Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (10 page)

“Aedan! Aedan!” Her cry echoed up the rocks and
they saw the young girl stand in the front of the canoe. Quin was fast with his
oar and struck her across the back, dropping her to her knees. Aedan screamed.

Then he went very still.

He looked around, grabbed a fist-sized rock, and
tossed it gently over the edge. It fell and fell, hanging in the air far too
long. And when it struck the water, it barely cleared the boulders. He watched
the movement of the canoe and counted out the same time the rock had taken to
drop. He had done this often over the Brockle when the targets had been
drifting leaves. He knew now how far the canoe would move during the fall, and
using that distance, he marked a point upstream from him.

“Can I use this?” he asked, pointing to a small
war hammer that Nulty still carried on his belt.”

Nulty unhooked the weapon and handed it over.

“From this height, you have as much chance of
hitting her as him,” Lanor objected.

“I’m not going to throw it from here.” Aedan’s
voice was shaking now.

Both men looked at him, confused.

“You said our chance might be small,” he said to Lanor,
“but what about her? I promised not to abandon her, and I won’t.” He looked at
the river. The canoe was approaching the mark.

“No Aedan,” Lanor said, stepping forward and
reaching out with a big hand. “You won’t make it. I won’t let you –”

But Aedan was too quick for him. With a deep
breath, he clenched his jaw, slipped around Lanor and sprinted at the edge.
Moonlight made it more difficult to be completely sure-footed over the broken
ground. A mistake now would rob him of the speed he needed to carry him over
the rocks. Instinct dug its claws in and willed him to stop. He felt sick. He
didn’t want to do this. But he drove himself on. Fear surged as the edge rushed
forward. He placed his final step. His stomach twisted.

Then he leapt.

The chasm opened its jaws beneath him. Every
muscle locked and his throat clamped shut. Wind began to thrum and then scream
in his ears as he fell. He glimpsed features in the rock face rushing up past
him – deep, craggy lines and hard shapes – but his eyes were fixed on the canoe.
It was as though everything slowed down and he saw in strangely vivid detail.
Though his mind was operating on the most primitive level, the impressions were
being etched with the weight and depth of runes on an ancient lintel.

Kalry was in the front of the canoe, crouched on
her knees, staring up at him. There was no relief in her eyes, only fear – no,
horror at what he was doing. He knew she would never have wanted rescue at this
price, just as surely as he could not have withheld it. They had never actually
spoken of what they meant to each other, but they spoke it now, with an
eloquence beyond the reach of words.

Then Aedan fixed his eyes on Quin. The man was
staring open-mouthed at the impossible spectacle. Aedan raised the hammer above
his head. At first he thought he had misjudged, but realised now that he would
land close to the canoe, almost in it.

Another rush of fear almost caused him to abandon
the throw and prepare for impact, but he pushed it aside, took aim, and hurled
the hammer with all the strength remaining in his body. The throw caused him to
turn. He would not land well. He forgot about Quin, even Kalry, as he shrank
into a ball and tensed.

An explosion of pain shook him. Water as hard as
rock. Then he felt no more as all was swallowed in dark silence.

The dreams were confusing, a distorted jumble of nightmarish
pain, tender words, and familiar voices. Sometimes it was his parents, Clauman
and Nessa, that he sensed, sometimes others. Sometimes night, sometimes day.
Thomas’s voice was there too at the edge of his tangled musings as he wandered,
lost within his own mind. Once he recognised Dresbourn’s voice and then his
father’s raised in anger – even in his dream world he crimped up and braced
himself. Sometimes the dreams seemed to be reality, and the taste of food
passed through his thoughts more than once.

He began to drift back and relive the events of
those days – the danger, the hope, the falseness and the loyalty. Then that final
scene played out before him again, and as he hit the water he sat up in his bed
with sweat beading his forehead.

Searing lances shot through his body. Arms, legs,
back – they all felt wrong. He collapsed into the mattress with a shudder of
agony.

His mother was beside him in an instant. She cried,
clutching his hand as if trying to keep him from escaping again, but his vision
dimmed and he drifted off.

When he awoke, she was ready with soup which he
was made to drink before she would listen to a word. When he had swallowed all
he could, he asked in a cracked whisper, “Kalry?”

“Rest, Aedan,” she said and looked away.

Aedan wanted to press but did not have the
strength. He tried to ask again the following day but was met with the same
response.

As consciousness returned, so the pain increased
and his slumber became fitful. When he was able to lift his head, he discovered
that one arm and both his legs were bound and splinted. They looked thinner
than they should have been. The angle of the sun from his window told him that
spring was gone. Weeks, even months must have passed.

He awoke one morning to see his father sitting on
the end of the bed.

