Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (9 page)

Amongst the rocks of the valley’s rim, she had a good view of the fair spread out below her. There was hardly a hide’s span of empty grass to be seen now. Tents crowded cheek by jowl, rival clans rubbing shoulders with all old enmities put aside. That was one piece of clan law that was universally accepted: for the four days of the Gathering and for three days before and after, differences were held in abeyance, even blood feuds suspended. The Gathering was the last great fair before winter, the last chance the clans had to trade, to exchange news, to find new wives before the ice and storms swept in off the northern sea to pen them all in their winter quarters in the mountains.

Smoke thickened the air and the whole valley was loud with bawling babies, barking dogs, braying livestock and babbling chatter. If she squinted, she could make out the badges of every clan, standards planted in front of the chieftains’ tents. Not far from each ornamented pole was another tent, a fraction smaller but no less well appointed, which would be the residence of the clan’s Speaker. In place of a banner, each sported a bronze representation of the clan’s totem animal, decorated with feathers and fur and beaded bone charms that tapped together in the breeze.

She counted them; yes, every Speaker appeared to be present. Including the apprentices, that meant there were at least twenty-five, maybe thirty or more women with the power in this valley. Potentially far more, if she allowed for all those girls whose talents had not yet been discovered. No one should notice one more working in all that blather.

Scrambling back down the slope, she hunted for a secluded spring that she could use. It took her nearly an hour of barked shins and stubbed toes before she found one and even then it was difficult to reach. She had to stretch over a sharp-edged boulder to fill her little basin, then carry it gingerly back to a spot where she could sit down comfortably.

Viewing was a trick she had stumbled across by accident. She had been trying to scry and had lost her concentration. A stray thought about her mother had filled the water with an image of Ana’s face and Teia’s head with the sound of her mother’s voice. After that, she had amused herself more than once eavesdropping on her sisters’ conversations and occasionally got her ears burned overhearing something not meant for her, like the talk of the wedding fair.

If she concentrated on Ytha as the focus of her viewing, she was afraid the Speaker would sense her immediately and know that she had been deceived. Even thinking about what might happen then was enough to chill her, so she would have to choose someone else, but she knew very few of the other chiefs well enough by sight to be sure of picking someone out. In the end she opted for Eirdubh, chief of the Amhain, a craggy, tough individual she remembered from the last Scattering, in the spring. He had offered to dice with Drw for her, and the old chief had laughed as if he had caught the Eldests’ own joke.

In moments an image of the Amhain warrior filled the basin. He was frowning, rubbing his chin between thumb and forefinger. As she concentrated she heard a voice, gradually becoming clearer. Drwyn was speaking, the rest of the Moot silently hearing him out. ‘. . . too long. It is time we restored our honour.’

‘We were defeated in open battle, Drwyn,’ one of the chiefs said. ‘The vanquished must accept the victory. Such is the law of battle, clan law.’

‘They came here in their ships and settled in our lands,’ Drwyn countered. ‘They hunted our game, despoiled our holy places, trampled over our traditions. To protect our honour we fought and died as true clan warriors, but they defeated us. That is not in dispute. The settlement, the peace they swore us to, is. It was a sham and I do not hold myself bound by it.’

‘Word of honour was given,’ put in another chief. Teia did not recognise him, nor the one who had spoken earlier. Unusually for plainspeople, they were both pale-haired with deeply sunburned hawk-like faces; they could have been brothers.

‘Word of honour is binding only so long as the line remains. Where is the Black Water Clan now?’ Drwyn asked them. ‘Its honour was lost seven hundred years ago. It no longer has a place at this Moot.’

The circle of chieftains rumbled their agreement, their Speakers nodding sagely. They remembered the histories of the clans, remembered how Gwlach of the Black Water had been raised to Chief of Chiefs, to lead them to battle and ultimately to defeat.

‘None of Gwlach’s line survives. His word is no longer binding.’ Drwyn spread his arms wide as he implored them to consider his proposal. ‘The iron men stole our lands then doled out bits and pieces to us and made us grateful for them. Thankful to be given back part of what was wrongly taken from us.

‘The faithless sacrificed their honour that day. They sold it to buy peace and broke a people that had roamed these lands for centuries before the settlers came. It falls to us, my brothers, to right that wrong, or else face the contempt of our children and our children’s children for ever. We are twice the numbers we were then; the herds cannot sustain us. Our families will hunger, we will starve and die. Maybe not this winter, nor the next, but soon. The Speaker of the Crainnh has seen portents. Without space to hunt, without our honour and our freedom, we will cease to be. The time has come for us to take back what was ours.’

