A Painted Winter
Page 27
Anwen raised her arm and plunged a dagger into Sorsha’s chest.
Pain seared through her, and her breath caught in her throat. Sorsha looked into Anwen’s eyes as Anwen’s hand lingered on the dagger. Tears trickled down Anwen’s cheeks. “Anwen, it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you,” Sorsha wheezed.
Anwen leapt off the bed and sprinted out of the room, her footsteps echoing up the stairs to the third floor.
Sorsha exhaled and looked at the hilt of the dagger wedged into her chest. Made of bone, with the Snake of Caledon carved into it. Warm blood pooled across her chest and dripped into her armpits and, as she breathed, the wound pulsed. Why is the pain so much stronger than other times I have been hurt? Her senses were heightened, and she felt all the exquisite pain of the flesh that was open, the coolness of the blade. Even the crackle of the fire seemed louder, and she could hear her blood circulating with a whooshing sound, like waves.
Thirty-Eight
Autumn, 367 C.E., Caledon
“I killed her.”
The sound of Anwen’s heavy breathing woke Brei and, in the darkness, he could hear her sobbing. She must have had a nightmare. He reached for her. “Anwen, darling, what’s happened?”
She snapped around, her wide eyes glinting in the low light of the fire. “I killed her,” she whispered.
Brei shuffled to the edge of the bed and pulled her into his arms. “It’s just a dream, darling. You haven’t killed anyone.” Her skin was icy, as though she had been outside.
She pushed him away. “No, I really killed her, Brei. I couldn’t help it… It’s all I could think about. Taran spoke to me after dinner, and he said something, I forget exactly, but something about how she wasn’t one of us, and I felt like I had no choice. Otherwise, she would have killed us, Brei.”
Brei yawned. “Who did you kill?”
She looked down at the floor, as if she could see to the rooms below, and whispered. “Her.”
“Sorsha?”
Anwen bit her lip, and the skin on his arms prickled. “Stay here and I’ll go check, but I am sure you just had a dream. Climb back into bed, darling, I’ll be back up in a minute.”
Brei crept down the stairs to the second floor and paused on the landing. It’s just a dream. He opened the door to Sorsha’s room and found her sat by the fire, resting her head on the back of the chair, staring into the flames. Brei sighed. She’s alive. Flames glistened in a puddle beneath her chair, catching his eye. Following the trail of red up the leg of the chair to her sodden tunic, his gaze finally rested on a bone handle protruding from Sorsha’s chest. That’s my dagger. The floor creaked beneath him, and her eyes flicked to his face.
“Have you come to finish me off?” she said, her eyes flashing yellow in the fire.
Brei stepped backwards, his chest frozen, and he wondered if he was still breathing. “Did Anwen really do this?” he croaked.
“She missed.”
“Why are you not…fixing it? Can you fix it?” he whispered, stepping into the room and hovering next to the empty chair. Beads of sweat slid down the sides of his head through his hair.
She looked into the fire. “Yes, I can fix it.”
He studied her face. She looks so calm. “Why don’t you, then? Isn’t it hurting you?” He fought to keep his voice from shaking.
“Yes, it hurts…but it’s distracting,” she said, without turning away from the fire.
“Distracting from what?”
She looked up at him, and her eyes were green again. “From everything.” Her voice choked, and a thick tear slid down her cheek.
He bent onto his knees next to her so that his face was level with hers. “It’s okay,” he whispered and placed a hand on hers.
She recoiled, and the muscles in her jaw tensed. “But I’m not okay. And I’m never going to be okay.” She was breathing fast, and the dagger rose and fell with her chest.
“You can heal the wound. You’ll be okay.”
Sorsha shook her head and smiled. “I’m not worried about this. I’ll heal it in a moment.”
Brei’s muscles relaxed. “What you are worried about, then?”
“I’m never going to see my mother again.” She pressed her lips together. “I am all alone, and that’s the way it has to be. I am a blade. Nothing more.”
