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

Chapter 31

Aliya threw another stone into the little lake. It made a very satisfying splash.

“Can I paddle?” she asked Edrik, for a second time, and again he shook his head.

“People have to drink that,” he said.

“I’m not dirty. Not as dirty as the water is.” The water was cloudy where all the stones had gone in. Aliya picked up another one, large and smooth, in both hands, and looked at it carefully to make sure it wasn’t a little something – although she had seen no somethings yet.

Then she heaved it into the pool, which went slurp and clunk in a very pleasing way. There was a nice bit of soft gritty shore to stand on and she spent some time making footprints to and fro along it. Then she drew faces with a stick, and a house with lots of chimneys that were bigger than its door.

“Have you finished building that house yet?” she asked Edrik, busy with her stick. When she turned round, Edrik was squatting back on his heels staring at the water and not doing anything at all. The house was still not much more than a pile of twigs.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“Nothing,” said Edrik. “This just reminds me of somewhere else, when I was young.”

This was a new idea, but hard to grasp: that Edrik might once have been young. She had no idea how old he was. Much older than Mama.

She grasped at another idea, even more unlikely, and asked, “Have you got children?”

“Two. Grown-up now,” said Edrik, sounding wistful.

“Oh. Where do they live?”

“Up north.”

“Near a little lake?”

He nodded.

She digested this. “What games did they play?”

“I can’t remember. Tag chase. And hide and seek.”

Aliya nodded. “Those are both good games for hunters,” she said, pleased at her own wisdom. Again she walked along the squidgy shore, but this time as carefully as she could, the way a hunter might. She was trying to make no footprints at all. When she looked behind her there were hardly any marks. As if she was hardly there.

Like a little something. How nice it would be to be able to disappear, she thought. To sit in the bushes and grass and nobody would notice you. How nice to not have Flodda or someone always watching you. And bad men would never find you.

“Can we play hide and seek?” she asked.

“No,” said Edrik. “You might be too good at it. I can’t risk losing you. Veron would have my guts for garters.”

“What does that mean?”

No answer.

“Lord Hapligan had garters made of golden silk,” she said thoughtfully. “Where did Lord and Lady Hapligan go?”

“I wouldn’t know. You’d better show me how to build this house of yours,” said Edrik.

“I think we need more mud,” Aliya said. “The twigs aren’t sticking together properly.” It was surprising because the mud was very sticky. It stuck everything else together except the twigs. It stuck all her fingers together and after a while she held up her hands to show Edrik. “Look,” she said. “I’ve got bear paws!”

“So you have,” said Edrik.

“Have you ever hunted bears?”

“At times,” said Edrik.

“How big are they?”

He stood up and held his hand a foot or so above his head. Then he spread both hands wide. Then he snarled. It was a very good snarl, and Aliya laughed, but she felt a little nervous.

“Are there any bears near here?” she asked.

“I doubt it,” Edrik said, and another voice said “No,” behind her. It was Veron, again.

“How do you do that?” demanded Aliya. “I didn’t hear you. Is it magic?”

“No,” said Veron.

“Yes,” said Edrik at almost the same time.

“No,” said Veron, with a narrow-eyed smile at Edrik, “she has nothing to do with it.”

“I didn’t mean anything,” said Edrik, sounding a little scared. “It’s just that you’re…”

“I am. That’s why she took me on. Cause, not effect.” Veron turned to Aliya. “Better wash your hands,” he said. “They want you to eat.”

Aliya obeyed. While she was drying her wet hands on her muddy skirts, she said, “Are you sure there are no bears?”

“Quite sure. None for forty miles or so.”

“What are the worst animals that live here?”

Veron tilted his head. “Lions, a dozen miles away, over on the plateau. They won’t come here. Wolves, a little closer. They might have come here while there were still sheep. But they won’t bother now. Moorhounds, likewise.”

Aliya nodded and licked her lips. There was another question waiting, one that she had been wanting to ask ever since she had arrived here, and had not dared to, because she thought the answer might not be a nice one.

She found she did not dare to ask it now. Instead she walked between the two hunters back to the burnt farmhouse with the question bouncing round inside her head.

What set this place on fire?

Bruilde was the one that she should ask. But she was a bit scared of Bruilde, the same way Edrik was a bit scared of Veron. She tried to summon up the courage to ask her question while she ate her flatbread and cheese and some smelly leaves that Flodda had picked. The leaves weren’t very nice and she saw that Camburé had left hers.

“Finish those off. You need to eat your greens,” said Flodda.

Aliya was about to protest when she remembered, again, that Flodda and Camburé and everybody else were here in this burnt place because of her. So she just said, “They’re a bit chewy,” and then she spat the chewed leaves out a moment later and put them in the grass behind her when Flodda wasn’t looking. She saw Bruilde watching and felt scared again. But Bruilde said nothing.

