By Sylvian Hamilton (34 page)

'Blaise.
What happened?'

Blaise
opened his eyes. 'It's coming,' he whispered. Straccan bent his head
to catch the slurred words. 'I made circles of power to contain it.
Won't hold for long. Close gateway. Quickly.' His icy hand grasped
Straccan's. 'Must be eleven relics. Only ten here. You have ... last
one ... finger of Saint Thomas. Quick! No time! Bury them here.'

Straccan
heard Miles cry out. He turned.

What
was that? Pouring down from the black starless vault above, a blacker
shadow in darkness, glinting wetly as it moved.

'Too
late,' whispered Blaise.

Straccan
drew his knife and stabbed the turf. One. Two. Into each slot he
pushed a reliquary, the second the little latten case he had carried
for so long. He thumped the palm of his hand down hard to flatten the
earth over them.

Whatever
that was, didn't like it. The demon screeched and writhed, and as it
strove to break through the circles of power Blaise had wrought, they
became visible, beautiful intricate webs of silver light that
tightened and cut like wire into the bulging horror within.

'Lord,
protect us,' Blaise whispered.

Thunder
broke directly above. Gilla, thought Straccan. Janiva. He fought the
deadly weakness and the throbbing in his head, and got up drawing his
sword, for all the good it might do. Lightning tore the darkness
apart, illuminating the lightless impossibility straining to escape.
Straccan's legs gave way, but as he toppled forward he hurled his
sword into the middle of the creature and thought he saw lightning
streak along blade and hilt as it flew, a long glowing cross, to
split the shadow through.

There
was a hideous braying roar. With a great thump the ground heaved, as
if earth's vast heart had beaten once. Lightning ran down the sides
of the stones into the ground, sizzling. The wet grass steamed, and
there was a metallic stink of burning.

The
demon was gone. The air within the Nine Stane Rig had a scent of wet
grass and wild thyme. A damp west wind, gathering force as it came,
flung down a faceful of rain and shouldered the clouds aside to
liberate the moon, which now swam out amidst a shoal of stars.

Together,
Straccan and Miles half-dragged half-carried the old man out of the
circle. In the moonlight Blaise looked bleached, skull-like, dead,
but the thready stumbling pulse still beat.

From
below came a shout. 'Sir Miles! You there?'

'Larktwist,'
Miles yelled back. 'Up here!'

The
spy came panting up. 'Bane sent me, he said something was up. Christ,
what happened? Is the old man dead?'

Tears
and rain mingled on Miles's face. 'He's still alive,' he said.
'Straccan's in a bad way too. We must get them back to Skelrig.'

From
the direction of the tower there was a bawling beast-like noise,
which rose and fell, growing ever louder. The din resolved itself
into a continuous baying, and presently folk could be seen running
towards the Nine Stone Rig, dozens of them, with torches.

'What's
going on?' Miles panted.

'They've
got Soulis,' said Larktwist. 'Where are your horses? Mine ran away.'

'In
that clump of rowans by the stream. There!'

They
packed Blaise, unconscious, over his own saddle, and Miles managed to
get Straccan astride the other horse. 'You lead that one; I'll take
this,' he said. 'Let's keep out of their sight. I think they're
pretty well occupied.'

The
night was getting warmer.

They
dragged him on a hurdle, a strange stiff bundle that howled and
screamed but could not struggle because they had wrapped him in lead,
a sheet of the lead for the new cisterns which had been stacked in
the yard. They had bound and laid him on it, folding the lead round
him like a cloak, pressing it down over his shoulders and in below
his knees. His screaming head stuck out at one end, his flapping feet
at the other.

Everything
they needed they had brought from Skelrig. A cart was piled with logs
and brushwood, and atop the logs was tied a great iron cauldron,
swaying and lurching over the rough ground like a monstrous humped
beast. Some men carried long poles and a length of chain.

They
made a great pyre in the centre of the Nine Stane Rig and lashed the
poles over it as a tripod from which the cauldron hung. They were
silent now, the only sound the mad screaming of their prisoner, so
continuous it seemed he could not be drawing breath. They looped a
chain round his ankles and suspended him head down in the cauldron.
Someone thrust a torch into the pyre, and the flames, encouraged by
jugs of oil and bowls of grease, leaped to envelop the pot and its
dreadful contents. The screaming was followed by prolonged howling as
he called on his devils and, at the last, on God.

The
molten lead engulfed his head and his crumpling body. Then there was
just the crackling of the fire and the soughing of the wind.

Chapter
38

Servants
fetched an improvised litter for Blaise, and between them, Miles and
Larktwist got Straccan up to the hall.

'Whoops,'
said Bane, catching him as he pitched forward, and heaving him on to
a bench. 'Come on, ups-a-daisy, let's get you to bed.' He propped
Straccan along to a small mural room, away from the noise of the
hall, and having got him undressed and between blankets, went to find
the children, who had gravitated to the kitchen.

'Sir
Blaise is very ill, and your dad's poorly too,' he said, swinging
Gilla up in his arms. 'Can you help look after them?'

'Of
course I can. What shall I do?'

Bane
felt a tug at his tunic and found Hob at his side.

'Hob
too,' said Gilla.

'Good
boy. The old man just needs rest, I think; there's nothing else we
can do for him. But your dad will need a tub of clean water, to wipe
him down when he gets hot. Will you get that. Hob? And clean straw;
what he's lying on will get wet.' Hob nodded and made for the door.
'And Gilla, somewhere in your Dad's baggage there's a bag full of
bits of willow bark. Will you look for it? We have to brew medicine
with it, and keep getting it down him.'

