Max took the stunning revelation well. His eyes widened a fraction, then he said to Olga, a little sternly, ‘Is this true?’
Olga shrugged and muttered, sulkily, ‘I not tell him I eat him, I just say has he heard stories about my people, how they supposed to eat children? He thinks then I will do this. But I will never because I am not –’ she glared at Tomi ‘– a wicked thing. I am just werewolf from family Ironheart and never ever we hurt children – never – no matter what silly stories you people in empire tell.’
Max said, wonderingly, ‘You are an Ironheart?’
She drew herself up. ‘Indeed. You hear of us?’
‘Of course. Yours is the greatest of the Ruvenyan werewolf clans, for your ancestor once saved the life of a Ruvenyan prince who became the most beloved of kings in your land, and ever since then the family Ironheart has been honoured in your country.’
There was a small silence, then Olga said, ‘You speak truth.’
I saw he’d touched a real nerve. She was going to help him anyway but now she would feel even more bound to him.
‘How you know this?’ she said.
‘You hear about a lot of things at court,’ he said quietly. ‘And don’t forget, the Empress is from Ruvenya. Not everyone shares the official line on shapeshifters. In fact, there are more than a few people who would like things to change.’ He looked at the child. ‘Including, I’ve heard, amongst your people, Tomi.’
‘Really?’ he said, his eyes wide.
‘Really. I would die to preserve the honour of the Emperor and the integrity of the empire. And that being so, I would never, ever associate with an enemy of the empire – and neither Olga nor Selena are that. That is the absolute truth. Do you believe me?’
Tomi looked at him, searchingly, looked at us, then finally nodded.
‘Thank you. So now I am asking you, on your honour as a Mancer, to give us your word that you will not try to escape till we can let you go.’
My eyes met Olga’s, but we stayed absolutely silent, as Max and Tomi looked at each other, sizing up one another.
‘I give you my word,’ said Tomi, softly, and they shook hands, solemnly, and once again I was strangely moved, though the more cynical part of me stood by and laughed. For the bond of a word of honour was one thing, and I understood and valued that myself, for it was the only thing that had kept me from betraying my mother’s memory; but who could really believe the word of a Mancer, when lies and deception were part of their stock-in-trade? Well, and there was nothing to be done about it now one way or the other. As to what Max had said about himself, that was dismaying, for it showed he was a long way from accepting the truth about the empire. His attitude to magic and shapeshifters was considerably more liberal than most Faustinians, but he was still a believer in the – what had he called it? – the honour of the Emperor and the integrity of the empire. He still clung to that.
He’d said Olga and I were not enemies of the empire; well, I could not speak for Olga, but I had no great love for the empire. For Ashberg and for my home, yes, but for the Emperor and his family and the Mancers – most certainly not.
And it was much more than that. It was the Emperor’s ancestor who had slaughtered my mother’s kind and made the very name of moon-sister into the badge of a traitor. It was the Emperor who kept up the wicked laws that forced the survivors to hide their true selves, that had sapped my mother’s strength and turned a poor old woman into a ravaged husk, that had made me into someone who could not even breathe the truth to the man she loved. No, I had not asked to be an enemy of the empire. But by my very birth I had been branded one in the eyes of the empire – the very empire Max would defend to the death – and though I loved him, I could not reveal my secret. I thought, sadly, of how he could accept illegal magic and werewolves without turning a hair – but moon-sisters? That had to be a bridge too far. And if that was so, then how could anything real exist between us? We were strangers to each other, in truth. Perhaps we only had these feelings for each other because we’d been brought together in such a strange way. It was just the lingering effect of the hazel-tree magic, I told myself. And in time, when that effect faded – what would happen? Perhaps we’d look upon one another with new eyes and not want anything to do with each other.
My gloomy thoughts were interrupted by Sister Claudia hailing us. She hurried towards us, looking anxious.
