by Lian Tanner
‘Is she dead?’ whispered Pummel.
Otte knelt down next to Duckling, hanging onto her shoulder to keep from tipping over. Sooli appeared out of nowhere. In her arms, the chicken was craning her neck to watch.
‘She is still bleeding, so her heart must be beating,’ whispered Otte. He pressed the rumpled sheet he had brought from the Bear Tower over the wound. Then he looked at Duckling and nodded.
Duckling wasn’t squeamish – no one who lived with Lord Rump could afford to be – but there was so much blood. She swallowed. Then she took hold of the Grafine’s shoulder and shook it gently.
‘Grafine,’ she said. ‘Wake up!’
There was no response, so Duckling shook her again.
‘Don’t hurt her,’ said Pummel, kneeling beside them.
The cat yawned, as if death bored her. Duckling looked up at Sooli. ‘You can see people’s paths, can’t you? Where does hers go?’
Sooli put the chicken down and inspected the floor around the Grafine. ‘Her path leads straight to death. She already has one foot on the threshold. She will not wake up.’
‘She must wake up,’ muttered Duckling, and she shook the Grafine a third time. But the woman didn’t even groan.
Duckling wished Grandpa was here. He could persuade anyone to do anything. He could probably even persuade someone not to die quite so quickly—
She looked up at Sooli again, her heart beating faster than ever. ‘If you can see her path, can you change it? Keep her away from that threshold thing?’
Sooli shook her head. ‘Her path runs out. It stops. There is nothing left.’
‘Nothing?’ asked Duckling.
‘Well, only a little bit.’
‘Then could you – I don’t know – put a bend in it or something? So we’ve got time to question her?’
Sooli bent over and took hold of something that Duckling couldn’t see. Or rather, she tried to take hold of it. Her fingers dipped and twisted, then sprang apart. She grimaced, and repeated the action. Dip. Twist. Spring apart. Dip, twist, spring apart.
‘Her path is too short,’ whispered Sooli. ‘There is nothing to hold onto. She has given up.’
There was a moment of silence. Then Otte said, in a cold voice that Duckling had never heard him use before, ‘Of course she has given up. My mother the Margravine always said she was weak. Unfit to rule, that is what my mother said. She tolerated the Grafine because they were cousins, but she despised her, too—’
Under Duckling’s fingers, a pulse jolted. The dying woman’s chest rose and fell. A groan spilled from her lips.
Sooli’s fingers seized hold of something and began to weave it to a different shape. ‘I cannot keep her here for long,’ she hissed. ‘Ask your questions. Quickly!’
But before Duckling could open her mouth, Otte whispered, ‘Grafine, I did not mean what I said. My mother had the greatest respect for you.’
‘Killed … her,’ mumbled the Grafine, without opening her eyes. ‘To save … the Strong-hold.’
Duckling didn’t believe that for a moment. According to Grandpa, people could always find good reasons for the bad things they did. But that didn’t take away the badness.
‘Did you raise the Harshman?’ she whispered.
The slightest of nods from the Grafine. Another groan.
Sooli’s hands grabbed desperately at something, as if it was slipping through her fingers. ‘Quickly!’
‘How do we send him back?’ asked Duckling.
The Grafine’s lips moved, but no sound came out.
‘What’s she saying?’ whispered Pummel.
‘Ice,’ croaked the Grafine. ‘Ice to … war.’
Otte leaned closer. ‘Ice to war?’
‘Ice to … wa-ter.’ The dying woman tried to say more, but the effort was too much for her. Her face sagged. She coughed.
‘Sooli!’ hissed Duckling.
‘I am trying,’ whispered Sooli. ‘But she has only seconds left.’
Duckling gripped the Grafine’s shoulder. ‘How do we stop him? Tell us, or he’ll destroy Neuhalt. Tell us!’
‘Boo … book,’ croaked the Grafine.
‘There’s a book?’ asked Pummel. ‘Where? Where is it?’
The Grafine’s hand jerked, as if she was trying to point. The chicken squawked in alarm. The cat hissed.
‘She is going!’ cried Sooli.
