Miriam stopped suddenly, and Devin nearly crashed into her back. She had been leading the last few hours and, whilst still feverish, seemed much more aware of where they were, and what was going on.
She stood with her head cocked on one side, as if listening. Devin froze, listening too. It was too easy to dismiss her behaviour as fever dreams, there had been two or three times now when she'd heard animals he hadn't, and once, she'd saved them from a red-eyed sow with a litter of piglets. Devin was a city boy, but he knew enough not to go near a boar.
He listened carefully, but heard nothing but the sound of the wind in the treetops. “Come on Ma'” he said gently, trying to move her along with his touch. She ignored him, and stood with her head cocked, swaying gently back and forth as if dancing to some distant music.
He ground his teeth in frustration and looked through the murk for somewhere to camp for the night. Finally, with much persuading, he was able to get his mother moving again. Devin dared not move too far from the ridge. The forest seemed to twist in the half-light and he feared they would get turned around and never find it again. The cover given by the forest was reduced by the proximity of the ridge, and the wind tore through the trees, seeming to claw at the ragged remnants of his clothing.
He held Miriam's hand tightly as he led her through the woods, looking for some form of shelter without leaving the ridge. The howl cut through the woods despite the wind. Devin froze in place, eyes wide and his heart pounding painfully in his chest.
“Ma!” His voice suddenly sounded very young, even to himself. “Ma? Was that wolves?”
“Shhh!” came the hissed reply. “Just keep moving. Quietly now.” Her voice was focused and clear. She seemed to have come back to herself for the moment.
An answering howl filled the night and suddenly the air was alive with the calls of the wolves. It seemed like they came from every direction at once. Devin looked to his mother for just a second before grasping her hand and running through the woods, his legs driven and ruled by fear. Leaves and branches tore at his hair and face as he fled from the howls, and he darted between the trees heedless of the noise he was making.
He didn't even see the stream, but flew through it, his legs suddenly soaked to the knees as he scrambled up the bank on all fours, grasping at half-seen roots and ferns. He could hear his mother close behind him, her breathing little more panicky gasps, thick with fear.
“Flee little manling,” came the spiteful whisper from the trees, so soft that he wasn't sure he hadn't imagined it.
Another howl filled the night, startlingly close and spurring Devin and Miriam to new efforts and they sprinted headlong through the trees. Devin looked around as he ran, searching for movement among the trees over his shoulder. Miriam ignored everything but speed, looking straight ahead as she moved with a lurching gait, using a branch as a crutch.
Devin heard a whimpering noise as he ran and it was several yards before he realised that he was making it himself. He clenched his teeth and tried to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. His legs were burning and, despite her leg, his mother was outpacing him. He fancied he could hear snarling, and the crashing of leaves and bushes behind him as the wolves drew closer. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a flash of silver grey fur in the moonlight, and then something struck his face and chest hard enough to make his vision spin and his ears ring. He slumped to the ground, bark scraping and tearing at his face as his vision swam in crazy circles and slowly faded to darkness.
Miriam jumped at the muffled crash behind her and turned in time to see Devin slide down the tree and collapse to the ground. The cold and the terror seemed to have reduced her fever, and she felt more able to think clearly. The wolves had fallen silent. She didn't know if this was good or bad, but she could hear nothing for the moment other than the wind blowing through the trees.
She flew to Devin in a panic and dropped to the forest floor beside him. Blood ran freely down his face from a nasty gash where he had run into the tree. She cradled his head to her as tears coursed unchecked down her face. “My baby!” she wailed. “Oh Lords and Ladies, Devin!”
Dimly she became aware of a warmth against her arm and realised it was his breath. He was alive at least. She turned this way and that in the moonlight, hoping to get a clearer view of his face but couldn't see much more than the fact he was bleeding.
A light footfall behind her was the only warning she had that she was not alone. She turned fearfully, expecting to face a huge wolf intent on an easy meal. Instead a woman stood there in the moonlight looking at her quizzically.
Miriam had a vague sense of recognition, but panic about Devin overrode any other thoughts. A calmer person would have asked what a woman was doing walking alone through the forest in the middle of the night. A more rational person would have noted the eyes, coloured amber with no visible pupils, or the inhuman grace with which the creature moved. Miriam was neither calm nor rational, and saw nothing other than potential salvation.
“He hit his head. We were running from the wolves, and he ran into a tree,” she explained, her voice thick with tears and worry. The woman nodded slightly but made no attempt to move closer. Instead she stood silently, casually surveying the scene.
“He needs help. He's bleeding!” Miriam said, with a plea in her voice.
“He is, as you say, bleeding.” Her voice was low and melodic and she almost seemed to sing the words.
“Don't just stand there!” Miriam screamed, fear and anger taking control. “Won't you help us?”
“Why would I want to do that?” the woman asked, seeming genuinely confused by the question.
“I could pay,” Miriam said suddenly, her hand going to the purse tied beneath her skirt. The woman smiled a sudden, hard smile and her eyes flashed in the moonlight.
“An exchange then? You would submit to this?”
