Dark Mist Rising (38 page)

He frowned. ‘Is my body there too? And the princess's? And Jee's?'

‘No. I brought you here bodily.'
Like a shaving knife, a
chair, a pair of boots
. There was no other way that someone not a
hisaf
could cross that barrier.

‘Can you bring us back home?'

‘Yes.' Surely bringing back someone who was not dead, surely that would not cause the same havoc as bringing back someone who belonged in the Country of the Dead?

‘But then I would bring you back to wherever
my
body is when I crossed over.'

‘You mean, with Tarek?'

‘Yes.'

He chewed on that for a while, then burst out with, ‘Well, from where I sit, you ain't thought this through very carefully.'

‘I didn't think it through at all! The savages were going to shoot us all, so I just acted.'

‘George would have arranged things better.'

‘I'm sure,' I said wearily.

‘So what do we do now?'

Jee said, ‘We maun not travel to The Queendom on the other side.'

He had appeared at my side without my hearing him, and Stephanie with him. The princess's eyes were wild still, but she held tightly to Jee's hand, her shoulder pressed against his. Apparently whatever he had said had made him her protector. Silent Jee! But, at that, he would probably be a better care-taker for the little girl than I had been so far. He could hardly be worse.

Tom said irritably – he didn't like being outguessed by a boy – ‘Why “maun” we not travel in The Queendom, Jee?'

‘We not be
in
The Queendom. We be in the mountains. And with the living it soon be winter. We have but two cloaks and I have Maggie's two knives. We have no money. Not enow.'

Jee was right. If we travelled, it must be here. And yet, if I brought them back over the Western Mountains while in the Country of the Dead, back to where The Queendom's border began in the land of the living, what help would that be to us? The moment I crossed back over, we would all be once again wherever my body had remained. Assuming my body was still alive.

Tom argued, ‘But if we travelled in the real country, we could at least find something to eat. What can we eat here? I don't see nothing.'

He was right. There was nothing edible in the Country of the Dead, where none ever ate.

Tom looked at me. ‘Pe— Roger, what do we do?'

‘Let me think!'

The three of them stared at me, which was not conducive to thinking. But there was only one course open to me anyway. I stood.

‘We are going to walk one day's journey towards The Queendom. That is the first step. Tom, can you carry Her Grace if needed?'

‘Of course. But then what will—'

‘We are going to walk one day's worth towards The Queendom.' I tried to make it sound as authoritative as I could. Finally Tom nodded. Despite wishing I were George, Tom trusted me.

I wish I trusted myself.

Jee cut the rope between Tom's ankles and we set out, Stephanie between Jee and me. She clutched both of our hands. Silently, timidly at first, three living people and a
hisaf
walked through the Country of the Dead.

Only light patches of fog veiled the landscape. The sky, low and featureless and grey, gave off its even pale light. Neither trees nor grass, the latter dotted with bushes or with clumps of pale wildflowers, stirred in the breeze. There was no breeze. To the east loomed the mountains that Tarek's army, in the land of the living, had just traversed; to the west somewhere lay the valley of his kingdom. And all around us sat or lay the Dead. There were not very many of them, this high in the mountains, where not many had lived, let alone died. But there were enough. A hunter. Two soldiers. An entire family that had perhaps lived here over time, their deaths separated by decades but occurring in the same dwelling, so that they all ended up together. Stephanie peered at a child lying tranquilly on the grass and gazing at the sky, and her hand tightened in mine.

Tom began to sing.

I almost snapped at him, but I stopped myself. I had seen the Dead, walked among them, my entire life. Tom had not. His face was ashen, with drops of sweat on his forehead and upper lip. He could do nothing about the eerie stillness of the Dead, but he could at least shatter the eerie silence. ‘Oh, a lady came a-riding,' he sang, quavering on the high notes, ‘all of a summer morning ...'

And so we walked, threading our way through the Dead, to the sounds of a lady come a-riding, a hunter come a-courting, a soldier come a-drinking, a girl come a-dancing, while the air hung quiet around us and no night fell.

‘We will stop here and make camp,' I said.

Tom nodded. This was something he understood. He gathered wood, took out his flint and steel, began a fire. There was no need for a fire: there was neither cold nor darkness nor wild animals, and we had nothing to cook. Our two cloaks of savage fur were too warm to wear. But Tom needed a fire. He built a roaring blaze and settled the children to sleep beside it. I heard Jee's stomach growl, but both he and Stephanie fell asleep too quickly to protest the lack of food. Not so Tom.

‘Roger—'

‘You have first watch, Tom,' I said. ‘Have you your knives?'

‘Yes.' He flashed them at me. ‘What beasts are here? Any like ... like Shadow and Shep? Hey! If they be like our dogs, maybe we can find one to hunt for us and—'

‘I don't know. I need to piss, Tom. Do not leave the children.'

‘No, I will not, but Roger—'

‘In a minute.' I was gone before he could question me further. Tom would not follow, not without Jee and Stephanie. I had time.

When I was out of his sight, I lay on the ground beneath the low branches of a mountain pine and drove a sharp stone into my thigh.

