Herne’s eyes were just tiny lights glowing deep within the sockets. Tiny, red, malevolent lights. Searching. Hungry. “Do not think to command us.”
“I ask only for your help.” But his request seemed presumptuous now. He’d grown too used to Puck, Fenoderee, and Mester Stoorworm doing what he told them. He’d forgotten they were an exception to a dangerous rule.
“And why should we?” Sometimes Herne crawled around Tom’s ankles when they spoke. But this time he was still, squatting back on thick haunches, gazing up at him. Sometimes he growled in the back of his throat and his shoulders shifted, like a cat getting ready to pounce. It made Tom want to take a step back.
But fear was what Herne wanted to see. “There is no reason you should,” Tom said. “But I thought you would appreciate the hunt.” He strengthened his grip on Caledyr, drawing on it.
Find them. Catch them. Stop them.
“What is a hunt without a kill?”
“Is it the kill you savour? Or the chase itself?”
Herne snapped his skeletal jaws. “Both.”
Not the answer he’d been hoping for. He wished he had Fenoderee instead of Herne. “There is no kill at the end of this hunt.”
His mouth gaped open. Tom had learnt long ago that was Herne’s impression of a smile. “There. You command us.”
Yes. He did. But instead he said, “I state only truth. This is a hunt without a kill. If you would help us, you would have my gratitude. If it is of no interest to you, I understand.”
Herne seemed to think for a moment, then cast his gaze to Puck, who stood with unusual stillness. “Is he coming with us?”
“He does not have to.”
“No. Bring him.” That gaping smile again. “We want him to report back to his queen how we saved this little adventure for her.”
“Saved?” Any jollity Puck once had was gone. “What matter is it if these two find their way into this valley?”
Herne’s jaw gaped even wider. “They call us an animal. A creature. A monster. Yet we have more wit than the queen’s fool.” Then he laughed, an awful sound, one that made Tom feel quite sick. Even Brega winced.
“Come,” Herne said. “Let us hunt.”
Tom had imagined a mighty cave mouth in the ground, the river flowing inside, leading to mighty tunnels that would accommodate them with ease. But, in fact, the river was small, only a few feet wide, and it tumbled into a hillside, a little waterfall that seemed no more than a crack in the ground. What wasn’t water was wet rock, covered in lichen, with scrawny weeds growing in crevices.
“Ho ho ho.” Puck’s voice echoed into the hole as he peered over the edge. “Is this hole one of little Fenoderee’s relatives? His mother, perhaps?”
“That’s mean, Puck.” Mester Stoorworm peered in alongside him. They both looked like quizzical pets, a small furry dog beside a huge, scaly one.
“Good, bad, mean, kind.” Puck shrugged. “These things mean nothing to a fool.”
Tom dismounted and strapped Caledyr to his back. “We’ll have to leave the horses.”
Brega nodded. “Agreed. Gravinn should stay with them.”
“Me?”
“You’re the only one who won’t provoke suspicion.” She tied a belt under her riding cloak and filled it knives, pouches, rope. “How far it is to the valley?”
“Four miles,” Gravinn replied. She looked about her, as if there was a crowd watching. But they were alone amongst grassy hills.
“As the eagle flies,” Dank added. He was still mounted and seemed disinterested in the hole. Instead he was looking towards the horizon. Tom followed his gaze, fearing discovery and a dragon on the wing. But there was nothing.
“Dank has a point,” Tom said. “It will be a longer journey down there.”
Brega nodded. “Wait until sunset,” she said to Gravinn. “If we have not returned, go to Neirin.”
“Mester Stoorworm, you might have to stay too,” Tom said. It was obvious he wasn’t going to fit through the gap.
The fay let out a whine. “Don’t leave us behind.”
“Trust me, I don’t want to.” Tom peered into the hole. Dark and dangerous and ending in dragons. “I’d feel much safer with you.”
“Please let us go.”
But it just wasn’t possible. “Keep Gravinn safe.”
“The moon is already high,” Brega said. It had taken them some time to ride here from the nearest Circle.
