Soulvine 03 A Bright and Terrible Sword (33 page)

‘
Where do they go?
’ Stephanie and Mother Chilton had both asked me, in blurry dreams. I knew now what they had meant. And I knew the answer.

Nell collapsed into the crevice in the rock, breathing heavily, her green eyes huge in her weary face. I knew that she wanted to sleep, above all else, as I had wanted to sleep after crossing back from the moor cur, and also that she would not do so. Not yet.

I said, ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes.’ She tried to smile at me, failed. But I did not need Nell’s smile. I needed her courage and her gift. This woman of the soul arts, whom I had not met until a fortnight ago, whom I did not even like, who looked so much like Cecilia – this woman was about to become closer to me than anyone living, even Maggie. Was
I
ready?

It didn’t matter. It was time. I took her cold hand.

Nell closed her eyes. Rain blew past our crevice. In the grey light I could see the pale translucence of her eyelids,
veined with blue, and the intense movements of the eyeballs beneath. Nell was concentrating, perhaps harder than she ever had before in her life. She was performing an act of will that drew on all of whatever small strength she had left. She was trying to reach my infant son.

I could not. I had received my dreams from Mother Chilton and Stephanie through little Tom, the conduit. That’s why they had been so blurry, sharpening as the days passed and the baby learned to see those around him. But never had I been able to initiate communication through Tom. I was not a web woman, and the soul arts were closed to me. That included the invisible shadowy web of dreams, which I could receive but not send.

Not so Nell. All at once her thin body twitched so violently that she scraped her shoulder against the rock. I gathered her into my arms and cradled her, as if she had been Cecilia, had been Maggie, had been my son himself.

‘Reach Stephanie,’ I said unnecessarily, for of course I had told her this already. ‘We need the little queen!’

Nell wasted no precious energy on responding to me. I might as well not have spoken. But her body in my arms went completely still, the most ferocious stillness I had ever seen.

The message must go through Stephanie. When we were in the high western mountains with Tarek’s army, the princess had had the power, untutored and lethal, to kill in dreams. She had to be standing close to her victim, and my mad half-sister had used that power to turn a six-year-old into an unwitting murderer. I was not using Stephanie to kill, even had that been possible. But only through the child’s power, now shaped by Mother Chilton, could I also use my son to accomplish what must be done.

Nell’s lips moved. She opened her eyes and said to me,
the single strangled word almost drowned by a sudden gust of windy rain, ‘Roger …’

‘Hold on, Nell! Tell Stephanie to go through my son. To send the message to all my father’s
hisafs
at once.
All
of them. He can do that, my babe can …’

Could he? All at once this entire desperate plan seemed to me sheer folly. It depended on two children, one of them an infant. I did not even know if Mother Chilton happened to be with Stephanie at this moment, or if Stephanie would understand enough, or if my father’s
hisafs
would obey this strange message, received in such a strange way …

‘The command word!’ I said urgently to Nell. ‘You must make sure Stephanie gives them the command word of the day!’

A faint scowl on her pale lips, but she had no time for my fretting. I was the creator of this plan but, like an architect with the building of a palace, must depend on others to carry it out. ‘
Where do they go?
’ All those children, whose power, whose
vivia
, had been stolen by the Brotherhood to balance the power stolen by Soulvine Moor from the Dead. It was such a precarious balance, that web of power. Destroy the bodies of the Dead, so that their power can flow to the men and women of Soulvine Moor in the land of the living. But then there is an imbalance in the Country of the Dead. So balance that by bringing over the
vivia
of the children. And put it where?

Into the darkness that was the other side of Galtryf. The darkness that prevented any soul arts from working in Galtryf. The darkness that I had seen on the other side, from a safe distance. I had also seen the glints of light in that darkness, the blurry flickering silver that was the life force of the stolen children, balancing the web.

Nell’s lips formed my father’s command word:
Hartah
.
The wind changed direction, blowing rain on her ravaged face. I shifted against the rock to shield her as best I could. What was she seeing? What was Stephanie doing?

And then I felt it, in my own mind. For I, too, was a
hisaf
that Stephanie could, through Tom, reach.

