I couldn’t blame him for his anger, nor his words. It was true that I had brought Lucien to Erebis Felan. I had brought war to a land that knew only peace and had caused blood to flow into the sand at my feet.
15
A Boy Bewildered
Tamlyn and Ryall stood close beside me, facing Delgar, who was demanding more answers than I could give. Lucien remained separate from us all, still standing at the centre of the Wyrdborn he had cut down. He watched us, content to let me speak for him, it seemed. Or was he still coming to terms with what he had done? He turned away to inspect the steel-coated bodies scattered around him as though they were driftwood washed in by the tide.
‘What kind of magic can defeat so many?’ asked Delgar.
‘Lucien is no ordinary Wyrdborn,’ I began. ‘You’ve seen the mosaics, you felt his power in the Great Hall. It should be no surprise to you.’
‘But how can this youth be the little boy who shared your cell only days ago?’
I told him about the fawn Lucien had lulled into eternal sleep when he was a baby, even before his mother died, and then our discovery on the road from Meraklion.
‘For so many creatures to die like that … it had to be Lucien,’ Tamlyn confirmed.
Delgar nodded. He seemed more able to accept the truth if it came from a man.
That made me angry and, with a coldness that I didn’t intend, I said, ‘The magic in Lucien can alter the very essence of life. Since he was a newborn, he has taken the life force from other creatures, animal and human both, and used it to grow faster than any of us can imagine.’
‘No, there is no magic that can do such things,’ said Delgar.
‘You are forgetting this,’ said Ryall, and rolled up his sleeve. ‘My arm ended below the elbow until Lucien used his magic.’
I took Ryall’s new hand and kissed it in thanks. He had done more than remind the Felan of what had happened to his arm; he had shown us all that Lucien’s magic could create as well as destroy.
Delgar surprised me by nodding in agreement. ‘But why has this … stranger done what he did today? That is a question that plagues me as much as how.’
‘You still don’t believe he is my Lucien, do you?’ I challenged him. ‘Until you accept that, you will not understand why he acted as he did. It’s time he spoke for himself.’
Lucien saw us take the first tentative steps towards him and smiled at me, as though he wasn’t covered in the blood of the hundreds he’d killed. That smile made me shiver all the more as I picked my way between the bodies, afraid that one would come to life and grab at my ankles. He let us come, making no move to retrieve the sword he’d abandoned entirely now that the Felan had retreated.
‘Are you the boy who came to Erebis Felan with these three?’ Delgar called when still a little way off.
Lucien was slow to answer, and even when he did manage a reply I glimpsed how hard it was for him. He had grown ten years in a matter of days, and not just his body but his mind, too. No wonder he struggled to shape his thoughts into words.
‘I came … on … the ship,’ he said in a halting voice.
‘If you are the same boy, how did you know of this invasion by your kind?’
‘I heard talking … in the room where Maymay …’
He stopped. So many words must be new to him, I realised, as I heard him fall back to using his first name for me. Although his voice was deep, he still sounded like a child. That changed quickly, though, as he became used to the flow of words from his tongue.
‘I heard Silvermay speak about the men … the ones called Wyrdborn. I didn’t know what she meant, but I watched her. She was afraid. I wanted to stop the bad ones from hurting her.’
‘You broke out of the cell,’ said Delgar.
‘Cell? I don’t know that word. There was a room … with straw on the ground. I got free. I had to. Something told me to go alone, that it was the best way.’
I felt myself wither inside. He might as well have shouted, I am one of them, I am a Wyrdborn.
He didn’t notice anything in my expression, it seemed. He was eager now to tell us what he had done. ‘I needed to be bigger, to be stronger, if I was going to stop them.’
‘You called the animals to you in the meadow?’ Delgar asked.
‘Yes, as many as would come. They were frightened at first, but I spoke to them. “I won’t hurt you,” I said.’
And I was sure he hadn’t. Each of those creatures had died without fear or the least twinge of pain. Yet they were dead, and by now the crows would have pecked out their eyes, and by next week their bones would be all that was left. I couldn’t stop a shudder convulsing me from head to toe.
