We never actually said good-bye, Black-Arse and I. He just slapped me on the shoulder once more, and then I climbed onto Falk’s back. The cart rolled out of the yard, and I followed. Black-Arse was left to stand with Maudi and Master Maunus, watching us leave. As we crested the hill, I looked back one final time. Would we ever see the three of them again?
Silky followed the cart, too, but not because Dina was guiding her. My sister looked as if she was barely taking in what was going on around us. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“Dina…”
She shook her head. “Just leave me alone,” she said, pulling up the hood of her cloak so that I could no longer see her face.
The cart was no racing chariot, and even though the dun mare was a strong-hearted little lady, it was still an effort to pull the load up the steep slopes of the Maedin range. When the sun began to set, we had barely reached the boundaries of Kensie land.
“Perhaps we should camp here for the night,” I suggested. “It’s best to have a bit of daylight left to gather firewood and suchlike.”
Mama shook her head. “We have to reach Skayark tonight.”
Skayark. That was a long way off.
“But it’ll be hours and hours before—”
She didn’t answer. She just looked at me.
“Mama, it’ll be pitch dark. They might not even let us in.”
And Skayark was very much a fortress town. I had seen those walls, and they were not meant for scaling.
“Skayark,” said Mama stubbornly. “We do not sleep until we have walls and people around us.”
I looked at Callan to see if he would back me up, but apparently he had no intention of gainsaying Mama today.
The sun dropped behind the Maedin range. It became more and more difficult to see the road in front of us—and the potholes. All we need now is for a wheel to come off the cart, I thought. Trying to fix that in the dark would be no picnic. Then I caught myself and hurriedly gave three loud whistles to ward off any mischievous road spirit who might have heard my thought. You have to be careful what you wish for in the mountains. Especially at this hour, on the threshold between night and day.
“What did ye want to do that for, lad?” asked Callan in some irritation. “The whole mountain can hear ye.”
“Sorry,” I muttered.
A cold wind came whistling through the valley, and I shuddered. Such sudden gusts are not unusual in the mountains, particularly near dawn and dusk. But it was not just the cold that made me shiver. It felt so hostile, that wind, as if it would hurt us if it could. The sun had completely disappeared now, and the first stars showed in the sky, cold and white against the darkness. Falk did not care for the wind either. Snorting, he laid back his ears and stiffened his legs and spine.
“Callan,” said Mama, “light a torch.”
“He will see us coming a mile off,” objected Callan.
“Do it anyway. In the darkness, we are easy prey.”
For a moment, I thought Callan would protest again. Then a sort of sigh made his wide shoulders rise and sink.
“If ye think that is the wisest way,” he said. “I do not know how to deal with wizardry and the like. Robbers and highwaymen, now…”
He sounded almost as if he would like to be attacked by an honest robber just so that he would know what to do. And in a way, I understood his feelings. Cold winds and misty visions—what is a man to do against such apparitions? I still did not clearly understand how Dina had come to lose her way in the fog and return to us in the Puff-Adder’s company. Sezuan. Even his name sounded like the hissing of a snake.
“I’ll fix us a torch,” said Nico, leaping off his bay mare. “Go on, I’ll catch you up.”
“No,” said Mama. “We stay together. No one goes anywhere alone.” She pulled back on the reins, and the dun mare came to a halt—gratefully, it seemed. “Davin, give the horses a little water.”
I slipped off Falk’s back and fetched the bucket from the back of the cart. My fingers were stiff with cold. This was supposed to be summer!
“Is it far?” asked Rose quietly.
“A fair bit yet,” answered Callan. He stayed on horseback, very straight and alert in the saddle.
“Mama.” Melli rubbed her eyes. “I’m tired. I want to go home now.”
I didn’t want to explain to my smallest sister that we weren’t going home. Ever. Apparently, neither did Mama.
“Lie down,” she said. “Rest your head in my lap. You can sleep as we drive along.”
“We’re not driving along,” objected Melli. “We’re not going anywhere.”
“No, but in a minute, we will.”
I offered the bucket to the dun mare first. There wasn’t a lot of water left, even though we had filled it at the last stream. The mare slurped and finished what there was.
“It’s not nice here,” said Melli defiantly. “It’s cold and disgusting and not nice at all. I want my own bed.”
Nico had cut off a stout birch branch and wrapped one end with rags soaked in oil from our meager store, and it looked as if the fire had finally caught properly. He tied the torch to the front of the cart.
“Do you know the tale of Little Flame?” he asked Melli.
She shook her head sullenly.
“Well, do you want to hear it?”
Melli was clearly more in the mood for a good sulk. On the other hand, she loved stories, and in the end she surrendered, nodding royally.
“Once upon a time, there was a small flame who wanted to see the world,” began Nico, hoisting himself into the saddle once more. “One day it simply leaped from the hearth where it had been born and began its journey….”
We continued our own journey. The flickering torchlight fell on rocks and heather and ferns, and made the shadows flutter about us like black birds. The wind had brought new clouds, and most of the stars had disappeared. I could see only the two lowest now, like two pale eyes staring down at us. The cartwheels rumbled across the uneven ground, and from somewhere in the dark came a shrill, piping scream. Melli gave a startled little mew.
