Sisters of the Fire

by Kim Wilkins

  ‘Bluebell came by,’ she said. ‘She is in Tweoning.’

  Hakon continued eating the dark bread and cheese. He didn’t blink. ‘Did you kill her with Griðbani?’

  ‘You know I didn’t. You know I can’t. Not yet.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, giving her his nightmarish grin. ‘But part of me hoped.’

  ‘I need to leave Tweoning. She will set spies upon me, I will be discovered … I don’t know what she intends for me. You must take me to Is-hjarta.’

  ‘Must I?’

  ‘Yes. Maava’s angels told me.’

  ‘So it’s their decision?’

  ‘It’s my decision. If Bluebell is looking for me in Tweoning, she is looking for me everywhere else. But not in Is-hjarta.’ She fell to her knees in front of him. ‘My life does not unfold at random, Hakon. My life is carefully planned by Maava. It is time for us to go to Is-hjarta, and it is time for you to return to face your brother.’

  Hakon shrugged. ‘I’d rather not see his face. His back will do nicely.’

  ‘Will you take me?’

  ‘We will need to get to a port, and we will need a ship.’

  Willow thought quickly, then said, ‘My sister is the duchess of Sæcaster. She will help us.’ It had been many years since she had seen Ivy, but she had never borne any great love for Bluebell either. Just as they had shared a womb, they had also shared a childhood a long way from Blicstowe. Willow was certain she could trust Ivy. Almost certain.

  ‘Sæcaster it is, then,’ Hakon said. ‘When do you want to go?’

  ‘In the morning. At dawn before everyone is awake, looking for me. I will speak to the stablehands now and have it all ready.’ She offered him her hand and he took it firmly.

  ‘We have a saying in Is-hjarta,’ he said, and then turned to his own language, with its strange, rough sibiliance.

  ‘And what does that mean?’ she asked.

  ‘Although the sky is cold in the Heart of Ice, the blood is fiery in the hearts of the bold. My blood is on fire, Willow. It tells me our Becoming is upon us.’

  Willow didn’t believe in the heathen idea of ‘Becoming’, but she did believe in Maava’s grand plan.

  ‘My blood is on fire too,’ she said. ‘I am burning up.’

  Ash stood at the end of a narrow finger of rock that pointed out into the green-blue ocean under the warm sun and a moist, salty breeze. She travelled along the coast a little further every day, hunting in caves and then, when she could no longer stand their lightless dankness, she would come out and stand here at the ocean and practise pushing the water in and out.

  The place where she stood had been underwater just ten minutes before. She clutched it with the fist of her mind, a feat that made her eyes and nose sting as though she had inhaled seawater. Ash was tiring now, and was starting to loosen her grip when the wind rippled over the rockpool at her feet, making the sun catch an iridescent object.

  Another dragon scale?

  Ash ducked to pick it up, lost the tide, and managed to close her fingertips over the scale just as the water came thundering back over her, choking and blinding her.

  Bubbles rushing past her ears as, in green darkness, she struggled to work out which way was up. In panic, she forgot she could call for aid, but the little hands reached for her nonetheless, pushing her towards the surface, where she grabbed a breath and found the shore with her eyes, before she plunged under again. She half-paddled, half-walked until her head was above the water, then waded out, pushed in the back repeatedly by waves, onto the grey beach.

  She sat, sand crusting her skirt, and caught her breath. Even with the warm sun on her, she was cold and dripping and it was a long walk back to the chapel.

  But she opened her fist and there was the dragon scale, identical to the first. Pearly white if looked at directly, with a sheen of gold appearing if she turned it towards the sun. While it didn’t tell her where the dragon was, it did reassure her that her strategy of searching to the south was justified. Now here she was, sodden and three miles of coastline from the chapel. She started walking.

  And the thought came to her: she didn’t have to stay in the chapel. She could collect her things and leave and make her way further and further south until she found the dragon. Unweder had been gone for days and she assumed now that he had died and his borrowed body, with no spirit to hold it together, had simply vanished.

  Many times she had imagined being free of Unweder, but she had never imagined it would happen so suddenly and mysteriously. Nor had she imagined how alone she would feel, here at the quiet edge of Thyrsland.

