Dark Mist Rising (36 page)

A chink in the wall. Power flowing along a torn web.

My vision blurred with fear.

It was fear too that finally spurred me forward. I galloped to the nearest of the Dead who still existed, an old woman holding a fireplace bellows. I didn't question why she was holding a pair of bellows when she died; I just snatched the thing from her hand. If my theft was enough to rouse her, I didn't stay long enough to see it. The bellows had a carved wooden point. I jabbed it into my thigh and crossed back over.

Tarek again stood with one of his captains. ‘—is dead,' the captain was saying.
The nurse
. The captain's back was to me and I could see Tarek's face over the man's left shoulder.

The Young Chieftain's eyes, for the first time since I had known him, widened in fear. I sat up, aware of the pain in my thigh, the blood in my mouth from my bitten tongue. Aware, above all, of the fireplace bellows that Tarek must have seen all at once appear in my tranced hand, materializing from nowhere, conjured by the air.

So that was how it looked to an observer.

‘Tarek?' The captain turned, puzzled, to see what had so startled his leader. All he saw was the
antek
unaccountably holding a fireplace bellows where there was no fireplace. Strange but not fearful. Anyone might have stolen anything from the palace in The Queendom.

‘
Klef
,' Tarek managed to say. The captain, still puzzled, saluted and left.

Tarek and I stared at each other.

‘
Antek
,' Tarek finally said. And then, ‘What shall I do about my queen?'

‘Set her aside,' I said.

‘No.'

‘My lord—'

‘You are the
antek
,' he said. The fear had disappeared.

‘You will stop her dreams. You will do it now.
Klef
.'

A call to my guard outside, and I was hustled to the tent of the twice-bereaved princess.

‘What happened, Your Grace?' I said as gently as I could.

She did not answer.

‘Your Grace, were you asleep?'

Nothing.

‘Stephanie, tell me. Were you asleep when your nana died?'

A nod against my shoulder. Then the dam burst. ‘I dreamed. The bad girl came ... She
laughed
...'

‘What did she say?'

Now she trembled so hard I could barely hold her.

‘Did she say, “Die die die”? Did she, Stephanie?'

Another nod.

I called in Tarekish, ‘Guard! Guard!'

My guard put his head into the tent, eyes carefully on the ground.

‘Find a woman of her people to attend the queen. Some older slave—' there was no other word ‘—and bring her here now. Send two men to remove this dead woman.' Another funeral. Stephanie could not stand another. I would see to it that she did not attend. Tarek would listen to me – for the moment, anyway. I owed my moment to a fireplace bellows, and I must make good use of it.

The guard withdrew. I murmured wordlessly to Stephanie, trying to calm her. This did not succeed. Her trembling grew worse, and warm pungent liquid soaked my lap. Terror had loosened her bladder. She was a child, after all, who had grown up pampered in a palace, and what did I know of pampered children? Nothing.

It seemed hours before the soldier returned, although it must have been only a few minutes. With him was a middle-aged woman with the rough red hands of a laundress. However the guard had selected her, he had chosen well. She sized up the situation immediately, and I saw her push down her own fear to take Stephanie from me, keeping the child's face turned from the nurse's body.

‘There, there, Your Grace, let's just get ye out of that wet gown—'

‘Roger!' Stephanie screamed.

‘I'm right here, Your Grace. Go with the ... the nana, and I'll stay here.' With relief I handed over the princess.

‘That ye won't, not while I change her gown,' the woman said, scandalized. ‘Ye wait outside the tent until I call ye. There, Your Grace, it'll be all right. Susannah be here now ...'

Susannah did not seem afraid of me, nor even of the savage warriors who hauled away the nurse's body. I stood by my own guard outside the tent, my clothes soaked with the princess's piss, until Susannah called peremptorily, ‘Ye maun come back in now. Ach, but ye smell! No, don't take her all wet like that. Your Grace, lie on your pallet and he'll sit beside ye and hold your hand. There, that's a good girl.'

Stephanie had calmed under Susannah's stern orders, but her eyes still held a frozen terror that caught at my heart. I sat beside her, murmuring nonsense, but the terror did not lessen. No one came. Finally Susannah said, ‘She maun sleep, that be what she needs. I have a friend who can make a posset—'

‘No! No sleep!'

It burst from me unbidden, words whose import I had not considered. How was a child going to go without sleep? But dreams were the conduit through which my sister reached her. If she—

‘How be a child able to do without sleep?' Susannah demanded. ‘Yer daft, ye are, witchman or no. A child maun sleep.'

‘No,' Stephanie moaned. ‘The bad girl ...'

‘She won't come while I am here,' I said, and immediately could have bitten my tongue. Again. I had no power to stop my sister from invading the princess's dreams. I had not even been able to entice her to invade mine.

But Stephanie believed me. For the first time some of the fear left her eyes. Not all, but some.

‘Ye can't sleep here!' Susannah said, scandalized all over again. Evidently witchcraft did not scare her, but scandal did. ‘A man sleeping in Her Grace's tent!'

‘You're here to chaperone,' I pointed out.

‘Makes no cheese ale,' she said, a country saying I had not heard in years. ‘Ye go.'

‘Roger stays,' Stephanie said, and for the first time I saw on her little face something of her commanding mother. The next second she was again a frightened little girl, but the tone had had its effect. Susannah shut up.

She moved around in the background, washing out the princess's soiled gown, making herself as much at home in her new duties as if born to them. I thought of Tom, capable of adapting to any place he found himself, tireless and fearless. Probably if Susannah had not been such a person, she would not have left The Queendom in the first place. Unless she had been taken by force, and then it must have been a truly epic battle.

