Silvermay

by James Moloney

  Red-faced demon, where’s your sting?

  Have all your powers taken wing?

  The combination of ‘red’ and ‘wing’ in that clever, goading way couldn’t be a coincidence, surely? The rhyme that followed put an end to any doubt:

  Hale and healthy and so wise

  A man of honour all despise

  I hurried back towards the man, hoping to hear more, but his song was drowned out by hisses and scolding all around him.

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘Stop that silly song before we all get in trouble.’

  ‘Quiet, you old fool.’

  He certainly was old — a grey-haired grandfather by the look of him as he staggered back against a wall. The warnings had silenced him, but I doubted he could have managed any more even if they hadn’t.

  ‘How can a song get you in trouble?’ I asked the woman who’d snapped at him to be quiet.

  ‘I’m not sure myself,’ she replied. ‘But the Wyrdborn have no love for that song, and last year, when a man sang it boldly in the market square to give us all a laugh, we found him the next morning with his throat cut.’

  ‘Do you know the words?’ I asked.

  ‘If I did, do you think I’d recite them out loud for everyone to hear?’ she said curtly and stomped off down the street.

  ‘What are you up to, Silvermay?’ Ryall asked as he watched her go. ‘That song could get us killed.’

  ‘It could lead us to what we’re after, too. I’m sure of it.’

  He sighed. ‘I was afraid you’d say that.’

  ‘I know that song,’ said a voice from behind us.

  We turned to find a straight-backed man about the age of the woman who’d refused to tell us the words. I saw a hint of defiance in his face; the same defiance I’d wanted to show as the Wyrdborn passed by in the street.

  ‘I remember most of the words, too,’ he said, unafraid. ‘My playmates taught it to me when we were daring and foolish, as the young often are in equal parts. The song was banned even then.’

  He might know the words, but, like the woman, he wouldn’t repeat them. ‘Forget it, the pair of you. Some things are best left alone.’

  That was the closest we came to finding out anything about the Redwing family, and soon it was growing dark.

  ‘We’d better find a place to sleep,’ said Ryall.

  Just as there were no wild animals to trap for our supper, there were no fields or forests to camp in, either. One of the taverns we passed advertised rooms, but a single night would cost all the money we had and the landlord had eyes like a wolf.

  ‘I guess we’ll have to bed down in the street,’ said Ryall.

  We weren’t the only ones with that idea.

  ‘Hey, get lost. This is my spot,’ a woman in smelly rags screeched at us when we tried to nestle into a nook sheltered by an overhanging roof. We were chased out of other places, too, and eventually had to settle for a narrow stretch of wall beside a warehouse, open to the threatening sky and opposite an alley that funnelled a bitter wind down from the keep. On one side of us, three children tormented their mother with whimpers of hunger, and on the other, a man coughed incessantly beneath a thin blanket. I shielded Lucien from the wind as best I could, and Ryall shielded me, but we were in for an uncomfortable night.

  ‘We should have gone back to the woods,’ said Ryall, who, by now, was thoroughly disenchanted by city life.

  So was I.

  Sleep was difficult on the hard-packed earth, and impossible once Lucien demanded to be fed. What could I do? We had no milk and nothing for ourselves either.

  Neither of us had even begun to doze when a voice cried out in alarm from the end of the lane. Like our many miserable companions, we leaned out from the wall to see what the fuss was about. The dark shapes of two men stood silhouetted in the moonlight reflected from surrounding walls. One raised an arm, pointing along the lane.

  ‘Is he pointing at us?’ I asked.

  ‘Hard to tell,’ said Ryall. ‘Look, the other one’s coming this way.’

  The second figure was indeed advancing rapidly. He was taller than his companion, his walk and the set of his shoulders a threat in themselves. We couldn’t see his face and that frightened us all the more.

  The mother beside us screamed and hugged her ragged children close. They huddled so hard against the wall it was a wonder they didn’t push straight through. Further along the lane, bodies fled into the night.

  ‘Where’s Tamlyn’s knife?’ I hissed at Ryall.

