The Caller
Authors: Juliet Marillier
About
The Caller
Neryn has made a long journey to perfect her skills as a Caller.
She has learned the wisdom of water and of earth; she has travelled to the remote isles of the west and the forbidding mountains of the north. Now, she must endure Alban’s freezing winter to seek the mysterious White Lady, Guardian of Air.
For only when Neryn has been trained by all four Guardians will she be ready to play her role in toppling the tyrannical King Keldec.
The thrilling conclusion to the Shadowfell trilogy from one of Australia’s most-loved storytellers.
Contents
To my family with love
Prologue
D
one. He was done. No more lies; no more acts of blind savagery; no longer any need to pretend that he was Keldec’s loyal retainer. His precarious double life as Enforcer and rebel spy was over. He had turned his back on it, and he was going home.
Crossing country under moonlight, he pondered what his sudden decision would mean. He would be at Shadowfell, the rebel headquarters, over the winter. He would see Neryn again: a precious gift, though there would be little time alone together in that place of cramped communal living. His arrival there would bring a double blow for the rebels, for he carried not only the news of their leader’s death, but also an alarming rumour, passed on to him by the king himself. Another Caller had been found; Neryn was not the only one. If true, these ill tidings set the rebels’ plan to challenge Keldec at next midsummer Gathering on its head. An expert Caller should be able to unite the fighting forces of humankind and Good Folk into one mighty army. He shuddered to think what might happen if two Callers opposed each other. He must take the news to Shadowfell as fast as he could. That, and his other burden.
He could not ride all night. He’d travelled far enough to be well away from Wedderburn land, and the horse was tiring. He stopped on the edge of a little wood, unsaddled her, set the bag she carried carefully down among the stones and shook out the feed he had brought for her. Tomorrow he’d need to do better. He did not make fire, simply rolled up in his blanket under the moon. He allowed himself to think of Neryn; imagined her lying in his arms with her hair like honey-coloured silk, whisper-soft against his skin. Felt something unaccustomed stealing over his heart, letting him dare to dream of new beginnings. Less than a day had passed since he’d chosen to walk away from his double life. Less than a day since he had found Regan’s head nailed up over the gates of Wedderburn fortress, and had known he could be a spy no more. And yet, even with the pitiful remnant of his friend in that bag over there, and the knowledge that the rebellion had lost the finest leader it could ever have had, he felt a kind of peace.
He slept; and woke to something prodding urgently at his arm. Long practice had him on his feet, weapon at the ready, in the space of two breaths.
‘Shield your iron, warrior!’ snapped the little woman in the green cloak. ‘Dinna raise your knife to me.’
It was Sage, Neryn’s one-time companion and helper on the road: a fey being not much higher than his knee, with pointed ears, a wild fuzz of grey-green curls and beady, penetrating eyes. Poking at him with her staff. Sage was one of the Good Folk, Alban’s uncanny inhabitants, whose help would be so vital to the rebellion. His heartbeat slowed. He slipped his knife back into its sheath, then squatted down to be closer to her level.
‘You could have got yourself killed,’ he said.
‘So could you. Listen now.’ Sage’s voice was hushed, as if they might be surrounded by listening ears out here in the midnight woods. ‘I heard you left Wedderburn in a hurry, on your own, without any of your Enforcer trappings. And before you ask, the news came to me from one of ours. A bird-friend spotted you. I cannot imagine that king of yours would be sending you out on a mission, on your own, at this time of the year. So you’re turning your back on the part you play at court. That’s not what Regan would be wanting, or indeed Neryn.’
He bit back a
none of your business
. Now that the Good Folk were part of the rebellion, it was Sage’s business. She was a friend; Neryn trusted her. ‘Regan’s dead,’ he said.
‘Aye,’ said Sage. ‘That sad news is known to me already. No need for you to bear it to Shadowfell; there’s quicker ways to pass on bad tidings than a man on a horse. They’ll know this by now, Neryn and the others.’
Neryn had spoken of messengers with wings; beings that were bird-like, but not birds. Bird-friends, she’d called them. ‘I’m carrying him home for burial,’ he told the wee woman, glancing over at the bag he’d stowed among the rocks. ‘I could not leave him there for the flies and the crows. I regret nothing; only that I did not know where the rest of him had been laid.’
‘He would not want this,’ Sage said. ‘He would not want you to quit your post. How are the rebels to learn the king’s mind, with you gone from court? How can the challenge to Keldec succeed without the inside knowledge you provide? Unless I’m mistaken, and you are indeed on some kind of mission for the king here.’
‘I can’t,’ he found himself saying. There was something about Sage that made it impossible to lie. ‘I can’t do it anymore, I can’t be that man. Besides, there’s other news, something Neryn needs to know urgently. I must –’
A twig snapped somewhere in the woods behind him, and in an instant Sage was gone – not vanished, exactly, but somehow blended back into the light and shade of the forest fringe. With one hand on his knife hilt, he turned.