‘The priest in the village told me some worrying news,’ she said without preamble. ‘The police are out in force not far from here – at the junction between the road to Marika and that to Silver Harbour. I would take you further but I am afraid that –’
‘Of course, we understand,’ said Max. ‘You have done more than enough for us already. We will make our own way to the coach stop.’
‘No, no. I’m not afraid for myself but for you. You see, Father Petrus said all the main roads are crawling with police. But there’s a path over there,’ she said, pointing to the fields on the left. ‘That leads through the woodland to a back road which is unlikely to be watched. It will get you to Silver Harbour, too. Now hurry, for Father Petrus will be out with the ointments for the last rites any minute and I think it would be better if he didn’t see you, then he can truthfully deny having done so.’ Then she made the sign of the cross over us. ‘Go with God, my children, and may the angels always protect you.’
‘And you too, Sister,’ we chorused.
‘And take good care of each other, especially the child.’
‘Yes, Sister, we will,’ said Max, gravely, putting a hand on Tomi’s shoulder. ‘You can be sure of that.’
‘Goodbye, then,’ she said, and with a sad little smile and a wave, she hurried back towards the church where a figure in a black cassock was emerging, and we were left alone.
‘Sister Claudia, she speak of last rites,’ hissed Olga, as we gathered up our things to leave. ‘What you hiding from me?’
‘One of the sick people died,’ I said, steadily. ‘The woman beside me.’
Olga recoiled. ‘Then you might be –’
‘No, Olga,’ said Max, overhearing. ‘None of those sick people had an infectious disease. Sister Claudia told me. They had serious heart problems, cancer, that sort of thing. That poor lady – she had late-stage cancer, only they didn’t know quite how close to death she was.’ He saw Olga’s stubborn expression and snapped, ‘For heaven’s sake, cancer’s not contagious!’
‘I know that,’ said Olga, ‘and if you –’
‘Oh, stop wasting time arguing about nothing, the pair of you,’ I said, more sharply than was warranted, for I was still oppressed by my earlier thoughts. ‘We’ll never get anywhere at this rate,’ and without waiting for an answer I scrambled out of the ditch and into the field.
‘Selena! Wait!’ called Max, but I didn’t answer. When he caught me up, he said, ‘What’s the matter, Selena?’
‘Nothing, nothing at all.’
‘Something’s upset you,’ he persisted. ‘Please tell me.’
‘It’s nothing,’ I said, biting my lip. ‘Nothing that can be helped and, anyway, I don’t need to tell you everything. You don’t.’
He looked as though I’d slapped him.
I went on, harshly, ‘You said it wasn’t to do with me, what happened to you. Then what was it?’
‘I can’t tell you,’ he said bleakly. ‘You must . . . you must trust me on this, please, Selena.’
My throat felt thick. I wanted more than anything to take him in my arms, to hold him close, to say that yes, of course I trusted him; yes, of course I understood, yes, of course it didn’t matter, that I would follow him to the ends of the earth if that’s what it took. But with the encounter with the moon-sister still fresh in my mind, and the certain knowledge of how his feelings about me would change if he knew my secret, I could not with a whole heart do what I so much lo
nged to do. Instead, I said, tightly, ‘I didn’t say I don’t trust you, only that we do not . . . have to tell each other everything. And you must trust me on that too.’
He sighed and took my hand. ‘Fair enough. But you will tell me, won’t you, if there is anything – anything – I can do?’
I swallowed. Tears pricked at my eyes. ‘Of . . . of course.’
‘Then I am glad,’ he said simply, and kissed my hand. The words as much as the kiss nearly undid my resolve and I am not sure what would have happened next if Olga and Tomi hadn’t caught up with us at that very moment.
But they did, and the dangerous moment passed. Max took a complaining Tomi on his back and set off up the hill, with Olga loping on after, while I brought up the rear. We kept to the hedgerow, walking rapidly in single file up the hill towards the woodland. It was all uphill and the path, or rather the faint track, was rough with clods of dirt and I was quite out of breath by the time we finally reached the summit of the hill and plunged into the woods.
