Dinner was a silent affair that night, although the duchess tried to make conversation. The duke hardly spoke at all and Levoreth was even quieter.
“I’m dreadfully sorry about the Blys,” said the duchess, putting down her fork. “But they are gone and you do them no benefit by grinding your teeth like that, Hennen. My dears, we needn’t go to Hearne. There’ll be other times.”
“We’re going to Hearne,” said her husband.
“I meant what I said,” returned his wife. “It isn’t as if the regent and his Autumn Fair cannot go on without us. After all, what are we to Botrell but uncouth country folk, smelling of horses and going about with straw in our hair?”
“We’re going to Hearne!”
“Excuse me,” said Levoreth, and she got up and left the table.
“And you’re still coming, too!” said her uncle.
“I know that,” said Levoreth. She glared at the duke and then slammed the door behind her.
Levoreth had not known the Blys well. She could not even recollect what Ginan Bly looked like, let alone his wife and child. But they were still her people. This was her land.
No.
She forced herself to unclench her fists.
No. All of Tormay was her land. Not just this sleepy little duchy of Dolan.
She locked the door of her room and blew out the candle. Outside, a sickle moon was rising in the east over the Mountains of Morn. The moon was so thin it looked like the sky’s weight would snap it in two. There was something in the air. Something—she was not sure. She leaned out the window. Her nose twitched. Heather from the surrounding hills, woodsmoke, the scent of hay and horses in the stables, a guard in the courtyard below smoking a pipe. Apples rotting on the ground in the orchard behind the castle, the musk of a fox sniffing around the chicken coop.
A fox in the chicken coop. Teeth and feathers.
They kill for pleasure sometimes. But there are other things that kill for pleasure as well.
There was something else in the air. Her nose twitched again.
Definitely. Just the barest hint.
Something dark.
There was just enough time. She had to see for herself.
A cloak around her shoulders, Levoreth tiptoed through the hall. The castle was settling into evening. She could hear servants chatting and laughing down in the kitchen. Crockery clinked together. Somewhere on the floor above, her aunt was humming to herself. Levoreth tilted her head to one side and listened. The tune was an old Dolani love song. A smile crossed her face. She wondered if her uncle knew.
Mistress of Mistresses!
Levoreth looked down. A mouse scurried out from behind a chest and stood shyly before her.
“Sir Mouse,” she said. “Well met.”
Indeed, Mistress! Indeed!
“Can you do me a great favor?”
Aye! What is your wish? We mice will do anything in our power to aid you, even though it cost us our lives! Command us!
“I would have you and yours guard this castle and the town. Parley with the cats, with the hounds, with the horses, and with all that live hereby. Bid them my peace. Bid them that all must be my watch against the Dark.”
The Dark!
The mouse squeaked in alarm and its whiskers quivered.
“Aye, Sir Mouse. Can you aid me?”
The mouse bobbed up and down. It reached out one tiny paw and patted the hem of her cloak.
We shall! We shall! Word shall come to you if we see aught!
The mouse scurried away.
The moon was rising high when she made her way from the castle grounds. A small gate in the gardens opened into the street behind the castle. Though, in truth, it was more of a cattle path than a street, full of ruts and mud puddles. Lights shone from the windows around her. A cow lowed in question from a shed nearby.
Hay.
Hay. And grass tomorrow?
She quieted the cow with a touch of her mind and passed on.
Steps were built into the wall here for the soldiers who walked the watches, but no one was in sight. She hurried up to the top of the wall and glanced at the moon. There would be just enough time. Barely enough, and she would be doubtlessly falling asleep in the saddle in the morning when they left for Hearne.
She took a deep breath and jumped off the wall.
Landed already running. She could hear the galloping of horses in her mind. Herself galloping.
