by Claudia King
Trying not to let despair sink its claws back into him, Caspian thanked the women for their help and moved on.
“We must speak with the shaman,” he whispered to Fern. “He is the only one who will know for sure.”
“What if he recognises us? He saw our faces on the riverbank.”
“But not for long. We weren't the ones speaking with him, and you took the shape of your wolf during the fighting, didn't you?”
“Yes. I should be the one to talk to him. He's less likely to recognise me.”
Caspian nodded his agreement. “First we will have to find him. They said he was at the house of a man named Nirut. Somewhere travellers go to stay.”
Nirut's wayhouse was not difficult to find. Near to the hill, it was one of the larger buildings looking out on to the main path. A couple of families lounged outside while the sound of raucous banter emanated from within. Laughing with an empty bowl in his hands, a bald man with a thick beard shouldered aside the drapes and stepped outside, making eye contact with Caspian and Fern.
“Need a bed for the night?” He seemed in a jovial mood.
“Is Liliac with you?” Fern asked.
“Oh yes. Rich with metal he is. We've split open a dozen skins of drink since he arrived. Come join us.” He waved them over. “You can make the house look pretty.”
They exchanged a look, then Caspian gave Fern a nod. From the man's disposition it seemed obvious what kind of drink they'd been sharing. This might be the perfect time to confront Liliac.
“Nirut's my name, and this is my house. Get yourselves in, and I'll get drinks in your bellies.”
“We've nothing to trade,” Caspian began, but Nirut shook his head and waved him off.
“I've already had enough trade for one season. Let's celebrate the quiet by making a bit of noise!”
Cautiously the pair followed him inside, emerging into a large chamber with a rough wooden table along one side and a scattering of hammocks and sleeping furs around it. Caspian was thankful for the gloomy darkness concealing them, for no sooner had they entered than he heard a familiar voice at the table. Liliac, now free of his bone-scale armour, sat with his back to them. Inked designs spiralled over his muscles alongside the braids of red hair falling down his back, and he spoke in a carefree tone that conveyed a sense of mocking anger. The half dozen men and women around him were laughing, though it was hard to tell whether their mirth ran with or against the shaman. Either way, they seemed to be enjoying listening to him rant about the spirits. It was that rare kind of blasphemous humour that few would dare voice aloud save for a spirit-talker, and it had clearly attracted an audience.
Caspian's muscles tensed as Liliac looked over his shoulder and saw them, but the shaman did not appear to be alarmed.
“Come and listen,” he said. “Sister welcome you. She always does, unless you've spent a season away from her damned home!” The others laughed, and though the joke was lost on Caspian he joined them in a smile. Before they could find a place to sit Nirut returned with a pair of wooden cups and shoved them into their hands.
“There you go, and there's more still to come!”
Caspian caught a flitter of movement out of the corner of his eye as Liliac turned back to address the others. The group at the table were not the only ones in the room. A figure, a woman or a boy by the shape of them, was perched on one of the hammocks. There were more people alongside her, Caspian realised, some asleep or keeping to themselves, but only she was paying attention to Liliac. Had it not been for the paleness of her face she would have looked like a shadow, clad as she was in dark clothing with a hood over her head. Upon noticing Caspian's eyes on her she sank back into her hammock, trying not to look as if she had been about to stand up. Perhaps she had just been startled by the new arrivals.
Turning his attention back to Liliac, Caspian took a sip from his cup and stepped closer. The bitter taste of fire water touched his tongue, but it was offset by a strange sweetness, as if someone had mixed honey or very ripe fruit into the drink.
“Let me talk,” Fern whispered to him. “We'll see how foggy his head really is.”
Reluctantly Caspian stood back to watch, letting Fern take a seat opposite Nirut at the end of the table. Even up close Liliac did not seem to recognise her, and soon she was grinning and laughing along with the others.
Caspian leaned back on one of the posts securing the hooded girl's hammock, pretending to sip his drink as he looked on.
