The Gift of Dark Hollow

by Kieran Larwood

  For Eli

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Maps

  Prologue

  Chapter One: Cuckoo

  Chapter Two: Tunnels

  Chapter Three: Shade the Cursed

  Chapter Four: Moonstrider

  Chapter Five: War Council

  Interlude

  Chapter Six: Surprise

  Chapter Seven: Assassin

  Interlude

  Chapter Eight: Dancing

  Chapter Nine: Applecross

  Chapter Ten: Ancients’ Island

  Chapter Eleven: The Tomb

  Chapter Twelve: Iron and Thorns

  Interlude

  Chapter Thirteen: Home

  Chapter Fourteen: Gormkillers

  Chapter Fifteen: The High Bard

  About the author and illustrator

  Praise for Kieran Larwood

  Copyright

  Prologue

  He still dreams about them sometimes. Nightmares that leave him wide-eyed and gasping, with fears sixty years old pounding fresh through his blood.

  It is never the Gorm themselves, strangely enough. Those hulking, clanking monsters of iron and flesh with their blank red eyes. Anyone would think they would be the things to haunt him all the way to old age.

  No. It’s always the crows that plague his sleep. The mindless servants of the Gorm. Simple birds, twisted by magic into jagged, flapping things with bladed beaks and torn iron feathers.

  He sees them gathering in dark skies: swarms of them circling in a clashing, crashing mass of metal, cawing and screeching to each other in a chorus like a thousand hammers pounding on a thousand anvils.

  They wheel and spin, striking sparks off each other as their wings touch, and he stands – a small rabbit once again – staring up at them, praying they don’t spot him alone and helpless on the wide open ground below.

  But they always do.

  One red eye at first, glaring at him from the throng. A single crow shrieks with horrible joy and peels off from its brothers and sisters, flapping towards him, making all the others turn and stare, their hungry, hungry beaks like razor-sharp shears …

  And on a good night, that’s when he wakes up.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Cuckoo

  Thornwood warren is still sleeping as the bard tiptoes out of his room, the crow-dream still echoing in his head, making him twitch at imaginary creaks of iron wings.

  The longburrow is empty but for the slumped shape of one lazy rabbit, snoring with his head on a table; an empty mead jug and a pool of dribble in front of him. The fire is quietly smouldering, giving the place a dim orange glow as the bard pads silently past. He wraps his cloak about him and heads up the draughty entrance tunnel.

  At the doorway, the usual guard, huge and annoying, is asleep at his post, blowing bubbles and twitching his ears as he dreams away to himself. Making a mental note to report him to Chief Hubert, the bard steps around him and opens one of the broad oak doors a crack – just enough to slip outside.

  It is moments before dawn, and the brightening sky peeps out between the bare branches of the trees above. The snow has all but vanished from the ground, and here and there the bard can see a brave daffodil or snowdrop pushing its head out of the cold hard ground to greet the coming spring. He follows the path between the trees, out to the edge of the Thornwood, where he can see the spine of the Razorback downs stretching away to the east. A blanket of mist is draped across the valley, and the line of hills looks like a giant serpent, wriggling its way through a pale, smoky sea.

  The bard stands and stares, breathing in the fresh new scents of the season. Soon, crinkly green leaves will be bursting from the branches all around, blazing away the last of winter with their bright living colours.

  Time for me to be on the move again, he thinks. It is not often he stays in one place for three months (and there are reasons it isn’t safe to do so) but it also isn’t often that he sees his older brother.

  Podkin. The bard sighs. It will be a shame to leave him. To every other rabbit in the warren, he is just an old longbeard. A retired warrior, sitting in the longburrow corner every night, playing Foxpaw with the other veterans and dozing. If only they knew …

  A twig snaps somewhere on the path behind, and the bard suddenly stops his dreaming. Tiny paws patter, and there is a rustle as something hides behind a bush.

  ‘You might as well come out,’ calls the bard. ‘You’re about as stealthy as an overweight badger with granite clogs on.’

