Aloren

  I stayed clear of the mad, lowing cow. I put my fist in a hole in the wall, dug out the saddlebag, and heard someone sniffling.

  She was up in the haymow. I couldn’t guess why she’d chosen the haymow.

  “Emry,” I said, “you’ll roast like a peahen on a spit.” She only sobbed louder, so I pulled her down, not very gently, and dragged her out the door.

  The inn was burning at the top, and I couldn’t very well send her back into it. I took her hand, and we raced through the north field to the pond, tripping on tufts of reaped hay. Halfway there the clouds thinned and parted: Floy wasn’t flying any longer. She ran, making tracks in the frost. Emry stared. “It’s just a ghost,” I said, tugging her along.

  The pond was lit with orange and rent with noise. Floy and I waded into the flowerbed, arms outstretched. “Ouch!” I glared at my thumb.

  “What?”

  “Gentians don’t––oh––” I’d brushed a nettle. “Come and help,” I hissed at Emry. She stood looking on, half-dead with fear.

  I wrapped my hands in my apron and pulled my nettles. My insides churned; I knelt in the dirt. I clenched my teeth and ripped them free. It felt like a kick in the chest. “Must it hurt this much?” I ripped more from the ground and cried out.

  I jumped near out of my skin when more hands joined in: Tem and Arin, both very Elde in the starlight.

  “God!” Tem gathered gentian stems, his back bowed and shuddering. “It hurts so!” We bit our tongues until the saddlebag bulged. Tem’s movements grew frantic. “Hurry.” He pushed us towards the forest. “The other half is riding through the pasture; they’ll be here soon.”

  “There’s another half?” I ripped free the last stalk of gentians.

  “Stop.” Tem bowled me over.

  “It doesn’t seem like enough, though,” said Arin. I wondered if he had gone mad, then saw he was looking at the flower heads in the bag. “It’s enough for a scarf. Like as not, for five tunics they’ll need to cover the hills.”

  They were supposed to cover the hills?

  “Do you have the letter things, Reyna?” said Tem. I ran to an oak on the opposite bank and pulled an inkwell and parchment from a knothole. The quill wasn’t there.

  “Where is it?” I looked around the roots and into the water.

  “Don’t be dumb,” said Arin, who had come with me. “If it wasn’t an iron feather it’s long gone.” Then he took me by the hand, and I took Emry by the hand, and we ran after Floy with Tem in the rear.

  We were splashing across Carder’s Ford in the tall bottom woods, when torchlight shone through the beeches east of us. A line of it stretched down a ridge not far from the ford. It moved in our direction.

  Floy slid on the wet shingle. “Which half is this?” There was an absence of underbrush. We had nowhere to hide.

  “Oy!” Tem beckoned and slipped between the beeches and oaks on the opposite side of the stream. He was an eerie sight, now an egret, now a boy, shifting in the shadow and light; and we stumbled after him. We hadn’t gone far when a big bald hill stood in our way. I saw the bone-white stones in its foot, half concealed by ferns, and the black between them.

  “It’s the barrow, Tem, the ford’s barrow. You don’t mean to go in there?”

  “It isn’t a barrow.” He stood just outside the entrance, his left arm feathered and in shadow. I peered into the dark.

  “But––”

  “Quickly now. We need you.” He pointed to his feathers. Arin had to use all his strength to push Emry and me inside, and Floy hesitated before she followed.

  In the dark beneath the hill the birds sat on my shoulders, and I stumbled along, banging my feet. Emry held my hand in a tight, wet grip.

  “Keep up,” I told her, “and you won’t get eaten by ghouls.” As we walked, the passage sloped down and widened, and the dust became wet, collecting between my toes. The air was musty and thick and we pushed through it like a curtain.

  The place wasn’t a barrow, but a tunnel, arching higher than I wished to reach, worn into waves by subterranean streams that surprised us unpleasantly now and again. No barrow, but haunted nonetheless.

