Beyond the Pale: A fantasy anthology (26 page)

All the same, she hadn’t forgotten her first ambition, as I discovered
when Niall and I were out on the machair one frosty morning, debating whether
to bring the cattle back inside the dun. Despite the crystal blue of the sky, a
new onslaught of winter lay heavy on the horizon, and hardy though the beasts
were, the wolf packs had grown more desperate as the months wore on. I hated to
imagine having to kill one, and I’d deserve the bad luck such a deed would
bring me.

We’d walked up to the top of the dunes to study the dark menacing cloud
that lay on the far line between ocean and sky, but the oncoming weather was
suddenly secondary.

“Gods above and gods below,” said Niall, and drew the sword off his
back.

I’d got my breath back, so I murmured, “Put it away. You’ll look a bit
damn silly if you’re more scared of it than she is.”

Lilith sat on one of her favourite rocks, wrapped in a goatskin cloak,
looking utterly contented as she fed scraps of pigeon to the crow and the
kelpie. The crow took them greedily straight from her hand; the kelpie seemed
more skittish, but it strained its head curiously towards her, flaring its
nostrils and pawing the sand, snatching a shred of bloody pigeon-meat from her
just as the crow reached for it. The bird’s indignant caw and Lilith’s laughter
drifted to us on the breeze.

Cautiously I walked along to the rocks and clambered down, Niall at my
heels, his sword sheathed, his fingers still twitching for it. Leonora had been
right: it was barely more than a first-year colt, nothing like fully grown.
That didn’t mean it didn’t have a deadly look. As it caught sight of us it
jerked up its head, and bared its teeth, a tendril of pigeon-flesh caught on
one lower fang. Its black eye fixed on us and it flattened its ears, screaming
a baby-stallion warning.

Lilith turned her head and smiled at us, giving a little wave. “Isn’t
he beautiful?”

“Very,” I murmured, because he was. Niall said nothing at all, just
stared at the creature.

“Oh, don’t be scared of him,” she said. “He’s only a foal really. He
won’t come out of the sea yet. I’m just getting to know him. I haven’t even
made a bridle.”

“You can’t bring that into the dun,” Niall managed to say.

“Of course not. Not yet.” She jerked her head at the opposite end of
the beach and said contemptuously, “That’s what Ramasg’s scared of, too.”

I followed her gesture. Sure enough, a shadow darted behind the rocks,
too late: a shadow with straggly black hair. I frowned.

“Has he been bothering you again?”

“A bit. But I can handle him.” She flicked her fingers dismissively,
and the kelpie colt snuffled eagerly at them. The crow must have been jealous,
because it hopped onto Lilith’s arm and glared at the creature.

I could barely take my eyes off it myself. It was a lovely thing, its
coat pale grey enough to be nearly white, its still-damp mane and tail tangled
with weed. As I watched, its demonic eyes seemed to soften, a green light
kindling in their depths, and it nickered to me, tossing its head. I smiled.

“Griogair!”

Niall had lunged for my arm, but Lilith had already taken my hand and
gently removed it from the kelpie’s neck, where I did not remember putting it.
My fingers slipped free of the writhing fronds of its mane, and it whickered
with disappointment as I blinked myself back to full consciousness.

“You sneaky little bastard!” I exploded.

Lilith laughed. “It’s only doing what comes naturally. You could soon
tame it.”

Strange, but she was right. I couldn’t resent the thing, any more than
I could resent a wolf for wanting to eat. And for its sheer beauty and grace,
you could forgive it anything. I knew that was its trick, but I suddenly didn’t
care.

“You could ride one,” added Lilith, gazing at me with worshipful eyes.
“I could bring you one, and you could bond with it.”

“Maybe later,” I said gruffly. “Give me a century or two to get used to
the idea.”

“You’d be mad,” growled Niall, earning a frown of dislike from Lilith.

“Anyway, Niall’s right for now,” I added. “Don’t bring it near the
dun.”

