‘What would you have me do?’ I asked the ghostly army, for it was clear the song alone was not enough, or they surely would have faded away with its echoes.
‘Fight . . .’ The word came like a great sigh. ‘Fiiiight . . .’
In their ghostly eyes I saw a flame burning, as if the passion they had shown in their last bloody encounter had not been extinguished by their years of lonely exile here in the place of their fall. But fight? Me?
‘I am no warrior,’ I said. ‘Look at me. I’m a . . . a vagrant, a nobody.’ I dropped my gaze, suddenly unable to meet their eyes. Their need was powerful in them; perhaps only that held them in the realm of the living. Was it possible that I was the only person ever to stop and listen? Could I be the only one who had heard their cry for justice?
‘I can’t . . . I don’t know what I can do,’ I whispered. How could I fight? The greatest warrior in all Alban could not stand against the might of Keldec. And that, without a doubt, was the fight they meant. ‘I want to help,’ I said, risking a glance up at them. ‘But I am powerless.’
Oh, gods, their faces, on which the blaze of hope kindled by the song was already starting to fade; their eyes, already losing the brightness of their awakening . . . How could I bear this? I sank to a crouch, lifting my hands to cover my face, for their sadness was like a knife straight to the heart and I could not look at them.
I did not complete the gesture. For there, in a crevice between the rocks at my feet, I saw a tiny plant growing. Three fronded shoots of soft green cradled a single flower no bigger than my thumbnail, a five-petalled bloom, white as first snow, fragile and perfect. So unlikely a survivor. So delicate, to stand against the scourging wind, the biting cold, the drenching rain. It was surely the only living thing in this place of death and sorrow. Apart from me.
I rose to my feet and drew a ragged breath. ‘I’ll try,’ I said.
A ripple passed through the spectral crew. As I spoke they stood taller, their pallid faces lighting with a fragile hope.
‘I can’t fight with sword and spear as my brother did, but I’ll stand up for justice. I don’t know how, but I promise I’ll find a way.’
As if a silent message had passed between them, each member of the ghostly army made the same gesture: a clenched fist placed over the heart. Through the falling rain their voices came to me as one. ‘Weapons sharp. Backs straight. Hearts high.’
Then in an instant they were gone, dissipated to nothing as, somewhere behind the clouds, the sun edged over the horizon. I was alone on the bank of Hiddenwater, shivering in my wet clothing.
I drew a deep, unsteady breath and made myself walk on. The grey water beside me rippled and stirred uneasily. My heart was thumping and my palms were clammy. In my mind the warrior voices sang on, lifted in a chorus of hope and faith, grand, powerful, indomitable. Yet here was I, an ordinary girl whose life was all fear, flight and concealment. What had possessed me to stand up and accept a challenge I surely could not meet? The battle I had agreed to fight was for Alban’s freedom. That meant a new king and a new rule. The thought made me tremble. It was huge, monstrous, terrifying. The strongest fighter, the most powerful mage, could not stand up against Keldec. His might was absolute. The Cull accounted not only for the canny but also for anyone heard to question the king’s rule. Those chieftains not cowed into obedience could expect the sort of treatment Dunchan of Silverwater had suffered. The populace was beaten down into submission. The iron fist of the Enforcers was everywhere. And if their unthinking brutality proved insufficient punishment, Keldec had one more weapon in his armoury: magic. For though it was forbidden for ordinary folk to use canny skills, those skills were a tool in the king’s hand, and he used them cruelly indeed.
This was the man I had just sworn to fight, a man whose power was a hundred times greater than mine. I was fifteen and all alone in the world. I was tired, hungry and cold, and there was a long way to go. If Shadowfell was where Farral had thought it was. If it was what he had believed it was: a place where folk dared to speak the truth, a place where they could plan a future free from tyranny. I prayed that Shadowfell was more than a wild dream born out of a desperate hope that someone, some day, would be strong enough to stand up for what was right.