  He fumbled amid our meagre pile of belongings.

  ‘Hurry,’ I said.

  The looming shadow was almost on us. Finally, Ryall gripped the weapon, but as he turned with it in his hand, a boot stamped down on the blade, trapping it against the ground.

  The deadly zing of steel filled the lane as the stranger drew his sword. It flashed once in the moonlight as he held it expertly with wrist cocked and said, ‘I hear you two have been looking for me.’

  21

  Guests of a Wyrdborn

  Lucien saved us. If he hadn’t begun to cry, Ryall and I would have died in that lane in a pool of our own blood.

  ‘You didn’t say anything about a baby,’ the swordsman growled at the faceless figure who’d led him to us. ‘Bring a light!’

  A flaming torch soon picked us out, although it was held in such a way that we couldn’t easily see the man who stood over us so ominously. He paid particular attention to Lucien, then slipped his weapon back into its scabbard. Air began to work in and out of my lungs again; I’d somehow forgotten to breathe.

  ‘Why have you been asking about Haylan Redwing?’ the swordsman asked from behind the dazzling mask of light.

  The truth was no more dangerous than a lie, I decided. ‘We heard that Redwing lost his powers. We want to know how it happened.’

  ‘Why is such a matter of any concern to you? Neither of you is Wyrdborn.’

  ‘No, but this one is,’ I answered, showing him Lucien in my arms. His crying began to wane after a few rocks back and forth on my knees. ‘We’re his guardians now that his mother is dead. Her last wish was that he live among the commonfolk, as one of us.’

  This brought a contemptuous grunt from the man, followed by a long silence as he tried to make sense of the pitiful figures huddled before him.

  ‘A boy child and not very old,’ he said, as though this mattered to him. ‘Where have you come from?’

  ‘The south. I’m not even sure what village his mother lived in.’

  It was the truth, after all. There was no need to mention Coyle or Tamlyn or an underground chamber decorated with blood-chilling mosaics.

  ‘You’re young to be a guardian.’ He took a closer look at Ryall for the first time. ‘Both of you. Why are you sleeping in the street like this?’

  There was no hint of compassion in his voice. Not that I expected there to be. He was certainly a Wyrdborn, whoever he was.

  ‘We can’t afford lodgings,’ said Ryall, speaking up.

  I was relieved not to have to keep talking. Even though I couldn’t see the man’s eyes, I’d felt the intensity of their gaze upon my face more hotly than the torch’s flame.

  Ryall spoke again. ‘We’re saving our coins to buy food.’

  The faceless figure grunted again. ‘You’ll be lucky to keep those coins till morning if you stay here. And the thief will most likely slit your throats while he’s at it. On your feet. You’ll sleep in my house until I decide what use you are to me.’

  Should we accept the offer of a Wyrdborn? I didn’t know how to respond. Beside me, Ryall had stiffened with the same concerns. But we quickly discovered there was no decision to make. The man leaned low over us and said coldly, ‘I don’t issue invitations, I give orders.’

  As we scurried frantically to keep up with him, I remembered his first words to us, uttered with a sword in his hand: I hear you two have been looking for me. He wasn’t Haylan Redwing. He wasn’t even old enough to have known him
. So what was the connection?

  ‘Please, sir,’ I called as he led us quickly through the darkened lanes of Ledaris. ‘You came looking for us because of Haylan Redwing, didn’t you?’

  He flinched at the name but kept striding. Before I could press him again, he stopped outside a forbidding doorway adorned with a gargoyle on each side. When he reached for the latch, I realised we’d arrived at his home.

  ‘You must know something about Haylan Redwing,’ I said, backing away from the door and hoping he wouldn’t notice. ‘What can you tell us?’

  He dismissed his companion — a spy who traded gossip for coins, no doubt — and took the torch in his own hand, making no attempt to hide his face from the light any longer. It was hard and handsome, the face of a Wyrdborn, as I’d expected. Creases around his eyes hinted at an age close to my father’s, although the skin of his cheeks and chin might have belonged to someone younger. There were none of the nicks and scars or sagging flesh that told of a man’s battles with a harsh world. Whatever he’d earned for himself, he hadn’t worked hard to win it like other folk.