The ground flowed away beneath her, earth and stone and trees blurring into one. The wind whipped through her hair and her cloak, tossing them back like a dark mane. She heard the river Ciele murmuring before her, and then she was past it, hurdling it in one stride. The moonlight flashed on the water, and the moon in the sky was the only thing that stayed motionless with her, watching her with the narrow curve of its unblinking eye. Hills rose and fell before her. The dew sprang from the grass at the strike of her feet. Her cloak was drenched in it. Time slowed, but she ran faster and faster.
Oh, Min!
Her heart was full and it seemed to her that if she turned her head she would see the great horse galloping next to her. She was up higher now, up on the plateau that rises in the northern portion of the Mearh Dun hills. She slowed her pace and felt sweat springing cold from her limbs.
The moonlight gleamed on the whitewashed stone walls of a cottage. A barn stood nearby. The ground was hard underfoot. She smelled the oily tang of sheep in the air. Sheep and hay and death.
And the other smell.
It was unforgettable. The Dark. Nausea twisted her stomach.
A memory struggled to life and for a moment she went blind to the cottage and the silent land around her. Shadows were falling from the sky. A mountain range rose like broken teeth into the night. Fires raged on the plain below. She heard the distant shouts and screams of the dying. The battle lines snaked across the plain. Iron clashed on iron. And the shadows fell from the sky.
They fell and they fell.
So long ago.
Long before we fled to Tormay.
But the stench was the same.
Levoreth forced her eyes open. Her head ached. The cottage sat waiting for her in silence. She swallowed and tasted bile.
In the little garden behind the cottage were two fresh graves. They were heaped over with stones and she touched them. The animals would respect her scent. They would not bother these graves. The lock on the cottage door was shattered. The smell was almost overpowering inside. She doubted, of course, that a normal human would be able to smell the scent. A wizard might be able to. Others would merely become uneasy, fearful, or sick to their stomachs, but they would not know why.
Animals, however, would smell it and know it for what it was.
The cottage was a single room that served as kitchen, living space, and bedroom. Just inside the door, moonlight slanted down onto the wood flooring. The wood was stained dark. Someone had kicked dirt over it, but the stain was apparent, ugly and dark red. Broken crockery, torn bedding, and splintered furniture had been piled up in one corner—all that was left of the Blys besides the two graves in the garden.
There was something else in the room. A thread of emotion fast fading away. Terror. And rage.
Ginan Bly had died fighting.
Levoreth nodded. She looked once around the cottage and then walked outside. The stench was all around. It clung to the stone walls and to the grass poking up from the ground. She stalked around the cottage, her head down.
There.
There it was.
The scent led away toward the north.
North. Yet she had no time to go north herself. Something in the city of Hearne was calling her. She cast her thoughts wide, searching across the surrounding land. Nothing. Not even a field mouse to be found. She pushed wider, but there was only a residue of fear. The animals had all fled. But there—there was something. A weasel skittering along the ground, nervous and hungry. She caught at its mind and pulled it toward her, but the animal shied away. She sna
red it again and soothed it with thoughts of fat mice and crickets. The weasel shivered.
Come.
The animal came, snarling and protesting, hardly able to talk for fear.
Afraid. Evil. Here! It is here! Run! Run away!
It popped its head out of a bush several yards away, its shiny black eyes darting every which way at once, and then it disappeared.
Come.
Run! Run away!
Come.
The bush quivered and then the weasel burst out from among the leaves and scurried across the ground to her. It wrapped itself around her ankles. She could feel the staccato of its heartbeat trembling against her skin.
Peace, little one.
Here! It is here! Everywhere!
Peace.
The weasel poked its head out from under her cloak and stared up at her. The moonlight glittered in its eyes. She felt the animal quiet down, but its thoughts still darted through her mind, tense and afraid.
Mistress of Mistresses. The Dark has been here. Not long ago. Can you not scent it? Humans lived here. They are dead. All dead.
Aye, the Dark has been here, but it is here no more. Peace, little one, and listen to what I shall say. Alone, there is none of you that can stand against the Dark. That is not your place, for it is the duty of those who have been given charge over you. Now, listen, for I would have you do a great thing for me.
