by Paul Stewart
‘Drink,’ she said, her voice tender, encouraging. ‘Just a little sip …’
The viscous red liquid trickled into Carafine’s mouth, and she swallowed, then swallowed again. The keld mistress withdrew the bottle, but Carafine’s blistered mouth pursed and puckered expectantly, and the keld mistress gave her a little more to drink.
Carafine’s eyes opened, turquoise set in red. ‘Sister,’ she rasped, her gaze hardening as she stared into the shadows beneath the black hood.
The keld mistress looked back into her sister’s eyes, so like her own, and she smiled.
Carafine did not smile back. ‘Why did you send him?’ she said, her voice frail and cracked, accusatory.
‘Who?’ the keld mistress asked gently.
‘Who? Who?’ The eyes grew wider. ‘The winter caller. I recognized him. Why did you send him here?’
The keld mistress frowned. ‘The winter caller was here?’
‘Don’t pretend you didn’t know,’ Carafine told her, the words desiccated and raw. ‘You said I could set up for myself, as long as I paid you. And I kept my part of our bargain. Every halfwinter I gave you your share. But then you sent your assassin …’ Animated by the bloodhoney, Carafine’s husked voice was indignant.
The keld mistress shook her head. ‘That husband of yours has not been paying us, sister, whatever he might have told you. That is why we came … and found you like this.’
‘Kilian didn’t pay you?’ rasped Carafine with a shudder. ‘But why?’
‘Oh, sister, sister,’ said the keld mistress softly. ‘How many times have I told you, you can’t trust kith …’ She paused. ‘I did send the winter caller, though,’ she admitted softly. ‘But not after you. I sent him after the kith who had killed Redmyrtle. He was following their scent.’
Carafine snatched a wheezing breath. ‘Redmyrtle is dead?’ she whispered, then her eyes widened as a thought took hold. ‘The winter caller was following their scent?’ she muttered, struggling to say the words. ‘When my keld killed the winter caller, they captured two kith – a cragclimber and a boy. Kilian told me their names …’
She fell still, and swallowed. She looked imploringly at her sister, who put the bottle of bloodhoney to her lips once more.
‘Eli Halfwinter,’ she rasped, her turquoise eyes flickering. ‘And Micah …’ The words were getting softer, more indistinct. ‘They set the fire …’ she whispered. Her eyes dulled and flickered. ‘They did … this.’
The keld mistress reached up and removed the black hood that cowled her head. The face beneath was as white and opalescent as moonstone. Snowwhite eyelashes, mistwhite hair and smooth polished skin, shot through with tiny bluish veins like marbling through alabaster. It was a bloodless, ice-frosted face out of which two pale turquoise eyes stared down malevolently at the black flame-wizened body wrapped in the wyrmeskin curtain.
‘I warned you, sister.’ The honeyed voice emerged from between white lips. ‘I warned you not to throw your lot in with a stone prophet.’ She reached out and her hands closed round her sister’s throat. ‘But you thought you knew better,’ she purred. ‘You thought you could farm kith. And look where it’s got you.’
The keld mistress’s turquoise eyes hardened as her fingers tightened.
‘You killed the winter caller,’ she suddenly hissed, as a wheezing gurgling sound escaped from Carafine’s mouth. ‘And let the kith he was hunting escape.’
Carafine shuddered, the blackened stubs of her fingers clawing weakly at her sister’s arms as the keld mistress strangled the life out of her. Finally she fell still. The keld mistress released her grip, pulled the hood back over her white face and rose to her feet.
The other keld were watching from the doorway. Blue Slake and Cutter Daniel exchanged looks. The eel-mother cleared her throat and her two crevicewyrmes hissed at the end of their leashes.
‘What now?’ she asked.
From beneath the black hood, the keld mistress’s voice sounded, rich and sweet and deadly as bloodhoney.
‘We find Eli Halfwinter and the boy, Micah,’ she whispered silkily. ‘And we kill them.’
