And that was when she saw them.
She had been almost too anxious to look at the distant, dark clouds. But she glanced that way, across the river and the dark woods and saw how the black shapes of the birds were more numerous, now. But it was not the birds that made her cry out, it was the carrion eaters who were crossing the river and beginning to prowl around the land at the bottom of the hill, where in Tallis’s world Knowe Field bordered Hunter’s Brook.
There were four of them, stooped, old figures, dressed in black rags. Tallis knew at once that they were women, but beyond that she could see no details, except that their hair was long and grey beneath the dark shawls. They were not the whisperers, not the masked women from the edgewoods. One of them pushed a cart, a ramshackle structure on two huge, solid wheels.
Their voices, their shrill exclamations and laughter, carried across the field of slaughter where they had come to loot the dead.
Tallis called urgently to Scathach. He didn’t stir. The strip of white nightdress fluttered in his fingers. A stronger wind was blowing in that other place, the beginning of the storm. Tallis suddenly felt frantic. She had two of the small stones in her pocket and she dropped them on Scathach’s unconscious form. She aimed for his legs but as the stones vanished they reappeared above his chest, knocked off target during their transition between the two worlds. Tallis gasped as she saw them strike, but they rolled harmless off the warrior’s body. Scathach remained unmoving.
Tallis leaned down again to watch the scavenging women. The wind had caught their loose black clothing and it flapped about their bodies like bat wings as they worked. But it was what they were doing that made Tallis shudder. They were stripping and dismembering the dead. They stretched the corpses and removed jackets, belts, breeches and boots. One of them worked on the naked torsos with a knife that flashed dully whilst the oldest and most hag-like used a long, curved blade and attended to the necks. When the women moved to another place the blind heads swayed and banged against the wood and the sad mouths gaped in silent protest.
The women’s cart was heavy with the flesh of the dead. Two of them pushed it, now. There were three dead men in the middle of the hill and then – yes, Tallis was sure of it – then they would see Scathach below the oak.
She crawled back along the branch until the season changed. Her heart was thundering, her head heavy with confusion. What to do? What to do? She needed to know more. She knew how primitive these people were, therefore she could find appropriate defences – in time! And she could make time. She could sustain Scathach’s life simply by not watching him. But that was not possible. She was too concerned. What if the cessation of time in his world did not continue? What if, even now, the hags were closing in on him to pick over his body, crowing as they trundled their rattling cart towards the succulent prey?
She scrambled back to winter. She could hear the laughter of the women before she even parted the leaves to see better. Metal rattled, wheels creaked, and the storm wind brought ancient smells of blood and smoke from the darkening field where the battle had been.
It was cold in that place. The distant trees swayed as the winter began to strip their branches. The smoke from the fires streamed chaotically in the glowering heavens. And Tallis realized that the hags had seen Scathach.
They ignored the bloody corpses in the middle of the field and dragged their squeaking cart towards the oak. The wind made their hoods billow and Tallis saw their ash-grey faces, the tight skin on the bones, the open mouths just black hollows from which emerged their predatory cries.
They stopped. They had seen the stone heads – Leaf Man and Leaf Mother – hanging above the body which they had come to loot. Perhaps they could see how the heads dangled from thin air. The creaking of the wheels ceased. The grim heads lolled as the cart’s handles were dropped and the women came cautiously forward.
They looked at the stones. They looked at Scathach. Then the oldest brandished her butchering blade and stepped forward.
‘No!’ screamed Tallis from the branches of Strong against the Storm. ‘Get away!’
The old women were stunned. They looked up, backed off, then stopped. Then the oldest took two steps towards the oak.
‘Go back!’ screeched Tallis. ‘Leave him! He’s mine. He’s mine!’
This oldest woman seemed to look right at Tallis, but the focus in her pale, watery eyes never hardened. She looked through Tallis, and to the side, and above her …
‘He’s mine! Go away!’ the girl screamed.
And the situation dawned on the women at last. There was no one in the tree, no human. They cried out, backing quickly away, arms crossed in front of their faces, the fingers of the right hand shaped like horns, those on the left indicating the eye. They spoke a confusion of words, then picked up the cart and swung it round, hauling it away across the field towards the storm and the forest where the fires burned.
Tallis laughed to see them go. Her laughter haunted the old women who began to run faster. She had won! She had driven them away! Scathach would be safe with her now.
But her triumph was short-lived.
She lay contentedly on the branch for a few minutes, watching the storm encroach, feeling the wind rise, seeing the hill become shadowy and grey. Still Scathach lay without moving, but she let him sleep. In the morning he would wake with the winter sun, she was sure of that. The crows would not get him now.
It was dusk, and from the direction of the woods light flickered. As she stared in that direction she saw several torches. Her heart jumped. Dark shapes were crossing the river. The torches flared more brightly. She could hear voices.
It was the women again. They still hauled their cart, but now it was piled high with what looked like wood … and a long stone. Behind them came a man. He was swathed in a long grey cloak, made of fur. He carried a tall staff. As he came closer, Tallis could see that his moustache was long, as was his grey hair, but he had no beard. His feet were bare. And there were not four women this time, but five. The newcomer wore an odd and frightening black veil across her face, but was otherwise as raggedly dressed as her companions.
