The Shamer's Signet

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  I swallowed, not knowing what to do.

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. You must learn to behave yourself. We shall start with two simple rules. Keep your eyes to yourself—if anyone looks at you, you stare at the ground. Is that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you must learn to keep your mouth shut. Do not speak unless you are told to do so.”

  He released me and told Sandor to get Tavis back into the wagon.

  “And this time, make sure he stays there!”

  He turned his attention back to me. I stared rigidly at the ground, as I had been told to do.

  “You,” he said, “get into the other wagon.”

  “There’s no way the chestnut can pull it, not with that leg,” said Sandor.

  “No. We shall have to use Mefisto.”

  He was speaking of his own mount, a big mean bay that would lay back his ears and snap at anyone who came near. At first I had thought it was only me he didn’t like—after all, I had pricked his rump with a knife once. But he was just as ill-tempered with everyone else, and in the end Valdracu had to harness Mefisto himself. Sandor claimed the horse would have taken his hand off if he had tried.

  Valdracu mounted the box and grabbed the reins. He clicked his tongue. Mefisto’s only reaction was an irritated kick at the traces. He obviously wasn’t used to playing the cart horse and didn’t like the job. But when Valdracu raised his whip in warning, the bay stallion decided to move forward after all. Anyway, the wagon was nowhere near as heavy as it had been. Its load was gone now, both the clan cloaks and the box of swords picked up by a group of men we had met at the edge of the Highlands. They hadn’t paid for it, as far as I could see. On the contrary—Valdracu had actually given one of the men a leather purse, which the man had received without a word. A strange trade, I thought.

  Mefisto kicked at the traces again, and Valdracu had to slap his dark brown quarters with the reins. I understood how the horse felt. I wanted to fight my harness too—I just didn’t dare. Not when my rebellion could cost Tavis his life.

  “Come up here where I can see you,” Valdracu said, patting the box, and I obediently went to sit next to him.

  “It’s not that I mind hitting you,” he explained, as if it were important for me to understand all the finer points. “It’s just that killing you doesn’t suit me at the moment. The boy, however—I have no real need of him. You are the only reason he is still alive. Remember that.”

  I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t been asked.

  DINA

  The Shamer’s Signet

  Daylight was fading when Valdracu finally ordered a halt. He was annoyed—the lame horse had delayed us, and we had not traveled as far as he had meant to.

  “Get some firewood,” he ordered as he jumped down from the box. “But stay in sight. Remember what happens to your freckled friend if you misbehave.”

  I clambered stiffly down from the box myself and began on the task I had been set. Tavis apparently was not going to be allowed out of the wagon this time. After his last stunt, they probably didn’t feel like untying him.

  The pines still crowded densely around us, and there were plenty of twigs and branches I could gather. Pine might not be the best fuel in the world, tending to spit and hiss and explode into sparks, but there wasn’t much else.

  “What’s that?” asked Anton, the one with the broken shoulder. He had caught a glimpse of my Shamer’s signet that my mother gave me when she made me her apprentice. I normally wore it under my shirt, but it had slipped free as I bent to pick up a branch.

  “It’s just a kind of pendant.” I quickly pushed it back out of sight.

  “Let me see.” He held out his good hand. The other arm was couched in a sling since his accident.

  “It’s only pewter,” I said, hoping he’d lose interest. “It’s not worth much.”

  “Give it here,” he said, annoyed. “Do as you’re told, girl.”

  But I couldn’t. I stood there, staring at the ground and clutching the round pewter plate as if it had been made from the purest gold. It was strange, really, because when my mother first gave it to me, I didn’t like it at all. But somehow it had ended up becoming something I would be heartbroken to lose.

  “It’s mine,” I whispered. “You have no right to take it.”

  I didn’t look at him. And I didn’t use the Shamer’s voice. But Valdracu struck like a buzzard swooping on a mouse. A hard and bony hand closed around the back of my neck and squeezed until tears clouded my eyes.

  “Misbehaving already, Dina? Perhaps you didn’t quite understand me.”

