Dark Mist Rising (Crossing Over)

by Anna Kendall

  My words had no more effect than had Tarek's. Impulsively I sank to the floor, pulled the princess from her nurse's arms – how did I dare to do such a thing! – and said quietly into her ear, ‘I know what you saw. Do you hear me, Stephanie? I know what you saw. You are not alone with the monster.'

  I did not know what she had seen. But my words made a difference. She still shook and sobbed, but her screaming ceased. Being alone is so often the worst part of pain. The princess clung to me, her tears wetting my tunic, her hair in my mouth.

  Tarek said, somewhere between relief and disgust, ‘Good, antek. Now discover what occurred here.'

  Over the princess's shaking shoulders I asked the nurse, who eyed me with jealousy even as she poured out her story. ‘Lady Margaret and I put Her Grace to bed, and then Lady Margaret lay down on her pallet, she was that exhausted, and I was just washing out Her Grace's things—'

  A water-filled basin sat in one corner, with a small pile of sodden white linen spreading a stain on the ground.

  ‘—when all at once Lady Margaret sits bolt upright on her pallet and cries out – her, that never complains nor makes a noise about how we have to live on this unholy journey – Lady Margaret cries out “No! No!” And my lambie wakes up at the same moment and screams, “No!” The exactly same moment! Then my lady slumps over, dead as a bucket of stones. And Her Grace goes screaming.'

  I translated, and Tarek turned to his captain, still standing just inside the tent flap. ‘For this you bring me here, Sufgek? For the death of a slave woman that frightened a child?'

  The nurse demanded, ‘What did he say?' I ignored her.

  Sufgek betrayed no emotion, but he said, ‘Both awoke in fear at the same moment. It may be witchcraft.' His eyes shifted to me.

  Tarek's gaze also turned to me, sitting on the floor with a terrified child shaking in my arms. For a moment the brilliant blue eyes turned speculative.

  ‘No,' he finally said. ‘This is nothing more than women's blimct. Sufgek, you should not have attacked my instruction. Klef.' He strode from the tent, the captain stepping hastily aside to let him pass. Over his shoulder Tarek said to me, ‘ Antek, return to your fire.' The tent flap fell.

  I had only a few moments. To Stephanie I murmured, ‘What did you see in your dream?'

  ‘No! Don't go!'

  She was preparing to shriek again. Hating myself, I said quickly, ‘If you make noise, Tarek will come back. You don't want that, do you?'

  ‘No.' And then, a suppressed wail: ‘You said you know what I saw.'

  I was threatening to take away the reassurance that she was not alone. Quickly I said, ‘You saw a girl with a crown, didn't you? And she said something bad?'

  Her arms tightened convulsively around me. The tent flap rose. My guard, his face averted from the women within, said loudly, ‘ Antek. Klef. Klef.'

  ‘Don't go!' Stephanie wailed.

  ‘I must.' If I were dragged from the tent, she would scream even worse. ‘But I'll come back tomorrow. And remember, you are not alone. I can fight the bad girl with the crown.'

  I stood, and the nurse took her from me. My guard had actually advanced into a tentful of women, a measure of how far he would go to carry out orders. Yet he did not touch me. I followed him back to our fire. The Young Chieftain was probably disciplining his captain, whatever that involved, and so I was saved from proving myself until tomorrow night.

  Tarek was more intelligent than his skittish captain, and he had already begun to doubt my supposed powers. He had apparently acquitted me of witchcraft in Lady Margaret's death. In this instance, he was both right and wrong. Lady Margaret's death might indeed have been due to soul arts, but not mine.

  Both Tom and Jee waited at the fire. Tom, wide-eyed, said, ‘The princess ... Her Grace ...'

  ‘Be she hurt?' Jee demanded fiercely. His whole skinny body strained forward.

  ‘No, Jee, she's not hurt. But Lady Margaret is dead – she died in her sleep. The princess was upset, is all.'

