Tamlyn

by James Moloney

  Dedication

  For Frank and Betty

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1 Greystone Harbour

  2 Waterspouts and Weakness

  3 Alive and Dying

  4 Dreams

  5 The Road Home

  6 Haywode

  7 Desolate Days

  8 In the House of Coyle Strongbow

  9 Stranger with a Familiar Name

  10 The Felan

  11 An Odd Contraption

  12 In the Cavern of Old Bones

  13 Departure

  14 Keeping Watch

  15 Secrets Uncovered

  16 The City of Lost Souls

  17 No-Man’s-Land

  18 A Stranger in My Arms

  19 Steel and Stone

  20 In the Streets of Vonne

  21 Blood on the Straw

  22 The Power of the Commonfolk

  Lucien ad

  Silvermay ad

  The Book series ad

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  My name is Silvermay Hawker, I am sixteen years old and I am in love.

  The man who lives in every beat of my heart has battles to fight against an evil that grows like a foul weed throughout our homeland. If he were simply a warrior it would be easier, but my love is a Wyrdborn, which means the same weed lives inside him. By rights, I should have nothing to do with him, yet I ache to be with him, to hear his voice and see his face, to touch his skin with the tips of my fingers and feel the warmth of his smile. His name is Tamlyn Strongbow, and we will only be happy together if he can free himself from the curse of his blood.

  I have known Tamlyn only this last summer, since the day he came by chance to Haywode, seeking shelter. His face was hidden from me at first, but once he threw back the hood of his cape and stared at me across the candle-lit interior of my home, I could think of no one else.

  I am back in Haywode now, after months of travelling and hardship. When he left Haywode as suddenly as he had arrived, I went with him. On the day I waved farewell to my parents, I was just a girl, but I have come back a woman. What makes such a change? Love, perhaps? It has played its part, but the wide world seems all too eager to crush such feelings in commonfolk like me. Harsh decisions have to be made and out of them can come cold-blooded acts. On my journey, I killed two men. They were deaths I could not avoid, for in both cases I had to take a life to save the friends who depended on me. I have heard it said that a killer’s hands can never be washed of the blood they have spilled, but it’s not true. I suffer no nightmares of remorse; I would do the same if such dangers were forced upon me again. Yes, I am a woman now, the equal of any man.

  You should know this about me, too: a powerful man wants me dead. Little more than a week ago, a soldier stood with his sword raised above my neck, ready to grant the man’s wish. If this were a fairytale, then it would have been Tamlyn who saved me, scooping me up in his arms and carrying me off to the happiness of ever after. The truth is less romantic, I’m afraid. I escaped with my life, and I am grateful for that, but the man who ordered my death stole away something I value even more: a baby boy named Lucien.

  This is the story of how Tamlyn and I try to get him back. If our tale ceases suddenly, then you will know that I died trying.

  1

  Greystone Harbour

  Beneath the billowing fog, the water of Greystone Harbour was a sheet of darkened glass, somewhere green, in other places black as pitch. Even where the oily colours touched the stone of the jetty and kissed the hull of the rowing boat at the base of the stairs, there were no waves, no gentle lapping, to challenge the hungry silence.

  Would I have heard such sounds anyway? My ears strained towards one thing only: a name spoken out of the mist. As I stared down into the boat, at a tiny figure standing expectantly in the bow, it came.

  ‘Maymay.’

  It was a little boy who spoke. Only two months old, he should have lain helplessly on his back, his arms waving, his pudgy legs kicking, his only voice the grunts and squeals an infant makes without knowing why. But this was Lucien and he was no ordinary child. Already able to stand, he was now proving his tongue was as precocious as his legs, even if he couldn’t quite manage my full name. I had always loved the lyrical name, which was a special gift from my parents — silver as my mother came from among the miners of Nan Tocha, and may because my father was a farmer who loved that precious month, free of late frosts yet unspoiled by the fierce heat of summer.

