The Shadow at the Gate (68 page)

Panic rose in him. The panic shocked him. It was not a reaction Jute could have foreseen. He despised Ronan. Despised and feared him. He could still see the square of moonlight at the top of chimney receding as he fell into the darkness. Still could smell soot and dust and spiderwebs. But watching him walk away sent panic choking at his throat. A whisper in the back of Jute’s mind reminded him he’d already be dead three times over if it weren’t for Ronan.

“Come back, you!” shouted the ghost. “Don’t worry, young Jute. That should do it. People always listen to me. It’s all in the voice.”

“Patience,” said the hawk. “He’ll be back.”

The hawk was right. Ronan did not walk more than fifty paces before he stopped. His shoulders hunched and he did not move. Then he turned and walked back, his steps slow and dragging.

“I can’t go,” he said desperately. “You must release me.”

“We didn’t bind you,” said the hawk. “She did.”

“Jute!”

The agony in the man’s voice made Jute flinch. He could not meet Ronan’s eyes.

“The boy can’t release you either,” said the hawk.

“Jute. I must go. I must.” Ronan’s voice halted as if he were choking on his words. He shuddered. “Those were my—my family’s horses. They’re part of my family. They would never leave, unless—unless. . . Something must have happened. I must go.”

“I never had a family,” said Jute. It was the only thing he could say. He did not know if he understood the anguish in Ronan’s face, but he wished he did. He wished he did with all his might.

“I ran away from my family fifteen years ago,” said Ronan, his voice shaking. “Fifteen years, and I’ve not seen them since.”

And Jute could not say no. He could not say no, even though he could still close his eyes and feel himself falling down the chimney. Even though the hawk’s claws bit into his shoulder so fiercely that he felt blood spring from his skin. The bird’s anger beat against his mind.

His family is not important. They are not important in comparison to your life.
 
Do you understand? We must keep you safe.

I never had a family.

Greater things are at stake here.

I never had a family.

At that, the hawk’s voice abruptly went silent. Ronan stood, frozen, waiting, his eyes on Jute’s face. The boy took a deep breath and then nodded. Ronan turned without a word. The way was easy to follow because of the scarred ground left by the flight of the horse herd. They traveled mostly in silence that was broken only occasionally by the ghost who, being a ghost, was not particularly sensitive to those who still lived.

“I once had the good fortune to see Min the Morn,” said the ghost. “Now, that was a horse. One blow from his hoof could split the earth in two. There was an old story that he shattered the northern ranges by galloping across the mountains. Of course, you might think a horse is only a horse, of course. Just because you think you have all the facts, and you might have them all, doesn’t mean you have the answers.”
                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
                             

The hawk was growing more and more restive in his surliness on Jute’s shoulder. With a grunt of disgust, the bird launched into the air. It was then that he saw the smoke.

“Look!” The hawk’s voice came down clear and thin to them. “Look there!”

Smoke stained the horizon. It was difficult to discern against the dimming of the early evening sky. Ronan’s face turned pale.

“A campfire, I daresay,” said the ghost. “Perhaps they’ll have a hot supper for us?”

“You don’t eat,” said Jute. “Besides, they might not be friendly.”

“Nonsense. We’re in the duchy of Thule, aren’t we? Hospitable folk. No one ever goes hungry in Thule. I remember having had excellent meals in this duchy.”

With those words, the ghost started off toward the smoke. Ronan and Jute trailed after it. Above them, the hawk soared higher.

“Mutton,” continued the ghost. “Sizzling over the flames. Fresh bread. You haven’t tasted bread until you’ve had it baked hot in coals. Of course, the taste is improved by ravenous hunger. You’ll understand when you’re old, boy. There aren’t many pleasures left in life at my age. Oh, don’t get me wrong—scholarly work is my one true pleasure. There’s nothing like hunting down an ancient word and discovering its sound, its letters, its meaning, but a good meal’s a close second.”