“Is your mother dead?”
She shook her head. “Only dead to me. And there is nothing I can do to go back. The Gods won’t let me leave here. Instead, I have an eternity of servitude. Alone.”
“Maybe you should fixate less on the past and instead think about the future. Because you can’t change the past. I always tell Anwen that.”
Sorsha laughed. “Does it work for her? If it was that easy, don’t you think I would have done it?” She leant her head into the back of the chair. “What future do I even have? There is no future for me, there is no ‘me’ anymore. I’m not even sure I am a human. I’m a mere shadow of a human, who belongs in Tirscath. A slave of the Gods, a tool. I am here for everyone else’s benefit but my own. There is no joy, no hope. There is only an eternity of loneliness while I serve my purpose…and eventually watch everyone around me die. Winter after winter after winter, I alone will remain. You are all ghosts to me.” She closed her puffy eyes, but the tears continued to slide down her cheeks.
“I don’t understand what you are saying… Do you mean you are immortal?”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, then?”
“It’s complicated. All I know is that I died before. And if I die again in the right way, I live another life. But that life will always be one of servitude.”
“You are forced to help people?”
“Yes, but the force…it’s like a compulsion. When someone is hurt, it’s as if there is nothing else in the world that I can do other than help them. I have no control.”
The blood was drying tight against her skin. Brei watched it turning brown and cracking. The gnarled rise of a scar on her chest poked out above the collar of her tunic. “Is that scar from when you died?”
She nodded. “I was shot in the heart with an arrow. Just before you found me.”
Had Taran seen the scar before the trial? The fire caught in her eyes, turning them luminous yellow again. He shuddered and sat in the chair opposite her. “I don’t understand why you can’t enjoy life, even if you’re forced to heal people.”
She slumped lower in the chair. “Do you remember how painful it was when your mother and Anwen were taken? Or when you lost your father and uncle?”
“Yes.”
“Well, imagine if you lost everyone you loved, Anwen, the twins, Taran, they all died. And there was no comfort for you, no release from the mourning because you would go on forever. You would feel that pain, the pain of their absence, for hundreds and hundreds of winters.”
“I don’t know what to say, Sorsha.” Brei gazed into the fire. “But I feel like that pain would be better than being alone forever.”
She shook her head. “Loneliness is just another kind of pain, Brei. A dull pain. For me, it’s not worse. I’ll never see my family again. That is a raw pain, sharp, that lingers just below the surface of my skin. I’d rather be alone than to mourn for all eternity. And I think, deep down, you know that is worse.”
Brei tried to push away thoughts of Anwen dying. They sat in silence, staring into the flames. Have I neglected Anwen so much that she would do this? I saw her sipping her sleeping potion. She shouldn’t have been able to wake up. Brei cleared his throat. “Are you going to tell Taran about Anwen?”
“I’m not a monster, Brei. I understand the fears that plague her in the long hours of the night. The doubts that are ever-present in her mind. When the irrational terror sets in her heart, she has no more control than I do.”
Brei clenched his jaw. Sorsha is a monster, though, just not the bad kind.
“Is Anwen the reason you never made a claim to the throne? Or did you just never want to be king?”
> “I wanted to be king. From as far back as I can remember, before Taran was born, probably. But Anwen was so broken. I had to make a choice.”
“Do you regret that choice?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes I tell myself and others that I do. I don’t know why, though. Because from the moment I met her it set the wheels in motion for all the other choices I made in life. I loved her for so long that it became who I was. And when the time came, I could not have made a different choice to the one I made.”
“But what about now? What if King Gartnait died?”
Brei ran his hand across the stubble of his jaw. “Now I could do it, yes. Especially because Mother is back. But now it is different.”
“Why?”
“Taran is…” He swallowed. “It means more to him now than it does to me. Anwen and the twins changed me. I’m not willing to sacrifice all for the pursuit of my own interests. I would rather follow Taran than challenge him, because challenging him would require my complete commitment, and I don’t want to take that part of me away from my family.”
