Dark Mist Rising (17 page)

I first glimpsed her through the trees, resting below me in a dell of wildflowers. She must have seen or heard me at the same time because she leaped to her feet and began to run. I caught her easily, threw her to the ground and straddled her slim body. Only with great effort did I keep from striking her.

‘You drugged me,' I said, barely getting the words out through clenched teeth, ‘and you made Tom ill so you could do it.'

She said sadly, but with no surprise, ‘Yes, I did. I was a healer.'

‘I thought you said you were a shepherdess! Or a lady's maid! Or a kitchen girl!'

‘No.' And then with despair, ‘You know what I am, Roger.'

‘Bees don't sting you. Or they do, but you are not injured by them. You appear suddenly in the deep woods of the Unclaimed Lands, clean and fresh as if from court.

You tell me ... you tell me that my mother has no grave.'

I could not go on. And all at once I could not touch her either. I stood. Fia got unsteadily to her feet. We stood there facing each other in that little dell full of wildflowers, sunlight falling all around us and birds singing in the freshness after rain.

I said, ‘You come from the Country of the Dead.'

‘Yes,' Fia said, suddenly fierce, ‘and you have given me your promise. Remember that. Your promise on your mother's soul! You will not cross over again.'

‘You exacted that promise from me unfairly. With drugs and sex!'

‘Nonetheless, you have given the promise.' Her face suddenly crumpled. She repeated quietly, ‘You have given that promise.'

‘How ... ? Who ... ?'

‘You know how – there is only one way. A
hisaf
brought me.'

‘But why?' I cried. ‘You have lost your chance at eternity! You will—'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I know. I have lost my chance at eternity. As did Cecilia, as did all the Blue soldiers you brought over once before. All gone for ever. So remember your promise!'

I seized her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Why?

Why?'

‘They are almost ready!'

‘On Soulvine Moor? Ready for
what
?'

But she only looked at me, a gaze of such profound despair that I clasped her to me. And so it happened in my arms. A fortnight had passed, the same fortnight that Bat had had, that Cecilia had had, that the Blues had had. Fia
melted
. All at once her face and body twisted and decayed, flowing into grotesque shapes, her mouth open in a silent scream. In moments she was gone. Her gown and apron and boots lay in a puddle amid the flowers.

I sat there beside them the entire morning. I could not move. Fia was neither in the land of the living nor the Country of the Dead; she was nowhere. Her soul had been extinguished, giving up its chance at eternity in order to exact my promise to never again cross over. To give up my quest to find my mother. That was why she had destroyed herself – to gain my promise.

No. That did not ring true. Fia had insisted on travelling north, towards The Queendom, to put more distance between herself and Soulvine Moor. That I could believe. But I did not believe that she had forfeited all existence, both here and in the Country of the Dead, solely to keep me from crossing over. There was more to Fia that I did not understand, much more, just as there was more to the fog on Soulvine Moor and to the figures I had glimpsed in that fog. ‘
They are almost ready.'

For what?

A great lassitude came over me. I had been up most of the night. Fia was gone. My body had been put through drugging and lovemaking and tracking. She was gone. I would never now talk to my dead mother, not unless I broke a vow sworn on her grave. Fia was gone. I lay on the ground and buried my face in her gown. It bore her scent still. I wept.

Then I fell asleep.

I woke to the sound of
guns
not far off.

Carefully I rolled Fia's clothing into a tight ball, and so found the miniature. It had been sewn into a secret pocket of her gown. I held it in my hand, where it lay small on my palm, and turned it to the light to make out the tiny image. Shining waves of black hair, green eyes, sad half-smile. The miniature was undoubtedly Fia, and yet it reminded me so much of Cecilia. Even though, except for the green eyes, the girls' features did not look much alike. The resemblance was more shadowy, impossible to define, but real.

I stared at the miniature until I nearly went blind. I suspected that both Fia and Cecilia had had some connection with that shadowy web of women who practised, or at least knew of, the soul arts. Cecilia, artless, had not practised them at all, but Mother Chilton had nonetheless once gone to great trouble to smuggle her out of the palace and to the Unclaimed Lands. Fia had been a healer, and perhaps more. Mother Chilton had known I was in Applebridge and perhaps had used a strengthening potion on a hawk – as she had once, two years ago used it on me – to enable the bird to drop a rock down my chimney.

Putting the miniature in my pocket, I carried Fia's clothing a half-mile into the woods and buried it in a copse thick with dead leaves. I had no doubt that Tom, a far better tracker than I, would follow her trail to this dell, but he would not be interested in following mine. I replaced the leaves.

Then I went home to see if Tom had woken from the drugged sleep that Fia had given him instead of her body.

He was awake and fully recovered. Standing in front of the hut, hands on his hips, he glowered at me. ‘Where did you go?'

I feigned surprise. ‘To check the snares, of course. As I do every morning. But no game today.'

‘Then where's Fia?'

‘Fia? Isn't she here with you?'

He scowled uncertainly. ‘No, I thought ... Ain't she with you?'

‘No. Well then, she must be off gathering plants.'

‘Oh! I thought—'

‘What?' I could feel false innocence on my face like a suffocating mask.

‘Nothing,' Tom said, too heartily. But he was never good at withholding information. He blurted, ‘By damn, I thought she was with you! The truth is, I been feeling very strange this last week, Peter. And last night I thought I would finally bed Fia, but then I fell asleep as if I'd been drinking ale all night with the lads at the Ram and Crown! But I feel fine now. Fia must just be off on one of her food gatherings. Come, then – I have something to show you. Behind the hut!'

