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

Chapter 43

 

 

Bruilde felt marooned; shipwrecked.

Her farm was gone, again. Last year, when the darkburns had destroyed Deloran’s farmhouse and its outbuildings, the land had largely been unscathed. This time it was different. Her fields, her woods, her orchards – all were burnt. Although the fields would be restored in spring she would not live to see her woods recover.

I am too old for this, Bruilde thought. So much for a tranquil retirement, a rest from riding out to battle. All that effort turned to ashes. I should grieve.

But she did not grieve. She could not afford to, yet. There was no time to even let it sink in now: for Aliya was lost, and nobody knew where to find her.

She stood with Olbeth and Flodda on the edge of the dam, listening to Veron’s terse speech. The women were all dripping wet – as was Doval, who wriggled, whimpering, in Olbeth’s arms. The murky pond had been their refuge while the fires roared past them in an orange whirlwind. They had cowered up to their chests in water with their feet in mud, and watched the flames grasp out across the surface, beckoning them with flickering fingers. Once or twice she heard the rasping wingbeats of the flying darkburn, busy setting all her lands on fire.

Stonemen too were audible, shouting with triumph in the dark. But they had not found the pond until the dazzlement of flames receded and the day began to mould the darkness into shapes. Bruilde was still trying to work out what she had witnessed then.

Eyes fogged with smoke and tiredness, her body shivering despite the burning air, she’d heard the voices first. The morning breeze had blown the smoke aside – and at the water’s edge she saw a group of stonemen.

More shouts. They pointed at the huddled, weary group that cowered in the pool. One of them started to wade boldly in.

And then, with that dreadful noise of slowly ripping canvas, the flying darkburn had appeared. It flapped above the smouldering trees, a dreadful, clumsy, ugly monster. It flew towards them, soaring – no, not soaring, rather struggling – low over the water as it hurtled down at the half-submerged women.

As the thing swooped across the dam, Bruilde ducked instinctively beneath the water. It was fear for the baby that made her rise back to the surface only seconds later.

Doval was unharmed, crying and squirming in his mother’s arms. That had been a mere reconnoitre by the darkburn, thought Bruilde grimly; the true attack would come at any moment now.

The darkburn swerved and veered around, its movements heavy, bits falling from its wings as it flapped with laborious effort: and then it swooped again.

But this time it did not fly across the water. It plunged straight down upon the men who stood along the shore.

Some tried to run. Despite its clumsiness the darkburn dived with shocking speed; and a stoneman was encased in flames. Again it dived, a gargoyle made of charcoal, smouldering amidst the fires that it had set. Bruilde heard the screams.

Soon no stonemen stood there any longer. Instead, new bonfires raged along the shore: bonfires that writhed and twisted before becoming still.

She had to turn away. For all her hatred of the stonemen, she did not wish to see them die in agony. When she looked back the darkburn was no longer visible.

“It flew over us and went west,” Olbeth said next to her, breathless, almost voiceless, standing with the baby on her shoulder. Doval dibbled his toes and squawked, exasperated with being held. Olbeth’s wet face shone like gold, reflecting flames. “It flew right over us and it didn’t…”

“I thought,” said Flodda on her other side, “I thought…”

Bruilde finished for her. “You thought that we were going to die.”

“Why didn’t we?”

“I suppose the darkburn got it wrong,” she said. “An airborne one like that must be hard for stonemen to control.”

“But their stones,” said Olbeth. “Their stones should have stopped it.”

“Maybe they don’t work on that type.”

“Do you know what it was?”

Bruilde shook her head. She was shivering harder now, and desperate to get out. None the less they stayed there in the water while the man-shaped fires burned around them, a perimeter of crackling death. It did not take long for them to slump into red embers.

Where were the hunters? thought Bruilde. Had they escaped? At times she seemed to hear strange cries beyond the hiss and crackle of the continuing fires; and though no further flames leapt up, she feared the worst.

Doval was passed from arm to arm. Bruilde took her turn; but he was heavy, and she was very tired. The roar of fire dulled to a rustle, a shuffle of red feathers. A single bird called with a questioning note; no answering chorus followed.

