The Amber Legacy

by Tony Shillitoe

  He rubbed his hands against his hips. ‘Horseman? No,’ he mumbled. ‘I was going to help, but a man from your village came and I had to stay out of sight. I stayed to check that you were in good hands, and you obviously were. I presume that’s who Horseman is? How’s your head?’

  Meg raised her hand and held aside her red hair. ‘It’s all healed.’

  Treasure’s expression showed genuine surprise. ‘That’s remarkable. It didn’t look too good when I found you.’

  ‘I think it was this ointment,’ she explained, holding up the small blue pottery container. ‘Do you want to take it for your horse?’

  Treasure checked again that no one was watching them, and came forward. Closer, Meg saw that he had odd-coloured eyes, one blue like a hot sky, the other grey, like the smoke from burning fresh bark. ‘Everyone stares at them.’

  She blushed and looked down. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, that is perfectly fine. I’m used to it. In fact, I like being different.’

  ‘Here’s the ointment,’ she offered, handing the container to him.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to sound too forward, but would I be able to get some food and drink?’

  Meg looked back at her house. Her mother had the fire going. ‘You can come and eat,’ she offered. ‘I’m sure my mother won’t mind.’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t risk it. You wouldn’t be able to bring something to me, would you?’

  ‘I can try. Where?’

  ‘The gully where I found you?’

  ‘I’ll bring something there just before sunset.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and he smiled and bowed. He checked the surrounding countryside again, before walking briskly towards the bush.

  Meg waited until the stranger had disappeared into the mallee before she returned to brushing Nightwind. His secretiveness puzzled her. His voice was smooth and he spoke precisely, as if every word was important, and his accent revealed that he was not from anywhere in the local region. He was also fascinatingly handsome with his unusual eyes and white-blond hair. His mannerisms reminded her of Button, but the stranger was much more refined, as if acting and speaking politely were natural to him.

  Button. Now that the soldiers were gone, she was surprised that Button and the other young men who’d gone into hiding to avoid being forcibly enlisted by the Queen’s army hadn’t returned to Summerbrook. Perhaps they were making certain the risk had passed. The stranger’s presence showed that their prudence was wise. She hoped Button was safe. She stopped brushing the horse, put him in the barn, and headed for the house.

  Taking food and drink to the stranger was more complicated than she’d expected. The evening meal was still not ready as the sun sank in the western hilltops. Meg tried unsuccessfully to engineer a quicker preparation and finally despaired of taking Treasure a cooked portion. ‘I’m giving some scraps to the chickens,’ she told Dawn.

  ‘Take Peter for a walk,’ her mother suggested. Peter grinned eagerly at his big sister.

  ‘It’s still raining,’ she said.

  ‘No it’s not,’ Dawn corrected.

  ‘Peter will get a cold. And I’m in a hurry,’ Meg argued. She checked that her mother’s attention was drawn to Peter when he began to grizzle at being left behind, before she scooped carrots and an apple into her pockets. She also grabbed a chunk of pumpkin cake. ‘I’m hungry,’ she said when she saw Dawn staring.

  ‘What about the rubbish?’ Dawn asked.

  ‘Oops,’ Meg apologised briskly, and she scooped the food scraps into her hands. She hurried towards the chicken run, which was always left open so that the chickens could roam, and dumped the scraps at the coop, before she headed for the gully.

  The sun was setting the hilltops afire as she remembered Button describing the sunset. Where was he hiding? She realised she missed his attention and wondered if she was falling in love. The gully was in shadows when she reached it. She scrambled down a steep slope to save time, taking care not to spoil her cargo, and approached the spot where she’d tethered Nightwind the night of the storm. ‘I’m glad you came,’ said Treasure, as he emerged from the bushes. He searched the surrounding countryside, and apologised when he saw Meg’s uncertainty. ‘I’m sorry. I have to be very careful. It’s important that I’m never seen.’

  ‘Why did you let me see you then?’

  With a disarming smile, he replied, ‘You were hurt. And you are very beautiful. I couldn’t leave you there.’