First the blurry colours, but less blurry than before. I glimpsed smooth polished wood – the side of a cradle? A woman bent over me, too close to see, all warmth and comforting smell. Cradle and woman vanished and I saw Stephanie. For a moment I
was
Stephanie. I felt my thin small body enclosed in an unfamiliar corset of bone, that was somehow not unfamiliar. I heard my skirts rustle around me. I held a hand, hard, and knew it was Jee’s. Surprise and fear flooded me, and I felt my mouth make an O! Then all that was gone and I was Roger Kilbourne, receiving words as clear and crisp in my mind as if spoken into my ears by a lord commander himself. Impossible to tell that the vision, devised by Nell, came from a child queen through an infant who understood them as little as an aqueduct understands the water it carries.

‘Rawley sends you this command through web women who have finally decided to work with us against the Brotherhood. The command word of the day is “Hartah”. Here is what you must do, immediately.’

The brusqueness, the sound of authority, might have come from my father himself instead of being crafted by Nell with the last of her strength. Had I been one of Rawley’s
hisafs
, I would have instantly obeyed.

The rain lessened. My mind emptied. I looked down, and I saw that Nell was dead.

I don’t know how long I stayed there, in the damp and chill, holding her. It was Maggie who eventually found me. Maggie, usually so jealous of any other woman, who this time seemed to grasp the difference. She took Nell
from me into her strong arms and then laid her upon the peat and moss. I realized the drizzle had ceased.

‘Roger,’ Maggie said with the gentleness that I saw only rarely, but always when it mattered, ‘what have you done?’

‘It is not done yet,’ I said, before I knew I was going to say anything.

She knelt beside me and took my hand. ‘What must I do to help you?’

‘Nothing,’ I said. But Maggie was not capable of doing nothing. She got me to my feet; I nearly tumbled over from sitting so long cramped in the crevice. She led me to another stone hut, blessedly empty of people. She spread a blanket from beneath a stone bench upon it, pushed me onto the bench, wrapped me in the blanket. I hadn’t realized I was shivering.

‘Now tell me,’ she said. ‘It can’t be long now before Rawley’s remaining men set him free.’ But still I could not speak. The words would not come. I was too exhausted, too filled with doubt. What right had I to think that this insane plan would work? Just because once I had done … had once seen …

I could not stay here. I had to know: had Nell and I succeeded after all? Was there a chance? I was on fire to know what would happen – not here, but in that other realm, where it counted.

‘Maggie … please … wait here. Please.’

I left her and crossed over.

Darkness
—

Cold
—

Dirt choking my mouth
—

Worms in my eyes
—

Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs
—

I stood in the Country of the Dead, among the low hillocks that, in the land of the living, was Hygryll. Fog
drifted around me, for which I was grateful. I was taking a chance that
hisafs
of the Brotherhood were not waiting here to grab anyone crossing over. Although this was not as much of a chance as it would have been yesterday. If Nell and I were succeeding, the Brotherhood would have other concerns to occupy them.

Through the fog I glimpsed the boulder, as big on this side as on the other, where I had held Nell in my arms. From the boulder I set out southwest. I knew where I was going. I had been here before. Soon I came to the large circle of Dead, the one I had seen after Cecilia’s death. The biggest of the circles, and the one with no spinning vortex in its centre. Instead, my mother had sat there, tranquil in the mindless calm of the Dead, with fresh blood inexplicably staining her lavender gown.

The circle was gone. So was she.

I almost cried out. Had Soulvine Moor taken her – destroyed her to suck the power from yet one more person? If so, I would never know. She would not exist anywhere, her chance at eternity gone to feed the monstrous desire of men like Harbinger to live for ever.

I could not bear it. But perhaps she had not been destroyed but only moved, perhaps even by my father …

And then I was running through the fog, searching, heedless of who might see me. My feet left no mark on the grey grass. I darted here and there, without plan, running – for how long? I didn’t know. Time, like distance, is different on the other side of the grave, and impossible to gauge when light neither wanes nor waxes and no sun ever rises. Time here can stretch or shrink.

