Fell (The Sight 2) (30 page)

Fell lay down again, a little shamefacedly and, closing his eyes, began to listen to Alina’s thoughts in the hall beyond. The thoughts of the heir of Castelu, and a Helgra woman.

“Well, my child,” Alina heard the kindly old elder whisper inside. “Tell me what you intend to do now.”

Alina shook her head. “I must leave for the palace,” she said, “although I would stay here awhile. I’d hoped that some Helgra could show me the way.”

Catalin looked up from his food and was nodding.

“Show you the way we can indeed,” said Ilyan, though with little enthusiasm. “But then what? If Lord Vladeran knows of your approach, he’ll try to kill you again.”

Alina nodded.

“If you seek revenge, child, and your rightful place,” said the elder softly, “know too that Vladeran has long surrounded himself with a band of trained killers. The inner corps of his Shield Guard are hand-picked and chosen to strike without mercy.”

“A single arrow can pass twenty men easily enough,” said Catalin suddenly.

“True, my boy,” whispered the blind old man with a laugh, looking into the distance, as if trying to read the future, “but what matters is that which comes after the arrow has done its work.”

“And I’d not let you do it for me,” said Alina, looking at Catalin. “I’ll confront Vladeran and fight him myself perhaps. Confront my mother too. Though whether it’s revenge I seek, or simply to understand, I don’t yet know.”

“You fight Vladeran?” said the old man with a chuckle. “You may have a wolf at your back, Alina WolfPaw, and a sword too, but you’re still just a girl.”

Alina rose suddenly, and the noisy room fell silent.

“You think my sex weak, perhaps?” said Alina proudly. “And it’s true I’ve not the strength of a man. But a Helgra woman has a heart as true as any man, and a skill just as fine.”

Alina grasped the wolf handle of her sword. She drew it cleanly and, with a sweeping glide, brought it down towards the table and a boar’s head that lay on a crowded platter, with an apple in its mouth. The stroke was perfectly measured, for it split the boar’s head in two, leaving the apple pinned on the very tip. Alina Sculcuvant smiled, and turning gracefully, she offered the apple to Ovidu.

“That bounty should be a thousand gold pieces,” he cried, taking the thing with a smile. “Thank you, gentle Eve. That was well done.”

“Well enough to tempt the Helgra to fight?” said Catalin suddenly, almost without thinking. He looked around the gathering, then stood up boldly. The young man felt nervous in front of them all, but he kept his chin raised.

“Fight?” whispered Ovidu.

“Fight against the tyrant who oppresses you, Ovidu. Fight too for the heir of Castelu and a Helgra woman.”

Catalin was looking at Alina, and her heart stirred with his brave words, but there was fear in her too. Not only for herself, but because of what Catalin’s father had told her of real fighting and of war. Alina wondered suddenly if her nature was weak.

“With what, lad?” snorted Ovidu. “You saw my men, armed with nothing but staff and hoe. Our best fighters were killed long ago, and our youth know nothing of the sword.”

“Alina could teach them,” said Catalin warmly. “Teach them all my father taught her. And this time I’ll learn too.”

Some of the women around the table were nodding admiringly, and the men’s eyes were filled with questions.

“Well,” whispered Ilyan, “they say that wisdom is a woman, and loves a warrior.”

“Hush, Catalin,” said Alina, sheathing her sword again. “I’d not ask others to fight my battles for me, and your father said war is a terrible thing.”

“That may be, Alina, but it’s the Helgra’s battle too, from that mark on your arm, and what we hear of Lord Vladeran’s rule. From what we’ve seen here too. You have wood from the forests to cut a thousand arrows,” added Catalin, turning back to Ovidu. “And so learn their strength and power and speed.”

He clasped the bow that leaned against his seat, and pulled an arrow from the quiver hanging there, strung it in front of the assembled throng, and sent an arrow singing down the very centre of the room, burying itself deeply in the wooden door beyond. There was an approving murmur about the great room, and Alina felt a deep pride in her belly for handsome Catalin, and thought how much he reminded her suddenly of his father, Lescu.

Not so pleased was the figure who had just slipped in through the door, and who had almost been grazed by the arrow. It was Cascu, Ovidu’s younger brother, and now some of the Helgra were laughing at him. Cascu smiled coldly and, reaching up a hand, tugged the arrow from the wood angrily as he looked at his father and his elder brother, seated by these strangers at the head of his table.

“Bravo, lad,” said Ovidu, next to Catalin, “but Helgra strength is born of the sword not the bow, and our swords Lord Vladeran took from us long ago. Our smiths too he butchered, boy, or took to work in his palace, and rot in his dungeons.”