  Meg blushed. ‘I’ve brought you some food. It’s not much. I couldn’t get cooked food. Mum was too suspicious.’

  Treasure accepted her gift. ‘I am grateful. I’m very hungry. This is wonderful. Thank you.’ He leant towards her to kiss her cheek, but she pulled away. ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said quickly. ‘I did not mean to offend you.’

  ‘No offence taken,’ she said. She laughed nervously. ‘I didn’t expect you to do that. I mean, I don’t really know you.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said, smiling widely as if the whole situation amused him. Silence separated them for a moment. A murder of crows crossed the orange sunset, heading for their rookery. ‘Do you mind if I start eating?’

  ‘No. I’ll leave you to eat. If I’m gone too long, Mum will start to worry. It’s probably been too long already.’

  ‘Do you know where the river bends south? Over a fall?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s where I’m camping from two days after tomorrow. I was thinking that your horse needs to be exercised. You could bring him to visit me one afternoon. If that’s at all possible.’ He laughed. ‘That is, if you want to see me again?’

  ‘I’d love to see you again,’ she replied, and inwardly cursed herself for sounding too enthusiastic. ‘But I can’t ride.’

  ‘It’s not far. Walk him there, and I’ll teach you how to ride.’

  ‘I will. But where are you going tomorrow and the next day?’

  He looked across the bush and said, ‘I have to scout some places. It’s not far, but I want to move carefully.’

  ‘Is it dangerous?’ she asked.

  He laughed. ‘No. I’ll be safe. It’s routine work. I do it all the time.’

  She hesitated, not really wanting to leave, but when she saw him staring she said, ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Thank you for your kindness,’ he said, and when he leaned forward to kiss her cheek she let him. ‘I will wait for you in two days’ time—in the afternoon.’

  Her body tingling, her cheek glowing at the point where his soft lips had pressed, she walked out of the gully. At the top, she broke into a gentle run, smiling as she trotted towards the yellow lantern light of her home, enjoying the cool air caressing her face and arms.

  ‘What took so long?’ Dawn asked, as Meg entered. ‘I was starting to worry.’

  ‘I checked Nightwind,’ she replied. ‘I think he needs to be exercised. It will be good for me to exercise him as well.’

  Dawn lowered the dish she was wiping over the wash bucket. ‘That horse should have been given to the soldiers, Meg. If they find him here, they’ll say we stole him.’

  ‘We’ve got witnesses who will tell how we found him. If any more soldiers come to the village and see him, I’ll give him to them. But he still needs to be exercised. I could even learn how to ride him.’

  ‘Why?’

  She met her mother’s querying gaze in the yellow lantern light, shadows playing on her face. ‘Because I’d like to.’

  Dawn chuckled as she put down her drying towel to approach her daughter, shaking her head. ‘There’s no need to learn how to ride. Young women have nowhere to go on a horse. Even men in our village don’t have to learn how to ride. Where would they go?’

  ‘I thought it would be fun.’

  ‘Exercise Nightwind, by all means. But don’t do anything foolish.’

  House chores completed, lanterns and candles out, her brothers and mother asleep, Meg climbed into bed. She opened a shutter on her window a
nd looked out at the night where the moon and stars, hidden behind cloud, left the world in darkness. A strong, cold breeze ruffled the leaves and made the night sound as if it was in constant motion. Her attention was diverted by a padding sound entering her room, and a heavy shape leapt onto her bed. ‘Leave room for me,’ she whispered as the dingo curled up. She reached back to stroke Sunfire’s coarse fur, and she stared out at the night, thinking of the blond stranger with the odd-coloured eyes, wondering where he was sleeping and how he was keeping warm. Her cheek still tingled, and she tried to imagine what his lips would feel like pressed against her own.

