The Shamer's War

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  I think it was then that Azuan began to scare me.

  My mother had fled head over heels, from my father, yes, but most of all from his family. And there was a… a greed in the way Azuan looked at me. As if I belonged to him. No, not to him. To them. The Family. I might have escaped them once while still in my mother’s belly. But now they wanted me back. And they were probably willing to pay handsomely for it. Enough to satisfy even a soul as grasping as that of the Crow.

  Would he simply buy me and take me to… to Colmonte, or wherever it was, far away, in any case, whether I wanted to come or not? I looked at him. At the face that was so like my father’s and yet was not his. Azuan didn’t love me. Not the least little bit.

  “That is my father’s flute,” I said, to buy time.

  “Yes,” said Azuan, simply.

  “May I have it back?”

  “Did he give it to you?” Again this glimpse of… not just interest, more like a greedy sort of attention. Like a cat looking at a mouse.

  I nodded. “It’s mine now.”

  He considered. Then he held it out toward me.

  “Let me hear you.”

  He meant it as a test; I was well aware of that. He wanted to know whether I had the serpent gift or not. But what he held out to me was also a weapon, and I meant to use it. I brought it to my lips and blew.

  At first it sounded terrible. My mouth was dry, and I couldn’t quite purse my lips the right way. The Crow gave a sharp bark of laughter.

  “Some musician,” he said. “If you are buying her because of her music, the price is too steep.”

  I could feel a hot flush rising in my cheeks even though I knew the last thing in the world I had to worry about right now was the Crow’s opinion of my playing. Then I rallied. I had this one chance. I could not afford to waste it.

  I pursed my lips the way my father had taught me. And started playing.

  It was not a tune. More like the hiss of the wind in the chimney. The crackle of the fire. Nice and warm, said the flute. A good place to rest.

  The Crow sat down on the bench. One of the men yawned.

  It is late, said the flute. The middle of the night. How nice it would be to lie in one’s bed.

  Enoch leaned back against the whitewashed wall. His chin came down to rest on his chest.

  I let the notes become heavier, slower, softer. Like the body becomes heavier, like the heart becomes slower, like the breath comes more softly as you fall asleep.

  And the men slept. One by one they crumpled slowly where they sat or stood, and sleep took them. I backed slowly out of the room. I felt like running, but that was not how it was done. So I walked, quietly, still playing my heavy sleep notes one by one, like the last drops of rain in a shower.

  Down the dark hallway. Toward the door and freedom. I played on with one hand only while I fumbled at the handle with the other.

  No good. The door was locked.

  “You are very good,” said Azuan. “He trained you well.”

  A frightened, off-key squeal from the flute. I spun. He was right behind me, and he looked very much awake. In one hand he held the key.

  “Where is he?” he asked.

  Azuan had not fallen asleep. Perhaps that was not so very strange if he himself had the serpent gift. But what did he mean by…

  “Who?” I whispered.

  “You are not stupid. Do not try to pretend that you are. Sezuan, Dina. Your father. Where is he?”

  And then I realized. He did not know that Sezuan was dead.

  I opened my mouth to tell him.

  “He—”

  And then something stopped me. Not something as well thought out as a plan, or even an idea. Just a feeling, a feeling that the less I told Azuan, the better.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t seen him for a really long time.”

  “How long?”

  “Months.”

  “Where? Where did you see him?”

  I threw a nervous look down the hall, but as yet no one was stirring.

  “I’m sorry, but shouldn’t we get out of here?” I said. “Before they wake up? At the very least it might save you a great deal of money.”

  He actually laughed, a laugh that seemed to startle him.

  “You really are clever,” he said. “Your father’s daughter, as one might say. And you are right. It is so much cheaper this way.”

  He smiled at me. But he also took a solid hold on my arm before he turned the key and let us out and locked up the Crow and his men.