‘Owen! By all that’s holy, you led us a long chase.’
His belly tightened as two riders emerged from the shadows. A fair-haired man with broad, amiable features: his second-in-command, Rohan Death-Blade. A taller, darker man: another from Stag Troop, Tallis Pathfinder. His mind shrank from what this might mean. These were the two he had increasingly suspected might know something of what he truly was, though neither of them had ever spoken openly on that most perilous of topics. And now here they were, and his choice stood stark before him: fight them to the death, both together, or step back into the prison of his old life.
‘Rohan; Tallis. I did not expect to see you.’
Stall for time. Don’t draw attention to the bag, for if they find that, it’s all up.
‘I won’t ask what you’re doing,’ Rohan said, getting down from his horse. He was in his black Enforcer garb, as was Tallis, but neither wore the half-mask the king’s warriors used to conceal their identity. Two men, three horses; the one on the leading rein was Lightning. Was this official business, a party sent to convey him unceremoniously back to court to face the penalty for insubordination? Or was it something else? ‘I’ll only point out that our orders would have us halfway back to Summerfort by now. You seem to be headed in the wrong direction.’
Not official, then.
‘If we make an early start tomorrow we can still achieve it in time,’ put in Tallis, his tone neutral.
‘What about the others who came to Wedderburn with us?’ There was no sign of anyone else.
‘I sent them ahead by a different track,’ Rohan said. ‘Told them there was a covert mission involving just the three of us. Any reason we shouldn’t make a fire? We haven’t eaten since we left Wedderburn and it’s cold enough out here to turn a man’s bollocks to stone.’
‘No reason.’ He forced his breath to slow; made his tight body relax. Saw how it would be, the return to court, the sideways glances from his fellow Enforcers, the hard questions, the demonstrations of loyalty Keldec would require of him, as the king did every time a subject strayed from his orders in the smallest particular. He felt like a bird that had escaped its cage and had just begun the first cautious spreading of its wings, only to find itself thrust unceremoniously back in and the door slammed shut. ‘You took a risk, coming after me,’ he said.
Tallis was gathering wood. The moonlight gleamed on the silver stag brooch that fastened his cloak, emblem of a king’s man. Rohan began unsaddling his horse; Flint moved to tend to Lightning, whom he had left behind with some reluctance. When a man was travelling across country and wanting to stay unobtrusive, a jet-black, purebred horse was hardly an asset.
‘If we head straight back to Summerfort in the morning, not so much of a risk,’ Rohan said, glancing sideways as if to assess his commander’s state of mind. ‘That’s my considered opinion, anyway. You’re troop leader; the decision is yours.’
For one crazy moment he thought his second-in-command was suggesting all three of them defect to the rebels. Then common sense prevailed. There was no decision to be made. There was no real choice. He glanced over toward Tallis, who was not quite within earshot. ‘Sure?’ he murmured.
‘Nothing’s ever sure,’ said Rohan.
Such a statement, made at court or before the rest of Stag Troop, would be sufficient to earn a man accusations of treachery. An Enforcer’s code of existence required him to believe in the king with body, mind and spirit; to remain unswervingly loyal no matter what he was required to do. So one thing was forever sure: the king’s authority, which came above all. To question that was to invite a swift demise.
‘We head off in the morning, then,’ he said. Last night he had felt a weight lift from his shoulders. He had believed himself free at last; free from the vile duplicity of his existence as Regan’s spy at court. Some freedom that had been, short-lived as a march fly. Of course, an Enforcer should think nothing of inviting his two companions to sleep by the campfire, then knifing them in the dark and heading off on his own business. He had done worse in his time. But not now. Not after he had drawn those first tentative breaths as a different kind of man. ‘Did you bring any supplies?’
Rohan and Tallis shared their food with him. He kept watch while they slept; he wondered if he was being given a chance to get away, or whether it was a remarkable demonstration of trust. At one point in the night, he got up to check the bag he had brought from Wedderburn with its stinking, precious cargo, and found that it had vanished. For a heart-stopping moment he wondered if he had missed Rohan or Tallis opening it, finding him out, stowing it away to show the king. Then it came to him that Sage had taken it.
That’s not what Regan would be wanting.
In that the fey woman was correct. For Regan, the cause had always come first; he had expected the same commitment from all the rebels. If Regan were still alive to be asked, of course he would want Flint to go back to court, to be an Enforcer, to do what had to be done in order to retain the king’s trust. It had taken years for him to work his way into his position as Stag Troop leader and Keldec’s close confidant. Despite his breaches of discipline in recent times, it seemed Keldec still viewed him as a trusted friend, or the king would never have told him about the second Caller.