  My palms brushed runes in the rock, stories that soaked into my skin with the dampness: Coronets of stars and sea-spray, and a saebel king, crowned with laurel and holly, moonlight in his eyes. A field of red flowers at the foot of a sand dune. An ice-woman with a dagger in her breast. A bridge of gold stretching across an abyss, and over it coming a girl, a hart, and a light. The light was a pinprick that grew and kept growing, and then I saw Emry’s dirty face, and stepped into the outside air.

  We were in a huge, square tower––we’d gone backwards through what must have been its escape route. The walls leaned drunkenly to one side, looking ready to collapse. The roof already had, blocking the entrance with a pile of rubble.

  In the corner was a rope ladder leading to a loft of wooden beams that should have rotted away long ago. Nobody noticed this. Nor did we notice the barrels in the corners, or the characters, neither old, nor runic, scratched into the chalky walls.

  “Look who it is,” said Mordan. I put my hands over Emry’s ears. “And a good thing, too. Felt like my chest was being wrenched to pieces.” Leode, looking more wan than usual, grinned and clapped his hands.

  “It was the last of the flowers,” I said, and looked round me. “How on earth did you find this place?”

  “We’re birds most of the time,” Leode said. Mordan went straight to business.

  “You might as well be kept up to date, so here’s the bad news.”

  “Wait,” I said, “Emry––”

  I pulled her into the corner under the loft. I sat next to her and sang a song about a girl who heard a nightingale singing with her dead mother’s voice. Emry was asleep before I’d finished.

  I’d half a mind to go to sleep next to her, but I walked back to where the boys and Floy had gathered. Mordan shook me awake. “Uncle Ederach hasn’t been crowned King or even made Regent.”

  “The Queen has a son,” said Tem.

  “Oh,” I said. “Is he a half brother?”

  “He’s a poisonous little toad,” said Arin.

  “You’d become fast friends,” I said. “What’s the good news?”

  “What good news?” said Mordan sadly.

  I leaned forward. “I’ve got some.”

  “What?” Leode leaned in with me. I sang the first line of Mother’s ice aster song.

  Tem started to laugh. Mordan’s eyes grew wide, and the moss sprang green beneath their feet.

  “That’s only the first line,” crowed Tem. “How many verses are there?” he asked Mordan. “Seven? Eight?”

  “Find out, shall we?” Mordan began to sing in his funny, half-grown voice:

  “The ice aster throws high her gossamer skirts

  On the brow of the Pirnon Mireir.

  She laces her slippers and dances a waltz,

  And she weaves her a door in the air.

  Could she weave herself through, she would find a sweet land

  Filled with noon-tides of nectar and cream

  But the key and the door and the door and the key––”

  He tilted his head. “How’s the rest go?”

  Tem shook his head, sang,

  “But the door wants a key, and the key will not show

  Till she walks neath the water in dream.

  “How’s the next bit start?” He was looking at Arin.

  “Don’t know,” said Arin, looking up at the stars. “I was six.”

  “You were singing it in the bath well after you were six,” said Tem.

  “Underwater,” said Mordan, “so loud I could hear it.”

  I started laughing.

  “Now I’m definitely not telling,” said Arin.

  “It’s a matter of life or death, Arin,” said Tem.

  Arin easily had the best voice of all of us. But he could howl like a dog when he wanted, and he did so now:

  “Before sh
e was gowned in her petals of white,

  Aster dreamed herself out through her door,

  Now were she to dance all her fragrance away,

  She would weave herself entrance no more.

  She floats free of the earth, just a crafter of doors

  For the feet standing stark in the ground,

  Ever weighting a warp round the runaway pain

  From a hurt that cries nary a sound.”

  “No ear does she have, nor a mouth that can scream

  To fill suffering’s silent appeal,

  But she’ll dance and she’ll bleed and she’ll dream out a key

  For the door she has sworn to unseal.

  She courts weft with her shuttle and measures her stride,

  Then sets out to envelop the earth.

  All her unfolding florets, her sorrow and stem

  Can’t begin to encompass its girth.

