Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (6 page)

The man’s mouth worked as he gathered himself. He exchanged a look with his wife. ‘I think you’d best take the children upstairs, dear.’

‘Mmph.’ Swallowing, Savin gestured with his spoon. ‘Please, don’t let me interrupt your meal. This shouldn’t take very long.’

He looked around the room, feigning interest. As he’d suspected, the furniture was rather too large and dark for the proportions of the space, and the table overdressed with flowers, candelabra and too much gilt-edged plate. ‘What a charming room.’

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the woman lay down her napkin and slowly lift the youngest child into her arms. She shifted in her seat and gave herself away with a panicked glance at the door. A single thought slammed the door shut hard enough to rattle the china in the ugly breakfront cabinet. The woman flinched and the child in her arms began to grizzle.

‘I’m afraid I must insist you stay.’

Fear rolling off her, she stared at him with eyes wide as a trapped animal’s. The room froze, became so utterly still that Savin could hear the candlewicks hiss as they burned.

‘Where’s Cally?’ Even allowing for the dread weighing it down, the woman’s voice was unexpectedly lovely.

‘The maid? She’s in the kitchen.’ He scooped up some more trifle. ‘Did she make this? It’s really very good.’

‘Please tell me you haven’t hurt her!’

Savin shot her his most dazzling smile, the one that usually set society ladies’ fans fluttering. ‘She’s in no pain, I assure you. Now, I’d like you to tell me why Alderan was here, and where he was going.’

‘Who?’ The man was frightened now, judging by the over-firm tone, the white knuckles on the handle of the carving knife. The rise and fall of his waistcoated breast betrayed how fast he was breathing. ‘I don’t know that name.’

‘But you know his face.’ A flick of fire-Song sculpted Alderan’s likeness from one of the candle flames, bristle-browed and leonine.

‘You’re mistaken,’ the fellow insisted. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’

‘Mama, who’s that man over there?’ asked one of the children, a boy by its clothes, though at that age the piping voices all sounded the same. His mother hugged the brat on her lap closer and fumbled for the other child’s hand.

‘A . . . friend,’ she managed, voice brittle as first frost.

Savin dropped a broad wink for the benefit of the boy.

‘Yes, I’m a friend of your father’s.’

‘Have you come for supper?’

He laughed indulgently. ‘Something like that. Why, would you like me to stay?’

At once the hairs on his scalp lifted as someone in the room reached for the Song. He glanced across the table as the couple’s carefully muted colours flared into brilliance, all subterfuge abandoned.

‘There’s no need for that,’ he said.

The man flung down the carving knife and bunched his hands into fists. ‘Get out of my house,’ he growled.

Savin clicked his tongue. ‘That’d be a shame, just when we’re starting to get to know each other.’

Wrapped in the Song, he felt their weavings begin. The woman snatched her children against her skirts beneath a shield as her husband launched fists of air in Savin’s direction. A flick of his own power turned the blows aside; another smashed the man backwards into the breakfront, shattering the glazed doors. Display plates tumbled from their stands and flew into pieces as they hit the floor.

‘Egan!’ The woman yelped her husband’s name. To his credit he recovered quickly, shook broken glass from his hair and lunged for the table. His hand closed around the hilt of the carving knife.

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ said Savin softly, power thrumming through him. The knife came up, greasy blade glinting, and he exhaled irritably. People never listened.

A thought trapped the knife with his will. The man cursed and threw his weight forward but his hand and arm moved not an inch. Gripping his own wrist, he tried to pull it back, equally fruitlessly. His fingers were locked around the handle as if it was a part of him.

‘What are you doing?’ The man’s shoulder worked as he tried to wrench his hand free by main force. Then the Song surged and blow after blow hammered at Savin’s will. Beads of sweat broke on the man’s forehead. The two younger children started wailing, too young to understand the forces being wielded around them, and pressed their hands over their ears to try to block out the power’s roar.

‘Shush now, darlings,’ their mother quavered, cuddling them close. Beneath the soap bubble of her shield, her eyes were glassy with tears. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right. Shh.’

‘Damn it, let me go!’

Head tilted to one side, Savin watched the man’s efforts grow more and more frantic. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think I shall.’

Slowly, his will bent the man’s arm, lifting it up then across his body. Guessing what was about to happen, the fellow tried to jerk his head back but another thread of air-Song held it still.

‘Oh, Goddess, just let him go!’ his wife moaned. ‘Please, we’ll tell you anything—
Egan!
’

Without looking, Savin threw a ward for silence around the woman and her keening children. She rained blows on him and on his weaving but she hadn’t her husband’s strength; they were easily turned aside and ignored. Instead he watched the man staring at the rising blade, his eyes swivelling desperately to keep it in sight as it glided towards his neck.

When it passed out of his field of view, he shut his eyes. Huffing stertorously, he whispered, ‘Please . . .’

The knife came to rest against the side of the man’s bull-like neck, pressed, stopped. A tiny thread of blood trickled down beneath his collar, staining his white shirt.

Sitting back in his chair, Savin smiled brightly around the table at the bewildered, wobble-lipped children, their mother with her face gone pale as whey. Her mouth formed the empty shapes of what might have been a prayer.

‘Now,’ he said, spooning up some more dessert, ‘shall we start again?’

5

ESCAPE

Drwyn had given Teia a new horse for the ride to the Gathering. Finn, her old dun gelding, was consigned to the pack-train after aiming a kick at him, and had been replaced with a sweet-faced grey mare. By the fifth day of the journey Teia hated her. She was entirely too biddable.