“Go away,” a sharp whisper sounded from his elbow. He looked down and saw a pair of red-rimmed eyes glaring up at him. “Find your own bed.”
“Forgive me. I didn't realise you were trying to sleep.”
The girl did not respond, she only glared until he moved down to the next unoccupied hammock. Even after that she kept shooting furtive looks in Caspian's direction. There was something unnerving about the girl, and he found his attention divided between her and Liliac. She kept tensing and relaxing, and every time she looked at him her annoyance seemed to grow. Nirut's house held a strange duality of feeling. The hooded girl expressed it most noticeably, but it was true of the other occupants as well. Those outside the circle of laughter appeared tense and furtive. One man in the corner had kept his back turned ever since Caspian arrived, but his twitchy movements suggested he was stealing glances when no one else was looking.
Liliac had begun talking about his friends in the temple by now, and Fern was attempting to nudge the banter back in the direction of his pilgrimage. It was a tense game they were playing, Caspian realised. Getting him to talk about his journey might stir up memories that had been clouded by the drink. At one point Liliac paused mid-sentence, squinting at Fern and leaning toward her, before shaking his head and carrying on. If he recognised them they might be forced to run, and then they would have the bows of the guardsmen at their back as they fled into the plains. Everything here was dangerous. They were a pair of mice perched atop a mountain of thorns, and one misstep might send them tumbling.
“Why do you only ever ask about my pilgrimage?” Liliac said. “All of you. I've more tales to tell than that!”
“Maybe if you told us we'd stop asking.”
“I heard you came back with someone,” Fern said.
“No, no one!” The shaman's words were too aggressive to ring true. “Ask the priests, they'd know! Ask Thakayn, or Jarek, or the Dawn King. They know more than me, don't they? Better than any shaman, that's what they know.”
“You're the one with their ear, Liliac, not us.”
“They'll hear me. They'll hear everything I have to say once I'm ready.”
“It's too late for you to beg an audience today, friend,” Nirut said. “You know what I say—one cup of drink for courage, two for calamity. And you've had a lot more than two.”
The conversation was drowned out for a moment in a swell of laughter, then the drinkers finally began to disperse. Fern tried several more times to get the shaman to speak about his pilgrimage, but his talk had grown weary and rambling. He stared into his cup, swirling the contents, all but ignoring Fern as he murmured what might have been a blessing or a prayer. Eventually even Nirut slapped the table and stood up, making one of the long planks creak as he knocked it out of place.
“Well that's it, you've drunk me dry, friend.”
“Bring more tomorrow,” Liliac said.
“I'll see what the traders brought in.” The wayhouse keeper ran his fingers up and down a necklace of metal rings around his neck. “I've enough here to keep everyone in this house fed through winter.”
“Praise the spirits,” Liliac mumbled. He had stopped swirling his drink and was gazing distantly at the wall, the cup threatening to fall out of his hand as it listed to one side.
Caspian beckoned Fern and she came over, but whatever thought he had been about to share left his mind as the hooded figure made her move. It was subtle, so cunning it would not have caught his attention had he not been keeping one eye on her. As Fern came fo
rward the girl stood up and walked behind her, crossing to the table so that Fern's body momentarily obscured her from view. No one else noticed. To the rest of the people in the wayhouse it would have looked as if she merely paused and turned her body slightly when she moved past Liliac, but Caspian had seen this sleight of hand before. Netya and Adel had done the same thing at gatherings, sometimes to fool an enemy into thinking they had been bewitched, other times to trick a friend with a pinch of spice in their drink. When the hooded girl turned away her sleeve hung out for just a moment, her fingers gripping something inside. She'd dropped something into Liliac's cup.