Dawn came shrouded in a stinking coat of smoke. Somewhere the sun must have risen; yet she could not see beyond the smouldering wrecks of her small willow trees, kept coppiced for wicker. All those withies dissolving into ash. As she watched, one fell, crumbling. Doval went to sleep upon her shoulder and Flodda took him back.

But no more stonemen came. And then a familiar figure stepped out of the smoke and stood to gaze across the water. It was Veron.

“Is it safe?” she called.

“We think they are all dead,” he called back, hoarse with smoke.

So the three women waded from the water, numb and heavy-limbed and shivering although the air was hot and full of shreds of ash. Bruilde could hardly walk. Olbeth lifted Doval from Flodda’s arms and hugged him; he did not appreciate being woken.

“Aliya?” said Veron sharply. “Where is Aliya? Is she not with you?”

“No. She was with Camburé,” said Olbeth.

“And where is Camburé? I told her to find you, Bruilde.” He sounded angry.

“I haven’t seen Camburé all night,” said Bruilde, “nor Aliya,” and her heart seemed to fold up like a collapsing tent. The storm of fire had swept not just her home, her life, away, but Aliya, a child of only five.

Aliya. Who was perhaps the cause of all this fire and destruction; though who knew? The stonemen might have chosen to attack her farm in any case. And it made no difference, because the outcome was the same: the child was very likely lying dead somewhere, burnt beyond all recognition, like those cindered stonemen on the shore.

“We have to find her,” said Veron.

Bruilde, weakly dripping by the dam, bid herself delay her grief, and asked him, “How?”

“Come with me, Bruilde. You know this place: I don’t.” He turned and she dripped after him. The other women followed silently. There were clouds of choking brown smoke everywhere: through them she glimpsed myriad miniature fires.

“How are your hunters, Veron?” she asked.

“Irtuk is dead, killed by an axe. Three wounded,” he threw back over his shoulder as he strode through the smouldering remnants of the withies.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes. But it could have been worse. Should have been worse. That flying darkburn set alight everything it touched. But it didn’t touch us. Very odd.”

“It touched the stonemen by the dam,” she said, and then described what she had witnessed from the ash-spattered water.

“Very odd,” was all Veron’s answer. By now they were approaching the ruins of her farmhouse – its stone shell, for her wooden inner shelter had burnt up, although she did not really care about that. It had only been temporary. It was the land that made her farm. And that was devastated.

The farmhouse stones were hot; too hot to linger by. Some of the huntsmen and her own men were scouring the surroundings, checking the shattered outbuildings, turning over charred rafters.

“Where would she have gone?” Veron demanded.

“Camburé? She knows this place no better than you do. She could have gone anywhere.”

“Aliya,” he said.

Aliya. She seemed to feel a small hand in her own, an insistent tug; a determined round face looking up. Where would the child have gone?

“The lookout tree,” she said, and pointed at the path that led there. “Aliya was keen to go and see it. She seemed to like it. Maybe she went there.” It was not much of a hope; but it was the only place that she could think of.

“Those woods around it are still burning,” said Veron.

“All the same.” What would she herself have done, when she was five years old and frightened? It was surprisingly easy to project herself back to childhood, as if old age were bringing her full circle. She wouldn’t have jumped in a dam, that was for sure; not into muddy water of uncertain depth. No – she would have run, run, run, as far and fast as she was able, until she found somewhere to hide.

So Bruilde, although she could not run, tried to hurry as she led the way towards the lookout tree, despite the awareness before they were even halfway there that it was hopeless. For all along the path stood ghost trees, charred and grey, their foliage stripped and turned to ash. It felt as soft as snow beneath her feet. Warm snow. Some of the lowest brambles had survived; that seemed both amazing and appropriate. But higher up everything was burnt – as if the flying darkburn had dipped down many times to set the trees aflame.

She stopped abruptly in the middle of the path. There was a body lying just ahead. With its blackened flesh and clothes it was unrecognisable; but it held a sword.

