Tamlyn (5 page)

I said no more. Instead, the anger resounded inside my head, where it became all the louder for being cooped up. The leaders who governed Athlane were callous men who stole from their people then lorded over
us in luxury. The injustice of it burned me like coals, but what could I do, a commonfolk girl without special powers, with no army to command and certainly no royal blood in my veins like the heroes in the fairytales of my childhood always had. I was Silvermay Hawker and I had enough trouble helping those close to me; the rest of Athlane would have to take care of itself.

While Ryall drifted towards sleep, I sat in the straw beside Tamlyn, our shoulders close enough to touch without quite doing so. I pulled at the stems and stalks until he took one from me and threaded it playfully into my hair. He liked what he saw and began to poke more around my head, placing each one carefully.

‘What are you doing?' I asked.

‘Making a crown.'

‘I don't want to be a princess.'

‘Don't you? I quite fancied being a prince — when I was a boy, anyway. My mother heard me pretending and had a crown made for me. She encouraged my games.'

‘Doesn't sound much like a Wyrdborn mother.'

‘She was different,' said Tamlyn, becoming serious. He stopped decorating my hair and stared into the gloom of the stables.

‘She gave you those puppies so you would feel their love for you,' I said.

‘Puppies,' he repeated softly. ‘I have never used that word, yet you're right: when Ezeldi first brought them to me, they were barely weaned. I don't like to think about what they've become.'

‘That was your father's doing,' I reminded him. ‘It's your mother I want to hear about.'

He stared at me as though it had never occurred to him that one person might want to learn about another. In the world of the Wyrdborn they didn't, I supposed, unless it was to discover a weakness.

‘My mother is very beautiful,' he said, ‘even though she is past the age when women are at their prettiest.' A gleam came to his eye. ‘Like you are now, Silvermay.'

I pushed at his shoulder and he fell sideways into the straw as though I had bowled him over. Still chuckling, he sat upright again as I said, ‘I don't want to hear about me, either.'

It was a lie, of course. What girl doesn't want to be told she is pretty? I would have welcomed every word like a desert thirsty for rain. Fool me, then, that he took me at my word.

‘My mother comes from a well-known family of Wyrdborn. There is nothing to explain why she carries something inside her that others do not.'

‘She has spoken to you about it, then, this strange something?'

‘Yes, over the years stories have come out. She told me once how she used to sit at her bedroom window, staring down into the street where the neighbourhood children played. She would watch them at their games — the boys wrestling and racing around, the girls sometimes dancing, always talking. She wondered what they talked about, even though she was never interested in what others had to say in her own house. One day the girls gathered around one in particular and gave her a parcel for some reason.'

‘A present. It was her birthday,' I suggested.

‘That must have been it, yes, but my mother knew nothing about such things. Wyrdborn don't give gifts to one another, and birthdays aren't any reason to celebrate. Nothing ever is.'

‘What an awful way to live, with nothing to look forward to, no special days for anyone,' I said. ‘Did Ezeldi see the present?'

‘Oh yes, she saw it, a rag doll in bright colours. She felt a need within herself and marched downstairs and out into the street. The girls scattered in fear because they knew who she was, but the girl with the doll wasn't fast enough and Ezeldi snatched it away.'

I couldn't stifle a gasp of disgust and Tamlyn heard it.

‘It was wrong, I know, and so did my mother, but wrong doesn't have any meaning to a Wyrdborn. The girl didn't dare protest, of course. She had to let Ezeldi take the doll, even though her eyes glowered with resentment and sadness at losing something so precious. My mother took the doll inside and up to her room where she looked out of the window again, but of course the street was empty.

‘In the days that followed, the girls found somewhere else to play their games. That was when Ezeldi began to sense something unusual. She had taken the doll because she'd felt the wanting of it inside herself, but there was no satisfaction in having it. As she looked down into the street, it struck her that what she had wanted wasn't the doll at all, but the circle of good will that had surrounded the girl. Simply possessing the doll hadn't given it to her.

‘When she asked at the dinner table why she'd felt that way, her own mother stared at her, unable to understand what she was asking. She had the doll, didn't she? What did the other girls have to do with it?

‘Later, Ezeldi saw the same girl alone in the street and went downstairs with the doll, thinking she would taunt the poor thing about its loss — something the Wyrdborn were fond of doing. Instead, she gave the doll back, imagining for a moment that she was
one in the circle of friends. The girl took the doll, and even though she didn't say a word gratitude showed on her face, which made something jump inside my mother's chest.

