The Caller (35 page)

He had thought the safeguards he’d set in place would be sufficient to keep things in balance. Brydian could not insist his Caller intimidate the Good Folk when there was no need for it. He could not insist on the use of iron when the captive army made no attempt to run riot, bolt from the practice area or attack those who fought alongside them. The truce, the arrangement Whisper had helped him set in place, had held thus far. And with luck they had still as much as a turning of the moon before Keldec brought his court to Summerfort.

Esten’s illness made things even easier. Nobody wanted him and Brydian there all the time, watching every move, stepping in to exercise control whenever they chose to. Brydian was no warrior. Esten had a gift of fearsome power, but he only used it on the councillor’s orders, and the men did not respect him for that. They were happier working with their own kind, fighting men, and so, it became apparent, were the Good Folk. As for the despatches Brydian sent at regular intervals to the king at Winterfort, Flint had had one or two intercepted, and had found they contained nothing dangerous. It seemed even Brydian realised the value of Flint’s approach, though he did not say so in his despatches, only that the exercise was progressing well.

As the season advanced, Flint began cautiously to hope that they might all survive until midsummer, when everything would change. That hope was ill-founded. One bright cloudless morning three men of Bull Troop rode up to the gates with an urgent message. It seemed Keldec had grown tired of waiting to see his special forces in training. The king and his court were on the way to Summerfort.

Chapter Eleven

W
ith the king’s arrival, everything changed. The women’s quarters filled to capacity, with extra pallets laid on the floor and people sharing. Toleg offered me a bed in the stillroom – if we had patients overnight, we’d need to be close by anyway – and I accepted gratefully. He had a tiny chamber of his own, with barely enough room for a pallet and a little chest, reached through a low archway behind our work bench.

With Keldec and Varda had travelled a vast number of retainers: stable boys and grooms, scullions and cooks, seamstresses, personal maids, councillors and, of course, a large contingent of Enforcers. The stables were packed. There were dogs, too, some kennelled, some wandering about. The queen had a tiny white terrier. One of her waiting women carried it around for her.

And she had a son. I had forgotten, sometimes, about this child whom the king wanted to make his successor, against the ancient laws of Alban which determined that only sons of the royal women could contest the kingship. The old law meant the kingship usually passed from uncle to nephew, cousin to cousin or, sometimes, brother to brother. The true heir, the person Regan had considered had the strongest claim to succeed Keldec, was also a little boy. He was hidden away somewhere, so Keldec could not take steps to eliminate the child he saw as his son’s rival.

The king’s boy was called Ochi, and he was three years old. I first saw him crossing the courtyard one day as I was gathering herbs in the kitchen garden; he was attended by a pair of solicitous nursemaids, with a guard following at a short distance. From this group of attendants I would have guessed who the child was, even without the richness of his clothing. For all that, he looked like an ordinary little boy, dawdling to examine a beetle on the stones; running back to point out something to the guard, who squatted down to listen; staring over toward me in the garden.
Who’s that?
I imagined him asking, and one of the maids saying,
Nobody.

Maybe that child would be his father all over again, and maybe he would not. Maybe Ochi would prove to have the same fears, the same streak of cruelty, the same weakness. Or he might become a quite different kind of person. One thing was sure: it was better that Keldec’s son never became king. Better for Alban, and better for himself.

With so many more folk at Summerfort, there was enough work to keep not only Toleg and me but also Scia busy all day. We had a constant flow of folk into the infirmary: fighters with combat injuries, cooks with burns, people with all manner of ailments for which they needed a draught or lotion or salve. I took to snatching meals when I could, as Toleg did, but he insisted I stop work in time to have supper in the hall.

Now all the tables were full. Keldec, Varda and their inner circle sat at a raised table, where they could look out over their household; Brydian and Esten were close to them, along with the man whom I had seen using fire at the last Gathering, another councillor. Men from Wolf Troop stood on guard by their table, and I soon realised the Enforcer who stood behind Keldec was acting as the king’s taster.

My table was occupied mostly by women – not only the queen’s attendants, who did not join her at the high table, but lesser members of her household, such as laundresses, seamstresses, embroiderers and so on. I usually sat beside a young woman named Devan, who had striking golden hair in a long plait down her back and a sweet, sad face. Devan was a spinner. When she told me that, it brought back a sharp memory of the Gathering, and the man who had won a gruelling contest of strength. His prize had been to protect his talented daughter from the Cull, but at a cost – the queen had wanted the fine spinner as a member of her circle, and when her father had explained that she was expecting a baby, he’d been told the child would have to go elsewhere, as Varda wanted no squalling infants in her household. I could not ask Devan if she was that young woman, whose father had tried to explain that her talent was not canny in nature, but had come down to her through generations of fine craftswomen. I had seen, at the Gathering, that this king and queen heard only what they wanted to hear.

Under different circumstances, Devan and I might have become friends. As it was, we were limited to exchanging a few pleasantries while we ate our meal. Folk’s conversation was even more guarded than before, as if there might be hostile ears everywhere.

There were now so many Enforcers in residence that they took their meals in shifts. I heard from Osgar, who dropped in to have a word whenever his duties brought him near the infirmary, that three troops were sharing the annexe, which was bursting at the seams thanks to the need to accommodate the young lads from the south as well. Another three troops were housed within the keep – the men’s quarters were far more capacious than the women’s. Part of Eagle Troop had stayed behind as security for Winterfort; the rest of that troop had been sent on an unspecified mission. They would all ride to Summerfort in time for the Gathering.

