Heartwood

by Freya Robertson

  He thought of the figure he had seen at the edge of the Forest of Wings, and shuddered. Even those who believed in souls rarely believed in ghosts – in the presence of a soul outside a living body. But his romantic heart was unable to push the idea completely out of mind. As he had grown older, his thoughts had naturally turned more to what happened after death, and he had found if he accepted the presence of a soul, he could not dismiss the idea of ghosts. That thought was something that haunted him more than any spirit.

  There was a clattering of stones at the entrance to the Tumulus, and then the three male Militis appeared, sliding down through the loose, wet soil into the cave below. They stopped for a moment, startled to see Grimbeald sitting up and talking, then came forward with exclamations to clap him on the back and shake his hand.

  “We thought you were gone,” said Feritas with relief, looking even fiercer in the candlelight, his bushy brows like caterpillars crawling across his forehead. Revoco was the same, his Wulfengar heritage evident in his wild hair and the angry expression that seemed to reside on his face permanently, even when smiling. Even Elatus looked pleased to see him, the young Laxonian’s arrogant face creased with a smile.

  “It takes more than a fatal wound to get rid of me,” Grimbeald joked, and accepted Elatus’s hand to pull him to his feet. His neck and shoulder felt stiff and sore, but he could tell he was on the mend. He was puzzled at that – it had been a deep dagger wound, and the blade had not been clean. The wound should have been infected and swollen, but when he looked, he found it flat and clean, as if someone had drawn a line upon his skin with red ink.

  “You can put that down to Tenera’s skill with herbs,” said Elatus as they helped him up the slippery slope to the outside. “She studied with the Head Gardener at Heartwood for a year or two, and then with the Medica.”

  “Thank goodness,” Grimbeald said, but although he acknowledged her healing skills, he was not sure his recovery was entirely to do with her talents. He had been treated before for injuries by skilled physicians and had never recovered this quickly. And he must not forget Tenera had thought him dead at one point. Had the Node really healed him with its energy?

  Grimbeald pulled himself up into the daylight. He was not surprised to see it was still raining. They were right on the edge of his beloved Highlands. To the north the hills rose and fell into the distance, their slopes filled with forests, the valleys with rivers and lush green grass. He could see carpets of bluebells, as if the trees had spread cloaks on the floor on which to rest, and grazing goats and wild ponies on the cleared hilltops.

  The Tumulus had been built on a small, flat-topped hill on the edge of the Highlands, almost as if guarding the entrance to them. He walked down and then around the mound. At the bottom of the hill were two oak trees standing like brothers guarding the tomb, their roots obviously those he had seen below, holding up the side of the cave. They masked the tomb from the south side, making it invisible to those travelling to the Highlands. Grimbeald had known it was there, but had never investigated it in any detail; he had always been in too much of a hurry to pay any attention to it.

  Now he wondered who had built it, and who had been buried in it. As he had said to Tenera, he had always assumed it was the burial site of some rich lord, a final resting place where the inhabitant had been surrounded by his or her earthly belongings, which had almost certainly been robbed out long ago. However, now he doubted there had ever been anything inside the Tumulus except bones.

  Walking around to the side, he saw the area Tenera had told him about; it was about fifteen feet square, and when he looked closely he could see scatters of tiny bones in the soil. There was a stone table at one side, and he guessed that was where bodies had been placed in the past to decompose; skin, flesh and muscle stripped by birds and wild animals and the cold, bitter wind.

  Tenera walked up to him. “We have been working on cleaning up the area. There was not a lot to do, thankfully, but we have tidied up the grass, removed loose rocks and dead branches from the trees, just as Nitesco said to do.”

  Grimbeald shivered. Was it his imagination, or could he feel a slight vibration beneath his feet, as if a herd of cattle stampeded in the distance? Cold droplets of sweat formed on his back. Was he coming down with a fever?