Not much chance of
you
aiming a kick at the chief’s backside, eh?

Feeling guilty, she patted her mount’s neck. It wasn’t the grey’s fault she wasn’t Finn.

She darted a sidelong glance at Drwyn. As a mark of her favoured status, she rode at his side now, whilst her family rode with the rest of the clan. He sat his raw-boned black warhorse with easy arrogance, wrapped in a thick plaid cloak against the chill wind. When he caught her looking, he heeled his horse over and leaned down from the saddle to crush her lips with a kiss.

‘Pretty thing,’ he murmured, stroking her cheek with his thumb. Then he kissed her again, roughly, his tongue pushing into her mouth. The heat in his eyes told her he would want her that night. She managed a smile, then focused her eyes on the mare’s dainty tufted ears and tried not to feel sick.

Eight days, and it felt like a year. She lived in Drwyn’s tent, fetched his meals and warmed his bed. She was expected to come at his call and leave when dismissed, in between doing whatever was asked of her. In return, he refrained from hitting her, unless she needed to be taught a lesson. He still liked to bite and slap when he bedded her, but she had learned not to complain. The one and only time she had, he had whipped her buttocks with his belt until they bled, so now she pretended to enjoy his attentions. It was a small price to pay to avoid another beating. The journey to the Gathering was long enough without having to make it on a flayed rump.

Teia pulled her chin down into the fur collar of her coat. Winter had drawn in fast. The plains were sere and hard with frost; the wind blew out of the north and in the mornings tasted of snow. Overhead the dull sky pressed down like a thick fleece. She could not recall a summer that had felt so short, or a winter that promised to be so long.

She longed to scry out her future, but Ytha watched her too closely. Ever since that night by the river, the Speaker appeared suspicious of her, and having arranged the match with Drwyn she watched its results closely. Whenever those cat-green eyes lit on her, Teia wanted to scream.

There was so much she needed to know. She hadn’t yet learned how to focus her scrying and seek specific answers; she saw only what the waters chose to show her. Sometimes the visions themselves terrified her – even apparently simple ones, like the boy with the chief’s torc, for not understanding the significance of even the most innocuous image frightened her all the more.

The last things she had seen had been that eagle’s-eye view of summer plains and her own bloody face. During the long nights in Drwyn’s tent, she had tried to puzzle out what they might mean, had dredged her memory for every scrap of lore Ytha had ever uttered on the subject of interpreting dreams and visions, but come no closer to the truth. Blood could mean an argument, a difficult decision, damage to one’s aspirations or, more often than not, just blood: someone would be hurt. That frustrated her; it was not an abstract vision of blood, but a very specific one. Her blood, on her face. Something was going to happen to her and she did not know what it was.

Storm clouds roiled overhead. Rain plastered Savin’s shirt to his skin and the wind shrieking around the towers of Renngald’s fortress whipped his hair across his face. He shook it free and squinted at the image rendered in miniature in the basin resting on the iron tripod in front of him: a tiny ship on a storm-tossed sea, wavering as the rain lashed the shallow water. One toothpick-slender mast was already broken; surely it couldn’t be long before the others followed, yet somehow the ship battled on; climbed each towering wave, survived the dizzying drop into the following trough and did not broach. Spread around it like a fabulous cloak was an intricate tapestry of the Song that bulged and billowed with the force of the storm pummelling it.

The Guardian was the architect of that glittering web. Savin could feel his will in the shaping of it – after so many years, he knew Alderan’s work the way he recognised the hand of a master sculptor – but the power that gave each gossamer strand the strength of an anchor chain, that was the boy. Untrained, raw as meat on a butcher’s slab, but between his strength and the old man’s skill they were deflecting a gale that should by now have smashed the ship to kindling.

His name was Gair, the man in Mesarild had said before he died. Some fatherless wretch the Church had cast out; a nonentity, but for his gift.
They’re going to the Isles that’s all I know I swear please Goddess it hurts—

Precious little, and it had taken one of the woman’s eyes to get that much, despite her protestations that they would tell him everything. Alderan, it appeared, was as close-mouthed with his own subordinates as he was with everyone else. Still, it had given Savin a direction of travel to pursue; learning the rest had only required a little silver in the right palms. Now he had a chance to be rid of the old meddler for good.

Gripping the rim of the basin so tightly the cold metal bit into his fingertips, he threw more power into his working. It sang over him, through him, and he channelled it into the storm he had wrought.

The winds rose again and slammed into the old man’s weaving. The ship staggered, her single topsail straining against its reefs. Point by point, her course veered southwards, closer to the foaming shoals just visible at the edge of the image. Around him the northern storm-winds howled in sympathy and set the Kaldsmirgen Sea thundering against the rocks below the castle walls.

Despite the slap and scour of the storm on his face, his lips stretched into a grin. This Gair boy was strong but Savin knew the Guardian’s tricks far too well: he’d had the measure of them for years.

You’ll have to try harder than that to beat me, old man!

Already the billowing curtain of the Song that shielded the distant ship was beginning to fray under the strain of wind and water. It could last only minutes longer, then the shoals would have them. The whelp was no threat: without training, with no more discipline than was required to call and hold the power, all the strength in the world was as nothing. If he survived the storm, which was not likely, his own gift would no doubt finish the job before the year’s end. Candles that burned brightly were apt to start fires if left unattended.