A Vonnish sword. Straight, long-hilted, double-bladed, without the slight curve which the stonemen’s weapons had.

“This is Camburé,” she murmured.

“Are you sure?”

Bruilde bent down and made herself look. “That’s the clasp she wore on her collar.”

Veron nodded. Then he scanned the area carefully, frowning through the smoke. “There’s no child here,” he said. “Let’s look further on.”

Bruilde thought it very likely that the child was indeed somewhere here, also unrecognisable. How could Veron know if any of these black lumps spilling ash had not been Aliya rather than just trees? If only Leor was here with them: he could do some spell, perhaps, to show Aliya’s presence – or absence.

She did not know why Leor sprang to mind. He had never been reliable. But oh, for a comforting touch of those long fingers. She wished that he were here instead of this taciturn hunter.

The hunter was striding off along the path at a great rate. So Bruilde followed, trying not to lapse into despair. But after a while they came upon more charcoaled bodies, six or seven of them; and her heart did a slow roll over and over before she registered that these ones were of course too big, and bore curved swords.

“Stonemen,” she said. Veron gave them no more than a glance.

“Look up,” he said.

She looked up. The smoke was thinner: now she could see the lookout tree not far away. She walked over to it. To her surprise, it wasn’t burnt.

And the woods beyond it were not burnt. The closest trees were badly singed, but behind those, though greyed by smoke, the woods looked green and brown as always and the undergrowth beneath them as thick and impenetrable as ever.

“The fire started here,” said Veron, gazing around the clearing. “It got blown towards your farm.” She felt the steady wind and nodded. Then she peered up into the lookout tree, as if by some new-grown agility Aliya could have swarmed up the knotted rope and out of sight.

Veron had walked around the tree. She heard him say, with a strange note of his voice, “She’s been here.”

“What?” Bruilde hurried round to join him. “Where? How can you tell?” For she could see no more than a shapeless crush of weeds and prickly shrubs.

“I can tell,” he said. He stooped to carefully inspect the briared entanglement of undergrowth.

“There’s no way through there,” Bruilde objected. “If she really was here she must have gone back down the path we came by.” She was about to leave, but Veron, squatting down, said roughly,

“No. She went this way.”

“Through there?” Bruilde peered at the gap in the brambles. “That’s an animal’s burrow. She wouldn’t fit through that.”

“Is this an animal’s hair?” He held up something all but invisible.

Bruilde rubbed her smoke-sore eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know. Is that Aliya’s? Could she really get through there?”

He did not answer, but was already wading into the undergrowth, pushing through spiky bramble stems that clutched his legs. He stopped, and broke and parted stems, and set out again.

I am too old, Bruilde’s mind repeated to her miserably, too old for all this. As she tramped after him along the rough track that he laid down, her breeches were constantly snagging; before long they were ripped irreparably, and her legs were bleeding. Veron did not seem to notice the tearing of the thorns. Perhaps after his recent experience, such pain was of small account.

But a five-year old! In all this density of prickles! They were like steel pins: worse, because finer. Bruilde stopped and demanded, “How could she have crawled all this way?”

Still Veron did not reply, but kept on wading through the bushes. He made surprisingly little noise – she herself was noisier by far – and after a while he stooped again and lifted something in his fingers. A shred of cloth caught on a thorn.

“Is that hers?” she asked.

He nodded and walked on. There was no other sound now but the crunch and rustle of their movements, as if they were the only people in this world. No bird sang, no creature moved; the woodland seemed to Bruilde to have been paralysed by fear, its life all hidden. An endless forest of wordless terror and concealment. Where was Aliya?

Veron stopped. “She’s here,” he said quietly.

“Where?” She did not believe him. But he drew aside a frond of bracken, and she saw the figure curled up underneath, so small; so small and still.

“Aliya,” she said, her voice barely audible. “Aliya!”

And, dear stars be thanked, the figure stirred. It stretched an arm and then a leg and then the head turned and the eyes opened.