And so she was. A breath sighed out of her – and the Grafine died.
Duckling had seen death in the salt mines, but never so close and so violent. Now it was right in front of her, and she trembled all over. There had been a moment when the Grafine was alive, and a moment when she was gone, and those two things were as different from each other as night and day.
Behind her, the cat said, ‘Raashk?’
For a long moment, no one answered. Then Pummel said, in a hushed voice, ‘She hasn’t got it. I’d be able to feel it if she had.’
‘Then where is it?’ whispered Otte. His mice were in his hand, and he stroked them over and over, as if seeking comfort.
‘I don’t know.’
Sooli gazed down at the body of the Grafine and swallowed. ‘She did have it. I could feel it in her path.’
The chicken leaned against Duckling’s leg, and that small touch of warmth helped bring her back to herself. She took a deep breath, and that helped too. She was still alive, and so were her friends. And they had a job to do.
She stood up, trying not to look at the corpse of the Grafine. ‘We’ll just have to keep searching for it then, and searching for that book too. Otte, is there another one of your hideaways near here?’
Otte nodded. ‘On the third floor. And on the eighth. Do you wish me to show them to you?’
‘Yes, in case we get separated,’ said Duckling. She helped the younger boy to his feet. ‘Come on. We’d better get out of here before someone comes.’
Sooli didn’t move. Neither did Pummel. ‘What about the Grafine?’ he whispered. ‘We can’t just leave her here. We should – cover her up or something.’
‘Deeead,’ said the cat.
‘I know she’s dead,’ said Pummel. ‘That doesn’t mean we can treat her like a bit of rubbish.’
Beside him, Sooli was also staring at the Grafine. Her face was pale, her brow was creased and her lips were moving, as if she was arguing with herself about something.
‘Sooli?’ said Duckling.
The other girl sucked in a shaky breath and said, ‘I could – trace her path back.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Otte.
‘We must find the raashk,’ said Sooli. She licked her lips, as if they were suddenly too dry. ‘If I could trace the Grafine’s path back a little way, perhaps I could discover what she did with it. If she left it somewhere. Or – or someone took it from her.’
Pummel blanched. ‘You could do that? Trace the path of someone who is …’ His voice trailed off.
‘Is it dangerous?’ whispered Otte.
‘I do not know,’ said Sooli. ‘I have never heard of anyone doing it but – but perhaps no one ever had a need as great as ours.’
Duckling chewed her lip. ‘Sounds horrible. Could you do it?’
‘The Harshman eats the land magic,’ said Sooli. ‘I must do it. But I will need your help. You must anchor me, to make sure I do not – go the wrong way.’
She looked awfully uncertain, but determined at the same time. ‘Come, sit beside me. Lean against me.’
Duckling and Pummel sat on either side of Sooli with their eyes turned away from the Grafine’s body. The cat, the chicken, Otte and his mice stood close by, watching.
‘If I get caught up in the Grafine’s path, you will have to pull me back,’ whispered Sooli.
‘How will we tell?’ asked Pummel.
‘I do not know. Just … if anything strange happens.’
The breath hissed out of Duckling in something that was almost a laugh. ‘Anything strange,’ she repeated. ‘Ha.’
‘We
’ll keep an eye on you,’ promised Pummel.
Sooli breathed in and out. She screwed up her face. She nodded, as if to reassure herself. Then she reached out towards the paths that Duckling could not see.
She didn’t pick any of them up this time. Instead, she traced them with her fingers.
‘There are so many,’ she whispered. ‘And the Grafine’s will be faint, and growing fainter.’ Her fingers hovered over the wooden floor. ‘But I think – yes, I think I see it.’
Duckling leaned against her and started to hum. A breeze hovered around them, warm and comforting.
‘I must follow it backwards,’ whispered Sooli, almost to herself. She touched something and shivered. ‘It is very cold. But I can do this. Here is where – we try to wake her. So I must go back before that.’
Her fingers drew lines in the air; her face showed intense concentration. ‘Here – she is dying. Alone.’ Sooli gasped, as if she was the one dying.
Pummel whispered, ‘Otte!’
