Silvermay

by James Moloney

  Terrible powers! Those words stuck in my ears like stone. When Arnou Dessar had seen Lucien in Nerigold’s arms he’d frowned deeply in fear, but his assistant, Gabbet, had witnessed the same scene in the flesh and there had been no fear in his eyes, only the thrill of someone who’d found something precious.

  ‘Your assistants. Do they know what those mosaics mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Norling and Gabbet. Yes, I’ve discussed it with them.’

  ‘Gabbet wears a blue shirt, doesn’t he?’ When Master Dessar nodded cautiously, I said, ‘Call him. I want to ask him something.’

  He threw up his arms. ‘I would if I could, Silvermay, but he’s got himself lost by the look of things. I’ve sent Norling to find him.’

  My mind was racing now, making wild connections. ‘Has he ever been gone from the diggings like this before?’

  ‘No, he’s most reliable; so much so I sent him to Vonne only last month to give my report to the king.’

  ‘This Gabbet was the man who hurried past us on the track this morning. Is that right?’ Tamlyn asked me.

  When I nodded, he swept the hair from his eyes in an action I knew signalled unease.

  ‘Your assistant delivered his report to more than King Chatiny, I’d say,’ he said.

  ‘Why would he go to Coyle?’ Arnou’s question was quickly swamped by something else he’d thought of. ‘The drawings. I made sketches of the woman’s face and some of the other scenes as well, for my fellow scholars to examine.’

  ‘My father has seen them, too, Master Dessar,’ said Tamlyn. ‘You can be sure of it. And right now your assistant is on his way to Vonne once more, this time to tell him that Nerigold and her son have turned up at the diggings.’

  That night, I lay beside Nerigold and her precious Lucien in the scholar’s cabin. Her tears of the afternoon had given way to a dogged anger that drained the last of her strength — what little the baby had left her after his evening feed. She was asleep before the sun had disappeared, but Lucien wanted to play and for an hour I let him grasp my fingers and grab for my hair. Unlike his mother, I wasn’t done with tears and occasionally one would splash across his face. He thought this a great game and smiled up at me gleefully. How could anyone match the gentle innocence of that smile with the fiend who hacked and rampaged his way through the desolate dreams of long-dead sorcerers?

  When there was no more light inside the cabin, Lucien closed his eyes and I lowered my head to the pillow beside him. My eyes closed as well but the sleep I managed was fitful.

  In the morning, Tamlyn and Ryall went hunting so we’d have something to contribute to the cauldron that fed the entire camp. Ryall had returned empty-handed the night before and this time was determined to show his skill. I didn’t tell him that hunting with Tamlyn was like nothing he’d have ever experienced.

  Everyone else had long since started work at the diggings, leaving the camp to Nerigold and me. I’d helped her out of the cabin into the morning air made fresh by last night’s rain, but Lucien was grumpy. I could guess why. Poor Nerigold was now so thin, she had little to feed him. The only thing to do was to fatten her up.

  ‘Will you be all right for a minute while I get some soup from the cook?’ I asked.

  I was gone for no more than a minute or two, but it was enough for Nerigold to drift off to sleep again. Who could blame her? And Lucien was safe enough, only an arm’s length from her side. As I returned to them, I saw something else. Movement at the edge of the camp. I stopped behind a tree, my heart suddenly in my mouth. Had we been found so quickly? And Tamlyn was miles away with Ryall.

  But I quickly began to breathe again because the intruder was a little fawn, searching for its own mother, no doubt. It was strange to see such a timid creature enter a camp like this; the strong scent of humans should have made it bolt into the trees. While I watched, fascinated, the fawn came closer. It was slowly inching its way towards Nerigold’s sleeping figure, its nose twitching, ears flicking back and forth.

  I’ll chase it away before it gets too close, I decided. But then, what harm could a fawn do? It was just curious; curious enough to overcome its fear. And, after yesterday’s horror, I felt my spirits lift as I watched it.

  The fawn was close enough to sniff at Nerigold’s feet now. Another tentative step and it was staring down at Lucien. He was watching it and, now that it was so close, he held up his tiny hand towards it. The fawn came closer still, until its little black nose touched Lucien’s outstretched fingers.

