“Hello,” I say, to break the weird silence between us. He doesn’t reply. “Were you asleep before?”
He takes his time before replying. “No.”
“You can sleep now if you like? I’m keeping a lookout.”
No reply. He’s really not one for conversation.
He sits watching me for so long that I wonder if I should get up and move or turn around, but something makes me hold his gaze. He’s older than me — a lot older than me — so I really shouldn’t be staring back at him the way I am, but I don’t care. It feels like he’s looking deep inside me, and right now, I want to let him.
“Do you know where the imitators came from?” I ask after a long silence.
“What’s an imitator?”
“That person-creature-thing that attacked us earlier. The one you — ” I hold up my hand and twist it to one side while clicking my tongue.
The Badhbh does not react.
“Have you ever seen one before?” I ask him.
“No.”
“Weren’t you interested in what it was?”
“No.”
“But it could have been created by magic. Isn’t that what you used to — ?” I stop myself, remembering the promise I made not to mention his past. “I read your diary,” I say.
“I am aware of that.”
A giant moth circles the fire in two irregular loops and then disappears into its smoke.
“It used to be human, but it wasn’t made through blood magic,” he says. “I sensed that when I — ” He twists his hand and clicks his tongue, copying the same actions I made.
“How did you do it?” I ask. His eyebrows rise a fraction. “Am I allowed to ask?”
“You want to know about blood magic?”
I don’t know. Do I? Magic is not dùth, no matter what sort it is, so even showing curiosity is a violation of our clan rules. Yet something inside me is eager to know more.
He continues before I can answer. “Blood magic is fed by blood. The more blood you feed it, the more powerful it becomes. That is why it is the darkest of all magics, and the most likely to corrupt.”
“Did it corrupt you?”
“Not the magic, no.”
He stares at me even more intently than before, as if daring me to probe further. I don’t know what game he’s playing; he’s goading me into asking questions about his past, even though he’s forbidden me from mentioning it. Of course I want to know more — about his life, about blood magic, about how he survived the plague — but his whole demeanor is so intimidating.
“The darkness inside you is of your own creating,” he says to me then, knocking me off guard.
“What?” I reply.
“I can see your darkness, but it is not necessarily a bad thing.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t have ‘darkness’ inside me.” My fingernails are sharp against the palms of my hands.
“Have you ever considered taking up magery? Inner darkness is a strong foundation for a powerful mage. Blood magic in particular is strongest when it comes from a place of darkness.”
“No, of course I don’t want to . . . You’re wrong.” My voice is loud over the silence of the night. I lower it so as not to wake Cray. “You know nothing about me. And stop staring at me like that.” I shift my body until I’m side-on to him. The next time I glance in his direction, he’s turned back around to look at the stars.
The Badhbh doesn’t say a word to either of us the whole of the next morning. He rides Bras in silence as Cray and I walk along beside him. Neither of us has seen him sleep or eat since he started traveling with us yesterday.
While we walk, Cray jabbers about anything and everything — imitators, King Edmund, his tribe, my clan . . . It’s nice, just listening to him talk. A couple of times, he even makes me laugh with some stupid joke or another. It’s been so long since I really laughed, I’ve forgotten what it feels like. It reminds me of a version of myself I wasn’t sure existed anymore. I know I have to go home, and of course I want to — my clan is relying on me after all — but part of me wishes I could stay here longer.
The weather’s been kinder today: not exactly sunny, but certainly less windy. The harder ground that we were walking through most of yesterday has succumbed to dense grassland filled with red clover and yellow rockroses. It’s unusual to see so many flowers this late in the year. A dark orange butterfly flits from blossom to blossom.
“I’m going to run up that hill and check we’re still on track,” Cray says. “Keep walking. I’ll catch up with you.”
I don’t want to be left alone with the Badhbh — not after the strange things he said to me last night — but I mutter a weak “Okay,” and Cray jogs away. I watch as his body shrinks up the hillside. Even when he hits the steep incline, his pace doesn’t falter. I sometimes forget that Cray is only a year or so older than me. He’s so strong, so self-assured. I can’t imagine ever being like that.