We stopped a moment then, much to Olga’s impatience, to rest and have a drink of ginger beer. Unlike Max and me, she seemed as fresh as when we’d started. It must have been the werewolf blood in her.
The woods were much bigger and denser than they’d seemed from the road and at times the going was pretty tough. It was hours before we got to the other side, stopping only once, briefly, to finish the rest of the sandwiches and the ginger beer. But what we discovered when we reached the edge of the woods was that there wasn’t just one road – if you could dignify the rough tracks not much better than cart-ruts as such – leading out of it, but three, and not one had a signpost.
But we had the compass Andel had given us. Neither Olga nor I was entirely sure of the direction of Silver Harbour, but Max was.
‘North,’ he said. ‘We have to go north. Silver Harbour is probably no more than two or three hours’ walk down the northern track,’ Max said, confidently, and led the way.
The track was what my Mama used to call a rocking-horse road; it wound up and down, up and down. But at least we didn’t have to fight our way through vegetation, like we did in the woods. We passed no other traffic on foot, wheels or horseback, and the country through which we were passing soon changed from patchy woodland to scrubby heathland with precious little sign of habitation. The day stayed grim and grey without the threatened rain materialising. An hour passed. Two hours. Three hours. Four hours. And still no sign of Silver Harbour. The track was getting narrower and heading into woodland again when Olga stopped and said, firmly, ‘We go wrong way.’
‘No,’ said Max, sliding Tomi off his back and pulling out the compass. ‘Look at this. See, we’re still going north, heading in the right direction. We just haven’t gone far enough yet.’
Olga shook her head. ‘I think you make mistake, Max. Maybe you think of direction of Silver Harbour from road where Sister Claudia leave us and not from top of hill.’
‘I most certainly did not,’ he said crossly. ‘What kind of fool do you take me for?’
Olga raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
‘Look, I factored all that in when I took the compass bearing. It’s north we should be going. It’s just further than I thought.’
‘Very well,’ I said, placatingly, ‘but if we don’t get to Silver Harbour soon, we’re going to have to stop for the night somewhere. It’ll be dark in a couple of hours and there’s no moon so we won’t be able to keep going.’
‘We’ll be in Silver Harbour long before nightfall,’ said Max crossly, and strode off down the track with Tomi on his back. Olga and I looked at each other and shrugged. There was nothing else to do but follow him. After all, we were hardly going to retrace our steps at this stage; the junction of the three roads lay way back in the distance, hours back, and this road had to end somewhere . . .
It did, an hour later, but not at Silver Harbour. Not in a town or village or even a hamlet, but at an isolated farm. There were a series of outbuildings clustered around a small farmhouse made of pearl-grey timber, with a sloping shingled roof pulled down around its eaves like a hat, as well as a vegetable garden and small orchard on one side, and a barn full of hay. Smoke was rising from the farmhouse chimney, but no-one was to be seen.
Max said, helplessly, ‘I don’t understand how it happened. I really don’t. North should definitely have led us to Silver Harbour.’
Olga and I looked at each other and said nothing. There was no need to rub it in now.
‘I’m sorry,’ he went on. ‘Truly sorry. We’re quite lost and it’s all my fault.’
‘It’s not as bad as all that,’ I said. ‘We’re all exhausted and we can at least get some shelter here in their barn or something. Maybe they can even sell us some food. We’ve still got that money Andel gave us. And they can tell us where we are, too.’
All at once Tomi, who had been standing silently looking around him, burst out with, ‘I don’t like it here.’
‘What do you mean, Tomi?’ Max said.
‘There is . . . a funny smell,’ the boy said, uneasily.
We sniffed. I couldn’t smell anything out of the ordinary, nothing one wouldn’t expect. Max couldn’t either, and more to the point, neither could Olga, and a werewolf’s sense of smell is much more acute than a human’s.