“Do not fret yerself,” said Callan. “It is only a couple of owlets begging for food.”
Nico had stopped in the middle of his story.
“Where is Dina?” he suddenly said.
I waved a hand. “Right behind—”
But she wasn’t. Not anymore. The darkness hugged us closely, a cart and three riders. Of Silky and my sister there was no trace at all.
“Dina!” I called.
There was no answer.
Mama hauled on the reins so hard that the dun mare practically sat back on its haunches. For a moment, she looked utterly terrified. Then she flung the reins to Rose. “Here. Stay where you are. Davin, give me Falk.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll go back. It’s better that you stay with Melli.”
She probably would have objected, but I had already turned Falk around and urged him into the fastest pace I dared, what with the darkness and the stony ground.
“Wait,” called Nico behind me. “I’m coming too.”
I slowed my pace just enough for him to be able to catch up. My hands had suddenly become so damp that the leather reins felt slippery and hard to hold. How could Dina have disappeared like that, right from under our noses?
“Dina!” I yelled, trying not to think of the last time I had ridden like this, calling and calling, with no answer except the silence. When Dina disappeared on me last year, it had been months before we got her back, and she still wasn’t quite her old self.
Falk stumbled slightly in some pothole I had overlooked. Instinctively, I reined back, and he tossed his head in irritation.
“Ease up,” said Nico quietly. “Give him his head and let him set the pace. He can see better than you can.”
Usually I became irritated when Nico corrected me, but right now there was no time for irritation. I let the reins slide between my fingers, and Falk immediately became both faster and more surefo
oted.
How long had it been since I had actually seen her? It felt as if she had been there, right behind me, only moments ago. How could we have let her fall behind like that? And why hadn’t she said anything, why hadn’t she called out? In my mind, I heard Mama’s voice again: “What if he lured you into some bottomless bog, or made you step off a cliff so that all we ever found of you were the shattered bones?” Could he really do that—the Puff-Adder?
“Dina!” I was yelling at the top of my lungs now. But all I could hear were the hoofbeats, the night wind, and the hungry owls.
And… and something. A flute?
“Nico? Did you hear that?”
“What?”
But it was gone again. It had probably been the wind. Or some shepherd in the neighboring valley, playing a tune to keep himself awake. Miles away, maybe. Sound carried differently in the mountains.
“There she is,” said Nico.
She was sitting stock-still on Silky, in the middle of the road. I was so relieved to see her that I immediately lost my temper. I don’t know why, but that’s how it usually works.
“What do you think you are doing?” I snarled. “Mama is beside herself!”
She looked… strange. Stone-faced. Almost as if she hadn’t quite seen us yet.
“I heard someone calling,” she said slowly.
“Of course you did! We’ve been yelling our heads off. Why didn’t you answer?”
She looked at me uncertainly. “I didn’t know it was you.”
“Dina, what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Why did you stop? Mama told us to stick together.”
She stared at Silky’s white-tipped ears. “I… must have fallen asleep.”
“Without falling off?”
“People do that!”
It sounded defiant and somehow wrong. Yes, people did sometimes doze in the saddle. But that didn’t explain why Silky had stopped. Horses did not normally let themselves be separated from the herd like that, and Dina… Dina didn’t look like someone who had been asleep. More like someone who had had a wide-awake nightmare. And why hadn’t she answered when we called her? What did she mean when she said she didn’t know it was us? Who else would it be?
Something was wrong with my sister. It took no Shamer to see that.
“Dina—”
“I told you, I fell asleep!” She was staring at me with a strangely hostile glare. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“Come on now,” said Nico. “Let’s get back to the others as quickly as we can. There’s no reason to frighten them any more than we have to.”
♦ ♦ ♦
I thought Mama would scold Dina, but she didn’t.
“Dina. Into the cart, now!” she said, with precisely enough of the Shamer’s tone in her voice to make it impossible for Dina to disobey. “Rose, can you ride Silky?”
“Maybe,” said Rose dubiously.
“Then do it!”
The words came like the crack of a whip, and Dina had barely changed places with Rose before Mama slapped the dun mare’s quarters with the reins so that it set off with a startled lunge. She drove the mare into a gallop, and the cart swayed dangerously, leaping and bouncing down the trail. I caught a brief glimpse of Melli’s white and frightened face, then I had to urge Falk onward to keep up.
“Have a care, Medama,” shouted Callan. “Mind the wheels! Mind the horses’ legs!”
“There’s no time,” answered Mama, ice in her voice. “I have my daughter’s soul to think of.”
What did she mean by that? There was no time for questions either. It was all I could do to keep up. There were no cozy bedtime stories now. Hooves thundered across stony ground. White foam flew in tatters from Falk’s mouth, and his dark neck steamed with sweat. Suddenly, the torch tied to the cart went out, either because of the wind or our breakneck speed, but not even that made Mama stop. It was a miracle that the wheels held up. It was a miracle that no horses stumbled. Perhaps it was a miracle, too, that all of us reached Skayark safely, my incautious little sister included.
