‘Wait!’ came a cry, from more than one onlooker. It was enough to delay the final attack and in those moments the boy knew at last who was about to take his life. It was Damon, there was no doubt now. Fergus stared up into the features that had burned into the back of his eyeballs: the black hair, the soft round eyes that so cruelly masked the evil in his soul. It was a face that men trusted and all too readily accepted as their leader.
He could see Damon’s face because the hood had fallen back onto his shoulders during the fight, and it was this piece of luck that saved Fergus’s life.
‘What’s this?’ called the innkeeper. ‘You’re dressed like a woman, yet you fight like a man. You certainly look like one. Which are you then, man or woman?’
‘I’m a man, you fool,’ Damon growled as he raised the sword again above the helpless boy.
‘Well then, man against boy is hardly a fair fight. There’s no call to go killing him, even if he drew steel first, so you can just put away that sword,’ the innkeeper commanded coolly, adding with deliberate emphasis, ‘under your dress.’
His words brought a snigger from the crowd which was closing in.
‘What do you say, friends?’ the innkeeper appealed to them. ‘A man in woman’s clothing should explain himself, don’t you think?’
Here was Fergus’s chance. He raised himself up on one elbow, but his head swam violently and before he could say a single word he turned aside and retched into the mud. The effort drained the last of his energy and he flopped onto his back, looking at the sky. A face came into view, thankfully not Damon’s. Three, then four, then five people were staring down at him, sympathetically, it seemed. ‘Poor fellow’s hurt his head, by the look of things,’ said one of them and then the view went black.
FERGUS HEARD HIS NAME being called and felt again the cold stones under his bottom, which meant he wasn’t fighting Damon, but fixing fences in a chilly field.
‘Are you asleep there, Fergus?’ The farmer chased away the last of his reverie with a gentle poke in the shoulder. ‘Come on, time to finish the job.’
Fergus jumped down from the wall and, with the broth warm in his stomach and his limbs refreshed by the rest, set to work again.
‘You’re stronger now than when you first arrived,’ said his companion. ‘Much taller too, by the width of my hand, I’d guess,’ and he held his palm open to show the measure.
Had he grown that much? Fergus had no way of judging. He thought little of what others saw when they looked at him. If he did, he would have taken more care with his pale brown hair and smiled more to make up for such a narrow mouth. Beneath the muddy smears though, the skin of his face was smooth and his cheeks flushed a healthy pink by exertion. If he was still at court in Elster, the young serving girls would have stared at him with dreams in their eyes.
By mid-afternoon, the stone fences were rebuilt and the pair returned to the cottage. ‘I’ll get the wood in,’ said Fergus without being reminded, but first he went to visit a friend in the barn.
Gadfly greeted him with a snort. A chain was locked around her neck and attached to a hook in the wall. Except when the farmer used her to pull his cart into the nearby village, she had remained here throughout the winter. Captivity didn’t suit her and this thought touched a tender wound in Fergus’s heart. He hadn’t planned to spend the winter on this farm. He’d only come here to avoid being seen in Grenvey’s capital. He smoothed his hands along Gadfly’s flanks and hoped his own discomfort didn’t make her feel any worse at being confined here.
Such emotion stirred more memories, and without even being aware of how his mind wandered Fergus closed his eyes, bringing the same blackness he remembered from the inn where Damon had come so close to killing him. Out on the wall, he’d lost all sense of where he was and had thought only of the past. Here in the barn, he lost himself again in his memories, scenes so vivid in his mind that he was back there, living them again.
HE DIDN’T KNOW HOW long he remained unconscious but when he opened his eyes at last he found himself lying in a cot with clean sheets. A pair of kindly eyes was staring down at him.
‘What happened?’ he asked, trying to sit up.
‘Don’t be in such a hurry to be on your feet,’ a smiling woman insisted. ‘You’ve got a bump like a goose’s egg on your forehead. Best you stay lying there for a while longer.’
‘But the man —’
‘Yes, he was a man, wasn’t he,’ she said with a wry smirk. ‘My husband proved that for all to see. Made him a laughing stock and forced him to change into britches and a jacket.’