‘Ezeldi didn't dare tell anyone about what she had done or what she had felt because she would have been scolded and laughed at. She was still a Wyrdborn, and as she grew older she did many callous and hateful things, but she never forgot the odd sensation in her chest and tried things out from time to time to see if she could make it appear again.'

‘Did she manage it?' I asked.

‘Sometimes yes, sometimes no. That was what she told me. Then her parents married her off to my father, even though he had killed his first wife.'

‘Killed her!'

‘No one seems to have blamed him. She was planning to murder him. It's not unusual among my kind. The marriage hardened Ezeldi, which should be no surprise, and she became as feared as any Wyrdborn in the city, yet she never quite forgot the flashes of something else, something only the commonfolk seemed to feel.'

‘Joy,' I told him. ‘What she felt was joy.'

‘Yes, joy, and I have felt it, too, thanks to my mother. She brought me up to know compassion and
affection, which seemed to be the things that caused the feeling within her. I'm grateful to her for that.'

‘So am I.' And I clutched his arm and rested my head against his warm shoulder.

‘I would do anything for her,' he went on, ‘which is an unusual thing in itself. In other Wyrdborn families there is no loyalty unless it is commanded by fear. That was what caught out my mother and me, in the end. She'd kept her gentleness towards me a secret until the gift of the dogs brought what she was doing to Coyle's attention.'

‘And he's done everything he could since to destroy all her good work,' I added.

‘But he hasn't succeeded, Silvermay. Whenever I look at you and feel joy in my heart, I know my mother has won out over my father.'

I
n the morning, we left the sad village, our bellies as empty as the eyes of the children who saw us off. In the next, a surprise awaited us.

‘You are Ossin Hawker's girl, aren't you?' asked a woman whom we met in the main street as she carried a basket of fresh loaves home from the village oven. ‘Here, take one each, and another for your sick friend,' she offered.

‘How do you know me?' I asked.

‘Oh, Ossin has been here many times to sell his hawks and once he brought you along, his youngest. Don't you remember? I certainly remember that brassy hair of yours.'

My hair! What a mess it must have been after ocean winds and days without a brush. When I have time to tame it, its ginger-brown falls in lustrous waves
down my back. It is my only claim to beauty. My eyes see more deeply into the people around me than they used to and if any of them care to stare back they find hazel irises flecked with green. I used to despair at the freckles that infest my face each summer, but not any more. What does it matter? As long as Tamlyn likes what he sees, I feel more radiant than a princess.

I must have been very young on that earlier visit because I had no memory of it at all, but it meant we were close to home at last.

When the woman answered my question with, ‘Yes, half a day's walk will get you to Haywode,' my heart just about flew out of my chest. I would sleep in my own bed tonight, surrounded by my family.

‘Eat your bread, Silvermay,' said Tamlyn when I wanted to make a start right away. He reached his arm around me and hugged me close, laughing softly at my sudden energy.

The smile left my face when I checked on Ryall. He was too exhausted even to speak now and it was only the spark in his eyes that told me he'd heard the news. I might have been the one most excited by being so near Haywode, but it was Ryall whose life depended on us getting there soon.

 

As promised, half a day's walking brought us to a hill that I recognised. I ran ahead of Tamlyn, who never varied from his steady pace, and from the brow of the hill looked down at Haywode, no more than a mile in the distance.

How long had I been away? I'm sure it could be counted up in days and weeks, but time itself hardly counted, or even the distance my body had travelled. What did matter was that I was almost home and with every step I felt drawn back into the warmth of my childhood. First came the trees I had climbed as a little girl, then the sheep I had fed by hand when they were no more than lambs, and finally the willows on the riverbank where I'd first kissed a boy.

The temptation to run further ahead was almost more than I could resist, and only the sight of Tamlyn, his arms like twin pillars holding up the sky, kept me from giving in. Thanks to him, Ryall had suffered no more discomfort than the steady sway of the stretcher. None of his wounds had re-opened and, in fact, he had managed to sleep for much of the way. Birdie would be pleased to hear it. She was always complaining about the injured men she treated in the village who got up from their sick beds too early just to show their courage in front of other men. Foolhardy, she called it. As often as not, she simply called them fools.

Dinny Grentree was the first to see us and before we were quite ready, as it turned out.

‘Silvermay! Silvermay, is that you?' he called.

Even though I recognised the rascal's voice, I couldn't see him until a rustling in the trees a little back from the road revealed him perched on a branch twenty feet in the air. He swung like a monkey until he was on the ground and staring at us, or at Tamlyn who still held Ryall high above his head, a feat that twelve-year-old Dinny couldn't take his eyes from.

‘How can he —' he began.