A pretty speech. Not one of Drwyn’s making, though. It had Ytha’s hand on it, that was for sure. And who had given him this sudden hunger for land to roam? Certainly Drw had seen no need to go to war for it – despite their numbers, the herds had not failed them yet, and he’d been content to follow them across the plains to the end of his days. Had that notion come from the Speaker, too, along with the carefully chosen words? The thought made Teia shiver.

The chiefs and their Speakers digested what Drwyn had said. Some nodded and murmured amongst themselves; others stared down at the turf or off towards the lake. One or two, like Eirdubh, gazed straight at Drwyn and dared him to hold their eye.

Drwyn did not fail them. He kept his head high, stance erect and proud. The tilt of his jaw, the way he held himself, were so like how she imagined Drw must have been in his prime that Teia felt a sharp pang of loss. The other chiefs obviously thought much the same. She could see it in their eyes, the way they measured him and found little lacking. It spoke powerfully in his favour.

She remembered what Ytha had said, how he must be his father’s son and more, and began to see how the Speaker was manipulating not just the Crainnh, but the other clans as well. Teia followed the path with her mind’s eye and saw the spear of the Chief of Chiefs at the end of it.

She dragged her attention back to the present and steadied the viewing, which had begun to waver with her distraction. Eirdubh was speaking. The Amhain chief was on his feet, a sinewy man in leather and fur with a face as worn and weathered as a tor. Silence spread around him as the other chiefs listened.

‘A grand plan, Drwyn,’ he said in that deep, quiet voice of his. ‘Grand indeed. But how do you expect to carry it out? The Empire and its Knights will not have vanished. They will still be there, in their stone forts in the mountains, waiting for us.’

‘The forts are empty,’ Drwyn said. A hiss of indrawn breath snaked around the Moot. ‘My Speaker has shown them to me and, to be certain, I have sent warriors to scout them. There are no iron men in the mountains.’

‘Can you prove this, Drwyn?’ asked Eirdubh. ‘Can your Speaker show us also? We do not doubt her words, for a Speaker can tell no untruth, but we men are not gifted in the way of Speakers and need to be shown plainly.’

‘I can show you,’ Ytha said, cool and composed. ‘Your own Speakers can, if you ask them. The lake is here – use the waters.’

Three of the other Speakers exchanged glances as they conferred. Teia recognised two of them: the White Lake and Stone Crow Clans’ lands were close and they wintered in the mountains not far from the Crainnh. As one they nodded.

The middle one stepped forward, her staff clasped before her. ‘We know the places of which Chief Drwyn speaks,’ she said. ‘We will scry.’

Teia felt their power draw in and focus, as if the sky had suddenly taken a deep breath. The waters of the lake rippled and grew still, but the water in her basin trembled as the Speakers’ scrying overlapped her viewing for an instant. Then the image in the water steadied. Teia brought her viewing closer, so she could see the scrying more clearly.

The Speakers had conjured an image of the an-Archen, blue-white and sharp, the snowy peaks dazzling to behold. The image drew in, as if seen from a swooping bird’s perspective, and focused on a mountain pass with a fortress blocking its narrowest point. Massive walls spanned the pass between heavily fortified towers, in which empty windows stared like the sockets of bleached skulls. Ravens circled overhead and bickered along the battlements, their harsh voices echoing around the pass. Of human habitation there was no sign. No smoke rose from inside the fort, no sound came from behind the walls; the entire pass rang with emptiness. If there were armed men there, they were as still and silent as stones.

‘It is true,’ breathed one of the Speakers. ‘It is empty.’

‘Can you go closer? See inside?’ her chief asked.

The image focused on the nearer of the two watchtowers and closed in. A window loomed, yawned, swallowed, and the basin was filled with darkness. It lightened gradually, revealing a circular chamber with an arched doorway leading onto a stone staircase that spiralled through the centre of the tower. Upwards it led to the ramparts, affording the watchers a view down into the empty heart of the keep; downwards it led past several more chambers until it deposited them in a room off the central yard. Collapsed roofs and echoing corridors told a tale of long disuse, echoed in cracked stones overgrown with lichens and hearths devoid even of ashes. The fortress was utterly abandoned.

