The Bird & The Lion: (The Feather: Book 1)

by CJ Arroway

  Orlend estimated he had lost at least 600 men to desertion in all, and worse – he had now lost the Cyl and Evie.

  ‘Can you tell me where we should start our search?’ Orlend was calmer now as he addressed his Borderer guide. Now was the time for cool heads, not anger, and he must regain his focus.

  ‘Those hills are like a labyrinth, Lord King. I know much of the Cyl, but no one but they know the paths beyond the Wall.’ Caril flinched, anticipating a rage that did not come.

  ‘Would anyone know? Are any Cyl susceptible to gold?’ He asked quietly.

  ‘If you could find one, I doubt they would talk. Gold or torture – they are stubborn people, Lord King, and fiercely loyal.’

  ‘Skavan – could he trace them?’

  Caril’s face blanched. ‘Lord King, he disappeared when the baggage train was attacked.’

  Orlend sighed. ‘Very well. Leave now, let me think on this.’ He waved his hand and Caril left, backing out of the tent carefully before turning on his heels at its exit.

  Orlend stood to pour himself a goblet of wine from the silver-trimmed flagon that stood on a table by his day bed. He looked around at the walls of the tent, one side draped with a tapestry taken from the walls of Wyrra Fortress. His mail and helmet hung from the thick central post that held up the roof high enough that even he could stand upright under its canvas. He stood a moment in quiet reflection, and then two guards stepped through his door.

  ‘We caught this one trying to sneak round the east side of the fort – we were going to kill him but Faral said to bring him to you.

  They threw him down on the tent floor – the terrified look on his face gave Orlend hope.

  ‘Looks like you’ve been in a spot of bother,’ Orlend said, pointing to his own mouth to reflect the damage on the Cyl man’s. The man looked up, Aldrwyn’s blood still sticky on his sleeve.

  ‘I… I… They chased me off – they aren’t real Cyl,’ he blubbered.

  ‘And you are,’ Orlend beamed, ‘you are.’ Fate had given him a gift. Perhaps he was the Reborn King after all.

  So Lynna – the Cyl traitor – promised to lead Orlend and his men through the hidden valleys and the swamp paths, to Cran Dy; in return for gold and a promise that he would kill only Nan, Rachlaw and the other visitors when the Cyl surrendered.

  Orlend readily agreed. But just before he led his men on their charge up the slope of the defenceless fort, Orlend slit his throat, after whispering all he would do to the Cyl women and children when it fell.

  * * *

  Cran Dy was little more than a hilltop. The summit was circled by a low stone wall, the overgrown ditches and defensive terracing studded haphazardly with fallen or rotting stakes that barred the way to no one. Its scattered huts, along with the tents they had carried, offered some shelter from the rain and wind that now whipped down its exposed slopes. But they were no shelter from an army.

  If they were attacked here, they would be a sitting target, and the slaughter would be quick and total.

  Its defence lay in its position. Almost invisible, it was only accessible by finding your way through the bog and water that filled the valley floor below, and only the Cyl knew the path. The maze of the mountains was made up of dozens of valleys that ran off from each other and, in turn, each valley had others that ran off from them. Of all the places to search, this would be among the least promising. The way in seemed to end before it began, a barrier of deep swamp and rock that rose up to false summits and apparent emptiness.

  It was to here that Evie, Luda and some of the Cyl men carried Aldrwyn. His skin was as cold and wet as the mere waters they had waded through, and he was motionless and silent. Luda thought of all the times he had wished Aldrwyn would sit still or keep quiet – now all he wanted was for him to move or speak, just a little.

  Nan had looked at him and, though she tried her best to hide it, Evie read her face and knew that the Cyl healers would probably not be enough this time.

  So when she woke late the next morning to the sound of shouting and weeping, and the clatter of tents being torn down – and when she saw the endless column of Sea People soldiers in the distance, cresting the high point into their valley – her heart finally left her and she told Nan she was ready to give up running.