Tom said nothing, just stared back at Stoorworm’s baleful, pleading gaze. Finally the fay gave a mournful nod and hunkered into a tight coil beside the horses, sulking.
“We could use some light, Dank,” Tom said.
“We need no light, Thomas Rymour,” Herne grated.
“The rest of us do.” Tom pointed at the hole in the ground. “Let’s go.”
Herne snapped his teeth at Tom and, when Tom didn’t flinch, shouldered aside Puck and Mester Stoorworm and crawled down into the dark. The tumbling river splashed over his skin before swallowing him. Then everyone turned to Tom and waited for him to follow.
Find them. Catch them. Stop them.
Dank’s sprite did little but make the waterflow glow. And the rock was slick, his footing precarious. The falling river was cold and distracting, and he found himself panicking, scrabbling for handholds. He kept picturing himself slipping and breaking his skull on the rocks below.
The father and the prayers, and fasting and charities, and calmness of the soul until death.
He took it slow, inched his way down. The river hammered on his head, his shoulders, slapped at his hands. The rocks were smooth, worn by water, ready to let him fall if he didn’t have a strong enough grip or a sure enough footing.
It was getting darker. The sprite’s light wasn’t strong enough and he cast too much of his own shadow. He had to go by feel alone, and the rocks felt smaller and more slippery with each movement.
Find them. Catch them. Stop them.
The father and the prayers, and fasting and charities, and calmness of the soul until death.
He looked to see how far he had to go and water ran down his face and into his eyes. He felt a moment of blind panic, felt himself back in the rat pit. Hauled himself up to get beyond a rising tide that wasn’t there.
Slipped.
Fell.
He let out a tiny cry before a wet stinking form took hold of him.
“We have you,” Herne grated in his ear.
He’d fallen all of a foot. “Thank you.” He turned and saw, for the first time, Herne standing like a man. His back was hunched, he still looked like a wild thing, and his head was still a skull. But, for the first time, Tom wondered if there wasn’t more to Herne than the hunter.
“Don’t thank the hound for making sure the fox doesn’t drown.”
No such luck. Tom watched the fay drop to all fours again and crawl away.
Dank and Brega descended without incident, and Puck leapt and jumped his way down as if it were a game. “We fancy no-one got down as quick as us, eh?” he asked, then growled at Herne. “Not even the hunter could do that.”
“A steady stalk catches the quick brownie every time.” Herne clawed his hand and closed the fingers slowly, chuckling like pebbles dropping in a chasm.
“Enough.” The fall, however short, had shaken Tom. He was wet and cold, and the tunnels were narrow and dark and dripping. It was too much like Cairnalyr. Even Caledyr wasn’t comforting him.
Find them. Catch them. Stop them.
It was like a mantra in his head. It wearied him and he let go of the blade. But he heard it all the same.
Herne led them on a path that was more often in the river than not, the riverbed uneven, their path twisting and turning into the depths of Tir. Tom’s boots became waterlogged, his feet grew numb as they slipped and stumbled and slogged in Herne’s wake. The only solace was that their path was uncomplicated; the river flowed, and they followed. But, after a time, they stepped into a cave and, while the river gurgled hap
pily in one direction, more tunnels branched off in others.
Puck leapt to his feet and bellowed, “Ho ho ho!” The echo resounded over and over and the fay seemed very pleased with himself.
“We are seeking a stealthy entrance to the valley,” Brega said. Tom could tell she was angry, but forcing a calm tone. “That sort of thing might put us in danger.”
“Ah, lady elf.” Puck pretended to swoon at her feet. “What is it about those stern eyes and that disapproving stare that makes our heart beat so?”
“I’ve stopped hearts for saying less.”
Puck’s lovesick face turned into a dark and delighted grin. “We’re sure you have.” His voice was like treacle. “But our sounds reach only the ears of those we wish it to.”
“Yet I hear you still.”
It was a dangerous game to play with Puck, who was as likely to delight at a retort as he was to rip out for a keepsake the tongue that uttered it. Yet Tom could see in her eyes that Brega didn’t speak out of naivety. She knew what Puck was. And, somehow, she knew how to keep him sweet, for Puck chuckled and pawed at her.
