The Broken World (22 page)

‘I ain't never seen a boy wear women's clothes before. What's your name?'

The young girl hurried into the shade of the tree, looking up all the time. Errol struggled to his feet, feeling the ground sway beneath them. He put a hand to the tree to steady himself and only then noticed how strange it looked. Its bark was smooth, for one thing, more like skin than anything he would have expected to find on a tree. The trunk was wider than it had any right to be too, and it bulged outwards from the base before tapering back in at the top. A tangle of narrow branches spread out from there, casting less shade than the massive oaks and beeches Errol remembered from home. He looked back over the scene, seeing it differently now from how it had appeared in his dream. Still the same place which Martha had passed through, but somehow alien.

‘You OK?' The young girl stood just a couple of paces away from him. Errol guessed she wasn't much older than ten. Something about the way she carried herself reminded him of Martha, though their features were nothing alike. Perhaps it was her skinny arms and bare, dusty knees, her crop of unruly dark ginger hair and the blazing curiosity in her eyes.

‘Someone hit me on the back of the head.' He reached back and touched the spot gently. It was sore, but his fingers came away clean, and the pounding he had felt upon first waking was beginning to recede, replaced by a powerful thirst.

‘Who'd do a thing like that?' The girl seemed genuinely shocked at the thought. Then a cheeky grin spread across her face. ‘Was it the woman you nicked the clothes from?'

‘No, it was …' Errol stopped as a shadow rushed across the ground, something large moving through the air overhead. Without thinking, he started to walk out from under the canopy to get a better look, but the girl grabbed him by the arm, pulling him back close to the tree trunk.

‘Are you mad?' She whispered the question, which made it seem all the more urgent.

‘I wanted to—'

‘Shh. They'll hear us.' The girl put her other hand over Errol's mouth, pressing close to him and into the tree trunk. She smelled strange. He couldn't put words to it, but there was something about her that seemed wrong. He held still, trying to puzzle it out for long minutes until finally she let go of his arm and stepped away.

‘Think they're gone now. We should be safe.'

‘Who's gone? What are we safe from?'

The girl looked at him as if he were an imbecile. ‘Dragons, silly. Who else did you think it would be?'

‘Dragons … Oh.' Errol felt a flush of heat in his cheeks. Of course there were dragons here; he'd seen them in his dream. Although the more he looked at his surroundings, the less it looked like his dream. There were trees, true, and a clearing not far off, but nothing was quite right.

‘Where is this place?' he asked, which got him another strange look.

‘You don't know ‘bout dragons, don't know where you are. Who are you? Where'd you come from?'

‘I'm sorry. You asked once before.' Errol held out his hand. ‘I'm Errol. Errol Ramsbottom. I grew up in a little village on the edge of the great Ffrydd forest, but most recently I was in Tynhelyg, in Llanwennog.'

The girl looked at his hand, then up at his face, with that same quizzical expression. She paused a while before answering as if considering whether he was serious or not.

‘Never heard of any of those places. You sure you didn't make them up? And what kind of a name's Ramsbottom? Sounds rude to me.'

‘Well, I can't much help you there. It's the name I was born with.' Errol dropped his unshaken hand awkwardly to his side, took a step away from the tree trunk and peered up into the sky. ‘You really think they're gone? The dragons?'

‘Sure. They never hang around long.' As if to prove the point, the girl ran out to the path, then slowed as she walked along it to the clearing. Errol hurried to catch up with her. He wasn't really sure what else he could do.

‘I come here sometimes, when the other villagers shout at me.'

‘Shout at you? Why do they shout at you?' Errol asked, although he fancied he had something of an idea.

‘Cos I'm in the way. Cos they feel bad about my ma and da. Who knows?' The girl climbed the grassy mound that swelled out of the centre of the clearing like a great green pimple. It was capped with a straggle of boulders that were far larger than Errol had first assumed, and rose higher than the trees, giving him a good look at the sky and the surrounding land as it undulated away into the distance. More of the oddly shaped trees spread away in
all directions, with just occasional rocky outcrops jutting out of them. They formed a very open forest, difficult to traverse if you didn't want to be seen from above. And over in the far distance, hazy with the shimmering heat of the air, a stone ridge rose in a slow, steady climb to a flat point before dropping precipitously back into the trees. Tiny dots wheeled around it.