“I was being a pig,” Aliya said. She rolled over to sit up stiffly in between the briars and held out her arms to Bruilde. Her clothes were ripped and filthy, and her face, beneath the dirt, was burnt and red.

Veron stepped aside and Bruilde picked up the child – which did her back no good, but she did not care – and held her close. Warm, bony, frail: scratched and bloodied, but alive. Myself, aged five, she thought. After a moment her back complained intensely, so she handed the child over to Veron.

“I’m thirsty,” said Aliya. Veron held her in one arm and studied her. With his other hand he offered her a waterskin. She drank a little. “I want Flodda,” she said drowsily.

“You’ve got us,” said Bruilde, “and we’ll take you back to Flodda now.”

“I want mama.” But then she seemed to fall asleep on Veron’s shoulder. He carried her back through the smoky woods, much as he might have carried a side of venison, Bruilde thought as she trailed wearily after him.

It was a long way to the farmhouse, past Camburé's body. Bruilde paused there, thinking that she ought to do something with the corpse; but what? So she continued walking after Veron and his slumped burden.

The farmhouse was too hot to be habitable. The others were in the stable yard, Olbeth and the hunters tending to the injured men while Flodda dandled Doval. Aliya seemed to wake up again and Veron set her down carefully upon the cobbles.

Flodda almost dropped Doval in her hurry to run over and embrace the girl.

“Oh, my dear, my dear,” she said, hugging her tightly. “Oh, my precious little one.”

“Don’t,” said Aliya. “I’m all prickled and it hurts.” She pulled away and held out a hand towards Doval, now bouncing in his mother’s clasp. “Hallo, baby. I told it not to hurt the baby,” she said.

“You told what?” said Veron, kneeling down beside her.

“I told the flappy thing. I said, there’s a baby. Don’t hurt the baby. Maybe it has a baby too, that’s why.” Aliya rubbed her eyes and then began to fall over. Veron caught her before she collapsed to the ground: a pile of floppy limbs and shredded clothes.

“We need somewhere better than this to lay her down,” said Flodda. “What about the cart?”

“The carts are burnt,” Bruilde replied wearily. Tiredness was rushing at her now that she knew the child was safe. She wanted to collapse like Aliya into a pile of limbs and have someone carry her away, insensate. But she was responsible for this place. She racked her brains. “The chicken house,” she said. “It’s roofed with slate. Over this way.”

The chicken house, set back from the other outbuildings, was small and low, too low for the adults to stand up in. No chickens lived here now. But the earthen floor was free of ash; there was even half a bale of unburnt straw.

So she made a straw bed for Aliya and commandeered a dry cloak from one of her men. Flodda wrapped Aliya in it and sat down with Aliya’s head in her lap.

“I’ll get some food for you,” Veron said.

“Where from? Everything is burnt.”

“Not the horses. They had sense enough to run. Some of my men are finding them, and their packs. We’ll need them, because we can’t stay here. We’ll have to think what next to do.” He went out. Doval rolled over to Aliya and poked her with his fingers until Olbeth picked him up and carried him outside again.

Lowering herself down carefully, Bruilde sat on the floor beside Flodda to wait for the promised food. The child was restless. At times she seemed to sleep. Then she would murmur in incomprehensible bursts, speaking to somebody who was not there.

“What was that?” said Bruilde. Aliya didn’t answer. She turned again in Flodda’s lap, and wouldn’t take another drink of water. When Flodda tried to wipe the soot and blood from her face she was pushed away.

Flodda’s mouth was trembling.

“It’s all right,” Bruilde told her. “She’ll be all right.”

“Yes, ma’am.” But she was weeping and trying not to.

“It’s the strain,” Bruilde said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Meanwhile Aliya slept, her eyelids fluttering. Then she woke and said, “I like that story.”

“What story?” Flodda asked her softly. She felt Aliya’s forehead. “Oh she’s hot, too hot.” She offered Aliya water. Again, Aliya refused to drink.

Veron came back in with a knapsack, from which he pulled a slab of bread and some dried meat, both greyish.