“Where is Kalry?” Aedan asked.

“That’s not why I am here,” his father replied. His
face was expressionless, apart from its native cast of stern dissatisfaction. “Dresbourn
received a letter two days ago and what it contains could destroy us. He had
copies made, posted them all over the town, and I took one. I need you to
listen and then answer some questions.” He began to read.

Dresbourn

As you are by now aware, I am a Lekran slave trader.
Though that makes us enemies, there is a certain respect that is possible even
between enemies. I write this partly from that respect and partly from anger,
an anger that you will understand shortly. It appears that we have both been
betrayed and I believe it would give us both comfort to have the treachery
punished.

You may have wondered how I obtained such good
information on the lay of the farm and the approach my men used. Two months
before our invasion I was able to bribe a young boy into divulging every detail
of the farm and its occupants. He was to keep clear of the place during a
specified time – the time of our arrival.

Have you not wondered how Aedan was able to work
things out from those ridiculous clues? The little turncoat was only pretending
to work out what he already knew. It is to your credit that you were not taken
in by his invented stories.

I paid him well to keep his mouth shut, paid him
very well. First he betrayed you, then he betrayed me. I leave it to you to
decide what to do with him. In my land, however, the punishment for this kind
of treachery is most severe.

It is true I acted deceptively while with you, but I
hope that you can see I have nothing to gain from being deceptive now.

Aedan had barely listened to the words. “Did he say
anything about Kalry?” he asked when his father was finished.

“First answer my questions,” Clauman said. “Did you
accept money in exchange for that information?”

“No.”

“Did you ever see Quin before he arrived at
Badgerfields?”

“No.”

“Is anything in the letter about you true?”

“I – I don’t think so … No.”

Clauman’s eyes were hard. “Then tell me what
happened, and mind you don’t stretch or bend it. I want straight answers. Don’t
think that your injuries will keep me from getting them.”

Nessa stepped into the room. “Clauman,” she
pleaded, “you can’t do this now. He’s barely able to draw breath.”

“This is a matter that could spell our doom,
woman! Have you forgotten that Lanor is dead? Do you know who the acting
sheriff is? Dresbourn himself!”

She opened her mouth to speak, but the deep
intelligence of her eyes withered to a girlish timidity as her husband pointed
at the door. With a last look at Aedan, she shrank from the room.

“How is Lanor dead?” Aedan asked his father.

“It is currently under inquest. Now tell me what
happened to you.”

Aedan, discomposed even further, tried to collect
himself and see the events again as they had unfolded. Beginning with the
supposed Lieutenant Quin, he pieced those two days together as best he could.
It was disjointed, and some parts he covered without detail, like his
humiliation before Dresbourn. His father’s sharp eyes bored into him at that
point and Aedan moved on quickly. When he finished, Clauman looked at him with judge-like
detachment. There had been no emotion in his face, not even when Aedan told of
the cliff and the jump.

“Yes,” he said, “I think that is the truth. You
have not the wits about you to put together such a complex lie, and it agrees
in many details with that ramshackle storekeeper’s account. Quin wrote this to
avenge himself on you.”

Aedan should have known there would be no word of
approval, of fatherly pride. Clauman was a man who never praised anyone
directly. Sometimes he would use glowing words about someone, but never in
front of them. Though Aedan was familiar with this cold reserve, the emptiness
of his father’s response still cut him. Clauman continued, partly talking to Aedan,
partly airing his own thoughts,

“Dresbourn then, was blinded by Quin’s flattery on
the day of his arrival. He declared you a fool in front of his entire staff and
a few dozen townsmen, and while his words were still drifting to ground,
he
was shown to be the fool. He is rightly shamed. But he can salvage his
reputation if he shows that you were in with Quin from the beginning.

“Emroy, that pimple-ravaged, insolent upstart has
claimed full credit for the plan you put together, saying the reason he sent
you ahead was because he knew you were familiar with the forest. It was a
cleverly calculated detail and this is where the next problem comes in. The men
you outran have now begun to tell stories, saying that you moved through Nymliss
like something unnatural, that twigs don’t break under your feet and thorns
don’t cut you.” He cast his eye over the web of scratches covering Aedan’s arms
and face and the torn feet still grooved with scabbed wounds.

“Some in this town are almost religiously
superstitious of that forest. They say your trespassings there brought this
tragedy on us, that we are being punished for your crime of entering forbidden
regions. As a former king’s forester, I care nothing for such idiocy, but people
are beginning to talk of a purge. With Lanor around, no such nonsense would
have spread. But the sheriff is gone and the town now looks to the high houses
for order, leaving Dresbourn in a very powerful position. He is deliberately letting
the talk grow wild. He even started a rumour of his own, suggesting the sheriff
discovered your treachery and you killed him for it, pushed him off the cliff.”