“Be careful how close you get to that one,” says the Badhbh.
“What do you mean?” I ask, immediately defensive.
“It will never end well.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “We’re friends. What’s wrong with that?”
The Badhbh gives me a condescending look but doesn’t comment further. The longer I spend in the Badhbh’s company, the less I like him. I swipe at the midges that hover around my head. I’ve already been bitten a couple of times, which I know is going to infuriate me later. There aren’t any around the Badhbh, though, as if they know to avoid him.
“I’m not a bad person,” he says out of nowhere. “You think I am, but I’m not.”
“I never said you were a bad person,” I reply.
“Correct. But it is your thoughts I am accusing, not your words.”
One of the midges bites the top of my ear — or at least I imagine it does — and I slap it away, which probably hurts me more than it hurts it.
“I don’t understand some of the choices you’ve made,” I say, “but then I don’t really know you.”
“That’s right; you don’t. Yet you think that you do. From one book. A book that I wrote — true — but you are unaware of the circumstances in which I wrote it. That diary is not the whole truth. It certainly isn’t my truth.”
I don’t know what he wants from me. Once again, he seems unexpectedly eager to discuss the forbidden topic of his past.
“So what is your truth?” I ask.
The Badhbh continues looking straight ahead. “What is my truth . . . ?” he mutters. For a long time he says nothing, making me wonder if he’s changed his mind about talking to me. Then his lips drift apart and he says, “I had a daughter.”
I don’t know why I’m so surprised by his revelation, but I am. I can’t imagine him with a daughter, having someone he cared about. He never once mentioned her in his diary.
“What was her name?” I ask.
The Badhbh ignores my question. “She was a similar age to King Balfour’s daughter, to the princess, Nathara. In fact, the two of them were friends at one stage, until Balfour took my daughter away.”
A blast of wind pummels the long grass around us, making it quiver and shriek. I already know this story isn’t going to end well. There is a long silence, which I feel compelled to fill with another question. “Why did he do that?”
“It was right at the start of his obsession with creating the first sgàil. He wanted me to help; he forced me to help. I was merely a court physician at that time, although I read extensively on many topics and knew a little about the theory of magics. Balfour’s need to eradicate his enemy, King Edmund, consumed him. He was convinced that creating a sgàil was the only solution.”
Bras plods on, disinterested in whatever the Badhbh has to say.
“At first, I was complicit,” the Badhbh continues. “I’m not ashamed to admit that. I’d long been fascinated with blood magic and was eager to learn more about it. But then the people we were exp
erimenting on started to die. True, they were mainly thieves and war criminals, but it still made me uncomfortable. I approached Balfour one night and informed him that I no longer wished to assist him. He replied that it was not a matter in which I had a choice. I still refused, so he had my daughter and my wife imprisoned, with the threat that they would only be returned after I’d succeeded in my task.
“Of course, once I’d created the first sgàil, the conditions of our arrangement changed: he wanted a whole army of them. And by the time we’d completed that, it was already too late. The plague killed my daughter and it killed my wife, just like it killed everyone else. If I had been with them, I could have used my abilities to save them, the same way I saved myself, but I never saw them again — from the moment he took them away to the day they died. The last years I could have spent with my family, and he stole them from me.” He swallows, followed by a single labored blink. “That is my truth.”
The sun sneaks out from behind a cloud, then changes its mind and slips away again. I don’t know what to think anymore. If what he’s saying is true, it’s atrocious how he was used — but it doesn’t justify all the wrong he’s done since.
“Is that why you left Nathara in the tower?” I ask him. “To punish King Balfour for what he did to you, even though he was already dead?”
“It is not a decision I am proud of, but it is the one I made.”
I want to ask him if that’s why he changed his mind and agreed to come with us — to seek redemption for the wrongs of his life — but something tells me our conversation is over. Whatever his reasons for helping us, I’m not sure anything can make up for abandoning a small child in the way that he did.