Name your bidding, Mistress of Mistresses! Even if it be death, I shall do it!
Go now to all the nyten, all the four-footed folk who call these hills home. Go to the hares, the deer, the mice, and the foxes. In my name, put aside your enmities for a time and bid all to keep watch against the Dark. Do not stand and fight, but wait and watch.
I shall do so, Mistress. Even to the mice! The plump and tasty mice!
And one last thing, little one. A very important thing.
Aye?
Find me a fleet-footed deer and send her to the Mountains of Morn. Give her word for the wolves, that they must come to this place and track the scent of Dark as far as they dare. If the deer keep my name in her mouth, the wolves shall not harm her.
The weasel bobbed its head up and down in obedience. Then, without a backward glance, it scampered away and was soon lost in the night.
Levoreth sighed.
“I know this stink,” she said to herself. “Damn you to your endless night, wherever you have gone! But my little ones shall keep watch, and the wolves shall track you to your doorstep, and then I shall unmake you, if it’s the last thing I do. If my fate didn’t bid me to Hearne, I would hunt with the wolves. I would hunt you to the ends of the earth. Even if it took me back east over the sea.”
And with these words, she turned once again to the south. The moon gazed down upon her. The wind sprang up and the sky blazed with stars. As she ran, it seemed that the ghostly shape of a horse ran by her side.
They left the next morning for Hearne. The duke was quiet all that day, causing the duchess anxiety. However, the sunlight and the beauty of the late summer soon proved enough to wrest him from his mood into his usual cheerful self. Levoreth yawned and slumped in the saddle, such that her aunt thought her ill.
“You should’ve said something, my dear,” said the duchess. There’s a tea of willow bark and jona flowers I’ve had splendid success with.”
“I’m fine,” said Levoreth.
“You look dreadful.”
“I’m fine,” said Levoreth.
The road wound south, through hills thinly forested with pines. For a time, it followed the east bank of the Ciele, before the river swung toward the west and the great sea. Here, the hill country met the plain of Scarpe, which stretched from the Mearh Dun in the north to the cliffs far to the west that rose above the sea with their rocky heights. The plain of Scarpe extended a good five days’ journey by horse to the forests of Lome standing on the western foothills and flanks of the Mountains of Morn. South was a hard week’s ride before the plain met the river Rennet and Hearne, whose stone walls loomed over that course’s mouth.
The plain of Scarpe was like an ocean of grasses, rippling in the wind toward an endless horizon. In the spring, it was patchworked with wildflowers—the different purples of the allium, the yellow-white spray of saxifrage, and the tiny blood-red poppies. By summer’s end, however, the flowers were faded and gone, leaving only the grasses burnished into gold under the sun. Water was a chancy thing at best on the plain, but Willen, the old sergeant-at-arms, knew Scarpe like his own hand, having fought in the Errant Wars that had raged across that land thirty years earlier.
“Besides,” he said to Levoreth as they rode along, “you give a horse a chance for his own notions, he’ll find a waterhole soon enough. They’re smart in that. There be other ways, too—the flight of bees and birds, the mixture of grasses, even the wind if you have the sense to smell it.” And he chuckled and laid a finger alongside his own weathered beak of a nose.
Levoreth smiled at him, and the roan under her danced a few steps.
They were a day into the Scarpe when one of the outriders came galloping in toward the party. He reined up next to the duke, spoke with him, and then cantered away. The duke spurred his horse alongside his wife and Levoreth.
“Good news!” he said. “The Farrows! Just half an hour south of us!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
OWAIN GOES HUNTING
“It’ll only be for a few weeks, Sibb. Not long at all.”
The Lord Captain of Hearne was sitting with his wife in the garden behind the house. Sibb grew herbs for her kitchen there. The scent of sage and basil filled the air. Around them, the plants flourished in their tiny plots. Morning sunlight crept down the wall. The honeysuckle vines growing along the wall were covered in a profusion of yellow flowers.