  He relaxed; Lady Margaret meant nothing to him. Nor to Tom, who launched into a long recitation of the death-while-asleep of an elderly aunt of some girl in Almsbury. But Lady Margaret had meant something to me. Again I saw her at court, scolding Queen Caroline's ladies into order. Playing a lute by the hearth on a winter's night. Finding me unconscious in a corridor of the palace and bringing me to the safety of her rooms and the nursing of her own serving woman. I saw her at Stephanie's monstrous marriage, defying the bridegroom by walking with dignity from the throne room in pursuit of the nurse. With the little princess by a mountain fire, urging me to ‘help Her Grace'. And now Lady Margaret had, by some fearsome art I did not understand, been murdered by a dream.

  Be tranquil, my good lady, there in the Country of the Dead.

  ‘Peter,' Jee said softly, under cover of Tom's cheerful babble, ‘I did so. I saw Alysse. She sent you this.' His small warm hand closed briefly on mine, and then I held a packet wrapped in leaves and tied with vine.

  41

  The camp quieted soon after. When soldiers rise before dawn and march with heavy packs all day, they sleep early and deep. Not guards, however. The penalty for a warrior who slept on guard duty was death. Now that there was no caravan in which to lock me, my guards rotated all night long. At whatever hour I woke, one sat beside me, feeding the fire, alert to anyone coming or going from its circle of light and warmth. But I had Alysse's packet.

  As soon as I unwrapped the leaves, the scent told me what lay inside. I wrapped it again and waited until Tom and Jee slept. Then I opened the bundle and pretended to nibble on the little cake within, letting tiny pieces instead slide inside my tunic. I was careful not to swallow even a crumb, but it was difficult. The cake's honey and nuts would have been hard enough to resist – long ago the army had run out of sugar stolen from the palace – but what made the mouth fill with sweet water and the tongue waggle in anticipation was the cake's aroma. The drugs Alysse used, that Fia had used, smelled like every dream of food a hungry man ever had.

  Tom had gobbled Fia's honey cake and slept like a stone. I had eaten mine, spiced with a different herb, and could not remember my own name, nor the proper shapes of tree branches, nor why I could not bed that bewitching girl ... But that second drug was not what Alysse had baked into this cake.

  I left the rest of the cake lying exposed on its broad leaf, and I pretended to sleep.

  The guard was young, but he was a soldier. He did not touch the cake. From one half-opened eye I could see his nose twitch, and once his hand moved towards the leaf, but he withdrew it. If he should choose to eat it at the end of his shift and then simply fell asleep back at his own fire ... Why had Alysse sent only one cake? Surely she could have foreseen this problem?

  The guard did not eat the cake. It sat there still, resting temptingly on its leaf and giving off its strong delicious aroma, when the next soldier on duty relieved the first. The savage fed the fire, settled himself beside it, inspected us three inert prisoners. Overhead the stars shone sharp and cold. Tom snored. The savage whistled under his breath, something I had never heard any of them do, a sweet and plaintive little air. Could all of them sing tune-fully then, just as all of them had blue eyes? The savage stopped whistling. A long suspended moment, and then he ate the honey cake.

  Soon ... soon ... now.

  He snored even louder than Tom. Surely someone else would hear? No one did. The only other guards were posted at the princess's tent, several hundred feet away in the darkness, and at the camp perimeter, further away still. Servants – now slaves – taken from the palace were not deemed worthy of being guarded. The chance of rescue from The Queendom was past, and there was nowhere for captives to run.

  Slowly I sat up, watching the savage slumped beside his gun. In the dimness he looked like nothing as much as a furry boulder. In a few more moments Alysse slipped into the firelight, took my hand and led me silently to the quiet deep shadows of a clump of bushes between fires. Her fingers were cold i
n mine.

  ‘Who are you?' I whispered. ‘You bedded Tom to get to me, didn't you? Do you come from Mother Chilton?'

  ‘Yes. No. It is not like that.' Her voice was hostile, which first surprised me and then did not. She continued, ‘You were told to not cross over again. You promised not to do so, and you have broken that promise, just as you broke the one to Fia.'

  Was there anything these web women did not know?

  I said hotly, ‘A hisaf, my father—' how strange the words sounded, spoken aloud ‘—said there was no danger to anyone in my crossing over, so long as I brought nothing back!'

  ‘The hisafs have their beliefs about the Country of the Dead, and we have ours. Theirs are mistaken.'

  ‘But hisafs can actually go there, and you cannot!' Sudden doubt shook me. ‘Can you?'

