Dark Mist Rising (21 page)

‘Why?' It came out a howl, and two birds in a nearby bush took frightened wing. ‘And a war against what? What is Soulvine trying to do?'

‘They are doing it,' Mother Chilton said grimly. ‘Listen to me. The Dead grow in power over years, over centuries – how could it be otherwise? Even stupid youths like you know how much power death has. You have good reason to know it. All thoughtful men and women spend their lives aware that they will someday die and that nothing at all, neither riches nor beauty nor love, can thwart that ultimate power. And when death finally enters into them, so does some of death's power. The power of the Dead is their own – unique, even when shared in their circles. That power grows slowly, like a huge oak from a tiny seed, until each of the Dead is ready to let it take them on to eternity. If it were otherwise, the Country of the Dead would contain many, many more than it does. Have you never noticed that no clothing there dates from further back than the last few hundred years? No, of course you have not noticed, and your ignorance would not know the dates of clothing anyway.'

I would not let her scorn deter me from my questions. ‘But Soulvine Moor ...'

‘Soulvine has found a way to visit the Country of the Dead. You have seen the men and women of the Moor over there, have you not?'

‘As a dark, humming fog. But I thought only
hisafs
could cross over!'

‘Originally, yes. But there are faithless
hisafs
, corrupt and self-seeking, and some of those ... I have told you enough!'

I had never before seen Mother Chilton distressed. I did not know she
could
be distressed. She covered her face with her hands, and her whole body trembled. The sight terrified me; it was like seeing a mountain tremble or an oak tree weep. But I could not let up. This was my only chance to learn what I so desperately needed to know.

‘It's not enough, Mother Chilton. What do Soulvine and these “faithless
hisafs
” seek to do? Tell me, or else I will promise nothing.'

Her spasm ended as soon as it had begun. She took her hands from her face, and in the shade under the pines I could not tell if there were tears on her face. Had it been but an act, then? To move me and so end my questions?

She said simply, ‘They are trying to draw the power of the Dead to themselves, and so live for ever.'

I stared, appalled beyond any words.

‘They would rob the Dead of eternity and take it into themselves. They would thus destroy the Dead over there, just as you destroyed them here – Bat and Cecilia and the Blue army. Now do you understand what is at stake?'

Rob the Dead of eternity
. I thought of those large circles, hands joined and heads shrouded in dark fog that agitated each of the Dead. In the centre of the circles, humming clouds of watchers from Soulvine. But to rob the Dead of eternity ...

‘Can they
do
that?' I whispered.

‘Yes. No. It's unknown as a certainty, but we believe they can. After all,
you
robbed people of eternity in this realm – why should it be impossible in that other?'

I could say nothing.

‘Roger,' she said, more quietly now but with urgency somehow aided by that quiet, ‘you must not cross over again. I told you once before to not seek your mother. Now you really must not try to find her.'

‘I found her,' I said. Mother Chilton's eyes widened. So she did not know everything that I did, or everything that happened in the Country of the Dead. This knowledge gave me courage to ask more. ‘Why is there fresh blood on my mother's gown when no blood is fresh beyond the grave? And who is that woman in the mist who knows my name? The woman who says, “Eleven years dead”?'

Mother Chilton groaned. ‘She has seen you, then.'

‘Yes.'

‘And spoken to you?'

‘Yes.'

‘This is very bad.'

‘Who is she? Tell me, or I will promise nothing.'

‘You threaten me, you ignorant meddling boy?'

‘I am no longer a boy,' I said hotly, ‘and if I have meddled, it is because no one has ever given me the knowledge to act wisely. So tell me, Mother Chilton, or I will make you no promises, who is that woman?'

‘She is not a woman. She is a girl, born eleven years ago. She is a girl, and she is your sister.'

The words did not make sense to me, did not map onto anything real. ‘My—'

‘Your mother married a
hisaf
.
Hisafs
do not marry girls from The Queendom, but they fell in love. She was beautiful and he was headstrong. None of us approved the marriage but—'

‘Who are “us”?'

She continued as if I had not spoken. ‘They married, and you were born. Six years later your mother gave birth again, and it killed her. Many women die in childbirth, you know.'

I remembered the visitors to the inn at Applebridge months ago, a lifetime ago. Lord Carush Spenlow's daughter-in-law fresh from childbed, pale and feverish. The midwife saying, ‘
That girl, Lady Joanna, will die. There
was nothing I could do.' The baby wailing in the caravan. ‘'Tis
a pity, really.'

Mother Chilton said, ‘But your mother was different, Roger. She carried the child of a
hisaf
, and she died at the very moment before giving birth. Such a thing had never happened before. Your sister was born wholly in the Country of the Dead, in that brief moment before the Dead lapse into tranquillity. Do you understand? The infant had no body in the land of the living. She never existed here. She has grown up beyond the grave.'

‘I don't understand, no.'

Mother Chilton said, ‘Yet it is so.'

‘But how could an infant even survive? If my mother lapsed into the tranquil trance of the Dead, how could she care for the baby?'

‘She could not. Did not. Your sister was raised in the early years by a succession of Dead, old women briefly roused by the corrupt
hisafs
who saw their chance in this bizarre birth. When the child grew a little older, they themselves brought her food. But she has spent most of her life alone, there among the Dead. She is a source of enormous power to the rogue
hisafs
, those who work with Soulvine. Even a
hisaf
must die, and these faithless ones do not wish to do so. But your sister is not a
hisaf
. She cannot cross back over, and if someone brought her over, she would wink out of all existence like a gutted candle. She knows this. What she is, Roger, is a link between the living and the Dead. She lives, and yet she never lived. And—'

She stopped, but I knew what she was going to say, and I said it for her. That laugh that shivered along my bones, turned my blood to ice.

