Rowankind (3 Book Series)
Page 15
It was well after midnight when I heard Corwen return. He padded up the stairs barefoot and closed the door softly behind him.
“It’s all right, no need to creep about. I’m awake.”
“Sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you.”
I raised myself up on one elbow and tossed a witchlight up to the ceiling as Corwen shrugged out of the banyan and stood naked by the bedside.
“You always disturb me. Please don’t ever stop.”
I never slept when he was out running as a wolf.
What I wanted to say was, please don’t leave me like Will did. Corwen wasn’t as easy to kill as a regular human. He could heal his own injuries by changing from man to wolf and back again, but he couldn’t cheat a blade to the heart or a bullet to the brain. I’d thought Will invincible, but he’d been killed by a falling spar, an accident at sea. How senseless a death.
“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “I know we decided against it, but I think we should tell your mother about the baby. Poppy guessed almost immediately, and it doesn’t seem fair to keep your mother ignorant, especially since it might give her something to look forward to.”
“I thought you said it was still too early.”
“There’s no need to broadcast it to the world, but your mother can keep a secret.”
“Better than anyone I know.”
“Then let’s tell her before we leave.”
* * *
Corwen’s mother had been quite overcome by the news, but in the nicest possible way. She was already musing over the old nursery furniture that had been relegated to the attic when Lily had grown past it.
She fussed, of course, but that was perfectly normal for an expectant grandmother, and we left her in good spirits for a change.
The visit to Denby House had been a lovely interlude, but I could see Corwen getting more and more on edge as we neared the Okewood. What trouble had Freddie managed to cause while we were away?
“You shouldn’t worry,” I told him.
“Worry? Am I worried?”
“You’re thinking about Freddie. You’re always worried about him.”
“Am I so obvious?”
“Only to me.” I reconsidered. “And probably to the Lady. She’s known you a long time.”
“The Lady probably saved my life. I wasn’t unlike Freddie when I arrived in the Okewood, confused and angry at the world. I was much younger, of course, and being a wolf had altered everything. When I first changed, I reveled in it, and then I realized how much I was losing. I didn’t have friends. My family turned down so many invitations on my behalf that I was never invited anywhere. My schooling suffered. Freddie went to Oxford, but poor unreliable Corwen couldn’t go. They worried I’d change into a wolf and eat someone. If only they’d realized what was in Freddie’s future. Ha! I’d have looked positively tame.”
“I suppose they thought they were doing it for the best.”
“I think they did, but I didn’t appreciate it at the time. Father was embarrassed, and Mother was overprotective. Both things boiled down to insisting I stay at home. No wonder I ran wild when I did get out.”
“And so you ran away to the forest.”
“I might never have found the Okewood if it hadn’t been for Hartington.”
“I didn’t realize.”
Corwen smiled. “It’s a long way from Yorkshire to the Okewood, though the Lady has presence wherever there are trees. I found my way first into Sherwood where I guessed there would be plenty of places to hide out and give my wolf his fill of game without anyone noticing. I set my sights too high when I spotted a stag. I thought I could bring him down by myself. Wolves usually hunt in packs for a reason.”
“A stag? Hartington? You tried to kill and eat Hartington?”
Corwen grinned ruefully. “I really did, but the old boy has more tricks up his sleeve than I realized. Besides, he knew who I was, or rather what I was, and he’d been sent to bring me to the Lady.”
“She knew about you?”
“She’d felt my presence. Hartington led me a merry chase. I thought I’d cleverly trapped him in a cleft in the rock, but that’s what he’d intended all along. As I closed in for the kill, he turned into a man again.”
“Wasn’t that foolhardy?”
“It was, and it wasn’t. He had to discover whether I was a mindless killer or not. It turned out I wasn’t.”
“What if you had been?”
“He had his clothes and a pistol in one of those magical Fae bags strapped around his chest. If I’d gone for his throat, he’d have shot me through the head and walked away. As it was, he invited me to the Okewood, then turned into a stag again and leaped away.”
“Did you go immediately?”
“It took me a couple of months to decide and to make the journey through the English shires, but Hartington was there in Exeter when my coach drew in, dressed as a country gentleman and waiting with two horses as if he knew I was coming. Given that the Lady could sense my presence, I suppose he had foreknowledge.”
“And you became her watch-wolf.”
“I fulfilled a number of roles: her messenger, spy, and, eventually, her ambassador, and sometimes . . . ”
“Go on . . . ”
“Sometimes the jobs were more difficult than others, either physically or emotionally.”
I didn’t prompt him. He would tell me if he wanted to.
“A wild boar in the Forest of Dean gored two people—one died. It turned out to be a farmer who’d gone missing a few months before and was irreversibly stuck in animal form.”
“You killed him.”