  Once back at the chapel, she changed into dry clothes and hung her wet ones outside in the sun. The prickling scalp was back, and this was a terrible disappointment since she’d thought perhaps it had stopped forever. Ash sat on her blankets to study the dragon scale in the sunshine that fell through the open shutter. The light passed through it and made a tiny rainbow on the grey cloth. She turned it this way and that, then gathered up her cloak and picked open the hem – heavy now with the weight of softly clattering sea gifts – and inserted the new scale.

  Ash was sewing, head bent over the hem, finishing off the last stitch, when the door to the chapel slammed open.

  She looked up, shrieked, scrambled back on her hands. A stocky man stood there, broad across the shoulders and forehead, thick black hair and eyebrows, all dressed in black. He had huge hands with black hair springing rudely from the knuckles.

  ‘Who are you?’ she gasped.

  ‘Don’t you recognise me, Ash?’ he said, in a gruff voice.

  No, she didn’t recognise him, but at the same time she did, because she already knew before he said, ‘It’s me, Unweder.’

  He stepped into the chapel in his new body, and she noticed he was unsteady on his feet, unfocussed in his gaze. His skin was grey and mottled.

  ‘Are you well?’ she asked, climbing to her feet. ‘You look –’

  ‘Like a new man!’ he bellowed. ‘A new man at last. I cast off that broken body and –’ He stopped, a perplexed expression crossing his brow as if he had suddenly forgotten where he was. Then he looked at her face and a cruel smile curled his lips. ‘You are the girl with the blood.’

  Ash’s veins cooled. Her scalp and skull felt as though lightning were zigzagging across them and she realised in an instant that the sensation had always been Unweder. Of course it had: a weasel in among her thoughts. With an effort she shook him out of her head. ‘Old friend, remember yourself.’

  ‘I had a …’ He trailed off, patted himself around the neck, and she knew he was remembering the obsidian amulet with a few drops of her blood – willingly given – that had kept his last body from rotting away around him. From the smell, it seemed this body was rapidly heading the same way.

  ‘I will help you again if I can,’ she said, frightened now, because the way he was staring at her told her she was not a human to him, but an object.

  He leapt on her and, unlike the old Unweder, with his palsied hand and ruined eye, he was strong and vigorous and he sat across her ribs and grasped her wrists with one huge hand, withdrawing a knife from his belt with the other. This close, she could see contusions flowering around his neck, as though he had been strangled.

  ‘No, Unweder. Not like this.’

  Her sleeves had fallen towards her elbows and she saw with horror that he was about to slash her right wrist. She twisted her arm in the hopes that he would miss the thick vein. During her studies, she had seen how quickly someone could bleed to death if that vein was cut.

  ‘Help me!’ she called to her elementals. Instantly, the wind picked up, banged the shutter closed, began to tear at his clothes and hair.

  ‘Too late!’ he cried, slicing out, and blood began to pulse out of her and run down her arm. His knife clattered to the ground and he caught some of her blood in one of the vials he used for his potions. The wind tore through the chapel, lifting the wood of the roof, but Unweder was right: it was too late.
He had what he wanted and now blood was pouring from her.

  Unweder stood and the wind instantly knocked him off his feet, slammed the door open and picked up the corner of her cloak. Ash seized the cloak, wrapped it hard around her wrist and stumbled from the chapel.

  She ran. He tried to run after her but the wind kept pushing him back. She half slid down the cliff path and crunched along the beach, great spurts of blood leaving a trail behind her. Her eyes grew dim. She looked up at the sky, willing herself not to faint. If she fainted she wouldn’t be able to help herself. On the wind, she could hear Unweder calling her name, over and over again …

  Fifteen

  Skalmir woke with a start. At first he was disoriented, thinking it must be morning. But the streaky light above the trees told him it was still night, perhaps a few hours before midnight, and he had only been asleep a few minutes. Something had woken him. He listened hard, heard footsteps. Just one set. He reached for his bow and arrow, climbed into a crouch and silently, silently, pulled himself behind a sturdy chestnut tree. The footsteps were coming towards him. Whoever it was, they would see his blankets, the remains of his fire, and they would know he was nearby. He loaded an arrow into the bowstring, pulled it taut, waited.