DAVIN
Skayark
“We owe much to the young Shamer,” said Astor Skaya. “And I tell ye, this Sezuan shall not pass.”
He proudly showed us his defenses—the yard-thick walls, the towers manned by archers, the guards in their blue and black uniforms, with the Skaya eagle embroidered in gold on the chest. Skayark lay like a coiled dragon across the pass, with crenellated walls that zigzagged from one mountainside to the other. There was no way around this fortress, unless one had wings.
“It will at least slow him down,” said Mama thoughtfully.
“Slow him down? Medama, in three hundred years no enemy has penetrated these defenses. Think ye that this Sezuan is capable of such a feat single-handed? I tell ye, it is not possible for a mortal man.”
“Not by force, no. But perhaps by cunning? Be watchful, Skaya. Be very, very watchful. He can make men see things that are not, and trick them into not seeing what really is. He can take on a hundred different forms and make his direst enemy shake his hand as though he were a brother.”
For the first time, Astor Skaya seemed a little worried and looked at his walls less smugly.
“Is there a way to recognize him?” he asked. “If he can take a hundred forms, how are we to know him? We cannot clap every traveler in irons.”
“He has a mark,” said Mama, suddenly looking embarrassed. Embarrassed? Mama? Who always seemed so certain of things, and most of all of herself? “A tattooed serpent. It is his family mark, he wouldn’t and couldn’t erase that.”
“And where is this serpent?”
“Coiled around his navel,” said Mama, blushing furiously.
And it was only then that I realized that Sezuan really was Dina’s father. That my mother had seen that tattoo and maybe even… maybe even touched it. And that she had borne a child to this man who now had us fleeing like mice when the reapers come.
Anger surged through me, with such force that I could barely stand still. I wanted to shake her and yell at her. How could she do such a thing? She who was always telling off the rest of us about right and wrong. How could she?
Astor Skaya was watching us curiously. I bit back my angry words because I didn’t want him to hear them.
“I think I’ll go to bed now,” I managed to say. And I walked away from her, down the stone steps into the barbican below. Mama and the Puff-Adder. Sezuan. How could she?
Even now, in the middle of the night, Skayark was not completely asleep. Torches were burning, and guards were waiting to relieve those stationed on the walls and in the towers. A game of dice was in progress at the foot of the stairs, and I stopped, not wanting the players to see the expression I couldn’t hide. I stood in the dark stairwell, leaning against the rough wall and keeping my face in shadow. How could she?
From the bridge above me I heard her voice.
“If my daughter has ever earned Skayark’s favor—”
“She has. Many times over. Medama knows we owe her countless lives.”
“Yes. I do know that. And that is why I ask in her name for Skaya’s aid. Astor Skaya, close the gates of Skayark for ten days. Let no one in or out. No one at all.”
“Ten days,” said Astor Skaya slowly. “That is a long time. In the middle of the trading season, too. There will be a lot of angry people outside that gate.”
“I need that time, Skaya. Ten days of safety, to hide our trail and make it impossible for him to find us again.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Aye then,” said Astor Skaya. “Ten days it is. Ye have my word on it.”
“Thank you,” said Mama quietly. “You lend me hope.”
Yes, well, that’s all wonderfully touching, I thought. But if you hadn’t… if you hadn’t let that dirty snakespawn take you to his bed, we wouldn’t have needed ten days. We wouldn’t have needed to flee like this, away from Yew Tree Cottage, away from Black-A
rse, away from everything that had begun to make life bearable and fun once in a while.
Mama and Sezuan. I couldn’t even bear to think it.
Callan and Nico and I slept in a low-ceilinged room above the stables with half a score of snoring Skaya guards. Astor Skaya had offered us his guest chambers, but it would have taken half the night to get them ready, and we were all tired. The castellaine herself, Astor’s wife, Dia, had taken Mama and the girls under her wing, and they had disappeared into some woman’s world where men were not generally invited. A world full of clean sheets and lavender scents and the like, I supposed. This place, on the other hand, smelled more of horse and dog and male sweat and a chamber pot that hadn’t been emptied. But the straw mattress was clean and quite soft enough, and even though I was still furious with my mother, I fell asleep in the middle of my angry thoughts.
“Come on, lad. Get ye up.”
Up? What did he mean, up? I had only just lain down.
But the morning sunlight fell golden-bright onto the floorboards, and when I forced my eyes open properly, I realized I was the only one still abed. Callan had obviously been up and about for quite a while.
I groaned but swung my legs out of the alcove. Nothing else for it.
“Coming,” I muttered. Sleep blunted the edge of my voice, which broke hoarsely.
“Ye’ll have to use yer ten days well,” said Callan. “No time to waste.”
“Us? You mean, you’re not coming?” I suddenly felt much more awake. Unpleasantly so.
He shook his head. “I might have come along with ye for another couple of days. Or some weeks, it might be. But yer mother has asked me to stay here.”
“But why?”
He threw a look across his shoulder, but the only Skaya man still in the room was busy repairing a falconer’s glove. He hummed tunelessly as he worked and had eyes for nothing except the tiny stitches.
The Serpent Gift Page 6
