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

Chapter 23

Aliya knew why they had to move, although the others didn’t know that she knew. It was something she kept to herself because she thought she ought not to have been listening.

After the fight around the big stone house they had gone back to the farm. But it didn’t feel the same any more. All the animals were upset. One of the big dogs was dead and the other one was hurt, although Lally was all right. But even Lally was jumpy and cross, nearly as bad as Flodda. The piglet wouldn’t come to her but ran around her pen as if trying to escape.

Inside there was lots of hurrying around as well. There had just been a whole day of footsteps running to and fro around the farmhouse, and people talking in intense quiet voices in the corridors and sometimes in louder voices too. Aliya heard these louder voices arguing in the kitchen, while she was in the pantry hunting for neglected biscuits. The door was open just a tiny crack so she crouched down silently behind it to listen.

It was Camburé’s voice that was so loud. “But they know where she is,” Camburé said, quite fiercely.

“Has someone given us away?” That was Wiln. “Does that mean there is a spy within the Vonn?”

“That seems hardly likely,” answered Camburé. She sounded angry. “It would not need a spy within the Vonn to find her presence out. We were not sufficiently secret bringing her here, that much is plain. She was targeted by that last attack: it was no coincidence.”

“Then they’ll try again,” said Olbeth.

“Yes. She isn’t safe. We need to move her.”

Aliya, listening to this from behind the door with half a biscuit in her mouth, paused in biting it to think.

She understood who they were. They were the bad men who had chased her. She had assumed that Veron and Olbeth and the others had killed them all. But maybe they hadn’t. Maybe there were more bad men waiting with their swords outside the house, waiting in the woods and fields and pig-pens to jump out and start chasing her all over again.

Aliya put the biscuit down. Her appetite had gone. There was a faint sickness in her throat because now she understood who the she was as well. She couldn’t be Mama, who was the most important she in all the world; because Mama was not here. Aliya tried to tell herself that she meant Olbeth. But Olbeth had always lived here and it wouldn’t have needed spies to find that out.

No, she meant her. Aliya. They wanted her.

“Where can we take her?” That was Wiln again. “Back to Kelvha? She’d be safe within the castle.”

“She ought to be.” A smaller voice; her nursemaid, Flodda. Her voice was always small, just as she herself was. Flodda was afraid to shout, because maids must never shout or they would be whipped. “But without the protection of her mother – and now that Melegan and all his family are disgraced… well, I don’t know.”

“With her mother, then?” said Wiln.

“That is no place for a child,” said Camburé. “Riding in the battle train.”

Aliya knew what a battle train was. It was lots of soldiers all marching in a line. Her father had been a great soldier – so Mama had told her, many times – and her grandfather had been a famous general. He had had his own battle train to follow him wherever he went. Or maybe to go ahead of him, with trumpets: she wasn’t sure.

She liked trumpets, and thought that riding in a battle train would be all right. But it seemed the other speakers didn’t think so. They agreed with Camburé.

“Can we go somewhere else?” suggested Flodda. “Is there another farm nearby where they would take us in?”

“Nearby would be no use.” That was a stern, still slightly husky voice: the wolfman. Veron. He had not been back into his chamber since the cobwebs covered up his legs. When he had stood up underneath the big low tree, still laughing, and brushed off the white cobwebby stuff, nearly all the fierce red lines had gone. Olbeth said the tree had cured him.

Aliya did not know what to think. The picture she had drawn for him had been left on his bed: she’d been into his empty room to take it back, awed that it had worked. The tree had cured Veron. She found it was a scary thought. Had her drawing been that powerful? She hid it in a corner of Lally’s pen, underneath the straw.

Now she hoped that Lally hadn’t eaten it. What would it do to a pig? But the voices in the kitchen were still talking.

“We could go to Outer Kelvha,” Flodda said. “Don’t you have allies there?”

“We do,” said Camburé, “but I cannot think of any who would be willing or well enough prepared to fight off a company of stonemen.”

“There must be somewhere!” Flodda said, in a sort of quiet wail.

“And some of us must stay on here,” said Wiln. “We cannot leave the farm defenceless.”