  * * *

  ‘Evie,’ Rachlaw pushed through the door of the hut, his face strained with concern. ‘Evie – I must talk to you.’

  She was going through her few belongings. She had to find the necklace her mother had given her when she was still a child – before the bird, before the magic and before the hunter in the forest. She would give it to Luda and then when – if – her mother was found, maybe, one day, he would give it to her and tell her that she had tried.

  She looked up quickly to see the look of concern on Rachlaw’s face, but then went back to searching – finally locating it at the bottom of her small sack, wrapped in the protective parcel of moss she had made for it. A small wooden bird, carved expertly by her father – the leather cord long since too small to fit around her neck. She tied it to her arm and stood up.

  ‘Rachlaw – it’s too late. I can’t let everyone die just to save me. I’ve lost my father, my mother, Aldrwyn probably – if I lose you, Luda, Nan; I’d have no reason to live anyway. I’m not afraid to die, it doesn’t scare me.’

  Rachlaw smiled sadly. ‘No, I don’t expect it does.’

  Evie took his hand. ‘Goodbye Rachlaw. Thank you for trying.’

  Rachlaw gripped her hand tighter, and looked into her eyes. ‘Evie – I need to tell you something. And I need you to listen to me, and to trust me.’

  Evie stared at Rachlaw. There was fear in him, and she could feel something else – something uncertain. She nodded and sat down on the small pile of stones that passed for a bench, and Rachlaw knelt down beside her, so that his head was no higher than hers.

  ‘You can’t go to them. I know you think it will save us, but it won’t. They will kill you, and they will still kill us all anyway. I know them. But they won’t kill you quickly, they will kill you as slowly as they possibly can.’

  Evie felt her throat tighten. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I know why they want you Evie. I’ve known all along.’

  She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

  ‘You must know you are different Evie? Different from all the others. All the children that came to Wyrra for re-education.’

  She shook her head and closed her eyes. She would have shut her ears too, if she could.

  ‘Yes, they could all make frost from dew, or make pictures in the air with dust, all those things – all the small magic. But you – you could do other things, bigger things.’

  ‘What other things? What are you talking about, Rachlaw?’ Evie tried again to hear that uncertain feeling from Rachlaw, but now all she could hear was her own heart racing.

  ‘The Sea People believe you have an old magic – true magic. They think they can use it, use you, to make themselves powerful. Orlend, he believes this. And they will try to make you give them that power, and when you can’t they will torture you to make you do it, then kill you when you don’t.’

  ‘I can’t do anything, Rachlaw. Why would they think that?’ Evie was shaking now.

  ‘Because you have something that’s unique.’

  ‘I don’t. I really don’t. I just do small magic.’

  ‘No Evie – that’s not small magic. Not… that.’ Rachlaw paused.

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘Not speaking with the dead.’

  Evie’s face fell. ‘How do you know… I never told you that. Was it Nan? Aldrwyn?’

  Rachlaw shook his head. ‘No Evie, it was you. I always knew. I knew before I even met you.’

  Evie sat back sharply and the stones of her seat slipped under her so that she almost fell back. She put out a steadying hand to support herself, trying not to show Rachlaw how much it was trembling.

  Rachlaw stood up now and began to pace the ro
om, his hand sweeping back the hair that covered his brow so he could rest it there for a moment.

  ‘I learned, when I was working with the re-education ministry, that a girl – a Daw girl from Uish – had heard a baby cry in the old quarry. I didn’t know who it was, no one did, just a girl. But when I heard about the flowers, then I knew it must be you. So that is why I came.’

  ‘A baby? I… I mean, I can barely remember it myself, that was years ago.’ Her mind was racing now. ‘And what does that have to do with anything? I was a little girl – I was barely more than a baby myself when I heard that. There were stories – I had an imagination, that’s all.’

  ‘What stories, Evie? What stories!’ Rachlaw’s voice was a roar, and she recognised it now – that uncertain feeling. That deep loss.

