Soulvine 03 A Bright and Terrible Sword (20 page)

I rose to my feet and stared up at them, their jeering mouths and green eyes. Each person seemed etched against the grey sky, preternaturally clear. A young girl, lovely as Cecilia had once been lovely, her pink mouth twisted with hatred. Leo, recovered from my blow, watching with arms folded and bloodlust in his dark eyes. Hemfree, who had sold Cecilia in return for induction into the Brotherhood. Charlotte, tied to one of the stone pillars, weeping. Was Rawnie there, too? Would they make her watch this? I didn’t see her, nor Joan either, and Leo was somehow fond of Rawnie so maybe he would excuse her from—

I saw my father.

He was tied to another pillar, far from Charlotte. I recognized him instantly: the man I had met only once, in the palace dungeons last autumn. His was the older version of the face I saw whenever I had a mirror. He
gazed at me with so much anguish that, for that moment at least, I could not hate him for his many abandonments of me. He made an odd motion of his mouth, and I knew what he was doing. He was biting his tongue, trying desperately to cross over. But none of us
hisafs
could cross over while in Galtryf, not even my father. Although with one last desperate effort, standing there in the bottom of the pit, I tried.

Darkness—

Cold—

Dirt choking my mouth—

Worms in my eyes—

Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

The grave, stretching on and on, while the darkness that was Galtryf, heavier than the world, would not let me cross further, pressing on me until I went back.

‘No path out that way, boy!’ someone called to me, amid laughter and jeers.

Slowly the jeers quieted, giving way to murmurs. Heads turned. Someone else approached. I did not see him until he reached the edge of the pit, but I saw the crowd part for him. Women curtseyed, men bowed. Then he stood above me, an old man with a white beard, dressed in a long white robe, his face familiar if only I had had time to study it.

I had no time. My eyes darted around the pit, searching for some creature I could use. A rat, there must be a rat, people were now sitting on the edge of the pit and passing cheese and bread back and forth, picnicking on my coming death. Where there was food there would surely be rats. If I could find a rat, a rabbit in the brush above – anything! But even the birds seemed to have left the sky.

The people above shouted and pointed. Words drifted down to me.

‘Here she comes!’

‘—tear apart—’

‘—finally ready—’

‘—his blood—’

The crowd parted again. Jago appeared on the rim of the pit, holding the leash of a huge grey dog. Its green eyes met mine and it leaped forward, restrained only by the leash. Grey lips drew back over white fangs, sharp as swords. From deep in the dog’s throat rose a sound that made the crowd draw back, and me turn cold and dumb.

Katharine. She was finally ready.

‘We maun wait!’

‘Hold her, my lord!’

‘Blood—’

Jago could barely hold the dog. Two of his men leaped to help, pulling the animal back from the edge of the pit. Again I searched frantically for a rat, a bird, anything living in order to escape the pain, even if I could not escape death. An image flashed in my mind: myself, sitting quiescent and mindless in the Country of the Dead, until one of the Brotherhood dragged me into one of the circles consumed by a vortex from Soulvine Moor.

My father called something to me, of which I caught the despair but no words. He called again, but I didn’t listen. Turning away from the terrible sight of Katharine-as-she-was-now, I spotted the moor cur.

It skulked in the brush on the other side of the pit from the ruined keep, attracted by the scent of food. No one looked in that direction; they all gazed at me or at the dog. I could see the moor cur only from the corner of my eye and only because I stood below it. It crouched in the shadow of rubble, waiting for scraps of offal or carrion.

Relief struck me so hard that my vision blurred. I did not have to endure being torn apart by the dog, did not have to hear my bones break nor feel my throat spurt blood. There was a way out – not from death, which
none of us can escape for ever, but from the pain of this particular terrible death.

But I could not take it yet. If my body collapsed too soon, Jago and Leo might simply wait until I returned to it. I had no idea how long I could inhabit the moor cur – I could only hope that it might be long enough.

And still the killing did not start. The dog strained at its leash, my father strained at his bonds, Charlotte wept, the crowd grew restive. What were they waiting for?