  “I didn’t mean to misbehave,” I protested. “My mother gave me this, and he has no right… no right to—” I stopped. Valdracu’s hand on my neck felt nearly as cold as Auld Anya’s.

  “Apparently you really don’t understand it yet,” he said. “Sandor, get the boy.”

  My skin felt clammy with fear. “No,” I said. “That’s not—I’m not—”

  “Shut up,” said Valdracu. “Who asked you?”

  Sandor came out of the other wagon, hauling Tavis along by the arm. Tavis was still pale, and the bump on his forehead had darkened to something close to black, but he kicked and fought as best he could, despite his bound hands.

  Valdracu let go of me and approached Tavis.

  “Stand still, boy,” he said. And Tavis stopped fighting, just like that. A new expression had come into his freckled face, and it was not one I liked to see. Tavis was scared. He would fight Sandor, biting and kicking and scratching—Sandor and probably all the other men. But not Valdracu. Valdracu scared him.

  “Pull off his shirt,” commanded Valdracu.

  Sandor pulled the shirt over Tavis’s head. Because of his bound hands it wouldn’t come all the way off but dangled from his wrists like a white flag. Or nearly white; it wasn’t very clean anymore.

  Valdracu cast a searching glance at his surroundings.

  “Across the horse,” he told Sandor, and although I had no idea what he meant, Sandor obviously understood completely. A white grin glistened in his black beard.

  “Yes, Lord,” he said. He threaded the end of a rope between Tavis’s wrists and drew it across Mefisto’s back. The big bay was still harnessed to the wagon. He twitched his ears sullenly, but apart from that he didn’t move, not even when Sandor hauled on the rope until Tavis’s bound wrists were drawn halfway across the horse’s back and he had to stand a-tiptoe, if he wanted to stand at all.

  Valdracu put his hand on the stallion’s dark brown neck.

  “Stand, my friend,” he told him almost lovingly. “You will not be hurt.”

  He loosened his belt. It was no ordinary belt, but a metal chain with a leather loop at either end. The chain was not an overly heavy one—perhaps as thick as my little finger.

  “I’ve made an agreement with Dina,” he said to Tavis, who was standing with his cheek pressed against Mefisto’s flank, staring at the chain. “It’s not nice to hit a girl, you know. So when she misbehaves… well, I’m sorry, lad, but that means you get the beating.”

  I wanted to object, I wanted to shout out that there was no “agreement,” that it was all something Valdracu had made up. But I was afraid I’d make things even worse if I said anything, so I bit my lip and kept my mouth shut. Silently, I stared into the ground, hoping, hoping, that Valdracu would see that I had learned my lesson and that it wasn’t necessary to hit anybody.

  He did it anyway. There was a whistling sound as he swung the chain, and a sickening sort of thwap when it hit Tavis’s back. Tavis screamed. And I could no longer look at the ground. On Tavis’s pale, freckled back a dark welt had appeared, about as thick as my little finger. And as I stood there, watching helplessly, blood welled from the broken skin and started to trickle down his side.

  I was so furious that everything inside me had gone black. If I had looked at Valdracu then, my eyes would have seared holes in him. How co
uld a grown man hit a small boy that way? How could he stand there with his disgusting chain and hit? It was all I could do to hold back the words.

  “He is still alive,” said Valdracu icily, and I knew it was a warning. If you ever raise your witch eyes or your witch voice to me or my men, we’ll kill him. That’s what he had said. And I was in no doubt that he meant it.

  Valdracu held out his hand. “Give me that pendant.”

  Tavis stood with his face pressed against the horse’s side, but although he was trying to hide it, I could see that he was crying. I loosened the narrow leather thong and put my signet into Valdracu’s palm.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Very well, Sandor. Get the boy back into the wagon.” He held the signet so that it caught the day’s last light. “Pewter,” he said. “A bit of enamel. Hardly worth the effort.” He threw it to Anton, who caught it with his good hand. “Take it, if you want it so badly.”

