The Flame in the Mist (16 page)

Approaching the Aukron’s corpse, Jemma noticed that it had become smaller, not much bigger than a cow—and it
was shrinking with every step she took toward it, disintegrating before her eyes. She stopped and stared as the monstrous head deflated, then separated into thousands of black maggots that slithered away beneath the leaves. The last shadow of its legs slowly disappeared, then its arms, and finally its torso. All that remained were the burst shreds of its heart, like a large black bowl containing the last pool of the monster’s green blood.

In the middle of it, something moved.

Jemma leaned in closer. There, in the liquid, she saw a tiny but unmistakable image, which expanded to meet her gaze. Two people—Nocturna and Nox—were running; then they were standing before Mordrake and Mordana’s statues, arms raised in a gesture of worship. The image expanded again. From beneath his night robes, Nox pulled out a bundle and unwrapped it: the remains of Jemma’s shawl, with the skeletal hand—the hand that the thugs had given them as evidence of her death. He placed it on the altar, then he and Nocturna waved their arms above it. Jemma remembered Nox teaching her that this was a way to track who, or what, a limb or fragment of clothing had belonged to.
“A piece of their essence remains,”
he had explained,
“and we can see who they are, or were.”
Jemma held her breath as she watched a shadow form rising up.

Marsh. So it
had
been her hand.

Grief jolted through Jemma.
It still doesn’t prove she’s dead
, she told herself, but a tear rolled down her cheek and into the Aukron’s blood. The image rippled, obscured for a moment. When it cleared, Nox and Nocturna were looking over their shoulders, appearing puzzled, then angry. Nox snatched
something from the end of the mantel: the black globe. He placed it in the middle of the altar, and waved his arms again. A dark shape appeared: a small version of the Aukron, which then shriveled and collapsed. Nocturna’s mouth formed an enraged
O
, sending the soundless scream of her fury jarring into Jemma’s bones.

They knew. They knew that she had killed the Aukron. That she was still alive. The hand in their possession was Marsh’s, not hers. And from the look on Nocturna’s face, Jemma had a feeling that the Wrath of Mord was about to be unleashed on her again.

The night darkened. A violent wind tore through the trees from the top of the crag. Thunder roared. The forest seemed to expand around her, dwarfing her. Grabbing the rats, she took off into blinding rain, which turned to needle-sharp sleet, then eyeball-sized hailstones that rolled beneath her feet, crashing her to the ground. She slid downhill under the heaving canopy of the forest, past firs bent almost horizontal by the wind, over ferns that cowered close to the earth, battered by the elements. Her cloak snagged on roots and rocks, jerking her every which way as she was blown down and down and sideways, and she realized with horror that the wind was propelling her straight toward the sheer edge of Mordwin’s Crag. She thrust out her arms in an attempt to hold onto passing trees, brambles, anything—but she was falling too fast, in a cascade of leaves, stones, and branches.

Her head cracked against something hard. She felt a brief sensation of flying, of being caught by the wind. Then blackness closed around her.

Pain shot through Jemma’s limbs. Her hands felt as though they were on fire, but she was holding something in each palm, cool, cylindrical, and soothing. Her Stone was hot on her chest, and some kind of hide covered her, yet shivers racked her body.

“Rattusses,” she managed to whisper. “Are you there?” She couldn’t turn her head to look, could only see rock several feet above her, dark and jagged. A cave, she must be in a cave. She was lying on something soft, and could smell leather and straw and smoke, as well as something pungent. She remembered vaguely her head being lifted, and hot, bitter liquid being poured down her throat. Above and to her left, orange tinged the ceiling; her left side was warm. Fire, crackling gently. Where were Noodle and Pie? Were they all right?

“Rattusses,”
she wheezed, a little louder.

No answer. A bead of sweat dribbled into her hair. Jemma closed her eyes and sank into blankness again.

Garbled words began swimming through her mind:
Leth gith bal celde … Leth gith bal celde …
Were they anagrams? She was too confused to tell, too lost in the fog of fever.

“Miss. Miss.” A mournful whisper. Echoey, distant, yet
right in her head. She opened her eyes. A gray figure hovered over her, small, ragged. A girl. Was she dreaming, or was one of the phantom children here in the cave with her?

Who are you?

“I’m Cora,” the figure said. “Me and my bruvver was taken when we was six. They killed ’im. Left me to die in the dungeons, wiv ’is body tossed in beside me.”