After eating she wanted to play with Doval but Doval was tetchy and Olbeth said it was nearly his bedtime. Camburé said she wanted to talk to Veron and Aliya didn’t mind because she would rather play with Edrik anyway.

But Edrik said it was his bedtime too, although it was still quite light. Perhaps it was because he was so old.

Aliya looked at Bruilde. “Do you need to go to sleep as well?” she asked.

“Not just yet,” Bruilde said.

“Can I go exploring in the woods before I go to bed?”

“If you go with Flodda.”

“I’ve got washing to do,” said Flodda, “quite a lot more of it now. What happened to your dress? You’d better change into your other one.”

“I’d better not,” Aliya said, “because I’ll only get more muddy. Please.”

“Oh, all right,” said Flodda. The power of please on Flodda was astounding.

Aliya turned to Bruilde. “Please can I go in the woods with Flodda? I would like to see the lookout, please.”

“I’ll take you, child,” Bruilde said.

Aliya stood up and curtseyed, because although she didn’t think Bruilde was a proper Lady – at least, she didn’t dress like one – this was her house, and you were always polite to someone when you were in their house.

Bruilde didn’t curtsey back. But then she was old so bending might be difficult.

“Come along,” she said, and she stood up too, becoming very tall, and took Aliya’s hand. That was all right, because an old lady might need help walking. But in fact it turned out that Bruilde was the one who strode along and Aliya had to patter quickly to keep up.

“Where are your horses?” she asked.

“Three miles away,” Bruilde said. “I moved them all out when the fire came through last year.”

“Good. What,” said Aliya, and then did not dare, after all.

“Some people,” said Bruilde. “They came and set it all on fire and then they marched away.”

“Where did they go?”

“A long way,” said Bruilde. Although this was not a very satisfactory answer Aliya decided it would have to do. She hoped it was a very long way.

“But the fire didn’t burn down all the trees,” she said, because they were entering a woodland, and it looked all right. Everything was growing, too much if anything, for it was extremely thick and jumbled underneath the trees. There was bracken and brambles and lots of other prickly frizzly stuff. You might be able to stamp your way through and maybe tunnel underneath but it would all be very scratchy. It was way too scratchy to explore. Even the path was prickly on each side.

As they walked along the path she had a good look for little somethings but she couldn’t spot any. Perhaps Bruilde was too tall for them.

Aliya decided that if she was a little something she wouldn’t choose to live here in any case, because it was so very prickly. She thought she didn’t like these woods much after all, but she wouldn’t tell Bruilde that.

So she said instead, “I like your twiggy house,” because that was a more polite thing to say, and true.

“I don’t,” said Bruilde, “but it serves. I don’t live here much these days. I just keep an eye on the place.”

“You could always build your house again,” suggested Aliya. “The big one, not the twiggy one.”

“I will, I expect. Just not yet. Not while… Here we are. This is the lookout tree.”

It was a good tree but not as good as the big apple tree at Lord Hapligan’s, nor as wide and dark as the one at Olbeth’s farm. It was very tall but not very friendly. All the branches were high up. Aliya looked carefully at the thick knotted rope.

“Can I climb it?”

“You can try,” Bruilde said.

She hung on to the rope and tried. When she lifted her feet up off the ground the rope swung and spun her round and she couldn’t get beyond the first big knot.

“How are you supposed to go up?” she asked. “It won’t let you. It just keeps going away.”

As if in answer the rope began to shudder violently. Aliya jumped off in a hurry and landed on her bottom. Legs appeared high up, descending from the lowest branch. She watched how the legs did it: slide down, stop with a foot on each side of a knot, wait for hands to come down, slide again. It looked quite easy. But how would you do it going up?

The legs landed on the ground, and the man on top of them let go of the rope and said to Bruilde, “A troop of twenty. About four miles east, I’d say.”

“Which way are they heading?”

“North. We’ll be all right if they don’t change direction.”

“Horseback?”

“Mostly on foot. Three carts. They’re not moving fast.”

Aliya thought they might be talking about bad men, but then she told herself they might just be talking about anybody, like a group of travellers. Yes, that was more likely.

She picked herself up and while they were talking she got onto the rope again. Which did you slide first, feet or hands? She tried feet and it didn’t work. So she tried hands, and once she had slid them up, she hung on tight and slid her feet up, feeling for a knot. The rope swung her round again. It wasn’t easy.

“I’ll tell Veron,” Bruilde was saying. “You go back up and stay on watch till nightfall. Give the usual signal if there’s any change in their direction. Or if you see any more.”

“A rope ladder would be better,” Aliya pointed out.

“Will do,” he said. “But, Bruilde.”

“What?”

“Those carts,” the man said. “It looked as if they might be smoking.”

“You mean…”

He nodded. Aliya had reached the second knot. As she perched on it, with the rope slowly turning, she was on a level with his head. Before the rope spun her around she saw his face: pulled tight and creased, a bit like Veron’s had been when he was ill.

He barely said the word. But she could hear it anyway.

“Darkburns.”