The
child ran out of the kitchen. Bane looked out of the arrow loop in
the direction of the Nine Stane Rig and saw the flickering glow of
fire. 'Let em get on with it,' he muttered, crossing himself. 'Good
riddance!'

Straccan
could hear screaming, faint and far off. 'What?' he mouthed, but
though his dry lips moved, no sound came from them. Gilla rinsed
another towel in the bucket of water and laid it on his burning
forehead. She could feel the heat radiating from his skin before she
touched him, and when the towel baked dry, she soaked it again and
replaced it.

Hob
stood on a stool at the arrow loop, looking out towards the hills.
He'd seen the people leave with their prisoner and he could hear the
distant shouting and cheering.

'What
is it?' Gilla asked, touching his hand. He shook his head and
shrugged. She gave him a quick bright smile and went back to the
bedside. 'Hob, this water's got warm.' He nodded and picked up the
bucket.

They
put the invalids in one room, the better to care for them. They lay
oblivious to everything, one tossing and muttering as fever waxed and
waned, the other corpse-like but for the faint rise and fall of his
chest under the blankets. Now Hob came into his own, tending the sick
men with a gentle competence that gave him new authority. His
demands, filtered through Gilla, for medicines and comforts for his
patients were met with alacrity.

'That
boy's a born doctor,' Miles observed, obediently warming a blanket by
the fire for Hob to wrap round Sir Blaise after he sponged him down.
The full tale of Hob's rescue of Gilla from the Nine Stane Rig had
emerged, and when, with vividly descriptive mime, he described how he
had felled the witch, all those in the hall had clapped and stamped
their applause.

Hob
was master of the sickroom but Miles and Bane helped lift and turn
the men who were too heavy for him alone. Like errand boys, they took
it in turns to fetch hot stones, warmed in relays in the kitchen
ovens, to pack in towels round Sir Blaise night and day, and round
Straccan too when the shivering fit was on him.

'What's
the matter with Sir Blaise?' Gilla asked.

Hob
banged himself over the heart region and wagged his fingers several
times to indicate something amiss with the heartbeat.

'Will
he die?'

Hob
shook his head fiercely. Not if he could help it. But he kept up a
perpetual barrage of half-threatening prayer to God-and- Mary. Make
him better, make them both well, or I'll never go to church again.
I'll never dust you, I won't bring you any more flowers. One of his
self-imposed duties at the tower had been to keep the chapel clean
and occasionally wash the statue, an ancient squat almost featureless
Virgin holding a shapeless lump that bore no resemblance to a baby. I
know you can do it, Hob nagged silently. You can do anything. So come
on! That's what you're for! Father Kenneth would not have agreed with
him but Father Kenneth wasn't there, and Hob followed the constant-
waterwearethaway-stone school of faith.

On
the third morning, the old knight opened his eyes. Hob sent Gilla
running for Sir Miles. By the time Miles reached his bedside Sir
Blaise was asleep again, but Miles sat patiently until, hours later,
the old man's eyes opened once more and his pale gaze found Miles.

'Told
you ...' he said, his voice not much more than a thread.

'Not
to go there ... disobeyed me.'

'Forgive
me,' said Miles, wretchedly. 'How could I let you go alone?' He bowed
his head, and his tears fell, surprisingly hot, on the old man's cold
waxen hand. Sir Blaise seemed asleep again, and presently Hob
chivvied Miles away. Bane found him later, sitting by the fire in the
hall, and put a cup of mulled wine in his hand. 'What happened up
there?' he asked at last, having nearly burst with the effort not to
probe too soon.

Miles
frowned. 'It's queer. I know I saw something, and I know it was ...
oh, Christ, terrible. But I can't seem to remember what it was. I
followed Sir Blaise. He didn't know I was there. I hid outside the
ring. He told me not to go but I feared for him; he was pretty groggy
but he wouldn't admit it. I saw him doing something, he sort of drew
in the air with his hands and he was chanting in some foreign lingo.
I thought, when his hands moved they left marks, like lines of light
hanging in the air. But they faded, and I couldn't see them any more.
It took a lot out of him; he was pretty wobbly. That star-thing he
wore round his neck, he buried that too, beside that big fallen
stone.

'All
the time, he was chanting and getting more and more breathless, and
then he just sighed and gasped and fell down.

'That's
when I went in. And that's where it gets all blurred. I had a real
job to get to him. God knows why, but it was hard to move in there.
And my ears hurt. And it got harder and harder to breathe. But I got
to him, and he gave me that string of relics and told me what to do.
It felt as if a strong man was hanging on to both my arms, to try and
hold me. It sounds daft, but it was the hardest thing I've ever done.

'I
thought I saw—I don't know, it was so dark and I couldn't look
at it—something struggling in a silver net. Something
terrible.' Miles's cheerful young face was twisted with distress and
his eyes had a faraway haunted look. 'Suddenly Richard was there,
then I thought the lightning had hit us all; there was a God-awful
noise and then nothing.'

'Drink
your wine before it gets cold,' said Bane.

'What
about Soulis?'

'What
about him?'

'Will
there be trouble, them killing him?'

'God
knows! Perhaps not. Though, whatever he was, it was murder.'

It
was a week altogether before Sir Blaise could travel and by then
Straccan had been on his feet for three days. Although the old knight
tired quickly and had not yet recovered his full strength, he was
able to sit a horse. It was the last day of June.

The
bustle of their departure filled the bailey. The sergeant-at-arms was
left in charge pending the arrival of a new lord, and Julitta's
servants had elected to remain until then, with a reasonable
anticipation of being taken on the strength when the new lord came.