Soon after the king arrived, the training took a turn for the worse. We began tending to many more injuries than before, and those injuries included some unlikely to have been inflicted during a practice fight such as the one I’d seen from the secret lookout, conducted under the watchful eye of senior Enforcers. Strange burns. Peculiar cuts. Bites. When we had Enforcers as patients, they tended to be short on explanations, but I heard, ‘That creature did it, the one with the teeth like a saw’ and, ‘He burned me, the poxy wretch, lit up that pelt of his and scorched my skin right off.’

The Good Folk were being injured, too. An Enforcer would come to the door and motion to Toleg, and after a consultation in lowered voices, Toleg would pack some items into a bag and go off, promising not to be long. But sometimes it was long. Sometimes he came back pale and silent, and responded to our expressions of concern by shaking his head, turning his back, and finding work for his hands. At those times, he chopped his healing herbs with unnecessary violence.

If Summerfort had been a place of caution before, now its inhabitants watched every step. I was lucky Osgar had befriended me earlier, and luckier still that his duties gave him an excuse to speak to me so often. He’d taken me up to the secret lookout twice more in those earlier days, but now we were all too busy, and I did not ask to go. But I wanted to see. What had happened to disrupt that orderly training? Why would anyone want to change things when they had been going so well?

I could climb up to the lookout by myself, supposing I could get to the steps without being seen and then manage to lift up the trapdoor. I was fairly sure Osgar had broken a rule by showing me the place, but possibly it was known only to Wolf Troop, whose job had long been household security. I resolved to seize the first opportunity that came my way.

But when an opportunity did come, it was of another kind. We were running low on herbs, not the common ones that grew in the garden, but the kind that must be wild-gathered to use while fresh. And we had a very sick man in the infirmary, Ruarc from Bull Troop, who had taken a mighty blow to the head and needed not only Toleg’s experience in the management of such injuries, but the presence of two fellow Enforcers to restrain the patient when his pain and confusion sent him into a raving frenzy, which was often. Toleg could not go anywhere. Scia and I were busy handling the other work of the infirmary. But we could not do without the herbs, and nobody else had the knowledge to find and gather them.

‘You’d better go, Ellida,’ Toleg said, during a spell of blessed quiet while Ruarc was sleeping. ‘Once you’re across the river, you’ll find a path up the hill. Stick to the main track until you reach a stream, and then head westward along the bank. Most of what we need can be found within an easy walk from that point.’ He glanced at Ruarc’s two comrades, who had taken the opportunity to sit down on a bench and drink the ale Scia had fetched for them earlier. Both were white-faced, sombre and silent. ‘You should take a guard,’ Toleg added. ‘Ask Brand to find someone to go with you.’

‘Mm-hm.’ My heart was beating fast. At last, a chance to get out of this place and speak to the Good Folk of the forest without drawing them too close to Esten’s influence. I could not be away long; I must use this opportunity wisely.

‘And, Ellida?’ Toleg spoke as I fetched my basket, my cloth-wrapped knife, my staff.

‘Yes?’

‘Take care crossing the encampment out there. At this time of day, our visitors will probably be in the practice area. But go cautiously, all the same.’

‘I will.’

If Summerfort had not been so full and everyone so busy, I’d never have managed to get away on my own – someone would have insisted I take an escort, even if it was only the most junior of stable hands. As it was, the gate guards were Wolf Troop men and knew me. They accepted the perfectly true explanation that Toleg could not leave the infirmary while Ruarc was so ill – the news of his grave injury was known to every Enforcer I had met since it happened, and seemed to overshadow everything else for them. One guard said he was sorry he could not offer to go with me; the other warned me to walk around the very edge of the practice area, as there was a mock combat in progress.

They opened the inner gate. As I stepped through the noise hit me. Groans, cries, shouting. The mock combat had gone terribly wrong. Injured fighters, both human and uncanny, staggered about or lay on the earth, with folk clustering around trying to help them. A big creature, the one with the pelt like flickering flames, was bellowing defiance while crouched down with both hands clutched over what looked like a gaping wound in his belly. His fiery pelt was dulling, turning to ash-grey even as I looked. I saw Flint go over and reach out to lay a hand on the wounded being’s shoulder. One of the other big fighters, a creature with a head like a rough stone, moved in and shoved him aside, snarling.

Flint turned to face Brydian, who sat at the front of the raised seating with Esten beside him. ‘I specifically ordered that the Caller not exert his control without my consent!’ he shouted. ‘This is the work of warriors, and I am still in charge here! Take your Caller and get out of my sight. Your interference has done more than enough damage!’

All my instincts called me to rush in and help. There were folk out there bleeding, suffering, dying. Why else had I come to court early, but to try to undo some of the evil caused by Esten’s call? But I couldn’t. Not here; not now. To run out there and try to aid the wounded Good Folk with Brydian and his Caller looking on would be to risk everything. Already one or two of them had lifted their heads to look in my direction. In my mind I offered an apology to my grandmother, who had taught me the healer’s craft, and another to Toleg. I lowered my gaze and headed for the outer gate.