  He looked over at Tenera, intending to ask her if she could feel anything, but to his surprise, she stared past him at something on the top of the mound, her mouth open and astonishment on her face.

  He turned and gasped. Standing there was the figure of a Wulfengar knight in full armour, his face set in the usual Wulfian grimace, which wasn’t particularly surprising in itself. What was surprising, however, was the way Grimbeald could see through the figure to the hills beyond, and the way the knight dissipated suddenly, as if he had dissolved in the drizzling rain.

  II

  For Beata, the journey to Henton was long and unrelenting. Caelestis’s death had been a huge blow, and she could not shake off her feelings of guilt and sorrow. It was a momentous task to even get up in the morning, let alone get on her horse and continue each day with the aim of completing her Quest. Many times she felt like giving up, and would have rolled over in her blankets and buried her head beneath them, refusing to get on with the day. Luckily, however, Peritus was a rock at her side, postponing his own grief and worries and supporting her continually throughout the last leg of their trip. He planned where they would stop, organised lodgings and food for both them and their horses, and generally tried to keep her thinking positive, though it was a difficult task.

  He finally managed to perk her up with the news he obtained from an inn in a little village where they stopped just a day’s ride from Henton on the coast, having finally found a bridge across the river. Beata had taken to bed, claiming tiredness, but Peritus had gone down to the bar and joined some of the locals in a pint of ale to pass the time. He had returned to their tiny room excitedly, and had dropped to his knees before Beata where she lay listlessly on the bed, taking her hand and pulling her upright before telling her the news.

  “I am tired,” she had protested. “Leave me be.”

  “You are always tired lately,” he replied impatiently. “Look, I have news. They told me downstairs the Virimage is still in Henton.”

  This made Beata sit up properly, and for the first time since Caelestis’s death a spark of interest flared inside her. “Are they certain?”

  “Two of them saw him last night, up at the… what did they call it? The ‘Castle on the Rock’. Apparently, his name is Teague. He entertains there every night. In return, they give him board and lodging. He has been here quite a while, it seems.”

  “Teague…” She rolled the name around her tongue. “It sounds like a Komis name.”

  “Oh, he is definitely Komis all right. Black hair, light brown skin, gold eyes; they were full of it downstairs.”

  Beata sat back against her pillows. “Well, I suppose it makes sense. Just look at Silva. The Komis have always been said to have a strong connection with the land. Did they say what he was like?”

  Peritus hesitated. “They called him ‘a bit of a lad’. That is about as much as I could get out of them. Not a talkative bunch, these fishermen.”

  A bit of a lad? Beata couldn’t begin to think what that meant. She had had very little experience with people outside of the Exercitus, and nearly all Militis were serious warriors committed to their work. She had never had such a thing as a social life, had never been to court, or had an admirer. It just wasn’t part of her life. That didn’t mean she wasn’t aware it happened, but it was like trying to imagine the sea when you’ve always lived in the mountains; no matter how much someone tries to explain it to you, it’s very difficult to conceive exactly what it’s like until you experience it.

  In spite of her naïveté, however, she was not stupid. The description of this Teague gave her the impression he was very young and still finding his way in the world. Well, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, sh
e thought. Young probably meant impressionable, and that was not a problem considering what she had to persuade him to do.

  She found it difficult to sleep that night, and when she eventually dozed off her dreams were filled with the Virimage and his strong brown hands casting spells in the sky and making flowers fall onto the ground and scattering her in petals.

  The next day dawned much as the previous few weeks, but Beata finally felt in a better mood. Achieving their Quest would not bring Caelestis back, she knew, but still it would go some way to making her death have meaning; she would not have died in vain if they found Teague and brought him back to Heartwood.

  It was the last day of the Lamb Moon, and it had been raining almost continually for the whole of its fifteen days. The second Moon of the Stirring, the Bud Moon, was usually a joyous time at Heartwood, Beata thought as they mounted their horses and set off from the village. It was a celebration of the renewal of life, when everything began to show signs of recovering from the Sleep, when the whole of Anguis began to awake. But the world as yet did not seem to show signs of awakening. The continual rain had drowned a lot of the early seeds, and the oaks she had passed so far had been bare of buds.