Duckling looked up, and saw that Otte’s face was blank. He had gone into another of his trances. Her fingernails dug into the palms of her hands. Someone was going to get hurt. Was it Sooli? Should they stop her, drag her away from what she was doing?
But Sooli was talking again, the words spilling out of her. ‘The Harshman is walking away from her – oh, how she hates him! She watches him go and cannot speak.’
Otte bent down and picked up the chicken. His eyes cleared.
He didn’t go hunting for bandages, so maybe it’s not so bad, thought Duckling.
Sooli’s fingers twitched. ‘Further back. Further back to – yes, to here! He is standing over her. He is bending down. He takes something from her – it is the pouch. He has—’
Suddenly her voice stopped and her face grew still.
‘Sooli?’ said Duckling. ‘Are you all right? You can stop now. Sooli?’
‘Duckling,’ gasped Pummel, ‘look!’
He pointed to Sooli’s hands – or rather, to where her hands should be. They were hardly visible.
Just a faint outline, growing fainter all the time.
It had taken Lord Rump most of the day to negotiate a satisfactory agreement, but it was done now. He was shaking hands with Councillor Triggs when he heard a tentative knock on the door of the meeting room.
‘Who is it?’ called Triggs.
The door opened, and a woman with dark hair and countrified clothes poked her head around it. ‘I am looking for someone,’ she said, blinking at the jewels that adorned the councillors’ necks and hands.
Triggs scowled. ‘This is the Privy Council, Frow, not the Lost Person’s Office. And we are in the middle of a most important meeting. If you have been so foolish as to lose your husband—’
‘My son,’ said the woman.
‘Son, husband, daughter, it makes no difference,’ snapped Triggs. ‘We cannot take time away from the current crisis to settle your affairs.’
But the woman was stubborn. ‘They said that Lord Rump might be able to help.’
‘Me?’ said Rump, drawing himself up.
The woman bobbed a curtsey. ‘Someone told me that you might know where my son Pummel is, Herro.’
‘Pummel?’ said Rump. ‘You are Pummel’s mother?’
‘Yes, Herro. He came to the city to find work and I haven’t heard from him since, which is not at all like him. He promised to write, but he hasn’t.’
Rump’s mind was racing. What should he say? Not the truth, obviously; he never told the truth unless he absolutely had to. But …
‘Pummel is a most excellent lad,’ he said. ‘Honest, hard-working and kind.’
‘You know him?’ said the woman, gazing eagerly up at him. ‘Is he well? Do you know why he hasn’t written?’
Councillor Triggs was growing impatient. His eyebrows twitched at Rump in a not-very-well-disguised message. Get rid of her. She is not important. We have bigger fish to fry.
But Rump never ignored the little people. Whenever he could, he listened to their problems and made helpful suggestions. Those suggestions often ended up disastrously for the people themselves, of course, but they were the key to his own success.
Besides, he had finished with the Privy Council for now.
‘Come with me, Frow, and I will tell you where you can find your son,’ he said. ‘Councillor Triggs, be so kind as to write a permission letter to enter the Strong-hold.’
Pummel’s mother gasped. ‘My boy is there?’
‘He is,’ muttered Triggs. ‘And it would not be wise for you to follow him, would it, Lord Rump?’ His eyebrows waggled more fervently than ever. ‘Because of the disease. No one can go in, because of the disease.’
The woman’s face lost its colour. ‘What disease?’
‘A most dreadful disease,’ said First Councillor Triggs.
‘A fatal disease,’ boomed Third Councillor Bagon. ‘You would be advised to go nowhere near the place.’
If Rump had one skill that was greater than all his others, it was his ability to read people. He saw now how Bagon’s words stiffened the visitor’s spine. He saw where Pummel’s honesty had come from, and his determination to do what was right instead of what was easy or profitable.
Rump still thought those things were foolish, but for the first time, he understood why they had appealed so strongly to Duckling.
‘Thank you for your advice, Councillors,’ said the woman. ‘But if my son is there, I must go nevertheless.’ She turned to Triggs. ‘My letter, please?’