‘Your husband is the innkeeper then. I should thank him. Damon was going to kill me.’
‘Damon! Is that the rogue’s name? He gave another to the men who questioned him.’
‘Is he still here in the inn?’ Fergus asked. He looked round frantically. ‘Where’s my sword?’
‘You are a curious one.’ The innkeeper’s wife stared at him with a look that was half admiration and half amusement. ‘Your sword is safe with my husband, but the man you were so determined to fight has gone in the coach to the capital.’
He told her how he must go after the man but she simply shook her head. ‘Why are you so keen to let him kill you? That’s what will happen if you catch up with him again. You’re no match for a man of his strength.’
No matter how Fergus pleaded, she wouldn’t listen. When, finally, he tried to stand up, the dizziness returned and the woman had no difficulty pushing him back down again.
By the next day, Damon was long gone, but at least Fergus knew where to look for him. Reluctantly, the innkeeper returned his sword and with Gadfly retrieved from the stables where she’d spent the night, Fergus waited only until they were outside the village before he slipped the leather pouch around her neck.
Without a map, he was forced to follow the road. What the travellers below thought of a horse and a boy high above their heads he couldn’t tell. Certainly the young children who witnessed their landing in a field a mile short of the capital made their feelings plain. They ran off in terror.
By mid-afternoon Gadfly was once again a horse like every other and Fergus began his search. But this was a city the size of Elstenwyck, with hundreds of places a man could hide. Two days passed without a sign of Damon and by then Fergus had new problems to deal with. He’d already spent the few coins in his pockets and both he and Gadfly were famished.
He wandered into the marketplace, hoping that one of the many stallholders might take pity on him and offer an apple or a hank of bread. No luck on that score, he soon discovered, but then he saw something that chased away his hunger. A drawing of Damon’s face was being nailed to a post in the centre of the teeming square.
‘Wanted for treason in the kingdom of Elster,’ announced the town crier as people began to gather. ‘This man is our enemy too. The King of Grenvey wants him captured so’s he can hand him over to his friend and ally, King Pelham.’
‘That’ll flush Damon out of his bolt hole,’ Fergus whispered to Gadfly, but the town crier wasn’t finished yet. His assistant was unfurling a second hand-drawn poster and together they tacked it below the first.
‘The king wants this young lad found as well. He’s not a felon and he’s not to be harmed. Bring him to the king and receive a gold florin for your trouble,’ the town crier announced.
Fergus didn’t need to see the second poster to know whose face it showed. As the bodies pushed past him for a closer look, he mounted Gadfly and turned her in the opposite direction. A gold florin! They would all want to hand him in. But he couldn’t go back to Elster. Not yet. He had to find Damon first.
He fled through the city gates, and attaching the pouch to Gadfly’s neck once more, urged her into the air towards the more isolated parts of Grenvey. The wind whipped at his jacket, a biting wind that chilled his cheeks and spoke of the changing seasons. They flew on until, just before sundown, the farmland of Grenvey ended abruptly and the forest began.
‘
Down there. We’ll hide among the trees while I decide what to do,’ Fergus ordered.
It was as cold in the forest as it had been among the clouds. Without a fire and with an empty, grumbling stomach, Fergus huddled against a tree trunk and tried to sleep. This wasn’t how he’d envisaged his heroic pursuit of Damon. As he drifted into a half-sleep, the words of the innkeeper’s wife came back to him. Why are you so keen to let him kill you? You’re no match for a man of his strength.
In his dream he heard the clash of steel and the pain as the hilt of his sword struck his forehead. He awoke with a start and looked down at the sword that lay in the dirt beside him. Don’t think about the danger, he told himself. He would find Damon, he’d never give up, and this pledge filled him with equal parts of a reckless courage and sheer terror.
It was barely midnight when Gadfly began to dance uneasily, waking him a second time. ‘What is it? Are there wolves?’
