by CJ Arroway
Nan and Bryndl began to sway in time to the beat as the tempo rose, until they became more and more unsteady. First Nan, then moments later Bryndl, slumped to the ground, immobile but for the twitching of faces and a brief tapping from Nan’s feet.
‘Now what?’ Evie whispered, tapping Rachlaw on the shoulder.
He put his finger cautiously to his lips, although the music was now too loud for their talk to disturb anyone. He leaned in closer to Evie’s ear. ‘They will be in the Spirit World now, so we just wait. Sometimes it is over in minutes, sometimes hours.’
Evie whispered back, a little louder now. ‘I thought you said they hardly ever did this?’
Rachlaw’s whisper rose again. ‘Invoking the Spirits? The elders – yes. But that’s not the only reason for going into the Spirit World – the Cyl priests will go there looking for answers to many questions.’
They waited, the music had long since died down and the crowd now turned their attention away from the sleeping elders and talked, shouted and laughed among themselves; though no-one left their place. Luda reflected that it seemed likely that this was one of the ‘hours’ visits and not a ‘minutes’ one. He was becoming a discomforting mixture of anxious and bored when suddenly the murmur of the crowd was silenced.
There was a ghastly, inhuman sound of gasping and choking as all heads turned back to the inner circle. Bryndl was lying as still as the earth, but Nan was twitching violently now – a cloud of froth was bubbling out from the side of her mouth and her skin was a sickly pale blue.
‘She’s dying. Someone help her!’ Luda had stood up and was shouting, but the crowd sat in silent concern watching. ‘Is no one going to help her?’ He looked around in disbelief.
‘I’m sorry Luda,’ Rachlaw said, his face etched with worry, ‘it is forbidden to disturb them until the journey is over, and doing something now would probably just make it worse. We need to wait – and hope.’
‘Is she losing the battle?’ Evie gripped Luda’s hand as she asked.
Rachlaw hesitated, then nodded solemnly. ‘She can still come back. She’s strong. It’s not over yet.’
Then the music started again. Not the beat of drums or the howl of horns, but a soft melody that seemed to come from the rocks and earth around them. Calm and heavy with a sweetness that settled on the eyes and pulled them to a close.
Evie felt herself relax and though she still feared for Nan she could not experience that fear, other than knowing it was there. Instead there was peace.
‘It feels like I’m floating, Evie. Can you feel it?’ Luda said, his face now soothed to calm.
Evie did not, but she nodded anyway – it felt as though disagreement did not fit with this world right now.
She looked over at Nan and saw her face was slowly returning its colour. Her body was still, but for the steady rise and fall of breathing, and her mouth had cleared itself. Then the music stopped.
The crowd looked around suddenly at each other, all trying to understand where they had just been while still in their seats. Then Nan moved.
It was a sudden jerk – like a dream of falling – and she was up on all fours, her eyes flickering from side to side in confusion as two priests rushed to hold her and help her to her feet.
She could barely stand and began to gag before steadying herself with her arms on the shoulders of her two supporters.
Hanna stepped forward: ‘Nan – are you alright? Can you speak?’
Nan took a moment to breath, then nodded.
Hanna pulled Nan’s lids open to look in her eyes, then handed her a cup to drink from, waiting for her to finish and hand the cup back.
‘Are you alright to talk?’ Are you able to tell us what agreement the spirits brokered?’
Nan cleared her throat then tried a word to test her voice, before pausing to swallow. ‘We are to fight with Rachlaw,’ she croaked.
The crowd cheered or groaned, depending on allegiance, and Rachlaw subtly punched the air, looking quickly around to see if anyone had seen him.
‘Raise Bryndl’ Hanna commanded, and two of the junior priests lifted his head to dab a vial of blue liquid onto his lips. They did this repeatedly; slowly at first then more frantically as Hanna and Nan watched with increasing unease. The priests lifted his face into their hands and pulled back his eyelids. A dark murmur was building in the crowd.
‘High Priest, Nan Tabyn,’ one of the priests stammered. ‘Bryndl is dead.’