Fifty-Five
Cara shivered. She pulled the homespun cloak tightly round her and held it shut at the neck. Her clenched fingers looked pale and bluish against the bunched grey material.
‘You cold?’ Micah asked.
‘A little,’ said Cara. She shivered again and smiled. ‘But I’ll soon warm up when we light the fire.’
Micah slipped his arms from the sleeves of his hacketon and, skitching up closer to Cara, draped the jacket around both their shoulders. Cara nestled against him.
‘Better?’ he said, turning and kissing her lightly on her cheek.
‘Much better,’ she said, and she kissed him back, on the lips.
‘Soon as Eli gets back and gives the all clear, I’ll light the fire and get it blazing,’ Micah said. ‘Thing is, Cara, out here in the weald, you got to be careful. Fires can attract attention …’
He felt Cara shiver again, and press more closely against him.
They were sitting on a broad ledge of rock, halfway up the side of a tall crag of yellowish sandstone. It had been an arduous day’s journey up out of the valley of Deephome, over the rocky plateau and into the mountains to the west. But Cara hadn’t complained once. When at last they’d stopped for the night, and Eli had gone out to check the lie of the land, she had helped Micah collect brushwood for the fire efficiently and with a good eye for what would burn well, even though Micah could see how tired she was.
He reached into the folds of her homespun cloak and found Cara’s hands, and squeezed them tightly.
‘You did good today,’ he said.
‘I did?’ she said, her voice a mixture of surprise and pride.
‘Real good.’
Cara looked up at the sky. ‘It’s all so big and strange and new out here in the weald,’ she said. ‘After Deephome …’
‘It takes time to get used to life on the trail,’ said Micah, nodding.
He looked into Cara’s blue-green eyes. They were full of innocence and trust … Trust in him. And Micah felt a sudden overwhelming tenderness for this kithgirl who had lost everything, yet was so resolute and brave. She needed him, and he would not let her down. He leaned forward and kissed her again.
‘Things will work out, you’ll see,’ he said gently, and slipped an arm round her shoulders. ‘Eli knows what he’s doing. Halfsummer is the time for harvesting the bodies of those wyrmes that didn’t make it through fullwinter, and honouring them by putting to full use what they have to give.’ Micah smiled. ‘That’s Eli’s way. He doesn’t hold with hunting and trapping, but he’ll take what the weald freely offers up. We’ll use every part of the wyrmes we find – the teeth, the wingbones, the pelts, the flamesac – and trade them for what we need in scrimshaw dens.’
‘Scrimshaw dens?’ Cara repeated, a quizzical look on her face.
‘Scrimshaw dens are like stores,’ Micah explained. ‘Weald stores. Where kith gather to barter and trade. And once we’ve gathered enough of value, then we’ll be able to visit a scrimshaw den ourselves, and trade. For pots and mugs and blankets and such. And we’ll get you some new clothes, Cara. Proper weald gear rather than these things,’ he said.
Micah’s ran hand over Cara’s grey cloak, and he looked down at her moccasins, already scuffed and battered from a single day’s journey. He squeezed her shoulder.
‘In the meantime,’ he told her, ‘I’ll stitch some wyrmehide onto those shoes of yours and strengthen the heels and toes. I’ve still got needle and thread in my pocket from repairing my own boots.’
‘You’d do that for me?’ said Cara, her eyes glistening.
‘Of course,’ said Micah, returning her gaze. ‘You’ve got to look out for one another out here,’ he said. ‘Eli taught me that
.’
‘He’s taught you a lot of things …’
‘He has.’
‘Will you teach me?’
Micah reached out and drew Cara back close to him, then pulled the hacketon jacket around them. ‘I shall,’ he said.
Just then, there was a raucous high-pitched noise that echoed far above them, bouncing off the rock cliffs and out across the plateau below. It was answered by low booming roars from somewhere out in the dark.
‘What was that?’ Cara said, her voice breathless.