I followed him reluctantly, glad that he accepted my story but wanting only to be alone to grieve for Fia. Why had she done it? Why give up eternity – even an eternity of sitting tranquilly in the Country of the Dead – for a fortnight of subsistence living in the Unclaimed Lands? What did I not yet know?

Everything, it seemed. I was as ignorant as Tom, and far more beset. He beamed as he led me behind the hut to a full-grown deer, a buck in summer antlers, lying dead on its side. But there was no arrow in its flesh, and anyway Tom had no bow. I had to squat down and look closely to see the single small hole in the skull, between the animal's staring eyes.

I said, ‘You killed it with a
gun
!'

‘And got it on the second shot! Pepper my arse, but I'm good!'

‘You stupid fool!'

Tom's swift change from pride to bewilderment to anger would have been almost comical if I had been in the mood for comedy. I was not. He said hotly, ‘Don't call me names! I got us a deer, and Fia will want the meat for her stews.'

‘Your
gun
folly will bring savage soldiers down on us!'

‘Oh piss pots. We ain't seen any soldiers in a fortnight.

They don't come this far into the Unclaimed Lands. You know that.'

I did not know that. But Tom had the capacity to believe whatever he wanted. All at once I saw my chance to both protect him and shed him. I said, ‘I think they will come here. Attracted by your
gun
noise.'

‘Well, even if they do, I can defend myself!'

‘I cannot.'

His anger vanished as quickly as it had come. ‘I'll defend you, Peter. You know that.' He smiled at me, confident and big and an utter idiot.

‘I can't take the chance. I'm going now.'

‘Going? Going where?'

‘Away. It's not safe here.'

‘But ... but ... where will you go?'

‘I don't know. But I'm going.' I went inside the hut and packed the water bag and some left-over food. ‘May I take your knife?'

‘Yes, of course, I have the
guns
and— Wait. What do you mean,
you
are going? Ain't we all going?'

‘Fia may not be back for hours. You know how she is about her gathering. And she'll want to stay here. We just made the bathing pool.'

‘But I can track her! I can track anything, you know that. I'll go find her and we can all—' He stopped. His face changed. Finally he said, ‘You would go without her.'

‘You'll be here to take care of her.'

That struck him powerfully. I watched him struggle between the desire to have me gone and the desire to have us all together. Tom Jenkins, who feared nothing but being alone, finally said slowly, ‘You're a coward, Roger. You would leave her to save yourself from the soldiers.'

I shrugged, letting him think so. He would be safer without me. He would wait in vain for Fia to return, and when she did not, he would search for her. By the time he came to believe that he couldn't find her, my trail would be too cold for even him to track. The Young Chieftain's soldiers had no business with Tom Jenkins. I would have saved his life as he had once saved mine, and we would be quit of debt to each other.

His broad face furrowed with contempt. ‘A coward,' he repeated, and I shrugged again. He turned his back to me. I packed some of the useful things Fia had made. Then I picked up Tom's knife from the floor beside his pallet, and in its place I put the miniature of Fia, half-hidden by pine boughs.

I did not want it. It hurt too much. Let Tom think she had left it for him. When she did not return, it might give him comfort. Despite everything, I would miss Tom Jenkins.

He did not turn around or say goodbye. I walked out of the hut that Fia had briefly made into a home and turned my steps towards Soulvine Moor.

And I knew beyond doubt that Soulviners would not enter the Unclaimed Lands. Anyone leaving the Moor and then attempting to return met the same fate as a stranger. It had been Cecilia's fate, and she—

Don't think of that
.

I walked the entire afternoon, sometimes sure I was too exhausted to take the next step, and yet I did. Long before sunset I ate the food I had brought, hid myself under a deadfall and fell into sleep as down a dark well. When I woke it was morning again, and raining. Soggy, cold, hungry, I contemplated my future.

Where was I to go?

How was I to live?

The savage army's main purpose in making the hard mountain trek to The Queendom seemed to be to lay siege to the capital, abduct six-year-old Princess Stephanie and carry her back over the mountains to marry the Young Chieftain. If they succeeded in capturing the princess, perhaps they would leave. Then I could return to Maggie and Jee. Unless the savages both carried off the princess and also left enough soldiers here to hold The Queendom. Was their army large enough to do both? I had no idea.

I could stay here, on the southern edge of the Unclaimed Lands, build a shelter and eke out some sort of living by hunting and gathering plants. In two years I had learned much about living off the land – from Jee, from Maggie, from Tom, even from Fia. That might suffice for summer, but eventually winter would come. I did not know how to survive a winter in the wild.

No, I must find people who would take me in as the lowliest kind of labourer. I must find these people in the Unclaimed Lands, mountain folk who kept to themselves and would be unlikely to give me up to savage soldiers. But mountain folk lived so poor, on such hard-scrabble farms, that they were unlikely to need extra labourers. And I had but one hand.

Lying under my deadfall, I felt tears spill from my eyes, mingling with the rain. I had but one talent, and I was afraid of that too. As a child I had lived, under Hartah's brutal direction, by crossing over and selling to grieving women whatever information I learned from old women in the Country of the Dead. The thought of doing that again filled me with horror. And now I was afraid to cross over, afraid of that crowned figure in the fog, whispering my name. And I had promised Fia.

‘
They are almost ready
,' she had said. Ready for what?

I had no answers, not to anything. But I must at least have breakfast. My stomach ached with hunger.