Aloren (11 page)

Currip stuck his warty nose into the tankard.  He curled his lip.  “Like sweet, carroty death.”

“Does any o’ you know a cure?  Anythin?” said Thew, tugging on his cravat.  Padlimaird gave Emry a nudge, which sent her mouth spinning. 

“Me Auntie Marna knew how.”  She stood up.  “For the evilest plants, the blackest, she used them…but she didn’t want me to tell nobody.”

“You’ll feckin tell
me
,” Fillegal roared, throwing his tankard at her.  She ran and disappeared into the dark woods.  Nefer leapt from his stool and ran after her. 

She came back soon enough, hair plastered all over her face, and a handful of ragged, green leaves squashed in her fist.  Nefer sauntered behind her, and I caught a whiff of palendry when they walked by. “What is it?” said Fillegal.  The Chief’s mouth was turning black in his yellow face.

“Evil-spurn,” Nefer said.

Fillegal took the stuff from Emry and swallowed it in one gulp. 

It worked.  As soon as Fillegal was able to laugh, he laughed until everyone joined him. 

Then he growled, “Stick yer hands in the air where I can see em, all o’ ye.”

My heart sped.  Toughy, the only man who could’ve vouched for my blisters, was dead.  From a tree Floy told me to turn a bit to the side with my palms face down, and so I did, and the palms quaked.  I heard the crunch of Fillegal’s boots in the snow, the silence when they stopped at my back.

“Was it a-getting cold, me dancin dear?” 

I turned round. They say change is least detectible in yourself, as you see yourself in the abstract. I couldn’t see anything right then except Fillegal’s idiotic face.

“It’s always cold,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“It’s always cold, cause you take everything for yourself, always wantin more, freezing up in your warm tent, and wondering why a ham feels like a chicken bone in your fat stomach, you clove-toed, horned bag o’ offal.” 

Fillegal’s mouth was hanging open; I could see every one of his blackened teeth.  “Hands look like she were birthin a baby dragon,” he said. 

Fear tightened my throat. 

Wille frowned at me. “Her try to poison someone? Smells like pigshit to me.” 

“She just gave a pretty speech, Sir,” said Paddy, “but I didn’t hear nothin in the way of confession.”

“She might’ve borned a dragon, but t’weren’t in an effort to poison nobody, as I’d be the first dead, Chief, she’s so jealous of me flash fingers.”

“She couldn’t poison a fish.  Hell, she couldn’t even poison a death adder.  Just a girl, in’t she?”

“Gattren, she’d poison a death adder, but not Aloren.  Aloren’d feel sorry fer it, Chief.”

“She’d nurse it back to health after Gattren poisoned it.  She wouldn’t be a-feared of it, neither.  Seacho is more of a girl than she is.”

“She’d just be a-feared of killin it.”

“Where is Gattren?”

“Hold yer gobs,” said Fillegal.

“Why?” said Padlimaird, who was getting his color up.

“I’m Chief, ye jackal’s arse.”

Padlimaird jumped up.  “Only cause we allows it!”

“Some Chief,” said Willie.  “Chief of twenty sad rags, and none able to play a tune.”

“I’ll tie yer tongue round every peak o’ the Daynens!”  Fillegal wiped black spittle from his chin.  “I’ll gut yer liver to bait me snares. I’ll chain yer feet to a rock in Lorila an’ yer nadgers to a tree in Pemrenia. I’ll use yer lugs as a rudder, yer stalk as a tiller an’ yer dugs as me oars on the sea.  I‘ll sentence ye, the both o’ ye, to a life of menial slavery fer yer first punishment.”

Padlimaird sat down and closed his mouth.

“Me poor mam,” said Wille.  “She’ll split in half and dance a reel together in her grave.”

“And you, ye snot-nosed sow,” Fillegal said to me. “I’m torn between hackin you up with a blunt piece of flint or strangling you with a thorn bush. But I’ve a mind to leach a hard day’s work o’ you, afore I kill ye.”

“And I know what ye’ll be doin right off,” said Cook, probably thinking of the pots that had got blacker and blacker since Peach had deserted her.  But Cook had to scrub them herself.