  Anton rubbed at the enamel with his thumb and did not look overly excited, but he still stuck the signet into the leather purse he carried in his belt. I felt lost. It was just a bit of pewter on a leather thong, and still it felt as if I had lost a part of myself.

  “I hope you learned something,” Valdracu told me in a low voice. He patted Mefisto’s neck. The big animal shook his head and snorted, and in the middle of everything I suddenly wondered why he hadn’t shied at the blow, the way most horses would have done. How could he know that only Tavis would feel the lash?

  Then I remembered Sandor’s expectant grin. He had known straightaway what Valdracu intended. And there was a very simple explanation why Mefisto had stood there, steady as a rock despite whistling chains and Tavis’s scream.

  They had done it all before.

  In the late afternoon the next day, the cart track widened, and the woods around us became less dense. There were clearings here and there where the pines had been felled and taken away to be used for timber, and in their absence grass and lupines and tiny birch saplings had found enough light to thrive. And slowly a new sound grew: the constant rush and roar of falling water.

  Valdracu peered at the setting sun. “Get that horse to move its feet,” he told the man leading the lamed chestnut. “We want to be in Dracana before dark.”

  Dracana? Where was that? What was it? I would have liked to know, but I didn’t dare ask. Not after what Valdracu had done to Tavis. That night I had been wakened by the sound of someone crying. It wasn’t very loud, not much more than a half-choked sniffling. Even so, it was enough to annoy Sandor, who was standing guard.

  “Stop that blubbering, boy!” he hissed. The quiet sniffs stopped abruptly. But I lay awake for a long time after that, thinking about Tavis and his sore back, and how he was lying tied up in the other wagon, frightened and alone. If only I had given up the signet right away. It was Valdracu who had hit him with his beastly chain, but it felt as if it were my fault too, somehow. If only I hadn’t been so stubborn. I knew that Valdracu would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.

  The wagon in front of us labored up a sharp rise and then disappeared from sight. Then it was our turn. Mefisto had to strain with all his strength to get us up the last steep incline. Then the road dipped, and we were suddenly in a narrow valley. At the bottom of the valley was a river, and by the river a town. Some of the buildings were very tall, almost four times as high as most ordinary houses. Across the river’s rushing waters a kind of bridge had been built, and below it I could see not just one but… but a number of waterwheels, so many that I couldn’t count them at first.

  The horses pricked up their ears and began to move with a will, even the lame chestnut. They had been here before, it seemed, and knew that shelter, food, and water awaited them. They needn’t move so quickly, I thought. Not for my sake. I was in no hurry to find out what was in store for me.

  DAVIN

  Like a Disease

  The wind whipped across the heather, and Falk was acting skittish, trying to turn around all the time so that he wouldn’t have to face into it. I was freezing cold; that morning the weather had been sunny and mild, and I was only in my shirtsleeves. If Callan had seen me, he would have scolded: “Never trust the weather in the mountains, lad; it can change quicker than a woman’s temper.” But the only thing on my mind then had been to get out of the house.

  Mama was out of bed now, but she grew tired very quickly, and she was as pale as a ghost. It stung to look at her. I had managed to swallow only a few mouthfuls of porridge at the breakfast table before rising.

  “I’m taking Falk out,” I said.

  At first she didn’t say anything. Then she nodded. “Take care, my love.” She was always careful not to look straight at me now, the same care she took with strangers.

  “Perhaps…,” I began, and then couldn’t make myself say it out loud after all: Perhaps today I’ll find a lead, some rumor, someone who has seen her. I no longer believed it myself, but sitting around at home was unbearable.

  “Yes,” she said, “perhaps.”

  So here I was, trotting along in the borderland between Laclan and Kensie, and I had almost given up even the pretense of looking. When I met someone, which didn’t happen often, I asked them whether they had seen two children, but I was no longer disappointed when they said no, because I no longer expected any other answer.

  Falk trudged along a narrow sheep trail skirting a hollow. The wind now carried little icy raindrops in it, and it was time to turn back. Time and more than time; and still I kept postponing it, going on just a bit farther, just another half mile.