  DINA

  Hoarfrost

  It was cold outside, and I began to shake almost at once. The thatched roofs of the little cottages were white with hoarfrost and glistened in the moonlight, and there was a thin glaze of ice on the puddles. Azuan seemed not to notice the cold, but then he had a nice warm-looking cloak, while I didn’t even have my shawl, which still hung beside my bunk aboard the Sea Wolf.

  “Come on,” he said when I had trouble keeping up with his long, rapid strides. “They won’t sleep forever.”

  Probably not. But where was he going in such a hurry? It dawned on me that he was headed not toward the harbor and the ships there, but inland, toward Dunark.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just hurry up.”

  We turned a corner, and that was the end of the Dunbara. Ahead of us stretched a strip of marshy flats, with ditches and little brackish tide pools glittering through the mists whenever the moon peaked through the clouds. On the other side of that the Dun Rock towered, tall and dark, with crenellated castle walls and a few lights dotted here and there. Between Dunbara and Dunark ran a road wide enough for two carts to pass each other and raised above the flats almost like a bridge. We were somewhere near the middle of it when a shout rang out behind us.

  “There they are!”

  Four men appeared from the narrow alleys of Dunbara, and even at that distance the tall, angular shape of the Crow was easily recognizable. They must have broken down the door to get out, and now they had found us. They started down the road at a run.

  “Don’t just stand there,” hissed Azuan. “Use the flute.”

  I didn’t think I could. It was one thing to let the notes sneak up on people when they were standing still, unsuspecting. But stopping the four men running toward us now at full speed…

  “I don’t think I can.” Perhaps Papa might have done it. Not me.

  The same thing must have occurred to Azuan.

  “Run, then,” he said.

  When he saw me still hesitating, he grabbed my wrist and hauled me down the road. But my legs were shorter than his, and shorter than those of the Crow too. Our lead soon shrank. Azuan threw a quick look over his shoulder and cursed at what he saw.

  “Go on,” he said, giving me a small shove. “I’ll try to stop them myself.”

  Stop them? How? He had no weapon that I could see. But perhaps he had a better grasp of the serpent gift than I.

  I knew there was only one thing I could do if I wanted to avoid the greedy claws of the Crow. I veered sharply to one side and jumped into the ditch. The thin crust of ice broke like glass, and the icy water soaked me to mid-thigh, but I had no time to curse at inconveniences. I struggled up the far bank of the ditch on all fours, clutching the flute one-handed, and began to run across the marsh as quickly as it might be done. I hopped from tussock to tussock when I could and waded through black mud when I couldn’t. It was slower progress than on the road, but it would be no faster for them if they tried to follow.

  The Crow was in no mood to go mud hopping. “Enoch, Keo, you catch the girl. The rest of us will deal with the foreigner.”

  I glanced across my shoulder. Enoch was balancing on the edge of the road, not looking as if he greatly fancied getting his feet wet. But he didn’t dare disobey the Crow either, it seemed. At any rate, he leaped, trying to clear the ditch in one bound. He didn’t quite succeed. For a moment he struggled to keep his balance on the other side, arms flapping l
ike he was trying to take off and fly. Then he slid down the bank again and disappeared from view.

  There was no time to enjoy the sight. Keo, the other sailor, had been luckier with his leap, and now he was hopping from tussock to tussock just like me.

  In the middle of everything, a sudden clear memory came into my head: a summer afternoon back home in Birches and a toad race that Davin and the Miller’s boys had come up with. They had each caught a big toad, but the toads didn’t take to racing and had to be goaded back in line after each hop, so that their progress toward the finish was a strange and zigzagging affair. The race Keo and I were having was the same. Charging forward in a straight line would have had us mired in mud within minutes; we had to hop left, hop right, wherever there seemed to be an inch of firmish ground to stand on.

  It wasn’t easy to gauge one’s footing. A damp hoary mist hugged the marsh, like mold on a loaf of bread. My legs were numb with cold, and my skirt clung to my legs like an extra coating of mud. Yet at the same time runnels of sweat were trickling down my back under my blouse, and I was beginning to pant like a thirsty dog.