  Lucien was not alone in the rowing boat. In the stern stood Coyle Strongbow, a man who, until only minutes before, had been known to me by another name altogether. Miston Dessar, he had called himself: part of a cruel trick to win my confidence. Trusting him as I did, I had passed Lucien into his hands and into his care before the ruse was revealed.

  Two of Coyle’s soldiers had pushed me to my knees, ready to hack my head from my shoulders. Now one of those soldiers lay dead at my feet and the other had fled. I had been saved by Lucien and the fledgling magic that I feared almost as much as I loved his smile. From out in the harbour, Lucien had choked my executioner with a simple act of his will and then commanded the boat back towards the jetty using the same raw force. No wonder Coyle watched in silent awe. It was this power, which would grow a thousandfold as Lucien became older, that he planned to set loose on the kingdom until every man bowed down before him.

  ‘May,’ Lucien called again, melting my heart. ‘Maymay,’ and he held his little arms out towards me as every child does when he wants comfort. I was not his mother, but the bond between us was every bit as strong.

  I jumped over the corpse at my feet and made my way quickly down the short flight of stairs, my own arms ready to scoop him up. Too late! Before I could reach across from the bottom step, Coyle used an oar to push the boat away from the jetty, just enough to thwart me.

  ‘Maymay,’ said Lucien and he began to cry.

  Although I could only guess at what was happening, he seemed to use the power of his will to draw the boat back towards me. It wasn’t enough. Coyle had powers of his own and as yet the boy was no match for him. With my precious Lucien standing in the bow, the boat disappeared into the mist. I heard him calling ever more frantically, his voice growing fainter and fainter until finally the grey shroud swallowed it entirely.

  I might have slumped down in misery if the sound of running feet hadn’t made me turn. The approaching figure was little more than an outline in the murky air of morning, but I would have known it anywhere. My Tamlyn was still alive!

  I climbed the steps to wait for him and in only three more bounds he was there. He let the sword in his hand clatter onto the jetty and opened his arms wide. I didn’t hesitate.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ he whispered as I pressed myself against him. ‘A new sensation for me. I’ve never felt the pain of absence; wishing someone was close by so that I could speak to her, or just look up and find her there.’

  We hadn’t been together for almost two weeks, and during that time Coyle, under the guise of Miston Dessar, had almost convinced me that Tamlyn had betrayed me from the beginning.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I cried into the warmth of his vest. ‘I’m sorry I doubted you.’

  Of course, he didn’t know what I was talking about. I would need an entire day to explain and there wasn’t time. I broke away and searched behind him for pursuers.

  ‘The others?’ I asked.

  Tamlyn’s half-brother, Hallig, had already attacked once, and he had brought a companion with him, another Wyrdborn, to tip the scales in their favour.

  Tamlyn glanced over his shoulder, but with the nonchalance of someone who knows there will be nothing to see.


  ‘There were two of them, and only you to fight them,’ I said.

  ‘They should have got the better of me, it’s true. If we’d all been commonfolk, then they would have, but they are Wyrdborn — they didn’t trust one another. Neither wanted to give the other an advantage by coming at me and putting himself at risk, and in the end that was my advantage.’

  ‘Are they dead?’

  He shook his head. ‘That is Hallig’s sword on the ground, and I could have killed him with it given the chance, but my brother is a coward, Silvermay. When the battle didn’t go his way, he wouldn’t risk a fatal wound.’

  ‘But the other one — will he come after you again?’

  He put a finger to my lips to stop my fretting. ‘I had no weapon to kill him with, but that doesn’t mean the sword didn’t nip his flesh when he got careless. There’s only so much pain a Wyrdborn will endure before he retreats to heal his wounds.’

  We were safe from those two then, but a far bigger threat lay hidden in the mist behind me.

  ‘Coyle has taken Lucien. We have to go after them, Tamlyn. They’re out there on the harbour.’

