Dark Mist Rising (41 page)

Tom took the woman from my grasp, produced a rope that must have been yet another of his thefts from the Dead, and tied her firmly to a stout oak. His broad face was very pale. Then he dragged two more Dead from the circle and tied them to trees.

‘That's enough,' I said, not knowing if it was or not. ‘The circles need at least ten to ... to work. Save some rope.'

‘I will,' Tom said grimly. Colour had returned to his face. He had a task to perform. Tasks always steadied him.

We walked back to Jee and Stephanie, neither of whom asked any questions. I don't know what Jee had told the princess. Then we resumed walking, Tom and Jee carrying the rest of the provisions on their backs. We saw no more circles this high in the mountains, but each time we came to a lone Dead, Tom solemnly tied him or her to a tree.

One, three, five Dead – out of all the centuries of those who had lived.

‘George would be proud of you,' I said, to say something.

‘Tell him when you see him,' Tom said, not looking at me. Nor did he smile. His words might have been sarcasm, or not. I could not tell. And I did not ask.

We could not keep her dreamless for ever. The snatches of sleep she was allowed were not enough, not for anyone. She began to whimper and fuss. The skin beneath her eyes looked so bruised that an observer, had there been one in the Country of the Dead, would have thought we beat her. Nor could Tom, Jee and I keep walking for a whole ‘day' and then do without sleep as, each in turn, we watched over Stephanie to keep her from dreaming. Even Tom's great strength grew less, and we were only, as best I could judge, halfway down the eastern slope of the mountains. As we neared The Queendom, fog grew in the Country of the Dead – not yet thick, still just light wisps drifting across the landscape – but the fog too seemed to trouble Stephanie. She would stare at a drifting patch of grey mist and bury her head in Tom's shoulder or against my side.

She was stumbling along, holding my good hand, when we came upon another circle of the Dead, and Stephanie broke.

There were fifteen Dead, and they all held hands. For the last quarter-mile the fog had disappeared almost entirely, and now I saw why: it had all been concentrated in this circle. Fog obscured each of the fifteen heads. If I laid my hand on one of those heads, I knew, it would vibrate like a hive of bees. And in the centre of the circle was a dark dense patch of mist, slowly rotating.

Tom and Jee froze, staring in horror at a thing they had not yet seen. I had, and yet a shiver ran through my belly and spine. That dark rotating mist was made of watchers from Soulvine Moor, and if the mist did the same thing I had seen once before, those dead men and women would soon be—

‘No!' Stephanie shrieked. ‘Make it go away!'

‘My lady, my lady,' crooned Jee, unfreezing and hanging over her, his small dirty face mirroring her distress.

‘Look away, Your Grace, and we'll go on just like it ain't there!' Tom said, but his false cheer rang hollow to even a child. Futilely he tried to turn her face away from the circle.

‘It's there!' Stephanie cried. ‘It's there! I want to go home! I want my nana!'

And then a storm of tears, greater for having been so long held in. Tom's face went stony. ‘Women's weapons,' he had once said of one of his bedmate's tears, Agnes or Joan or Betsy or Annie. Did he think that of the little princess, who was but six? But I was too weary to explore the corners of Tom Jenkins's brain; my only thought was to put distance between us and the circle. Tom would not be tying these Dead to any tree.

‘Carry Stephanie, Tom,' I said. ‘We must keep on.'

‘I cannot,' he said.

Never before had I heard Tom say he could not do something.

‘I must rest at least a little while,' he said. ‘I ain't an ox, Roger. Though you think of me as such. Strong dumb Tom, who does your bidding.'

‘I don't think of you that way,' I lied.

‘It don't matter. But I must sleep, and I will. Over there.'

He started off around the side of a hill, out of sight of the circle of the Dead. I bit back a sharp retort. Weariness had made us all quarrelsome, but I could not afford a quarrel with Tom. We needed him too much. Biting back my own resentment – if he thought it hard to be a follower, let him try to lead this sorry band – I followed Tom, dragging the sobbing Stephanie.

All of us lay down. Immediately exhaustion took me.

I said to Jee, ‘Can you watch Her Grace, Jee?'

‘Yes,' he said stoutly. And even though I saw that he too was tired, even though he was a child, I let him. I stretched out on the ground away from Tom, who even in sleep kept close the weapons he had stolen from the Dead: two spears, the bow, a quiver of arrows fashioned by different hands, the shield, a
gun
. Plus one of his own two knives in his hand. Within moments I slept, the deep and empty sleep that, amazingly, had not once been troubled since we crossed over into the Country of the Dead.

And then Stephanie dreamed.

It was her shriek that woke me, but it was Jee who lay asleep – no,
not asleep
. I jumped up and ran to him. No breath stirred his lips.

‘Jee!'

‘She came!' Stephanie cried. ‘The bad girl, she wants me to stay here.'

‘Jee!'

I grabbed the slight body and shook it. Jee gave a single great gasp and then once again went limp. He was not yet dead but he would be soon, she was killing him.

I dropped Jee, raised my good hand and struck Stephanie a blow on the head.

She slumped to the ground before her small face could even show surprise. Tom yelled and the next moment I lay flat beside the princess, with Tom's knife at my throat. His eyes glittered with rage, with astonishment, with instinctive defence of his sovereign.

‘Tom,
does Jee live
?'

Confusion replaced all else. ‘Jee? You attacked the—'

‘She was killing him! With her dream.' It was not Stephanie I meant, but even if Tom did not understand, he turned his head to look at Jee.

‘Let me up!'

Tom did, but not for my sake. In a moment he was kneeling between the children. I squeezed my eyes shut tight, suddenly afraid of what my sister had done, of what I myself had done ...

