Darkburn Book 4: The Haunt of Ternss by Tayin Machrie - HTML preview

Chapter 7

 

 

“He’ll need another dose tomorrow,” warned Yaret. “How many more doses do you think you’ve got?”

“At the rate I gave it to him? At least fifty,” replied Shebel.

“So if he has it twice a day, like the stonemen do, that’s enough for three weeks. Four at most.”

“Maybe. But I can’t keep feeding him Athelid twice a day!” protested Shebel.

“I agree,” said Olbeth in her low, calm voice.

“Why not? It worked,” said Maeneb. “The pain has almost gone.” Veron’s pain had been growing steadily until then, as she had been increasingly and uncomfortably aware. It was strange to sense anything emanating from Veron. Usually all that she could gather of his feelings was a kind of fierce excitement. The pain had been a coil of burning tightness, impossible to ignore. Its absence was a vast relief to her.

The four women were sitting at the end of the long table in the firelit hall, which was temporarily empty of other people. All baggage had now been unloaded and the bearers had dispersed. The only sound in the room was the faint crackle in the great hearth: a sound from winter.

Maeneb recalled the last time she had been here, in this very seat, during winterfest. That had been a happy occasion, she supposed – for most, if not for her; although she herself hadn’t found it as dreadful as she had expected. She had almost felt that she belonged.

But this was very far from winterfest. The hall was hot with its unnecessary fire, which she assumed had been lit as a token of warm hospitality. Underneath the dark oak table one of Olbeth’s dogs was lying on her foot. It was giving her cramp and she couldn’t kick it off.

“We need to cure his wounds, not just alleviate the pain,” argued Shebel.

Maeneb countered, “Allaying the pain may give you time to find a cure.”

“His wounds are worsening,” said Yaret sombrely. “By some horrible magic, I presume. They’ve been growing deeper and redder almost by the hour.”

“I have more salves that I can try,” said Olbeth, “if he will allow me to apply them while he’s drugged with Athelid.”

Shebel shook her head. “That might not be easy. We already knew that Athelid makes the stonemen aggressive. It makes Veron outright dangerous. And will your salves be any different to mine? Because mine seem to have done nothing.” Then, as Huldarion and Meya entered the hall, she stood up to greet them. “My lord; my lady,” she said formally.

While Yaret and Olbeth rose also, Maeneb remained seated. Huldarion had never required her to stand up for him before. No reason to start now; though thankfully the dog decided to stand too, releasing her foot, and then wandered huskily around the table to Olbeth before it settled down again.

Huldarion motioned them to sit, and they obeyed. Meya did not join them. She looked out of sorts and out of place.

“I hope your room is to your liking?” Olbeth asked.

“Very much,” said Huldarion.

“It will suffice,” said Meya, thin-lipped.

“Indeed, this whole farmhouse of yours is to my liking,” said Huldarion, almost wistfully. Maeneb could understand that wish for permanence, after years of making do with Thield for a home. The ever-moving town of tents was coldly flimsy compared to this solidly built house; but she herself would choose to live somewhere less enclosed. Higher ceilings, bigger windows. She remembered Gaelera’s chambers in the tower at Kelvha Castle, the tall leaded panes around the window seat. Those windows had attracted her, although the view from them – of other narrow-windowed walls – had not.

“Is Wiln still looking after Aliya?” asked Olbeth.

“He has taken her with her nursemaid to see the pigs,” Meya replied, her voice softening. Lately Meya’s mind had become muffled or maybe muddled, more indefinite, as if wrapped up in a woollen cloak; and also more uncertain. Maeneb assumed that this was related to the presence of the child – although from what she herself had seen of Aliya, she was an annoying brat.

Just now she sensed some discontent in Meya’s mind. “How goes it with your hunter?”

“Not as well as we might hope,” said Shebel with a grimace, and she explained the situation while Huldarion listened intently. Well, he never listened less than intently.

At the end he turned to Olbeth. “Have you any medicines that may work?”

“I have plenty of things that I can try,” said Olbeth. “But I’m not optimistic. They will be the same remedies that Shebel has already used.”

“A cure for Veron will not be found in any medicine cabinet,” said Yaret.

Meya turned to her with a frown. “How can you be sure of that?”