Eventually I came to a place where the fog had lessened and lightened: pale drifting wisps rather than dark shrouds. I could see better here.

If I crossed back over now, my father might already be
free. Rawley’s men, tired of waiting for him in the prison hut, would go searching for him. They would find him and Charlotte and Rawnie bound in the hut where supposedly I lay asleep, but they would not find me. Not until I could see, without interference from Rawley, what Nell and I had accomplished. If we had accomplished anything.

So I walked north, or what would have been north in the land of the living, towards the border of the Unclaimed Lands. I walked a long time. This was the route I had once taken with Cecilia, and again with Tom Jenkins. It had not changed much.

But time had. More time must have passed on the other side, because shortly after I left the moor and reached the pine and birch woods of the Unclaimed Lands, I saw it happen.

Something materialized beside me. Four men, their arms laden. Immediately one of them shoved his bundle into the arms of another and seized me. ‘I have one!’

‘I am Roger Kilbourne!’ I cried. ‘Rawley’s son!’

That stopped them. I did not know any of the four. The man who held me turned my face towards him and studied me. He said, ‘Could be – there is a resemblance. But perhaps only by chance.’

I said, ‘I know what you are doing. With the babes. Rawley sent a message through the web women to do it. With the command word “Hartah”!’

‘Aye, he knows,’ another said, and the man released me.

They carried sleeping infants. No, not sleeping: tranced. Three of the men carried two babes apiece, and the one who had grabbed me had carried one, now thrust unceremoniously atop another child, covering its face. It made no matter. These children could not be smothered, nor killed.

The men laid their burdens on the ground. As they bent, I saw the distaste on the face of the youngest
hisaf
, barely past boyhood himself. The one who had grabbed me demanded, ‘Were ye with Rawley when he sent this order two days ago?’

Two days ago. Time had indeed shrunk here. What answer would be safest? I said, ‘I was in Hygryll, yes, but I was not with him at that moment.’

‘And what does he mean by it? It makes no sense!’

Now all four glared at me, ignoring the tranced infants lying at their feet. I shrugged. ‘He did not tell me.’

‘Do ye know nothing, then?’

I shrugged again. But I knew what my father, unlike the Brotherhood, had not known. The Brotherhood had understood the web of being. Rawley had been blinded, just as Nell said, by his own rigid idea of a breach in the fortifications between the living and the Dead. Jago, and Harbinger, and even vain and hapless Leo had understood the idea of balancing the powers of life and death. But I knew – better than most! – that solid bodies, not only the
vivia
of souls, could change the balance. I had learned that when I brought back from the Country of the Dead the bodies of Bat, of Cecilia, of the Blue army. My theft of bodies that belonged on the other side of the grave had so disturbed the Country of the Dead that it had nearly been destroyed.

And now my father’s
hisafs
, unwittingly, were bringing over bodies that I hoped would disturb it again.

All over The Queendom, all over the Unclaimed Lands, every one of my father’s
hisafs
were carrying tranced infants through the grave into the Country of the Dead. The men had stolen them in the night from cottages and manor houses and perhaps even from Glory itself, materializing as easily inside dwellings as once the Brotherhood had done to steal the children in the first
place. So many infants, taken from their grieving parents. Taken, then returned in circles on the ground, as empty and mindless as the true Dead. Those little bodies balanced the soul power sent to the darkened Galtryf in the Country of the Dead, which in turn balanced the power taken from the Dead to go to the living men and women of Soulvine Moor. A delicate balance. A web of being.

Which I was now deliberately breaking apart.

All at once there came to my mind the image of the spider web in John Small’s cottage, which had trapped a thrashing baby mouse all those months ago. The web straining under the mouse’s efforts to free itself, until the wild Small children had seized the whole and swept away the web completely.

‘I asked ye a question, young Rawley,’ the
hisaf
growled.

‘My name is Roger!’

‘Whatever yer name be, I asked ye a question. What is your father doing?’

‘I told you that I don’t know.’

The man stepped closer. ‘I don’t believe ye. Ye were with him at Hygryll, and we were on our way there when this … this message invades our heads …’