Catalin looked back at Ovidu with a sudden grin.

“Then you’ve two teachers,” cried the young storyteller, “for my father was a great smith who taught me skills I’d willingly pass on. You’ve metal from the wheels of your carts. You can move on foot instead, like the wild wolf.”

Ovidu’s eyes were sparkling.

“But it would be a bitter thing to attack Vladeran’s palace,” he said. “He has so many at his command, not to mention that river to guard him.”

“And the King?” said Catalin.

“You say that parchment was lost, Alina,” answered Ovidu, “and even if we could get to the King, I doubt he’d think this anything more than some wild fairy tale, let alone spare a single man from his wars.”

They had all fallen mournfully silent, and Catalin stared cheerlessly into his wine.

“Besides,” muttered Ovidu, a little shamefully, “these fine lords, Vladeran and Tepesh, even Stefan, they stick together, do they not? Perhaps not even the King has quite the taste for justice I’ve heard he does.”

“Then we must fight alone,” said Catalin softly, raising his head again, his blue green eyes locked unwaveringly on Ovidu’s. “My father always said that bold thoughts are stronger than a mighty army.”

Ovidu seemed at a loss for words, but he looked at Alina, the true heir of Castelu, an heir with Helgra blood, and Catalin the archer, and slammed his fist on the table, with a belly laugh that seemed to shake the whole room.

“By Fenris,” he cried, “I talk like a Sikla. It does my heart good to see a boy speak this bravely, and I’ll argue no longer. It shall be so. Once more the Helgra shall forge weapons.”

Ovidu’s voice was swelling with courage, and it rang out around the Helgra hall.

“Once more we shall raise our heads high, for is it not better to live standing tall, than to die on your knees?”

Ovidu was gazing challengingly about the room, and many of the Helgra had begun to nod enthusiastically, although Ilyan’s youngest son, Cascu, was not amongst them. Ovidu suddenly stood up.

“And the Helgra have other weapons too.”

He strode over to the wall and plucked something from a shelf. When Alina and Catalin saw what he was holding in his two powerful hands, they shivered. It was a single antler tusk, from a large red deer. It look liked a curling branch, but not with fat twigs coming from it, but ten hard points, like daggers.

Ovidu swung the antler left and right, and both saw immediately how dangerous it could be in Helgra hands, but Alina suddenly thought of her dreams. She was no changeling perhaps, but she remembered how she had dreamt of these antlers, and suddenly Alina felt as if she were deep inside some goblin stronghold.

“We’ll send the Helgra out to the forest, to collect fallen antlers and sharpen their points,” cried Ovidu. “Only the Helgra know the skill of it.”

Some around the table had jumped up too.

“And we’ll light the forges, and go out amongst the mountain villages, calling out the Helgra to do battle and end this suffering forever,” said Ovidu. “Then send messengers to the King while we train. There shall be justice again in our lands.”

The gathering suddenly rose, and one after the other began to take up the call, a chant that roused Fell from his drunken slumbers that had begun beyond, and made him whine in the night.

“Alina!” they chanted, as Alina thought that it was good indeed to have a pack, but worried too at the thought of war and the knowledge that Fell would not be at their side at all. “Alina WolfPaw!”

Fell and Alina stood together in the shattering morning, on the edge of the Helgra village. A new hope was in the air, and brilliant shards of sunlight had armed the heavens with spears of pure gold.

“I hate to leave you, Alina,” came Fell’s growling mind.

The chorus that had woken the Helgra that morning was still on the air—not birdsong, but the sound of hammering metal. Five days after the feast they had already lit the fires in the forges, and Catalin was hard at work. But Fell’s yellow gold eyes were full of worry. He had delayed too long.

“You’ve friends now, Alina. A pack indeed.”

“Yes, dear Fell. I’m part Helgra. I hardly believe the story of it. Yet I have no friends like you.”

Fell gave a soft, contented growl. “You’ve a great destiny, I think. But I must find my father, Alina. Maybe I’ll return to you. Who knows? Maybe I can still find the Guardian.”

“Worry for yourself now, Fell, and for those you love.”

The wolf raised his tail. “Love” had been such an unfamiliar word to the Kerl, but he knew suddenly he loved the girl, and it hurt him to leave her again, perhaps forever this time.

“A legend told us once that a courage is needed, Alina. A courage as deep as despair.”

“Despair?” said Alina fearfully, worried about what she had brought to her own people. Alina had never meant to bring sadness to anyone, and Lescu had taught her that war meant sadness and death.