“Bruilde,” said Olbeth, as if she’d just remembered something. “We’ll take her to Bruilde.”

“Bruilde?” said Camburé. She did not sound pleased. “But the place hasn’t even been rebuilt yet since the fire.”

“Exactly,” Olbeth said. “Since Deloran got burnt out, the stonemen haven’t troubled it. They think it’s derelict. Bruilde is being very careful to make sure that it continues to appear so.”

“Well. I see your point. All right,” said Camburé. “Bruilde it is.”

That seemed to be agreed by all. But Aliya had no chance to learn any more about who or where Bruilde was, because after that, the voices moved away into the hall, and then she thought it best to wait for a while before venturing out of the pantry with her foraged biscuits.

The kitchen was empty. The first person she saw, alone in the echoing great hall, was Veron. She tried not to think of him as the wolfman any more because when she had called him Mister Wolfman earlier that morning he hadn’t thrown anything but he had said he didn’t like it.

“Wolves are wolves and men are men,” he’d told her. “They can’t be half and half. Some things can, but wolves can’t.”

“What can, then?” Aliya had asked, genuinely curious; but he hadn’t answered. She didn’t argue with him, because even though he didn’t take the angry medicine any more he still didn’t seem like someone you should argue with. She was very careful with him now that he was no longer lying down.

Now, in the great hall, Veron was laying out knives upon the table. They were not dinner knives. They were all made in different sizes and some weren’t knives at all. Aliya looked at them and at Veron and he looked back at Aliya.

“How are your legs now?” she asked politely, although she knew that they were better. His face was different too. Less tight; though always watching. Sometimes he even smiled, which was a little scary. But he wasn’t smiling now.

“They’re all right. How do you feel about moving house?” he said, as if he knew that she’d been hiding in the pantry to listen.

“I don’t mind,” Aliya said, because she was not sure which was the right answer. “But how will Mama know where I am? How will she come and find me?”

“We’ll send a messenger to tell her,” said Veron.

“Where will we go?”

“Wait and find out,” he said.

Aliya thought about this. “Can I take my pig?”

“Better not. It won’t enjoy it.”

Aliya frowned. But she felt that this was probably true. Even if she would allow herself to he caught, Lally didn’t like being carried anywhere, even across the yard. She squealed. So she would squeal even louder in a carriage.

“Will there be ducks?” she asked.

Veron gazed down at her with a slight frown as if he hadn’t really seen her before. Yet he had seen her loads of times.

“You need ducks?”

“They don’t have to be ducks,” she said. “But something.” Something she could hold, hang onto, that wasn’t Flodda: something small that she could feed and scold and look after. She could help look after baby Doval but he wasn’t hers the way the piglet was.

Veron nodded. “There will be something.” He began to gather all the knives up off the table, very carefully, and put some in his belt and some in a big leather bag and some he curled up into a long chain like a bristly snake.

“Can I have a knife?” she asked.

He turned around and looked at her again. “Have you had one before?”

“No.”

“Better not, then.”

“All right.” In fact she was slightly relieved. “Will you be coming when we move?”

“I will,” he said, and she found that answer was both worrying and a comfort. Then Flodda came in and hurried her away.

Unlike Veron, Flodda said nothing about anybody moving and Aliya did not ask. Neither did she ask why everyone was bustling in and out in such a hurry. But later on, in the middle of the night, when Flodda woke her and she was lifted out of bed in the dark and quiet, she knew at once what was happening.

“We’re just going on a little trip,” said Flodda softly in her ear as she carried her from the room wrapped in her blanket. “You can sleep in the cart.”

So Aliya pretended to fall asleep on Flodda’s shoulder because that was easier than having to walk or talk. Once she had been laid down in the cart she pretended to fall asleep in there. Despite the jolting, soon she really was asleep, and when she woke up the cart had stopped and she was in a wood, although she could see the edge of it and fields beyond. A bit of sun shone down between the trees and there were birds singing everywhere. So it was morning.

She sat up straight. “Is this where we’re staying now?” she asked. She couldn’t see a house or even a hut, only trees.