“Because the wounds were caused by malignant wizardry. My belief is that only wizardry can cure them. Even Aliya thought as much – she instantly said that what we needed was a wizard.”

“She did? She thought of that all by herself?” said Meya, and Maeneb felt an increase in the fuzzy pride that suffused her.

But Huldarion shook his head. “Leor has already tried to cure Veron, without success,” he said. “None of the spells that he’s come up with have been any help.”

“And yet the spell must surely have its counterpoint,” said Yaret. “Perhaps we need more botanical lore. Tamu knew only the name of the plant – brienot – but even that knowledge allowed Leor to act against it.”

“Botanical lore,” mused Maeneb. “If only the Farwth were close to hand. It would be bound to know.”

Yaret looked at her keenly. “Why, yes, you’re right, it would. And you can communicate with the Farwth, can you not, Maeneb?”

“Not at this distance,” said Maeneb, startled.

“But surely! What about those reports of Eled’s health you’ve given us? You got those in Kelvha, and that’s further from Farwithiel than here!” said Yaret.

Maeneb was taken aback. Everyone was looking at her now. It made her feel uneasy as she attempted to explain.

“Those messages came only when the Farwth willed them. It can send word to me, it’s true – or rather, it can send thought; but the messages I try to send back go unanswered. And I have tried. At such a distance I think I’m just not strong enough for it to hear me.”

“How far are we from Farwithiel now?” asked Yaret.

“Perhaps a hundred miles,” said Olbeth.

“Less, if anything,” Huldarion added. “I think, Maeneb, that whatever your misgivings you should try to ask the Farwth about the brienot, in any way you can.”

“Who is this Farwth?” enquired Meya, a little haughtily.

“I’ll tell you later on, my dear,” said Huldarion. Maeneb could sense that Meya did not care for that dismissal. But he was speaking again to Olbeth. “Meanwhile we’d better continue with the Athelid: and please try your salves. We’ll hope to find some cure.”

“No cure will work if we cannot keep him resting in one place, as I’ve commanded him,” Olbeth answered. “I’ve set two men to guard his door, and his huntsmen will patrol the yard outside; but we can’t be sure that they’ll be able to restrain Veron if he decides to go.”

Huldarion nodded. “In fact, such guards may not be necessary. Although you may not realise it, Olbeth, you did the best thing possible in ordering Veron to stay within his chamber. For while Athelid makes people more aggressive, it also makes them amenable to suggestion. So be as firm with him as you like.”

Why did that speech startle Meya? Maeneb was puzzled by the wariness she felt awakening in the other woman’s mind. There had surely been nothing in Huldarion’s words to cause it. Could she have resented the familiarity of his tone to Olbeth? It was no more than the warmth he sometimes showed to any of his closest friends – Rothir, for example. Although Huldarion had been annoyed with Rothir ever since the raising of the darkburn...

Well, that did not concern Maeneb. And neither did Meya’s odd reaction, which might be born of nothing more than snobbery. A tedious emotion. While Maeneb could not escape from sensing other people’s feelings, she found them frequently uninteresting. She was much more anxious about this new idea that she herself should speak to the Farwth.

How could she convince them that it was impossible? At such a distance she might as well attempt to talk to the stars. And even if she could somehow ask the Farwth for advice, it was not biddable. It had never replied directly to any question she had put to it in Farwithiel. It would not give a useful answer now.

But Huldarion was looking at her in expectation. “Can you try the Farwth?”

“I can try,” she said helplessly, already feeling the frustration of predictable failure, “but it won’t work. It never has before.”

“Try none the less.”

That was an order, and Maeneb could not flout it. She nodded wretchedly at being given a task whose difficulty nobody else could comprehend, and at which she was almost certain she would fail.

“I am going to retrieve my daughter now,” Meya told Huldarion, her voice cool, “before she decides to adopt a piglet as a pet.”

“Come, then, my dear.”

As they turned away, he offered Meya his arm. An unnecessary pretence of affection, thought Maeneb. Or was it real? There was warmth there, too, when he looked at Meya. But a different sort of warmth. A heat. Her thoughts shied away from it and she was glad to see the pair depart.

“I will go and check if those guards are having any difficulty,” said Shebel, and she got up and glided gracefully away.