Twelve

“Mach’s balls, Lally,” said Wille the next day.   “Couldn’t keep quiet, could ye?” He heaved a shovelful of dirt over his shoulder.

Padlimaird shook dirt out of his hair.  “Couldn’t keep her fat mouth shut.”

“Shaddup,” called Fillegal from his canvas hammock, “or I’ll change me mind about the depth.” 

It had taken us most of the day to dig a ditch wide enough to fit all of Fillegal’s loot.  I stuck my shovel in the loam and leaned over the handle, and heard a rustling in the underbrush.  

I rubbed dirt from my eyes.  Of a sudden Wille shunted us out of the hole and into a clump of willows. 

A screaming, flailing sorrel burst from the wood.  She had a rider.  She slid sideways at the edge of our pit and dumped him in, and then scrambling round it, upset the bank of rubble.  Dirt poured over and around the man; and a grey wolf burst through the cottonwoods and made after the sorrel.

Quick as fire Fillegal nocked an arrow on his bowstring and shot the wolf in the side.  The beast slid around in a circle, whining and bloodying the snow.  Then it lay still, tongue hanging out.   

“All that fer nothin?” said Padlimaird.

Wille threw his shovel aside and jumped into the hole.  He scraped some dirt from the rider.  He began laughing.  “It’s Hoary!” 

I could hardly believe my eyes––I wondered if I’d fallen asleep where I stood.  But the old envoy spit dirt from his mouth, and I knew the Hoary of my dreams wouldn’t have stood for looking so filthy.  “Don’t stand there with your jaw unhinged, Master Illinla,” he said to Wille.  “Dig me out.”

“Bless me beard.” Fillegal jumped down and dug around the human’s waist.  He came up with a string-bag.  “What’s this pretty liddle bauble?”

“Not full o’ your money’s what it is,” I said.  Fillegal knocked me over. 

The sorrel’s reins had snagged on a branch, and she stepped nervously back and forth.  Fillegal untangled the leads, whispered into her ear, and walloped her on the rump.  And after Wille, Paddy and I had buried his goods, the Chief tied all our hands to a rope lead, and goaded us with a nocked arrow back to camp and the oak we’d been tied to the night before.  Hoary was tied to an ash across from us.

The Chief bid us goodnight, promised me a painful death at dawn, and left us to ourselves.

I jerked against my bonds.

“Stop that,” said Padlimaird.  “Ye’re sawing inter me skin.”

“You remembered me surname,” said Wille to the envoy. 

“You’re hard to forget, Master Illinla.”  

“Aye,” said Padlimaird.  “Sticks on yer boot like a wad of spit. What’s yer name, anyways?” He pressed his hands behind his rump. 

“Starts with an R,” said Wille.

“My name is Calragen Eligarda.  You may call me Calragen, if you wish.”

“So, Raggy,” said Wille, “what happened to the other three of you?”

“Dechvano and Euristride have passed beyond,” he said delicately.

“How?”  I said, in an attempt to keep my mind off dawn. 

***

It was a complicated story, full of untied endings and unanswered questions, but Calragen told it as best he could, and we listened.  We had nothing much else to do except shiver.

After coming into Lorila, Calragen and the others had spent two years in the province of Dirlan, on the eastern marches, because it was unsafe to travel westward even with full escort, as the Duke of Dirlan was in the middle of a vicious spat with the Lord of Olefeln (both being potential heirs to the kingdom); and anyone traveling from the east into Olefeln was likely to be killed, robbed, or tortured, and sometimes all three at the same time.

In Dirlan, Calragen mentioned a broach of Dravadha make that disappeared from the possession of the royal family thirteen years back.  This caused discomfort in Duke Caveira of Dirlan, and when Calragen asked whether the broach had ever turned up, Caveira turned white and mumbled about rivers in Norembry.

“And I showed him a sketch of the broach I had drawn back in Milodygraig,” said Calragen, “and told him I may have found the thing. And Euristride wouldn’t let up about Ellyned’s garrison just lately grown bigger.  I fear that’s what did it.”

“Did what?” Padlimaird picked threads from his shirt.