No, no! I don’t want to hear this—not now.…

“Help us, please, help!” Cora’s hand passed like a breeze through Jemma’s shoulder. “Please, you got to free my bruvver. ’E’s my twin. Like my uvver half. I can’t move on wivout ’im. ’S the same for all of us out ’ere. You’s our only hope.”

Me? Why? How can I help? Your brother’s dead—you’re dead! Maybe I am too.…

“Please! They’s all trapped in the castle.… You can help. You’s the One.…”

The One? I don’t know who I am. I’m just me. Just Jemma
.

Clang!

One lone toll, from far, far away.
Leave me alone, Cora, please.…

Cora dissolved into the granite ceiling, and disappeared with a long drawn-out sigh as the strange words began circling Jemma’s head again:
Leth gith bal celde …

Two cold dots nudged Jemma’s chin. She opened her eyes.

“Noodle, Pie!” The rats were lying on her chest. They blinked, and hopped to the ground. Without thinking, Jemma sat up. “Ouch!”

Her back was sore, her head ached, but otherwise most of her earlier pain had subsided. The Stone felt warm on her
chest, and energy seemed to be snapping between it and her hands, in which she was clutching the crystals. Who had placed them there? The same person who had lit the fire, no doubt, and had recently piled wood onto it. Evidently, this was their home. Three pots sat by the fire, and a shelf of rock held several roughly hewn wooden bowls and cups. Next to them, a tall cup held a bunch of yellow and white flowers. Dried herbs hung by ribbons of sacking from the cave’s roof. On the earthen floor beside her, Jemma now noticed her cloak, neatly folded by whoever lived here, with the book, the wineskin, and her knife stacked on top of it. Her boots sat side by side on the floor. She stretched, grateful for the fire’s warmth, then placed the crystals beside the knife. They were completely clear, no trace of cloudiness remaining.

Outside the cave was a mass of swirling white.

“Where are we, Rattusses? Where have you been?”

Pie scuttled to the fire and nosed a pile of round white objects next to a smaller pile of pale creamy-colored ones, and finally, clusters of small purple berries.

Food. For you
.

“Mushrooms and nuts!” Jemma grabbed them. The mushrooms were cool and plump, and the nuts—hazel and pine—crunchy and fresh. “Mmmm, thank you! And what are these berries—not nightshade, surely?”

No, silly
.

The rats’ feast was surprisingly filling. Her hunger satisfied, memories of the past few days filtered back into her head, and as they did, her spirits sank. She remembered the strange words she’d heard when she’d woken earlier; but more vividly, she remembered the girl ghost, Cora, with her plea for help.
For her, and her twin, and all the others in the forest. Their earnestness and sorrow felt like a mission Jemma had been handed—a mission she was not sure she wanted.

She sighed, pulling back the long, red-haired hide covering her, then saw her legs.

“Mother of Majem!” she said. Her stockings were torn to shreds, and her thighs were streaked with scabs and bruises that glistened with a greenish ointment. Her right ankle was bound between two rough splints of wood, her bare foot sticking out of the end. “What on earth happened?”

Noodle hopped into Jemma’s lap and lay there, stock-still. A picture flickered in her mind, a memory of falling, of intense pain as she whomped onto white-covered treetops, branches giving way beneath her one after another, until she crashed onto the ground in a shower of cold wetness. Then her vision shifted, and she seemed to be outside herself, watching from ground level as she was lifted by sturdy arms attached to a thickset form that was roughly clad in animal skins, with sacking bundled around the feet and ankles for shoes. Dark hair flowed over broad shoulders, on one of which perched a tiny bird. It wasn’t her own eyes she was seeing through, Jemma realized, but ones close to the snow-covered earth, darting this way and that, following behind and watching as she was carried across a white, powdery landscape and through the Misty forest as though she were the most fragile china. Then she saw what she guessed was the bottom of Mordwin’s Crag, and several feet up it, the mouth of a cave.

In the far distance, a bell tolled. The vision imploded, scattering into tiny fragments. Jemma looked at Noodle, lying
as still as a rat statue, his ruby eyes staring. He blinked, then shook himself, golden spikes of fur sticking up from his body.

“Noodle … that was … you just showed me …?”

He twitched his whiskers.
Easier than words
.

“Who was carrying me?”

“Me,” said a husky voice behind her. Jemma wheeled around, and saw a large shadow at the back of the cave. Instinctively, she shrank back.

“Who are you?”

“Me Bryn. Look after you till you well. Bryn like to do that.” Something chirruped. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Jemma saw a bird huddled in Bryn’s hand. He lifted it level with his lips and chirruped back at it. “Soon well, Sparrow. Soon mend wing. Girl land in tree, hurt you.” He looked up at Jemma. “You hurt too.”