‘Of course not. None of them could deal with it.’ There was a proud
gleam in her eyes. “I’ve got Dornadair to keep me company, anyway.” She
puckered her lips, which the crow nudged with its beak as if kissing her.

I laughed and shook my head.

“Don’t be late back,” I said. “There’s snow on the way.”

~

I was more aware of Ramasg after seeing him spying on Lilith down on
the shore. There was still something I disliked about the boy, something I
distrusted, and if anything he seemed to have grown worse: more underhand, more
vicious. I saw him spit in her food when her back was turned; I saw him spill
pitch deliberately on her cloak, or drop something suddenly to trip her.

She was right, though; she could handle him now. If she ever retaliated
I didn’t know about it, but I don’t think she did. Or rather, she retaliated in
the most wounding way possible, which was to pretend Ramasg did not exist. He
was so clearly jealous of her, as well as afraid and contemptuous, that her
complete failure to see him must have been like a fishhook in his gullet. Nor
did it help his prestige even among his own friends, which duly plummeted,
especially since Lilith was always careful to acknowledge them, to smile shyly
and nod at them as they passed her in the courtyard. She’d be a clever
politician when she was older.

And as she said, she had the crow Dornadair. It might go off hunting
alone now and then, but mostly they were together, out on the moor or down on
the rocks. When she called it, with a strange guttural cry, it would come to
her; she would spend hours with her undersized bow and arrow, hunting pigeons and
grouse for it simply because it disliked the taste of seabird. It had even
reached an amicable coexistence with the kelpie-colt, which surfaced and
trotted out of the waves for Lilith almost on command now.

“You’ve got to admit,” I told Leonora smugly, “she’s happy here.”

“I do admit it, freely.” And Leonora gave me that smile that told me:
Just wait.

Lilith was contented, then, and she had never been the kind of child to
shriek or throw tantrums or even to laugh too loud. Her easy, low-pitched
happiness lasted the whole of that late spring as the air grew mild and the
flowers crept in a wild rash of colour across the machair, and the grass began
to smell once more of warmth and summer instead of frost and death.

That was why, when she came running to me in the Great Hall, I waved
Niall aside and opened my arms to her, shocked by her demented grief. That was
why I knew immediately that her despair was real, and heartshredding, and
terribly, violently dangerous.

~

Dornadair, she gasped through her tears, was gone. He had not responded
to her call; she could not locate his disordered, playful mind with her own. He
had been gone for three hours; twice as long as they had ever been apart
before.

Dornadair, she said, was dead.

The clann members near to us shook their heads and sympathised in their
matter-of-fact way, and Leonora became surprisingly sad and quiet, kissing the
girl’s face and begging her not to worry till the worst was known. Even Niall
tried to console Lilith, stroking her hair and shushing her, but she would not
be shushed, and I knew she would not be consoled till the bird was found.

There were three hours of daylight left to us, and we had no choice.
Niall sighed and made for the stables to ready our horses while I squeezed the
girl’s shoulders and promised to find Dornadair. I doubted very much that we’d
find him alive; I trusted Lilith to know that. But still we had to ride out,
and it didn’t matter how much I cajoled and warned; she had to come with us.

Lilith rode at my back, clasping my waist like a drowning child, her
breath coming in short gasps. There was no point in speed; we simply had to
cover the moor at a walk, searching the uneven ground and the heather knolls
till our eyes ached. None of us, tellingly, looked to the sky.

As the shadows lengthened I began to despair of finding the bird, and
the thought of dragging Lilith back to the dun without it was more than I could
face. Niall, thirty yards away, gestured to a high outcrop of stone that
breached the moor like the fin of a basking shark, and headed his horse towards
its sloping flank; Lilith and I took the further and more gentle rise.

The sun, too brilliant to look at, was sunk halfway beneath the horizon
when Lilith gave a cry that made my blood cold.