  Suddenly I caught sight of two travelers below, on the more traveled trail at the bottom of the hollow.

  “Hello, down there!” I called.

  They looked up. One was a woman, the other a man leading a donkey. They were both sensibly dressed, he in a woolen cap and a sleeveless sheepskin coat, she with a scarf over her head and a large shawl wrapped warmly around her shoulders. Common folk, it seemed, of the kind who could not afford to feed a horse but had to make do with the hardy little donkey. Two large wicker baskets hung on either side of its woolly gray back. Trading goods, it might be, or perhaps simply whatever they had brought for the journey.

  The man briefly raised his hand. “Hello! Can you tell us—” and then he broke off, peering more intently at me. “Davin? Davin, is that you?”

  Now it was my turn to stare. I couldn’t seem to—oh, of course. The clothes were different, and I had not expected to see him here, but it was the Weapons Master from Dunark, the one who had helped Dina and Mama and Nico to get away from Drakan last year. And the woman by his side was Master Maunus’s niece, whom everybody called the Widow. For years, she had been running her dead husband’s apothecary business in Dunark.

  “Welcome to the Highlands,” I called, and made Falk clamber down the slope to the bottom of the hollow. “What brings you here?” For although the Widow was related to the Kensies just like Master Maunus—she was in fact Maudi Kensie’s granddaughter—they had chosen to settle in the Lowlands, in a fortress city called Solark.

  “War,” said the Weapons Master curtly, and I saw now that his left hand was wrapped in a stained and dirty bandage.

  The Widow smiled at me, but it was a tired and joyless smile.

  “We were lucky to meet you, Davin. We didn’t dare travel by the road, and I’m afraid I don’t know the trails up here as well as I did when I was a girl. Are we going the right way?”

  I nodded. “I’ll take you. I was about to turn back anyway.” Curious, Falk sniffed at the donkey. The donkey tipped back its long ears and looked bored.

  “Won’t you ride, Mistress Petri?” I asked, getting down from Falk’s back.

  “Thank you, Davin,” answered the Widow and cast a sideways look at the Weapons Master, “but it might be better if Martin—”

  “You ride,” he grunted. “Nothing wrong with my feet.”

  She still looked at him.

  “Ride,” he repeated. He obviously didn
’t want to be treated like a wounded weakling.

  “As you please,” she said, and I held Falk for her while she mounted. Her long brown skirts flapped in the wind, and Falk was fresh enough to pretend to be startled.

  “Stop that,” she said, and did something with the reins that made Falk stand stock-still with a sheepish cast to his ears. “We have no time for such silliness!”

  She rode on a little ahead of us, and Falk behaved much better for her than he ever did for me. The Master and I trudged along in the trail left by Falk’s hooves. I offered to lead the donkey, and he wordlessly handed me the rope.

  We walked silently for a while, the donkey between us. Down here in the hollow I couldn’t see for miles the way I had been able to up on the ridge, but the wind was less fierce, and walking warmed me up much better than riding Falk.

  “What happened?” I asked, nodding at his hand.

  “Drakan has taken Solark,” he said with an edge to his voice like rusted iron.

  “Solark?” I was so surprised that I stopped in my tracks. “But I thought—”

  “That Solark was impregnable? Yes, we all thought so.”

  “But… how?”

  “Treason.” He spat the word as if the taste of it was bitter. “He paid a man to poison the water supply. From one day to the next, everyone, city and castle, got sick. Many died, and those of us who lived were hardly able to stand upright. After that it was easy.” He looked at me, and there was such rage in his eyes that I took an involuntary step backward. But his anger was not for me. “People were dying in the houses and in the streets, and no one had the strength to help them. The bluebottles had a grand feast in Solark.”

  I wished he hadn’t said that. Often enough, I had seen the flies cover some small dead animal like a swarming blue-black blanket. The thought of that happening to a human being… I lowered my eyes and swallowed.

  “How did you get away?” I finally asked. Drakan was unlikely to have forgotten the role those two had played in Dunark last year. If he had had them within his reach, I don’t think he would just have let them leave.