  The bush rustles again, and a small figure steps out, all huge floppy ears and brown speckled fur. It is one of the chieftain’s sons: the little lad who sits and listens to the bard’s tales so intently every night, chipping in with vivid observations and difficult questions. ‘The sensible rabbit’, the bard always thinks of him, although he has learnt that his name is actually Rue.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ Rue says, eyes on the ground. ‘I wasn’t spying on you, just …’

  ‘Sneaking up behind me and watching what I was doing? I believe that is the actual definition of spying.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’ The little rabbit looks as though he is about to cry. He has mentioned several hundred times how much he wants to become a bard, and now he probably thinks he has ruined his chances. The bard takes pity on him.

  ‘Oh, whiskers I wasn’t doing anything worth spying on, anyway. What I would like to know is how you managed to spot me coming out here at this time of the morning. Shouldn’t you be tucked up in your burrow, asleep?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep, sir. I’ve got six brothers in my bed, and they all snore so much, it keeps me awake. I was under one of the tables in the longburrow, practising some of my tales, and I saw you walking past. I wondered if you might be doing something … bardy. So I followed you. I really would like to become a bard, sir.’

  ‘So you’ve told me. At least half a million times. And stop calling me “sir”. I’m not a chieftain or a knight. Just an old, tired storyteller.’ The bard pulls at his beard, wondering how much to encourage the little rabbit. If he’s awful at storytelling then there’ll have to be a very awkward conversation. And if he isn’t? All bards know there is a duty to train up newcomers with potential. And who will that fall on? It can’t be me, the bard thinks. Not now, with things as they are …

  The bard notices Rue is still blinking up at him, the tender light of hope in his eyes. He’s left it far too long to just say ‘go away’ and be done with it now. He’ll have to do or say something. Preferably something encouraging.

  A little test then. Just like the bard’s old master gave to him. He wanders over to a fallen tree and makes himself comfortable amongst the moss and mushrooms. Rue follows, his huge brown eyes drinking in the bard’s every move. For a moment they stare at each other, and then the bard nods to himself.

  ‘Very well, little one,’ he says. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got. Why don’t you tell me a tale?’

  ‘A tale? Here? Now?’ Rue’s ears begin to shake. He has never imagined actually telling someone one of his stories, let alone the bard himself.

  ‘Yes, on you go.’ The bard’s eyes twinkle. ‘The Tale of the Twelve Gifts would be a good one. You’ve heard me tell it at least five times this winter.’

  Rue gulps. He breathes deeply. He reaches into his mind for the story, and begins to unravel it.

  ‘Well. It was a long time ago, see? I mean a long, long time ago. Back when the world was new and memories hadn’t even begun.’

  Rue looks at the bard for approval, but his face gives nothing away. Rue continues. ‘The Goddess, she summoned the chieftains of the twelve tribes together. She had a gift for all of them, she said,
so they all gathered at the standing stones called Moon Henge and had a big feast and stuff.

  ‘Then the Goddess appears, and she has twelve magic items, one for each tribe. They all have amazing powers, but they all have a weakness too, because she wants the chieftains to use them wisely and not go all crazy about it.

  ‘They’re all different as well. A dagger for Munbury that can cut through anything except iron, a sickle for Redwater that can sense poison, and a helmet for Sandywell that makes the wearer invincible.’

  Rue blinks at the bard a few times, wondering how to finish. Telling stories to an audience isn’t as easy as he thought it would be. ‘The end?’ he says, with a wince.

  ‘Hmm,’ says the bard. And, ‘Hmm,’ again.

  ‘It was bad, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘I’ll never be a bard, will I?’ Rue looks as though he is about to cry again.

  ‘It wasn’t that bad,’ lies the bard. ‘But I’m sure you know a lot more detail you could have added in. Tell me … who were the chieftains of the tribes? What were their names?’