I hoped it was Dornadair; I hoped it wasn’t. But as my horse picked its
way across the smooth rocks towards the untidy mess of limp black feathers, it
was obvious what lay there. Lilith slipped from my horse’s back before I had
even reined it in, and was running across the plateau towards the crow’s
corpse.

Niall rode across at my shout, and dismounted to hold my horse’s reins;
I made myself go to Lilith’s side and crouch down. I didn’t dare touch the
sleek black feathers, twitching and blustering in the wind, but she reached out
and gathered up the crow’s pathetic remains, hugging him against her as if she
could warm life back into his bones. But even her hot tears dripping into his
feathers couldn’t do that.

I squeezed her shoulder, and got to my feet, finding it difficult to
take a breath through the pity in my throat. I was about to speak to her again
when I noticed the other, smaller dead thing, a slab of rock and a small
crevice away.

I went over to it, and lifted it by one wing. The carcass was ripped
open at the breastbone, but otherwise barely touched.

Besides, even when it’s stripped to the bone, I know what a pigeon
looks like.

Leonora sniffed, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “Poison, certainly.
Quite a lot of it.” She laid the pigeon down on the bench. “At least it must
have been relatively quick.”

If that was meant to calm me, it had the opposite effect. “I’ll kill
the little bastard,” I snarled.

“You think it was Ramasg? You ought to be sure, Griogair.”

“I’m more than sure. Fionnaghal says a pigeon was stolen from the
kitchens, and the other children say it was Ramasg who took it. I didn’t even
have to threaten them. Lilith isn’t the only one who’s upset.”

Niall poked gloomily at the pigeon’s gizzard. “I never thought he’d go
so far.”

“If I’d ever thought it myself, I’d have strung him up by the balls.
Too late now. We should have known.”

“Offer Lilith a whipping. When you catch up with him.”

“I doubt she’ll settle for that. Did you see the state of her?”

“And it’s if you catch up with him,” added Leonora. “Has anyone seen
the boy?”

Niall shook his head. “Lying low. The first smart thing he’s done in a
year, not that it’ll help him. He has to come back to the dun sooner or later.”

Leonora slipped an arm round my waist and hugged me. “It wasn’t your
fault, Fitheach. And grief-stricken as she is, she’ll find another familiar.”

“True,” said Niall. “It’s terrible, but it isn’t like losing a bound
lover.”

He spoke very lightly
—
more lightly than he would have done if he’d
actually bound himself to Lann by that point
—
but I think he was wrong, anyway. Perhaps
Lilith wasn’t joined to Dornadair at the soul, but she was not quite twelve
years old and she loved him more than I think she’d loved anything in her brief
life. That wasn’t a bond you could dismiss; and love came hard to Lilith under
any circumstance.

All the same, after a few days she had recovered her composure enough
to return to the life of the dun
—
quietly, and making eye contact with no one,
but she was there among the clann, and her eyes were dry. Her quick recovery
surprised and pleased me, though her underlying grief remained tangibly raw. I
had the feeling some of the clann children wanted to sympathise with her, to
apologise for Ramasg, but one flinty stare and they’d back swiftly off. So much
for my hopes, so high in the early spring, for her full integration into clann
life.

Ramasg was still skulking. At least, I thought, the last of the harsh
winter had been driven off by what promised to be a fine summer. He wouldn’t
freeze out there
—
though in my harsher moments I thought he
fully deserved to
—
and he
was as familiar with caves and shelter stones as any clann child would be after
fourteen years running wild on the moor. Besides, Lilith was already back to
her habit of roaming
—
more
mournfully now that she had no companion
—
and I had no doubt that if she saw so much as Ramasg’s broken
fingernail in a rockface, she’d tell me.

~

He’d been gone a week when my uneasiness grew too great to ignore. He
might not freeze, and he might not starve, and wolves wouldn’t touch him, but
he was just stupid enough to get stuck in a cave or run into a wandering rogue
Lammyr. My rage still burned hot in my chest, but I was afraid that with time
it might subside to an ember and that I wouldn’t have the heart for any
punishment he’d deserve.