  It will surely jump away now, I thought.

  I was wrong. Lucien’s hand rested gently on the creature’s snout. Slowly, the fawn lowered itself to the ground, first its front legs, then the hind. It rested its head on its folded forelegs and, to my amazement, closed its eyes to sleep.

  Lucien must have enjoyed the soft warmth of its body because he kept his hand on the fawn’s snout for some minutes while I watched, unseen. At last he grew tired of the game and removed his hand. He’d begin to wail with hunger any moment, I knew, there was nothing surer, and that would send the little fawn off to its mother. But I was wrong again. He waved his arms about playfully and kicked his feet, as content as a baby full up to the neck with his mother’s milk.

  One arm smacked the fawn a light blow on the side of its face. That was surely the end of the game. I moved quickly in case the fawn woke in a panic and didn’t know which way to run.

  It remained still. The first dread seeped into my stomach.

  I walked closer, clapping my hands. Was it deaf? But deer are attuned to vibrations in the earth. It must have detected my footsteps by now yet still its eyes stayed closed. A few more cautious paces and I was standing over it and bending low to poke it gently with the tip of my finger, just as I’d done days earlier to a different creature.

  I knew then, even though I couldn’t quite give up hope that it would suddenly spring into life. Its sides were perfectly still; that was the final clue. No air stirred in and out of its young lungs. The fawn was dead and Lucien had killed it. He had simply drawn the life out of it, just as he must have done to the poor squirrel, unaware that this time I was watching.

  All signs of his fractious hunger were gone. When I sank to my knees beside him, his eyes brightened and his busy feet doubled their kicking. His entire face broke into the most gorgeous grin he’d ever granted me, but instead of filling me with delight, it chilled my blood and froze the bones of my body to stone.

  Only an arm’s length away, Nerigold slept on, too exhausted to remain awake for long. I knew for certain now why she was so weak and why there was no flesh on her bones; I knew why my mother’s brews and broths hadn’t made her any stronger in the weeks she’d lived under our roof. It wasn’t the difficult birth that kept her this way, nor the journey she’d made since then; it was the son she loved so much. Each time she fed him, Lucien drew the life from her just as I’d seen him do to the fawn. She was a larger animal, a human being with the love and the will of a mother, but in the end he would take all the life she had to offer until there was nothing left to take.

  15

  Take One Life to Save a Thousand

  I could hear Tamlyn and Ryall coming back before I could see them through the trees; they were in high spirits, it seemed, and I couldn’t blame them for that. Hunting must have been a welcome relief from the story told on the walls of that chamber.

  Ryall appeared first, a pole over his arm with a pair of rabbits hanging by their ears from each end. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he called to me gleefully while still a good way off. ‘He can hit a rabbit on the run. No one’s even tried that before.’

  Tamlyn came behind with the bow, the hint of a smile curling the edges of his perfect lips. Why couldn’t I be standing in Haywode, watching my love come in from the woods after the hunt? Even in the middle of this latest despair, I sensed the happiness of such a scene and the warmth it would flush across my skin.

  The moment was broken as Nerigold stirred on the litter
at my feet. She looked first for the noise that had woken her, then almost as quickly searched for Lucien. ‘Oh,’ she gasped, flinching from the body of the fawn. She must have thought the hunters had already dumped it at my feet as a kind of trophy.

  Ryall bounded across the campsite, unhooking the rabbits from the pole as he came. He was a dog again, tail wagging, eager to show me what he’d caught and receive his reward. Poor Ryall. If he had been a dog, he might have been better at detecting my mood. I ignored his rabbits and gave him no smile.

  He saw the young deer. ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘You weren’t the only ones hunting this morning,’ I said.

  ‘But you didn’t have a bow.’

  He’d missed the wry tone in my voice and I couldn’t give a better explanation, not yet.

  ‘Oh well,’ he said when it was clear I wasn’t going to tell him any more. ‘An extra bit of luck, I suppose. It’s too good for the soup. We’ll roast it over the fire.’

  ‘No. Bury it in the woods,’ I told him.

  ‘Why. Looks all right to me.’