“The following spring Caveira told us he knew a secret road west to Akurya, where the Ravyir is.  He bade five of his men guide us through the water meadows west of Dirlan.  We were betrayed.  They led us to the center of the swamps, and night fell and they were gone.”

He needn’t have gone further.  We’d all heard tales of the bloated stomach of the Nolak River: the Gagathene.  Of glowing saebels that lured travelers to putrid deaths; mud imps that invited folk into their underground lairs and fed them frogs until they grew webbed fingers and slimy, spotted skins.

But Calragen and his fellows had met with something else––a black shadow, cat-shaped, that stalked and filled the humans’ heads with vice.  Dechvano and Euristride quarreled, fought, and sank in the mud.  It was a djain, Calragen said.  We tightened with cold. 

***

When I was eight or nine I asked Tem what a djain was.  (Mordan had been uncharacteristically vague about it.)

“Nothing,” Tem said. 

I’d got much the same from Mordan.  “What d’you mean,
nothing?”

“A hole.  Nothing.” 

The way Tem said
nothing
––it sounded like a horrible wound, or the huge pupils of a mad cat.  Unnatural and sick.  I felt dirty.  “How does it happen?  How are they made?”

He shrugged.  “A bright light goes out.” 

In my grandfather’s time a Simargh gave birth.  The light was brighter then, folk said, the air like a diamond.  Right afterwards the baby Simargh was stolen, and the world darkened back to how it used to be.  No one knew what happened to the baby, but long, long ago, before the oceans changed, another Simargh had been stolen by the djain.  They stamped out the Simargh’s soul, and it grew up to be a
Seyora––
a very terrible djain. 

No one fancied talking about the djain––it was bad luck.  It drew them to you. 

***

In desperation, Calragen and Solisreme, the man we had called Silent, fled down the river until they were free of the marshes.  Weak and disoriented, they were set upon by wildmen, and thrown into the river.

“I was washed up, and my horse found me,” said Calragen.  “I’ve been looking for Solisreme.  Wasn’t aware I’d wandered into Norembry.  Poor Redstart’s past her prime, but if she could speak she’d tell me what a fool I am for bothering to look.”

“She says you’re a blockhead,” said Padlimaird.  “I calmed her when her leads got caught in the branch.  She was sorry she throwed you, but it was in the heat of the moment, she said.”

“See her?” said Wille.  “Tied to the post over there by the fire.  Got a blanket, even.  Fillegal must’ve took a shine to her.”

“Who’s Fillegal?”

“That warblin woodlark so worried about your bad posture he decided you’d better spend the night tied to a tree,” Wille said.

“What’re you doin with that axe, Nefer?” said Padlimaird, as Nefer, on watch that night, walked over whistling and wiping grease off a wood axe.

“I gotta kill the human.” 

If our oak had been in season, her leaves would have wilted and fallen off. 

Nefer looked at our faces.  “Me orders.”

“What’s he ever done to you?” said Padlimaird. 

“Grew hisself a stomach to feed.”

“You get rid of Fillegal,” I said.  “All you got to do is drub him a couple whacks, then you’ll be Chief next an’ you can do what you want.  He don’t deserve to be Chief anyways.”

“And if I get made Chief, Lally,” said Nefer, “the human’ll have to be scragged anyhow, as outsiders ain’t ever supposed to know who’s Chief.”

“Hang the rules.”  I cared more for my own safety than Calragen’s at the moment.  “What good’ve they ever done?”

“They’re the on’y thing keeping a bunch of bad men from doing much worse.” 

“What’s worse than this?” I said.

Nefer looked at me, scratching his tooth.

Wille said, “You swings the axe too hard and fell the tree.”

“Now, look,” said Nefer, “what was you doing that this human saw, that Fillegal’s so keen on killing him for?”

“His grave needed diggin,” I said.

“We was diggin Fillegal a loot-hole,” said Wille. 

Nefer scratched his tooth again, and said, “Only the Chief’s supposed to know where our loot’s hidden.”

“How is that a good rule?” I said.

“Hey,” said Wille, comprehension dawning in his face.  “Hey, I suppose we’re all in for it, then.”