“An exchange? Yes! I have money, I'll pay whatever you like. Just help him, please?”
***
Devin woke to pain. His face felt strange, tight like a bad sunburn. This was overlaid with a throbbing pulse running through his forehead and left cheek, down to his jawline. He tried with some care, to open his eyes and noted only one would open. His hand made its way to his face, and his fingertips encountered what felt like leaves, and something sticky, like mud or honey.
“Do not touch it,” a stranger's voice said.
“Devin sweetheart?” came his mother's voice. “It's a kind of medicine. Try not to touch it okay?” Her voice was calm, clear. The clearest she'd sounded in days. Despite the pain that was increasing the more he awoke, Devin felt a relief coupled with a wild exultation. They had found help. They were safe.
“Your manling will need rest. Make him drink this, I will return when the moon rises,” the stranger said.
Then his mother was there, holding a wooden bowl to his lips, and encouraging him to drink a thick, sickly-sweet, liquid. It tasted like honey, and strong wine, and something else he couldn't identify. It burned all the way down his throat and the taste seemed to change subtly the more he drank. He didn't even notice himself getting drowsy until he felt his mother gently take the bowl from his lips, and his eyes softly closed.
Devin slept deeply until he was finally roused and they began walking. He was half-awake at best when he first caught sight of her. His head was still groggy from sleep, and whatever it was that he had been made to drink. There was a dreamlike quality to everything which was only exacerbated by the fact that they were travelling by moonlight. Despite this, he was certain that the woman travelling with them was the strange person he had spoken to the night his mother had been dancing around the stones. He squinted and tried to focus his blurry eyes upon her as he staggered along, leaning heavily on his mother.
As his head cleared he used the opportunity to study her more closely, she was definitely the creature from before. At a glance she looked broadly human, two arms, two legs. The similarities stopped there though. Her ears were sw
ept up into points and her skin had a pale greenish cast to it that shone through, even in the moonlight. She was dressed simply in tight fitting clothes of a pale tan colour and though she walked barefoot, she moved with grace, unconcerned by the twigs and pebbles underfoot. As if she felt his eyes upon her, she turned and looked at him sharply, before smiling slowly. The smile said nothing of humour or affection. This was a cold smile that extended no further than the lips, her amber coloured eyes as cold and hard as the gem they resembled.
“What happened to me?” he asked his mother softly, as they made their way between the trees.
“You ran into a tree, knocked yourself senseless.”
“Then what happened? I mean, what happened to the wolves?” Devin wondered.
“I don't know. I hadn't thought about it really. I mean, at the time, I was more worried about you.” Miriam paused, stopping while she looked up at the sky.
“They stopped as soon as she arrived,” she said finally, gesturing at the figure of the woman who was fast disappearing into the night. They hurried to catch up with Miriam supporting Devin with one arm.
“What about your leg?” Devin asked suddenly, realising she was no longer limping or using a crutch.
“She put some stuff on it. Amazing really. I've never seen anything like it, but it was almost completely better overnight.” Miriam smiled. “It looks like we are both going to be fine.”
Devin grinned at her in the moonlight.
The sky was beginning to brighten by the time the woman finally slowed. She turned and fixed Miriam with a feral look. “Just beyond these oaks lies your path,” she said softly.
“Already?” asked Miriam. “It looked so much further away from the ridge earlier.”
“You question me?” the woman replied, amber eyes bright and staring.
“No, no,” Miriam said hurriedly, her words tripping over each other. “It just passed so quickly. I'm grateful of course...”
“Come.” She moved swiftly through the trees, stopping with her hand resting on a huge oak, looking back at the pair of them expectantly.
Miriam hurried after her, eager to be out from under the trees. She stepped past the odd woman and stopped in confusion. The path led into a large clearing, a collection of low stones lay forming a ragged circle with a short monolith standing as a hub to the misshapen wheel. She spun slowly, looking this way and that. The trees were thick around the edges of the clearing and she could see no end to the forest.
“I don't understand,” she said slowly. “You said we were here.”
“As we are,” replied the woman, moving up behind her. “As, everyone always is.”
“You said our path was this way!” protested Miriam, her temper beginning to fray.
“As it is, as I have led you. And now you must pay.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Miriam said in confusion, rummaging through her skirts to grab the purse given to her by Shalin. “Um, we never discussed an amount?”
“You assume I have any interest in your shiny trinkets,” the woman said, moving closer to Miriam. “We agreed an exchange.”
As she approached, Miriam wondered how she could ever have mistaken her for human.
“What do you want?” Miriam breathed as she took half a step backwards, away from the creature.
“Foolish She! You come and dance among the stones and then you ask what I want? How soon you have all forgotten.” With two quick steps she was in front of Miriam and grasping her by the throat.
“Ma!” screamed Devin as the creature dragged her towards the stones with an unearthly strength.
Miriam gasped, her fingers raking ineffectually at the creature's arms.
“Ma!” Devin yelled again, racing after the creature as she moved to the monolith, pulling Miriam along effortlessly. He grabbed at her arm and tried to stop her, but it was like trying to stop the tide.
