by Jaine Fenn
The man behind her said, ‘Then this one we’ll keep.’
In that moment, Kerin weighed up the two paths her life had suddenly been reduced to: to die here tonight, or to spend the rest of her life as a reivers’ whore.
She kicked out and up as hard as she could.
Her foot connected, though not where she had hoped; she had caught his leg. She heard the hiss of indrawn breath and the reiver teetered, then caught himself. ‘She is not worth the trouble,’ he muttered. ‘Kill her!’
The man behind her let go of her arm and grabbed her hair, dragging her head back against the rock. She felt the blade move away from her neck by a hair’s breadth. She could do nothing to fight him; as though accepting death, her body had already begun to go limp.
As the reiver drew the weapon across her neck and she felt it bite into her flesh, she found time for one last clear thought: At least I’ll not suffer as you did, Maman.
Then everything stopped.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
If he’d had any sense, Sais would have waited to see what was going on before charging in blindly. He wasn’t thinking straight: half-asleep, aware Kerin was gone and sure the people he’d seen moving around in the dark weren’t drovers, he reacted instinctively, throwing himself at the silhouette in front of him. In the dark he misjudged the distance and the man dodged to the side.
Sais tried to catch himself. No chance!
He sprawled forward into the stream. His head went under and hit something. A rush of stars exploded across the inside of his eyelids. He pushed himself back up and broke the surface, spluttering.
Hands grabbed his shoulders and started to haul him out the water: he in turn reached up to grab the man’s arms and pulled him forward. His attacker gave a surprised grunt and tried to pull away, but he was already off-balance and tumbled forward. Sais, too stunned to dodge, partially broke the reiver’s fall, getting winded in the process. He still heard the stomach-churning thud of a skull hitting rock. The reiver went limp.
Was the man dead? Had he killed him? He obviously knew how to fight, and to fight dirty at that - had he killed before?
Movement in the dark: another man heading his way. Something glinted in the man’s hand.
Sais started to push the reiver’s body off him. His arms felt like putty and he was shivering hard.
The reiver closed, swung his arm back—
Reality lurched.
Suddenly nothing made sense.
Except . . .
Something about this state hit him in the hindbrain. If only he could think straight, remember—?
Then he was back in the moment, sitting in a freezing stream in the dark with a dead reiver on his legs. There was no sign of the man with the knife.
He heard screams from overhead. Against the faintly glowing clouds he could make out the silhouettes of half-a-dozen figures floating, or rather, flailing, in the air.
Shouts were erupting along the line.
A knife landed in the stream next to him with a splash. Sais reached out to pick it up. His hand had just closed on the hilt when the weirdness happened again, this time over before he could register it. The figures in the sky were whisked away, as though by a sudden wind.
He didn’t see where they landed, but he heard the noise they made: a sound somewhere between snapping branches and a load of water-skins being stamped on.
Sais stood, shaking his head to clear it. He looked around and saw movement up-slope. A piercing double whistle sounded, and the movement sped up: people running away.
Someone was crying, back at the sled.
He staggered over. As he approached, a figure stood up, a hand pressed against its neck. ‘Who’s there?’ he asked, wielding the reiver’s knife drunkenly.
‘Sais, is that you?’
‘Kerin? Are you all right?’
‘I am cut . . . I will live. Damaru—I—’ She stumbled forward to the source of the crying. Sais saw the shadowy figure of Damaru sitting on the grass, hugging his knees and rocking, sobbing gently to himself. The shadow that was Kerin went over and embraced him. Kerin began saying something over and over to her son. It sounded like, ‘I’m so proud. So proud of you.’
‘Kerin,’ said Sais urgently, ‘what just happened?’
‘Damaru saved us all.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He moved the pattern.’
‘Fuck me.’ Sais sat down heavily. He needed to work out how he knew the sensation of whatever it was that Damaru had just done. He had no conscious recollection of it, but his body remembered the feeling. It must have happened in the hut when Damaru broke the pot, but Sais had been asleep then. Besides, it was so familiar. Some time in the past, the past he’d lost, he had experienced this effect, and more than once.
