by Kim Wilkins
‘The whole army?’
‘Some say the raiders have seven ships.’ This was the innkeeper’s ruddy-faced wife, overhearing their conversation and eagerly joining in.
Ash exhaled slowly.
‘Seven ships?’ Bluebell gasped. ‘That’s not a raiding party. That’s an army.’ She turned to Ash. ‘We have to go to Sæcaster.’
‘It will take days. We must rest. I must rest.’
Bluebell would not say what she was thinking in front of the innkeeper: that her father was too old to lead the army, that he would die without her there.
‘When did they leave?’ she asked him.
‘Yesterday morning, I heard.’
‘We’ll catch them,’ Ash said, putting cool fingers on Bluebell’s wrist. ‘We are just two and we are horsed, faster than an army on foot. We can set off tomorrow morning at first light.’ She turned to the innkeeper’s wife. ‘Would you take me to our room?’
‘What about food?’ Bluebell asked.
‘I’m not hungry.’
Bluebell bit her tongue so she didn’t say, ‘Hunger be damned; you need to eat a whole pig.’
‘Come with me, my lady,’ the innkeeper’s wife said, and led Ash away.
Bluebell watched them go then asked the innkeeper, ‘How bad is the situation? What other news? I have been too long out of the world.’
The innkeeper stroked his beard. ‘Well, there are rumours … but I don’t know if I can credit them …’
‘Rumours of what?’
‘A village set on fire on the west coast. Dragon wings casting shadows across the fields.’ He turned his palm out. ‘But as I said, I don’t know if I can credit such stories. The dragons died out with the giants.’
‘The dragon is dead,’ Bluebell said. ‘I killed it myself. If my sister wasn’t off sleeping she’d tell the tale tonight in the alehouse.’ Bluebell felt a pang of regret that it wouldn’t happen. She had been looking forward to that.
‘Is that so?’ he said, awe clouding his eyes. ‘Then your reputation shall be amplified, my lord. For they say its wingspan was twenty yards and its white scales dazzle so bright against the summer sky that it blinds those who look at it.’
Bluebell didn’t say that it was much smaller, but she did say, ‘It wasn’t white. It was red.’
‘Stories I heard said whiter than bones bleached by the sun.’
She shrugged. ‘Stories get it wrong all the time.’ But an itch of unease started in her stomach.
‘All but the stories of your deeds,’ he said, with a little nod of his head. ‘Will you eat?’ He gestured to the door to the alehouse.
She looked at the door, longed to be with company and noise and men. But how could she sit there among them when they all knew she should be leading the army towards Sæcaster? ‘Have something brought to our room,’ she said. ‘And make sure nobody mentions the white dragon to my sister. She is … fearful of dragons.’
‘Aren’t we all?’ he said. ‘Let me show you the way.’
She followed him, head down so she wouldn’t meet the eyes of people coming and going from the alehouse. Surely the stories had it wrong, surely it was her dragon they spoke of? But she wouldn’t dare sow a seed of doubt in Ash’s mind. Ælmesse had gone to war, and the only honourable thing for Ash to do now was to fulfill her destiny as her family’s war counsellor. The dragon problem could wait. They had to get to Sæcaster.
Twenty-six
Skalmir had many things to consider, captured now, held in a cage under the singing tree; but all he could consider was Rowan’s face and body, lit by the firelight of Rathcruick’s tribe.
Because Rowan had changed. She had left him a seven-year-old. The girl in front of him was not yet a woman, but she was not a child. If he had never seen her before, he would have guessed her age to be twelve. Her face, her arms, her legs, all longer and leaner than the Rowan he knew; the first curve of maturity in her waist and hips.
‘I would have warned you,’ she said to him as Rathcruick and another man pulled a thick rope that raised the cage, inch by inch, back into the branches of the tree. The cage swung and the rope creaked.
‘You look different,’ he said.
She turned her head so he could see the tattoo on her cheek, identical to Dardru’s. Spirals within circles. ‘I have been here a long time,’ she said.
‘It can only be weeks.’
‘Time passes differently here. Sometimes it feels like weeks, sometimes like years,’ she said with a sigh. ‘There seems to be no division from night to day, from sun to moon. I feel …’ She slapped her palm against her temple twice. ‘I am not alone in here.’