  ‘Not for long,’ he said. ‘There’s a ship waiting offshore. I saw its lamps as I made my way along the shore before dawn. We have to stop Coyle before he reaches it.’

  A dozen rowing boats were tethered to the jetty. With Hallig’s sword retrieved from the ground, Tamlyn jumped into the first we came to, reaching for the oars as I took my place on the bow seat. As soon as I was settled, he slashed the painter rather than loosen the knot, and with the weapon set aside so that it didn’t get in the way, he rowed us into the mist.

  Mist isn’t a strong enough word to describe the pillows of grey that swirled around us, like the breath of a dozing dragon yet despite the ominous air of foreboding, the scene was as beautiful in its eerie way as summer clouds.

  Cupping my hands to my mouth, I shouted, ‘Lucien!’

  ‘Hush,’ Tamlyn snapped over his shoulder. He was facing the stern while he rowed. ‘You’ll let Coyle know where we are.’

  I felt foolish and told myself to think before I did anything rash like that again.

  Tamlyn stroked powerfully, searching as much of the harbour as he could and pausing every half-minute to listen.

  ‘Somewhere in all this grey is the gap in the harbour wall,’ he said. ‘If we find it before Coyle does, we can stop him reaching the open sea and the ship he has waiting.’

  So there was hope, after all. The best thing I could do now was to stay perfectly silent, even inside my head, in order to pick out the smallest sound. Not long after, this strategy seemed to pay off.

  ‘Over there,’ I whispered, pointing when Tamlyn turned.

  He nodded to show he had heard it, too: not the lapping of water against the seawall, but the squeak of an oarlock and the dull slap of an oar entering the water.

  Careful to avoid noise of our own, Tamlyn turned the boat in the direction I’d pointed and slowly we glided closer. I strained for a glimpse of Lucien in the bow of Coyle’s boat until the fog parted suddenly and there, thirty yards away, the dark shape of a hull began to emerge.

  ‘We’ve found them,’ I hissed.

  Tamlyn ignored me, with eyes only for the boat as more of it became visible. I did the same, and a second breath across the water’s surface revealed the boat’s occupants: not the man who’d betrayed me and the little boy I loved, but two men I had never seen before. They had seen us as well by now and instantly one of them stood up, crossbow in hand, and took aim. Before I could cry out a warning, the bolt was on its way.

  I expected to feel its deadly sting before I could drop behind the side of the boat. Luck was with me, though, for the bolt didn’t find me, but my head and hip ached where they’d banged so violently against the unforgiving wood. Tamlyn was facing me, sprawled as low as he could manage across the benches. I poked my eyes over the side to see if the men were coming closer, but the fog had closed its grey curtain over everything as quickly as it had pulled it aside.

  ‘Keep your head down, Silvermay. There’ll be more shots coming even if they can’t see us.’

  Tamlyn twisted onto his stomach to reach for the sword that lay in the bottom of the boat and immediately I gasped. ‘The arrow!’

  It hadn’t missed, after all. Tamlyn had thrown himself in front of me and now the arrow protruded obscenely from his back.

  ‘Is it in deep?’ he asked as though it were no more than a splinter.

  I had seen what an arrow from my father’s longbow could do to a deer, and even to a wild boar, which had hide like a poor man’s armour. At such close range, the shaft should have been buried a foot into Tamlyn’s flesh, but that wasn’t the case.

  ‘Only a couple of inches,’ I said, relieved.

  He could tell what I was thinking. ‘You know how the magic works, Silvermay. If the crossbow had been mine, you would have a dead man for company. Thankfully, my Wyrdborn flesh stopped the head before it could penetrate any deeper.’

  What a strange feeling it was to hate the magic born into his bones when the same magic had just kept him alive — but that was how I felt.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d rather feel the kiss of a pretty girl on my lips than an arrow in my back. It will hurt even more when you pull it out.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Well, I can’t reach it, and I don’t see anyone else in this boat.’