‘Go away …’ Tallis whispered, feeling despair, then anger surface again. ‘Go away!’ she commanded more loudly, and the sombre procession slowed for a moment before continuing to advance.
Before they had reached the area of the haunted oak, Tallis stopped time again. She gathered several of the painted stones, selecting only those with eyes and circles on them.
In Scathach’s world again, the fire from the torches streamed violently in the wind. The dark storm-clouds moved swiftly across the field and Tallis could smell rain in the air. She could hear thunder.
The women rammed the torches in the ground, forming a half circle around the oak. They stood there, ragged clothes whipping about their angry bodies. They screeched in a single voice, the sound an eerie and terrifying ululation. They watched the oak branch where Tallis crouched and they made their magic signs with their hands and arms. The woman with the veiled face whispered to the man, then stepped back a little. The old man stepped forward. He raised his staff and struck at the Leaf heads above Scathach’s body. The action was sudden and violent and Tallis responded with a scream of her own and a stone thrown viciously at his head. The stone struck him on the shoulder. He roared words of pain and anger into the tree, then stooped to pick up the talisman. Almost immediately he dropped it, frightened by it, but the veiled woman scurried forward to claim it, turning it over in her fingers; Tallis thought she heard the woman laugh, and this frightened her.
So she screeched, ‘He’s mine!’ And threw a second stone at one of the torches. The women continued to wail, the oldest brandishing her long, dull knife. ‘Leave him alone!’ Tallis screamed. ‘Don’t cut him. Don’t hurt him!’
The old man was furious. He waved his staff and made strange patterns in the air with his left hand. He pointed to the sleeping form of Scathach then slapped his chest. He said something; the words were simple,
urgent.
Tallis threw an eye-stone at him and it struck him on the brow, sending him staggering back. When he had recovered from the blow he unloaded other torches from the cart and lit each one, ramming them into the soft ground to increase the circle of fire around the tree. Tallis watched. The darkness grew deeper; the flames made the pale faces of the hags glow.
When Tallis scrambled down from the tree for more eye and circle stones she realized that dusk was approaching in her own world. She carried more stones from the base of Strong against the Storm, into its heart.
She passed again from peaceful dusk to storm-blown night. The crackle of the torches was loud and the screeching of the hags sounded like wild animals howling with pain. When she looked down into the forbidding world she could see that the old man and two of the women were pushing the tall, grey stone from the cart. They could hardly manage it. They succeeded in getting it upright, where it balanced, held by the women. The veiled woman placed her hands upon it for a second, then said something to the old man, who struck it with his staff then walked around it, crying out in his strange tongue. Each time he passed between Tallis and the stone he struck the smooth grey surface.
At last the strange ritual was over. Tallis watched as he took a knife and scratched the stone in a line from top to bottom, then used the blade to strike it powerfully along its edges …
The blows didn’t seem strong enough to have made the deep marks of ogham, but Tallis watched intrigued. Were they carving Scathach’s name? Was this the strongest spell they knew with which to steal the warrior?
Suddenly it was done. The stone fell heavily to the ground. (There was no Stretley Man in that position in Tallis’s own time.) The women ran at the sleeping form of Scathach and were met by a hail of stones from the tree. The attack drove them off, bloody and screaming. Only black veil was unaffected, standing a little way back, watching the tree.
‘You won’t take him. You won’t take him!’ Tallis screamed. ‘He’s mine. He belongs to me …’
She was out of stones again. She slipped quickly back to the heart of the oak to gather more. Thunder struck loudly and she was rocked in her precarious perch by the gusting, powerful wind. As she filled her arms she suddenly froze.
Where was the dusk? What was the storm doing here?
‘Scathach!’ she screamed. ‘Oh no. Oh no!’
She felt back along the branch, almost losing her grip. She flopped down at her vantage point and stared into the field, between the fires.
Scathach was gone. She could hear the cart creaking and she leaned down to watch it go. Scathach was flopped in it, his legs trailing over the edge. The old man was walking beside it, his staff across the body. The old women wailed and hauled their prey to some quiet place, to strip it in peace. The black veil had been tied around the standing stone, the hag’s triumph blowing in the storm.
‘Scathach!’ Tallis cried, repeating the name endlessly as the tears and the grief came.
She had failed. She had failed to protect him. She had failed the Hollower’s task for her. Anguish was a cold, twisting knife, cutting her bones, her flesh, her spirit.
Fire was spreading up the oak from two torches which had been flung to its base. Tallis sobbed, watching the flames. She had tried so hard to save her lovely warrior, and she had not been old enough to do it, her spells had not been strong enough. The Hollower had whispered the way of vision-making, and she had controlled time in the vision until she had doubted herself: she could remember the exact moment when she had lost control of the Hollowing, when she had become afraid that her simple presence in the tree would not be enough to dictate the flow of Scathach’s life …
And she had paid the price; Scathach had paid the price. She had failed to save him. Her doubt had been an interference, and by interfering she had changed Scathach’s story.