  Rue’s tongue pokes out of his mouth for a moment as he tries to remember. ‘Well, there was Ruddle the Healer of Redwater, and Shadow the Hidden of Dark Hollow. Oh, and No-kin the Lost of Munbury, of course. He’s my favourite.’

  ‘Tell me about No-kin then. What was he wearing to the feast? What colour was his fur, his eyes? What food did he like to eat? What songs did he sing along with?’

  Rue looks at the bard as if he has gone crazy. ‘How would I know that? It was thousands of billions of years ago, probably. Everyone who was there is dead now.’

  ‘Ah,’ says the bard. ‘But you don’t need to know what the answers actually are. That’s where the storytelling comes in. What you told me was not a tale. It was the bones of one: a few facts put in order, without any life breathed into them. What a bard does is to add meat and skin and ears to the bones. Bring the story to life. Make your own No-kin live in your head, and then give him to your audience. Doesn’t matter if he’s not the same as the real No-kin – like you said: it was thousands of years ago now. Who’s still around to tell you you’re wrong? A few more years practise and you’ll get the hang of it, I’m sure.’

  Satisfied that he has put Rue off in the gentlest way possible, and without completely shattering his dreams, the old rabbit begins to get up from the log, ready to head back to the warren for breakfast. He is interrupted by Rue clearing his throat to speak.

  ‘No-kin is a white-furred rabbit, with sky-blue eyes. He has a mane of long hair that he spikes up from his head, like all the warriors of the Ice Waste tribes where he comes from. He wears a dark green tunic and trousers, with a silver torc at his neck. He has a scar down the left-hand side of his face, where an ermine scratched him before he killed it with his bare hands. He eats the same carrots, radishes and turnips as everyone else, but his favourite food is crowberries, which grow on the tundra. He barely speaks, and when he does it is with a strange accent. The other rabbits all want to know why he left his tribe in the Ice Wastes, but he says nothing, and he is the first rabbit to take his gift from the Goddess. It is a copper dagger, as sharp as starlight, which is where its name comes from: Starclaw.’

  The bard stares, open-mouthed, at the little rabbit. Rue’s eyes have glazed over as he speaks, as if he is seeing something in another world. In a few seconds he has come back to himself, shaking his head to clear it, and looking puzzled, not quite knowing what has happened.

  But the bard knows. It was the storyteller’s trance: that sideways step into another place, partly in your head, and partly somewhere else. It means that the little rabbit does indeed have a gift, worse luck, and that the bard is the one to do something about it.

  As if to confirm it, a cuckoo calls out somewhere in the Thornwood. The first cuckoo of spring, and a sign from the Goddess, if ever there was one.

  The bard sighs and mumbles a very rude curse under his breath.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Rue asks. ‘Did you just say something about badgers’ bottoms?’

  ‘What? No. Nothing of the sort,’ says the bard. He sighs again. ‘Come on, we need to get inside and get this over with.’

  ‘Get what over with?’ Rue is more puzzled by the second.

  ‘Asking your father if you can be an apprentice bard, that’s what.’

  And with a delighted little rabbit skipping along at his heels, the bard heads back to the warren.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Tunnels

  Surprisingly, Chief Hubert is more than happy that little Rue has found a vocation in life. He has six other, older, sons – and they have caused him headache enough.

  The eldest, Hubertus, is training to be chieftain one day. His brother, Hubertian, is training too (just in case), and so is the third son, Huberdink. No rabbit could say that Hubert wasn’t prepared for anything. Of the next three, Parsley is preparing to leave for the Temple City of Fyr in Thrianta to become a druid, Thyme is learning to be a blacksmith and Dill has finally decided he wants to be a turnip farmer. When it comes to Rue, Hubert has long run out of ideas.

  And so it is decided that the bard should take him on his wanderings. The old storyteller has made it clear that he can’t personally be his master (although he refuses to say why, exactly) but that he knows just where to take him to find one. They are to leave after the Lupen’s Day celebrations that mark the start of spring, with a farewell from the whole warren.