  ‘No. Our knowledge comes in other ways. We—'

  ‘Who are “we”? What are you and Mother Chilton and Fia?'

  ‘We are those striving to preserve life.'

  ‘But are you women all witches or—'

  ‘Who we are is not your concern, and I am not here to argue names with you, Roger Kilbourne. I have under-gone considerable risk to talk to you, and that risk should convince you of the dire importance of what I have to say.'

  ‘Which is what?'

  Her cold hand tightened on mine, hard enough that it hurt. She was much stronger than she looked. Her voice held an intensity made greater by the dark night.

  ‘I am here to tell you two things. The first is that no matter what the hisafs say, you must not cross over, not ever again.'

  ‘Why not?'

  ‘Will you not take my word on this?'

  ‘No. My father said—'

  ‘Damn your father! He now lies prisoner in Galtryf, that is all your hisafs have accomplished so far!'

  ‘How did you know that? How? My sister told me—'

  ‘Your sister is the real reason you must not cross over. You two are linked by blood. She is a great danger to you, and an even greater danger to the rest of the living.'

  ‘You tell me nothing I have not already heard,' I said acidly. ‘Surely you did not come here to say only that. Tell me exactly what she can and cannot do!'

  Alysse's voice changed. She no longer scolded; now she was trying to convince me, and in her conviction burned desperation. She spoke slowly, and each word carried a terrible weight. ‘The grave is not really a wall between the living and the dead, as the hisafs conceive it to be. That is their mistake. Not a wall, not a moat, not castle fortifications. You must form a different picture in your mind. Those living and those dead are connected, as in a vast web. How can it be otherwise, when the Dead were once alive, and the alive must someday join the Dead?'

  ‘Mother Chilton spoke of a “web of being”. But I do not see how—'

  ‘Of course you do not see how – you are only a hisaf, and not a particularly able one. Just listen, Roger Kilbourne. Your crossing over does not, in and of itself, disturb the web of being, no. Your father told you true on that. But you did not confine your crossings to yourself, did you? When you brought back others, and their objects, each occasion upset the balance of the web. Pulled at its delicate threads, tore some loose. I do not say you caused this war, because it began before you were even born. But you have aided the enemy, oh how you have aided them!'

  ‘It is not only I who have torn threads loose. Who sent Fia back over, and Shadow and Shep and the other dogs?'

  ‘Neither Fia nor the dogs are our doing. Do not attempt to accuse me, Roger. You do not know everything and I shall not tell you more – you, an ignorant boy who has already profoundly helped the enemy. Don't you understand? Soulvine Moor is destroying the web that weaves together life and death. Both have tremendous power, and that power flows along the strands of the web of being, which holds it in balance. Even your ill-begotten sister is part of that web. The rogue hisafs are using her, in league with Soulvine Moor. Your father's hisafs hope to kill her. Neither group must succeed. If the flow of web power – the strongest force in the world – should be so abruptly and greatly disturbed, what do you think might happen to the living? Or to the Dead, waiting so trustfully for—'

  ‘For what?' I struck in. Her words dazed me. Could the barrier between living and dead really be destroyed? ‘For what do the Dead wait in their circles? Tell me!'

  She said simply, ‘For the sword.'

  I shook my head in the darkness. And then I remembered. Slowly I said, ‘There was something bright and terrible, coming from the sky in the Country of the Dead—'

  Alysse gasped. ‘You saw the sword?'

  ‘I don't know ... only for a moment. I'm not certain.

  It was the moment I brought back the Blue army, and something rent the sky, but it was so bright I couldn't look at it. Then I crossed away.'

  She groaned. ‘You should not have seen it at all. No one should see it except— I will not tell you more. You have no right to know. Roger, you must not cross over again for any reason.'

  ‘But you admitted that my crossing over does not by itself disturb anything.' Why was I arguing about this? I was afraid to cross over.

  ‘It is not just what you might happen to you, Roger. It is also your sister. She was – is – at the centre of the web. The power that Soulvine Moor seeks to take from the Dead and allocate to themselves, that power flows through her, the unnatural living presence among the Dead. Do you not see why she is mad? That would drive any child to madness. And unlike other hisafs, faithful or faithless, you are linked to her by blood. If you remove that centre of power while you are in the Country of the Dead – if you think you must kill her to defend yourself, for instance – it could do immense harm. That must not happen. And neither must she harm you.'