‘You grew bigger thanks to the animals you killed?’ Delgar prompted
‘Yes. My clothes didn’t fit any more. I roamed through the fields with nothing on until I stole some from a farmhouse.’
‘I’ve never heard of such magic,’ said Delgar, but he fell silent again immediately, for there was more and he was eager to hear it.
‘I was bigger, but not as big as the men on the ships,’ Lucien said. ‘I watched from the sand and saw them come ashore. That must be them, I thought, the ones who will hurt Silvermay.’
‘They didn’t come to hurt me, Lucien,’ I told him. ‘They came to find you, to make you do terrible things, the things you do in the mosaics.’
He didn’t seem to take this in, and how could he? How could a mind still struggling to cope with what he’d done understand pictures made of stone hundreds of years ago that predicted his every move? All he could do was repeat what had happened.
‘They were good fighters, very strong,’ he said. ‘They killed the others who tried to stop them. I didn’t want to watch, so I went into the woods. But some followed me there. I crept up close to one and felt the power in him. It was what I needed so I took it from him.’
‘But how did you kill him?’ I asked. ‘A special magic protects the Wyrdborn. They cannot die unless —’
‘That was what I took from them,’ interrupted Lucien. ‘You call it magic. To me it was … it was a kind of food. And after I had taken that part of them into me, I put them to sleep.’
‘Like you killed the cows and the other animals,’ I said.
He stared at me, perplexed, and I guessed why. He simply couldn’t connect what he had done to the harsh word I’d used to describe it. To him, it wasn’t killing; he had simply taken what he needed.
Again, I wasn’t the only one worried by the look on his face. Birchon had returned without any of us noticing. He had heard our last words as he was approaching and was quick to put his own interpretation on them. ‘The Wyrdborn feel nothing when they kill. This one is no different.’
‘How is Geran?’ I asked him.
‘She’s lost a lot of blood. I can only plead with the gods.’ He refused to speak any more about her and focused again on Lucien.
Lucien knew something was wrong. His brow wrinkled and he sent me a look of such confusion, I had to fight back tears.
‘How many Wyrdborn did you kill?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. I remember taking the sword and armour from one. By then I was big enough to wear it. After that, I didn’t hide from the invaders any more. I went after them with my sword. I was stronger than they were. They didn’t like that. They ran from me, back to the beach. I followed them and found them spread out in a line, like the day before. The others — the ones in the circle around me now — broke into small bands again to fight them. They were weaker though and if they lost, then the men with darkness in their hearts would go after Silvermay.’
‘Their hearts,’ I said, interrupting. ‘You sensed a darkness in them?’
‘Yes. I took it from them and then I could put them to sleep.’
I saw it now. Before the fatal blow, he’d grabbed each Wyrdborn by the wrist. It wasn’t just to rid the Wyrdborn of the magic in their souls, as Tamlyn had said, that touch had been enough to let him draw the essence of t
heir being into himself.
Birchon expressed it another way. ‘He took their evil to bolster his own. He is darkness to the core.’
Lucien turned to him as understanding dawned slowly across his face. It was painful to watch. ‘No,’ he said, but too weakly to make them believe him. I doubted he knew what to believe himself.
‘He killed them to protect the people he cares about,’ said Tamlyn, coming to Lucien’s defence. ‘That makes him no different from the Felan. War is a kind of darkness. You cannot blame Lucien for that.’
‘He brought it to our shores. Many Felan are dead already and who’s to say there won’t be more, perhaps even my own …’ Birchon couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought. Instead he said, ‘Thousands more might die because of his evil.’
‘You are too harsh on the boy,’ said Delgar. ‘What Tamlyn says about war is true. There is reason to fear his powers, I agree, but he deserves a hearing. We are wizards of the Circle, leaders of the Felan. We know that peace grows out of justice. We need to know more about this boy before we pass judgement on him.’