‘Hush, Dinny,' I said, trying to distract him. ‘Run to the village and tell my parents that I've come home.'

Once he was gone, I helped Tamlyn lower the stretcher to the ground.

‘Will he tell the whole village how I was carrying Ryall?' he asked.

‘No,' I said, more out of hope than conviction. ‘He'll be too excited telling them about me.'

I took my place as a stretcher-bearer for the final walk into Haywode and, amid the excitement, I barely felt the strain in my shoulders. We hadn't gone far before a figure appeared on the road. I knew who it was instantly, simply by the skirt she wore, which, as ever, flattered her slim waist. It was Hespa, and after a moment to let the surprise flow over her, she came running.

‘Silvermay, it
is
you,' she called.

I only just had time to put down my end of the stretcher before she launched herself into my arms, each of us hugging the other tightly.

‘I don't believe it,' she said. ‘I was worried you would never come back, that you were dead.'

Only after this first rush of welcome did she look towards my companion. ‘Piet,' she said, and with a shock as sudden as a slap in the face, I realised how unprepared Tamlyn and I were for our return. All through his earlier stay in Haywode, he'd been known as Piet, to hide his identity as a Wyrdborn, and we would have to keep up the ruse now that he'd returned.

Whatever Hespa called him, his presence immediately brought another name to her lips. ‘Where is Nerigold?'

What could I do but deliver the brutal truth. ‘She died in Nan Tocha.'

‘And her baby, too?' asked Hespa, who had helped me bathe Lucien and teach him to smile.

‘My little Smiler,' I said. ‘No, he is still alive.'

And before I could stop them, my tears broke free and I was hugging her again. It was too much to explain that yes, Lucien was alive, but that it would be better in a way if he were dead. That set me crying even more desolately as I recalled how I had come close
to killing my little Lucien for just that reason. Better that he were dead, I'd said to Tamlyn, when we realised that he was the cause of Nerigold's failing health. He had agreed, and together we'd placed the baby's own blanket over his face, only for Nerigold to intervene and, with her last breath, make us pledge to save him from the horrors foretold in the mosaics of Nan Tocha.

Alerted by Dinny Grentree, others came along the road now, and then my father was hurrying towards me and my mother, too, although Birdie never exceeded a brisk march no matter what the emergency. The return of her youngest daughter wasn't about to change that.

Hespa moved to let my parents take turns at embracing me. Ossin arrived first, squeezing the breath out of me before Birdie made him step aside. Even as I revelled in my reunion with the most important woman in my life, I watched Ossin over her shoulder. His face was lined with concern for the stricken body laid out on the stretcher, but he was observing Tamlyn, too, and the look in his eyes said that Dinny had told at least one villager of what he had seen. I would worry about that later. For now, my mother had stood back to take a good look at me.

‘You've grown older in the months you've been away,' she said.

‘Of course I have. Everyone grows older,' I said with
a laugh, but her pronouncement and her penetrating eyes unsettled me.

‘I don't mean in the passing of days, Silvermay. I can see it in your face: the things you've seen and done are not the normal fare for a sixteen year old.' She looked towards Tamlyn as she said this, in case I missed her meaning.

‘There's a lot to tell,' I said. ‘And the first is that the boy in this stretcher is Ryall, who grew up in your sister's home in Nan Tocha. We've brought him here hoping you can save him.'

Immediately, she dropped to her knees so she could inspect Ryall's injuries. ‘He's barely alive, poor dear. Take him to the house,' she ordered.

With Ossin at one end of the stretcher and Tamlyn the other, Ryall was carried to the cottage I was longing to see.

Like every home in Haywode, ours was one large room divided by curtains that could be drawn across to give privacy when needed. Mattresses, filled with straw, were stored against the wall each morning to give more space for the work of the day. My mother quickly dragged one of these into place to make a pallet for Ryall.

‘Help me with the bandages, Silvermay,' she instructed.

I'd been Birdie's assistant many times and I obeyed without thinking, taking the stained rags as she removed them and bringing new ones from the store she kept ready. In the meantime, she checked every part of Ryall, drawing in a sharp breath once or twice as she uncovered the worst of his wounds. She spent a long time examining his left arm, in particular. ‘I don't like the look of this,' she commented.

I was so absorbed in the nursing I didn't notice that both Tamlyn and my father were no longer standing behind us. When I went searching, I found them just far enough from the house not to be overheard, my father's face no less stern than it had been earlier, on the road.