  ‘Why not?' I said bitterly. ‘If I have caused so much havoc already in the Country of the Dead, if I have aided Soulvine Moor so much, if I have done such evil, why go to such lengths to protect me so? Here or there? Why not just let my sister destroy me?'

  ‘It is not you we are trying to protect.'

  ‘Not me? Then whom? Princess Stephanie? My sister is appearing in her dreams and—'

  ‘Stephanie too is part of the web, and it would have been better had that poor child been shot by Tarek's soldiers. Then she could have rested quietly in the Country of the Dead. Instead she is being tormented by your sister, and she is so closely guarded that we cannot get to her to help except at prohibitive cost. But the princess cannot cause any real disruption to the Country of the Dead, and she is not the reason I am here. Not the reason I have risked so much to talk to you.'

  Her voice held so much apprehension that my own chest tightened. It was difficult to breathe. But whatever I had expected, it was not what Alysse said next.

  ‘If you somehow escape from here, Roger Kilbourne, if you do not die at Tarek's hands, then you must not go home to Maggie. She is with her kin in the village of Tanwell, but you must not go there. Your sister does not know about Maggie, but if you go to Tanwell, she may find out.'

  ‘I ... I don't understand. Not go home? Mother Chilton told me to go home to Maggie. She did!'

  ‘I know,' Alysse said. Her voice dropped so low that I had to lean into the bushes, close to her ear, to hear her at all. Twigs tangled in my hair. ‘When Mother Chilton told you to go home to Maggie, we did not know what we know now. I have come here, through dangers you cannot possibly understand, in order to tell you that under no circumstances, for no reason, can you go back to Maggie.'

  ‘Then is Maggie the person you are trying to protect?

  That you have taken all these risks for? The person that Fia—'

  ‘No. Not Maggie.'

  ‘Then who?'

  It was a long time before Alysse spoke. I had the eerie impression she was listening to something, there in the starlit night. Finally her voice came, slow and reluctant from the darkness.

  ‘Your child will be a son.'

  Then she was gone, and a rabbit hopped away fr
om the bushes into the cold night.

  42

  In the morning, the savages buried Lady Margaret. At dawn Tom and I were woken by my usual guard. The soldier I had drugged with Alysse's honey cake had been hauled away, asleep on duty, and perhaps shot. I did not care. Two savages led us a short way into the woods, where a hole had been dug in a small clearing. Lady Margaret's body, wrapped in what had been the curtains of her pole-chair, already lay at the bottom of the hole.

  Tom and I shivered beside the grave, uncertain what would happen next. Silently Jee slipped in beside me. The air was very cold and low grey clouds pressed down from the sky. Morning bustle in the camp was muted by the trees. I was having trouble keeping my thoughts on Lady Margaret, or on anything except what Alysse had told me last night. Two factions contended for power over the web of being: Soulvine Moor with the faithless hisafs, opposed by my father's hisafs and the web women, and the latter two could not work together nor even share information. ‘ Your child will be a son ...'

  Tom said grudgingly, ‘At least the savages are burying the lady. They might have ...' He waved his hand to indicate that savages might have done anything.

  I was surprised too. Despite what Tarek believed, even his senior captain thought that Lady Margaret's death had involved witchcraft. Based on their treatment of Jee, the soldiers would have been reluctant to even touch the corpse. Nonetheless, Tarek must have given the order that Lady Margaret should have whatever death rites were usual for her people, and his soldiers had obeyed. Discipline.

  We stood there while the sky darkened even more and a few stray drops of rain fell. Just slightly colder, and the rain would become snow. Tom muttered, ‘What are we waiting for?'

  Jee said, ‘Her.'

  ‘Who?' Tom said.

  ‘The princess.'

  Of course. Jee had grasped that more quickly than I. Lady Margaret had been Princess Stephanie's senior attendant. To Tarek, neither childhood nor hysteria would be a bar to the royal duty of attending the death rites. In his own way he was behaving decently. I hated that.