  A woman emerged between two oaks, dressed in a dark red cloak, her long dark hair flowing over her shoulders. This was no woodlander. She saw his camp and froze.

  Skalmir stepped out from behind cover, his arrow still trained on her. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  She reached under her cloak and a moment later a blinding flash overwhelmed his senses, sending him reeling into the trunk of the tree behind him. His sight had fled, leaving behind only swirling patterns of black on black. He dropped his bow, fell to his knees, and began to rub at his eyes. He felt her close by, her soft hands at his waistband, taking his knives. He tried to fight her off, but was dizzy and disoriented.

  Then the point of a blade was pressed against his ribs. ‘Don’t move,’ she said.

  He raised his arms. ‘Please, don’t kill me,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t if I don’t have to,’ she said in a steely voice that was at odds with her shaking hand. ‘I have no mercy for raiders.’

  ‘I’m not a raider,’ he protested. ‘I’m a hunter.’

  She ignored him, pressing the point a little more firmly, forcing the shaking away. ‘Have you seen a little girl?’ she asked. ‘Dark haired, around seven years old? She may be in the company of Ærfolc.’

  The first glimmer of understanding. ‘You mean Rowan?’

  She was silent, but it was a silence borne of surprise, not anger.

  ‘You’re Rose of Ælmesse, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘You resemble your daughter. I am no raider, my lady, and I am not your enemy.’

  She dropped the knife. ‘Do you know where she is?’ she said in a breathy rush.

  ‘I’m looking for her. I have been her guardian these last four years. My name is Skalmir Hunter.’ He lowered his arms. ‘How long will this blindness last?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘A matter of hours, perhaps. I’m sorry, I saw you and I panicked. One doesn’t grow up in Thyrsland without a healthy fear of very tall, fair-haired men.’

  ‘I have lived in the southlands my entire life,’ he said. ‘I have been a faithful servant to King Wengest.’

  ‘I should have known you weren’t a raider,’ she said. ‘Your beard is far too short and tidy.’

  He laughed. ‘Give me a few more days away from home.’

  Her hand slid under his elbow. ‘Here, let me help you back to your blankets. I will stay with you until your sight returns.’

  He stood, leaning on her.

  ‘Lift your foot here,’ she said. ‘There’s a hot, burned space where the powder went off.’ She led him across the unseen forest, then helped him to sit on his blanket. ‘I’ll fetch your weapons,’ she said. ‘Wait there. I kicked them into the undergrowth.’

  He waited, heard her brushing around in leaves. Her warm body returned and sat next to him, took his hand and one by one handed him his knives, his bow. ‘I couldn’t find the arrow, sorry,’ she said.

  ‘I have more.’

  ‘Is your sight returning?’

  ‘Not even a little bit. Why are you in the Howling Wood?’

  ‘I came to find Rowan.’

  ‘I know that, but why are you here? How did you know? I understood that nobody knew where Rowan was, least of all …’ He couldn’t bring himself to say, ‘least of all you’ – it sounded cruel.

  ‘It’s more complicated than I can explain,’ she said, then there was a long silence.

  Skalmir wondered if perhaps Bluebell had told her, but that couldn’t be right. Bluebell had always instructed him that, should Rose ever discover Rowan’s hiding place, she wasn’t ever to know that Bluebell had been privy to its location all along. ‘Rose is forgiving by her nature,’ Bluebell had said, ‘but this she would not forgive. I do not know how long she will search for Rowan, but she will never stop wondering.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll explain another time,’ Rose said at last. ‘But we are both in pursuit of the same quarry, Skalmir Hunter, and after a day where I have been lost twice, dropped my pack in a stream and soaked my blankets, and accidentally blinded a man who looked like a raider but tidier, I find myself hoping with all my heart that we may help each other.’ She paused, and when she spoke again her voice was less certain. ‘Or at least, that you may help me.’

