Marilyn Todd - Scorpion Rising

Do you know what they'll do to Elusa, if they find out what you 're planning?

The rest of his conversation with Connal flooded back.

Because they will, son. They always find out. These trees have ears, they have eyes, trust me, the Hundred-Handed know everything. They pool secrets the same way they pool their knowledge of nature, the same bloody way they pool us, and what the trees don't give away, pillow talk does. Now for gods' sakes, Connal, grow up.

And now here he was, a young man with the world at his feet, risking his privileges, his freedom, indeed his very life to save a couple ofteenagers whose future was doomed from the start. Claudia rubbed her face with the palms of her hands, and perhaps it was memories of Swarbric's dashing theatricals, maybe it was his well-honed disarming smile or the charm he'd worked so hard to perfect, but as she watched the seams of his pants (the ultimate livery of the performing bear) stretch to their limits as he bridged the stream with one bound, she found herself cupping her hands round her mouth.

'I promise,' she called, though he was running too fast and she knew that only the forest had heard.

While the shadow of fear grew heavier still.

Deep in the shade of a lightning-split yew, eyes followed Claudia Seferius as she made her way back down the path towards the Field of Celebration. When the battle cry rose to unite Gaul in its freedom and the cobblestones ran red with blood, how sweet would it be to make that one his whore, the eyes wondered.

She, who marches along with her chin held high and her shoulders squared back, as though she owns the bloody place?

What would it be like to take her, he wondered, have her beg for mercy at the point of his knife, simpering, whimpering, not so high and mighty then, he'd be willing to bet, and where would that famous Roman pride be then, eh? Grovelling in the dust of her own bloody arrogance, that's how fast her self-importance would fall. She'd be begging and pleading, praying to gods who didn't exist, and he saw her licking his boots with the length of her tongue, and then let's see how sharp it was, that wit of hers, with the dust of Gaul in her mouth!

He'd have her do it naked on the end of a chain.

See how it feels to be enslaved to another. Do this, do that, can't do this, don't do that. Now you'll dance to my tune, you bitch. I will have Rome writhing at my feet, washing them clean with its tears of self-pity, and pity you didn't think of anyone else except your own self-serving ends. Pity you didn't think of us before now.

Because you come marching in here, you seize our people, our soil, our traditions, our gods, ah, but you can't take our spirit, you bastards. Gaul is our homeland, Aquitani's our blood, and as we drive you out as we did once before, you will rue the day you set foot in this country.

And you, my pretty flashing-eyed Roman girl. What will you rue as I cut off your pretty Roman-style ringlets and hold a knife to your long Roman throat? Once your jewels and your clothes, your hair and your pride have been stripped bare at my feet, who will you call out to, I wonder?

Scorpion. Whisperer. What was a name?

But as I take you and take you and make you my whore, be sure of one thing, you bitch.

You will call me 'my lord'.

Claudia stopped in the path. Turned. And shivered. It was as though someone was watching, she thought. Boring eyes into the back of her head.

Ridiculous.

It's Sarra. Her murder was vicious and brutal, nerves were bound to be jangling, and besides fear is a normal reaction after death. Self-preservation always becomes more pronounced. With a toss of her head, and heedless of the hairpin that sprang loose from its moorings, Claudia marched down the woodland path and tried not to look at the trees that seemed to close in, or the shrubs that were suddenly pressing too close. In the aftermath of murder, it was too easy to get swept up in dark thoughts and see the ash as the tree that strangles its neighbours, rather than a good source of charcoal. Or forget about rowan's rich healing properties, and remember only its power to conjure up demons. It was too much, she thought. First this talk of spirits buzzing like bees, then this oppressive, gummy heat, and with death stalking the shadows, emotions that she might ordinarily have shrugged off were suddenly swirling on an eddy of grief.

Manion, probing her painful childhood rejections with a scalpel that pared to the bone.

Orbilio dangling friendship as the bait for his trap.

There was the trauma of finding Sarra, before Claudia had had time to come to terms with Clytie's death, so horribly reminiscent of her own mother's suicide.

And now Swarbric, risking everything for a pair of selfish lovers who would not thank him for his intervention.

Combined, these things were bound to induce suspicion, mistrust, a feeling of being watched, but let's keep this in perspective, she thought. Simply because one girl has been butchered this morning doesn't mean there's a maniac stalking the woods. Sarra, like Clytie, had been killed for a reason… even if Claudia didn't know what it was. Orbilio claimed motive was the key to solving a murder but if, as she feared, Sarra's death was nothing but a callous diversion, motive might well be the last thing she figured out.

Fearn certainly had a motive, as well as the means and the opportunity, though proving her guilt would be difficult, if not impossible. Even so, she mustn't allow single-mindedness to blind her to what, in the end, might be false speculation. Lives were at stake, young lives at that, and she couldn't afford to overlook clues in her quest to prove Fearn a murderess, only to find she was wrong. Claudia slapped a mosquito that alighted on her wrist. For one thing, she hadn't ruled out Pod as a suspect, though it was unlikely the Hundred-Handed would be prepared to conceal his role in a murder. However much they valued a dwarf's healing powers, there was a limit to how far that loyalty extended — especially when the victim was one of their own! No, no, the more Claudia thought about it, the more she was convinced that Clytie's killer was close to the College's heart — of which the pentagram was its pivot.

All roads lead to Fearn…

At the point in the woods where the track opened out, she could hear the singing and revelry from the Field of Celebration, as the people who relied on this forest for survival rejoiced in its ripeness and wisdom. There would be games for the children (she could hear them squealing), revolving around the dependable oak. There would be demonstrations of how to prevent weevils from making blotches and displays of the woodcarvers' skills. Dora, ably flanked by the Priestesses of Buckthorn and Broom, whose trees also favoured oakwoods, would be mingling among bargain-hunters at the Midsummer Fair, while her brown-clad novices danced an intricate jig round a board shaped like an acorn. But it was not to the festivities that Claudia's feet took her. Turning to the left, she was at Swarbric's hut within less than a minute and, staring up at its thatch, scenes unfolded like acts in a theatre.

It's early in the year. The trees are without leaf. An accident occurs, which results in Swarbric dislocating his shoulder blade. Mavor is summoned at once.

Despite the double tragedy that hung in the air, Claudia smiled to herself.

Between you and me, he yelped like a girl.

It was always the same, she reflected wryly. Heartbreak and comedy walk hand in hand. One rarely exists without a glimpse of its opposite …

The actors on the stage moved again. Now Mavor is calming his pain with soft words and a potion. She manipulates the joint, clicks it back into place. Swarbric sweats with the pain, his face is waxy and grey, but now he is being bandaged tightly for his own good. Cold compresses cool him. A soft hand stokes his forehead. Breasts that another time would pulse sensual splendour have become a bosom of comfort and care. Long-forgotten memories surface as he lies helpless on his own bed. He is a child again, three years old, and this is his mother. His mother loved him, he remembers, he loved her in return, and now Swarbric is cocooned not in bandages, but in worship, and the more Mavor returns to tend to his shoulder, the deeper the young man reveres her. Through her tender ministrations, she has cured his pain and averted deformity, and in a way that prevents any recurrence of ligament damage. In his eyes, she is deified, and of course there was no affair. It would be an insult, an affront, to the woman he adores. Swarbric will do anything for her…