The others were sitting up already in the cart as if they hadn’t slept. Even though there were only a few of them – Flodda and Camburé and Olbeth and the baby – the cart was not big enough for them to all lie down in. It was a cart that Wiln used for carrying sacks or sometimes sheep around the farm. It only needed one horse. Aliya didn’t know why they hadn’t brought the big cart. But she thought it might be fun if they lived here by the wood and had to sleep beneath the trees.

“We’re staying here today,” said Olbeth, “and in the evening, when it’s dark, we’ll set off again and go to a house where my friend Bruilde lives.” And then she explained how she was worried about bad people attacking her farm. “We want you and baby Doval to be somewhere safe,” she said, as she helped Aliya climb out of the cart.

Aliya nodded. Olbeth was very sensible so she knew that there must really be a problem. But she felt quite safe here. Veron and two of his hunter men were walking by the edge of the trees where it was bright. They carried bows.

Camburé and Flodda were looking at her with serious faces. The baby was the only happy person. He sat up on a mossy bit of ground with a pile of leaves in his lap and his fat legs curled round them, and flipped and flapped them with his hands, making wubwubwub noises. He was so excited that he slowly fell over sideways onto the moss. Olbeth picked him up and settled him around the leaves again.

“Does my Mama know?” Aliya asked.

“She will know by nightfall,” said Camburé. “Meanwhile you can play in these woods today.”

“But first, breakfast,” said Olbeth.

So Aliya got dressed – she didn’t need Flodda’s help – and ate her breakfast of bread and cheese and dried grapes in a hurry. She wanted to explore the woods. Flodda and Camburé seemed to expect her to be upset, and kept offering to play with her. Flodda had brought a soft leather ball, while Camburé suggested that they play hide and seek.

“No thank you,” said Aliya. “I’m going to find out about these woods.”

“Don’t go far,” begged Flodda – who looked quite unhappy – so Aliya said, “No, I won’t go far.” And when she set off through the wood to explore and Flodda kept following her, she decided not to show Flodda that she minded.

But Flodda didn’t get too close. She stayed apart if not quite hiding, as if she was pretending to be there by accident. She didn’t get in the way nor ask silly questions about why Aliya wanted to feel the bark of all the trees and burrow with her fingers in the moss. There were a hundred little creatures in there. Lots of them were spiders, and tiny glittering spiderwebs hung on the little bushy plants that stuck up through the moss. The plants had lime green leaves edged a little bit with orange and Aliya decided that those were her favourite colours.

As she rubbed her hands up and down the trees feeling the bark tickle she listened to all the birds and tried to work out what they were saying. She had never heard so many birds all at one time before. Where were all their nests? She peered up into the trees whose leaves were bright but she couldn’t see anything that looked like a nest.

It was a nice wood, though. Lally would have liked these woods and Aliya felt a pang of regret. She told herself that Lally had her picture of the tree to keep her safe. So long as the piglet didn’t eat it.

Something here had chewed some of the trees and she thought about that for a while before deciding that there might be deer. So she wandered a bit further – aware that Flodda was still following her – until she found a small place that was nice and bushy and looked as if it could hold deer. Baby deer, at least, or rabbits; or even wild piglets, although she knew that grown-up wild pigs were fierce and smelly.

But it didn’t smell of pigs here. It smelt of moss and earth. A good place for animals to hide. So she hid herself behind a tree for a few minutes to give the animals time to come out and then she peeked out very quickly to see if there were any.

“Oh,” she said, because there was something there, just for a second, but it was not an animal. It had been something, but now it was a little stumpy bush with only a few leaves.

Aliya hid again behind her tree. She counted to twenty and then she peeked suddenly again.

There it was! And there it wasn’t. She laughed, and ran over to hide again behind another tree, and counted and then popped out to peek and this time it was a little person with big ears, or maybe arms, only when she looked harder it was just a piece of wood.

But it had been a little person, she was sure. Almost sure. Maybe not a person. A little something that lived in this wood. It was trying to hide from her but it wasn’t very good at it. It didn’t know when she would pop out.