  ‘I can tell you this,’ he said, taking a firm grip on my arm in case I tried to flee. ‘Haylan Redwing was my grandfather.’ Then he shoved me through the doorway as though I weighed no more than a puff of breeze.

  The house was austere, to say the least. In the dark, colours would have been dulled in any case, but there simply weren’t any. The furniture was well-made yet there wasn’t much of it; just what one man would need. This was most obvious at the dining table, which was large enough to fit my own family around with aunts and uncles as well, if there had been benches to sit on. Instead, a lonely chair stood at one end.

  Servants appeared: a girl about my age and a woman who was certainly her mother. They waited silently, with shoulders pinched and heads down, for their master’s instructions.

  ‘Beds for these two and something to eat. They have a baby with them. See he gets whatever he needs.’

  With that he mounted a staircase and we didn’t see him again that night.

  ‘This way,’ said the older of the servants, and we were soon seated around a much more welcoming table in the kitchen. ‘The evening’s meal is long since cold, I’m afraid,’ she told us with genuine regret. ‘We have bread and three kinds of cheese.’

  I thanked her, then asked what we still didn’t know. ‘What is your master’s name?’

  ‘Theron,’ came the reply.

  ‘That’s all, no second name?’

  She shook her head. ‘In Ledaris, that’s all a Wyrdborn needs.’

  Lucien began to squirm in my lap now that I’d taken him out of the harness. Had he heard Theron’s orders to his servants? He couldn’t possibly understand the words, of course, but he was letting me know he was hungry all the same.

  ‘I’d been feeding him goat’s milk until our goat was stolen,’ I told the woman. ‘I don’t suppose …?’

  ‘We’ll have no milk until the morning, but there’s some stewed apple,’ she said, fetching a small pot from the pantry.

  I was doubtful, despite this morning in the marketplace. Not Lucien, though.

  ‘What an appetite!’ the daughter exclaimed when he scoffed the lot.

  She brought him some more and offered to spoon it into his mouth herself so I could eat my own meal. Lucien was up to his charming tricks again. Smiles appeared on the faces of the women, something I doubted they had much use for in this house. They didn’t hold back feeding Ryall and me, either, and I had to insist I was full up to my eyeballs before they stopped hacking off fresh slabs of bread.

  Afterwards, we were shown to a small room that opened off the kitchen. There were two pallets, each with a straw mattress and a blanket.

  ‘Our quarters are through there,’ said the older woman, pointing the way. ‘If you need anything …’

  I tested one of the pallets for comfort when the women were gone. ‘I could sleep here for a month,’ I said.

  Ryall didn’t care how soft the beds were. Typical boy! He was more interested in the churning sound that drifted in through the window and already had his nose pressed up against the heavy bars to see what it was.

  ‘A waterwheel, quite a big one,’ he said with approval. ‘There must be a spring up near the religo’s palace and they channel the water down between the houses to drive the mill next door. Clever idea.’

  When he came away from the window, I called him closer and whispered in his ear, ‘Are we guests or prisoners here? What do you think?’

  ‘A bit of both. He let us fill our bellies, at least, and prisoners don’t have beds like these,’ he added, pointing at the pallets.

  ‘But guests can leave when they want to,’ I said.

  He thought about this for a moment, then slipped out of the room, leaving the door ajar. In less than a minute he was back. ‘The doors are locked, front and back, and there are no keys.’

  We’d already seen our window was barred.

  ‘I’d feel better if we had a way out, just in case,’ I told him and, since Lucien was fast asleep, we climbed the staircase together, making as little sound as we could.

  Ryall was a trapper, he knew about stealth, so I sent him to explore the first floor where Theron slept while I continued up to the loft. As I took the last few steps, a familiar odour made me think of home, and by the time I pushed back the door I’d already guessed what I would find. Chained to a perch was a hawk, staring out through a large skylight towards the moon-bright sky.