Hurry.
The hawk’s voice keened through Jute’s mind.
One is still alive!

“We must hurry!” said Jute. “There’s someone still alive!”

He did not answer the ghost’s questions, for he could hear the urgency in the hawk’s voice and the sound of the wind. The wind knew. He could feel it blowing through his thoughts. The ghost hurried along at his side. Behind them, Ronan walked, but his face was set and white and his pace faltered as if he was reluctant to discover what lay ahead. Thunder rumbled overhead. Jute felt a drop of rain on his face, and then it began to rain in earnest. It was a dreary sort of rain that painted out the sky and plastered the grass onto the ground.

Jute could no longer see the smoke anymore, or the hawk, for that matter. But he could still feel the wind in his mind, blowing his thoughts forward. How odd. It almost felt like the wind was pushing his thoughts forward into the haze. Pushing them forward so that he could see with them. But not with his eyes. It was the strangest sensation. The wind inside his mind blew harder as if in agreement. Jute pushed with his own mind, pushing his thoughts forward to see past his eyes, to see past the obscurity of the rain. A picture formed in his mind. Flames hissing and dying in the rain. The blackened ruins of wagons.

Stop that.

The hawk’s voice was sharp.

Why?
said Jute, bewildered
. Every time I do something, you tell me to stop.

Seeing with one’s mind is a dangerous thing. Unless you are skilled at it, and you are not, then it is like lighting a fire in the darkness. It attracts unwanted attention. And right now we do not want any such attention.

The wind subsided to an apologetic murmur in Jute’s mind. He could smell smoke in the damp air. The ground fell away in a gentle slope, down past a trampled sweep of grass to a hollow. A spring lay in the middle, edged by bushes and cattails. Smoke guttered up from dying flames. The charred timbers of wagons stood gaunt in the rain, skeletons of what they once had been. And there were bodies.

Jute swallowed hard. Beside him, the ghost gasped. They both paused at the top of the rise, but Ronan gave a hoarse cry and stumbled past them. He staggered like a drunken man. The rain hissed on the last of the flames. Ronan howled, his face raised to the sky like a dog. He swung around, looking this way and that, his eyes blank and his head shaking from side to side as if in confusion. Bodies sprawled everywhere: Men and women. Young and old. Here, a girl had been cut down at the water’s edge, a spilled armful of laundry around her trampled into the mud. There, an old man lay tangled in the shattered steps of a wagon. The wind gusted through and blew embers out onto the surface of the spring where they died, sputtering and snapping. The hawk swept down.

One is still alive.

“One’s still alive!” blurted out Jute.

There. By the cook-pot.

“Here!” said Jute.

An older woman lay crumpled on the ground, her hands outstretched as if she was reaching for something that was gone. Ronan stumbled past Jute and fell to his knees at the woman’s side. Hands shaking, he brushed her hair back from her face. Her eyes opened. She stared up at the sky and then her gaze fell on Ronan’s face. A smile trembled on her mouth and then was gone.

“Declan,” she said.

He said nothing, could say nothing. Her hand crept out to grasp his.

“They took her.” Her fingers tightened on his, impossibly strong. Her knuckles whitened. “Find your sister.”

Still, he could not speak, though his tears fell on her face. She stared straight up at his face, but she saw him no longer. It was as if she gazed past him into some other sky that was not the gray, rainy sky of Tormay.

“Ever since I was a girl I’ve dreamt of it,” she said. But she did not speak of what she had dreamed, and then she was still.

They carried all of the bodies to a wagon that had not been burned as badly as the others. Jute had seen dead bodies before. Once, an old drunk had fallen out the second-story window of the Goose and Gold and broken his neck on the street below. The Juggler’s children had gathered around to gawk and giggle nervously, daring each other to touch the dead man’s hand. And then there had been the winter when a horrible bleeding cough had made its rounds of the city. It had restricted itself mainly to the poorer neighborhoods of the city, particularly Fishgate and south of it. Jute could still remember the carts rolling by, filled with corpses like cordwood. But he had been more fascinated than horrified. Now, however, his stomach turned over with nausea. He was only strong enough to carry the lighter bodies, and these were the children. His eyes blurred, and it was Lena’s head lolling against his arm.