  ‘But the arrow head will tear you open on the way out.’

  ‘I can’t do much with an arrow sticking out of me like a porcupine’s quill. You must pull it out.’

  Every muscle in my body shuddered in revolt. My mother, Birdie, was a healer. When her patients groaned and cried as she set their broken bones or stitched wounds, she told them, I have to do what’s good for you and afterwards you’ll thank me. Despite their curses, they did thank her — when it was over. But I wasn’t my mother.

  Tamlyn glanced over his shoulder and saw my ashen face. ‘Do it, Silvermay, and hurry. Every moment you delay gives Coyle more time to get Lucien onto that ship.’

  Well, since he put it that way.

  I took hold of the shaft with both hands. He winced.

  ‘Ease it up and down and from side to side,’ he ordered, then groaned when I obeyed. But the arrow was slowly backing out of his flesh. The bright red of his blood darkened an inch of the shaft. When it had come out altogether, there would be so much more. This was something I had learned from my mother: that it wasn’t the arrow or sword that killed, but the loss of the blood that gushed out when the weapon was removed.

  Two inches of bloodied shaft showed now, then three, and with a final tug and a cry of anguish from Tamlyn, the barbed head came free. I clamped the hem of my dress over the wound since it was the only cloth I had to staunch the blood flow.

  He tried to move away, but I pressed down with my free hand on his shoulder. ‘You must stay still until the bleeding stops.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘You can take your hand away.’

  When I ignored him, he simply stood, as though the weight of my hand was nothing at all, and returned to the oarsman’s seat. I expected to see blood streaming from the wound and spreading over his vest in a deadly stain, but there was no more than a dot here and there where a little had dropped from the shaft as I pulled on it. He didn’t seem to have bled at all.

  ‘Get down low in the boat like before,’ he commanded.

  I was slow to act until another bolt from the crossbow flew out of the mist and thudded into the hull of the boat. He didn’t have to tell me a second time. I certainly didn’t want him to pull an arrow out of my body!

  ‘What about you?’ I whispered, seeing he made no effort to protect himself in the same way.

  ‘I’ll take my chances.’

  ‘How do they know where we are?’

  ‘They don’t. They’re firing blind, guessing from the sounds they pick up.’

  He put his finger to his
lips and focused his concentration on the swirling mist where the arrow had come from. Another followed, overshooting this time and ten yards wide, but that hardly eased my fear. I couldn’t bear to watch him exposed this way.

  Tamlyn studied where the third arrow had landed in the water, tracing a line from that point back into the clouds. A fourth bolt whistled out of the fog, missing him by inches. He didn’t flinch. Instead he kept his eyes steadfastly on the direction the arrow had come from and asked me to pass up the sword he’d laid aside while rowing.

  He took it from me without releasing his eyes from their intense vigil. Then, standing, he drew the sword back over his shoulder and threw it into the mist. It tumbled end over end like an enormous dagger, slicing through the air. There came a shrill cry and then a splash.

  I couldn’t resist a peek over the gunwale, but there was still nothing to see.

  Tamlyn quickly got the oars working, taking us towards the stifled cry. ‘Stay down,’ he warned me and I complied, for a few seconds, anyway.

  When I raised my head up again, I saw the other boat as a dark shadow not so far away. It emerged more clearly as Tamlyn rowed us ahead. There was only one man in the boat now. He was staring over the side in horror, and when we drew closer still, I could see why. His companion lay floating on his back, the sword protruding from his chest.

  The sound of dipping oars finally reached our quarry and, looking up, he found us bearing down on him fast. It struck me then that we had no weapon, while he sported a sword at his belt. But battles are won by more than weapons. The fellow took one look at Tamlyn and leapt out of the boat. He must have dived deep because there was no sign of him until he broke the surface twenty yards away, and only long enough for a gulp of air. Then he was down again and we saw no more of him.