Yaret turned to Olbeth. “Where would we find the most ancient tree on your property? I noticed a stand of large selver trees up on the hill, beyond the camp.”

Olbeth’s hand stilled in thought, so that the dog she was caressing gave a tentative whine and put his paw upon her lap.

“Those selver trees are old, but not the oldest,” she replied. “We have some oaks… but they’re only three or four hundred years. No, I think the oldest tree must be the yew.”

“And where is that?” Yaret glanced round as if expecting to see it springing up between the flagstones.

“It’s almost a mile away. Do you want to go there? I’ll get Rothir to show you.” Olbeth stood up.

“You come too,” said Yaret to Maeneb.

“Any old tree is not the Farwth,” she objected.

“Come anyway.”

Yaret jumped up. Olbeth was already crossing the hall with the dog padding behind her. Maeneb felt obliged to follow them. Her spirits sank still lower; whatever hare-brained idea Yaret had, it wouldn’t work.

Olbeth led them through the farmyard – where they were joined by the second dog, its mind a sudden flurry of delight – and down a short lane towards an outbuilding with a long, blackened chimney. There was a smell of smoke and hot, sour metal.

“He’s in the forge, of course,” she said. “His favourite place. Rothir! You’re wanted!” she called in through the door.

Rothir emerged from the building with a fat-cheeked baby in his arms. “Just showing the forge to Doval,” he explained. Doval bounced in his grasp, sang Bababa, and waved both arms, hitting Rothir in the eye.

“You mean you wanted to check things out here.”

“I admit it. I was seeing how much iron we have left.”

“Plenty. Let me take him now,” said Olbeth indulgently, and he handed the baby over.

Maeneb was glad she was not expected to do any baby-handling. Babies were extremely disconcerting: their minds a mess of noise and colour, jumping from huge excitement to bottomless distress within an instant. Worse than dogs.

Yaret didn’t seem to mind it, however, for Maeneb detected the same sudden warmth she had just sensed in Huldarion. Yaret must like babies.

With the baby tugging at her hair, Olbeth said, “Rothir, could you show these two the old yew tree in the table field? They’d like to visit it. Take the dogs along as well. They need a run.”

Rothir asked no awkward questions. Instead, with a nod, he clicked his fingers at the dogs and set off with them bounding eagerly ahead. Maybe he assumed the women simply wanted exercise, no less than the huge hounds.

She thought it odd that Rothir seemed so cheerful. Contentment radiated from him in an inexplicable wave. But of course it wasn’t inexplicable at all, because he was at home here on his sister’s farm. Maeneb felt a pang of envy; for while she was slightly more comfortable in this place than many others, it was in no way a home.

Indeed, ever since the exile from Caervonn with her mother, Maeneb had called nowhere home – not even Farwithiel, where her father was a warden. Her last visit there had been the first time she had felt accepted by the Farwth.

But the ruler of Farwithiel was a law unto itself and she had little faith that it would hear her now. So she dragged her feet as they entered a field full of some gold-green ragged crop. In her previous visits to Olbeth she had never been this way before: they walked around the field-edge beside a battered orange-lichened wall.

“Why do you want to see the yew tree?” asked Rothir at last.

“Olbeth says it’s the oldest on her land,” said Yaret. “I want to use it to ask the Farwth for its help, about the plant that caught Veron.”

“The Farwth? How will that work?”

“The wardens told me that the Farwth was connected to every tree within hundreds of miles, by its roots and maybe by the earth itself. So I thought the oldest tree might give us the best chance of communicating with it.”

“Hmm,” said Rothir, a touch sceptically. “Even if you could speak to the Farwth in that way, it is not susceptible to pressure.”

Maeneb was grateful. “No, it certainly is not,” she agreed. “Do you remember how it reacted to your threatening it, Rothir?”

Yaret looked at him in surprise. “You threatened the Farwth? When was that? And why?”

Rothir made a dismissive gesture. “It doesn’t matter. It didn’t work in any case. The Farwth had already made its own mind up.”

“I can’t imagine threatening the Farwth,” mused Yaret, walking on. “And while I agree that it’s not susceptible to pressure, I think it is susceptible to… curiosity, maybe. It can be compassionate, without understanding what compassion is.”