I had to keep my promise. I had to fight, and the first step in the battle was finding Shadowfell. Those ghostly warriors had believed in me. They had shown their faith in me. I must have faith in myself and keep going. Sing the song. Keep weapons sharp, back straight, heart high. One person might not stand against Keldec and his Enforcers. But if enough of us did so, there would be an army.
CHAPTER FOUR
Nightfall found me close to Deepwater, longest in the chain of lochs. The oak forest that cloaked the banks would offer shelter and concealment for the next few days’ walking at least. At the far end of Deepwater lay the king’s summer fortress. I must pass close by that place to reach the track to the north. Dwell too much on that and I might lose my hard-won courage.
I risked a fire, for my clothing was wet and I could not stop the trembling that ran through my body. There were places in these woods where rock or tree canopy had kept fallen timber reasonably dry, though striking a spark was a challenge. My hands were shaking from cold. I took off Flint’s cloak – gods, how would I have managed without it? – and hung it over a rock near the fire, where it steamed alongside my tunic and shirt. I put on the garment Flint had left. It had been rolled up in my bag and was a little less damp than my own things.
I had tried to forage along the way, but my efforts had supplied no more than a handful of wizened berries and a scant bunch of herbs. I boiled up the leaves to make a rudimentary soup, which I drank slowly, savouring the warmth of each mouthful. When I was done, I set the little pot down with some of the mixture still in it, and beside it I arranged the last three berries on a fallen leaf. I did not think I had imagined the stealthy tread of small feet behind me today, especially once I had entered the forest.
I wrapped the damp cloak around me and settled to rest. Already the oaks were shedding their summer mantles, and I slept half-buried in a rustling blanket of leaves. Soon the forest would no longer provide safe concealment. I was wood wise; I had learned the skills I needed while Father and I were on the run. What I had not been taught by Grandmother about foraging and making shelter, I had worked out for myself as Father and I criss-crossed the highlands, always keeping one step ahead of trouble. We stayed no longer than a night or two in any single place, fearing our presence might bring unwelcome attention on those who sheltered us. We never talked about why the Enforcers might be interested in us. Often enough they came close to us, covertly, thinking we would not know them in their plain dark clothing, without their silver brooches and their jingling harness. But we knew: their ill deeds hung over them like a bad smell. We used what skills we had to vanish into the forest; we let Alban conceal us.
Once or twice folk had whispered that the king’s men were asking after a traveller in the north, a fellow with a good hand for stanies, wandering with a daughter who was somewhere between girl and woman. Had anyone seen this pair? If they did, they were to report it straight away to the nearest Enforcer. Lie about it and the punishment would be grievous indeed. Nonetheless, some folk had been brave enough to warn us. Not of recent times.
I walked for one day, two days, three. I developed a cough that would not clear. Each night in the forest the spasms kept me awake longer and hurt more. Each morning as I awoke to another day of chill and damp, I found it harder to catch my breath. There were herbs that might have eased the symptoms, but they did not seem to grow here, and even if I had been able to find them, I could only have made the simplest of infusions.
Hope is easy enough to find on a sunny day, when a person’s clothing is dry and her belly is full and the prospect of a good night’s rest lies ahead. It is much harder to keep that flame alight when autumn closes in and the rain falls in sheets, drenching every tree and bush and turning the ground to a
treacherous quagmire. It is still more difficult when the wind gets up, chilling the air and sending every creature scurrying for what meagre shelter it can find.
Staring into my little fire one night, I acknowledged that I would soon be in serious trouble. I was dizzy with hunger. My chest ached. I always felt cold, even though I spent all day on the move, climbing rock walls, making precarious crossings over gushing streams, darting into cover if I saw any sign of human activity. For even here, up in the woods, there were tracks used by local cottagers, places where pigs were driven out to forage for nuts and roots, signs that folk had been burning charcoal or gathering firewood. The closer I came to Summerfort, the harder it would be to stay unseen.
I reached a place where the track dipped down to run along a lower part of the hill, a stone’s throw from the broader way that followed the loch shore. This was a hard-packed earthen road suited to carts and riders, and it was busy. Among those who passed along it were groups of Enforcers, most of them heading eastward. They were riding to Summerfort, I guessed. Perhaps they would report the progress of the Cull to King Keldec, if he was still in residence there. He would be proud of them.