‘… carry a load like that,' I heard him say. ‘I should have guessed long ago, after you worked so tirelessly in the fields during the harvest. No commonfolk can keep up such a pace.' Ossin shook his head. ‘I remember, too, how you wouldn't accept the gift of my sword on the day you left. It would remain mine, you said, and you would return it to me one day. Only a Wyrdborn must be careful of what he owns, in case it does him harm.'

During our walk, people had stared in amazement at Tamlyn's show of inhuman strength. My father had only heard of it from Dinny Grentree, yet he was the first to wonder whether a Wyrdborn might be capable of such kindness. I was on the point of saying, no, you
have it wrong, you're imagining things, when Tamlyn spoke up in reply.

‘I don't deny it, Ossin. I am a Wyrdborn. Worse still, I am Tamlyn, the son of Coyle Strongbow who serves the king.'

‘Then there's no place for you in Haywode. It's best that you leave.'

‘No,' I said sharply. ‘Father, you're treating Tamlyn like you've never known him before.'

‘I know he's a Wyrdborn. Isn't that enough?'

‘Tamlyn is different and you know he is. During those weeks he was here, you came to respect him, to like him even.'

‘Yes, and every woman was in love with him, too,' said Ossin. ‘It's a common trick of the Wyrdborn, Silvermay. Their foul magic can alter the mind — with tragic results, as poor Hespa nearly found out.'

‘Yes, but who saved her from the Wyrdborn?' I replied. ‘And ask yourself, why did you warm to him while he was here? It was because of the devotion he showed to Nerigold and his hard work around the village. That wasn't a spell conjured over our minds; he did those things willingly. You should judge him by the way he acts, not by what he is.'

Ossin Hawker was a brave man who kept careful watch for threats to his family, but he was also fair-
minded. He listened to my plea, and although the suspicion didn't leave his face, he saw the justice in what I had said.

‘Judge a man by how he behaves,' he said, repeating my argument. ‘A fine principle, Silvermay, but the Wyrdborn are enough to test any man's trust.' He turned to Tamlyn. ‘My daughter has won you the right to stay, but you will be watched. I've learned too much about the Wyrdborn to let down my guard.'

Tamlyn nodded. ‘I understand. Perhaps one day I will no longer carry this curse in my blood.'

He looked at me, then, a deep sadness in his eyes, so different from the joy I'd seen there during the voyage from Greystone. The veil of strength and certainty that he wore as a Wyrdborn had been allowed to slip again, for me alone, letting me glimpse the vulnerability that lay beneath. At moments like these, I loved him more than ever. I had seen the tricks the Wyrdborn play to win a girl's heart, but there was no such trickery in my Tamlyn. I had already trusted my life to that belief and had no reason to lose faith now.

‘Will you tell the rest of the village, Father?' I asked.

‘No. The mean-spirited like Darry Nettlefield will force him out before sunset and blame you for bringing
him here. Go on calling yourself Piet, as before,' he said, at the same time offering his hand.

Tamlyn took it gratefully. ‘There is something else I will ask of you one day, Ossin, but only when I've earned your trust.'

‘And what is that?' my father asked.

‘Now is not the time,' Tamlyn replied, but as soon as my father turned away Tamlyn looked towards me and smiled. The thrill that smile sent through me is something I want to feel again and again, for as long as I live.

Such emotions are too intense to last more than a moment, although they leave a wonderful afterglow and warmed by this, I went back inside. Birdie had finished her head-to-toe examination and, finding me once again hovering behind her, she stood and took me aside.

‘Most of his injuries are already healing. You did well to bring him so far without making matters worse.'

‘It was Tam … um … Piet's work,' I confessed, almost giving the game away with my slip of the tongue.

But Birdie wasn't interested in explanations; she was too concerned about Ryall. ‘A number of his ribs were broken and there are many nasty gashes to his face and abdomen, but nothing serious enough to threaten his life. It's his left arm that worries me.
The bone broke through the skin and that is always dangerous. Worse still, there is damage inside I can't see, which is stopping the blood from flowing freely below his elbow. I'll do what I can, but it's not easily repaired.'

 

What a time it was, that evening when I arrived home. Birdie put skills of a different kind to work and produced a feast to rival the spring festival. My sisters were called in from the nearby farms where they lived with their husbands; Hespa was there, of course, and the Grentrees, who would take Tamlyn into their home again since there would be no room in ours.

There was sorrow as we told of Nerigold's death, and there were tales that we kept to ourselves, especially about the mosaics uncovered in Nan Tocha. To my surprise, there was laughter, too, and from an unexpected quarter. Ryall was tucked up comfortably on his pallet in the corner, and despite his pain and exhaustion he entertained everyone with stories of how he had stolen food to feed us during the journey to Ledaris.