“I’m friendly,” said Aliya. “Don’t be afraid.”

Behind her she heard Flodda call out softly. “Who are you talking to?”

“I’m looking for rabbits,” called Aliya back, and then she laughed and put her finger to her lips at the little something that was pretending to be a piece of wood. Next time she looked she saw another one, from the corner of her eye, that immediately turned itself into a mossy stone.

Aliya walked up to it but she didn’t touch the stone. That would not be fair.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said, more quietly this time so that Flodda wouldn’t hear. “I’m only staying for one day. I’m going away tonight. I like your wood.”

Indeed, she thought she would quite like to live in this wood herself, so long as it didn’t rain. There were lots of bits of loose wood around that weren’t little somethings but only twigs and branches, so she could always build herself a hut with those. She ran around collecting some of them and then hid behind a tree and peeked at the pile to make sure that she hadn’t collected a little something by mistake.

She hadn’t. But the little somethings that she had already spotted were there again before they flashed back to bush and stump and stone. It struck her that they looked quite damp. Maybe they would like a house. The twigs she had collected weren’t really long enough to make a proper house for her, but they were big enough for the somethings.

So Aliya found a flat spot with a mossy carpet underneath a tree and began to pile the sticks up into walls. She collected little stones to make a doorway, although it kept on falling down and ended up too small. So it could just be a window and she would leave the other end open for somethings to creep in and out. The walls looked a bit wobbly so she undid some of them and tried again, stuffing gaps with lumps of moss. She found that she could peel great wads of moss right off the stones. They felt like thick damp velvet although they smelt nicer. They smelt wet. She was very happy.

“Who’s that for?”

Aliya turned round and sat up, startled. She hadn’t heard Veron walk up to her although she had heard Flodda every time she breathed or shuffled. She was so startled that she didn’t answer.

“It’s a bit small to shelter you,” said Veron.

She thought of telling Veron that it was for rabbits but she knew he wouldn’t believe that.

“It’s for anything that lives here,” she said, “that needs a little house.”

“What sort of anything?”

She didn’t want to give away the little somethings if he didn’t already know about them. She didn’t want them to be hunted. So she just said, “Will you be hunting anything in this wood?”

“No,” said Veron.

“Good.” She turned back to building the roof that kept falling off. She needed to weave the sticks together somehow. But she could feel Veron still watching her.

“What sort of anything?” he said again.

“Anything that doesn’t want to be seen,” she said. “In case it rains.”

Next time she turned round he had gone although she hadn’t heard him go. She kept on building her house, and while it wasn’t very good it gave her some ideas for how to build the next one. So after Flodda had made her eat a lump of barley cake and drink some water she started on the next. It didn’t fall down, or not very much.

Then she decided she would build a bridge across the little stream which they had drunk their water from. The water held swirling pools where there were tiny creatures swimming and she watched them for a while. When she looked up there was another something that turned itself into a shapeless weed and she was glad that the things that lived here hadn’t been scared off.

“Nobody is going to hunt you,” she said.

“Who are you talking to?” asked Flodda.

“They are my pretending people,” said Aliya. She had prepared this answer while she was eating. She knew that Flodda would think she was pretending, when actually it was the somethings who were pretending to be something else. In her opinion this was a pleasingly clever answer.

All the exploring and building and looking at creatures kept her busy and content. But after another meal of cheese and fruit she felt suddenly very tired. She lay back against Flodda’s shoulder sitting on the grass and must have fallen asleep because next thing she knew it was dark and she was in the cart again, being jolted away.

“My somethings!” she thought. “I didn’t say goodbye!”

She wondered if she should have brought one with her. But sleepy as she was, she knew that wouldn’t work. Like Lally, it would not enjoy it. Or Flodda might have thought it was just an ordinary lump of wood or stone and might have thrown it away into the wrong place.

Instead, her somethings right now might be sheltering in the house that she had made. She hoped that they were comfortable.

It wasn’t comfortable in the cart but she snuggled into Flodda and made a nest there with a warm tangle of blankets and Flodda’s thin but reassuring arms. When she woke up again the woods were gone and she was in another farmhouse altogether.