  The river they had followed all the way from Lornberg had widened considerably as they got nearer to the coast, and Beata was shocked by the sheer amount of water thundering along its course, its colour an unhealthy brown, a clear indicator of the earth it had churned up along the way. Everywhere, the ground was waterlogged, the horses having to plough through thick mud as they plodded their way along the road.

  Still, it was good to feel lighter of mood, and Beata almost felt like singing as they began to see houses peppering the sides of the road, a sure sign the town wasn’t far away. They went on for a mile or two in that manner, the houses becoming larger and closer together, and then rounded a hill to see in the distance a high ridge topped by a large, long defensive wall. Leading up the slope towards it, streets began to leave the main road and weave across each other like threads in a blanket. Beata’s heart beat a little faster as the amount of traffic increased and the roads became harder to negotiate. They made their way up the slope and passed under the massive portcullis that hung suspended from the gatehouse. As they got to the opposite side and the road began to go downhill once again, she stopped her horse to stare at the view, and gasped.

  The ridge curved in a ring around the town of Henton, which lay sheltered amongst the hills like a stone inside a peach. Atop the westernmost edge of the ridge, overlooking the sea, perched the “Castle on the Rock”, a huge stone edifice consisting of a mish-mash of turrets, crenellations and walls that surveyed the goings-on in the busy town like a stern fighting instructor watching the practice moves of its students. If it had been a person, she thought with amusement, it would have had its arms crossed and a frown on its face.

  The town spilled down from the wall right to the topmost edge of the beach, which curved from one end of the ridge to the other like the silvery strip of the crescent moon that would soon appear in the night sky. It was a bustling community, the roads filled with carts and people, easily the biggest settlement she had ever seen.

  But the thing that won her attention most of all was the sea. She had never seen it, and although she had often heard others speak about it, she had never been able to truly picture it in her mind. Now she just stood stunned at the sheer amount of water in one place, watching the grey waves crash onto the shore like angry warriors beating on each other’s shields.

  “Get a move on!” yelled someone behind her, and she realised she was blocking the road. She nudged her horse along the ring road at the top of the hill leading to the castle, thinking that was obviously the best place to start, as the villagers Peritus had spoken to had mentioned Teague had performed at the castle.

  “Isn’t it amazing?” Peritus said now, moving his horse alongside hers. “I have imagined often about how the sea would look, but had never dreamed it would be like this.”

  “It is a truly stunning view,” Beata admitted, but already her mind had moved on to other things. “Peritus, there is something bothering me. I had planned to go straight to the castle, explain our plight and ask to see Teague directly, but I am now not sure that is the right way to approach him. I wonder whether we ought to go in disguise and assess the situation.”

  “Disguise?” He stared at her. “You mean a false moustache or something?”

  “Not quite,” she said with amusement. “But we are quite conspicuous wearing our Heartwood armour. Perhaps we should… dress down a little.”

  He took some convincing to go into the castle without his armour, but they took a detour via a group of shops and she showed him what she had in mind, and eventually he agreed. They walked the horses to a cluster of trees a short distance from the castle and she took off her armour and changed into her new outfit as quickly as she could without drawing attention.

  She had bought herself two tunics, of the kind and quality, she hoped, a lady of a countryside estate might wear when visiting family on the coast. The first tunic was a deep green and long-sleeved, and reached to the ground, just covering her new small leather slippers that felt decidedly strange after her heavy leather boots. Over the top she wore a thigh-length short-sleeved tunic of a lighter green. She uncurled her hair from its usual tight bun at the nape of her neck and let it fall around her shoulders in light brown curls.