I blunt iron
A shadow through Time I cast
I am unshaped Earth. I stand alone.
I am the second of the three. I am Stone.
Or had she changed the story?
It was only as her desperation and despondency eased that she was able to review the events of the last few hours and finally see the actions that gave the lie to her belief in Scathach’s gruesome fate.
It was with a sense of shock that she realized that the wailing of the women had not been a cry of triumph, but the keening of despair, of sadness; if there was triumph it was for the rescuing, not the stealing of the warrior’s corpse.
Everything she remembered, now, increased her awareness that she had mistaken the plangency of their voices for the crowing of carrion birds, alone with their prey. The image of that old man, pointing to Scathach, pointing to himself … Had he been saying that he belonged with them? Is that why the hags had abandoned the bodies in the middle of the field, because they had seen one of their own princes?
It all came horribly clear to her. The hags had been of his people, and they had seen him below the tree, and seen the tree spirit which guarded him, and assumed that the spirit was trying to steal him. They had tried to save Scathach from the tree spirit. How badly they had misunderstood what she had been doing. She had been protecting him from slaughter. Now it seemed she had been protecting him from his own kind, his own clan.
Perhaps she could bring him back by calling more gently. Yes, that would be good. They had not yet reached the river and they had heard her shout once before. She would climb into the arms of Strong against the Storm for one last time and call to them, to reassure them, and tell them her name so that when Scathach was recovered fully from his wounds he would always remember her fondly.
Her time with him was not now; it would be later, when she was older.
For the moment she was just a tree spirit, but not one of whom they needed to be afraid.
She ran three times around each of the fallen stones, the Stretley Men, not knowing which of them was Scathach’s stone, then she returned to the tree and climbed it swiftly, crawling along the branch to where the storm was raging and a torch-lit night stood as the first marker of the dead of the lost and ancient battle.
She had expected to see the cart and the rag-robed women and it was with a final, sickening shock that she realized that time had eluded her again. Now, by the river, a great pyre burned, its flame a silent dance against the wall of the forest behind.
A man lay on that pyre. It was Scathach, of course. Tallis could tell that – and she could see, too, that already the fire was claiming him for ash.
Below her the oak tree was burned and blackened, the fire gone, its ghost residing in the smouldering trunk; but Tallis was hardly aware of this. She cried for Scathach, watching as the flames began to consume him, bright life rising into the storm sky.
And the last thing she saw was a horse and rider gallop from the forest and pass around the blaze, black cloak and dark mane streaming. Why she thought it was a woman Tallis couldn’t tell, but she saw the rider pass around the pyre from right to left, once, twice, and then again, the flame bright on her white, clay-stiffened hair, the gaunt black lines on her face, the red streaking of her naked limbs. Her cries of sorrow were like the fleeting cries of the dawn birds, banished from this forbidden place of winter, this Bird Spirit Land.
[SKOGEN]
Shadow of the Wood
(i)
She was still distressed a week later – it was early August, now – and had not become involved in any way with the preparation in Shadoxhurst for the annual festival of singing and dancing. She didn’t have much to say to anyone and her parents left her to her sullen contemplation of the land. When her mother spoke to her about the manifest concern that her daughter was feeling, Tallis simply said, ‘I have to make it up to him. I misunderstood. It will have hurt him. I have to make it up to him. Until I do that I can’t start looking for Harry again. Or the Hunter.’
This was not especially illuminating for Margaret Keeton and she left Tallis to her own devices.
But what devices?
Tallis had made a grotesque mistake. The Hollower had helped her to open the first gate clearly to the forbidden world, to the otherworld, to the ancient realm whose real name still eluded her, though she had struggled several times to ‘hear’ the name in her mind. The Hollower had trained her and she had ruined the training. Instead of witnessing the sad death and wonderful spiritual release of Scathach, she had interfered with a process which should only have been watched. She had changed something. She had done something very wrong. The Hollower, the masked woman from the wood, was very agitated. She followed Tallis, but withdrew into the shadows whenever the girl tried to approach.
Tallis had changed the vision. She had interfered. She had acted wrongly.
She felt an urgent need to make amends with Scathach. But she had no idea how to break the spell of change. She had no idea what magic to use to send his spirit on its way, to release him from the image in her own tormented mind, an image which, she was quite convinced, was trapping him in Bird Spirit Land.
She was holding him between worlds. In limbo. She had to find the charm to release him to his journey. Then, too, she would be released to pick up her own journey, in pursuit of Harry, in search of the way into Ryhope Wood.
On the day of the festival Tallis woke before dawn. She dressed quickly and tiptoed out of the house, running across the nearer fields until she came to Stretley Stones. There she stood by Strong against the Storm and watched its summer branches, listening in the silence for any hint of a winter storm. She heard nothing. The faces of the crows, scratched there a few days before, had faded. Already the great tree was absorbing her magic, healing its wound. In the days since the hollowing had ended no birds had entered the meadow, Tallis had clearly noticed that.
Lavondyss (Mythago Cycle) Page 11