Gadfly turned a full circle, her eyes wide and the muscles beneath her hide twitching nervously. When Fergus approached, arm outstretched to stroke her nose, she pulled away. After a few backward steps, the horse started away through the trees, drawing Fergus after her. She stopped only long enough for Fergus to catch up and once he was just a few paces behind, she set off again. In this way, they soon reached the limit of the trees and stumbled out into the moonlight. There, in the open, the horse’s skittishness disappeared and she seemed content to nibble grass at the edge of the field. So that was all she wanted, Fergus thought, a midnight snack!
Dawn found him shivering and chasing away dreams of a warm bed in the way a farmer shoos rabbits from his cabbages. Just the thought of rabbits and even cabbages was enough to make his stomach complain more loudly than ever. He’d gladly eat either, cold and raw.
A farmhouse stood in the distance, a column of blue smoke showing that at least someone was warm, with a breakfast cooking on the stove. He rode Gadfly to the door and asked the woman who answered his knock if she could spare a bowl of porridge.
‘Anyone who can afford to ride is hardly a beggar,’ she answered with a sniff. ‘If you’re so hungry, go into the village and sell your horse.’
Fergus put on his most pleading face but she remained stony-hearted. More than that, she kept the door half closed as though afraid he would see inside.
Probably hiding a well-stocked larder, Fergus decided as he led Gadfly back into the trees. Here they waited, until at midday the woman set out to take lunch to the farmer whom Fergus could see far away across the fields. ‘Let’s see what she’s hiding,’ he muttered as he guided Gadfly towards the house once more.
The door yielded easily and he found himself inside a cosy room warmed by a glow in the fireplace. Near the fire, but not close enough to be in danger, lay a cot with a baby fast asleep inside. Careful not to wake the little thing, Fergus took a pork pie and two loaves of bread from the pantry, and, remembering the cold night, a blanket from the bed in the corner. Is thieving always so easy, he thought, and with his arms full he headed for the door.
But the door was already open and the space filled with the stout figure of a neighbour who’d chosen this moment to visit.
Only Fergus’s sword would get him free. He reached for it, but first he had to drop the blanket and the loaves of bread. Alas, by then the man had seized his collar and yanked the sword from his belt. Before he could even call out in protest, he was dragged out into the farmyard and tossed into the mud where he lay with his own blade held to his throat.
The farmer and his wife saw the commotion and came running. ‘What’s this, Birdie?’
‘I came to visit you, Stig, and found robbery going on.’
The farmer’s wife gave a frightened yell and rushed into the house. She was back in an instant, though her grim expression hadn’t changed. ‘Arabella’s still sleeping, but he must have seen her.’
All three glared at Fergus. ‘Wouldn’t take no for an answer,’ the woman sneered at him. ‘Well, you’ll pay for your stubbornness.’
‘Is that right, boy?’ the farmer demanded. Fergus had picked out his name, despite the disadvantage of lying on his back in the mud. It was Stig, and surprisingly he seemed the calmest of the three.
‘Yes, I was stealing some food. I haven’t eaten for three days. And I was taking a blanket too. It’s cold and I have nowhere to sleep.’
‘There, guilty by his own tongue,’ the man called Birdie crowed. ‘And on top of that, you have me for a witness. You know what that means. You can kill him here and now and not have to answer to a soul.’
Fergus didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Don’t you have to take me to a judge first?’
Birdie’s face crinkled into a self-satisfied grin. ‘I can tell by your accent you’re a foreigner. Let me educate you about Grenvey’s laws. For crimes like this, the victim can do what he likes with the culprit. Here, Stig,’ he urged, handing the farmer Fergus’s sword, ‘run him through and I’ll help you bury him.’
The farmer looked towards his wife.
‘Kill him,’ she snapped. ‘He saw Arabella. If you take him into the village, he might tell someone before they hang him.’
What’s going on here, Fergus wondered with rising panic. It seemed he was going to die not because he’d stolen from them, but because he’d seen the little girl asleep by the fire. Should he tell them about the gold florin they’d get if they handed him over to Grenvey’s king? Looking into the faces of Birdie and the farmer’s wife, he doubted it would make any difference.