A few moments later I had my answer. A Soulviner dragged Maggie to the edge of the pit and held her there.

For a long terrible moment I thought they would throw her in with me. But no, the man merely held her so that she, too, would be forced to witness my death. Her mouth moved but I could not hear the words; perhaps they could not issue from a throat still damaged by John’s strangling her. I could not hear her words, nor make them out on her lips, but nonetheless I felt them.
I love you, Roger
.

Jago bent to release the dog from its leash.

It sprang forward, and for a long suspended moment as the dog hung in the air in its leap into the pit, it seemed to me that I saw Katharine in its eyes. Then I was gone, crossed into the moor cur.

Confused jerks of a foreign body, sharp scents on the air, fear fear fear run run run—

I was in the moor cur, and I was the moor cur. Growls from behind me: there was a
pack
out there. I was Roger, I was the moor cur … why could I not gain complete control? I was Roger, Roger was in my pack, I was the moor cur and a dog attacked me—

Throwing back my head, I howled the signal, and we dashed towards the pit.

Roger’s body lay limp on the stone, a grey dog circling and snapping at it. I smelled the dog’s confusion, and into that confusion we attacked.

Shouts, screams, snarls … some of the pack fled. But my jaws had closed on the dog’s throat and my mate’s on her belly. We bit and tore and the taste of blood was good was sickening was good I was Roger I was the moor cur …

The crack of a
gun
. My mate fell to the stone. I leaped from the pit and raced away, flesh still in my jaws. More
guns
. They could not catch me … but now the Galtryf hunting hounds raced after me, baying. They leapt over the remains of ancient walls, over piles of rubble, closer,
closer
… The hounds were built for greater speed than I. Then the moor cur’s mind was gone and I was Roger, myself, in the body of the moor cur, and death that I had just defeated was gaining on me once more.

No
.

I had come this far, done this unimaginable thing.
No
.

The swiftest of the hounds now raced only a few yards behind me. Then his jaws snapped on my hindquarters. Pain flooded me. I had but one choice left. Using the pain, I willed my moor cur’s body and my human mind, and I crossed over.

Darkness—

Cold—

Dirt choking my mouth—

Worms in my eyes—

Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

And then I lay, panting, with my tail between my legs, on an empty plain in the Country of the Dead.

Hours passed before I could rise.

My cowering on the ground was not due to the moor cur’s body, which had not been damaged badly by the dog’s bite. It was Roger’s mind –
my
mind – that kept me whimpering. There is only so much strangeness that can be tolerated at once. In the last few years my life had
been passing strange, but nothing such as this. Never anything such as this.

I inhabited a moor cur.

I had killed – for the second time – my half-sister.

I could not return to my body. It must still live – or I would not, in
any
form – but my body lay limp in Galtryf, where there was no crossing over in either direction.

Maggie was imprisoned in Galtryf, without our son.

I inhabited a moor cur …

Would Jago and Leo and the others realize what had happened? I thought not. They didn’t know – no one knew – that the arts of the web women and those of the
hisafs
were not so far apart as either group, in their arrogance, imagined. I didn’t think Jago would realize that I had crossed into the moor cur. More likely, they would assume that I had found some unfathomable way to penetrate the barrier that was Galtryf Keep and had crossed over as Roger, as myself. Not in body but in essence, as
hisafs
used to do. Perhaps they would try the same thing. Perhaps they would keep my body alive in the hopes that it might yield some clue about what I had done, and how. I could hope.

But if a
hisaf
walking in the Country of the Dead caught even a glimpse of a silver-backed moor cur, the Brotherhood might deduce the truth. I could not stay here, not this close to Galtryf. In fact, I could not stay at all in the Country of the Dead. The grey dogs were here, and they might scent me. I had to cross back over to the land of the living. Besides, my belly rumbled with hunger.

But first, there was something I must do.

Raising my head, standing erect on my four legs, I sniffed the wind. No scent of man. How did I know that? I don’t know, but I knew it. The senses of the moor cur body were freely available to me, as were its limbs and jaws and ears that caught every sound. But of its
mind, there was no trace. I could not feel it. For that, I was grateful. If I were to survive this most extreme strangeness, I needed all my wits, without distraction.