“Yes, Alina, and I know what it means now, I think. I thought once that it meant that life itself is despair, and so we must make the darkness our ally.”

Alina frowned.

“But it doesn’t at all. It means that real courage is not to give up hope, even in the most terrible darkness, and to carry on. That if courage and love are as deep as despair, deeper, then light may come again.”

“I pray it, Fell. For all of us.”

“Pray?” muttered the wolf’s troubled mind, thinking suddenly of Ottol and his talk of the Great One, and of his fruitless search for the Guardian too. “I’m a Varg, Alina, and so should pray to Tor and Fenris. Yet you’re a human and pray to your own gods. They cannot both be real, Alina Sculcuvant. Perhaps none of these stories are. As I think now the Guardian is nothing but a myth.”

Alina’s mind was silent, but her heart was beating faster.

“Unless they’re just names and human words, and it’s the very thought of things greater than ourselves that really matters, wherever they come from,” thought the black wolf, with a hopeful, defiant growl. “That by reaching out with those thoughts, we somehow reach into something far deeper than even words, and so touch something beyond what we think we know. So I shall reach out to what is beautiful.”

“Yes, dear friend,” said the storyteller. “But go now and find your father. Hurry.”

Fell was seized with worry for Huttser, and he was suddenly running, out beyond the village towards the mountains, as Alina of Castelu turned back with a heavy heart towards her Helgra own, and the fight ahead. As she went, she did not notice the cowled Helgra mounting his horse hurriedly, and turning its head towards Lord Vladeran and his palace, beyond the Stone Den on the mountain.

ANOTHER BEADING RED DROPLET, LIKE A HOLLY berry broken from its leaf, plashed into the font, and Lord Vladeran’s voice came cold and fearful, as he held out his hand again and clutched at the air.

“Morgra. They’ve escaped me again, damn you, and now this boy aids her too. A blacksmith’s son.”

The she-wolf’s scarred features appeared once more in the water, lit by shadows thrown by the seemingly holy candlelight.

“And Fell,” thought Vladeran, “we did not turn him.”

“Turn him?” Morgra’s ears came forwards in the water, and those wolf eyes glittered. “His nature dwells in darkness, human. Many times he’s wanted to turn on the girl. Only some pact has held him back, but the Sight has shown him her death also. He needs only accept his destiny. He should have done so long ago.”

Vladeran’s eyes darkened. He wondered now about his own destiny. Twice the girl and the wolf had slipped his clutches, and the fear of it had made him set twenty Shield Guard about him permanently. But Vladeran had other worries too.

Although he had suppressed his enemies in his own lands, and the Helgra were crushed and broken, his armies had suffered great losses against the Turks already, while his own serfs and subjects, stretched to breaking by the taxes of food and provisions raised for the wars, and by the loss of their loved ones in Vladeran’s battles, were breathing discontent. Vladeran’s rule had become more and more ruthless, and now his dungeons were full.

“The Gift,” said his mind, “they say it brings the power of prophecy.”

Morgra seemed to be remembering, and her ear twitched.

“In the Red Meadow, although we lie suspended between your world and the final journey,” came her thoughts, beginning to whisper like the wind in Fell’s cave, “the Sight brings ways to touch the living world, indeed, through dream and prophecy, if nothing more. Just as the fortune-tellers once did in the land beyond the forests. There are indeed ways to see into the pattern of things, even from here.”

“Tell me then, wolf. See for me now.”

Vladeran was thinking hungrily of one of the sacred Oaths of the Order of the Griffin, the pursuit of knowledge.

“Of what would you know, human?”

“Of the future, and the girl. Redheaded Alina. Above all, of my own destiny. Is she really a danger to me?”

The scarred she-wolf nodded and closed her eyes in the water.

“Let me see into your future then, human. By Wolfbane, the Evil One, and by the great Varg god Fenris. By all the powers of the Sight.”

Morgra suddenly opened her muzzle and gave a howl so strange and dark that Vladeran stepped back in fear, and the hunting dog in his hall whined bitterly. The cry rose, a cry that had once been one of summoning from the world of the living, and suddenly vanished into silence.

Morgra was silent for a long while, and Lord Vladeran thought that the spectre might fade once more, but at last her thoughts began to murmur, and her head to sway from side to side, as if she were seeing things before her dead eyes.

“I see the child, human. The changeling girl. WovenWord. SkeinTale. So important. I see a father, and a lifelong friend. I see your death.”

Vladeran grasped the sides of the font and glared at the she-wolf.