It made me sick to see them ride by. I kept well clear of the road and moved as quietly as I could. One wrong step, one cracking twig or sliding foot, and I would be in custody in the blink of an eye, forced to answer hard questions about what I was doing out here on my own.
Four days, five days, and still no sight of Summerfort. The leaves fell all around me; the branches above me grew bare and stark. This was taking too long. What if I could not reach the pass before the winter snow came? But I couldn’t press on today. Riders had been going by since early morning. If I came too close, my coughing would give me away. I found a hollow barely big enough to accommodate a fox and crouched there in the hope that the way would clear and let me move on. As I waited, the sky opened, releasing a downpour that dwarfed the previous rain. I huddled under Flint’s cloak, watching the road, where the deluge had slowed but not halted the stream of riders travelling eastward. Water dripped from the foliage to pool around me. My bones ached with cold.
There was no making fire. I had neither heart nor strength to look for food. I could not remember how it felt to have a full belly. It seemed to me I would never be dry and warm again. I cursed Father for dying; I cursed him for believing he could change our world with a wager.
‘If only you were here,’ I whispered into the chill as the light faded to dusk and the endless curtain of rain turned all to shadowy haze around me. He couldn’t have made the rain stop; he had no canny powers. He couldn’t have conjured supper from nowhere or stopped the Enforcers from riding by. But if he had been here I would not have been alone.
I stayed where I was for a night and a day. On the second night the rain stopped and I risked moving on in the dark. My limbs were like an old woman’s, stiff and cramped. I crept through the woods, struggling not to cough. Each furtive footstep sounded to me like an intrusive crash, alerting the whole world to my presence. Perhaps Keldec had sentries right here on the hill. Maybe the Enforcers who had ridden past yesterday were waiting just around the next corner. When an owl flew out from the trees ahead, my heart jolted in fright.
The walk felt endless. It felt pointless. Why in the name of the gods had I promised to fight? I could hardly manage to put one foot in front of the other. Remember the song, I told myself. But that seemed a long time ago, and I was too tired to remember.
At last came a watery dawn, and there, a hundred paces or so before me, was the broad valley of the Rush, the river that cut through the mountains on its headlong progress to Deepwater. Once I reached the crest of the hill, just over there, I would be looking down on the stone keep, the wall, the hard-packed practice areas of Summerfort. There would be guards everywhere.
A voice spoke right behind me, making me jump in fright. ‘You’ll be wanting a wee sit-down and maybe a brew.’
I whirled around and there, standing quiet as shadows amid the damp ferns of the forest floor, were two small figures. The little woman in the hooded green cloak: Sage. The odd creature with the leafy pelt: Sorrel. He extended a fronded hand, beckoning. I did not move.
‘A brew?’ I croaked, thinking how good it would be to wrap my hands around a warm cup, to soothe my aching throat with a hot drink. ‘You can’t make fire here. We’re too close to Summerfort. They’d see the smoke. And we should keep our voices down.’
‘Still heading north, are you?’ Sage’s eyes were fixed on me in piercing question.
Had I told them this? ‘Up the valley of the Rush.’
The little woman looked at her companion, then the two of them gazed at me. ‘You’ll not get far in that state,’ she said. ‘A few steps out from the forest, just far enough for king’s men to catch sight of you, and then you’ll collapse in a dead faint. If you won’t accept help when it’s offered, you’re more fool than I took you for.’
‘I must go on,’ I whispered.
‘Not without a brew and a warm-up,’ said Sorrel. ‘Come this way.’
‘I told you –’
‘Aye, we heard you. They’d see the smoke. From your fire, maybe. Not from mine.’
‘Come on, lassie,’ Sage said, reaching up to take a fold of my cloak between her bony fingers. ‘You’re all shivery-shaky. It’s not far.’