Sibb picked up his hand, turning it over in her own. His palms were callused and his knuckles wealed with scars. A particularly large scar ran between his thumb and finger, reaching almost to his wrist. She ran her finger along the ridge, remembering. A frown crossed her face.
“Three weeks at most,” he said.
She said nothing in reply, but only traced the scars on his hand.
“I’m leaving Bordeall in charge at the tower. He’ll have near enough the entire strength to command, so Botrell can sleep soundly at night. Hearne will keep safe while I’m gone.”
“It’s not Hearne I worry about,” she said, tracing the scar alongside his thumb. He laughed and kissed her.
“Don’t fret, Sibb. With a sword and a good horse, I’ll always have the luck to find my way home. Odds are we won’t find hide or tail of them, so there’ll be no need to worry on that account.”
“Them,” she repeated.
“Aye.” He sighed. “I don’t even know what we’re looking for. Man, beast, or something in between. I have the feeling it’s something in between. At any rate, we’ll ride out to our foundling’s village and see if we can find some tracks. How I wish she would regain her tongue. Without her knowledge, we’ll be hunting blind. Even if we return with only stories of bones and an old slaughter gone cold, it’ll be worthwhile, for I want Botrell thinking beyond this city. He’s able as regent, I’ll give him that, but he forgets that all the lands of Tormay look to Hearne. The other duchies are unsettled about these murders and, so far, Botrell ignores their unease.”
“He’s an odious man,” said Sibb.
“Woman, you forget he is our regent. I’m sworn to protect his city and his personage. In pursuit of such office I’ll have to—ouch!”
She punched him in the ribs and they were both silent for a moment. Bees drifted and settled among the honeysuckle vines.
“I’m worried about that girl. I fear she’ll never be well.”
He frowned. “Would any child who’s lost their family at such an age ever become well?”
“I’ve held her while she sleeps. She’s as fragile as a sparrow. Doubtless, she’s older than our Magret, but less than half the weight. When she’s
taken by nightmares, her heart races and she pants as if she is running, as if there’s some horror chasing her. I can’t help but think the thing is chasing her still, sniffing along her trail. Perhaps, one day, it’ll find its way here and so her nightmare and waking day will merge into one. Not just for her, but for all of us.”
“Sibb.”
She sighed and laced her fingers through his.
“I can’t shake the thought from my mind, Owain. Such eyes she has. She’s always staring and not noticing anything about her. Perhaps she sees things we cannot see. Sometimes she seems to focus on Loy—”
“Her devoted dog,” he said, smiling.
“I can’t help but think of our own in her stead.”
Her hand tightened on his.
“Find them, Owain. Find them and kill them.”
The Lord Captain of Hearne and his men rode out that afternoon. The troop was twenty strong—the best of Hearne. Some of the older ones had seen battle during the Errant Wars, when Owain Gawinn had been but a young sergeant and the forces of Hearne had been commanded by his father, Rann Gawinn.
Their saddles creaked with the weight of their gear and provisions. On their backs they bore spears and quivers bristling with arrows, muffled by their cloaks. They received scant notice from the folk in the streets going about their business—the vendors at their carts, the shoppers sniffing over turnips and fingering bolts of cloth, the drifting rabble, and the urchins—they made grudging way for the troop, action that stemmed more from the need for their own safety from the stamp of hooves rather than from any regard for the regent’s men.
This lack of regard was due to no fault of the Lord Captain of Hearne. On the contrary, he had always been pleased by the blind eye the people turned to him and his men. He considered that his job was to allow folk to go about their lives while he dealt quickly and quietly with those who broke Hearne’s laws. And he did that job well enough so that he had achieved a kind of facelessness for his men.
When the troop reached the city gates, however, a cheer went up from the soldiers standing watch. Owain reined in under the shadow of the tower, and a man strode forward. His hair was white but his back was as straight as a sapling. He held a spear in his hand.
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