The two Elders began to argue — in front of us, at first, then moving off a good distance, leaving me free to step towards Lucien.
The blood had stopped dripping from his armour, but I couldn’t bring myself to embrace him, or even touch him. My poor Lucien. Had a face ever looked more bewildered? Yet how could he feel otherwise when so much had happened to him in only three days? The changes to his body alone had been enormous, but the wrench inside his mind must be greater still.
‘Was I wrong to do what I did, Silvermay?’ he asked.
Both Tamlyn and Ryall jumped in before I could answer. ‘No,’ they cried in unison.
‘How could it be wrong when you have saved so many?’ Tamlyn carried on. ‘These men,’ he swept his arm towards the fallen Wyrdborn, ‘they were going to invade all of Erebis Felan and they didn’t care how many they killed along the way. You’ve saved thousands of lives, Lucien.’
‘Then why was that man so angry? Why do they hate me when I haven’t done them any harm? I don’t want to do them any harm.’
‘It is the way you kill so ruthlessly,’ I tried to explain. ‘Killing the animals in that field seems cruel to them, and then taking the souls of the Wyrdborn to make yourself grow … it’s the magic inside you they are afraid of. They don’t trust its power and so they are afraid of you.’
Lucien looked even more crestfallen after this. Then he raised his head as a memory came to him. ‘There was a word I didn’t understand. Mos … mosic …’
‘Mosaic,’ I said.
‘Yes, that was it. They’re afraid of the mosaic. Is it a monster of some kind?’
‘No,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Mosaics are pictures made from coloured stones. In Athlane, and here in Erebis Felan, too, there are mosaics that tell what you will do in the future.’
‘How can anyone know that? I don’t even know myself.’
‘The mosaics are all part of the magic — the magic that lives more strongly in you than anyone else.’
‘Magic?’
His response stunned me. How could he not understand the word after all that had happened to him? Yet, even as I wondered, I saw why. To him, his powers were entirely natural because he hadn’t known anything else since the day he was born. Inside his fourteen-year-old’s body, he was still like the little baby who knew so little about himself. And I couldn’t explain it to him for it simply wouldn’t make sense.
‘It’s time you stripped off your armour,’ I told him instead. The blood had begun to harden and I couldn’t bear to see death clinging to him in this way.
Tamlyn, Ryall and I helped him remove the shinplates and the skirt of steel plates around his waist. The breastplate followed and he stood in the clothes he had stolen. Even these were soaked in blood, and his hair, damp with sweat and falling in rats’ tails across his back, needed washing, too, before it congealed into a mass that only a pair of scissors could deal with.
‘Go into the water,’ I said. ‘Let it clean the blood from your hair and your clothes.’
The idea appealed to Lucien and, after a little testing with his feet, he plunged into the sea, dousing himself all over and playing in the waves as any boy would do.
‘I wish it was as easy to wash the magic from his bones,’ said Tamlyn.
‘I doubt there is enough water in the sea,’ I replied grimly, then told myself to cheer up. The Wyrdborn were beaten, and the Felan had been spared the agony of a long struggle to drive them from their land. The man beside me was now one of the commonfolk, and while we stood there watching Lucien frolic like a puppy in the waves he put his arm around me. I leaned my head against his shoulder and indulged in a dream of my own — that I was home in Haywode with Tamlyn’s arm still holding me safe, and every figure who passed before my eyes was a friend with a ready smile.
Clean at last, and tired from his games in the water, Lucien emerged onto the hard sand. He came to me and I opened my arms to him. Water spilled from his shirt and his hair, soaking me instantly as we hugged.
‘You are so tall,’ I said, standing back. ‘I have to look up to see your face.’
Yet I still thought of him as a child, the same little boy I had done my best to care for since the day I had laid eyes on him. That much wouldn’t change, I knew. Lucien carried no memory of Nerigold within him, though, only the stories Tamlyn and I had told him about her. He knew me instead, through the intimacy of touch and the hundred ways that a mother shows her little one that she loves him. I was Lucien’s mother, and on the beach that day I felt proud and, at the same time, awed by the responsibility it bestowed on me, now more than ever.