  The bard can’t help thinking that Hubert will be glad to see the back of him. After all, he has outstayed his welcome by several weeks. It is time and more to be gone, but it will be hard saying goodbye to his brother. As old age creeps ever onward, each farewell stands a good chance of being their last. And with the trouble that the bard has following him … well, he would count it lucky if old age was the thing that finally sent him to the Land Beyond.

  On the morning of Lupen’s Day, everyone in the warren dresses in clothes of springtime green and yellow. They wear daffodils and cherry blossom in their hair and in garlands around their necks. They carry staves of fresh-cut hazel with buds of bright new leaves bursting out from the top. Leading wagons full of food and drink up to the standing stones at the edge of the Thornwood, they spend a whole day there: feasting, dancing and singing.

  The last of the winter stores are used for the banquet mixed in with the first delicacies of spring. There are clay pots full of jams – blackberry, elderberry, raspberry – platters of acorn bread, dried parsnips, bowls of dandelion leaf salad with toasted pumpkin seeds, fennel cakes, watercress soup, mustard and buttered asparagus.

  There are minstrels and stilt walkers, jugglers and acrobats. Children hunt for painted wooden carrots all over the hilltop, and then the Green Rabbit leads them in a dance around the stones (he’s really the enormous doorman, covered from head to foot in leaves and branches, and being made to do it as a punishment for falling asleep at his post – but nobody lets on). The bard is called on to tell one last tale: how Lupen was the first rabbit created by the Goddess, and loved so much by her that she was heartbroken when her twin sister Nixha, the goddess of death, came for him with her bow and lethal arrow. So instead of letting him die, the Goddess put his spirit into the moon, where she could look up and see it every night.

  His audience applauds, the bard bows, and with that, it is time to leave. Everyone has a hug or a handshake for the bard, and there are many gifts of food for his journey ahead. Rue’s mother is crying and his father seems to have something in his eye (definitely not tears, of course). They present him with a good oak walking stave and a travelling cloak lined with wool that will double as a sleeping bag. His little friends give him slaps on the back and tell him how jealous they are of his adventure.

  The bard waits until they are all busy, and then walks to the edge of the crowd. His brother, Podkin, is in the thick of things, laughing at the little ones and talking about old times with the other longbeards. He wears a hooded cloak
, covering up his false ear, and leans heavily on his staff, but otherwise seems as carried away with springtime excitement as the little kittens. The bard catches his eye and beckons him over for a quiet word. The two share a brief hug, and the bard clasps his brother’s shoulders tight.

  ‘You take care of yourself, won’t you? I expect to see you again the next time I’m back this way.’ His voice shakes a little, as if he is not sure this will be true.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Podkin says. ‘I’m well looked after here, and full of spring spirit. You have your own little apprentice to care for now.’ He chuckles to himself. ‘I never thought I’d see the day. But I’m happy for you.’

  ‘Toasted turnips,’ says the bard, frowning. ‘I keep telling you – he’s not my apprentice. I’m just taking him under my wing until I find someone suitable.’

  ‘Whatever you say, little brother,’ Podkin gives a toothless smile.

  ‘I mean it!’ the bard says. ‘These things have to be done properly. The stories need to be passed on.’

  ‘Will you be passing on more of my story, by any chance?’

  ‘I might. It is a good one, after all.’

  Podkin gives his brother a wink as the two step apart. ‘Just make sure it’s the real story then. Like the one you started last Midwinter. None of that nonsense about beasts and giants and monsters.’

  ‘It will be accurate to the last detail, I can assure you.’ The bard bows low, and then the crowd of rabbits sweep him away from his elderly brother, down the hill. Before he knows it, he and Rue are walking along the old Thriantan Road, the echoes of farewells fading behind them.

  *

  The two walk in companionable silence for a few minutes – staffs striking the earth in time, packs jingling on their backs – before Rue pipes up with his first questions.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask where we’re going, sir? And how long it will take to get there? Do you have a master in mind for me? And will you start training me in the meantime – before we reach wherever it is we’re heading?’