Drovers came up to them, asking if they were hurt. Someone got a small fire going. Kerin had them bring her pack over; Damaru was uninjured, but she had a shallow gash on her neck, which she got Sais to dress. Sais had minor cuts and the promise of some impressive bruises to come, not to mention a nasty headache, but nothing serious. He offered to look after Damaru while Kerin went off to deal with the other casualties. He knew better than to ask the boy about what had happened and already the strange mix of confusion and familiarity was fading to a vague niggling disquiet.
Three men had nasty cuts, one across his back, the other two on their arms. Two men had been killed. The drovers dealt with this turn of events with quiet stoicism.
Sais didn’t expect to be able to sleep, but exhaustion and shock took their toll. He fell asleep listening to a whispered argument between Fychan and Howen about how they should honour the dead.
He awoke at dawn, stiff, sore and with an aching head, to find most people already up. The two dead men were lying side by side by the stream. Something smouldered in a shallow pottery bowl on the ground between them; after a moment Sais remembered the smell from the capel in the village. Kerin was sitting next to Damaru, who was still asleep. She nodded at the two bodies. ‘I was saving the incense to burn for Damaru, but we have no pyre to free their spirits. It was the least I could do.’ She gave a tired laugh. ‘Fychan actually thanked me. Whatever else he may be, the boy is devout.’
Howen led prayers for the dead men’s souls before the drove set off.
The reivers who’d been subjected to the demonstration of Damaru’s power received no such respect. From the look of the mess on the rocks further up the slope, there wasn’t much left of them anyway.
That day the overhanging craggy cliffs of Maen Bulch opened out to rocky slopes. Thin streams cascaded down deep-cut rills and the valley floor widened until the drove could move freely again.
Cadmael told Kerin and Sais that Damaru’s miracle would make a fine tale.
The next day, the drove stopped suddenly halfway through the afternoon. When a shout went up for Kerin, Sais assumed that one of the wounded men needed her attention. Kerin went forward with her pack.
When she returned, Sais took one look at her face and asked, ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
‘Tis Manawn, one of the Penfrid drovers,’ she said dully. ‘He has the falling fire.’
‘Shit.’ Distracted by the rigours of the drove, Sais had almost forgotten about that. ‘What’ll they do? They could probably fit him on one of the sleds now we’re on even ground.’
‘No,’ said Kerin, ‘the men will leave him.’
‘Leave him? Out here? He’ll die.’
Looking at her feet, Kerin whispered, ‘If the Mothers will it.’
After a brief discussion the leaders called everyone up to the front. People offered up prayers for the sick man, who lay beside the track, staring wide-eyed at the sky. They left him a water-skin and some food, in case, Huw said, the Mothers showed their mercy.
Then they carried on. No one looked back.
Two days later they came to a large village in the centre of a wide, fertile valley.
‘If the drovers knew we were passing
this place, why didn’t they bring Manawn here to be looked after?’ Sais asked Kerin.
Kerin pointed to a line of dark smoke curling up from behind the cluster of huts. ‘That is a pyre; the winnowing times are upon us, and each must look to their own and not presume upon others.’
Sais hung back while the drovers went up to trade rush mats and capes for fresh food. Damaru was greeted with awe. People made the circle sign whenever they looked his way and several of them darted up to touch him. He shied away and flapped his hands at them. Sais was surprised Kerin didn’t intervene.
Huw asked the villagers if anyone recognised Sais, as he would have come this way to get to Dangwern from the lowlands, but no one had.
When they left Sais asked Kerin why she’d let the villagers paw at Damaru.
‘They wish the blessing of a sky-touched child against the winnowing times. I cannot deny them that.’
‘Aren’t you worried they might infect him?’
‘Infect him? The falling fire is not something you catch. It is the judgment of Heaven. Besides, he is a skyfool. He can no more succumb to the falling fire than a priest could.’