  Before dawn, she woke from a strangely unsettling dream. In the dream, she had been standing on boards, wet, creaking boards, and she could hear material cracking overhead, as if it was catching the wind like drying sheets on the clothes line. Everywhere she looked she could only see water, dark grey and heaving water that reminded her of the river in very rough weather, and yet it stretched on further than she could ever imagine water could stretch. The boards beneath her were moving, rocking, and she was puzzled by the unsteadiness of everything in the dream. And she felt a longing like an emptiness that hurt in the deepest section of her heart, as if she had lost the most precious of her possessions, and that longing was drawing her across the eerie water. She sat up on her bed and stroked Sunfire’s fur, recalling the elements of the dream, puzzled by what she’d felt, until it faded with the darkness into sunrise.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Queen Sunset had good reason to curtail her city parades. The Rebels were determined to kill her and the people were unsettled by the rebellion. But the Seers refused to let political matters interfere with religious celebrations. So, a month past, on Alunsday, she had reluctantly ridden the King’s Way, heavily protected by her escorting Elite Guards, expecting an assassination attempt throughout the entire morning’s journey. The festivities went without incident. Crowds cheered as they always did and the street was as packed with people as any other year—and for a short moment in her turbulent life she almost felt that there was no war taking place. The feeling quickly evaporated. She still reasoned that to appear in public when political tensions were at their bloodiest was testing the theory of luck too arrogantly.

  ‘Your Highness,’ Seer Diamond had argued when she informed him that she was not going to parade in public again, ‘the coming Erinsday is a holey event you cannot afford to dismiss so lightly. The people look to you for their spiritual guidance, and your presence among them is always much sought.’ She remembered staring at the man, his long white beard and equally white hair irritating her because it was the look everyone expected of a priest. She also wondered whether or not he was serving two causes. The Rebels were supported in their bid for the throne by his colleagues—Seers who sided with her son, Prince Future—so how much was Diamond’s desire to get her into the public arena driven by alliances with his Rebel colleagues?

  ‘We serve Jarudha, Your Highness,’ Diamond reassured her when the rebellion began, and Seers like Light and Truth declared their unwavering support for Prince Future’s bid for the throne. ‘True disciples of Jarudha have no political aspirations. My peers are misguided in aligning themselves with either side. We should stand above such pettiness, and focus upon the spiritual battle for souls.’

  Of course, she knew that Seer Diamond and his faithful colleagues also used that view to justify their complete non-involvement in the current war, and therefore their non-support of the Queen’s troops against Prince Future and the Rebel Seers. Their non-involvement meant that Future’s army held an advantage, because the Rebel Seers used their magic against her men and she had no method to counteract them.

  And her Intermediary, Follower Servant, whose father had served her father, supported the Seers in their push to make her maintain her public profile. ‘Your Highness,’ he argued, ‘you are loved by the people. Prince Future is not embraced with the same passion as you, so he is trying to foster popular support. If you lock yourself away in your palace, the people will think that you are afraid of your son, and they will begin to think that he is the stronger one. People are fickle, Your Highness. They sway like reeds in the wind. You must be seen to be the strongest. Your presence in the Erinsday parade will show them that you are confident and they will follow you.’

  Follower’s advice was seldom tarred by political machinations, except devotion to herself. She acquiesced again. After the Alunsday success, she felt confident that a public speech in the central market square in the Northern Quarter of the city on Erinsday would be a safe and significant act in ensuring that she retained the love and support of her people. So when she looked down to see twin darts jutting from her right shoulder and arm as she opened her speech, she was caught between shock and disbelief. There was pain—a numbing ache, rather than the piercing agony that she always imagined soldiers felt when they were wounded on the battlefield. And the darts were in her—and that didn’t make sense. The crowd’s silent anticipation dissolved into confused background noise as she looked towards Follower Servant whose face mirrored her disbelief. Seer Diamond and Seer Vale were staring at her. Someone was yelling behind her, but the noise was evaporating like the daylight, and she was surprised to be dying.

  ‘It will take a few days for the poison to fully leave your body, Your Highness,’ Seer Diamond explained. ‘The surgeons said that you must rest and drink often.’

  The Seer’s wrinkled and white-bearded visage withdrew and was replaced by Follower Servant’s smooth-cheeked and blandly handsome face framed against his black attire. ‘We caught the assassins, Your Highness,’ he reported, smiling at his success. ‘One was unfortunately killed refusing to be arrested, but we have the second one locked away in the Bogpit. He confessed, of course.’

