Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (17 page)

No one stirred about the caves. Drwyn’s guards had been dismissed, and the lateness of the hour had sent the entire clan to their beds. From behind the other curtained doors she passed, Teia heard snoring, a baby’s whimper, the soft, urgent sounds of coupling. The bluish light of the globe guided her around smouldering hearths and piles of gear, leading her down the steps to the empty vault of the meeting place and then up the other side. Past more occupied caves, store-chambers, then finally down a side-turning into the older caverns.

This stretch of the mountains held more caves than there were cavities in a bird’s bones to make it light enough to fly, and for thousands of years, generations of clan-folk had scratched and scraped their way into adjoining caverns to extend their quarters, but there were no chisel-marks here, no crudely fractured stone. Some long-ago flow of water had sculpted these passages; the walls and floors undulated, as curved and graceful as the chambers inside a heart. Only the footprints leading back and forth through the thick, soft dust said that humans had ever come this far.

Teia swallowed nervously. The passage was eerily quiet, soundless apart from the scuffle of her boots in the dust as she followed the light, which in turn followed the footprints. Ytha’s, she guessed; they had the look of a woman’s rather than a man’s. Some of the prints were small enough to be a child’s, and she thought briefly of the other girls who had been drawn into the summoning with her. Especially the youngest; if she’d been drawn up to the lake in this fashion, she must have been terrified.

Occasionally other tunnels joined the one she and the orb were following, bringing gusts of cold and a suggestion of a vast emptiness beyond, or warmer air laced with strange smells from deep underground. If she stopped, so too did the globe, although it soon drifted onwards again so that she had to keep moving to stay within its circle of illumination.

Eventually the tunnel began to climb, slowly at first, then becoming increasingly steep until she needed to lean against the wall to help herself up. She skidded in the loose dust more than once and her thighs burned with effort. The air grew colder, too, making her breath curl into clouds before her face. Then, as she rounded a corner, she smelled the sharp, clean scent of snow. The tunnel levelled off and in a few yards opened abruptly to the outside world once more.

Teia stepped out onto a ledge overlooking a lake in a precipitously steep-sided col. The valley was ringed with sharp ridges, black rock and white snow stark against the night sky. A fitful breeze rippled the water.

The Speaker was waiting for her near the lip of the ledge. Wrapped in her snow-fox mantle, with the gold crescent across her brow to hold her hair back from her face, she looked imposing, the way Teia imagined Queen Etheldren from the stories: a queen of stone and moon and water, brooking no rival.

Despite her thick coat, she shivered with a sudden unease and the globe of light at her shoulder winked out. ‘Join me, child,’ said Ytha, without turning.

Cautiously, Teia crossed the ledge to her side, boots crunching on smears of frozen snow. The wind tugged at her clothes and hair.

‘I have been waiting for this night, when the wandering moon comes full again,’ the Speaker went on. Her breath whitened on the chill air before the breeze dashed it away. ‘On a night such as this, we might glimpse our futures.’

She took Teia’s arm to draw her alongside and the two of them looked out over their reflections to the far side of the col, where the wandering second moon, silvery white, rode serenely between the horns of the mountains.

‘The Talent is drawn to gateways. It seeks out doors, borders, places where two worlds brush against one another. It is drawn to water, for water can pass through the tightest seal, span the world through rivers and oceans. Water gives life and drives it. It powers a seedling’s roots down through rock, supports a mighty tree, runs through our veins in our blood. It is everywhere and it is all-powerful. It can show us what we would not otherwise see.’ The grip on Teia’s arm tightened, pinching just a little. ‘But I think you know this already.’

Icy dread slithered down her spine. Ytha suspected, but how much did she know?

‘Why have you brought me here, Speaker?’ Teia ventured.

Ytha turned, fixing her with those cold green eyes. ‘Because the time has come to decide what I must do with you.’ She drew a knife from her belt. ‘And because you have something that I need.’

Teia saw the blade glint and recoiled. She tried to pull herself from Ytha’s grasp, but the Speaker’s grip was iron and the knife was rising. Blind panic assailed her and she screamed.