Stephanie fought sleep. Her eyelids half closed, then flew open. Again, and yet again. But finally she slept.

I could have wakened her. But then what? Eventually she would have to sleep. The best I could do was sit beside her and stay awake myself, ready to shake her if her face or body indicated agitated dreams. But then even that possibility was taken from me, and not by the muttering Susannah.

‘
Klef
,' my guard said from the tent door.

‘Go away, ye barbarian!' Susannah snapped.

He did not go away. When I did not
klef
, he and another soldier invaded the tent and dragged me from it. ‘Do not let her dream!' I said desperately to Susannah, who looked at me as if I had taken leave of my wits. ‘It is vitally important. Wake the princess if she starts to dream. Stay awake yourself and—'

‘
Klef!
' I was dragged out.

Susannah did not understand, no more than Tom did.

She would sleep and would let Stephanie sleep, and my sister would breach Stephanie's dreams as Soulviners were breaching the Country of the Dead. And then what? I did not know. But it could not be good. Not for Stephanie, not for any of us.

The savages dumped me by my fire. It was very late and only embers were left. Tom slept, but Jee was absent. My guard squatted beside me. In the night darkness I could not see his face, but the jerkiness of his movements told me how uneasy he was.

No more uneasy than I.

The stars shone high and cold between patches of clouds. I stared at the familiar constellations as they appeared, the Bow and the Ox and the Weeping Woman, and I waited. For what, I did not know. But it would happen, whatever it was. An entire circle of the Dead had disappeared before my eyes. Two women had been killed by power obscenely diverted through an innocent child. In that other realm my sister walked, mad and murderous.
Hisafs
and web women performed acts I did not understand in places I could not go. Something would happen, brought about by one of them.

But instead it was Jee, a dirty and lovesick ten-year-old, who brought everything to the point where there could be no turning back.

I jerked upright, expecting to see savage soldiers,
guns
pointed at me, carnage or riot. Instead there was just Tom, silhouetted against a paling eastern sky. Beside last night's fire my night guard sat cross-legged, watching us. The army had not yet been roused for the day's march.

‘What is it?'

‘Alysse is nowhere in camp.'

‘You woke me to tell me that? What do you expect me to do?' When I had finally slept, my sleep had been deep and dreamless, the profound sleep of complete exhaustion. I wanted more of it.

‘You don't understand,' Tom said. ‘Alysse is nowhere at all. I sent Jee to look for her, and he did. The savages have hurt her or killed her. I know it! She couldn't have left camp all by herself!'

Yes, she could. But I couldn't tell Tom that, not about the rabbit hopping away into night shadows, or about the hawk that had dropped a stone down my chimney in Applebridge. So instead I said lamely, ‘Jee looked everywhere?'

‘Yes! He told me so.'

‘Where is Jee now?'

Tom looked around distractedly, as if just noticing that Jee was again gone. The worry for Alysse was real, I knew, but temporary. Just so had he grieved for Fia – for a week. Then he had worked out in his fickle mind that she was not worth the grief because she had left him, and so he had gone on to Alysse. So would it be this time. Soon there would be a Sarah or a Madge or a Jane, and he would never mention Alysse again.

At least, that's how it would be if I could keep us both alive.

Tom said, ‘I don't know where Jee is. That boy comes and goes, comes and goes, he don't never ... but Alysse, a defenceless girl! These piss-pot savages ...' He clenched his huge fists and stared at my guard, who ignored him.

‘If she weren't so pretty,' Tom went on, ‘but she is! Peter, you ain't seen this of course, but she has the most amazing—'

I followed his gaze. The guard jumped to attention. My spine turned cold.

Gliding towards us through the sleeping camp, ghostly in the pale light just before dawn, was a procession. Even at a distance I recognized the Young Chieftain from his walk, a gait of utter confidence and purpose. But Tarek never came to this part of the camp, and in the morning he led his triumphant army on their march in the opposite direction, toward home. Behind him walked two of his captains, and behind them three soldiers with full arms and shields. The six men moved in silence among the sleeping savages and the less orderly palace encampment, heading for me.

‘What the ... By damn—'

‘Be quiet, Tom. I mean it. Say nothing. You are my servant.'

The savages reached our fire. Tarek did not slow his pace but kept on walking. One of the captains snapped an order to my guard, who hauled me to my feet and into the procession as neatly as a hawk that grabs prey in its talons without breaking flight. Tom, already standing, scrambled alongside me.

‘Tom, no.'

‘I'm your
nel
, remember? This looks serious.'

Looks serious
. Tom, not ordinarily given to under-statement, saying this looked serious. Laughter rose in my throat, the insane laughter of hysterical fear. I pushed it down. Whatever was happening here, in this eerie dawn silence, I would need my wits about me. Even for dying.

The nine of us walked through the camp to the princess's tent. Away from the fire, the cold pierced me; sometime during the night, winter had set in. Tom kept up, despite the rope between his ankles, by employing a peculiar half-hop, half-step. The savages did not try to stop him. To the pearl of the eastern sky were added sudden streaks of pink. Somewhere to my left a soldier stirred and drew a sharp breath as we passed. In the woods beyond, an owl hooted.

Three guards lay peacefully on the ground before Stephanie's tent. More than peacefully – their limbs sprawled with total abandon, and all three snored loudly. Six upright guards surrounded the pole-and-animal-hide structure,
guns
at the ready. Then I saw Susannah, royal nurse of less than half a day, gagged and bound to a sapling twenty feet beyond the tent. At the sight of me she struggled against her bonds and tried to cry out, but no sound came.