I said, ‘My sister is mad.'

‘Wouldn't you be, with such an existence for so long?'

‘Yes.'

‘
Eleven years dead
...' And yet not dead.

Mother Chilton said wearily, ‘Go back to Maggie, Roger Kilbourne. Give me your promise that you will never cross over again, and then go back to that poor girl who so unaccountably loves you. I have told you enough.'

‘No, you have not! Why must I not cross over? What can my sister do to me?'

‘We do not know for certain. We do know that she is in the power of the rogue
hisafs
, who seek to use her for their own ends. She is unique, neither living nor dead – who can say what her powers may be? And we suspect that they seek to use you as well, through her, although we do not yet know how. Try to remember, Roger Kilbourne, that you are not alone in this world – in either of these worlds. You are not a speck of dust floating in empty air. What you do has consequences for the entire web of being.'

‘But I am a
hisaf
!' It came out sounding like the wail of a child.

‘There are many
hisafs
. But you are different from the others.'

Fury filled me. She was so elusive, this woman standing in the shadow of a wind-warped pine, her eyes somehow reflecting all light back to me. She would tell me nothing straight. I wanted to strike her with my one good hand – I, who have never hit a woman in my life – but I knew that if I did, she would best me yet again.

‘I am different
how
? And why think so at all?'

She said, ‘Because you and your mad sister are linked by blood. And because your father is different from other
hisafs
.'

I gaped at her. She had said it simply, just as if the sentence had not the power to knock me off my feet. And she continued on in the same tone.

‘He is horribly mistaken about the nature of this war.

But he is nonetheless doing the best he can. As are we all.'

‘My father is
alive
? And never has he seen me or even—'

‘Hush! Listen!'

I heard it then, shouts through the trees. They came from the direction of the cabin in the clearing.

Mother Chilton seized my arm. ‘Give me your promise! You will never cross over again!'

‘Soldiers—'

‘Say it! I have kept my part of this unholy bargain!'

I said, ‘I promise I will never cross over again. My father—'

Four soldiers burst from the trees. We stood, Mother Chilton and I, our backs to the cliff. No escape. But these were not savage soldiers of the Young Chieftain's army; they wore the purple tunics and shoulder emblems of Princess Stephanie, of The Queendom. I could have wept with relief – but only for a moment.

‘That's him!' one man cried. In a moment they had seized both Mother Chilton and me. They dragged us along the track to the clearing. Tom Jenkins lay outside the cabin, beside our fire. Blood caked his blond head.

He was not moving.

A tall man with the tunic emblem of a captain studied my face. He nodded and made a gesture, and one of the others hurried inside. The captain, who had the thin sharp-chinned face of a weasel, said, ‘You are Roger Kilbourne.'

I said nothing. A rusty voice quavered, ‘Master ...'

The captain said impatiently to the others, ‘Let the crone go. We have no orders about feeble old servants!'

I turned to look at Mother Chilton. Her face had wrinkled fantastically; her head bent forward on its knotted neck; her eyes were filmed with the rheum of age. The soldier released her. Again she whined to me, despairing and obsequious, ‘Master ...' The soldier shoved her, and she nearly fell. Righting herself, she shuffled off. Not once did she look back at me.

‘Roger Kilbourne,' said a voice behind me, and I turned. The voice was both thick and heavily accented. I think I knew, even before I turned, who it was.

The savage singer-turned-warrior had not, after all, died from Shadow's attack in the Almsbury cottage. Unlike the other three soldiers, he had somehow survived that brutal maiming. But his handsome young face was horribly disfigured. One eye was covered with a patch. His mouth twisted in a grotesque line, the lips half torn off and still not healed. His voice came thick and garbled from a throat swaddled in bandages. His one eye sparkled with hatred.

This time, I knew, there would be no dog to rescue me. Shep-who-was-not-Shep had not followed me up from the beach. His time in the land of the living was done, and so was he. As I would soon be as well.

In moments of despair the mind can fasten on to strange notions. Knowing that soon I would die under torture, one irrelevant thought stabbed me with regret.

I wished that I had asked my mother's name.

‘
Tel mit
,' the savage once-a-singer growled at the soldiers of The Queendom, and I saw from the puzzled look on their faces that they too had difficulty understanding the words coming from that swaddled, maimed throat. The savage was evidently in charge of this detail of Princess Stephanie's soldiers, and he spoke to them in his own language, not ours. I understood ‘Take him' but not the string of garbled syllables that followed. I didn't think the captain could follow it either, but he must have already had his orders.

His men handled me roughly but with no intent to cause pain. They bound my arms behind my back and pushed me into a supply wagon at the edge of the clearing. They also dumped Tom into the wagon. He groaned briefly before lapsing again into unconsciousness. The savage singer came towards the wagon and said sharply, ‘
Ka! Ka mit!'

A soldier grabbed Tom and dumped him out again, back on the ground. The driver lashed his donkey and we started forward. Whatever was going to happen to me was not going to happen here.

All morning we travelled. I lay bound on the bed of the supply wagon, along with sacks of flour and dried meat and a barrel of ale that sloshed, half-empty, with every jolt. The driver sat on the wagon, and the other three soldiers walked behind. The maimed savage walked ahead, alone. Under the trees the shade was cool, but each time the track took us into the open, the sun beat down on my uncovered head. I had nothing to do but think.

When would the torture start?

Was Tom dying, left in the clearing, or would Mother Chilton go back for him?