‘Quiet, child!’ Ytha snapped. ‘I need only a drop.’

‘What?’ Teia’s knees turned to water and she almost fell. ‘But I—’

‘Hold out your hand.’ When she did not respond, Ytha seized her left hand, turned it over and deftly cut the palm, not deeply, but enough to set the blood flowing. Then she curled Teia’s fingers around it so that the blood did not spill. ‘Now wait.’

Tucking the knife back into her belt, the Speaker turned to the lake and held out her hands. Her eyes closed. Badly shaken, Teia watched, as the lake water stilled and became as flat as a mirror, in spite of the breeze gusting around them.

Whatever Ytha was weaving tugged at the music inside her, pulling at her to join in the working. She fought it as best she could, fearful of being sucked into another horror, as she had been at the Gathering. The longer Ytha worked the more effort was required to resist; Teia’s ears rang and her spine felt as if it was being drawn out of the top of her head.

Finally the dreadful tugging ceased. The air hummed like a plucked bowstring and the silver moon looked so hard and bright it might shatter the sky. Ytha breathed out slowly and lowered her arms.

‘Let your blood fall into the water.’

Teia stepped up to the edge of the rocky shelf and extended her bleeding hand over the lake. A few drops spilled, as black in the moonlight as Maegern’s tears. The waters swallowed them without a ripple, leaving the reflection of moon and mountains undisturbed.

A strange pulsing struck up through Teia’s feet and into the music inside her, and she gasped aloud. A pause, then it came again. The next pause was shorter, the beating stronger, coming again and again until it acquired a rhythm as steady as her own heartbeat.

This was unlike any scrying she had ever witnessed. A blood scrying – the most powerful of them all. In blood was truth, but only another Talent could unlock it. She felt the beat of Ytha’s power in every fibre of her body. The air in her lungs vibrated with it, the air in her ears, and still it grew louder.

Then Ytha spoke inside Teia’s mind.
Show me
.

The lake waters shimmered and cleared. Floating in them, larger than any mere reflection could be was an image of Teia’s face. Of Ytha’s there was no sign.

Thus it begins
, the Speaker said.
Show me
.

The image changed. Blood sheeted down Teia’s face from a gash on her temple and her eyes stared up out of the lake, dull and flat. She blinked, startled. This was the image from her own scrying. So it had been a true future she had seen!

Show me
.

No blood this time, just an ugly red scar and a lock of her hair turned snowy white. Around her shoulders was draped the fox-fur mantle of a Speaker and she held a whitewood staff in her hands, but her eyes still gazed upon the pits of hell.

This was a familiar vision. Teia dared a sideways glance at Ytha. The suggestion of a frown creased the Speaker’s brow, but her concentration remained fixed on the images in the water.

Show me
.

The Speaker’s accoutrements vanished but the scar remained, now white with age. In the lake, an older Teia stood with her hands placed protectively on the shoulders of a boy of about twelve summers – the same boy she had seen before. Her son, it now appeared. As in her previous visions, he wore a chief’s torc, wolf-head bosses shining, but this time the torc ran with blood. She gasped. So the boy would be chief, but the torc would be taken in battle. Battle against whom?

Show me
.

The boy’s image wavered and disappeared, leaving Teia’s behind. Now the torc was around her own neck. Ytha’s eyes widened and she shot a look at her, but Teia could only stare back helplessly. She had never seen this before. Herself as chief? That was impossible!

The beating in her blood grew stronger. Ytha was concentrating again, drawing in her powers. Pain lanced through Teia’s cut hand; she sobbed and clutched it to her.

Show me
.

The shimmering took longer to clear this time. When it did, the image lasted only a few seconds, to Teia’s relief. It showed a battle in progress. Spears lunged. Axes hacked. Horses reared as men screamed and died. The image blurred into the battle’s aftermath, where not a living soul stirred. Torn and bloody corpses littered the sodden grass and ravens stalked amongst them. Putrefying flesh melted from shattered bones; abandoned gear rusted where it lay.

