Blood Song: The First Book of Lharmell (17 page)

There were harmings in the pass, now. Seven of them. They were running at full-tilt. My fear made me lose my grip on the brant. I cast around desperately for the thread, but then I saw the harmings and I loosed three arrows in quick succession. Three harmings fell to the ground, dead, and I was just about to fire my last arrow when I saw the others fall back out of sight.

I heard the beat of wings. The brant was airborne. I felt it approaching. Rodden was using all his concentration to guide it down to us. I kept my arrow trained on the pass.

But we had forgotten something. From behind us I heard a skittering of stones. In worrying about the harmings in the valley we had forgotten to guard our backs. I turned, saw a group of three harmings and fired. I’d panicked and my aim was off, and I merely struck one a glancing blow in the arm. The yelbar in the point was enough to make it scream in pain and fall to its knees.

That was it. I was out of arrows.

Wings beat the air. The sky overhead darkened. The other two harmings shrank back. I guessed that they were un-Turned and weren’t yet used to the enormous birds.

I looked back at the pass. Four harmings were at the mouth of the pass and bearing down at us. Two skidded to a halt when the brant landed. The other two didn’t falter. I heard an irate screech and Griffin attacked one with her razor-sharp beak and talons.

‘Get on the brant!’ Rodden yelled to me.

I clambered aboard the bird and Leap jumped up after me. The brant was skittish of the commotion and I tried to calm it with my mind. I saw Rodden reach for the stick and smash it over the head of the other harming. The branch broke instantly but the harming reeled back in pain, its face bloodied. I threw the rope to Rodden and he passed it around the brant’s middle and tossed the end to me.

‘Tie yourself on,’ he called, and ducked away from a vicious swipe.

‘Here!’ I threw him my bow. He caught it and landed a few good blows. I saw the part-harmings overcome their fear of the brant and begin to approach. There was no way we could withstand an attack from all of them at once. I felt panic rise in my chest. We had to get away
now
.

‘Get up here!’ I yelled. Griffin alighted on my wrist and I reached the other hand to Rodden. The brant began to flap its wings. It was about to leap into the sky. Rodden grabbed my hand, kicked a harming in the face and sprang up behind me.

Go!
we both shouted at the brant. It took off. At the last second a harming grabbed my leg and hung on. The weight was too much for the bird and it became stuck, three feet from the ground, its wings straining. Clawed fingers stuck in my trousers, dug into my flesh. Rodden beat the harming viciously with the bow and it let go before the others could swarm the bird. The brant’s wings beat a little faster and we began to rise. The ground fell away. I watched with relief as the harmings became little more than upturned faces on the rocky ground.

I slumped over the brant’s neck, overcome by exhaustion and relief. Rodden steered the brant, the tors at our backs. As the ocean came into view I held tightly to the bird’s feathers, hoping that it wasn’t going to dump us into the open sea. The sun was directly overhead and the water glittered like diamonds.

I felt the cord that joined me to the tors tighten and then reluctantly, agonisingly, lengthen. My breath came in painful gasps. I squeezed my eyes shut and braced against the pain. Spots danced before my eyes.

I must have blacked out for the rest of the flight because the next thing I knew I was being jolted awake by our impact with the ground. I looked around. We were in the courtyard of the palace at Xallentaria.

Leap jumped off first. Rodden slid down and worked at the knots that tied me to the brant. The rope slithered away and he helped me down. I stood on rubbery legs, my face pressed into his filthy shirt. He put his arms around me and we stood, motionless, his heart beating in my ears, until I heard Renata calling my name.

FIFTEEN

I
woke several times over the next day, marvelled groggily at the soft bed and my clean hair, and then fell straight back to sleep.

Late on the second day, I struggled out from between the sheets and into the living room. Renata was there, reading a book. Everything was too sharp, too bright, too
normal
, I stared at her, remembering what Rodden had said when I’d asked how he thought I’d become a harming.
Ask your mother
. Had she known all along that I was like this and done nothing to warn me? To help me?

Renata saw me hovering in the doorway. She got up and handed me a flask. ‘That man said you would need this.’

I took it. ‘Do you know . . .?’

‘What’s in it? Yes. Go on.’ She folded her arms.

‘I can leave the room,’ I offered.

She shook her head.

I took a few sips, feeling her eyes on me. My skin crawled with shame. I screwed the lid back on and put the flask down, my eyes averted. I couldn’t do it in front of her.