‘There is only the smell of smoke and hay and the smell of animals,’ she said. Her nostrils flared, and her eyes lit up. ‘Oh, and something like stew cooking inside. All good smells. You are from city,’ she added, kindly. ‘You are not used to country smells, that is all.’
‘No,’ said Tomi, stubbornly, ‘There is a funny smell.’
‘It’s that or sleep in the open, Tomi,’ I said. ‘You don’t want that, do you?’
He swallowed and shook his head. He didn’t say anything more but kept very close to Max as we walked in through the gate and up the path that led to the house.
Max knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again and still there was no answer. Trying the door, the handle turned easily, and we walked into a most cheerful, big room with a table laid for four, and a cookpot bubbling away on an old-fashioned wood stove, a fire burning merrily beneath it. I could feel my mouth watering and I know I wasn’t the only one. Even Tomi had considerably brightened up. There was no talk of ‘funny smells’ now, not surprisingly, as the smell coming from that cookpot could in no way be considered peculiar, only rich and meaty and almost unbearably appetising.
There was more food on the sideboard: bread, cheese and jam, a jug of milk and one of ginger beer. There were pictures on the walls, colourful rugs on the floor, and bedrolls and blankets were neatly stacked on a shelf along one wall. Everything spoke of a busy family life, and of ordinary activities only just interrupted; but there was nobody there, not a soul. Where were the householders?
We went to look in the outbuildings. The barn was full of hay but empty of people. In the stables, two horses and a cow looked up from their mangers and regarded us incuriously, but there were still no people to be seen. We even looked in the henhouse, where the drowsy chickens rustled on their perches. But when we went around the back of the house, we saw a meadow sloping down to a stream. On the other side of it were fields full of some kind of late crop stretching as far as the eye could see.
Max said, with a relief we all shared, ‘Ah, that’s what it must be, the men have been working in the fields and the lady of the house has gone to fetch them in for dinner.’
‘Then we’ll wait inside for them to come back. I’m sure they won’t mind,’ I said firmly, and no-one made any protest at all, for it was getting darker and colder, and the thought of that bright, warm house was very tempting indeed.
We waited and waited. The night drew closer and closer to the windows, and still the householders did not return. All the while the warmth of the fire seeped into our tired limbs while the appetisi
ng smell of stew tortured our nostrils and made our bellies rumble.
At one point, Max said we should go and see if we could see the people coming, but when he opened the door, such a cold wind blew in, and the night was so pitch-black, that he closed it again in a hurry. Then the rain that had threatened all day began to fall, and fall with a vengeance, pounding at the shutters and the roof, while the wind howled. We sat in the cosy, warm kitchen, knowing that we could not go out again into that foul night. We all knew, by this time, that there was no family living here. The table had been laid for four because there were four of us. We were in an enchanted place. What we were yet to know was whether the enchantment was good or bad.
It was hard to believe in its being bad, though. Not in this cosy, warm atmosphere, with the food smelling so good. I could certainly not feel any evil intent here. But who said that evil magic must look evil?
Tomi’s instinct as a Mancer hadn’t trusted this place at first. But that instinct was trained to sniff out illegal magic, and illegal magic wasn’t the same as evil magic. It could be good, like the magic of the hazel tree. Or bad, like the magic of a curse. One had to know who had made the enchantment to know for sure whether it was good or bad. I’d known the hazel-tree magic was good because it was my mother’s. But I had no idea who had brought us here, for we had been brought here. There was no doubt of that, I thought. Max was probably right; going north should have brought us to Silver Harbour. And yet it had not. But how could that be?
It had been a very overcast day, I thought. Impossible to get a bearing from the sun. So Max had had to rely on the compass. The compass, which had definitely pointed north. We’d all seen it. The answer was so absurdly simple, yet so stunning a thought, that I gasped out loud.
‘The compass. It’s the compass!’
‘What?’ said Max.
‘We didn’t go north, Max. We went . . . in some other direction. East, I think.’
Moonlight and Ashes Page 15