Micah looked up. ‘Screechwyrmes,’ he said. ‘See?’ He pointed to half a dozen creatures, pale silver in the moonlight. They had wide angular wings, broad mouths and bony protuberances at the tops of their skulls, and were circling the mountain crag above. ‘They shriek like that when they hunt, Eli says.’ He turned back to Cara. ‘Sounds scary – but they’re harmless enough.’
Cara reached up to the back of her neck and raised the collar of the wyrmeskin hacketon. ‘I’ve lived my entire life in Deephome,’ she said softly. ‘In fact, until today, I had never been beyond the top sentinel post. I used to stand there and watch my father go out into the valley country to preach to the kith.’ She paused, frowned. ‘At least, that’s what I’d thought he was doing …’
She stopped, and Micah looked up to see that tears had gathered in the corners of her eyes and were running down her cheeks.
‘I still can’t quite believe it.’ Her voice was low and expressionless. ‘Draining our blood and giving it to the keld to make that foul bloodhoney of theirs … And all the while he had us praising the Maker and singing to Him in the great chamber …’
Suddenly giving way to tiredness and despair, she slumped against Micah. She buried her face and wept quietly, and Micah felt the juddering rise and fall of her shoulders.
‘He made a mistake,’ he told her.
A bad mistake.
He recalled how, suddenly finding themselves without their prophet, the Deephomers had traipsed off in their different directions, their bodies stooped and faces pale and drawn with shock. Most of them had decided to throw in their lot with one or other of the elders; a few of them went it alone. It seemed so long ago now, yet it had only been that morning.
Eli had hung back, waiting to see where the others were heading, before turning to Micah and pointing off in a different direction entirely.
‘We’ll go that way,’ he’d said, ‘out of the valley country. To the west, where the whitewyrmes are said to dwell.’
In Micah’s arms, Cara’s sobs began to lessen and she fell still. For a while, neither of them spoke. Cara kept her face buried in Micah’s chest, while Micah looked over her head at the white impassive moon.
When Cara spoke at last, her voice was thick and husky from crying. ‘What do you think my father meant?’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Micah, though he knew well enough what she was asking.
Cara pulled away and looked at him. ‘When he asked me to forgive him, he said he did it all for her …’ she said. ‘My mother. Even though she was wicked.’ She swallowed and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. ‘He said he loved her, even though she was wicked …’ She frowned. Her turquoise eyes grew wider. ‘What did he mean?’
Micah couldn’t meet her gaze. Cara had her mother’s face, her mother’s eyes …
‘My mother died when I was a child,’ she went on. ‘So he can’t have meant her. Can he? And anyway, she wasn’t wicked. Not my mother. She can’t have been …’ She grasped at Micah’s hands. ‘So what did my father mean?’
Micah shook his head.
He had told her everything in the great chamber – everything except the truth about her mother. When she had found the grey cloak her belief in her father had finally been shattered. And that was enough for her to bear. He hadn’t told her about Carafine then, and he wouldn’t tell her now. He wouldn’t tell her ever.
‘I don’t know,’ he whispered gently.
Cara nodded, the movement barely visible, and Micah was unsure whether she believed him. But it didn’t seem to matter. She reached out and tugged at the lapels of his hacketon, pulling Micah down on top of her as she lay back, and she kissed him and kissed him …
Eli had returned a little while later, with the carcasses of two squabwyrmes he’d come across swinging at his side. He’d reported that the country around them seemed quiet, and they’d lit the fire and roasted the wyrmes and then, exhausted, had bedded down for the night.
The moon rose higher, and when Micah rolled over onto his back it shone in his face like a bright beacon. He opened his eyes.
Beside him, Cara stirred. She nestled into him, her head on his chest and her hands clasped together. Micah tugged at the wyrmeskin hacketon that was draped over the pair of them, shielding her eyes from the glare of the moon, and Cara sighed contentedly.
Looking back at the moon, he caught sight of movement in the darkness. Something was out there, flying, and as it flapped across the white surface of the moon, Micah recognized the familiar dip of a sinuous neck and the way the arched wings rose and fell.
It was a whitewyrme. A whitewyrme with a rider. In the far distance, the long spike of the kinlance dissected the orb of the moon for a moment, then the silhouette was gone.