It changed again, the images flickering faster and faster. A bloody hand clutching a torc. Sunlight on a broken spear. A wolf’s mask, snarling – no, a she-wolf, crouched over her litter of mewling pups. A grassy plain, bright with summer flowers. An unknown man, his head wreathed by spreading wings. Utter blackness. Fire. A woman’s face, contorted, wailing. Virgin snow under sharp, cold stars.

The images began to change and re-form so fast it was impossible to see what they were, and the beating in her head had grown so loud it seemed to shake the mountains around her. Teia fell to her knees, hands pressed to her skull—

And it stopped. Panting, her ears ringing, she dared to look up. Ytha’s eyes were closed and she swayed as she leaned on her staff. Then the Speaker took a deep breath and straightened, shaking her hair back over her shoulders.

‘Remarkable,’ she said at last. The faintest tremor weakened her voice. She turned to Teia and studied her for a long moment. ‘Scrying does not show what will be, only what is most likely. Where two futures are so finely balanced that neither is more likely than the other, the scrying will show both. Never before have I seen so many images. Your future hangs in the gods’ own scales, child.’ She paused and her eyes hardened. ‘You ought to have told me about the baby.’

Tears stung Teia’s eyes. Now Ytha knew. Now there could be no more pretending, no more hiding. The Speaker
knew
. How could she ever have imagined she could keep it to herself?

Her shoulders sagged and she howled, all the pent-up misery of the last two months boiling out of her like a storm. ‘I was frightened!’ she wailed. Her chest heaved and she sobbed so hard it distorted the words. ‘I was s-so f-frightened!’

Ytha’s hand came down on her shoulder, but gently.

‘Hush now, Teia,’ she said. ‘Don’t be afraid. There is no greater honour for a woman than to bear her man a son. The first one will be hard, but there are herbs to lessen the pain.’

Gradually Teia’s tears spent themselves, though her shoulders continued to shake with dry sobs. Ytha’s words sank in. Was it possible that the Speaker had misunderstood the reason for her fear? That it wasn’t the pains of childbirth she had been dreading, but the revelation of the futures she had glimpsed? A tiny spark of hope kindled inside her.

‘I’m sorry, Speaker,’ she managed.

Ytha patted her shoulder. ‘Rest easy, what’s done is done. Now tell me, when was your last bleed?’

Teia thought back. It was difficult to remember; the chance that she might yet escape the worst of Ytha’s wrath was as intoxicating as aged mead. ‘Three moons ago. A little more.’ Not too long before Drw’s death.

‘A son before summer’s end.’ Ytha smiled, tight and self-congratulatory. ‘A good omen for the clan. Come now, up off the cold stone. We must tell your husband.’

Dread curdled in Teia’s belly. Had this actually been Ytha’s plan all along, not just to put her in Drwyn’s bed but to see her wedded to him? Wiping her eyes, she followed the older woman back through the mazy passageways to the inhabited caves. With each step, her anxiety grew.

When they arrived at the chief’s chamber Drwyn was in a fine temper, striding about in just his trews, ordering his warriors to form search parties. He fell silent when he saw Teia approach, accompanied by the Speaker with a hand on her shoulder. The war band milling about the passageway, many sleepy and still only half-dressed themselves, fell back to make way for them.

‘Where in all hells have you been?’ Drwyn demanded, seizing Teia by the arm as his other hand drew back.

‘Hold, Drwyn,’ Ytha said sharply. ‘Not here, in front of your people.’

He lowered his hand, but his bloodshot eyes remained murderous. He jerked his head towards the curtained entrance to the cave. ‘Inside.’

Teia hurried in, followed by Ytha at a more stately pace. Drwyn came last, yanking the curtain closed behind him.

‘I will teach you what it means to run from me, wench,’ he snarled, advancing on Teia, who shrank back against the wall.

Ytha rolled her eyes. ‘Macha’s ears, boy! I summoned her for a blood scrying.’