Bryn sat cross-legged, stroking the bird. His face looked as though it had been flattened by an anvil. His nostrils spread almost halfway across his cheeks, which were pitted with what Jemma knew to be pockmarks—the remnants of smallpox, described many times by Nox, who had a horror of disease. Bushy brows sprouted from a bony shelf jutting above Bryn’s small eyes, and he peered at her through a curtain of greasy-looking hair. But as alarming as his appearance was, Jemma felt safe under his gaze. He emanated kindness and calm.

The bird fluttered to Jemma’s lap and rubbed its head on her fingers.

“Sorry I hurt you, Sparrow,” she said, then looked at Bryn. “Hello, Bryn. Thank you for rescuing me.”

“Hello.” Bryn crawled to a pot next to the fire and scooped
some liquid from it into a wooden bowl, which he handed to Jemma. “Drink. Help heal.”

The brew smelled like a combination of Drudge’s breath and rotting potatoes, and Jemma screwed up her face as she sipped. “How long have you lived here, Bryn?”

Bryn’s eyes disappeared beneath a frown. “Don’t know,” he said. His voice was as low and resonant as the tone from the empty syrupwater flagons Jemma used to blow into. “Long ago, me, boy. Live up hill. In hut, by castle.” He pulled one of his hides around him. “My ma wash clothes there. But Bryn get sick. Bad man in cloak, he say no can stay—”

“Nox? Nox Agromond?” Jemma gritted her teeth.

Bryn shook his head. “No! Nox boy, like me. Bad man in cloak his pa. My ma, she bring me to forest, make well with plants, berries. Then she take me back to hut. But Nox’s pa scared. See my face, say Bryn still sick, must stay away. Nox cry, say he want me to stay and play, he lonely now without his sister—”

“His twin sister! Yes, they were just little when she died.”

“Mmmm.” Bryn smiled, revealing a row of startlingly white teeth. “She pretty. Hair red, but not like yours. Hers dark, like blood.”

“You mean … you actually
saw
her—Malaena—alive?”

“Oh, yes. We play. She nice. But one night, my ma say she hear screams. After, no more Malaena.”

“How awful.” Jemma shuddered, and felt a pang of pity for the boy Nox had been, and for his twin sister. “What happened to her?”

Bryn picked up a twig and drew patterns in the earth with it. “Ma says they kill Malaena because her skin white as snow. She got no Mark. Nox, he got Mark.”

Jemma gasped, remembering Rue’s words:
The Mark of Mord … Any Agromond born without it … done away with …
“Oh, no,” she croaked. “Go on, Bryn. What happened after you were sent away again?”

“We come here. Here, home. Many winters pass. Ma do good work, heal men who hurt at quarry. Me help too, she teach me. Then quarry shut down because crag lose its magic.”

“Magic? What magic?”

“Rock from crag give Power. Give Agroms Power. And they sell rock to men from far away, to give them Power too. Pay a lot. Make Agroms rich.”

“So the rock’s magic—the Power it gave—was bad? Evil?”

“No, no! Ma say, not good or bad. Magic is what men make it. Ask for bad, get bad. Ask for good, get good. But must use with
respect
.” He scratched his head. “She say, when you take from earth, you must give back, or earth die. Crag need something called sun. But Agroms not know. Hate sun. Love Mist. So they no feed crag, and rock die. Magic die. Power, gone.”

“So that’s why everything was decaying! The crag needs sunlight—the very thing the Agromonds have been keeping away. Poor crag …”

“After quarry shut, just Ma and me. We happy. Better than at hut.” Bryn’s eyes softened; he sighed, his eyebrows knitting into a single furry line. “One day,” he said, “Ma’s breath stop. She gone to the wind, to the stars. Me plant her body in earth.”

“Oh, Bryn …” Jemma reached for his hand, wondering how anybody could bear such a lonely life. She couldn’t imagine how hers would have been without Marsh and Digby.

“No sad!” Bryn said. “Ma grow into pretty flowers. See?” He looked up at the blooms on the shelf, and smiled. “Bryn not alone. Ma with me. Birds, animals too. Trees. Earth. All teach me, how make things better, make animals better, make you better. Me happy! Me make medicine, like Ma show me, like plants show me. But shiny things”—Bryn pointed at the two crystals
—
“
they
magic. Me hold them, get strange words in head. Like voice, but not. Say they want to be in girl’s hands. Me put them there. And then—you heal, fast, fast!”