A great ragged gasp, and then a hoarse cry, as from a throat bruised and scarred. But Jee lived.

And Stephanie?

‘She breathes,' Tom said grimly. ‘But her senses have left her. You did it to stop her dream from killing Jee?'

‘Like Lady Margaret. Like her nurse.' I could still feel Tom's knife, and I put my hand to my throat. It came away bloody. ‘Tom, it was all I could do!'

‘She's but a little girl!'

‘It was all I could do.'

Jee still lay gasping. Only that could have kept him from the princess. I crawled to him and touched his shoulder. His dark eyes fastened on mine. Slowly colour came back into his face and his breathing grew more regular. Then he started to cry.

I gathered him into my arms. ‘Hush, Jee. She could not help it. She meant you no harm; it was another working through her dreams. Hush now.'

He thrust me away, ashamed of having broken down in front of men. Anger was better than fear, so he became angry. ‘What other?' he demanded. ‘Ye be the witch. What other from Witchland kills by our princess?'

Tom, cradling the unconscious Stephanie, looked at me hard.

I said, ‘She is the queen of ... of the faithless ones. She lives here, in the Country of the Dead. And she is my half-sister.'

Silence.

The silence stretched on while Tom and Jee stared at me. And then another voice spoke into the stillness:

‘That will do no good, Roger. Stephanie must revive sometime.'

I whipped around and there she stood, at the edge of a grove of pine trees, and with her a dark fog that raced towards us, obscuring that first sight of her slim figure and her shining crown. The dark mist obscured too the three men I had seen with her. In a moment that dark mist rising had reached us, and I could see nothing at all. But I could hear my sister's laugh, which pealed towards us from the fog, high and shrill and mad.

I grabbed onto his bulk and bit my tongue, and we all crossed over. Perhaps my sister expected this, for she went on laughing, the last sound I heard before

Darkness—

Cold—

Dirt choking my mouth—

Worms in my eyes—

Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs–

And we were through, standing knee high in snow, with brilliant sunlight piercing our eyes and an icy wind blowing the bare mountain trees.

Tom shouted something, his words borne away by the wind. Almost I expected to see my sister appear beside us. But she could never do that. She was marooned in the Country of the Dead and we were safe, I had done it, had brought Jee and Tom and Stephanie back over bodily.

Another figure materialized in the snow. Another. Then a third.

The three men who had been with my sister.
Hisafs
, holding knives. They stood less than ten yards from where we huddled against the cutting wind. Tom dropped Stephanie onto Jee and sprang in front of me. His stolen weapons had been left in the Country of the Dead, along with our cloaks, but he had his own two knives at his belt. He hurled one at the closest man.

The
hisaf
vanished.

He had crossed over, of course. I saw Tom's expression through the white cloud of his breath as the knife buried itself in a bank of snow. The second
hisaf
stood, grinning at him, then at me. He shouted something I could not hear for the wind. Older than my father, he had a thick black beard, bald head, and eyes that—

Before Tom's second knife reached him, the
hisaf
vanished.

How long? How long to cross through the grave, take a breath, inflict minor pain on himself, then again traverse the crumbling barrier of cold and darkness and return to us to—

‘Behind ye!' Jee shouted. He dropped to the ground on top of Stephanie, shielding her with his body. Tom whirled around. The third
hisaf
now circled Tom, knife in hand. I grabbed one of Tom's knives from the snow and tossed it to him. I barely had time to find the other knife before the bald, black-bearded
hisaf
reappeared, fifteen feet from us. Sunlight reflecting off snow glittered along his blade.

Tom lunged at the third
hisaf
. Younger, bigger, stronger and not unskilled in fighting, Tom managed to knock the blade from the man's hand. Immediately the
hisaf
vanished, just as the first one reappeared right next to him.

Tom dodged. The
hisaf
's knife glanced along his left side, but Tom didn't seem to notice. He concentrated utterly on his opponent. Even the
hisaf
must have felt the fury in that huge powerful body because, instead of attacking again, he vanished.

The black-bearded
hisaf
ran towards me through the snow.

Tom was faster; he reached me first and leaped upon the man. They struggled briefly, and then the
hisaf
melted from Tom's grasp and was gone.

‘What are they?' he screamed at me.

‘
Hisafs!
Like me!'

Tom groaned. ‘Stand back to back!' he yelled at me over the wind. I clutched his other knife, knowing that I was too clumsy to use it –
Peter One-Hand
– but with no choice. All of us were without choice. These
hisafs
could now cross over and back in body, as I had. We must kill them and send them quiescent to the Country of the Dead, or we would all four of us go there ourselves. No, three of us, for then my sister would have Stephanie, and I did not think that her handlers would want Stephanie quiescent and mindless when she could instead be put to use.

Jee and Stephanie lay between us at our feet. The third
hisaf
vanished without attacking –
why
? We waited for the men to reappear. The wind howled and froze my face. The
hisafs
did not come. Minutes dragged by. What if they just let us freeze here until—

Two of them appeared on either side of me, close enough for me to feel the warmth of their bodies, and the third a little way off. Then one had me by the neck with his knife at my throat. Tom spun around to face us.

‘Attack and Roger dies!' the man shouted above the wind.

Tom hesitated.

In that moment of hesitation the second
hisaf
lurched forward. His knife flashed. A gust of wind blew snow in my eyes, blinding me, and I could not see what happened until the gust passed and the
hisaf
was falling to the ground, Jee's hand on his ankle. Jee had tripped him. Tom fell to his knees and plunged his own knife into the man's chest. Blood jetted forth in a fountain, turning the white snow bright red.