That night, for the first time, the sky was clear. As twilight faded into darkness, stars began to emerge. Sais sat on his bedroll watching the turquoise sky come alive with light. It was spectacular, and totally unfamiliar.
After a while he realised Kerin was standing near him. He said, ‘I don’t know how I can have forgotten this.’ Unless he’d never known it, of course.
‘I am glad you have finally seen it.’ Then she added tentatively, ‘May I sit with you?’
‘Of course.’ He moved over.
‘Do you understand a little of what Heaven must be now?’
‘Perhaps I do. It’s beautiful. So bright, so . . . big.’
‘Aye.’ He could tell by her voice that she was smiling.
After a while he said, ‘Why are there so many stars above us, and almost none round the edge of the sky?’
‘Because that is Heaven! The stars are the light of Heaven that we are given to see, so the further from Creation - and from the Abyss that lurks below us - the more light there is.’
‘How about the Skymothers?’
‘They are nearer their Creation because they watch over it.’
He pointed to a reddish star near the horizon. ‘So is that one?’
She pulled his arm down and said quickly, ‘Do not point! Not towards a Skymother!’
‘Sorry. I forgot.’
‘No, I should not have reacted like that. But that is a Skymother, aye. Medelwyr, our lady of the dusk.’
‘And is another one coming up over there, where the horizon’s glowing?’
‘No, that is silvermoon rising, or perhaps cloudmoon.’
‘I’ve forgotten about the moons too. Can you remind me?’
‘The two moons and the sun that light the day are places of spirit and fire. When we die, our soul goes to one of those places - men to the sun, women to cloudmoon, children to silvermoon - where it is purged and judged. Most times, it will be found wanting, and returned to be clothed in flesh again. After all lessons have been learned, all suffering endured and all temptations overcome, a spirit may break free and ascend. Or, if it has fallen under the influence of the Cursed One it may be lost, banished forever to the Abyss.’
‘Right, I see.’ Sais started as a trace of white light, gone in an eye-blink, streaked across the sky. ‘What was that?’
‘Ah - I missed it! That was an early one.’
‘An early what?’
‘A falling star. We call them that but they are not stars, as the sky remains unchanged, no matter how many fall. They are a gift from the Consorts, for star-season: their bounty raining down.’
‘I think you mentioned that. You were talking about the red rain and this silver one.’ He remembered what she’d said now. ‘So these falling stars bring fertility?’
‘Aye. The land would not produce life save for this grace. And they bring skymetal too, sometimes.’
‘Skymetal?’
‘Aye, tis far stronger and brighter than ordinary metal. But only servants of the Skymothers may wield it. Arthen acts as priest for the village, so he has a disc of it.’
‘The thing he held up in the council?’ Besides a few bronze knives and spear-tips, Arthen’s disc was the only metal he’d seen here, which seemed odd to him. ‘And star-season is when this - ah - bounty, and skymetal, come to earth?’
‘In truth it happens for some weeks. The week when the fall is greatest is star-season. The end of spring and the start of summer.’ She laughed a little nervously. ‘I am surprised you have forgotten star-season. Status is put aside, the Traditions disregarded. No work is done, and people are free to do what they will.’
‘Sounds fun,’ he said.
‘Sometimes,’ she said, then added, ‘Neithion died at star-season, in a fight. I doubt he started it - most likely he tried to intervene.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was the will of the Mothers.’
They were two weeks in now - nearly a third of the way to the market - and Sais was adjusting to the bustle and slog of the drove. He accepted going to sleep each night with his nostrils full of the reek of damp wool, rancid fat and sweaty feet, then waking up feeling as though he’d hardly had any rest, to eat an inadequate meal of unidentifiable dried fruit or a jerky indistinguishable in texture - and probably taste - from the straps on his pack.
Whenever the exhaustion and the cold and the filth and the hunger got too much, he reminded himself that he had no choice other than to go with these people. Eventually he would eat hot meals and sleep in a bed again, if he just kept walking.