  She weaves light with a fire that shows in her step,

  And shines out through the snow and despair,

  But the demons have slipped through a much larger door,

  And they scheme to indict and impair

  All the sweet thoughts above, all the gladness and joy

  That she spins into delicate strands.

  Though no hope for her dance, Aster spins out the whole,

  Making warmth with her feathery hands.”

  “Thank you,” said Tem. “What have we learned?”

  “She’s white,” said Leode, “she floats free of the ground, and she hasn’t ears or a mouth, and she lives under the stars.”

  “Which is true of a lot of flowers,” said Mordan.

  “Alright, Mordan,” I said. “What’s the Pirnon Mireir?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We all stared at him.

  “It’s Simargh,” said Mordan.

  “I know,” I said. “It means ‘between colors’.”

  “How’d you––?”

  “A human told me.”

  “Really? If everyone had stopped repeating what humans told them––”

  “All the world’s problems would be solved because we did what you said?”

  “Stow it,” snapped Tem, and we did because Tem only snapped when he was very put out. “The asters have a place-name, now,” he said, moving carefully around disappointment. “We just need to find out what it is.”

  Floy spoke up, “If it’s mentioned even once in an old song, it has to exist somewhere.”

  “It may just go by a common name,” I said.

  “We shan’t give up hope,” said Tem.

  “Or the search,” said Mordan.

  “We’re not allowed to,” said Arin.

  “Let’s finish the letter before dawn comes, at any rate,” said Tem.

  “I lost the quill,” I said. “Who’s closest to a goose?”

  “You,” said Arin. But everyone was looking at him. He blinked, startled. “Oh, no. No, no, no.” I shoved him towards the shadows in the tunnel. “Can’t you use a stick?” And then he was a flapping swan that threw a tirade of spits when I pulled a feather. He made for the light and turned back to a boy.

  I knelt on the ground to pare down the black feather with a little knife. I handed the pen to Tem.

  He gave a nod to Arin. “I’ll knight you if ever I make a king.”

  Arin snorted and Tem sat down on the stones with the quill, parchment and ink. Mordan sat next to him and together they set to work. Once they both looked up at me and laughed softly.

  “I’m funny?” I said.

  “You’re gorgeous,” said Tem.

  I scrubbed my face with my apron. Tem folded the letter into thirds. “This letter will have to have a seal––Reyna, listen!” Arin was throwing clods of loam at me. “You mustn’t seal it until you give it to Ederach. There’re no names written on the parchment, but it could be very bad if the letter falls into the wrong hands with the seal attached. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” I lobbed moss at Arin, then took the letter and dropped it into my bag.

  “That saddlebag’s becoming more and more valuable,” said Mordan.

  “And I’ve been taking excellent care of it.” I threw it down to grapple for moss. The air was thick with it when Floy, standing outside the mouth of the tunnel, heard a noise.

  “Hush.” She looked round. A drumming echoed through the dark and faded into the cool air.

  “Horses,” said Arin. My last dirt clod clapped him on the cheek.

  Tem’s face turned lard-grey and he walked over to an old cask in a corner. He gave it a heave with his arms; it looked like a lot of effort for an empty barrel.

  “Wake the little girl,” Tem told me. I couldn’t move––there was shouting now, coming up through the tunnel. “Wake her and climb up to the loft.”

  “It’s beer,” whispered Floy. “Beer! They’re all filled with it. Stars help us.”

  “Get up, you little fool.” Mordan shoved me toward the corner.

  I patted Emry around the cheeks and yanked her up by the wrist. She fell over. I straightened her and pushed her up the ladder.

  “Bloody hell, Tem,” said Arin. “Brigands?”

  “I know,” said Tem. “It’s too late to leave through the tunnel and too early to fly out the roof.” Tem smashed a small keg, rotted through, and slapped half a barrel hoop into Arin’s hands. He gave the other half to Mordan, and taking one himself, called up to me: “Throw me your apron.” I tore it off my waist.

  “You don’t mean to fight them?” said Floy. Tem wrapped a shred of apron around one jagged end to protect his hands so that it looked like a grotesque sort of scimitar.