With a sigh, Councillor Triggs sat down and scribbled a note on official Privy Council paper. The woman snatched it up and turned back to Lord Rump. ‘You said you would show me, Herro?’
Lord Rump led the way out the door of the meeting room and down the long corridor. But at the bottom of the council chamber steps, he paused.
‘You will not be dissuaded, Frow? The Strong-hold is a dangerous place, particularly at the moment.’
‘All the more reason for me to go there,’ said Pummel’s mother.
‘In that case,’ said Lord Rump, ‘you can do both me and your son a small favour. You will need to speak to the Margrave, mind. Can you do that?’
Pummel’s mother paled. ‘Such an important person! But I will do my best.’
‘That is all I ask. Tell him – memorise these words now – tell him that Lord Rump is as loyal as he ever was, and so are his companions. Tell him I will prove it by restoring the food carts. Tell him I hope to have them there some time in the next few days.’
The woman repeated the words faithfully. Then she nodded, shook his hand, and set off for the Strong-hold.
Sooli felt as if a strong current was pulling at her, trying to drag her under water. Or perhaps it was the Black Wind, with her name on its lips. Or the Grafine’s path, stuck to her hand.
Everyone had a path, Great-Grandmother had taught Sooli that. It was like a shiny silver thread that extended a little way in front of them, where they were going, and a little way behind them, where they had been.
If you were Bayam, and had worked very hard at your training, you could pick up those threads and turn them in another direction, so that people went where you wanted them to go.
Sooli had not worked at all hard at her training. And even if she had, she might not have known how to let go of the Grafine’s path. It was no longer silver. It was soot black, and it made her hands feel soot black too, like something that had been burned to a cinder and had no life left in it.
She tried to speak. Tried to whisper, ‘Help,’ but no part of her would move. She could hear Duckling, Pummel and Otte, though they sounded as if they were miles away. And when they picked her up and half-dragged, half-carried her to the Grafine’s bedchamber, she could smell the ancient tapestries and the oiled furniture, and the long, stolen years of the Strong-hold.
But she could not speak.
The soot crept higher up her arms. I am turning into a ghost, thought Sooli. I am tied to the path of a
dead woman, and it is dragging me to my doom.
Still, she resisted the pull. The Saaf were a digging-in-their-heels sort of people. Stubborn. Difficult. And the Bayam was always the most stubborn and difficult of them all.
So although the soot-black path dragged at her, Sooli resisted.
Duckling had never felt so helpless. She and Pummel had carried Sooli to the Grafine’s room, hoping that no one else would want to use it. They had laid her on the enormous bed and pulled the cover over her, trying to keep her warm.
‘Wake up, Sooli,’ they said, over and over again. ‘Please wake up.’
Otte had lit all the candles he could find, and in their light Duckling could see Sooli fading right in front of their eyes – first her hands, then her wrists, then her forearms.
Otte was beside himself. ‘If I had some hawberry, I might be able to wake her,’ he whispered. ‘But I used it all in the salt mine, and have not had time to gather more.’
His arms tightened around the chicken, who gave a startled squawk. The cat, sitting upright and alert on the foot of the bed, blinked but said nothing.
‘We shouldn’t have let her do it,’ said Duckling. ‘It was too dangerous. We should’ve stopped her, or pulled her back quicker—’
She broke off as a sharp gust of wind blew past her. Pummel quickly shielded the nearest candle with his hands, and although all the others were snuffed out, it was not. The cat flattened herself against the bed, her fur bristling.
By rights, no wind should have been able to find its way through the thick stone walls of the Keep. And even if it had, it should never have got as far as this room on the fourth floor.
But this was no ordinary wind. It was bitterly cold, and it made the hackles rise on Duckling’s neck. It reminded her of a dream where she had wrestled with an old woman, knowing that if she lost, something terrible would happen.
‘The Black Wind,’ she whispered. ‘It’s come for Sooli.’
‘Deeeathhh,’ hissed the cat.
‘No!’ cried Pummel, still protecting their only light. ‘We can’t let it take her. Duckling, can’t you make it go away? Tell it she’s not ready or something?’