Though the first few nights on the road had been free of dreams, after the incident with the reivers, the nightmares returned with a vengeance. Every night he was chased through bright corridors, pursued down dark passages, or mired and paralysed, waiting for a terrible fate. Often the dark eyes were there, watching him, boring into his soul. Sometimes the unknown woman called to him, entreating, or encouraging, or even cursing him.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if the nightmares had led to him regaining any of his lost memories, but the details fled as soon as he woke up.
Kerin and Damaru took to sleeping away from him, in case his bad dreams triggered Damaru’s skyfool abilities. Whilst Sais would have happily revisited the sensation Damaru had caused if there was any chance it might help him connect with his past, given the violent way Damaru’s skyfool powers had manifested so far, he decided Kerin was wise to be cautious.
The valley they’d been following fed into one steeper and more dramatic, edged by the highest mountains he’d yet seen. Their tops were lost in cloud, and scree from their slopes swept down the valley sides in great grey fans. The stream from Maen Bulch, now a river, ran down the gentle creased slope to the valley bottom where it met a larger river called the Glaslyn.
They forded the Glaslyn at the bottom of the valley, rigging up ropes to guide the sleds across. From the caution they displayed, the drovers were terrified of falling in. Sais felt less concerned - he had an idea he could swim, though he didn’t much fancy testing this assumption in a fast-running, ice-cold mountain river.
The valley bottom supported stands of trees; they took advantage to shelter from the frequent showers and to light campfires at night. On those nights when it didn’t rain it was almost cosy sitting next to Kerin while she sewed, listening to the men sing and tell tales. Wild goats wandered the woods, and a couple of days out from Piper’s Steps, Gwilym managed to bring down a youngster with a well-aimed slingshot to the head. Kerin roasted the choicest cuts on a lattice of green twigs, a meal which Sais found unbelievably delicious.
He was less enthusiastic about the fresh meat the next morning, having spent much of the night crouched in a bush trying to get rid of it. He made more unscheduled stops that morning, and by the afternoon felt weak and feverish. Kerin said she would make him
an infusion to calm his stomach when they stopped that evening.
Then, near the end of the day, Huw ran back and said, ‘The councillors have decided we need to press on through the night if we are to reach the Steps in time.’
Sais stared at him. ‘You’re joking.’
Unfortunately, he wasn’t.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘They are here!’
Einon opened his eyes to the grey dawn light, confused for a moment to see grubby canvas, not smooth rock, over his head. Then he remembered: he was not in his room in the Tyr any more, he was in a tent halfway up a mountain with a bunch of hairy, ignorant uplanders.
‘What?’ he snapped at the man looking in through the flap.
‘I am sorry, Gwas, I did not realise you still slept. Tis the drovers from beyond the grass plain. They are coming along the valley now.’
Einon sighed, ‘Ah, give me a moment—’ as the man withdrew. He had rather hoped these last three villages would not make it in time. He already had eleven sets of bickering clansmen expecting him to act as arbiter in their interminable disputes over cattle and precedence and ancient, half-remembered feuds.
Perhaps Einon’s mentor had shown the wisdom of his rank when he dispatched Einon to this skyforesaken wilderness. Perhaps, as the terse letter that had ordered him out of the City of Light had stated, it would do Einon good to leave the confines of the Tyr and see new places for himself. More likely, there were hidden reasons for Urien, Escori of Frythil and the man Einon loved and trusted above all others, to send him out on a job better suited to a Rhethor from the estates. It probably came down to politics, something his mentor excelled in, but from which Einon had tried - and apparently failed - to remain aloof.
Yawning and shivering, he splashed water on his face, pulled his cloak around him and staggered into the morning twilight. The cattle were low shapes in the half-light, as still as the hills themselves. As the messenger led him past the fire the men sitting round it stood up and traced the circle. Einon nodded an acknowledgement.