  She came out from behind the tree hesitantly. She had lived almost her entire life in some form of armour or other, and had no idea whether she could even pass as a real lady. As soon as she saw Peritus’s face, however, she knew it had worked. His mouth fell open, and he found himself completely speechless, even though she glared at him and told him to close his mouth before flies flew in it.

  She made him take off his armour, and they rolled up the mail and jerkins and attached them to the back of their horses. In just his breeches and leather tunic, he could easily pass for her manservant.

  They rode up to the castle and left their horses in the front courtyard with the stable hands, and were shown by the steward into the Great Hall, which was much bigger than the ones at Cherton and Hicton. The Hall was pretty much empty, as the servants had not yet started preparing for the early evening meal, and everyone else was out on errands or business around the town. They were then left to have a look around while the steward went to fetch refreshments for them.

  Beata let out a long breath as he left the room, relieved her disguise had worked. Peritus sat himself at one of the long wooden tables, but she still felt too nervous to sit, so she began to walk down the Hall, looking up at the banners that hung limply at right angles from the wall, depicting the coats of arms of various members of the Lord of Henton’s family.

  Looking up as she was, she did not notice a figure asleep in the shadows and stumbled over him, causing him to awake with a curse and sit up and glare at her.

  “Watch where you are walking…” he began, but his words ground to a halt as he saw who had just trodden on him. “My lady…” He got hurriedly to his feet – a task obviously not easy for him, thought Beata wryly, for he was clearly drunk as a man on his wedding night. He swayed slightly as he stared at her, his eyes wandering lewdly around her body before they finally focussed on her breasts. “Arbor’s roots,” he exclaimed. “What a great pair of pillows.”

  Behind her Peritus snorted with laughter, but she ignored it and glared at the drunken lout before her. “Excuse me,” she said icily. “I think you should mind your manners.”

  He blinked. Then, in an affected attempt to act in a lordly fashion, he gave a drunken, lopsided bow. “My dearest lady, please accept my humblest apologies.” It would have been a gallant gesture, except for the fact that as he arose he let out a deep, rumbling belch. To her amazement, as he did so a cloud of rose petals emitted from his mouth and floated delicately to the ground in front of them.

  She stared. He stared back and then grinned. “Did that surprise you? Well
that’s nothing. You should see what happens when I fart!” And then he collapsed in guffaws of laughter to the ground before quickly falling back into a drunken sleep.

  Beata stared at him. She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t witnessed it herself. But realisation gradually sank in that it was clear from the rose petals – and his brilliant golden eyes – that this drunken idiot was the magical Virimage who was supposed to save the world.

  III

  Gavius stared at the person before him who looked just like his twin brother, although he was certain it could not possibly be him. However, he had no answer for who this person really was and, until they revealed their true self, he had to go along with the game.

  I want you to explain to me why you have sent me to my death, Gravis had said. Gavius’s brow furrowed. “I do not understand,” he said. “Why have I sent you to your death? You agreed to take on the Quest as I did. I did not force you into anything.”

  Gravis nodded. “A true Gavius answer. You could not possibly have done anything wrong. I do not think the words ‘I was wrong’ are even in your vocabulary.”

  Gavius said nothing for a moment, struggling with his irritation and anger. His success at this game depended on his ability to keep calm. “Tell me why I am wrong,” he demanded. “How exactly did I force you to go on the Quest?”

  Gravis stared at him directly, his dark blue eyes sorrowful. “You know what I am like. You know how you influence me. I have always stood in your shadow, followed along behind you. I could not bear to admit I am not strong enough for this role. You could have stopped me – argued you needed me with you. But you let me go, knowing I could not cope on my own.”

  Gavius did not reply, outwardly calm. Inside, however, his stomach churned. He could not deny the truth of some of Gravis’s words, and it singed his cheeks with shame. But not all he said was true. “I did not think you could not cope on your own,” he said honestly. “I know I have always been the strong one. But I had no doubt in your abilities, or else I would not have let you go.”