“It doesn’t think in human terms,” said Rothir.

“No. And yet, and yet: I feel a strange connection to it. While I was staying in Farwithiel, one of the wardens told me that the place grows into people’s dreams.”

“Does it grow into yours?” he asked.

He spoke to Yaret; but Maeneb harshly answered, “No,” to stop any further discussion, because she felt the distant presence of the Farwth at many times, not just in her sleep; and this was something that she guarded jealously.

Perhaps Yaret sensed Maeneb’s displeasure, for she said only, “A little, sometimes. I like this farm.” She sounded wistful as she gazed out at the lumpy pastures, dotted with untidy trees and the scruffy long-haired cattle. Maeneb thought it very ordinary.

“So do I,” said Rothir.

“It has just the right amount of rise and fall. Height and shelter. Woods and meadows. Wildness and domesticity.”

“It’s very muddy,” Maeneb said.

They tramped along a path worn through damp grass – the two dogs threading eagerly back and forth on their own scent-driven routes – until all the farm buildings had disappeared behind them, hidden by the undulations of the land. After one last rise they came to a high hedge with a low wooden gate in its middle.

Rothir unlatched it. “This is the table field, where the old yew tree is.”

“Oh!”

The exclamation came from both the women. Beyond the hedge a large tree had come into view, low and broad with dark wide-spreading branches; but that was not what made them gasp.

“A stone table,” said Maeneb in some wonder.

It was a table far too high for anyone to sit at. The horizontal slab was balanced on three other slabs of rock which were arranged in a tight triangle; and it was higher than her head. Rothir let the dogs through the gate to romp around, and closed it behind them. No sheep grazed in this field. It must be rabbits that kept the grass close-cropped.

“Is that a tomb?” asked Yaret.

“Probably, so Wiln says,” he answered.

“The tomb of his ancestors?”

But Rothir shook his head. “His family have only farmed here for a few generations. The place had no inhabitants when his forebears settled here and built the farmhouse. Yet they weren’t the first to live here. There were the foundations of a former building; and ancient walls – we just walked alongside one of them – and boundary markers. To say nothing of various old bits that they dug up; mostly broken pottery. Stone knives. The odd bronze tool.”

Yaret walked over to the stone table and around it. It was a good six yards long, thought Maeneb: each of its supporting slabs must be four or five yards in length, and over two yards high. She watched Yaret squeeze through the narrow gap between two of the upright slabs – the only gap where such an entry was possible – and come out again a few seconds later.

“Wow,” she said.

“I can’t get in there,” said Rothir with a rueful smile.

“I only just managed it,” Yaret admitted. “You should bring Aliya here; she’d like it.”

“It’s a tomb, not a children’s playpen,” said Maeneb, who was on edge. The stone table was nothing but an unwanted distraction from her looming task.

“Have a look inside, Maeneb,” urged Yaret.

“Why?”

“For a second. Just to see.”

“Oh, for stars’ sake,” she muttered underneath her breath, and wriggled through the stone gap. The surface was gritty and caught at her clothes.

Inside it was surprisingly dark. The gap behind her let in no more than a bright sliver of light: two more blades of brightness were the other gaps between the upright slabs, barely wide enough to slide a finger through. Alternate dazzlement and shade.

It wasn’t cold, though. Within the slabs, it felt cocooned. As if something were holding you safe in there, cradled in a huge stone hand… and there was a sense of enormous stillness, a feeling that the world outside had slowed and almost stopped.

Maeneb pushed herself back through the gap in a hurry, scraping her cheek. But the world had not stopped, unfortunately. The other two were walking over to the yew tree. Reluctantly she followed, entering the shadow underneath the tree’s wide low-slung canopy. She had to duck to avoid the branches that brushed their springy needles on her face.

“So what are we supposed to do?” she muttered. The yew’s trunk seemed to be made of several gnarled and knotted stems, which together must have measured several yards around. Under here it smelt of cool earth, faintly sweet.

“How old is it?” asked Yaret.

“Hard to know,” said Rothir. “A thousand years at least. It could well be double that.”

“So not even half as old as the Farwth. Still, I expect the Farwth knows of it. The root system must be extensive.” She ran her hand down the grey ridged trunk.