The body moved easily under my command. Every sense alert, I trotted back towards Galtryf, the centre of all strangeness.

On this side of the grave, it was not a castle at all. Instead of a ruined pile of stone, there loomed a … a
darkness
. Denser than fog, the darkness seemed solid, and yet it shifted subtly as I watched from a safe distance – or what I hoped was a safe distance. Flecks of silver seemed to appear and then disappear in the blackness. My hackles rose. The thing reminded me powerfully of Queen Caroline’s eyes: black with submerged flecks of silver, like the shifting of stones under dark water.

No longer did it seem so bizarre to me that a
hisaf
could not cross over from Galtryf Keep into this structure of darkness. The thing looked impenetrable. Solid yet shifting, neither alive nor dead, neither grave nor landscape … I did not know what it was. Nor did I want to know. I wanted only to be away from it.

My moor cur’s body ran so easily! I covered a few miles in a random direction, until the empty plain gave way to a copse of stunted trees. I lay, panting, in the shade. My hunger had worsened. But in the Country of the Dead there was nothing to eat, for neither man nor beast.

I crossed back over.

The same woods, although not the same tree. Now I lay under a stunted pine, bent by the wind from the sea, which seemed closer here. The coastline must be altered. My moor cur’s ears pricked at the sound of distant waves. Salt wind blew in sharp gusts. A storm was blowing in from the sea.

A rabbit hopped across the moor beyond, stopped to nibble at some green shoots.

Nothing in me felt moved to follow it. But for the first time, I realized what eating would mean to me now. I, Roger, had none of the moor cur’s desires, or its tastes. Yet unless I wanted to starve, I must chase game, must kill it with my mouth, must devour it raw …

I could not do it. I was not a moor cur, I was a man! I could not hunt like an animal, feel a helpless living creature’s blood fill my mouth, tear it apart.

Yet I had done so with my sister Katharine.

Something did not fit. I could remember killing her, but it was as if the deed had been done by someone else. And so it had. At that moment in the pit I had not been Roger Kilbourne but rather the moor cur. Just as in the moment I saw the female cur shot, I had been Roger, and so felt no mourning for the moor cur’s mate. Evidently I could shift back and forth.

Again my belly ached with hunger.

Cautiously I ventured from under the pine tree. The rabbit still nibbled on its shoots. It had not scented me; the wind blew in the other direction. I felt for the moor cur’s mind beside mine, but could not find it. Instead I willed my own to recede, using the same well image that had brought me here. But I must not crouch all the way back inside the well or I would be back in my limp, tranced body in Galtryf. Picture Roger glancing back towards the well, thinking of climbing back in, of abandoning this brain to the beast that it had originally—

I found myself in the Country of the Dead.

It took several more tries to get it right, while the wind blew harder and dark clouds raced in from the sea. Eventually I could control the crossings between the land of the living, the Country of the Dead, and the mind of the moor cur. By that time the rabbit had long gone, but I glimpsed a grouse seeking the cover of its nest in the
bracken. I shifted my mind – for such it felt – to the back of the moor cur’s brain.

The moor cur shot forward in pursuit of the bird, and caught it. With greed and satisfaction it tore the grouse apart and ate. I was there, too, but at a great distance, as if I were witnessing any bestial killing that had nothing to do with me. And when the moor cur had finished eating, I once again took command of it.

Strangeness indeed. The bloody feathers blowing across the moor now sickened me. But there was no time for squeamishness; the storm began. Rain pelted me hard, mixed with hail. I ran back towards the little wood, until another sound froze me to taut stillness.

Someone cried out.

The growl deep in my throat was involuntary; perhaps I was not as in command of the moor cur as I thought! But I, Roger, realized this was not the cry of a hunter, nor even of a man. My ears swivelled to find the woman over the keening of the wind and the smashing waves below the cliffs.

It was scent that eventually found her, not sound. And it was not a woman. She lay crumpled on the moor, soaked through, curled into a mewling ball that looked even more frightened when I appeared above her. It was Rawnie.