  He softened his voice as Evie’s face told him the fear and confusion she was now feeling. He dropped back to his knees until his face was level with hers again.

  ‘Do you remember the stories, Evie? The jilted woman who jumped from the quarry? There was never any baby in those stories was there? They found a woman’s body, not a child’s. So why did you hear a baby? When no one knew there was a baby. Only you – only you, and me.’

  Rachlaw’s face was pale and flushed in a way Evie had never seen it before. And as Rachlaw spoke it seemed to Evie that its granite was cracking from the weight of years held back. She went to speak, but Rachlaw was now letting the words flow out.

  ‘Giselle was my… we loved each other. But she was Daw, and I was Lord Hakla’s son. I found out she was pregnant, I swore that I would do the right thing, even if it meant I lost everything, even if there was no way back after that.

  ‘I would talk to my father, try to make things up with him. And if not, we would put everything right anyway. Just as soon as I got back from the Borders.

  ‘But of course I didn’t get back. You know why. But she didn’t. She just knew none of her messages were answered, that the door to my lodgings was barred for Daw girls. So she went deep into the Black Hills, to the woods, where no one knew her and no one would see her. And she had my daughter. And she held her in her arms when she jumped from the quarry.’

  Evie gripped Rachlaw’s thick forearm with both hands and felt a pain rise from him like none she’d known since she had cradled in Jennet’s lap, the night they hauled her father’s broken boat onto the Uish quay.

  Rachlaw wiped an eye with his gloved hand. ‘I’d managed to persuade one of my Cyl guards, with the promise of gold, to go to her and tell her what had happened to me. She wasn’t there when he got to Auist. He was told she had left for the Black Hills, to the river where she grew up.

  ‘He tracked her to Uish and the forest there, heard rumours of a woman who had taken herself to the woods, so he searched for her until he heard a baby cry. He saw her – he said she looked at him, straight in the eye; she smiled at him and then she went over the edge.

  ‘He went down and found them both, spread across that damn rock. So he took my Giselle and he tucked her in to sleep, and he took my baby to bury deep, where the foxes and the bears would not find her, and then he came straight back to break my heart.’

  ‘I’m so sorry Rachlaw, I wish I had known.’

  Outside they could hear the clatter of wood and steel, and the dull fall of heavy timber, as the Cyl worked to pull apart the few standing huts for material that could reinforce the makeshift barricades. The shouts and cries came from men, women and children; no one would be left back from the fight.

  ‘I’ve caused enough damage,’ Rachlaw said. ‘I made promises that I would protect you. I don’t want you to suffer when I can still do something. The Sea People – they will hurt you Evie, they will keep you alive to hurt you, for as long as they can. They won’t let you go. And I can’t let that happen.’

  ‘But I have nowhere to go anyway, even if I…’ Evie started.

  ‘Below this fort, on the far side – I will get a man to show you – there is a gully. It leads down to a river and a cave, high up in the gully wall.

  Evie nodded. ‘Ok.’

  ‘The gully starts just a little way below where we are now – we can get you there without you being seen, if we are careful. Just above you, where the river drops, there will be a cave. The entrance is hidden by the moss that grows over it, but if you look for the broken hornbeam trunk, you’ll find it. It will be very white against the green, it will stand out.

  ‘The Cyl know it, but they fear the stories of the underworld people, so they’ve never explored it. I have. It leads down through this part of the mountain to the valley floor on the other side – not very far, but far enough to be away before anyone sees you. As you come out, you will see a road a short way down the next valley, and that will take you safely out of the mountains.

  ‘Go there, it will be dark but if you feel the wall on your right the whole way you won’t get lost. Go there – and if we can get through this, I will come and find you.’

  ‘But they’ll kill you – kill them.’ Evie gestured to where the sound of battle preparation was growing more frantic.

  ‘Not if I can help it. We will hold them off as long as we can, and then I will tell them you have fled. By then you will be far away. They may spare us in order to chase you – they don’t care about us, Evie, they care about you. If they get you now they’ll just kill us, but they will not want to stay fighting here while their objective is getting further away. It’s our only hope. It’s your only chance.’