Corwen’s mouth tightened. “Nothing else for it. The Lady weighed the options and made the decision. I was only grateful he didn’t turn human again as he died. That would have been . . . ” He shrugged. “I buried him in the forest. Anything else would have been disrespectful. The Lady arranged for her lawyers to send the family a sum of money to help them over their loss, supposedly from a long-lost relative’s will.”
One fact struck me more than the other. “The Lady has lawyers?”
“Would it surprise you to know that they were weasels?”
“No. Really?”
Some humor returned to Corwen’s expression. “No, not really. The size imbalance is too great. It’s a question of mass. Human to wolf is barely possible. The fox-girl is very small-boned and only comes up to my shoulder. No, not weasels. The lawyers are sharks.”
“Literally?”
He grinned. “Literally. I believe most of the family is in the fishing trade, somewhere near Cromer, but the Basking brothers came up to London to make their fortune. They slip into the Thames after dark and swim out into the estuary to feed.”
“If any of the family ever feel like taking up long-distance sailing, I can think of a crew that might welcome them.”
“I’ll pass that on.”
Corwen’s brief smile faded, and I knew he was worrying about Freddie again.
I loved Corwen’s sister, Lily, like my own, but if I had to liken my feelings about Freddie to my feelings for a brother, it would be Philip who came to mind. David was everything I could hope for in a brother, even though he was Fae, but Philip and I had never been friends. He’d sided with Walsingham against us, and in the end, I’d been forced to kill him. When it came down to a simple choice, I’d killed Philip to save David and Corwen. A hard choice, but I’d made it in a heartbeat. As a summoner I could call the dead, but Philip’s shade was one I never wanted to confront.
“Now who’s worrying?” Corwen nudged me.
“Not worrying exactly. I was thinking about Philip.”
18
Book
WE WERE RELIEVED to find everything peaceful on our return to the Okewood. Freddie had stayed quietly in his own territory and seemed to be content
. We visited, and though he stayed in wolf form, so conversation was limited to Corwen reading out his mother’s letter and telling him where we’d been, he did seem to listen and there were no snarls.
We were contemplating taking Freddie back to Aunt Rosie’s cottage when the Lady called us to her.
We followed one of the sprites to the Lady’s grove where she invited us to sit on stools fashioned from upturned logs. Today she was the maiden, looking barely eighteen with ribbons in her hair and high breasts beneath a flowing white gown.
A bevy of lively sprites brought us tiny acorn cups of nectar and morsels of food served on sycamore leaves. The portions may have looked parsimonious, but I’d had the Lady’s food before. If you let it, the acorn cup would quench your thirst, and the morsel on the leaf would sustain you for the rest of the day. We ate as she bade us, wondering whether she was about to send us on another journey.
She didn’t keep us in suspense for long. She handed me a note. I recognized Aunt Rosie’s writing from her notebooks. I opened it up.
Dear Ross and Corwen,
I hope this finds you well. Leo sends his best wishes and hopes you may visit soon, as do I. There are things we need to discuss. The good folk of Summoners Well are very pleased to hear of the peace with France. For my part I have always hated the suffering and privation war brings, and I mourn for the families torn asunder. However, with the cessation of hostilities, I am aware prisoners held in France will be repatriated, including W, who has caused so much grief in the past. I had a Dream in which he returned more powerful than ever, and you know my Dreams are not to be dismissed lightly. If W’s notebook is still missing, its contents could be deeply dangerous in the wrong hands. I am very worried as to its whereabouts. Please reassure me if you have the book safely in your possession.
Your Loving
Aunt Rosie
I read it and handed it to Corwen. “She’s had a dream. She’s worried Walsingham will be released and returned to Britain, more powerful than before.”
“As are the goblins.” Corwen took the letter and read my aunt’s neat handwriting. “It’s a perfectly valid worry.”
“And Walsingham’s notebook?”
“Undoubtedly dangerous.”
“I suppose it does contain all his dark spells, but I would think he wrote it in code so that no one else could use it. And he’s blind now, so what use will it be to him?”
“If it’s in his possession, he’ll find a way.”
“He surely doesn’t have it. If it was on his person when James Mayo was killed and his ship blown to high heaven, it would have been destroyed in the explosion or soaked in saltwater, its pages no more than a smudgy mess.”
“The pirate who pulled him out of the water—”
“Nicholas Thompson, Old Nick,” I said. “Cruel even for a pirate. He likes to flay his victims. Walsingham’s lucky Old Nick saw more profit in ransom, than pleasure in torture. Even so, I don’t expect Nick was gentle. If he saw any profit in the book, he might have kept it.”
“Would he have any idea what it was if he had found it on Walsingham’s person?”
“I doubt he would have known exactly what it was, and I don’t suppose Walsingham would have told him, but he might have recognized it as something valuable. Old Nick always had an eye for profit.”
I cast my mind back to those last desperate minutes on the Black Hawk, Mayo’s flagship. Mayo’s fleet had had the Heart dead to rights, their guns perfectly positioned to send her to Davy Jones with a single broadside, and so I’d gone to Mayo’s flagship to negotiate.