Their fire was a little higher up the hill, in a depression between great rocks. It was so tiny I doubted it would warm so much as a beetle. There was no smoke at all. On the flames was a small pannikin, and there was Red Cap, stirring the contents with a long stick. He still wore the sling. I could see the small ears of the infant sticking up from it. None of the others seemed to be around. I crept into the shelter and realised I was wrong on one count, for the flames’ warmth was a blessing on my chill body. I sank down, easing my bag from my shoulder.
‘Aye, that’s it,’ Sage said, eyeing me as I stretched out my hands to the fire. ‘You can’t go on anyway, with king’s men on the road. You may as well be warm and fed.’
Before I could say much at all, Red Cap was ladling a mushroom broth out of his tiny pannikin into even smaller bowls fashioned of interwoven leaves. He put one of these in my hands. ‘Eat up,’ he advised, and applied himself to his own meal. Sorrel drank his share straight from the bowl. Sage ate tidily, using an implement fashioned from an acorn cup.
I hesitated, my mouth watering, my mind on old tales about folk who wandered into the realm of the Good Folk, accepted tempting treats and found they could never return home again.
‘Get on with it, then,’ Sorrel urged. ‘You’re skin and bone, girl.’
‘You’ll take no harm from the brew,’ put in Sage, quicker to understand why I held back. ‘Eat your fill.’
So I ate, though my sore throat made it hard to swallow. The food was good. It was astonishing that such a small pot could provide sufficient for all four of us, but it did. When Red Cap had drunk half his bowlful, he loosened the sling, lifted out the baby and sat it on his knee, where he proceeded to feed it the remainder of his meal by dipping his finger in, then letting the infant suck off the broth.
As soon as I was done eating, I got to my feet again.
‘I should go on,’ I made myself say, though I longed to stay by the fire. ‘Thank you for helping me –’
‘Sun’s up,’ Sorrel observed. ‘King’s men will be watching. Besides, you’re dripping wet. Bide awhile, dry yourself, and watch who comes and goes down there. If you have to run in the open, don’t do it without thinking.’
‘That could be the best way to do it,’ I said. ‘Before I lose my courage.’
‘A plan, that’s what you need, and common sense,’ said Sage. ‘Do what the wee mannie tells you, Neryn. Rest, dry those wet things, get some heart back.’
I sat down again or, rather, my legs gave up the effort to support me. ‘How do you know my name?’
Sage gave me a beady-eyed look. ‘We know what we know,’ she said, which was no
answer at all.
‘Where are the folk who were with you earlier? Silver, and the man in the nutshell cape, and all those others?’
‘Ah.’ Sage had her hands held out to the fire’s warmth. She gazed into the flames. ‘We had what you might call a disagreement. The three of us came this way. The others . . . well, they followed Silver, as they generally do.’
Had I been the cause of this? Had I parted friend from friend? I hoped not.
‘Our kind, we’re solitary folk mostly, you understand. Get more than two of us together and we’re uncomfortable. Get more than three of us together and you’ll likely have a dispute.’
‘There are three of you.’
‘Aye, well, three’s not such a bad number. In the old tales it’s all threes. And we’re not your run-of-the-mill folk.’ She glanced at her companions. ‘Silver and her band were eager to leave you to your own devices. Keen to send you on your journey alone.’
‘They were right,’ I said, ‘though today I am very glad of your fire, your food and your companionship. The king’s laws forbid all of this. You should go home and leave me.’
‘Home? What home does she mean, Sage?’ If Sorrel had been possessed of visible eyebrows, he would have lifted them at this point.
‘I don’t rightly know, Sorrel. The old home under the earth? Or a new wee home, with a bittie wall in front and flowers growing over it, maybe?’ Sage’s unswerving stare had never left my face. ‘Would that be your picture of it, Red Cap?’
‘With this king ruling Alban,’ Red Cap said, ‘we’ve got no more home than you have, lassie. We’re all of us set adrift, letting the storm carry us where it will.’ As he spoke, he was tucking the young one back into the sling, his hands deft and gentle.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said after a moment. ‘What is the old home you mentioned, under the earth? Is that a . . . retreat? A portal to your own world?’ Rumour had it that many of the Good Folk had slipped through into that other place, never to be seen again by humankind.
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