“She can’t eat that,” remarked Bruilde. “Is that what you hunters eat? It looks disgusting.”

“Give me the bread,” commanded Flodda, “and the water cup.” She made a mush of bread and water and fed a little to Aliya with her fingers. Bruilde looked on and wondered what the child’s mother would make of all this. Her child attacked by a flying monster, chased by murderous stonemen, nurtured in a chicken shed on bread and water… It was as well that she did not know.

“My head hurts,” said Aliya.

“Eat a little more, my love,” said Flodda.

“Where’s the other lady?”

“I’m here,” said Bruilde, “and Olbeth is just outside,” but Aliya shook her head.

“No, no,” she said, “not you. The other lady. When I was lying down next to the flowers. She told me a story.”

“That’s nice,” said Flodda.

“She’s delirious,” said Bruilde.

“She’s a lady who lives on the moon,” Aliya said. Bruilde saw Veron, squatting at the hut’s entrance, swivel his head round sharply.

“Is she now,” said Flodda.

“She likes the moon because she can see everywhere,” Aliya murmured. “And it’s very quiet.”

“It certainly would be, up there,” said Bruilde.

“But sometimes it gets too quiet so she comes down here to talk to people. Or else she gets lonely.”

“Poor lady on the moon,” said Flodda. “Never mind her now.”

But Veron demanded, “How does she get down here?”

Aliya rubbed her face. “I don’t know. I think she jumps.”

“She must be very good at jumping,” said Bruilde.

“Yes, she is,” Aliya said. “She jumps like a.”

“Like a what?” said Veron.

“I don’t know,” said Aliya. Her head turned restlessly. Her fingers twined themselves in the cloak she was wrapped in.

Veron persisted. “Do you know her name?”

“Leave the child alone,” Bruilde said. “She’s delirious. She needs to rest.”

But Aliya stared into space and said, “Her name’s a secret.”

“It is,” said Veron. “What story did she tell you?”

“I can’t remember. It was about a tree. There’s an important tree.”

“She means the lookout tree,” Bruilde offered, but Veron shushed her with an imperious movement of his hand.

“What about the tree?” he said.

“Someone wants to catch the lady,” said Aliya.

Veron went still.

“That’s not a very nice thing to do,” said Flodda.

“She should be safe enough, up there on the moon,” Bruilde said.

“But she has to come down to talk to people! And she has a cub.”

“A cub? You mean a son,” said Flodda.

“I don’t know,” Aliya wailed fretfully. She pushed Flodda’s caressing hand away.

“Who wants to catch the lady?” asked Veron. His voice was stern and Bruilde looked at him in some surprise.

“Leave her alone,” she said.

“I don’t know,” Aliya murmured. “He’s made of gold or something. He’s all shiny like the sun and he wants to catch the lady off the moon.”

“How?” Veron demanded.

“He’s hunting her. He wants to make a trap.”

“What sort of trap?”

“I don’t know.” Aliya’s face began to crinkle as if she might be going to cry.

“She’s been dreaming,” said Bruilde, her sternness now matching Veron’s. “Go away and let her rest.”

Veron turned round abruptly and went out. Flodda soothed Aliya, singing softly to her. She persuaded her to eat a little more mush, and then sat stroking the child’s head until she went to sleep.

Bruilde levered herself up from the hard floor. The moon itself could not be harder and colder, she thought, for a lady’s aching limbs to rest on. No wonder the lady of the moon needed to come down to earth.

She walked outside and saw Veron standing a small distance away. He did not appear to see her, or more likely did not care.

He was intently gazing at the sky. Through the smoky daylight she perceived a pale moon, so frail, so delicate it looked as if it could dissolve and be blown far off on a breeze, like a wisp of silver ash.

“You should have told me,” said the hunter. “Why did you tell the child and not me? You should have told me.”

He was evidently talking to himself. But he paused and seemed to listen for an answer although there was no sound that Bruilde could detect.

Then he said, “I am not the first and I will not be the last. But for now I am the one. And all my fealty is yours: my strength, my skill, my heart, my life. You should have told me.”