‘That's the Twmp. That's where the dragons live. Something must've upset them. Don't normally come this way unless they're upset. Not often you see them all swarming like that neither.'

‘Any idea what's upset them?' Errol looked at the whirling dots again, seeing them for what they really were. No bird could be that big.

‘Not a clue, but I guess I'd better let the others know. You can come if you want. Sure old Ben'll want to meet you.' The girl jumped down from her rock and started off down the mound in the direction she had just climbed. Errol followed as quickly as he could manage, although after the climb his head was hurting badly again. And his thirst was worse than ever.

‘Hold up a minute,' he shouted. The girl stopped, turned, walked swiftly back to him.

‘You all right? Only you don't look it.'

‘Just a bit woozy, that's all. Is there any water around here? I'm that thirsty. Don't think I've had a drink in days.'

The girl gave him that quizzical look again. ‘You really ain't from these parts, are you, Errol. Don't suppose you've got a tap knife and all either.'

Errol's look must have confirmed his bafflement. The girl dug in the folds of her rough tunic, coming out with a
leather sheath from which she produced a wicked-looking blade.

‘Here. I'll show you.' She shrugged her shoulders at his uselessness. ‘It's like having a little kid.'

She walked over to the nearest tree, then proceeded to tap the bark with the hilt of the knife, occasionally pressing her ear to it as she did so. Errol watched as she finally flipped the knife round and sank the blade into the tree.

‘There you go. Should see us back to the village.' She stepped aside and he could see water dripping from the hollow hilt of the knife. He cupped his hands, letting the surprisingly cool liquid pool in them before giving it a good sniff. It didn't smell suspicious, and he was too thirsty to really care. He lifted his hands to his mouth and drank as deeply as he could.

The water was slightly sweet, cooling his head and soothing his throat as it went down. Errol drank until his stomach started to feel bloated with it, but still the steady stream came from the hilt of the girl's knife.

‘You finished?' she asked as he finally stepped back, wiping his hands on his filthy travelling cloak and nodding. His head was already clearer, the pain receding. He felt more energized than he had in days, possibly months. He watched as the girl pulled the knife from the tree. Far from the water escaping in a cascade, it oozed a little, then dried completely as she smoothed her fingers over the cut, mouthing words Errol couldn't quite make out as she did so. When she stepped away, he couldn't see any sign of a hole at all.

‘The Bondaris tree puts its roots down deep, where the water is. She shares with us, as long as we ask nicely. And
say thank you.' The girl's voice was serious all of a sudden, and Errol understood that this was something very important to her.

‘Well, she has my thanks indeed. I don't think I could have kept going much longer.'

That seemed to satisfy the girl. She cleaned the blade of her knife on her tunic before sheathing it and putting it away. Then she started off down the track. Errol fell in beside her.

‘You have my thanks too,' he said, better able to match her pace now. ‘That's not something I would have known to do.'

‘We learn it when we're little. But not everyone gets a Bondaris knife. Not till they're older. I've only got one cos my ma and da passed.'

‘I'm very sorry,' Errol said.

‘Wasn't your fault.'

‘No. But all the same.' He stopped walking for a moment as he realized something. ‘Here you are, saving my life, and I don't even know your name.'

The girl turned, but carried on walking backwards. ‘It's Nellore. Now hurry up, or we'll be walking through the worst of the sun.'

All she could remember was the pain. It came in waves, but the troughs were like nothing she had felt before, the peaks enough to make her scream. Beulah was aware of people all around her, a busyness that would have been mortifying had she been able to concentrate, think about anything at all. Only the solid presence of Clun at her side, his firm hand clutching hers, kept her sane.