“Let her go!” he screamed and kicked savagely at the creature's leg. She stopped suddenly and fixed him with an intense gaze and then, as if holding his mother there took no more effort than holding a small child, she struck him with her free hand across the face. Devin flew through the air and landed some five feet away at the edge of the trees. He hauled himself to one knee as his head spun, and turned to face them.
Miriam had been dragged into the circle and was pressed backwards against the small monolith, her hands still clawing at the creature's wrist. The woman raised one hand high towards the moon and between one breath and the next they slipped into the stone as easily as a stick into water. They were gone.
“Ma!” shrieked Devin as he raced at the monolith and fell to his knees, clawing at the rough stone with tears running down his cheeks in the light of the uncaring moon.
***
Khorin stepped down from the cart and looped the reins around a dead tree. The horses wouldn't stray far anyway but they might hurt themselves otherwise. He walked through the tall grass easily, making his way under the trees. It was only just dawn and the weak watery light was barely enough to light his way once he was under the dense canopy. He carried a large axe over one shoulder, the haft resting easily on the leather vest covering his simple homespun. He'd spotted a stand of beech in here the other week and it was a good day to bring one or two of them down. He'd come back with Owen from the village later on in the month to have him help with the cutting, but the felling he could manage alone.
He walked slowly but deliberately, wasting no time but not hurrying either. Rushing was for younger men and after thirty years farming these lands, he had just about used up all his rushing. He was not a large man by any means. His hair and beard were shot through with grey and touches of white but his arms showed sinew as he flexed them on his axe handle, which told of a strength that could be called upon when needed.
Whistling rather tunelessly as he walked through the woods he tried to recall exactly where he'd seen the beech trees. Oak tended to burn hotter than beech, but for some reason Khorin had never felt comfortable bringing down an oak tree. Maybe it was something to do with acorns and squirrels. He chuckled quietly to himself at the thought.
He stepped over a small boulder half buried in the ferns, and found his way to the game trail. It wasn't much of a path, meandering this way and that, but it would get him to where he was going. Horses, now they at least would go in a straight line when pressed, but a deer couldn't walk in a straight line if its life depended on it.
He was so caught up in his reverie that he almost missed the boy altogether. He was curled up like a sleeping dormouse at the foot of an ancient willow. The branches and leaves seemed almost to cradle him as he slept. He was also filthy, and as sorry a state of a child that he had ever seen.
Khorin rushed to the boy and knelt down, feeling at his throat. His hair was down to his collar, he could almost have passed for a girl were it not for his sunken features. There was a pulse, but only barely and he almost missed it. He wet his hand in the leaves and held it under the boy's nose, feeling for the feather-light touch of his breath. Frowning he stood back and looked at the lad, there was something very wrong here. The boy was beyond gaunt and soaked through to the skin. The first touches of moss had begun growing on his clothes.
“How long has this child been here?” he whispered to himself.
He knelt down next to the boy, laying his axe down on the ground and gathered him up in his arms. There was ivy growing around the boy's legs but he pulled it free with a sharp tug that somehow failed to wake him. Shaking his head and wondering what could possibly have occurred here, Khorin cradled the child in his arms. A bow lay in the grass and leaves. He scooped it up, grunting at the effort of crouching with the boy. His axe lay forgotten at the base of the tree as he made his way out of the woods.
He made his way back to the farmstead and crashed through the door with one foot whilst crying out for his wife.
“Hannah! Where are you wife?” he bellowed as he rushed down the steps into the kitchen and stopped with the boy near th
e hearth.
She bustled into the kitchen, a whirlwind of concern and domesticity. “Who's that you have there? Lords and Ladies Khorin! Where did you find him? He's covered in a thousand kinds of dirt. Is that moss?”
“I found him in the woods. Sleeping, if you can swallow that. Happy as you please he was. Beneath an old willow, like something out of a tale.”
“Why hasn't he woken then?” Hannah replied wringing her apron between two nervous hands.
“Who knows? He breathes, and his heartbeat is strong. Get him warm and let him rest. Questions can wait.”
It was rare that Hannah accepted Khorin's lead in such an authoritative fashion but she was so shaken by the state of the child. There was moss growing on his feet. Moss! She moved close to him and brushed the long dark hair back from his forehead.
“Set him down in the chair there Khorin, don't just stand about.” She knelt and took the boy's cold hand in her own. “What's your story then little man?” she murmured. “Get some water from the pump Khorin and let's put it on the fire. We'll get him clean, and we'll take it from there.”
She gave orders and they both bustled about the cottage, heating water and filling a bath. Before too much longer the boy became a bit more skin coloured and the bath water came to resemble a forest floor. Through it all the boy slept on, unconcerned, as two strangers stripped him of his clothes and scrubbed his skin pink.
By midday the child was tucked into a clean bed in the tiny bedroom at the top of the cottage. Hannah stood in the doorway watching the blankets rise and fall over his chest. He was painfully thin, so thin it made him look younger than he really was, but his height suggested he was at least nine or ten.
The Riven Wyrde Saga boxed set Page 6