As Caspian rose to his feet the shaman's eyes strayed back to his drink, a frown creasing his brow. He'd noticed too, but in his groggy state he seemed more curious than alarmed. He sniffed at his cup bemusedly, then lifted it to take a sip. Caspian pushed past Fern and knocked the vessel from Liliac's hand, sending it rattling across the table as it stained the wood with a dark streak of liquid. The shaman almost fell over, staggering to his feet with a yell. He looked at Caspian in shock, recognition dawning as the fog lifted from his eyes and he realised what the girl had done.
“That sneak—!” He whirled around, yelling after her as she darted out through the drapes.
“Quickly,” Caspian whispered to a confused Fern, tugging her after him as Liliac ran outside.
“What did she do?” Nirut's bellowing laughter followed them out of the house. “Steal your talismans?”
A few other figures had risen to their feet during the disturbance, including the furtive man in the corner, but Caspian had no time to check whether anyone else was following them. He hurried after Liliac. The shaman ran around the side of Nirut's house, tripped into the wall of an adjacent building, then picked himself up and hurried on, huffing and cursing all the while. The shadow of the girl's cloak disappeared behind the wayhouse up ahead, so far distant that there was no hope of Liliac catching up to her. That did not stop the shaman from trying, however, and he loped from house to house with Caspian and Fern tailing after him until his legs gave out and he stumbled to his knees. By then the girl was long gone, as swift and silent as a wolf. Caspian doubted he would have been able to catch her even if he'd been trying. Fortunately it was only Liliac he wanted. Glancing behind them, he saw that no one else had given chase. The three of them were alone between a stone-walled house and a mossy pile of timber.
“That rat...” the shaman panted. “What was she... was she... oh, spirits no...” He looked sideways at Caspian with a fearful glare. The run seemed to have cleared his head a little, and in the stark light of day there was no mistaking the recognition creeping over his face. Before he could speak Caspian grabbed him by the shoulders and slammed his back against the stone wall. His forearm was across Liliac's throat an instant later, pushing down so that he could not cry out.
“Don't speak. Don't try to yell. You know you'll be dead before anyone comes.” It deadened Caspian's soul to feel how easily the threats came. He wondered whether he truly meant it. He was so weary, so tired of this chase, so emotionally dry that he wanted something, anything, to bring it all to an end. He just wanted to hear the truth of what had happened. If that meant learning that Netya was dead, at least he would know. “That girl tried to poison you with something. I don't know why, but I saved your life. That's more mercy than you showed to our people.” Liliac's face had turned a deep red. He struggled and gasped against Caspian's arm, but he was in no condition to fight back. Realising that he was about to choke him, Caspian eased off. “Tell me what became of the women you took, and perhaps I'll spare your life again.”
“At the temple,” Liliac gasped. “They must be. The high priests took them before I arrived.”
“They are alive?”
“Yes. Priest told me to... to bring her alive.”
“And what about the others who went into the river? There would have been a man and a woman. Did you take them too?”
Liliac shook his head in confusion. “No. No one else.”
All the strength flooded out of Caspian's body. He took a step back, letting his arm fall away from the man's throat. When the wood pile bumped against his heels he felt himself slumping down against it. Netya was gone, then. Drowned and swept away by the river. He knew that Adel and Kiren still needed his help, but he could not bring himself to stand. It was as if metal hooks had sprouted from the timber and bitten into his flesh. How could he do what needed to be done now, knowing what he did? What a fool he had been, mere moments ago, aching to know the truth at any cost. Knowing was so much worse.
Liliac looked as if he might run, but Fern shoved him down and braced her knee against his neck, pinning him against the earth.
“Where are they in the temple?!” she said angrily. Her choked voice was barely holding back tears. “How do we find them?”
“I don't... I can't..!” Liliac was struggling to breathe. Caspian knew he should tell Fern to stop, but his body was too heavy. He couldn't even muster the strength to move his lips.
“You killed her,” Fern sobbed, pushing harder until the shaman's words became a thin rasping noise.