The Speakers drew back, letting the image dissolve. A breeze ruffled the lake waters and all trace of their scrying vanished.

Teia huffed her hair out of her eyes. Her concentration was slipping. The Speakers had almost drawn her into their weave, and keeping her viewing separate from theirs required a great deal of effort. Her temples throbbed; she would not be able to sustain this for much longer.

‘I am satisfied,’ pronounced the White Lake chief, nodding as his Speaker resumed her place at his side. ‘I know that place. If it is empty, the iron men will likely have left the others as well. What do you propose? This is a poor time of year to be beginning a war.’

‘I propose we all wait out the winter, arming our war bands and readying ourselves, and in the spring, we join our forces for battle.’

Drwyn’s face was resolute, fierce, but Eirdubh shook his head. ‘It is dangerous, Drwyn, very dangerous,’ he said. ‘To resume a war which cost us so many brave warriors, and after so long. Even blood feud does not endure through so many generations. Is it not time to let it lie? I confess I am uneasy.’

‘The Eldest will guide us,’ Ytha told him. ‘I have seen it in a foretelling.’

Murmurs of surprise and anticipation flitted around the Moot and Teia leaned closer to her basin, although that would not let her see any better. Signs and portents were common enough; they guided the clans through everyday life – when to hunt, where to camp, what fortune held for a man – but a true foretelling was rare indeed. No wonder the other Speakers were so interested.

‘For three nights,’ Ytha began, spreading her arms wide, ‘I dreamed of a great wolf walking the plains, hungering for prey. For three days a wolf howled at dawn and at sunset our totem wept tears of blood for our imprisonment. On the fourth night, a raven spoke to me in my dream, saying that Maegern will ride again. She will fall upon our enemies like a storm and drive them from our ancient lands so that we may be free once more.’

A shiver tickled Teia’s spine and she instinctively made the sign of protection over her breast. Maegern, Goddess of the Dead. Goddess of war, of ravens and discord, the darkest and bloodiest deity in the clan pantheon, with Her eye-painted shield that saw all and Her Hounds for the hunt. Not a name to invoke lightly, even for a Speaker.

She dragged her attention back to the basin in her hands. The Amhain chief was nodding, lips pursed as if, being a reasonable man, he was prepared to allow for the possibility.

‘That may be,’ Eirdubh said, ‘but I would like to see such a sign for myself. Our gods have been silent for too many years. We asked for their help when the plague came and we saw nothing. I say we wait, and on the last day of the Gathering meet again and ask the Raven to give us Her blessing. If She answers, I shall be the first to offer you my spear, Drwyn. If She does not, I shall have no part in this war. I value the Stone Crow Clan’s survival too highly to see it go the way of the Black Water.’

‘No one values their clan more highly than I, Eirdubh. I would not endanger it needlessly,’ Drwyn said. ‘But blood feud is blood feud. I mean to extract a drop of our enemies’ blood for every drop shed by our people when they were driven from their lands. A life for every life. I will buy back our honour with the southerners’ souls, and I will do it alone if I have to.’

A tense silence gripped the Moot. Ytha broke it, stepping forward to lay a hand on Drwyn’s arm. ‘The Amhain’s suggestion is a shrewd one, my chief,’ she said. ‘We need time to reflect, to ensure that a decision made in anger is not one we later live to regret. I applaud his wisdom in this.’

Drwyn shook himself and nodded enthusiastically. ‘Indeed, indeed. Eirdubh’s wisdom is renowned and he is right to counsel us all to caution. Three days, then, my brothers, until we meet again and ask Maegern for Her aid. May She smile kindly on us.’

Teia let the image in the bowl fade; a headache crashed down on her skull like a kick from a baulky horse and she had to sit with her eyes closed for a minute or two before she could think straight again.

Three days. Would the Raven come? She did not know. Along with every other clanswoman, Teia put aside a pinch of food from each meal and threw it into the fire as an offering to Macha the Provider. The ritual had been ingrained in her since childhood, but sometimes she forgot, and so far no lightning had struck her down and no giant ravens had carried her off. She had long since ceased to be afraid that they would, and the ritual offering was mere habit now rather than rooted in belief. Nonetheless, she shuddered as if someone had dumped snow down the back of her neck. Absentminded sacrifices to gods who may or may not exist were one thing, but gods that might one day sit down around the cook-fire and demand to be fed were quite another.