‘We can manage this,’ Renata said, her voice brisk. ‘No one need know. A special tonic in the morning is hardly unusual. The Queen of Pergamia herself has a blend of herbs she makes into a tea and drinks before breakfast every morning.’ She frowned. ‘Wipe your mouth, darling.’

I rubbed at my lips with the back of my hand.

‘I’ll have a word to the kitchen as soon as we get home –’

My heart sank.

‘– and everything will be arranged. Being . . . what you are . . . is no reason you can’t have a normal life.’ She must have seen the shock on my face, as she added, ‘It’s all right, darling. Nobody else knows. Not Lilith. Well, Amis and the king know everything. They know Rodden is one of them, too. They always have.’

‘How did this happen? Being sick as a baby had nothing to do with it, did it? I asked Lilith what I had and it sounded like the hundred-day cough.’

‘It was the hundred-day cough that did it, but not directly.’

‘What do you mean?’

Renata sighed. ‘I’d just lost your father. You were barely six months old. The coughing was terrible. I was watching you die, and it was the worst time of my life. Worse than losing Garrick. I heard of a travelling apothecary who carried a magical cure with him. Any sickness or injury could be banished, just like that. So I sent for him. Your nurse warned me not to. She said she’d heard terrible things about him. People going mad and disappearing. Killing their entire families. He was very strange. Frightening, even. But I was desperate. He kept his hood up the whole time. We gave you a few drops of this dark liquid – I insisted that it be the tiniest, tiniest amount – and the effect was instantaneous.’

I was silent, picturing the scene. The harming hovering over my cradle. How could she have let such a creature near her child?

‘It was a last resort, my darling. You wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t done what I did.’ Her blue eyes were wide, imploring. She wanted my forgiveness. She wanted me to understand.

I didn’t know if I was ready for that. ‘You know what that man was? A harming.’

‘I couldn’t let you die, Zeraphina. And look at you – you’re fine. Nothing needs to change.’

I stood up and went to the window, my fists clenched at my sides. Fine? I was fine? I didn’t
feel
fine. I could sense them now, the tors, tugging at my insides. I remembered the Lharmellins’ haunting song. ‘Why didn’t you tell me what I was?’ My voice shook.

‘Darling, I didn’t know.’

‘You’re lying. The books in the library. You said you knew none of them contained a mention of Lharmell. How could you know that if you didn’t personally see to it?’

‘No one is allowed books on that place. It is forbidden.’ She came up behind me and placed her hands on my shoulders. ‘I would never lie to you. Darling, you must believe me.’

She would have tried to help me if she thought there was anything wrong. Wouldn’t she?

‘You never showed any sign that I should have worried about you. Your hair and eyes – they seemed little more than an inconvenient side effect. And it happened such a long time ago. Can’t we just forget about it?’

‘I can’t forget! It’s inside me. It’s changed me.’ But she was right about something: I had been far, far too good at hiding what I really was. No wonder she didn’t understand.

‘Yesterday I arranged for our things to be packed up,’ she said. ‘We’re leaving for Amentia tomorrow.’

Fear clawed at my chest. The tor-line wrenched painfully. I had expected a barrage of questions, for her to demand to hear everything that had happened to me since the night of the ball. She didn’t want to know. She wanted things to proceed exactly as if nothing unpleasant had ever happened, just as she always did. I needed nothing more than a tonic in the mornings and I could go home with her and be a dutiful daughter. Marry someone who I would have to deceive for the rest of my life. How could I forget everything I’d seen? How could I do nothing now that I knew the truth?

‘Mother, I don’t think I can go home.’

‘Is it because of that man?’ Her voice was sharp. ‘Did anything happen between the two of you that I should know about?’

I rounded on her. ‘You should be thanking “that man” for my life. He was the one who came to find me in Lharmell. I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for him.’ Outwardly I bristled; inwardly, the truth squirmed in my belly. I realised I didn’t just feel gratitude towards Rodden. I felt affinity. He was like me. He could understand what I had been through. The thought of suffering the pain of returning to Amentia was bad enough – but to be there alone? It was too much.

‘I can’t go home right now. I don’t think I can ever go home.’

I heard footsteps running in the hall outside, and then the door was flung open.

‘Fina!’ Lilith wrapped both her arms around me.