* * *
Warriors are sent with fire, but the elders join the Earth Spirit in the ground. The preparations would be made and Bryndl would be mourned with the ceremony he was due.
Nan and Rachlaw had gone straight to the Great Hall to discuss what this now meant for the battle ahead. Rachlaw could see the visit to the Spirit World had taken a lot out of Nan, and she walked slowly, supported by a thick-ended staff, though she refused to take his arm.
The Cyl were now bound by honour – whatever their feelings toward their historic enemy; they would fight with Rachlaw and The Home against the Sea People. But while they were bound, it was clear not all were happy. A few of the men they walked among now would not look Rachlaw in the eye and, as they entered the Great Hall, waiting for them was Dyfran, Bryndl’s only son. And his face held more fire than the stone hearth that warmed him.
Dyfran was shorter than Rachlaw, but just as powerfully built, and they fixed their eyes on each other, unmoving, like two bulls each refusing to give the path. Then Rachlaw extended his hand. Dyfran looked at it and kept his by his side. ‘I am bound to follow your path now, and tomorrow we will talk of war. But know this Nan – Rachlaw is not Cyl, he is not my brother and he never will be.’ Rachlaw nodded reluctant understanding, and Dyfran left, bumping his shoulder firmly into him as he passed..
‘Are you sure you are feeling strong enough for this, Nan? It can all wait until tomorrow,’ Rachlaw said. He could see her pale features looked even older and more time-worn now.
‘I’m fine Rachlaw. I would rather work than lie in bed and think of poor Bryndl – how he…’
Rachlaw took a tankard from the wall and went to fill it from one of the barrels stacked against a great wooden beam that supported the wide roof of the hall. ‘I’ve got you a drink Nan, maybe take a rest for a while and we’ll get onto business then.’
Suddenly their quiet discussion was disturbed by the sound of scuffling outside and the door burst open. A small group of Cyl men forced their way into the room - the man at the front waving a short sword in the direction of Nan and Rachlaw.
‘You cheated. You and your little pet – you cheated and you killed him. You dishonoured us and you have tied us to The People scum. You are nothing but a cheating People-lover.’
Rachlaw’s hand went to his sword, but he kept it sheathed. ‘I’ve been called many things before, but ‘little pet’ is a first, I have to say.’
‘Not you, you dog – that Nix freak. He used his magic to kill Bryndl – we saw him blowing on his little pipe. Nan sold us out to The People scum and used that dirty little fish freak to do it.’
Nan leaned on her staff to push herself up and slowly walked towards the man. He was little more than a boy, Rachlaw thought, but he was angry and he was armed so he moved to be ready if he should dare to act on his anger.
‘Sorry,’ Nan said, standing so close to the man that the peak of her hood almost touched his chin, ‘I’m getting older, I didn’t quite hear what you said Aldrwyn was – a fish what?’
‘He’s a dirty little fish fr–’
The words were not out of his mouth before Nan’s staff was in it. The crack of broken teeth was followed by a howl of pain as its gnarled wood came down on the startled man’s head, and he crumpled to the floor, curled up against the rain of blows Nan now poured on him.
‘Aldrwyn is your brother. How dare you! How dare you speak of magic kin like that. He is Cyl and you are Nix – we are the same. You. Are. The. Same!’ She hammered the staff end down to the beat of her fin
al words, then aimed a last blow to his leg and ordered him out, his startled friends dragging and helping him out as tears ran down his bloody face.
Nan shut the door, then staggered forward and grabbed the side of a chair before lowering herself into it.
Rachlaw moved to help her and saw a sight he never thought he would witness – Nan’s eyes, too, were full of tears.
‘The world will never change, Rachlaw,’ she said, fixing her watery gaze on him. ‘Whatever we try to do, however hard I try, this world will never change.’
Rachlaw rested his hand on Nan’s shoulder, and he thought that she may be right.
The Jackdaw
‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t rip that messed up face of yours right off with my bare hands!’ Orlend’s face raged a deep red and the veins on his thick neck stood out until it seemed they would burst. ‘You had one task, which you failed – twice. And now you come here asking for your money?’