Minutes turned to hours turned to days, or so it felt. Clun had carried her to their bedchamber high in the central tower of Tochers Castle, laid her out on the bed like a corpse and there she had stayed. The midwife and a couple of senior Rams had appeared soon afterwards, tried to shoo away the Duke of Abervenn without realizing what a bad mistake that was. Beulah would have laughed had not another massive contraction starred her vision and convulsed her spine. By the Wolf, how could something as natural as childbirth hurt so much?

It was Archimandrite Cassters himself who had finally given her some bitter-tasting drink that gave her a little relief. It hadn't taken the pain away so much as make her stop caring. Beulah floated above the scene, watching with a mixture of horror and fascination as the whole messy process took its lengthy time.

When the child arrived, finally, in a mess of blood and shit that made her feel like an infant herself, Beulah had been snapped back into herself by the shock. She was soaked with sweat, her hair hanging limply over her eyes so that at first she couldn't see what was going on. Clun, bless him, had wiped her brow with a soft cloth, cleaning her up as best he could as she felt the agony slowly ebb away. It was replaced with a bone-deep weariness and a horrible sense of anticlimax she couldn't understand.

And then something wailed like an infant. A fat woman Beulah scarcely recognized waddled into her view, holding a bundle of rags in her arms.

‘A daughter, Your Majesty. Praise be the Shepherd. She's small but strong.'

‘Like her mother, then.' Clun stood, taking the bundle
from the old woman, who did something more of a bow than a curtsy and backed away. Beulah was still aware of her presence, not far off, and that of several others. Her vision seemed to peter out after about five feet though, the room fading into darkness so that all she could see were her bedcovers, Clun and this tiny thing that he carried.

‘Our daughter, my lady,' Clun said. He bent low to the bed, presenting the bundle, and only then did Beulah see it for what it was. A tiny red-faced infant stared out at her with black, emotionless eyes. It was like a person but so small. How could anything that small exist? How could it survive? It had been wiped down, but its cheeks were still crusty with birthing fluids. Without thinking, she reached out and rubbed at the mess, trying to clean it off, annoyed that someone hadn't already done so. Stimulated, the child fixed those bottomless black eyes on her, reached out with tiny arms.

‘Here, take her.' Clun lowered the bundle and Beulah had no option but to accept it. The infant still waved its arms about, fists the size of angry bees flailing at imaginary enemies. There would be plenty of real ones to contend with, Beulah had no doubt.

‘How do you feel, Your Majesty?' Archimandrite Cassters appeared in Beulah's limited vision, bending towards the bed with a stiff, arthritic back. The man must have been pushing eighty; it seemed absurd that he should be the one to supervise the birth.

‘Weak. Weary. Thirsty.' Beulah only realized just how parched she was as she tried to speak, her words croaky in a throat made hoarse by her earlier screams of pain and curses against mankind. ‘How long has it been?'

‘Long, ma'am. Let us leave it at that for now. Your mother was the same with you and Lleyn both. It is something of a family trait.' Cassters waved his hand, and a page appeared bearing a small wooden bowl.

‘Drink this. It will help.'

Beulah let the archimandrite tilt the bowl to her lips, took a sip of warm, sweet liquid. It soothed her throat and cleared her head a little. Enough to crook her newborn into one arm and take up the bowl with the other and then drink deeper.

‘Will I take her?' Clun asked from the other side of the bed. Beulah nodded, watching the tiny face stare at her as he took their child away. It reached out with those impossibly small arms, as if trying to grab hold of her and not let go. She should have felt something for this being she had nurtured inside her almost nine months, but instead she was just relieved to have it taken away.

‘We'll need to find a wet nurse,' she said as soon as she had finished the rest of the drink. The sweetness had been there to disguise the bitter herbs, she had realized after the first couple of sips. She didn't care. They would relax her, let her sleep while the maids cleaned her up, sorted out the ruined bedding. What she wouldn't have given to have been back home in Candlehall, where there was endless hot water and deep, deep baths.

‘It has been done already, ma'am.' Cassters bent low again, and Beulah feared he might topple over on to her.

‘Is there something else?' She knew there was, but the old Ram seemed to be having a hard time deciding how to say whatever was on his mind.