Over her shoulder, Renata was watching us with a look of resignation in her eyes.

‘Lilith,’ I said tentatively, ‘what would you think if I didn’t go home with Mother just yet. If I stayed on and –’

Lilith pulled back, looking at me in surprise.

‘Only if you want the company that is,’ I said.

She flung her arms around me again. ‘Yes! Yes, I do. I was so worried what I should do in a big castle full of so many strangers, but having you here would make all the difference. Isn’t it wonderful, Mother?’

Renata gave a tight smile and turned away. Lilith, oblivious, kept right on hugging me.

––

I found him on the northern parapet. The sun was setting in the west and there was a fresh wind blowing off the sea. It was a natural wind, the only sounds carried on it were the rustling of leaves and the evening chorus of birds. I heard the plaintive cry of a peacock from the gardens.

Rodden was leaning on the battlements, watching the northern horizon. Dark shapes were in the sky.

I stood beside him. ‘What’s happening?’

‘It’s the brants,’ he said. ‘The Lharmellins have lost their grip on them. They’re flying away, for now.’

‘For now?’

He nodded. ‘They’ll go back. Lharmell is their home.’

‘Did we do that?’

He smiled. ‘We sure did.’

‘Renata told me what happened when I was a baby.’

‘You were dying and some nice hooded figure offered her a miracle cure?’

I nodded.

‘Thought so.’

I looked towards the tors. ‘Do you think it will ever stop?’

He knew what I meant: the blood-hunger, the bond with Lharmell, the innocent people killed or turned into harmings. He was silent for a moment, his ice-blue eyes bleak. ‘Perhaps. It’s too soon to know if what we did will have any effect.’

I nodded, and slipped the ring off my thumb, the one he’d stolen all those weeks ago. I held it out to him.

He took it, frowning. ‘What’s this, something to remember you by?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not going anywhere. This is my fight, too. I just want to make sure that if something happens, you’ll have a way of finding me. And me you.’ I waited for him to argue with me. To tell me to go home. Forget everything.

I’d had enough of people trying to make me forget who I was. But I could no more forget the ground beneath my feet.

He looked at the small silver band, turning it this way and that. Then he smiled. ‘I think I’ve got a pretty good fix on you already, Zeraphina.’ He slipped the ring onto his finger. ‘But I’ll hang on to it, just in case.’

I watched the dark shapes of the brants circling on the horizon. They wouldn’t stray far from Lharmell. They just weren’t able.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

R
hiannon Hart remembers writing before she could read, puzzling over the strange squiggles in
Jeremiah and the Dark Woods
by Janet and Alan Ahlberg and putting her own words in their places. Her first love was Jareth the Goblin King at the tender age of eight. She wrote fan fiction in high school but she’d never admit to it out loud, so don’t ask. When she’s not reading or writing she is belly dancing, chasing after other people’s cats, or putting the pedal to the floor at her sewing machine. She grew up in north-western Australia and currently resides in Melbourne, where she works in marketing. Rhiannon has been published in the
Australian Book Review
,
Magpies
and
Viewpoint
and blogs at
http://rhiannon-hart.blogspot.com/
.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T
hanks must go to the following people who helped make this book what it is today, and kept me sane.

All the staff and students of RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing course, particularly Clare Renner and the students of the 2009 Writing For Young Adults class.

The blogosphere and Twitterverse, without whom this journey would have been a lot lonelier.

The authors Amanda Ashby and R. A. Nelson for holding my hand across the miles.

The Random House Australia team for their enthusiasm, particularly Zoe Walton, my publisher, for taking a chance on a first-time author, and Abigail Nathan and Kimberley Bennett for their keen editorial eyes and helping me see the bigger picture.

My agent Ginger Clark. It seems obvious to say I couldn’t have done this without her, but I really couldn’t have done this without her. 

The early readers of the manuscript who got me excited about the project and gave invaluable insights, including Shona Cameron, Megan Davis, Benjamin Harlow, Robert Hart, Michael Kimpton, Robert Lawlor, Reannon Shaw, Libby Stewart, Sandi Worrall-Hart and Melissa Wren.

The later readers, who kept my hopes alive, and are too numerous to list.

My dear friends for keeping me sane and, best of all, for being proud of me.

All my family, but particularly my mum and dad, for teaching me to read, reading to me, for a childhood surrounded by books, and for making me who I am today.