  ‘Bury it! Now!’ I snapped.

  Ryall took a step backwards, as if I’d slapped his face, but he recovered quickly and picked up the fawn, glaring at me unhappily. It was still warm and its gangly limbs hung loosely as he tossed it over his shoulder. Its face was so peaceful, as though it was simply asleep the way I’d first thought.

  When Ryall had gone, Tamlyn took his place. ‘What’s the matter? Why did you shout at the boy?’

  I looked down at Nerigold before answering. What shocks she’d had to endure yesterday. The pain of a mother I could guess at, maybe, but I couldn’t share the way she felt it. It didn’t seem fair to heap more onto her. I should take Tamlyn aside and tell him about the fawn.

  I was about to do this when my eyes fell on Nerigold again. I cared for her as much as I cared for Lucien. I was a kind of mother to her, too, wasn’t I, just as I was to Lucien. What kind of mother doesn’t save the ones she loves. If Nerigold was going to survive, she had to know what was happening to her.

  ‘Lucien killed the fawn,’ I told them.

  Silence followed for a moment or two, then together they gave a little explosion of laughter.

  ‘You’ve made a little bow and arrow for him, have you, Silvermay?’ Tamlyn joked.

  I held his eyes with mine, aware of how heavy my features must appear. I felt as old as the mosaics deep inside the mountainside.

  ‘But that’s ridiculous,’ said Tamlyn when I didn’t flinch. ‘He’s a tiny baby. He can’t walk yet. Look at him lying there, he doesn’t even know those are his own hands.’

  I told them what I’d seen and this time the silence persisted.

  ‘He’s done it before,’ I added, and at last Tamlyn responded.

  ‘The squirrel?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s worse than that, much worse. He’s doing the same to Nerigold. That’s how he’s growing so quickly. Every time he feeds from her, he’s taking more than her milk; he’s draining the life out of her and taking it into himself, just as he did to the squirrel and the little deer.’

  ‘No, Silvermay,’ Nerigold gasped. ‘About the deer, you were being silly, but this is …’ She searched around for the word. ‘Outrageous. How can you say such a thing?’

  Nerigold was a loving mother. Of course she wouldn’t believe me. But Tamlyn … he’d stayed quiet and the longer I searched his eyes, which were turned my way from beneath the dark overhang of his brow, I knew he agreed. His wordless stare gave me the strength I needed to convince Nerigold.

  I dropped to my knees, with the quietly playing Lucien between us. ‘I’ve seen my mother tend the sick. Some had illnesses that she couldn’t remedy and grew weaker and weaker, a little each day until there was no strength left in them at all, not even to take the next breath. The same is happening to you, Nerigold. Each time you feed Lucien, you are weaker than before. You know it as well as I do. If you go on feeding him, you’ll die.’

  I didn’t tell her what I’d come to fear. That it was already too late.

  ‘Get away from me,’ she hissed and, when I didn’t move, she pushed out suddenly, across Lucien, her bony hand stabbing into my shoulder, making me fall back. She picked up her son with a strength I hadn’t thought she had left and held him to her, turning away from me, and from Tamlyn, too, because she could see he sided with me.

  I’d never felt so low in my life. Nerigold was as close to me as either of my sisters and to see her shielding Lucien from me made me wonder if I was the true fiend in all of this. I wanted to hold her, I wanted to reach across and wrap my arms around them both, but there was no hope of that unless I took back all I’d said. What a halfway world I’d made for myself. I could go on letting her hate me or I could watch her die.

  It wasn’t until Tamlyn took me by the arm that I knew how drenched my cheeks had become with tears. He lifted me effortlessly to my feet and drew me away to where Nerigold couldn’t hear us. There I found the embrace I’d hoped for; not with Nerigold and Lucien but with Tamlyn, who hugged me until I stopped crying. It was the first time he’d held me for so long, in real life, anyway. He’d done it often enough in my dreams.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he whispered when he judged I was ready. ‘What you saw this morning changes so much. Yesterday we told Arnou Dessar that those pictures weren’t about Lucien at all. We argued so hard we convinced ourselves, and I for one couldn’t have slept if we hadn’t.’