  Back on the road, someone was shouting, but I couldn’t see what was going on. The mist was dense and white, and I had to keep my eyes on where I was going, and on Keo. Was he gaining on me? Yes, definitely. He leaped adroitly from one tussock to the next and didn’t seem to put a foot wrong. Was the man half toad?

  My own leaps grew shorter and shorter, and more awkward. My cold dead legs were on the point of failing me. My tired body sent treacherous messages to my brain: Might it not be easier just to stop? Just to let them catch me? At least they would have to find me somewhere warm and dry, somewhere to rest for a little while… a fireplace, a blanket, perhaps even a hot drink.

  My foot slipped. I waved my arms and fell, and the flute flew from my fingers. It floated in a lazy arc through the air, turned once end over end, and tumbled into a tide pool and was lost from sight.

  No!

  All thoughts of fireplaces and warm blankets evaporated from my head. The flute. The flute! I dropped to my knees by the side of the pool and pushed both hands into the dark water. Where was it? I couldn’t see anything. The surface was smooth as a mirror, a moonlit mirror, and I couldn’t see through it into the hidden ground below. I rummaged blindly among slimy reeds and mud and stones, but there was nothing.

  No, wait. There. My finger closed on a familiar smoothness. I snatched it to me, not caring that the water dripped all over the parts of my blouse that weren’t already soaked. Had it been damaged? Would it ever—

  A sound behind me. A splash and a grunt.

  I spun.

  Keo was only a few tussocks away. Another leap or two and he would—

  “Stop.”

  I wasn’t sure where it came from, the Shamer’s voice. I didn’t mean to use it. But suddenly that one word came out of me with that precise edge, that precise tone that made people stop and listen. Even Keo.

  He paused almost in midleap and stood there for a moment, teetering on one leg like a stork, while the mists rubbed against his legs like a begging cat.

  “If you take one more step,” I said in a weird, cold voice I barely recognized as my own, “I’ll turn you to stone.”

  He hesitated. His eyes gleamed whitely in the moonlight, and his mouth was a dark O in the middle of his face. I could hear his strained breath, huff, puff, huff, puff, like Rikert’s bellows back in the smithy in Birches.

  “You don’t scare me,” he said.

  But I could hear the lie in his voice. I had already scared him. This was why he had stopped. They all knew I was the Shamer’s daughter, and I had listened while they talked up there on the deck when they thought I couldn’t hear them. The witchling, they called me, or worse things: devil’s spawn, witch’s brat. Oh yes, I knew all the names. I could almost see how the thoughts chased one another around his head. If a girl could make a grown man fall asleep with a flute, could she turn him into stone as well? He didn’t know. But he wasn’t certain that I couldn’t do it.

  I raised the flute.

  “Go back,” I said. “Tell them you couldn’t find me. Tell them I fell into a tide pool and drowned. Tell them anything you like, but go your way and let me go mine.”

  “They can see us,” he said.

  “Not anymore.”

  I meant simply that we were now so far away that the darkness and the mist hid us from their eyes. But he took it differently. He turned around and looked back. And if he had been scared before, he was terrified now. The hoar mist lay like a heavy white blanket across the marshes, and the moon had disappeared behind a cloud. The road was gone. It was there, of course, somewhere in the dark, but we could no longer see it. It was as if we were suddenly the only people in the world, him and me.

  Still, he hesitated.

  I raised the flute a little higher.

  Reflexively, his hands clenched into fists. Then he turned and ran, no longer smoothly and cleverly from tussock to tussock. This was sheer panic, a heedless blundering through pools and ditches and black mud, like a sheep with a wolf on its tail. Long after the mists had swallowed him and the darkness hid him from sight, I could still hear him run and fall, run and fall, with no other purpose than to get as far away from me as possible.

  I sat by that tide pool for a long time, hugging my wet flute to my chest. I was shaking all over from the chill and from exhaustion, and the longer I sat there, the colder I got. At some point there were voices in the mist, raised in anger—one of them was the Crow’s. But they never came anywhere near. I had escaped from all of them, from the Crow and his men as well as from Azuan, at least for the time being. And that was good, of course. That was fine. If only I had had some idea where to go from here.