  ‘You wish you were free, don’t you?’ I whispered. ‘So do I.’

  The hawk inspected me imperiously as such magnificent birds have every right to do. Beside it stood a second perch, unoccupied, although the chain hanging loose towards the floor and the many fresh droppings beneath told their story. I could almost hear my father calling his precious hunters home and ached at the sudden rush of memory.

  Don’t you dare start weeping, Silvermay Hawker, I seethed silently. This was no time for such an indulgence.

  I checked the skylight and found that the window tilted aside easily so the birds could come and go when set free of their chains. Like Tamlyn’s mother, Theron must use hawks as messengers. Through this window we could reach the roof and, with a long rope, climb down, although I hoped Ryall had found an easier way. Heights scare the life out of me!

  No luck, though.

  ‘Everything’s locked,’ Ryall whispered when I met him again on the stairs.

  ‘Looks like we’ll have to sleep in those beds, after all,’ I said.

  What else could we do? For tonight, this house was a safe haven, even though its walls were a prison and its silence like a tomb.

  There was more to eat in the morning, a feast fit for honoured guests, and this time with the master of the house as our host. Two more chairs had appeared at the huge table when Ryall and I emerged from our room to find Theron already in place.

  ‘Eat your fill,’ he said, making it sound more like a command than an invitation.

  As promised, there was milk for Lucien. He’d never taken milk from a cup before and made a terrible mess at his first attempt, but Theron looked on without complaint.

  ‘You said he is not your child, er …’ It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t asked my name.

  ‘Silvermay,’ I told him. ‘My companion is Ryall.’

  ‘And the baby?’ said Theron.

  ‘His mother called him Lucien.’

  ‘And she is dead,’ he said bluntly. ‘Where is the boy’s father?’

  I was trying to stay as close to the truth as possible so I wouldn’t be caught out later. This time, though, I had to take a risk. ‘She never told me his name. He cast her out when he grew tired of her, that’s all she would say.’

  Theron’s eyes weighed heavily on me while he considered this. For the moment he had no more questions, so I filled the silence with one of my own.

  ‘Is it true about your grandfather? Did Haylan Redwing lose his Wyrdborn powers?
’

  Theron’s face turned to stone. ‘What have you heard?’ he said in a voice to match.

  With a glance at Ryall, I began as best as I could remember it, the story Arnou Dessar had read from his teacher’s book.

  Theron listened wordlessly and I felt my skin prickle with fears I didn’t dare name.

  ‘A fanciful tale,’ he said with a snort when I was finished. ‘I didn’t know my grandfather and he is never spoken of. There are rumours, but as for a journey to a distant land … What did you call it?’

  ‘Erebis Felan,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  The granite of Theron’s features made reading his thoughts and emotions almost impossible. Only his eyes gave anything away, but this time they remained blank. In fact, that blankness gave me an answer, although not the one I desperately wanted.

  ‘You know nothing about the talisman mentioned in the story, do you, Master Theron?’

  I could feel my spirits sinking into my worn and dusty shoes. But what he said next dragged them out of the depths and sent them soaring like one of Father’s hawks.

  ‘No, but I will ask my family — my cousins and uncles. One of them may know something of this talisman.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll begin this morning. Ansuela will bring whatever you need.’

  And with that he was quickly gone, leaving me to stare at Ryall.

  ‘What do you make of that?’ I said, barely able to believe our sudden change of fortune. ‘By tonight, we might have what we came for.’

  Ryall simply shrugged and reached for a bun crusted with sugar.

  The older of the serving women appeared carrying a tray laden with small bowls.

  ‘I’ve prepared these for the baby,’ she said as she placed the tray on the table. ‘We know he likes stewed apple so I’ve brought more of that, but little ones can be finicky, so I’ve made a few dishes that my own children liked as well.’

  I thanked the woman, then sat Lucien on my knee and set to work. ‘Come on, open up for Maymay.’

  He looked suspiciously at the first spoonful before working it around his mouth.