  I broke a little from his grasp and nodded. ‘I don’t think I slept anyway.’

  ‘For good reason. Lucien is certainly a Wyrdborn. We’d guessed that much already, but he is like no Wyrdborn before him. I’ve heard of many who have killed a parent, even both, but never one who’s done such a thing before he’s two months old. Those scenes from the chamber won’t leave my head, Silvermay. Think of what horror will come to the world if he turns into that monster. Lucien will be the greatest instrument of evil this land has ever known. How many will die because of him? Starting with his own mother.’

  His mother. I was the one who’d discovered as much, but that was as far as my imagination would let me go. It needed Tamlyn’s cooler heart to see the worst of it. The dread that had been stalking me raced in to take hold with its foul jaws. Tamlyn spoke of the misery Lucien would bring to others, but Lucien would always be first in my mind and what I feared the most was what the evil would do to him. An instrument, Tamlyn had called him.

  ‘My poor Lucien. It is him in those pictures,’ I said aloud.

  ‘Better that he’d never been born,’ said Tamlyn.

  ‘Or that he dies before it can begin.’

  Those last words were mine. It was love that made me say them, born from the desire to save him suffering through what he would become rather than the thought of protecting others from the suffering he’d cause.

  When I looked up at Tamlyn’s face, he was staring at me, aghast. Only then did I realise what I’d said. ‘Forgive me. You know I don’t mean it.’

  ‘You might not mean it, Silvermay, but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked uncomfortably.

  ‘How many will die because of him? A squirrel, a fawn — those are nothing. Soon it will be Nerigold. And what will happen when Coyle gets hold of him? That fool Gabbet will tell him where Lucien is. His men will find us and, when they do, you and I will die quickly. We won’t see what comes after, even though we know better than anyone what’s in store. For us, it will be the easy way out. The harder way is to face what you just said.’

  It was mid-morning when Tamlyn used my own words to sting me worse than any bee. I protested loudly, of course I did. Whatever evil glowered on those walls, it was a greater evil to kill a child. How could he even suggest it? I stormed away in a fury.

  After that, the day limped on like a wounded beast, until finally the sun dipped to the tops of the trees. I spoke to Tamlyn only once through those long hours, and Ner
igold wouldn’t speak to me at all. When she fell asleep with Lucien still in her arms, I gently slipped him free and entertained him as I’d done every day since the three of them had turned up in Haywode.

  Tamlyn had spent the day gathering what he could for the journey ahead of us, and when Lucien finally lay sleeping beside his mother, that was the reason he spoke to me.

  ‘Do you think Nerigold will be able to travel soon?’ he asked. ‘That creature, Gabbet, will reach Vonne tomorrow. We cannot delay too long.’

  That was what he said, but the words that hung heavy and unspoken between us were: Better he dies before it begins.

  Nerigold woke an hour later, and Lucien soon after, crying loudly to be fed. She picked him up before I could reach him. ‘He’s hungry,’ she said and immediately began to adjust her dress.

  ‘No,’ I gasped before I could stop myself. The word was out there, inviting Nerigold to defy me, and she made a special point of glaring silently into my face as she began to feed her son. I felt as if the air around my arms and shoulders had suddenly turned to ice. The cold stare was because of my story about the fawn and what it meant for her, but I couldn’t throw off the sense that she had heard what I’d said to Tamlyn and the way he had turned the words back upon me.

  Just as she finished feeding Lucien, Nerigold collapsed. Even though I’d been watching for it, her slump sideways caught me by surprise. I rushed forward, expecting feeble demands to get away from her, but she was unconscious. If I hadn’t seen her lungs working air in and out, I would have feared she was dead.

  ‘Tamlyn!’ I called.

  With Nerigold in his arms and Lucien in mine, we took them into the scholar’s cabin. It wasn’t until she was stretched out on the bed that I dared touch her. My hand pulled away in shock. ‘She’s so cold.’

  Tamlyn tucked the blankets clumsily beneath her body but she didn’t stir. He stood back, looking at the pair of them on the bed. ‘You’ll have to stay with them for the night in case Lucien cries.’