  “I mean to hide…”

  “No fear,” said Mordan. “They’ll be so drunk by the time they do they won’t be able to find––whatever they use––”

  “Enormous whips,” said Arin, wrapping a cloth round his barrel hoop, “spiked with iron––”

  “Quiet.” Floy took up the discarded half of Tem’s.

  “The loft,” said Tem, “all of you.”

  Mordan pushed Leode’s rump up the ladder after me so I might pull him over the top.

  “Where’s my sword?” Leode grumbled, and Mordan climbed up after him. Then came Floy, Arin, and Tem, all armed.

  The loft was built into a corner with a pine mast holding it aloft. It was stacked with empty kegs. Mordan pulled up the ladder, thinking it might discourage a search.

  “You’ll both have to hide, now.” Tem ushered Emry and me over to an enormous barrel. He hoisted Emry (who later thought the whole affair a dream) into the barrel, but I struggled as he picked me up and tried to pour me over the side.

  “I can fight.”

  “No doubt.” He grunted when I kicked him. “But what really matters is you haven’t got wings.” He pushed me down by the top of my head, where I sat disgruntled with the saddlebag in my lap.

  “Get low.” Mordan tackled Tem from my sight. The riders burst through the entrance. I saw only the stars through the top of the barrel, but I heard the men––loud, drunk, and violent with it.

  “Mach’s balls, Miggon,” shouted one. “If yer tryin to collapse the grotty place round our ears, just bang yer head against the stones at the bottom. Less work then screamin the tower down.”

  “I’ll scream till I got the silver in me fist.” There was a loud thunk and a yelp. “Give it here, Thew, or I’ll give you another lump. I’m the one shaked her by the ankles so she spate it out.”

  “Spate it out?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “It’s Fillegal’s, and I’m holdin it safe fer him.”

  A civil war engaged everyone on the ground level. There came bangs, clangs, thuds, yells, and moans, and then a metallic ring sounded through the tower.

  I heard a whir in the air above me. Something dropped into the barrel from overhead.

  The Dravadha broach.

  “Oh, no,” I whispered.

  “Throw it back,” said Arin.

&nb
sp; “No, don’t,” said Mordan.

  “Give it to me,” said Tem, reaching inside the barrel, so I did, and he set it very clearly right on the edge of the loft, whispering to everyone to get behind their barrels.

  There was a scrambling, clawing noise, and I peered over my barrel. A great, shaggy head appeared at the edge of the loft, red and gasping because its owner had just shimmied up the support. Leode squirmed forward, and before any of us thought to pull him back, he brained the head with half a barrel hoop. It disappeared, followed by a thump.

  “Got him,” said Leode.

  “It was nice knowing you all,” said Arin from behind a barrel.

  Dawn came, then.

  “Oh, no,” said Tem, looking above him. “Not yet, not now.”

  He sprouted black plumage at his fingertips, and went completely egret just as another brigand jumped up on the ledge. His teeth and saber were gleaming with morning green.

  The egret flew up and ravaged his face. The man caught hold of the egret’s neck.

  Then something strange happened. Elde Tem flickered to life, punched the man in the nose, and knocked him over the edge. The boy flickered off and was gone. “What in hell?” said Tem, who was an egret again.

  Mordan said, “That happened to me the other week.”

  “What?”

  “I was raging mad about something, and––bam! I was a boy for a second. You must’ve been really angry.”

  “Scared, more like––”

  An arrow clattered off the walls, and I ducked. “Leave,” I shouted, “leave, they’ll shoot you!”

  The men below laughed. One said, “We’ve found us a nest of wild chickens.” The boys left through the roof, and Floy flew into my hand.

  My fingers closed round her. “Don’t strangle me,” she said.

  I knelt beside Emry, whose eyes were wide as moons, and a brigand stuck his head inside the barrel. The stench was awful.

  “Bugger me bloody. It’s a barr’l of girls.” A hand pushed his head out of the way, and another head looked in.

  “Save some for me, Tom, you horny ox.”

  “Where’s my barr’l o’ girls?” called someone from the ground.