The fire crackled and whirred as they fell into silence again. I need to check Anwen is okay. Brei yawned and stretched his arms above his head. “Would it be okay if I, ah…had my dagger back now?”
Sorsha closed her eyes and ran her hand through her hair, as though she had a headache. “I suppose so.” She pulled the dagger out with one forceful upwards motion. Fresh blood oozed down her chest, re-wetting the dried blood. She looked at the wound for a few moments before she placed her palm over it. Her hand hovered there for a minute, and she closed her eyes. Then she wiped the dagger with her tunic, smearing red across the beige linen.
“Here you go.” She smiled as he reached for the dagger. “Anwen will be okay, Brei. I will stay away from the tower. I’ll stay as far away from Caercaled as I can. You might never see me again.”
Brei glanced back as he left and saw Sorsha on her knees, soaking up the blood from the floor with the skirt of her tunic.
Thirty-Nine
Autumn, 367 C.E., Caledon
The infant paused its incessant wailing to cough. Hoarse and rasping. Sorsha pressed the back of her hand against the baby’s forehead. “The coughing fever,” she whispered to Serenn as the baby screwed up its red face and continued to wail. “This will be quick.”
Serenn walked across the grubby roundhouse to the firepit in the middle of the room. “We shall call on the Gods Nodens, Cernunnos, and Brig to save your child.”
The young mother nodded, her bottom lip trembling. Her red hair was tied in a bun at her neck, a dirty apron was wrapped around her rough spun woollen dress, and her hands were covered in the flour she had been grinding when the Bandruwydd arrived. She was bound in protection and provision to a simple man, a hunter repurposed as a warrior for the forthcoming campaign. Soon he would leave for the south, and there would be no one to protect or provide for them.
Eluned passed a smoking stick to Serenn, releasing an earthy herbal fragrance into the stale air.
“Nodens, God of Healing, save this child and protect him through the long nights of winter,” Serenn said, raising her arms to the roof. Sorsha waited until she was certain that Serenn and Eluned’s chanting had consumed the mother’s attention before she placed her hands on his chest and forehead. Within moments of the child’s healing, Eluned swooped down and wrenched him from Sorsha’s arms. Serenn and Eluned chanted over the baby and blew smoke from the cured sticks into his face. He coughed, small and sweet.
“The Gods have expelled the sickness from his body!” Serenn said.
The boy’s mother rushed to Eluned. “Thank you, thank you so much!” she sobbed as Eluned passed the child into his mother’s arms.
Sorsha was already forgotten, if she had been noticed at all, and she left the roundhouse and waited outside. Although she knew this was her last patient for the day, she lingered in the muddy lane for Serenn. Sorsha intended to interrogate Serenn, as she had done every day since she returned from the south. The door to the roundhouse creaked open and Serenn and Eluned stepped out into the mud.
“I have nothing to say to you, Sorsha. Just like I didn’t yesterday. And just like I will have nothing to say tomorrow,” Serenn said as she brushed past Sorsha.
“Where is Arian?” Sorsha yelled to Serenn and Eluned’s backs.
A man leading a pig between the row of roundhouses jumped, his eyes wide. “Come along, pig,” he murmured and pulled at the rope around the pig’s neck.
Eluned swung around, her mouth contorted. “For the hundredth time, she is busy!”
Sorsha glared at Serenn and Eluned’s black cloaks fanning behind them as they scuttled around the last roundhouse on the row and disappeared. Since Sorsha’s return, the forests surrounding Caercaled had transformed from green to violent red and orange. Every day Sorsha met with Serenn and Eluned in the city to heal the sick, but even as the leaves crumpled to the ground and the first snowflakes fell, Arian was nowhere to be seen. Sorsha yearned to seek her out, but after Anwen’s attack she had kept her promise to Brei and not ventured near the tower again. In a way, she was grateful for the excuse to avoid its confined, damp walls, which reminded her of her nightmares. But she feared for Arian’s safety, and Sorsha wished bitterly she had spoken to her properly the day she returned, to find out what Arian had been trying to tell her.