  DINA

  The Spinner’s Web

  In the fog, the Sea Wolf lay like all the other ships anchored at Dunbara’s piers, a dark island with masts for trees, swaying gently every time a tidal ripple rolled on past.

  It wasn’t an island I wanted to return to. Carmian’s cabin had been a prison, even if it lacked a proper door. Nor was I keen to be anywhere near the Crow again. A distance of a couple of hundred miles would have suited me just fine. But I had to find Nico, and I didn’t know where else to start looking.

  Right now there was no sign of life aboard. I didn’t think they would all be sleeping. Probably most of them were out looking for me. But what about Nico? He would never have permitted the Crow to trade me to Azuan like that, not if he knew about it and was able to object. I was terribly afraid that the Crow had sold him off first—he was, after all, worth a lot more in gold than I was.

  You’ll have to go up there, I told myself in my sternest inner voice. You have to know whether they have him chained up in the hold or something like that. I raised the flute and made my stiff fingers move. The notes crept through the fog on gray cat’s paws, almost soundlessly. I played until I felt sure even the rats were asleep, and then I made ready to enter the Sea Wolf one last time.

  They had pulled up the gangway, but I found a ladder I could use instead. I had had quite enough soakings for one evening. I had had to steal a sweater and a pair of boy’s trousers from a cottage on the way, or I would have frozen to death. I had left my own wet clothes as payment of sorts; I didn’t know if they had any girls in the family, of course, but if not, they could sell them, or at least they might once they had washed out the mud. The knitted sweater was much too big and smelled strongly of fish, but at least it was warm. And the trousers would stay up—just—if I tightened my belt a little more than I usually did. I wasn’t quite sure what I looked like to other people. If anyone saw me, I hoped that at first glance, they would take me for a fisherman’s son wearing his older brother’s castoffs. And perhaps not give me more than that first glance.

  I crept across the ladder onto the ship and then flipped it back so that it landed with a clatter on the stone pier. A passerby might wonder what a ladder was doing there, but not half a
s much as he would wonder if he saw it leaning against the side of the ship, a clear sign that uninvited visitors had come calling.

  The deck rose and fell slowly. The tide was coming in one long, soft swell after the other. I stood there for a moment, poised to flee if the flute’s music had failed me. But there was no one in sight, not even the guard I was positive the Crow had posted somewhere. The hatch to the cargo hold was neither bolted nor locked, but this meant nothing. If Nico was down there, they would have tied him up in any case. But even though it was unlocked, it wouldn’t budge when I pulled at it. I had to put down the flute, wedge my heels against the edge, and heave for all I was worth. Come on, I swore silently. Come on, you blasted thing!

  There was a yawning creak that could be heard several ships away, and I stumbled back and fell down with the hatch on top of me. I froze, listening. If anyone came…

  But no one did. I stuck the flute into my belt and climbed through the hatch into the empty cargo hold.

  It was dark and silent down there. The hull creaked with each tidal swell, but other than that, I could hear nothing, not even the scuttling of rats. Perhaps I really had managed to put the beasties to sleep? It would be nice to think so.

  I couldn’t see a thing. How on earth was I supposed to find Nico? Fumble my way along the floorboards? And if I didn’t find him, would it be because he wasn’t here, or because I had missed him in the dark?

  “Nico?”

  No answer. But then again, if everyone else was asleep, so presumably was he. This was hopeless. I needed a light. But how? I didn’t have a handy candle in my pocket.

  The lamp in Carmian’s cabin. That would do very nicely.

  I fumbled my way back to the ladder and climbed out. I hesitated a bit on the last rung, like a fieldmouse before leaving its hole. But there was still no sign of movement. The dogs in Dunbara were barking at something again, but aboard the Sea Wolf everything seemed serene and peaceful.