“A wit like yours is a rare thing, my lady,” he said, then turned a wicked look on Tom. “She is more fun than you have proven to be.”
The knowledge that those words were meant to hurt him didn’t lessen their sting. “Which way, Herne?”
The fay was crouched at a tunnel, sniffing. Like everything else about him, the sound was a disgusting and disturbing thing, wet and hollow, like it would cover you in mucus and then draw out your soul.
Tom touched Caledyr. Find them, catch them, stop them. It was more comforting than his silly fears.
The fay crawled to another tunnel, sniffed, then to another. He didn’t know.
“Why not follow the river?” Brega asked.
“Dank said it didn’t go to the valley.” Though sat in the dark, it was easy to imagine the boy had been lying.
She grunted, cast her eyes around the cave. She was hard to read with the light so dim. “Some of those tunnels are little more than cracks. We could get stuck. Or worse.”
Tom nodded. Now would have been a perfect time to call on Katharine. She’d have known which was both the safest and quickest way. There was no certainty that Herne would pick either.
“This one.” The fay was already crawling into a fissure in the wall of the cave, barely wide enough to squeeze through.
Tom shared a look with Brega, then with Dank. “You asked for him,” the boy said, but smiled to take the sting from the words.
“I did.” So Tom turned and climbed after him.
This path was tougher than their last one, with no flat ground to walk on. Each step involved bracing himself against the rock walls on one side or the other, leaning this way and that, feet never flat, ankles always complaining. After what seemed like miles but was perhaps only a few hundred yards, he began to yearn for a rest, and wondered if they would reach the valley before sunrise. Would they have to stop, to rest? Had Six and Katharine? No. They must have known they’d be pursued. They wouldn’t have stopped. He pictured them clambering through this space, driven, pushed forward by zeal. Desperate to ruin what Tom and Dank and Brega and Gravinn had been building.
The tunnel disappeared and he saw Ambrose, stood staring at the ground as if he had forgotten how to sit. “Do you think me a puppeteer too, Tom?” he asked. “I have been planning and plotting for centuries to make all this happen.”
He came back to the present folded at the bottom of the fissure, pain in an ankle, old pain reignited in his head. He’d slipped and fallen.
“Tom?” It was Brega’s voice. “Are you well?”
He was getting a little tired of all these injuries he was accumulating. But he said, “Well enough.” He pushed himself to his feet. His ankle wasn’t sprained, but it still hurt. “Let’s keep moving.”
The space grew tighter, then opened into another tunnel, this one small enough to force Tom to double over. Water gurgled over their feet.
“The river?” he asked.
Herne was crouched in the water’s midst, snapping at it. “Not the same,” he gravelled. “Another one.”
Tom nodded. “Which way?”
Herne said nothing, only crawling away against the flow of this new river. Perhaps it was because they had followed a river in, but it felt wrong, like they were turning around. But he had no other choice; his own sense of direction was long lost. They were in Herne’s hands, for better or for worse.
Herne had called him quarry, in Faerie. Melwas had scoffed, but then the two fay had whispered to each other. Had Melwas asked Herne to lead him into some kind of trap? Or was the fay conducting a perverse hunt of his own?
They left the second river through another fissure, this one short and wide, so Tom had to slide through on his belly. But he only had to squeeze through a dozen feet before they came to another tunnel, this one big enough that he could almost stand straight. It seemed almost to double back, before meandering off in another direction. It didn’t seem possible that Six and Katharine had come this way. Were they lost? Or was Herne leading them astray?
Another cave, bigger than the last, filled with great, dripping stalactites and stalagmites.
“A moment,” said Brega. Tom was surprised that it was her to call a rest. She slouched against a stalagmite.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes.” She took a small flask from her belt and sipped from it. Then, after eyeing him a moment, she offered it to him. “Water,” she said.
He took a small sip and nodded. “Thank you,” he said. More for the gesture than the offer itself.
She shrugged. “I’ll refill it from the next river.” She put it back in her belt and pulled out a piece of bread. She held it up to him.