‘You have me.’
‘Not in the cage,’ she said, pointing at her forehead. ‘In here. In my head. Dardru is with me.’
‘Dardru …?’
‘Rathcruick’s daughter. The one Bluebell killed.’
‘Bluebell didn’t kill her. She killed herself.’
‘For pride, to escape being one of Bluebell’s trophies,’ she said. ‘I know all her thoughts.’
‘I don’t understand. How did she get in you?’
‘Rathcruick did it. He has gone mad in his grief. The Ærfolc believe the spirits of the dead stay around their loved ones until given leave to cross over. Rathcruick never gave Dardru any such leave. And I was open, vulnerable. I was out – out of my head, visiting Mama in the forest as my shimmering self. And he slipped her in. At the first opportunity …’ She took a deep shuddering breath. ‘He says I will be queen of the Ærfolc, queen of Thyrsland thereafter. All I need to do is submit.’
‘To Dardru?’
‘Yes. But I won’t. She isn’t as strong as me. I am descended from kings.’
He gazed at her in wonder. His tiny foster child, grown into a young woman who boasted about her strength, her lineage.
‘And so he keeps me in this cage, thinking it will make me change my mind.’ She looked down at the fire and called out, ‘I won’t change my mind!’
Rathcruick didn’t answer.
‘He won’t speak to me,’ she said. ‘They roast food right beneath me and give me leaves to eat. Then they cover the fire at night so I won’t be warm, and they go sleep in their houses. There’s a whole camp, about half a mile away.’ She indicated with one hand, poking it through the bars. ‘I had already decided that if you didn’t come for me, I would refuse to eat and die in here just to spite him, and his wretched daughter can live inside my corpse and see how she likes that.’
He smiled weakly, didn’t reveal his doubts. ‘You won’t die,’ he said. ‘Do they keep you in here the whole time?’
She indicated the rough blankets around her on the wooden base of the cage. ‘As you see. They lower the cage twice a day to feed me and let me go to pot. Under guard, mind you. Other than that, I’m here in wind and rain and sun, and will be until I do as he says.’ Then her defiance leeched away again, and she sounded very young as she said, ‘If only Dardru hadn’t died. He was kind to me until then. I thought I would be happy when I found the singing tree. I believed he wanted to make friends. He says he knew my grandfather, that they had been allies …’ She trailed off, uncertain.
Skalmir couldn’t tell her that, now he’d come for her, he didn’t know how to save her. He’d left his weapons back at the camp with Rose, Rathcruick had taken his knife, and the bars of the cage were forged of iron. He ran through possibilities in his mind. They would be let down twice a day. The camp was half a mile from the cage. He put these two facts in play over and over, and yet couldn’t come up with a way to escape.
‘Have you ever tried to get out of here?’ he asked her.
‘Of course. I’ve been here forever. I tried reaching under and loosening the latch. I tried to reach for the rope to gnaw through it with my teeth. I’ve tried swinging the cage until the bough creaked and cracked. But every time I get close, the tree warns them.’
‘The tree?’
‘Yes, it stops singing and starts screa
ming.’ Her eyes went up to the branches around them. ‘It has no love for me. It does Rathcruick’s bidding.’ Then Rowan looked at him sadly. ‘I don’t suppose it will be any easier for you to help me escape, will it?’
‘I don’t know, Rowan,’ he said, and he grasped her hand and squeezed it. ‘But there’s somebody else who might save us yet.’
‘Who?’
‘Your mother.’
And now Rose was alone. She knew it. She didn’t need to go into the wood to see what had happened to Skalmir; he was gone. He hadn’t answered any of her increasingly frantic calls.
She curled herself in a ball by the fire and closed her eyes as the morning sun began to flood the glade. Alone. For a few brief moments, her mind turned over the agonising choice between continuing to search for Rowan or returning to Linden, but then she realised she had no choice. She was lost and had no idea how to get back to her own world, or into Rowan’s. As far as she knew, she was the only human in this place – wherever it was – and she felt her isolation keenly. Her skin was covered in gooseflesh, and she hugged her knees and told herself she mustn’t cry, but she cried anyway, big heaving sobs of self-pity that made her ashamed of herself. Who was there to listen and judge her, anyway? She cried until her stomach hurt, then she stopped, sat up, palmed the tears from her face and started thinking about what to do next.
