Alys Clare - The Way Between the Worlds

He paused, seeing again the body of Hawksclaw lying across the bed of animal furs, efficiently dispatched even while he slept. He glanced at Lassair. He had killed Hawksclaw; he had killed other men. Did she know these deep things about him? Did her remarkable powers enable her to see into his heart and understand who and what he was?

But that, too, was something from which he shied away.

He made himself go on.

‘The king had a second task for me,’ he began. He was reluctant to speak, and the words had to be forced out. Even back when William had first issued the orders, Rollo had been wary. Now that he knew so much more, wariness had given way to dread.

‘I said just now that, in order to counter King Malcolm’s advance, King William sent half of his army by sea. They perished, almost to the last man, their ships hit by a storm of unbelievable violence that struck somewhere off the east coast.’

She gave a soft gasp. He waited, but she did not speak.

So he went on: ‘William has ears and eyes throughout his land. He is a man who always needs to know what is happening, even in the far, forgotten corners of his realm, and he has organized a highly efficient network of men and women who are well paid to keep him informed.’ She nodded; perhaps she had heard tell of such people. ‘Someone came to him with a whisper overheard, a rumour, the merest suspicion, yet for some reason its effect on the king was powerfully strong.’ He fell silent, recalling vividly how the king had looked and sounded as he conveyed to Rollo what he had learned. He felt again the shiver of dread that the king’s words had caused.

‘What did the whisper say?’ Lassair asked quietly.

He met her eyes. You know, don’t you? he said silently. She made no response.

He took a deep breath that sounded more like a sigh. ‘The rumour said that the storm which wiped out the ship-army was no natural storm, but a magical one, raised by a tempestarius.’

He sensed a sudden tension in her, and for a moment she did not speak. Then she repeated the word. ‘A tempestarius?’

‘It means a storm-raiser.’ He lifted an eyebrow, half expecting her to say: oh, yes, I know all about them . She didn’t. ‘There are many ancient tales about such people, or so the king’s informant assured him. Some tell of a magical land of clouds called Magonia, where the inhabitants sail the skies in ships made of storm clouds. They are in league with the tempestarii — the storm-raisers — and when the violence of the weather reaches its peak, the Magonians fly down to earth and raid the farms of anything they can carry away.’

Her expression suggested she thought the story a little far-fetched. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone — even the greatest magicians — being able to carry off a herd of cows inside a cloud,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t sound very likely.’

‘That’s just what the king said,’ he murmured.

‘But there are certainly shamans and sorcerers who can control the weather, or it’s said that there are,’ she went on, frowning as she thought. ‘The men who teach me have told me of such people.’ Her eyes met his, and he saw that she was deeply troubled. ‘But this is high magic,’ she said, ‘and far beyond anything I have ever encountered.’ She gave a sudden violent shiver, so strong that it set her entire body shuddering.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘I was remembering the place where I found you,’ she said, so quietly that he had to strain to hear. ‘It was a place under an evil spell; there was no doubting it. Someone had put a powerful enchantment on it, and usually that’s done to keep people away from something that has to be kept secret.’ Now she turned to face him, eyes blazing. ‘Supposing the rumour was right and a storm-raiser did create the tempest that drowned the ship-army. They perished just off the coast, right here. Out where the shore gives way to the sea there was once a place of power, built by the people who in ancient times held sway in this land. Its power will still be there, and someone capable of raising such a storm would know that.’ She paused, fear and excitement competing in her expression. ‘He stood out there, right on the site of the circle at the crossing place, and invoked all the force of its long existence to help him. He cast his spell, and the ships and the men were lost. Then, because he did not want anyone to know what he had done, he set an enchantment on the place to stop the curious venturing out on to the salt marsh to investigate.’

There was a light in her face, and he sensed she was being inspired by some power outside herself. ‘He knew you would come,’ she said, and her voice sounded dreamy, distant; unlike her normal one. ‘He’s been aware of you, questing after him, and he set the trap for you and your horse, meaning to draw you on and on, out across the shaking ground, until you both succumbed.’ Tears were streaming down her face. ‘You lost your poor mare, whom you loved. He got her, but — but. .’

He opened his arms to her, and she fell against him. He cradled her against his chest, dropping kisses on her soft hair. He wanted to weep with her, for the loss of Strega was raw and pained him constantly.

After a while, he felt able to finish what she had tried to say. ‘But he did not get me,’ he whispered.

He took her face between his hands, gently turning her so that she looked up at him. Then he bent his head and kissed her lips.

‘Thanks to you, my sweeting, he did not get me,’ he repeated.

She drew away from him a little, eyes fixed on his. Then, as if the talk of narrowly-avoided death had made her more vitally alive, she in her turn took hold of his face and kissed him back.

His kiss had been tentative, gentle.

Hers, however, was neither.

Some time after we had released each other, I looked at him and realized just how much he meant to me; how much I would give to keep him safe. The next thought followed seamlessly on that one: the peril we had faced in that fearsome place was something so far beyond my experience and my knowledge that every impulse was telling me to flee.

But I had to convince him to come with me, for I would not leave alone.

He was on his feet, standing in the middle of the track and looking north towards the shore. Towards the wood circle, for all that we could not see it. I could feel it, though. Its power was neither good nor evil: it was simply power — fundamental, elemental power — and it scared me rigid.

I said, having thought carefully, ‘I am not equal to what the storm-raiser has imprinted on this place. I cannot fight his magic and find a way out to the place of power within the old wood circle.’

He spun round to me. ‘I would not ask you to,’ he said. ‘But I-’

‘You are even less well equipped to fight what is out there than I am,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady and sound authoritative. ‘You-’ I had been about to remind him what happened the first time he made the attempt, but it was too cruel.

He knew, though. His face had clouded again into grief. He hung his head.

I hurried over to him. ‘There is nothing more that either of us can do here,’ I said urgently. ‘You have done what you were commanded to do; you have found out that the rumour is true, and that the storm was raised by human agency.’ Human? I wondered about that. The being who possessed such magic was more than human. .

He raised his head and stared up into the sky. He looked fierce, full of energy that could not be released in the direction he desired.

‘I have a suggestion,’ I said, moving closer to him. ‘The dread deed whose echoes still haunt the very air here may be far beyond my experience, but I know of not one but two men who will be able to help.’ I was not quite as certain as I was making out, but I was desperate to get him away before he did something rash. ‘I’m not sure where one of these men is just now — ’ Hrype could have been almost anywhere — ‘but the other one does not venture far from his home, so I would wager that’s where we’ll find him.’