  Evie hesitated for a few seconds then nodded. ‘Ok – I’ll do it. But tell them quickly – if I have a head start I can keep away from them, I don’t need you to keep fighting too long – I can move fast, I know how to hide and I can draw them off. I don’t need you risking any more of their lives. Nor risking yours. Please?’

  Rachlaw nodded. ‘There’s just one other thing – and this is very hard. I want you to take this,’ Rachlaw handed her a small piece of linen, tied up with green string. She turned it in her hand then looked at Rachlaw quizzically.

  ‘Inside there are herbs – a special preparation. If… if there’s no hope. If you are absolutely sure that there is no escape and they have you, I want you to take this. As a last resort. It will send you into a deep sleep, a peaceful sleep – it will be calm, and gentle and you won’t wake up. I just couldn’t bear the thought of what… I couldn’t know that you suffered.’

  Evie held the little bag and stared at it a moment, then at Rachlaw – without saying a word she hugged him and walked away.

  ‘Evie… be careful,’ Rachlaw said.

  ‘I will,’ she smiled, and she left.

  The Cave

  Evie could hear the cries of defiance and provocation that echoed across the valley behind the hill she had just descended. She thought of the battle that was preparing itself to begin, and the people she knew who would suffer in it.

  The recent rain had made the water of the river in the gully swell, and she could hear its steady roar now as she slid down the wet rock into the river. The waters pushed her downstream faster than her balance could always keep her; she was soaked through and bitterly cold.

  She walked, slid and tumbled through the high walled canyon, scraping her arms against the sharp rock walls and gagging water from her mouth and nose, as she fell beneath its surface for what felt like the hundredth time. She scrambled and fell down to the point where the river dropped away and her path could go no further down. She looked up and around for any sign of the cave. There, high up to her left, was the stark white of the cracked tree that Rachlaw had described.

  The climb was hard, up and across the gully wall – wet with dripping moss, slippery with algae and rotten leaves. A couple of times she felt her hand slip on the greasy surface, and looked down with her heart in her mouth at the drop below. The climb had taken her out up and above the fall of the river, so that the height of the drop doubled in an instant and she could see the hard, sharp rock below. Her head was swimming.

  Finall
y, she reached the whitebeam trunk and, checking her weight against its strength, gripped it with two hands to haul herself up onto a thin rock ledge. Hanging mosses and hart’s tongue ferns formed a curtain that covered the entrance to a small cave, just as Rachlaw had promised. The entrance was larger than she thought it would be – tall enough to stand in and wet your hair in the dripping mass of vegetation that hung from its mantle.

  The air was thick with the smell of decay and sulphur, so that it almost overwhelmed her senses. She pulled her tunic up to cover her nose and mouth against the taste of its foulness.

  The cave entrance opened up into a small cavern that narrowed down to a few broken rocks a little way in front of her. To the side there was a smaller passageway that seemed to lead sharply down into the darkness of the mountain.

  Evie stepped into the passageway, forced to duck her head low and stoop, so she could feel the wet cold of the stone roof against her neck. She remembered Rachlaw’s words – keep your hand on the right-side wall and you would not get lost. The ridges and furrows of the cave wall held a thin layer of slime and grit that coated Evie’s hand and worked under her bitten fingernails as she felt her way down.

  It took just a few steps into the passageway until the thin light that came through the moss of the entranceway dissipated and she was stepping into a blackness she had never experienced before, even in the forest on a moonless night.

  The cave passage seemed to slope further down, and Evie felt a sense of unease at descending deeper into the mountain; an instinctive fear of the darkness of the earth that all people, magic or not, seemed to share.

  Her mind was fighting off the formless creatures of the underearth that jitter in the darkest corners of the mind’s eye, her heart racing as she focussed on the real monsters she was running from – those above her now in the sunlight and rain.