The sun was up by now, so she knew she should at least follow Skalmir’s route and see if there was any evidence of what had happened. She had heard no sounds of a struggle, no roars of bears or howls of wolves, so she didn’t expect to find him dead, but she trod warily and anxiously nonetheless. She listened carefully, heard nothing beyond the usual sounds of the wood. Skalmir’s feet had turned up leaf fall and left faint prints in the cold dirt. Rose followed them.
The footprints stopped. No scuffle. No mark of him having stood somewhere. Step, step, step, nothing.
Rose lowered herself to her knees on the spot, her hands reaching out to move twigs and leaves around. She found a stone, which at first looked as though it was entirely naturally formed. But on closer scrutiny, she became aware it was too symmetrical to be anything but hand carved, too upright to be anything but placed deliberately. She cleared off the ivy growing over it, and saw that it was shallowly etched with a symbol. A circle, like a wheel with spokes that extended out and finished in spirals. She ran her fingers over it lightly, then more forcefully. ‘Take me where Skalmir has gone,’ she demanded, under her breath, but nothing happened. She was still in the wood, the sun already sweeping fast overhead. She looked up and could almost see it moving. It would be night again soon. Her eyes felt gritty with tiredness, her body limp with exhaustion. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept.
Rose climbed to her feet and headed back to their camp. Her stomach rumbled loudly, but she was too tired to hunt for mushrooms. Skalmir’s pack was still here, and she went through it and pulled out a hunk of old bread, which she chewed on and swallowed without pleasure. She washed it down with water and kept looking through his pack. A knife, arrowheads, spare clothes. She tucked the knife into her waistband and repacked the rest. His bow and quiver were still here, too. She had never shot an arrow in her life and now it seemed a terrible oversight. She pulled the bow string. It was much heavier than she’d imagined. Standing, she tried to fit an arrow in it and release it. The arrow fell at her feet, the bow string slapping her hand.
Rose sat back down and went through her own pack. She still had blinding powder, so she tucked that under her cloak. Yldra had also given her a potion to help if she got the shits, and another to purify stagnant water. Solutions to problems she didn’t have. She remembered the strange waymark magician, the one who foretold she would be lost again. How could she conjure him up, get him to point her in the right direction?
There was no right direction, though. She knew that. She was lost in the woods, lost in between the days and weeks. She thought about the grey that had appeared in Skalmir’s beard and wondered if the woods had already robbed her of a year or two of her life as well.
Late afternoon shadows came so quick they looked as though they were being poured onto the ground. She was weary enough to sleep, knowing too it would give her back her energy, chase away the mental fog. Sleeping alone among the enchantments of this wood didn’t feel safe, but sleep she must.
Rose gathered the packs and the weapons close, wrapped them in Snowy’s blanket and gathered them against her chest. She closed her eyes and willed sleep to come. Her senses were too alert, and for an hour or more she lay in that position, unmoving, unsleeping.
Then the dark seemed to set in properly. Night noises came. She cracked her eyelids open and saw stars. Was Rowan under the same stars? Was she nearby? ‘I am coming for you, my child,’ she murmured.
Closed her eyes. Slept.
The warm shape against her back was familiar. She had felt it hundreds of times before, at home in her bed at Yldra’s house. But this time, it wasn’t still or quiet. Fingers poked her back.
‘Mama, I’m here. Don’t wake up.’
Rose was dreaming. Her dream self came to consciousness, opened dream eyes on a silver-blue landscape of shadowy trees. ‘Rowan?’ she asked, looking around, everything moving slowly, shushing softly as if under water.
‘You won’t be able to see me,’ the voice said, ‘but you can feel me.’ With that, a small, cool hand slid into Rose’s.
Rose squeezed it tight. ‘Oh, my child,’ she said, overcome. ‘My child.’
‘There will be time enough for that,’ Rowan said, her voice a whisper among the folds of Rose’s thoughts. ‘Let me show you where you must go.’