  Her uncertainty, her soft, feminine voice, stirred protective feelings in him. He had only glimpsed her for a moment before she’d blinded him, and now he was reconstructing her appearance from that brief glimpse and from his intimate knowledge of Rowan’s face. ‘Of course. We will search for her together. I’d be honoured to serve your family this way, my lady.’

  ‘Call me Rose,’ she said lightly.

  ‘Well, Rose, there are enough blankets here for you to borrow so you will be comfortable tonight. You may sleep, if you please.’

  ‘You can’t see,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay awake and watch. You may sleep.’

  ‘I don’t want to sleep until my sight is restored,’ he said.

  ‘Then sit with me and tell me about my daughter,’ she said, a note of strained desperation touching her voice. ‘Is she well? Clever? How tall does she grow? Please, I have been so far away from her, and now I fear for her life. Let me at least know her a little, for she has been so long denied from me.’

  So Skalmir sat with her in the dark and told her everything he could, careful to keep Bluebell’s name out of it. He spoke about his own wife and her death, about Wengest’s regular visits, about Sister Julian’s lessons, and Rowan’s aptitude with the bow. Rose asked a thousand questions, needy for more specific detail, as though she wanted to crawl inside Skalmir’s head and press his memories against herself.

  After more than an hour of this, she seemed to lapse into quiet sadness, so he asked her, ‘What about you? What do you remember most about her?’

  ‘Her poreless skin and liquid eyes,’ she said. ‘The sweet softness of her cheek. And now they’ve marked her and carved ink into her beloved face.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That’s how I knew to leave home and come for her: a vision of her with Rathcruick’s tribe, with a tattoo like a circle of knotwork carved into her cheek. She’s only a child! It must have hurt her terribly …’

  ‘She is stoic in the presence of pain,’ Skalmir said in a comforting tone. The circle of knotwork – that was the tattoo Dardru had worn. Was Rathcruick making some fatherly claim on her? Was her kidnapping – if it could be called a kidnapping when she went willingly – a way of Rathcruick seeking restitution for the loss of his daughter? Rowan already had too many fathers.

  ‘I will tell you this,’ he said to Rose, ‘I am almost certain your daughter went willingly to Rathcruick. She has heard a tree singing in the woods. Nobody else can hear it, but Rathcruick promised to take her there.’

 
‘Will they hurt her?’

  ‘I don’t belive they will. But nor do I think they will willingly return her to us.’ A fluttering grey light passed over his field of vision and he said, ‘Rose, I think my sight may be returning.’

  ‘Really? I’m so glad. I honestly didn’t know how long it lasted. It might have been weeks.’

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t tell me that,’ he said, holding his fingers close to his eyes and wiggling them. He thought he could see them faintly. ‘We must be wise. It’s after midnight and we need to start hunting at dawn. Sleep now, if you can. By morning, my sight will be restored and we can track them to their camp. Nobody knows the Howling Wood like I do. We will find her.’

  ‘I have lived so long without her that finding her doesn’t seem possible,’ Rose said. ‘But I’m glad you are with me, Skalmir Hunter.’

  ‘Your daughter calls me Snowy,’ he offered.

  ‘I am glad you are with me, Snowy,’ she said with a smile in her voice.

  Dark. Cold. Wet.

  Alive. Ash was alive. She sat up, looked at her wrist. It was tightly bound in seaweed. She was on a cave ledge, on her blanket from the chapel. And beside her, her pack. She opened it, wincing at the pain in her wrist. Here was food, fire oil, a flint, the not-quite-dry clothes she had been wearing when she found the dragon scale. Her blood-soaked cloak was neatly folded next to her.

  She was alone, but she knew her sea-spirit friend had saved her, most likely with some help. Ash lay back down, staring at the roof of the cave. No going back to the chapel now; no going back to Unweder, if he had survived the lethal winds that had come for him. Just an hour more lying down, gathering her strength, then she had to move. She had to get as far away from Unweder as she could.

  Late afternoon sun speared through the shutters and fell on the heavy wooden table where Bluebell sat. Her father’s state room, hung with gold-thread tapestries and cluttered with war booty, seemed to glow in the slanted sunlight. As she waited for Æthlric, she knocked her knuckles fast and light on the table. She didn’t like to sit still and wait, not when she had somewhere to be.