  ‘And?’ Sunset asked.

  ‘Another attempt by your son, Your Highness,’ Follower replied. ‘This is the fourth.’

  Queen Sunset turned her head away. Follower always presented the assassination attempts as orchestrated by Future, but in her heart she knew that her son, as much as he might covet her throne, would not resort to murder. The Rebel Seers might have blinded him with their religious views and with the talk of how the Kingdom needed to be led by a man, but he would not kill his mother.

  ‘I’m sorry to bring this—hateful news, Your Highness,’ Follower offered apologetically. ‘I understand how it must feel to know that—’

  ‘Go!’ the Queen ordered, snapping her head around to glare at the Intermediary.

  ‘Your Highness—’ Follower began, but she cut him off.

  ‘Go!’ He bowed and withdrew. Seer Diamond stood a pace from the bed. ‘I need to be alone!’ the Queen asserted, and broke into a coughing fit. When it was over, she opened her eyes and was pleased to find that she was alone in her chamber, the afternoon sun slanting between the golden curtains, filling the room with light. She’d cheated death again. But how could she bring her son back from across the vast chasm of religious and political ambition?

  News of Samuel’s death eventually spread through Summerbrook when people noticed that he didn’t make his customary appearance on Erinsday to rail against sinners. Rumours did circulate after Alunsday, but Meg’s discovery of the dead soldier, and the arrival of the Queen’s soldiers shortly after, blurred events enough for people to forget the old man. Besides, no one went to his cave unless they were desperate for a foretelling. But when he didn’t come in his habitual manner to the market on Erinsday the rumours sprang to life again. ‘They’re saying that old Samuel’s dead up in his cave,’ said Mykel as he tossed a morsel of meat to Sunfire.

  ‘Who’s saying that?’ Dawn asked.

  ‘I heard it in the inn.’

  ‘And what were you doing in there?’ Meg asked, looking up from the mixing bowl where she’d been kneading dough.

  ‘I was helping Fletcher Archer,’ Mykel replied defensively.

  ‘It’s just a rumour. We’d know if he was dead,’ said Dawn. She passed a ju
g of water to Mykel.

  ‘How?’ he asked.

  ‘Emma would know.’

  Meg let the conversation run its course as she worked the dough for her mother. She knew the truth. Who will be the first to confirm the old man’s death? she wondered. Will Emma tell someone? Or will the curious eventually go up to the cave and find the grave there? Because Emma had asked her to keep the truth to herself, she had.

  Later that day, Meg saw Iris Baker go to the front door of the house and speak to Dawn. When Iris left, Dawn came out to where Meg was cleaning the fowl yard and said, ‘It’s true. Old Samuel is dead.’

  Meg stopped raking and leaned on the rake. ‘Who found out?’

  ‘Fletcher Archer went up to the cave. He said someone had already buried Samuel, so he went to see Emma and she said it was her. Apparently she found him dead in his cave. He was old. It’s not a surprise.’

  ‘Did Fletcher say anything about what he found?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Meg stumbled, realising she knew more than anyone else was meant to know. ‘I—what will happen to all of his things?’

  Dawn shrugged and brushed flour from her yellow apron. ‘Who knows? I think Emma will get them. There’s not much the old man had that anyone else would want.’

  Meg nodded. ‘So I guess everyone knows,’ she said.

  ‘Iris is spreading the word. She says there’ll be a Singing On tonight at the inn. We should go and pay respect to the old man. Samuel knew a lot of things, more than most people. I expect you to come along.’

  ‘As if I wouldn’t,’ Meg answered indignantly.

  Dawn shook her head. ‘I remember what you thought of him. Respect for older people is important. It’s time to show that respect.’

  The minstrel’s arrival was a welcome addition to the night at Archer’s Inn, a distraction from what otherwise threatened to become a depressing evening with the Singing On in memory of Samuel. No one in the Inn said as much, but Meg could tell that most people thought it. ‘It’s times like these that we could do with a Jarudhan priest,’ Fletcher Archer said when he called for everyone’s attention to begin the Singing On.