The hand tugged gently, and Rose began to drift, a kite being pulled on a string, over rocks and uneven ground. The shimmering light moved and swirled around her, making whispering, murmuring noises. Rose felt weightless, made of moonlight. The dark parted in front of her and closed behind her again, and her thoughts became scrambled, blurred.
‘Stay in the dream,’ Rowan said urgently, bringing her back to the dreamlit forest. ‘Stay in the dream, Mama. I need to show you where to go.’
They had stopped in the forest and Rose tried very hard to concentrate, to look around at the shapes of trees and rocks so she could find this location again tomorrow when awake.
‘Here, look down,’ Rowan said.
Rose looked down and she saw the stone she had found earlier, with the spiralling pattern on it. ‘I know where this is,’ Rose said. ‘I didn’t see the way.’
‘The way is shut. I will open it when I slide back into myself, and I will keep it open as long as I can. As long as Rathcruick doesn’t feel me working the crossing, you will be able to get through. Listen for the singing tree.’
‘Does he control the crossing?’
‘He controls nothing. He thinks he does, but the woods are just as capricious as he is. Just come, quiet and cautious. Snowy and I are waiting for you.’
Rose snapped awake. The silver-blue forest of shadows was gone, replaced with bright sunlight. How long had she slept? Not long, she suspected, as her limbs still felt heavy. But her mind was alert, her heart thudding.
‘Rowan,’ she said, and the idea that she was so close now, so close to her child after so many years …
She had to find the stone in the wood. Rose scrambled to her feet, left her pack and Snowy’s weapons covered by the blanket and kicked a thin cover of dead leaves over them for good measure, then retraced her steps back into the wood.
The stone was where she remembered it, and she kneeled by it and put her hands on it, expecting to be transported that way. Nothing happened.
An awful suspicion that her dream had been just that: a dream, nonsense, wishful thinking.
But then she saw the shadow, eating the ground next to her. The shadow deepened, became a hollow, then a pit. The ground crumbled away around her knees and she scrambled back, only to find herself sliding into the pit on her palms and knees, tumbling over
and falling. Her stomach went hollow and she screamed, but the scream stopped abruptly when she hit ground.
Somewhere else entirely. Rose took a moment to get her bearings. It was now night-time. She appeared to be in the bottom of a hollow tree, and the other place – with the carved stone, had simply vanished.
She stood, careful not to hit her head, and brushed off her palms.
Rowan had said to listen for the singing tree, and she heard it immediately. Music made from wind in branches, sweet and strange and seductive. As much as she wanted to hurry her steps, the dark and Rowan’s warning made her quiet and cautious. Nearly an hour passed before she saw the enormous oak, the smouldering campfire beneath it. She could see two silhouettes in a cage hanging from a bough against the deep twilit blue of the sky.
Rose slowed, crouching to inch closer, expecting to be discovered at any moment. But it seemed the fire had been let to burn down, the camp had gone elsewhere. By the time she stood beneath the cage, looking up at Rowan and Skalmir, she was convinced Rathcruick and his tribe had left them up there to die.
Snowy looked down, motioning for her to be quiet. Rose glanced around, saw the rope that was used to pull the cage up and down. She could untie it, but had she the strength to lower it safely? Would they come crashing to the ground too fast and break their bones?
She eyed the tree. They were a long way up. The rope it was.
Rose began to work the knot. As she did so, the tree’s melodious whispering and rattling began to intensify. False notes sounded.
‘Hurry!’ Rowan called.
Rowan, her daughter. It was finally happening, the reunion she had dreamed about for years. She felt unprepared. The circumstances were not right. They needed time, a safe place to hold each other.
The tuneless notes became more frequent, louder. Rose had the rope in both her hands. She dug her heels into the ground and freed the last loop and the weight of the cage tore the rope through her palms, lifting the flesh. She turned, wrapping the rope around her own waist once, then pulled it around the curve of the tree trunk. She stopped on the other side, her back hard against the trunk, and braced as she lowered the cage, in fits and jerks, to the ground. Her hands bled, her shoulders burned, but the cage was coming, faster and faster.