“My death?”

The wolf’s eyes opened again, and the silence seemed to echo about the little chapel.

“Tell me,” cried Vladeran. “What did you see of my death?”

“SkeinTale’s no danger to you, human. For though her fate is bound into the very fabric of being, and Larka sent her spirit from even beyond the Red Meadow to tell Fell of it, you can only be killed if her father is in sight of these very halls.”

Vladeran felt a great power swelling in his chest, as though he had just donned a breastplate of impenetrable armour. Alina’s father, Lord Dragomir, Vladeran’s best friend and his wife’s first husband, had died on the battlefield before Vladeran’s own eyes. When his troops had ridden down to collect his broken body, his soldiers had seen all their dead humped into pits, flaming like torches in the deathly air.

“You’re certain of this, wolf?”

“Oh, yes, human. As certain as I am that only a love like Larka’s could have reached her brother from where she is now, and talked to him as she did. That charm surrounds you.”

Vladeran smiled, and suddenly it seemed as if he did not need the Inner Shield Guard to protect him at all. Did not need anyone.

“The girl was always a thorn in my side,” he said, “but she’s hunted everywhere and unjustly accused, too. I have set a bounty on her. It’s as it should be.”

Something came into Morgra’s eyes, a dark memory. Had Morgra herself not once been unjustly accused? It had been the accusation that she herself, set apart by the strange powers of the Sight, had been a cub killer (when what Morgra had been trying to do was protect the infant) that had truly driven her into the shadows.

“Yet how can we guide Fell back towards his destiny,” asked Vladeran, “and be certain that he will fulfil his nature, and kill the girl?”

“Pain,” answered Morgra’s bitter mind, “for Fell now faces a pain he has never known before. His father is dying. I see the shadow of these things from the Red Meadow.”

“And then?”

“Then I shall touch him when he is most vulnerable, for it is only when we’re really in pain that our strength, our courage, and our faith are truly tested. If we give up hope then and question all we believe, then we may truly be welcomed into the shadows, and taste the dark joy of the Sight. Fell has tasted it once, and he shall do so again. I shall help him.”

Yet Morgra knew something she did not say, a terrible secret that none on earth knew, and which would surely drive Fell towards the dark forever.

Vladeran nodded gravely. “I will trust you then, Morgra. For I sense your nature, she-wolf.”

Morgra’s eyes glittered at this talk of her nature, but Vladeran heard a sound from the chamber beyond. A boy’s voice.

“Father. Are you here, Father?”

He plunged his fist into the water, as if breaking glass in a mirror, and Morgra was gone. He turned and, sweeping through the tapestry once more, stepped back into the main hall. The fire was no longer lit, and great beams of heavy sunlight slanted through the windows, making the whole place glow and shine, glittering especially on Elu’s golden head. His son was sitting in the great carved chair—a throne if Vladeran had been a king—and swinging his legs happily.

“You
are
here,” said Elu, with a cheeky grin. “Mother said to find you.”

Vladeran stopped and looked strangely at his own son.

“Elu. You look fine sitting there. Like the Lord of Castelu already.”

The child beamed and Vladeran walked closer, with something almost jealous in his eyes.

“Where’s your mother, Elu?” he asked softly.

The boy seemed distracted.

“Oh, she’s at tapestry, and it’s so boring. She sang to me though. A pretty enough song.”

“I like to hear your mother’s song, Elu. What did she sing?”

“It was a Helgra song. You love Mother, don’t you, Father?”

Vladeran felt something tighten and catch in his throat, and again he was surprised by how direct children can be.

“Yes, Elu. Very much.”

“Mother says you’ll always protect us. That you always have done.”

Vladeran leaned forwards, scooped his son up in his powerful arms, swung him round, and, sitting down himself in the chair, perched him on the arm of the chair next to him.

“You’re a good boy, Elu,” he whispered. “And so I do, but we must teach you to protect yourself too, mustn’t we? One day you’ll wield a sword.”

“Oh, when, Father?”

“Soon, boy. But first comes the dagger.”

Vladeran slipped his hand to his side and pulled the dagger from his belt, then brought it up beside his son’s face. Elu’s eyes sparkled. Vladeran turned the dagger slightly in his hand, thinking suddenly of his son on the throne and almost of how easy it would be to make the move, and pass it across the boy’s throat.

He pushed the horrible thought aside, and flipped the dagger in his grasp, then offered it to his son.

“Oh, thank you,” said Elu happily. “It’s very fine. You love me too, don’t you, Father?”