Mud squelched beneath her boots as Sorsha stomped along a path leading between a row of roundhouses. Villagers jumped out of her way. They feared her. “The strange Bandruwydd from the south,” she had once heard a villager whisper, “she’s a spy.” Since her return, her senses had ignited. Whispers in houses were as loud as drums beating for a festival. An ant crawling across dead leaves in the dark was as clear to her as a bird flying across the sky on a sunny day.
The row of roundhouses ended, and she passed below the naked branches of oak and yew until she reached the city wall. The Northern Gate was garrisoned with warriors she knew, despite the lack of conversation they had with her. Owain and Gruffydd were senior warriors, calm watchers of events. Cináed was a troublemaker, good-natured but with a taste for riling men up into scrapes he could bet on. Brin and Deryn were young and were happiest when they could stand on the sidelines to holler and jeer. Sometimes Princes Naoise and Dylan would join them, for entertainment more than assistance. Fifty or more men were stationed at each gate, all with their unique perspectives on life and yet all with the same reserved aversion for Sorsha. As she approached the gate, the men fell silent, as they always did, and stood back to let her pass. When she had first returned to Caercaled and the sweet smell of late summer still lingered in the air, she had experimented with hellos or smiles. But the men met her with stony faces. Now, as winter approached, she avoided their eyes altogether.
An oak-lined path ran from the Northern Gate to the River Tae, and eerie branches stretched across the path, as if yearning for a skeletal embrace. As the days grew colder, the wind blew mist off the river, cloaking the forest in a veil of wispy white. Sorsha continued along the trail and past the holly bushes growing rampant beneath the oaks, threatening to overgrow the path. Red berries shone within the spikey green leaves, and Sorsha watched as a brown thrush flew into a bush and disappeared to its nest. The path forked, and she followed a thinner trail through the misty trees until she reached a clearing.
King Gartnait had been so pleased to have Sorsha back that he made generous gifts to her companions Nyfain and Dioras, including a small roundhouse that had become vacant after the last occupant perished from the coughing fever. As their body was burnt in a pyre outside the house, Dioras, Sorsha, and Nyfain moved in.
Paltry rays of sun streaked through the fog onto the slanting thatched roof of the roundhouse. Nyfain was hanging linen garments on a rope affixed to the roof and stretching to the trunk of a nearby tree. She turned and waved as Sorsha walked across the clearing. Dioras sat on a stump, striking a rock along the length of his new sword. He looked up and smiled.
“I missed you when you came home this morning,” Dioras said, with a coy smile.
Sorsha kissed Nema and glanced at Dioras over her shoulder. “You were out cold. Were you drinking with the Caledon warriors again?”
“Yes.”
“Any news?” Nyfain called over.
“Just the same,” Dioras said. “They are leaving for the Great Wall as soon as the solstice approaches. Their excitement, I will admit, is endearing, and I’ve been wondering if…”
“You want to go with them?” Sorsha turned to him.
“I do. Is that so bad?”
“Why would it be bad?”
Dioras shrugged. “You don’t seem that keen on the warriors or on killing Romans.”
“I have nothing against the warriors. But I know when I’m not welcome.”
“They all think I’m brave for living with you,” Dioras said. “They think you’re an evil spirit let loose from Tirscath.”
Sorsha smirked. “An improvement on the whole spy thing, I suppose.”
“I still don’t know how you get away with healing people and everyone thinking its Serenn,” Nyfain said to Sorsha. She then turned to Dioras. “I think you should go. I’m sure it would be exhilarating to kill some Romans soldiers. I know I would go if I could.”
Dioras and Nyfain smiled at each other, and Sorsha turned back to Nema.
“Sorsha, I should have mentioned this earlier,” Dioras said. “I was talking to Taran and Naoise last night.”
Sorsha grunted and kept patting Nema’s shining black coat.