This got Padlimaird’s attention.  “Let’s haul off,” he cried, banging his shoulder against my head. 

“Fillegal’ll kill you either way, probably.” Nefer chewed his knuckle.

“He’s gone daft,” said Padlimaird, and I looked at his shirt.  He’d bored a hole through it with his fingers. 

“Nefer,” I said, “he can’t kill folk who ain’t here.”

I’m not completely sure why Nefer did it.  Perhaps he felt guilty, as he had bribed me into dancing.  But I suspect it was more because he’d grown bored with the looting, and burning, and Fillegal in particular. 

So he swung his axe at our binds rather than our necks, and with the robust encouragement of Wille we decided to make a breakaway down the River Swisa toward the city of Ellyned, which sat on her estuary. 

Calragen untied his sorrel from her tree, and the four of us nipped around filching supplies.

Everything went smoothly, until Nefer clonked his elbow against a tub full of potatoes.  Thew, who’d been lying beside it, sat up.  He looked groggily at Nefer. 

I stopped breathing, sausages dangling from my arm.  Nefer pointed to his boots with a look of wonderment, and poor Thew, who’d never been a bright star, glanced over to where Nefer pointed. 

Nefer’s cutlass flicked out and gently, almost lovingly, cut a slit across Thew’s neck.  He collapsed.  Nefer shrugged sadly, and continued gathering potatoes.  Squeamish Padlimaird took one look and went to heave in the bushes. I wondered if my hands would ever stop shaking. 

Finally, mercifully, loaded with bedrolls, food bags, Toughy’s tent, and Nefer’s stool, we made towards the river.  Waiting for us was a skiff of oak and pitch patches that Nefer had stolen off an eel-trapper earlier that week. 

It would have been difficult for Calragen alone to drag nervous old Redstart onto the boat, but we four Elde convinced her to lie down on a mat of fishing nets surrounded by our baggage.  The boat, tied to a stump, sank a couple inches in the cold Swisa.  I hopped aboard after Wille.  Floy, alighting on my shoulder, reminded me there was no way Mordan would ever find us once we took off downstream in a small boat.  I insisted that my being alive and lost was better than my being dead and found.  And anyway, my uncle Ederach lived in Ellyned and the river was the quickest route.  

Padlimaird, last to step into the boat, turned at a noise.  He banged his shin and bit back a yelp.  Emry swept aside the branch of a river birch.

“Emry, get back to bed,” Wille whispered.

“Where are you goin?”

“Taking the boat out fer a little while,” said Padlimaird.

“With a horse?”

“She wanted to come, too.”

“I’m not stupid, Padlimaird Crescentnet.  You’re desertin, ain’t you?”

“Look, Emry,” I said, thinking of poor Thew, “you’d better come with now.  Get on.  It’s a big enough boat, there’s room for seven.” 

Nefer extended his big hand to help her aboard, but she backed against the birch, a dangerous look on her face.

“It in’t allowed,” she said.  “We’ll get killed.  It’s against the rules.” 

I thought of the writing, the journal, the stone and Cook’s bannocks; and my stomach sank like a stone.

“O’ course we’ll get killed.  All of us––if you call out,” said Padlimaird.

“Hush, Emry,” said Wille, “and when morning comes tell Seacho we’re comin to rescue you later.”

“And if Gattren comes back,” said Padlimaird, “tell her to jump off a cliff fer me, cause me arms is too tired to stay an’ push her meself.” 

Some days Padlimaird could be surprisingly clever.  This wasn’t one of them.

Emry turned round and yelled, “Chief!  Chief!  They’re leavin in a big old boat, all six of em!”

Nefer cursed.  There was a shouting and rustling in the trees; and in no time at all the whole camp had woken and run to the riverbank.  Fillegal was in the lead, looking mad as a skinned cat.  Nefer cut through the mooring rope with his cutlass.

“What the hell are you doin?” yelled Seacho from the bank.

“Seacho!  Jump in, Seacho!”  Wille waved at the shore.

“Geddown, all o’ ye.”  Nefer tripped and shoved everyone to the bottom of the boat.  Bowstrings twanged in the trees and arrows flew over the water.