“You eat it,” he said, though his stomach betrayed him a moment later with a rumble.
She tore it in two and thrust a chunk at him. “Don’t stand on ceremony, Rymour,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologise either.”
He resisted the urge to apologise again and sat opposite her. She was lowering her scarf so she could eat, her eyes shining in the dark, fixed on him. He could barely see her anyway, let alone make out her features. Nevertheless, he kept his eyes on the ground. He took a bite of the bread. It was old and dry, the remains of a loaf they’d taken from one of the villages, filled with sweet tomatoes and herbs. It seemed too full and too complicated to Tom, but he had to admit it tasted good. “Thank you,” he said again.
She waved a hand at him, stuffed the rest in her mouth and quickly adjusted her scarf. She watched Dank as she laboriously chewed her huge mouthful; he was stood in low conversation with Herne. Both boy and fay were facing away from them and Tom couldn’t make out what they were saying to each other.
Puck was hopping from stalagmite to stalagmite in silence.
“Do you think we’ll catch up with them?” Tom asked.
She chewed some more, giving him a look. “I think we have to,” she managed around her food.
He nodded.
She finally swallowed and said, “I always knew that elf was bad news.” She glared at him. “We shouldn’t have taken him with us.”
“It wasn’t my choice.”
“You told Neirin to take him.”
“I told Neirin we would take him.” Tom picked at his bread. “There’s a difference.”
“Barely.”
“It’s there.”
She shook her head and pulled out a small bag, held it up to him. “What’s in here?”
Tom shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Exactly.” She waved the bag, swinging it in a gentle circle. “It could be anything. We have no idea. We’ll only know when I take it out.”
“Fine.”
“But when you have your foresights, you make it real.” She stopped waving the bag and said, “Once you’ve seen it’s a cake, it can’t be anything else.”
Tom saw w
here this was going. “I see the future, Brega. Things to come. I don’t make them happen.”
“You do.” She opened up the little sack, revealing a block of honeyed oats. “By seeing it, you make it so.”
“You make it sound like Neirin had no choice to take Six.”
“He didn’t.” She took a bite and wiped away crumbs. She spoke with her mouth full. “You made the choice for him. That’s what you do. You take away possibility and choice.”
Her words lacked any edge of spite. But he still felt under attack.
“I disliked you for that,” she said.
Disliked. Not dislike.
“And for killing Draig,” she added.
He hadn’t killed Draig. But he had made sure he was left behind to die. “And now?”
“Now I am Lord Neirin’s only protector. Chasing through the bowels of Tir after that Westerner keeps Lord Neirin safe. So I have no choice but to do it. The cake has no choice but to be a cake.” She took a bite, threw him the rest, stood and brushed away more crumbs. “And Draig betrayed us. I miss him. But he deserved worse than death.”
It was chilling, to hear her speak of her friend in such a cool, detached tone. Tom climbed to his feet and nodded, but didn’t make eye contact. “Thanks,” he said.
She gave him a nod and then turned to Herne. “Shall we continue?”
It felt like hours before they felt a breeze on their skin. Herne had led them up, down, back and forth, through tunnels and cracks and even, at one point, over a narrow crevice, where one slip would lead to a fall without an apparent end. But, at last, Tom felt a breeze and smelt a rich, spring morning. And, yes, light. Light, up ahead.
Herne stopped. “We’re here,” he grated.
Eirwen’s grace. It felt like days since he’d seen the sun. He had to stop himself from running out into the light. Instead he said, “What now?”
“Now?” Herne’s miserable, frightening little eyes were smiling. “We were not summoned for now.” Then he lay down like a dog before a fire and his eyes went dark. Sleeping? Tom didn’t dare nudge him.
“Never fear, Tom,” Puck whispered. “You have your old ally still.”
It was of surprising comfort, and Tom stepped over the sleeping Herne to peer around the corner. The tunnel ended in a crack, narrow and ugly, and beyond Tom could see glimpses of warm light and rich, green grass. He unstrapped Caledyr from his back and began to push himself through the gap, but Puck’s furry hand caught at his own.
The Realm Rift Saga Box Set Page 54
