Alys Clare - Out of the Dawn Light

‘You’ve soaked me!’ he complained.

‘ What did you find? ’ Romain shouted. ‘Have you got it?’

But Sibert shook his head. ‘No. I had something, though, or I thought I had. There was — I don’t know how to describe it. I was feeling down the tree trunk and I found a line that felt as if it was too straight to be natural. I was trying to see if it could be the outline of a recess of some sort when you came over and now’ — he was once more feeling about beneath the water — ‘now I’ve lost it.’ He sent Romain an accusatory glare.

Romain wasted no time on apology or recrimination. Spinning round, he called to the girl. She was standing outside the timber circle and she had her back to him. He thought for a moment that she was moving away, but that couldn’t have been right. ‘Come here and see if you can detect anything,’ he called urgently. ‘Over here, on this side of the stump. Sibert thinks there may be a hidden opening and-’

She turned round and he saw her face.

It was deadly pale, and the grey-green eyes that had turned to silver in the light off the water were wide with fear. ‘We cannot stay here,’ she said, her voice an anguished whisper as if it were vital that nobody overheard. ‘There is death here and we are in its shadow.’

He heard her words, which so faithfully echoed what he had sensed only moments before, in a kind of numb horror.

Death. Shadow.

But the thing I have come to find is almost within my grasp!

‘We must go on looking!’ he shouted. He lunged towards her, intent on grabbing her and forcing her inside the circle. She saw what he was going to do and, turning, splashed back towards the shore, skirts trailing in the water. Romain went to go after her but then a sudden very cold wind blasted out of the east and with it the speed of the incoming tide picked up alarmingly.

Sibert was at his side, and he had a firm grip on Romain’s sleeve. ‘I don’t want to drown even if you do!’ he yelled. ‘It’s madness to stay out here — we’ll be out of our depth very soon and there’s already a vicious current pulling at our legs. Hurry! ’

Still Romain pulled against him, drawn to that unearthly stump and whatever it held inside itself as if it had cast a monstrous, invisible net over him and was slowly drawing him in.

Another powerful wave hit him in the back of the legs and he would have fallen but for Sibert holding him up. Salt water splashed up into his face and went up his nose and into his open, gasping mouth. Coughing, choking on the harsh brine, at last he allowed Sibert to drag him away.

The first attempt had failed.

I think it was that evening, as we sat round a driftwood fire and tried to dry our soaked boots and clothing, that what I had worked out ages ago first really dawned on Sibert.

Which, very simply was this. Romain, Sibert and I were all vital to this mission, Romain because it was he who had found out about the hidden thing , Sibert because he knew where it was concealed and I because my particular skill would allow me to locate lost objects. I had been naive and had omitted to agree a fair recompense for my trouble; it had been enough, when Romain approached me, that I would be escaping from my sister for a while and going off on an adventure with two young men, both of whom I liked quite a lot and one of whom I was really attracted to.

What terms had Sibert agreed?

Unless this treasure was easily divisible — which I seriously doubted since all along it had been referred to in the singular as an object — then only one of them could have it. Romain had been forced to admit I was right when I’d said he planned to use the treasure to buy himself back into royal favour, so it was possible he intended to sell it and give Sibert a share of the proceeds, reserving the rest for his own purpose. I wanted to believe it but I could not make myself. It really wasn’t very likely because the king probably had plenty of money already but it wasn’t every day an abject subject came grovelling to be pardoned for his father’s sin with an object of power in his hands. .

No. If I was right — and every instinct was shouting out to me that I was — then Romain had no intention of sharing the treasure with anybody. He would allow me and Sibert to find it for him and then at best he would offer us something for our trouble. At worst, he would betray us and desert us and we would never see either him or the treasure ever again.

I had worked out this truth long since and I was biding my time, not sure yet what I ought to do. Now, as we sat digesting what I have to admit was a pretty decent meal accompanied by the great luxury of smooth red wine, watching dreamily as the steam rose off our drying garments, I sensed that Sibert was at last realizing it too.

He shifted around for a while and I felt that he was wondering whether or not to raise the matter and, if he did, what he should say. Eventually, staring at Romain with an angry frown on his face, he opened his mouth to speak.

And in that instant I knew that he must not. Something was telling me urgently that this was not the moment. I did not wait to try to work it out but instead coughed loudly to cover Sibert’s first words and at the same time kicked him hard on the shin.

‘ Ouch! ’ he exclaimed, rubbing at his leg. ‘What did you do that for?’ Now he was glaring at me.

‘Cramp,’ I said shortly. ‘Sorry.’

While he was still frowning at me I mouthed, ‘Not now!’ and, thankfully, he seemed to understand.

I lay back, the tension seeping out of me. I had obeyed the inner warning without hesitation, partly because I trust my own instincts, which usually do not let me down, but also because of what I had sensed as I approached the sea sanctuary. There was such a sense of threat out there that I had wondered that Romain and Sibert had kept on their feet; as for me, I was so beaten back by the silent power emanating out of it that I couldn’t have gone on even if they’d dragged me. And I was so afraid. I knew that the sea was angry, for I could hear crashing waves like marauding ships breaking out there on the waterline. The wind was angry too, blowing straight out of the east. From somewhere — perhaps within the timber circle itself — there had come a low, forceful, unearthly sound that I could not begin to identify. But then I had recalled the name of this place: Drakelow.

I was hearing the muffled boom of the dragon. .

I was not only afraid for myself, although in truth that fear was more than enough to cope with. I had seen a dark cloud over Romain. As it billowed and waxed right above his head I recalled my granny’s words: He walks in the shadow of death.

Was this what she had seen? All those months ago in Aelf Fen when she stared at Romain, had her more practised eyes detected what was hidden to me until today? I did not know, but I strongly suspected it.

I liked Romain. Oh, more than that; despite the fact that I was fairly certain he intended to cheat Sibert out of a share of the treasure, I was drawn to him powerfully. In my foolish heart I still entertained the fanciful, optimistic hope that if and when I succeeded in bringing off what he wanted of me, he would stop treating me like an anonymous child and see me for the alluring and fascinating woman I was.

Some hope.

I was faced with a dilemma. My only — and very slim — chance of making Romain see me with new eyes involved my steeling myself to go back out to that terrifying timber circle and find the treasure. But I was afraid of the circle’s power and I also knew it was very dangerous for Romain. I could not bring myself to admit that I believed it would bring about his death; my mind kept hedging away from that. And I might be wrong. .