Cray bounces back down the hill and catches up to us. He notices none of the heaviness that the Badhbh’s revelation has created.
“We’re nearly there,” he says. “Well, I could see an island from the top and it was huge, so I presume it’s Skye.”
I look past him at the sweeping vastness of the Scotian landscape. Donal and Violet are still out there somewhere. The whole time we’ve been traveling, I’ve been secretly hoping they’d come running out from wherever it is they’ve been hiding and then laugh as we exchange stories of our different adventures. But no, I really am leaving them behind. My only solace is that as soon as I get back, I can alert the clans that they’re missing, and they’ll send a team of Scavengers to find them. If they’re still alive.
My first sighting of Skye brings me none of the joy I was hoping it might. I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s not our true home I’m returning to, maybe because I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to Cray again just yet. I keep thinking about the Bó Riders’ cavern. They haven’t lived there for long, and yet in the short space of time I was there, I felt such an overwhelming sense of belonging. I haven’t felt like that since we lived in our own enclave, since before the deamhain, before any of this happened. It’s not the same staying with Clann-na-Bruthaich. I want to go home, to our real home.
“Anything look familiar yet?” Cray asks.
“Yes, we definitely came up this way. At least I think we did. . . . If I’m right, we left the boat in the copse at the bottom of that ridge.”
We wander farther down toward the shore. A strong smell of gannet droppings hangs in the wind. We reach the copse, but the boat is nowhere in sight. At first I think we must be in the wrong place, but then I recognize the rock that looks like a goat’s head, which Donal pointed out when we first arrived.
“What’s this?” asks Cray, holding up the end of a torn piece of rope. The other end is still wrapped around a tree. It’s the rope Donal used to tether the boat, but the boat is no longer there.
Me and Eydis watch the sunrise together, and it’s hek beautiful. We’re up the top of a hill, so we’ve got a clear view of the ripped-up clouds what are soaked with orange as dark as egg yolk. I feed Eydis another apple, and she thanks me by leavin a thick trail of slobber on my palm. I wipe it off on her neck. “You dirty slobberin beast,” I say.
There are apples aplenty up here. Couldn’t believe my luck. Eydis has already gobbled close to twelve of them. Truth bein told, they taste like sourpickle, but they’re better than nothin.
Eydis nuzzles me, wantin another. “You’re gunna be squittin apples all afternoon,” I say, but I grab another and rub between her ears as she eats it. I’m beginnin to think she isn’t no ordinary horse. She’s bulkin for one, and can run for a hek long time for two. And then there’s how she found me and saved me from that crazy skittin dart boy. I owe her my life and I’m never gunna forget it.
As the sun gets brighter, I can make out somethin else and all. A dark strip what runs through the ground as far as I can see in both directions. It’s the Scotian border, the hek bulkin trench what King Edmund was talkin about. Lookin across into Scotia, it’s a bit disappointin. Dunno why I thought it would look diffrunt from Ingland, but the land on the other side of the trench is the same as it is on this side. The same dull, sunken brown.
“Come on then, greedy face,” I say to Eydis. “Time we got movin.”
Before we go, I load up one of the saddlebags with apples to feed her later, then we’re off and trottin.
It doesn’t take us long to get to the border trench, which is hek wide, with steep, crumblin sides. In my head I imagined it’d still be burnt and black from the fire, but course not; that was decades ago. The grass has grown back, but it’s sad, beige grass what doesn’t look like it can grow proply, same as the land on either side of it.
It’s hard for Eydis to get down into the trench, and even harder for her to get up again, but with a bit of pushin and shovin, some whisperin and some encouragin, she manages.
We’re here. Scotia. We made it. I sure am chirpin to be leavin Ingland behind. It’s a scraggin wreckmess of a place. I don’t never wanna go back there again.
We don’t see no people the whole rest of the day, but that’s not surprisin. King Edmund said evryone here was dead. It’s nice bein just me and Eydis. Peaceful. We still ride hard — Lady Beatrice’s voice, tellin me I gotta get to Skye quick, never leaves my head — but there’s calm in the air.
