers stroking the carvings, reviewing the evening. Had I worked magic? It didn’t feel wonderful, or startling, not like the sparks that the Fire Master struck from his staff — all I did was use the stuff that surrounded me. Maybe ‘magic’ was only seeing and using the details of life. Not magic at all, really.
My sleep was crowded with dreams, sharp fragments of memory — shaping the golden river into a weapon, Rinpoche dissolving into sparks, N’tombe unravelling the sorcerer’s thoughts, Alden arguing with a farmer over the loan of a horse, the moist coughing of the old woman. Gradually, my thoughts calmed until sleep became a relentless, sighing ocean that I fell into, drifting with its tide.
A Necklace of Souls Page 27