“So?” said Maeneb.

“So,” said Yaret patiently, “what we can tell this tree may be passed on the Farwth, through roots and more roots, all the way to Farwithiel.”

“You want me to talk to this tree?”

“Why not? We talk to the Farwth. And what is this tree but a miniature Farwth?”

Maeneb put a hand to the twisted trunk. It was not totally unlike the Farwth, it was true, although that great unforgettable mass of intertwining trunks and stems was a full two miles in circumference.

“After all, Yaret talks to darkburns,” Rothir told her, with a smile. He really was in an unnaturally good mood.

“You told Huldarion you’d try, Maeneb,” urged Yaret.

“Oh, I’ll try,” she said. “I just don’t think that I’ll succeed.”

“Let’s link hands. I know you don’t care for that, but it’s only for a minute. You too, Rothir. And we’ll all direct our thoughts at the Farwth together, through this tree.”

At that, Rothir did look slightly perturbed. But he took Maeneb’s right hand in his big, hardened one, while Yaret gripped her left hand firmly.

Maeneb shuddered. She intensely disliked such close contact: it made her skin crawl and her instincts revolt. A minute had better be all that it took.

So get on with it. She aligned her thoughts towards the distant Farwth, far to the north and east.

First she pictured the blighted country the army of Riders had passed through, with its creeping, sickly vegetation, then Veron struggling in the brienot’s merciless grip; she visualised the painful weals left painted on his skin, burning through towards the bone. And she asked the Farwth for its guidance.

Show us a cure, she begged silently, tell us what can be done. She had no faith that she would be heard.

“Is anything happening yet?” asked Rothir in a murmur.

“Ssh.” She leant her forehead against the rough ridged bark and closed her eyes. Yews were extremely poisonous, she was well aware; yet they were not malignant. Adon had made of the innocuous brienot something not only far more toxic than a yew, but actively seeking to do harm. He had configured it to do his will. Manipulated it.

Adon did this. He distorted and perverted the harmless brienot. And now we have no remedy, she told the trunk that seemed to lean on her as she leant on it. All we can do is allay the pain and wait. And all that will happen is more pain.

But the Farwth did not understand pain. His leaves will wither, she thought, his bark will peel off, disease will ravage and destroy him. Unless you can help.

Breathing in the shadowed sweetness of the yew, she waited for an answer.

None came, of course. Why had anybody thought it would? Opening her eyes, she studied the pattern of cracks. A maze without a destination or solution.

Yaret opened her own eyes.

“Any good?” she asked. “Did the Farwth respond?”

“What do you think?” Maeneb withdrew her hands sharply from the others’ grasp and laid her palms upon the deeply scored bark.

Yaret shook her head slowly. “I heard nothing. But we had to try.”

“The distance is too great.”

“Perhaps. Or maybe the Farwth will send you word in its own time.”

“It had better not take long,” said Maeneb bitterly. She was angry with herself – unreasonably; and angry with the Farwth, despite her consciousness that such anger was also unreasonable, and unproductive. She feared for Veron, and if no cure could be found, she knew that now she would feel obliged to blame herself.

Oh help him, help him, she said silently to the tree, for the sake of the brienot if nothing else, because what was done to it was a blasphemy of nature.

She paused. No answer came. No soundless yet reverberating voice. No wordless thoughts that resonated through her head. Nothing but the faint breeze sighing through the needles all around her.

“We’d better go back,” said Yaret, and now she sounded weary. “You can still keep listening, Maeneb. An answer may still come.”

Rothir said nothing. He probably thought the whole attempt was pointless.

As they walked out from underneath the yew and past the stone table, thick clouds were gathering to the east, piling themselves up in heavy roils that looked like boulders ranged along the sky.

“It’s going to rain,” said Maeneb dully. That was all that seemed worth saying on the long trudge back towards the farmhouse. Her boots stuck to the mud. Yaret was limping.

They plodded past the forge without talking and re-entered the farmyard. Aliya was there with her nursemaid, kneeling down to look at something in a crate that squeaked and snorted.

“So what do we do now?” said Maeneb dismally.

“You keep listening,” said Yaret. “Just in case.”

Rothir said, “And I shall go and talk again to Leor.”