Vladeran felt something stir in his gut. He had long taught himself to disregard his own feelings, in the search for his own mastery.

“Yes, Elu, of course.”

Elu smiled and leaned against Vladeran’s shoulder with a happy sigh.

With that there was a great knocking, and the huge doors to the chamber swung open. Six soldiers entered, all in armour and none less than six foot tall. They wore leather breast shields and visors, and each bore an insignia like Vladeran’s own.

Yet now the cross that had symbolised the Order of the Griffin was painted as black as night, and those yellow gold wings at each tip had turned red. The Inner Shield Guard marched towards Vladeran, flanking a man in a cloak and hood, whose clothes were spattered with mud after a hard and urgent ride.

“Go play now, boy,” whispered Vladeran. “And tell your mother I’ll come to her soon. I have high matters to attend.”

“Yes, Father,” said the child, jumping up.

The boy stopped for a moment to survey the soldiers admiringly, and then ran through their ranks from the great chamber. The Shield Guard all saluted their master, one to the right thumping his bare fist on his insignia, but it was the cloaked figure who stepped forwards and pulled down his hood.

“Well?”

“Alina and Catalin,” whispered the spy, in a thin, nasal voice, made dry and weary by his long ride. “The storytellers are with my people now.”

Vladeran stood up, with flashing, angry eyes.

“Alina with the Helgra, Cascu?” he hissed in amazement.

Ovidu’s brother nodded.

“My brother and father welcome them. They know who she is. She is with her own again.”

“Her own? What are you talking about?”

Cascu smiled thinly.

“She is marked, is she not?”

Lord Vladeran seemed confused.

“She had a mark, yes. What of it, man?”

“The opening eagle is the mark of a Helgra woman. The same mark the Lady Romana bears.”

Vladeran’s eyes were suddenly touched with doubt. Romana had never told him what the mark really signified.

“And could you not dispatch them easily, Cascu?” he whispered. “Kill them both.”

“They’re protected now, day and night. No weapons are allowed in their presence.”

“Protected by those weaklings? A pack of cowards and foolish old men.”

Cascu lifted his head slightly, and something like anger flickered in his face.

“Not all of us are old men,” he said softly, with some pride left in his voice, “even if our best are already dead. My father and my brother have sworn to help them.”

Vladeran smiled.

“With what? I’ve taken your weapons, poisoned your rivers, killed your smiths, broken your power. Forever.”

Cascu’s eyes narrowed, almost with a challenge.

“The boy teaches them the arts of the smith once more, and now tales of a Helgra girl and a black wolf raise our kind to revolt throughout the Helgra lands. My people arm themselves again, Vladeran, encouraged by the appearance of a wolf who serves a human.”

Vladeran stepped forwards furiously.

“This wolf,” he hissed, “this cursed black wolf. Then can you not kill Fell, Cascu?”

“It’s gone from their fold, my lord, into the mountains on its own once more. It goes to its dying father. But news of it stirs my people.”

Vladeran’s eyes glittered. Then Morgra’s words had been true. He could surely trust the she-wolf and her prophecy.

“But the Helgra’s pride begins to flow again,” said Cascu. “It swells like a river, fed with snowmelt. The villages are rising, and they’ll march soon towards the palace. They raise banners that carry the mark of a Helgra woman, in the cause of the heir to these lands.”

Lord Vladeran’s eyes blazed, but as he stood there he suddenly started to laugh.

“Do you hear that, Landu?” he cried, turning to the man who had saluted with his fist. “Do you hear that, my loyal Shield Guard? Fools come to test us in our own halls, but you shall protect me, shan’t you?”

“In blood we serve,” cried the Shield Guard as one, stamping their right feet.

“The oath,” hissed Vladeran. “Repeat the oath of the New Order of the Castelu now.”

“The conquest of the earth,” Landu snapped back, standing even straighter, “the pursuit of war, and the glory of treading down the weak.”

The soldiers were looking straight ahead as he repeated the five inverted principles that now bound them together, but there was something strange and caught in Landu’s look as he finished the oaths. “The mastery of the feminine and the search for power, my lord.”

Vladeran smiled approvingly.

“Exactly, Landu. And my soldiers too shall swat our enemies like flies. A girl and a boy lead an army, even a Helgra girl? Mere children. It’s a silly dream.”

But a new fear grabbed at Lord Vladeran.

“News of Alina, Landu, and this Helgra rising. It reaches the palace already?”

Landu shook his head.

“Not yet, my lord. It’s spoken of in the countryside now, like a dark fable, but here there are only distant rumours, dismissed as mere fancy. As stories.”