I thought I was in the middle of a spat with a pirate, but Walsingham was on board. I hadn’t expected that. He had prepared magic spells the like of which I had never faced before. One spell had me pinned to the deck and another spell had killed James Mayo when he tried to defend me. I’d never given Jim credit for his feelings; however, it seemed he cared for me—enough to get himself killed on my behalf, which I was damn sorry for.
Will’s ghost had saved my life, guiding my witchlight to the powder kegs in the ship’s magazine. I’d managed to dive over the side barely a minute before the magazine blew, but I was badly injured by the explosion and almost died. I thought Walsingham had died, a just reward for killing Mayo.
Others must have thought him dead, too, because a new Walsingham had been appointed in London, Walsingham being a title rather than a real name. The old Walsingham was officially out of a job, but when he’d returned to London, they’d appointed him to consult on the matter of magical beings loose in the land. That was how he’d come to be on the Guillaume Tell, a prison ship for magicals.
So, last year, when Freddie and Corwen had been taken by the Mysterium, there he was—a shadow of his former self, blind and with half his left arm missing, but alive.
Damn, I should have killed him, then his spell book would not have been anything we needed to worry about, but I’d thought him powerless and I didn’t have it in me to kill a cripple.
“We could go and visit Aunt Rosie,” Corwen said, “but surely we should have heard from the goblins by now. I’m reluctant to take any more time away from the Okewood in case a message arrives.”
“I know.”
The Lady had been sitting listening to us work through options, and I suddenly felt very rude for not including her. I looked up.
“I’m sorry.” I held out the letter, but she waved it away.
“I know your aunt’s concerns, and they are very valid. I have felt a stirring in the magical forces that flow through this island. I think your Aunt Rosie is right. Walsingham is back.”
“But the Fae want us to take a message to the king and . . . ”
“You can’t be in two places at once unless you split up.”
I nodded, worried that was what she was going to suggest.
“You are two sides of the same coin. Your skills balance each other out. Together, you are more than the sum of your parts. Stay together. Deal with one thing at a time.”
“But which is the most important—Walsingham himself, his notebook, or the Fae’s ultimatum?” I didn’t even have to think about it when I put it that way. The Lady simply smiled at me.
Walsingham would be targeting us. The Fae could target every single human living in the British Isles.
“We’d better get word from the goblins soon,” I muttered to Corwen as we walked back to our glade. “This baby’s not going to wait.”
“Are you feeling quite well?”
“Apart from the mornings I’m fine,” I said. And I was. Maybe a little more tired than usual and my breasts were tender. Apart from that I didn’t feel any different, but I couldn’t deny I had less inclination to take risks, which I supposed was only natural.
* * *
We couldn’t write to Aunt Rosie. If anyone intercepted the letter, they’d be chasing her for the witch she was. We could make it to Summoner’s Well and back in a day, and the Lady promised that if the goblins sent a message, she would make sure we got it quickly.
Thus reassured, we called Timpani and Dancer and, dressed as a respectable country gentleman and his lady wife, we dipped in and out of Iaru until we came to the edge of Summoner’s Well.
Bullcrest, the house where my mother and Aunt Rosie had grown up until the Mysterium found them, sat on a rise at the edge of the village. It was a fire-blackened ruin, the ground around it still barren after thirty years.
Corwen had never seen it before. I’d come here with David when we’d been looking for Aunt Rosie shortly after my mother died.
“Is that the house?” He pointed up the hill.
“That’s it.”
“The fire damage looks recent.”
“Well, it’s thirty years old, but magical. Mother and Aunt Rosie blasted everything within a wide radius.”
“Including Walsingham.”
“It’s no wonder he doesn’t love your family.”
“It’s true. We’ve done him a great disservice on more than one occasion, though never with the kind of malice he’s shown us.”
We rode down into the village, a small collection of neat houses, mostly thatched. There was a single street with an additional knot of buildings set back from the road comprising a general store and a tavern with Leo’s smithy next door. The smithy consisted of a respectable double-fronted stone cottage with a tiled roof rather than thatched, which I suppose made sense when you considered the fire hazard from upward sparks. The smithy itself was built on the side of the cottage with tall barn doors, opened wide, and a window made up of smaller square panes, somewhat grimy from the smoke. An enormous farm horse was tied up outside and the rump of its twin showed in a shaft of spring sunlight inside the forge.
I could hear Leo’s voice carrying on two conversations at once, one with the horse’s owner and another with the horse itself which consisted of soft reassuring phrases, “Steady, boy. I think it’ll turn wet before the week’s out. Whoa-up, you noddy. Give up fidgeting, this’ll only take a minute. Aye, you can always tell by the willow. My Rosie always gathers catkins. There, you go, big ninny. Told you it wouldn’t hurt.”