The farmer, Stig, stood examining the sword in his hands. ‘Well made,’ he commented. ‘It’s been used not so long ago too, by the look of it.’
He took a firm grip of the hilt, making Fergus wriggle back as far as he could in the mud until Birdie pressed a heavy boot onto his chest. Fergus’s eyes remained glued to the shimmering blade. Stig raised it a short way then shoved it point down into the soft ground.
‘I saw enough death when I was a soldier,’ he said. ‘Besides, this thief you’ve caught for me, Birdie, he’s barely more than a child and there’s been too many dead children in these parts. Let him up.’
Reluctantly, Birdie hauled Fergus to his feet. ‘What will you do with him then? You can’t just let him go off on that horse.’
The farmer scratched his stubbly chin and thought a moment. ‘No, he’ll pay. He’ll work off his debt on the farm. I could do with some help on those fences, and the horse can pull my plough in the spring.’
‘But he’ll run off first chance he gets,’ Stig’s mean-spirited wife protested.
‘Not if I chain his ankle to a lump of iron.’
Birdie and the farmer’s wife seemed satisfied with this, but not Fergus. He had to find Damon before the trail went cold.
‘I don’t mind paying my due, but I heard you say ploughing in the spring. That’s months away and I can’t stay here that long. I’ve got places to go.’
The farmer rested his hand on the sword that stood jammed into the mud beside him. ‘I wasn’t thinking of just a few months, lad. Since your penalty might have been death, you should be pleased if I let you go in a couple of years.’
GADFLY HAD GROWN TIRED of Fergus’s hands smoothing her coat and with a snort and a shiver along her flanks, she brought him back to the present. He blinked in the half light of the barn and had to look around for a few seconds before he could remember where he was.
Half a year had passed since he’d first set foot on this farm and except for rare visits to the village he hadn’t left it since. How was he going to find Damon now?
CHAPTER 4
The Nature and Magic of Curses
‘NICOLA! NICOLA, COME AND see this!’
Marcel’s excitement carried him along the corridor like an eager puppy, bringing quizzical looks from two maids who carried clean sheets from the laundry. When he reached his sister’s door, it opened to reveal a sleepy face.
‘You’d better not let the chancellor hear you calling that name. What’s so im
portant at this time in the morning anyway?’
He grabbed her hand and tugged her into the corridor. ‘I’ve been up all night reading and it’s paid off. I’ve found a way to make Father trust us.’
Nicola came awake rapidly and followed him back to his room where a book lay open on his desk beside the window. ‘It’s called The Nature and Magic of Curses,’ he told her breathlessly.
‘Looks like every other book in the room, the ones you’ve been complaining about for months,’ she said. ‘What’s so special about this one?’
‘Well, for one thing it was written by the Grand Master of Noam.’
Nicola stared at him blankly.
‘Noam! Everyone knows about Noam. It’s famous for its wizards.’
‘Famous among other wizards maybe. I’ve never heard of it.’
Marcel blew out a long breath in exasperation. ‘It’s an island a long way from here. Doesn’t belong to any kingdom in particular but to all of them. Apprentices can go there to learn more of the sorcerer’s arts from the master magicians who live there. The greatest wizard from across the Mortal Kingdoms is chosen to be their leader. He’s known as the Grand Master.’
‘And he wrote this book,’ said Nicola, beginning to understand his enthusiasm.
‘Yes, his name is Denulde. Maybe he knew Lord Alwyn, maybe he gave him this book, I don’t know, but there’s his name,’ said Marcel, pointing out the words on the first page. ‘He wrote all of these spells, and one of them is going to solve our problems with Father and the chancellor and everyone else in the palace who doesn’t trust us. Look at this.’
Marcel pointed to the open pages and let his sister read uninterrupted until she straightened at last and turned a pale and solemn face towards him.
‘It’s horrible, Marcel. Boils over every inch of the skin, teeth rotting in the gums and, after a year of torment, madness and death.’
‘It has to be horrible. That’s the point. It’s punishment for killing your parents.’
Nicola shrugged. ‘A curse like that isn’t going to make any difference to Fergus. We both know he’d never hurt Father.’
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