My promise to Alysse was already broken, and I must know what my situation was. If Tarek had kept me alive and captive, I would return to my body and then could immediately bite my tongue and cross back to the Country of the Dead. The savages might not even realize I had briefly been present. If, on the other hand, I was already dead but somehow not quiescent, I would not be able to cross over at all. I could not imagine what I would do then, but at least I would
know
. Was I alive back in those savage mountains, or was I dead?

The answer turned out to be neither.

Darkness—

Cold—

Dirt choking my mouth—

Worms in my eyes—

Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

And then I lay beneath the same low branches of a mountain pine, but bright light blazed between the green needles. An astonished squirrel, squatting in the shade, squawked at my sudden appearance and skittered up the tree trunk. A moment later a nut was thrown down at my head.

I was back in the land of the living but not with Tarek's army.

My head whirled. This had never happened before.

Not just my essence, but my body, whole, had moved through the grave. Nothing of me had remained in Tarek's camp – I had ‘winked away', as Tom would have said. How could I have moved bodily to the Country of the Dead, when always before my body had remained behind?

Slowly I understood, and the understanding chilled my heart. This was due to the breach that Soulvine Moor had created in what should have the impenetrable wall of the grave. As a result of that breach,
hisafs
could now truly move between the realms on either side of the grave, could even travel in one to appear suddenly and unanticipated in the other. It was terrifying proof of just how far Soulvine had come in its quest to break down the wall between the living and the dead.

So I was safe from Tarek, but dread of the future filled me. However, there was no time for dread. Almost immediately I began to shiver. The brightness beyond the pine branches was sunlight on a light fall of snow. Crawling out from beneath the tree, I pulled my fur cloak tighter around me, blinked several times and tried to think what to do next. I could cross back over immediately and so escape the winter that Jee had so prag-matically mentioned, but that would not solve the problem of feeding us.

Running warmed me. Few savages lived in these high mountains, but on the other side we had passed one large group of Dead a mile or so back. They had been dressed in different styles of rough clothing, some for winter and some for summer, which suggested that a mountain family had lived and died on that spot for a long time. Perhaps they lived there still. Perhaps I could steal food from field or orchard.

Harvest was well over. The farmhouse stood, but the small field and stunted orchard were bare. However, a herd of goats foraged on the hillside above the farmhouse, watched by two boys of nine or ten. The goats pulled at the tough-stemmed plants poking above the light snow. I hid at the edge of the woods and eyed the boys. Did they have
guns
? Could I get close enough to steal a goat?

It turned out to be surprisingly easy. I ran out of the woods and towards one of the goats. The boys shouted something. Surprise raised their downy eyebrows, widened their blue eyes. They rushed towards me, knives drawn, fierce scowls replacing the looks of surprise. They were boys, but they were Tarek's people, and I, with but one hand, must not have appeared too threatening. Still, I seized the neck fur of a startled kid, bit my tongue, and goat and I vanished from the boys' sight.

Almost, I enjoyed it.

When I emerged from the woods, Tom was pacing up and down, frowning. ‘A long piss ...' He spied the goat.

‘Can you butcher a goat, Tom?'

He nodded, speechless. But Tom Jenkins was never speechless long. ‘By damn, where did you find
that
? I saw no animals all day, not so much as a puny bird. She's a beauty, ain't she? I'm so hungry I could eat a—' He stopped cold.

‘What is it?' I said.

Tom whispered, ‘Is that goat ... is it a Dead? Can we eat a Dead? Roger, what if doing that—'

‘It's not a Dead. I crossed over and stole it from a savage farm on the other side. It's alive until you kill it, Tom.'

His face cleared. He seized the kid, which bleated piteously but without effect. I turned away to be sure that Stephanie still slept. Jee was a hunter, but it was a fair bet that the princess had never seen her dinner slaughtered or skinned. Stephanie slept on, until the smell of roasting meat woke them both.

I could do this. I could feed us by crossing back and forth. We could walk to The Queendom over these quiet mountains where weather did not exist, and I could bring them all back over, safe, to the land of the living.

I could do this. Unless we encountered the other life in this place.

Now the countryside lay quiet, the fog still and light, the Dead quiescent. There was no sign of other
hisafs
, nor of my sister. Perversely, this very absence began to trouble me. Did they not know we were here? Could I really be that fortunate?

Yet it did not seem fortunate to be here. It seemed eerie, as it never had before, not even in the most wild of the landscape's previous disturbances. I had come here most of my life, in anger or despair or hope or refuge, but I had never come here bodily, knowing that I had left no physical self in the land of the living. And I had never come here accompanied by others to whom all this was not only eerie but unimaginable.

‘So that ... man is really dead,' Tom said as we walked towards the mountain pass to the east. It looked much closer here than it had on the other side. I hoped that was true. The Dead that Tom pointed to was a hunter, dressed in many shaggy furs, more fur bound around his feet, a primitive spear by his side. He must have died in winter. Jee and Stephanie walked ahead, where I could see them. The princess kept her hand tightly in Jee's. She had entirely stopped talking, not a single word, but she kept walking.

‘Yes, ' I said to Tom, ‘he's dead.'

‘And he's just been sitting there since he died.'

‘Yes.'

‘And when we come to the place where Lady Margaret died – it's right over that hill, you know – we'll see her, just sitting there.'

I had not thought of this. It would be better for Stephanie to not see Lady Margaret. ‘We will skirt around the other side of the hill, I think.'