Micah thought of Thrace.
Cara glanced up at him from the shadows. ‘Why, Micah,’ she said, ‘your heart’s racing.’
She smiled, her eyes sleepy and tangles of auburn hair framing her face.
Cara. His sweet trusting Cara.
‘Is it?’ he said.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Wyrmeweald Trilogy
One
Eli Halfwinter surveyed the mountains that rose up out of the mist ahead. Fullwinter’s grip had relaxed. The snow and ice had mostly gone. The green shoots of halfsummer were sprouting.
Eli’s eyes narrowed.
The summit was a good day’s climb by his reckoning, and the way looked perilous steep. The high sun cast long shadows down the ochre-brown rockface that were like stains. Eli glanced north along the range, then south. The mountains seemed to stretch off into the distance for ever, and he was loath to set out on such a detour.
Looking up, the cragclimber saw dozens of wyrmes flitting round the cragtops and upper ledges. Striped orange manderwyrmes. Spikebacks. Metallic bluewings. He heard their squeaks and chitterings echo off the wall of rock as they pitched and dived in search of insects.
He looked down again, scouring the lower reaches of the mountains. His gaze fell upon a jagged black crevice away to the south. It was a cleft through the rock, large enough for wyrmes to pass through. The scree at the entrance looked trampled, and it was spattered with wyrmedung.
This was what he’d been looking for. A wyrme trail. One of the migration routes that linked winter hideout to halfsummer pastures.
As Eli approached, he found that the crack in the rock was narrower than he’d thought – just wide enough for the great lumbering greywyrmes to pass through in single file. He stepped into it.
The sun was snuffed out like a candle flame and the air felt chill. High above his head was a thin slit of blue sky. The rock was sheer and dark at his sides, and at the most constricted points of the trail had been chafed and grazed by the flanks of the migrating herds. The shadowed track doglegged sharply to the left, then right again, then opened up.
Eli found himself on a small stretch of flat sand. It was enclosed by vertical rockfaces that rose up around him, curved and ridged like giant hands. Behind him was the narrow opening he’d entered. In front of him, blocking the way ahead, was a great pitted boulder.
Except it wasn’t a boulder. It was a greywyrme. Massive. Recumbent. And dead.
The corpse was lying on its side, the back bowed and turned away, the long neck and thick tail curved round towards him, and betwe
en them the four limbs, outstretched, clawstiff. The head of the creature was draped over a slab of rock, its great maw gaping open to reveal rows of yellowpearl teeth. Deep empty black eyesockets stared back blindly at him.
It was a bull male, seventy summers old by the looks of it, perhaps even older than that. Eli rested a hand on the hard cracked skin of the greywyrme’s flanks. It hung loose over the framework of jutting bones beneath.
The creature must have died just before the start of fullwinter, and its body been covered with thick snow that had protected it from carrionwyrmes and other scavengers, and frozen it solid. With the thaw, the wind whistling through the ravine had dried the body out, mummifying the remains and rendering its skin and flesh too brittle and desiccated to be of use.
But the teeth and claws, now they were a different matter . . .
Eli straightened up. He pulled his rucksack from his back and set it on the ground. He loosened the ties. He pulled out a small hammer, a pair of pliers, then unsheathed the knife at his belt.
The claws of the greywyrme’s hindfeet were brown and nubbed, but beneath the pitted surface Eli knew they would be fine-grained and make for excellent carving. They would bring high rewards at a scrimshaw den. He set to work.
The knack was to slide the point of the knife in at the back of the toe, where the curve of the claw left a small gap between the knuckle and the scaly skin, and twist. Eli jerked the handle round and the blade sliced through the tendons like they were yarns of wool. Then, keeping the knife in place, he gripped the claw with the pliers and wrenched it back hard, twisting as he did so.
There was a dull cracking sound and the claw came away from the foot. He turned it over in his hand appraisingly, then set it down on the sand.
Eli removed all twelve of the claws from the hindfeet. Then he moved on to those at the front.