‘Oh I can give you a couple of reasons,’ Skavan shot back. ‘Firstly, my deal was to capture or – and this is the important part – to discover the whereabouts of your little Jackdaw. I would show you the contract but there isn’t one, because whatever spirit gave you those arms obviously took the material he needed from your brain and you can’t even write your own initials.’
Orlend smashed his giant fist on the table and the crack of oak reverberated around the room. Skavan stood unmoved, and it was unclear to Orlend if his face was immobile from the line of black stitches that ran diagonally across it, or the fact that he really did not care.
‘And secondly,’ Skavan continued, ‘you might be the size of a Wyrran granary, but you are fat and slow and I would gut you like a fish before you even opened your hand to touch me.’
‘If I didn’t still need you,’ Orlend stepped forward so that he towered over the hunter, ‘I would cut your scrawny throat where you stand.’
Skavan’s eyes were now lighting up with an intensity that made even the warrior king step back a little.
‘Do you really think I’m afraid of that? What an exquisite feeling that would be – to hear the sound of my own blood pulsing from my neck; knowing it was the end, to feel that pain, to taste death – to live in that moment knowing it was all I had.’
Skavan closed his eyes; a soft smile lit up his face and a visible tremor ran through his body. He turned again to Orlend and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘But I choose when. Not you, not anyone. And I will die as a viper – biting the hand that kills me.’
Orlend snorted like a goaded bull, then clenched his fist and closed his eyes to cool his fire before he spoke again. ‘You call yourself a hunter but a little girl has turned your face into pig tripe.’
‘It wasn’t–’
‘Silence!’ Orlend bellowed. ‘Whether you would like it or not, I would kill you. But you have at least found her, which is more than anyone else has managed. And you had the guts to come here and tell me to my face that you had failed me, and – as little as I respect you – I respect that at least.’
‘Oh, your respect is all I ever wanted,’ Skavan sneered.
‘Shut up or I will kill you right here. Who do you think you are? I am the Reborn King and you dare to speak to me–’
‘You’re starting to believe your own stories now?’
Orlend gathered himself, calming his voice. ‘I don’t want to see you again until it is done. You will join the baggage train, and you will use your talents – if they still work – to cover any escape attempt when we attack. I will pay you your finders fee, but if you fail this time I will not just kill you, I will peel the skin from what is left of your face and I will feed the rest of you to the pigs while you still live. Now get out.’
‘Well, seeing as you asked so nicely.’ Skavan bowed and turned to leave. He stopped a moment at the door and pulled at the buckle of his belt to extract a thin, hidden blade. He fixed Orlend’s gaze and quickly trimmed a fingernail before bowing again and letting himself out.
Orlend grabbed the edge of the heavy oak table with both hands and steadied himself, counting his breaths until he felt his huge body start to untighten and his heartbeat fall.
‘This is all for a purpose, this is all for a purpose.’ He pulled himself up to his full height, shaking out doubt from where it had no excuse to be.
‘Ok, Ok. It’s good. We can deal with him when it’s done. So that’s it. Tomorrow is the show.’
* * *
Orlend stood with his back to the men, looking intently at the tapestry on the wall. There were eight of them around the table – the heads of the seven tribes who made up Orlend’s coalition and, at the rear of the table, his face half-hidden in his cowl, Callan the Seer. And there was an air of mutiny.
One of the leaders was standing, his arms held out in open disbelief at what Orlend was now proposing.
‘Orlend – you promised us gold and land, we gave you our men and then, when we give you victory, when we have everything we fought for in our hands, you want to drag us off to go and fight some half-savage tribesmen in the back end of nowhere. Have you lost your mind?’
The men around him banged the table with fists and dagger hilts to show approval or dissent at the man’s words.
Now another man spoke up – a heavily battle-scarred warrior called Faral One-Eye, head of the Grey River tribe. ‘Listen to me. Listen to me!’ he boomed, standing and slamming his chair down onto the stone floor so that the struts of its back shattered with a silencing crash.