“But Nulty was there. Why didn’t he say what
happened?”

“He did. He said he made part of the jump and
fished you and the sheriff out of the water. I was there at the hearing. When
he was finished, Dresbourn said that such a story would require either a
powerful swimmer or a powerful liar and that the fat storekeeper did not look
like much of a swimmer. Nobody listened to your witness after that. It is starting
to look like charges of treason and murder could be laid. I think you are too
young for the gibbet, but I can’t be sure that Dresbourn feels the same, and he
is now the law. I fear we will soon be in great danger.”

“But I did nothing wrong!” Aedan cried.

“I don’t think Dresbourn cares. He loves his pride
more than his own daughter. You took that pride from him and he wants it back.
Wants it at any cost.”

“Will you tell me about Kalry now?” Aedan asked.

His father snapped out of his thoughtful manner. “The
storekeeper said he would be here later. He will be able to tell you. There are
pressing matters that need my attention if I’m to keep our house from burning
around our ears. He walked to the door, but then paused and turned, looking at
his son lying broken on the straw pallet. His eyes softened just a little and
he opened his mouth as if to speak. Aedan looked at him, hopeful. They held
each other’s gaze, his father tottering on an edge, but then his jaw clamped
and he turned and strode from the room, while Aedan remained with heaving
chest, staring at the empty doorway.

The window-shaped frame of sunlight had travelled across his
floor and was climbing the dried-clay wall, reflecting, washing the little room
with a deep red ochre. His father had left the house after their conversation,
and his mother, despite her constant hovering about him, would answer none of
his questions. When he heard Nulty arrive, he almost shouted for him. The
portly man barrelled into his room and his eyes shone.

“Oh bless me, boy! I never thought to see you awake
again.”

Aedan smiled. Nulty carried his arm in a sling and
walked with a heavy limp.

“What happened, Nulty?” he asked. “The last thing
I can remember is throwing the hammer. Nobody will tell me anything except that
I’ve been named a traitor and a lot more.”

“Yes. I’m very much afraid this is true. We must
hope, though, that the madness passes and reason prevails. But don’t you worry
about that now,” Nulty said, settling himself onto a low stool and stretching the
injured leg before him. He looked at Aedan and began,

“He managed to dive away from the hammer, but the
wave from your landing almost toppled the canoe. I think you must have landed
closer than you intended – I actually thought you clipped the edge. We saw Quin
lose his balance and fall into the river. If it had been only him, it would
have worked. But there was a second canoe. The second man pulled Quin out of
the water and they caught up with Kalry before she could untie herself.”

Aedan’s colour drained.

“When we saw the second canoe, Lanor followed you off
the cliff. Whether it was the water or a rock, I don’t know, but he did not
survive. I think you survived by sheer luck. With the two of you either
unconscious or dead I thought it would be unwise to try the same, so I slipped
and bumped my way along the crag until I found an overhang about half way down.
It was still the most awful jump.

I pulled you both out the water. Lanor was dead. I
thought you were dead too, but once the water drained from your lungs, you
coughed and I began to hope, and here you are now.” Nulty’s soft eyes
shimmered.

“You carried me back?”

“Only until the first river where the others had
built a raft. Two men returned for Lanor’s body. A sheriff should be buried in
his town.”

“I owe you my life,” Aedan said.

“Nonsense. You and Lanor both offered your lives
for Kalry, and
you
seem to have been given yours back again. You need to
spend it wisely.”

“I’ll find her, Nulty. I will.”

Nulty was quiet, apparently considering whether or
not to give voice to what was in his mind. “Aedan,” he said at length, “there’s
something you need to know about the slave trade.” He paused, collecting
himself. “The highest prices of all are paid on Ulnoi, the northernmost of the Lekran
Isles, for young girls of noble descent – easily a hundred times more than for
any other strong, young slave. To Quin, Kalry was worth more than the rest of
the farm put together. She was probably the reason for the attack. Dresbourn was
never quiet about his noble line and it seems that the knowledge reached the
ears of an informant who probably takes a cut.”

Nulty shuffled in his seat. His eyes lifted to Aedan’s
and darted away again, dropping to the floor, before he continued. “On Ulnoi, every
year, a family is required to sacrifice a daughter to the gods of the island. Substitute
slaves are permitted if they are of high blood. A few weeks back, Dresbourn
stormed into my shop demanding to know if I had anything to do with the
disappearance of his prized ancestral scroll. When I asked him if what you had
noticed was true, that Quin had read the document, he admitted that the slaver
had taken a strong interest in it. Quin must have taken it to get his price.

“Last week …” Nulty closed his eyes and pressed
them tight.