16
On the Shoulders of a Monster
While Lucien and I were speaking, Ryall had moved to stand over Coyle’s corpse where Tamlyn joined him, and rather than stand alone, I moved to make a third figure over the body.
‘He was more cunning and more dangerous than any of the Wyrdborn,’ Tamlyn said, ‘but he was no match for the magic he was determined to control.’
‘There was no love between you and your father,’ I said, ‘any more than there was between you and Hallig. Do you feel the same way about Coyle’s death?’
Tamlyn lowered himself onto his haunches beside Coyle’s body and cautiously, I might even have said tenderly, touched his father’s face. ‘I feel a sadness, Silvermay. A kind I have never known before. It is not sympathy. How could I feel anything but hatred when he murdered my mother? But I don’t feel any joy in his death, either. What I feel more than anything is a kind of freedom. It’s as though something is over for me and a new time is beginning.’
And maybe for me, too, I thought. It was a strange sensation to feel hope coursing through me when my nostrils were clogged with the stench of death.
When Tamlyn stood up again, we found that Lucien had wandered off a short way, stepping over bodies as though they were no more than stones exposed by the tide. He came back to us, his face difficult to read.
‘Do you recognise this man?’ I asked him.
‘He was the one who took me away from you, Silvermay.’
‘He was my father,’ said Tamlyn.
‘He was your father, too, Lucien,’ I added.
Lucien stood quietly for a moment, then said, ‘Yes, that was what he told me when I was so small he could carry me in his arms. But he was wrong, Silvermay. I have no father. I was born with two mothers.’
What a thing to say. What could I say in return? All I could offer was another hug.
Birchon took us back to the Felan’s camp behind the dunes, where dry clothes were found for Lucien. Parts of the camp had already been dismantled, and beyond the sea grass I could see wagons beginning the journey north towards the capital.
Birchon gave orders to a waiting lieutenant. ‘Collect up the Wyrdborn and bury them in the woods,’ he said. ‘One large pit is all you’ll need.’
I glanced at Tamlyn and knew he was thi
nking the same as me. It was a humiliating end for men and women who had once treated all around them with arrogance and cruelty.
After the lieutenant had gone off to gather gravediggers, Birchon turned to us. ‘The fighting here is done. Everyone is returning home, and so should you. I will arrange a ship for you as soon as we reach Meraklion. It will take you back to Athlane or wherever you wish to go.’
Before we could respond, he walked away. We heard him giving further orders about striking camp and marshalling supplies.
‘He wants rid of us as soon as possible,’ said Tamlyn.
I resented the sharp tone in Birchon’s voice as much as Tamlyn did, but all the same my mind quickly drifted to pictures of home: my mother in the doorway of our cottage; my father hurrying across the fields to welcome me.
No, I told myself. That dream must wait a little longer.
‘We’re not ready to go back to Athlane,’ I said to Tamlyn. ‘There’s more we have to learn, more we have to do. We made a pledge to Nerigold. We can’t rest until Lucien is free of the Wyrdborn curse.’
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ said Tamlyn and, stepping past me, he called to Birchon. ‘The key to Lucien’s fate lies here, in Erebis Felan. We’re not ready to leave.’
Birchon rounded on him. ‘His fate! It’s the fate of the Felan that I care about. The boy is a danger to all of us and we want him gone from here, as soon as you can sail.’
‘We’re not leaving until we’ve done what we came here for.’
I was proud of Tamlyn’s defiance and stepped to his side to support him. Ryall did the same at his other shoulder.
Instantly, the air filled with the tension I had sensed on the beach when Lucien found himself surrounded by rank after rank of Felan. This time there were only the officers, but each was well armed and every hand rested expectantly on the hilt of a sword.
Delgar spoke into the heavy silence, his voice as calm as his words. ‘The boy has done us no harm, and the rest of his kind are dead, Birchon.’
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