‘We are here in Wyrra because Orlend brought us here. How many generations have dreamt of this moment? Of Fraxians sitting in the war room of The People, drinking their wine and counting their money? This is Orlend’s doing. He is the Reborn King. You can crawl back to the bogs of Fraxia with a few bags of gold in your arms if you want. Or choose a fat little wife from The People and farm parsnips somewhere on the Wyrran Plain for the rest of your days. Not me – I am with Orlend, I am with him until we bring back the Land to be Returned’
A roar shot up from most of the men. The man who had spoken first sat back in his chair, shaking his head firmly.
‘Do you see this tapestry?’ Orlend spoke calmly, his back to the men. ‘The stitching is so fine I’m told it takes a month to make just a hand’s breadth of cloth.’
He turned to face the table, raising his hand to show them a full view of the artwork. ‘Beautiful hunting scenes aren’t they? Proud princes of The People riding out to chase the stags while the doting ladies of the court look on. You won’t have seen anything like this in Fraxia – in our halls, that The People would call hovels.
‘Do you know what one of these is worth?’ He looked around the table as the men, now silent, shook their heads. ‘I’m told you could buy three, maybe four, ships for the cost of just one of these.’ He shook his head and silently studied the tapestry for a few seconds. Then, without warning, he violently tore the whole piece from the wall.
Orlend pulled out his great knife and sliced through the heavy cloth until it was almost clean in half, then threw the tattered parts to the floor. He now raised his voice so that the men shuddered.
‘Do not talk to me of gold, or land. Of what you gave me. This is nothing. Wyrra is nothing. You have given me nothing. And,’ his voice now dropped, ‘I have given you nothing either. Not yet.’
He gestured for Callan to stand. ‘Men – we will take what we want from Wyrra. I will take no gold, all that is here is yours. I just ask that you listen to what Callan has to say. To what I have known for some time and that I now share with you. Listen and follow, or listen and leave – I will force no man to come.’
Callan stood and pulled back his hood. His small eyes burnt with rabid intent as he mouthed silent words to himself, his pale face staring upwards. His hands shook the small bones of a dog and he threw them to scatter across the dark wood table top. Then he spoke.
‘I have seen her!’ he cried out in a high-pitched, animal-like voice. One of the men, who had
been resting with his arms on the table, jerked back suddenly and turned to watch the howling seer.
‘The Jackdaw, who flies above our empty land. She drinks from the water and the fields rise. Her feathers fall and they turn to waves of golden grain. She calls and our enemies fall. Her cry rends them in two and we walk across their riven bodies, across a bridge of bone, a river of blood, to our land – returned to us at last.
‘I see our king, our Reborn King, with the Jackdaw at his right hand; the girl who flies with the Crow. In her beak she holds the key. She is the one, it is certain. And we shall be returned by the Crow Daughter as it is foretold!’ Callan’s voice rose at the end to a shriek as he collapsed, face down, onto the table.
There was a moment’s silence then the men rose as one in warlike cheers – all but one, who kept his seat and backed away uncomfortably from the frozen face of Callan, whose wide, unblinking eyes and frothing mouth now lay directly in front of him.
‘Men.’ Orlend spoke again. ‘Forgive me that I have kept this vision from all but a few. But now you must know. After a thousand years, the hour has at last come, and we are blessed to be the ones to live – yes, and die if we must – in this great time.
‘It is foretold. In the Western Mountains there is a girl – little more than a child – but she is the key. She is the one to unlock our destiny – to stand at my side and return my birthright. Our people’s birthright. ‘Your birthright. To be again the great people we were before, to see again the land that is ours; fruitful and rich as it once was.’
His voice rose until it sounded like the spirit of thunder himself stood before them. ‘Who is with me? Who is with me to the West? To our destiny. To our glory!’
The men roared their approval and hammered their knife hilts against the great black table where Rachlaw, Dawhl and Venner had sat just weeks before discussing the very man who now stood as lord of all the lands they had owned.