Once we get a little ways away from the border, the land starts comin back to life. Greener trees, fuller fields, even patches of flowers and gorse bush. It’s nice and not what I was expectin. It’s cold, though, and there’s a harsk wind bitin. Not as cold as Norveg, praps, but colder than Ingland for sure.
I talk to Eydis the whole time. She’s the best listener. I tell her about Norveg, with its long, bright summers and the winters where the sun doesn’t hardly bother risin; I tell her about Granpa Halvor and how pleased he’d be to know I’m helpin people what need it; and I tell her about my mother and what she used to be like before she started neckin. There was a time when my mamma was a diffrunt person: she’d make up stories for me evry night before I went to sleep, she could make the most hek ríkka chew outta nothin at all, and she always used to mess up my hair cuz I pretended I hated it. I explain to Eydis how evrythin changed after my pa was sent off to fight in some stupid bloodsplash for Konge Grímr and never came back. My mother wasn’t never the same after that.
I lean forward and hug Eydis’s neck. It’s warm and smells of rich dirt and sweat. “Thanks for listenin,” I say. She whinnies loud and keeps on gallopin.
By midafternoon she knows hek near evrythin about me, so I start tellin her about Øden and how he grew the world out of a tree, and about the High Halls of Heaven, where we’ll go to when we die, providin we done good in this life. Then I say all about Konge Grímr and what a skittin grotweasel he is, and about his brother, Mal-Rakki, who’s hidin out in the ice caves in the north of Norveg.
I pretend I’m Mal-Rakki now, ridin on my own, out in the wilds. We do have a few things in common, after all: we both fled north to escape Konge Grímr, we both wanna help people what’ve been done wrong, and the king is hek keen for both of us to be dead . . .
“Mal-Rakki means Whi
te Fox,” I explain to Eydis. “He wasn’t always called that, but that’s what evryone calls him now.”
He’s still alive; I’m back to bein sure of it. He must’ve known Konge Grímr didn’t die durin the battle in the mountain, so he’s still bidin his time and preparin his army. He’ll only get one chance and he knows it. When he does come back, he’ll lead our people to a new kind of livin, just like Granpa Halvor always says.
We stop before the last of the light goes so I’ve got time to gather some wood for a fire. We’re gunna need a big one tonight; the tips of my fingers are already frostin. I found a bridge for us to sleep under. It’s tumblin in places, but it’ll keep out the worst of the wind, as well as the rain if the sky starts spewin. It’s only just tall enough for Eydis to fit under, but she doesn’t seem to mind none. I get the fire goin and she stands near it, not scared one speck.
My nappin is deep but brief. Soon as I wake up, I know I’m not gunna be buried under sleep anytime soon. It’s spewin heavy and the drips are findin their way through the skittin bridge. I was wrong about it keepin us dry. The fire is hissin, reduced to almost nothin. Eydis is awake too. I expect it was the drips what woke her.
“Can’t sleep neither?” I ask. She moves her head from side to side, shakin out a sad sigh. “Spose we might as well keep goin, then.”
I don’t mind the rain. In fact I kinda like it now we’re out and ridin in it. I think Eydis likes it too. We ride so fast that it doesn’t feel cold. The wind yesterday was hek skap, but the rain is refreshin.
Now that I’m in Scotia — now that I’m gettin closer to Skye — I’ve started thinkin about what I’m gunna do afterward, after I tell the Skye people what I gotta tell them. I was thinkin before that I’d try to get back home somehow, but it might not be that simple. I haven’t got no way of gettin there for starters, and — even if the Skye people did have some way of helpin me — once Konge Grímr gets back, nowhere’d be safe for me. Øden knows my lyin, drunken kerl of a mother won’t miss me, although she’ll struggle gettin by on her own. Too bad; she chose her fate when she swapped me for neckin pennies. What about Granpa Halvor, though? I miss him so much. But his shack’d be one of the first places the king’d look, and if he found me there, he’d punish Granpa Halvor and all. I can’t do that to him; I can’t risk Granpa gettin hurt.
The Broken Raven Page 21