They set the wagon alight and let it burn.

“Can’t let the scavengers get them,” said Ronan dully.

Two of the bodies still lay by the spring: the woman and an older man found fallen nearby. Ronan began digging with his sword in the muddy earth. The other two tried to help him, but he turned on them, his face twisted in fury.

“Come away, Jute,” said the hawk. “This isn’t our place.”

The boy climbed up to the top of the rise on the other side of the dell. The ghost drifted after him. Behind them, smoke billowed up as the flames rose higher. But the wind was in their face, blowing out of the northwest, and they could not smell the stench of burning flesh. The hawk settled on Jute’s shoulder and furled his wings.

“They were his family,” said Jute after a while.

“Yes,” said the hawk.

“I never knew my family. I don’t remember.” Jute paused, staring down at his fingers. They were filthy with dirt and soot and something that looked like blood. He ripped up a clump of grass and scrubbed at his hands.

“What sort of land is Harlech?” Jute said, looking up. He swallowed hard. His stomach felt empty and he found himself missing Lena and the other children. “I’ve heard Harlech’s a dreadful place, where everyone’s a wizard. That the land itself’s alive. No one from Harlech ever comes to Hearne.”

“On the contrary,” said the hawk, his voice gentle. “It’s a beautiful land. Moors and hills and deep valleys dark with forests. The sea there’s cold and the cliffs of Harlech are as sharp as knives, honed by the waves and the wind. As for wizards, I think there’re no more wizards in that land than could be found in any other duchy.”

“I’ve never met anyone from Harlech,” said Jute.

“Of course you have. The old man, Severan.”

“Severan? You’re right. I’d forgotten that's where he came from.”

“I think I’ve even seen the house he spoke of. Once, when I was flying along the coast. It’s more of a cottage. It perches on a cliff overlooking the sea, about as far from Hearne as a man can get.”

“Hearne,” said the ghost thoughtfully. “I have some memories of that place. Now, where did I put them?”

The hawk’s claws suddenly tightened on Jute’s shoulder. His head swiveled this way and that.

“What is it?” said Jute.

“Nothing,” said the hawk. “I just thought I heard something strange for a moment. It was nothing. I must’ve been mistaken.”

Ronan trudged up the slope below them. His shoulders were bowed.

“I must leave you here,” said Ronan. “Please. Release me.”

“But I can’t,” said Jute helplessly. “I have nothing to do with what binds you.”

“He wasn’t the one who bound you,” said the hawk. “The sea doesn’t give her gifts lightly. There’s always a price. You know that.”

“Don’t you understand?” shouted Ronan, turning on them in fury. “That’s my family down there! Those bodies burning on the pyre. My father and my mother—” His voice broke. When he spoke again, his tone was quiet. “Only my sister’s left, and she’s been taken. The tracks lead away from here. I can follow them. I can find her. She’s all I have.”

“If that’s your family,” said Jute, “then who are you?”

“My name’s Declan Farrow,” said the man who had been Ronan. He said the words slowly. The name came reluctantly, as if he had not spoken it for many years. “My name’s Declan Farrow, though I haven’t been called that for more than fifteen years. Fifteen years I threw away. I can’t even remember my sister’s face. She was a tiny girl when I left.”

“Declan Farrow!” said the hawk. “I should’ve known.”

“Release me, Jute. You hold my life in your hand. Let me go.”

“I have nothing to do with this,” said Jute in great bewilderment.

Declan groaned out loud. “I’m bound fast. I can’t willingly desert you, for I’m compelled by a power that cares nothing about what happens to me. But you can help me. Come with me to find my sister.”