Was this how good men turned to wickedness, Caspian wondered? For he realised that he no longer cared whether Liliac lived or died. Even in cold blood, his heart was numb to the shaman's suffering. He'd felt more sadness for the men they killed at Beron's house. Suffering hardened a heart, they said, and without Netya his had become as firm as a rock. Without the hope of finding her again all he could think about was the moment she had fallen into the river. The Sun People who had shot their arrows. The hate he now felt for them. Even if he did not want to crush Liliac's neck with his own knee, he felt nothing watching him die.
“You killed her,” Fern said again, pushing Liliac's hand down as he tried to grab her.
“No, he didn't.”
The voice was soft. Caspian almost didn't bother to turn his head to look for the person who had spoken, but they sounded familiar in a way that yanked his muscles momentarily back to life. He recognised the cloak belonging to the furtive man in the wayhouse, the one who had kept his back turned. Now he stood at the corner of the house facing them. It was Kale.
“Don't kill him, Fern,” the young man said, hurrying forward to take her shoulders. Caspian reached out to grab him as he walked by, unconcerned with anything beyond what Kale's sudden appearance might mean.
“Where is Netya?” he asked desperately. “What became of her?”
“She's alive. I swear it, she is alive.”
And with a shuddering release of breath, so too was Caspian. He had never felt more warm and more sick than he did in that moment.
“Let him up, Fern,” he managed to say. “We're not like him. Not yet.”
—25—
Mending
Adel's step faltered as she moved to lift the drapes to Kiren and Netya's chamber. The Dawn King had set aside a separate domicile for her after Netya arrived, and now she had to make a short walk through the temple halls whenever she wanted to see them. Few things could stop the den mother dead in her stride save for the voice she heard on the other side of the drapes. Jarek was there, conversing in low tones with Kiren. The pair of them laughed, and she felt her fingers tensing slightly. That laughter could have been hers many years ago.
She turned around and walked away, thankful for the soft deerskin slippers that muffled her steps. Why could she not go in? Was this not a moment she deserved to share? The sound of laughter made her heart ache and her stomach shrink. Being in Jarek's company was bearable, she found, so long as they had something important to discuss. The morning after Netya arrived she had been so concerned for the girl that his dark eyes and playful smile had barely distracted her. But today she had nothing to talk about. Nothing to divide her attention. And when she shared such moments in Jarek's company, her heart did not know what to do with itself. It was better if they simply kept their distance.
“Adel?” his voice came from behind her, stingin
g her like a wasp.
She bit her lip and closed her eyes, then fixed her features into a frown and turned to meet his gaze. “Yes?”
“There's room enough for all three of us if you want to join. Kiren has such fine stories to share.” He grinned, shaking his head and blowing a kiss to the air. “Just like when I was a boy, running away and making her own adventures. Has she told you what she did to her people's canoes?”
“No. I've no time for stories.”
“All the more reason to make some!” He leaped forward and reached for her hand, but Adel drew back sharply the moment their skin touched.
“No. I was only passing by. Stay with your stories.”
Jarek's expression softened. He was a fool, but if anything he could read her even more easily than he'd been able to when they were young. His look of understanding stirred something deeply uncomfortable within Adel, and before he could speak she spun around and walked away. Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears. She clenched her fist to stop it from trembling. She needed to move past this weakness. Jarek had, so why couldn't she? It was nothing but a hindrance at times like this. She hated these moments. Every time she was alone with Jarek her thoughts began to scatter, and then she had to make some feeble excuse to leave before she revealed too much of herself. Perhaps it would be better to share her feelings with him again. Netya would have told her to. But she was so used to keeping such things to herself, especially when she had gravely important matters to worry over. Her duty was to the future of her people now, and she could not sacrifice that for anything. Perhaps once the Dawn King's friendship had been secured and they were ready to leave she would speak openly with Jarek again, but not now. It was just too difficult to acknowledge the things that could have been, and to be reminded of the things that could not.