Fisher, Catherine: The Hidden Coronet #3

Galen leaned back. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“No,” she said, too quickly.

He gazed at her broad back. Then he said, “I can only do what the Makers wish.”

For the rest of the journey he was silent, and glancing back Raffi knew he was meditating, gathering strength, sending sense-lines out into the frozen land, waking stones and soil and the bare trees, searching for any Maker-life, any energies.

Raffi was quiet too. After the strain and racket of the fair, weariness washed over him like a wave. Despite the cold he dozed, slumping against the woman. As the cart hit a stone he jolted awake, muttering, “Sorry.” She grinned at him. “My lad was like you once. Eat and sleep. That’s all boys are good for.”

He smiled, wan.

The evening closed in. Above in the darkening sky the seven moons brightened, the crescent of Cyrax far off on the horizon; glinting through torn cloud above the black land. Stars were suddenly there too, vast scatterings of light, brilliant in the frost-cold.

The road ran down, into a hollow. Raffi felt trees, dark shapes on each side, old hollies and some yew, the faint turpy smell of their needles crushed under the wheels.

The track ran smoother. The trees closed in, became a dim avenue, their branches tangling overhead. Bats flitted in a narrow strip of sky.

And then he felt the house.

His eyes widened; the skin crawled on his neck. Behind him, he heard Galen scramble up.

Halenden was dark; a cluster of roofs and gables rising above the trees. He could see windows, most of them boarded up, and a great mass of ivy and spidervine that sprawled over half the façade, smothering walls and chimneys.

As they drove up to it, the house seemed to grow. Owls called in its leaves; a skeat answered in the woods, and then a whole pack of them was howling, the farm dogs barking furiously in return.

The cart creaked to a halt.

Galen climbed out, stiff, then stood tall in his dark coat, looking up at the building, noting the battered, rainstained door, the high windows, some with broken glass, glittering with reflections of the climbing moons.

The dogs went quiet with a yelp, as if he’d ordered them to.

Raffi stood behind him. The stillness of the place made him wary. The woods were infected by its gloom; the house had eyes inside, and for a second he looked through them, seeing himself and Galen and Majella from some high place.

“Come around the back,” the woman said, climbing down awkwardly.

But when Galen turned, her face went suddenly still because there was something changed about him, some power that crackled in the air; his face was gaunt and his eyes dark in the shadows.

“I know,” he said.

Barely breathing she mumbled, “Keeper?”

He stepped toward her. Now he was the Crow, the dark energies moving in blue sparks through his fingers. “I know. The Makers have told me. The very trees have told me. Do you believe you could really hide this from me?”

The woman gasped. For a moment Raffi thought she would kneel down in the mud, her fingers making the half-forgotten signs of honor. But then she looked up boldly, her face set.

“You’re right. I should have told you.”

“Told us what?” Raffi blurted out. He couldn’t bear it. “Is this a trap? Are the Watch here?”

Galen grinned sourly. “In a manner of speaking. What she hasn’t told us is that this is the house of a Watchman. Her son’s house. Isn’t that so?”

She nodded bleakly.

Raffi was aghast. “We’ve got to get out!”

To his horror Galen just laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t think he even knows.”

“He doesn’t.” She looked up at him, her small eyes measuring his anger. “He’d have us all killed if he found out.”

“Your own son!” Raffi couldn’t believe it.

“My own son.” Watching Galen she said, “The keeper knows. He knows we don’t stop loving our children, however they turn out. Yes, my son is a Watchman. He wasn’t taken as a child; he joined them of his own will. He enjoys power. He hates the Order. You’ve even seen him, lad. He was the one who searched you back at the checkpoint.”

Raffi’s chest was tight with fear. “We have to go. He’ll recognize me!”

But Galen was watching the woman, his face unreadable. Finally he asked, “Will he come here?”

“Unlikely. Not while the fair is on. He’ll want to see the hangings.”

Galen nodded. “Then listen to me. Tonight, if I can, I will break your house of its spell. But in return, if I survive, I want your help. Your son has a spare uniform, insignia, papers. I want them.”

“What!” Raffi grasped the keeper’s arm. “Why?”

Galen shook him off ferociously. “Because if we do nothing, there are ten people who’ll hang on those gallows. And one of them is a keeper. I intend to get him out.”

Chilled, Raffi stared at him in despair.

And instantly, from behind them in the house, an eerie, throaty cry rose up, as if it were his own fear given voice, an echoing howl from some creature trapped in unendurable darkness and pain, so terrifying that Raffi’s hands went cold and all his sense-lines stirred in a web of dizzying sickness.

It lasted long seconds. When it had ebbed, all three of them were still, shadows among shadows.

Then the woman nodded, white-faced.

“All right,” she said. “Anything.”

3

One day Soren was walking in the Fields of Eldaman when she saw a tiny flower under her foot. “What are you called?” she asked. The flower said it had no name. Soren picked it and wove it into a crown. She took it to Flain. “In our work,” she said, “we have overlooked the least and smallest of lives.”

Flain ran his fingers over the flowers. “From now on,” he said, “all men will know you. You will teach the highest how to be humble.”

Book of the Seven Moons

THE ROOM WAS VERY DARK. Galen would have only one lamp, and that was standing in the middle of the floor. Its yellow glow threw a great shadow over the keeper’s shoulder, edging his face with slants of light. Around it he was arranging the awen-beads, seven circles of green and jet, a peculiar formation new to Raffi.

Squeezed into the corner, his back against the dusty paneling, Raffi sat hugging his knees, then laid his forehead on them wearily.

The woman had fed them. A good meal—soup, mutton, and cheese, the best he’d had since they left Sarres, and despite his worry he had been hungry for it. She’d cooked it in the old kitchen below, where broken spits hung askew under the vast sooty throats of the chimneys, and she’d waited while they’d eaten it. But even Raffi had sensed the stifled fear in her, heard the small, impatient creaks her chair had made. She was desperate to get out.

At last Galen had cut a slice of cheese with deliberate care and said, “When you go, lock the doors from the outside. Whatever sounds you hear, whatever strange sights you may see, you stay away. Neither you nor anyone else is to come back to this house until full daylight. Do you understand that?”

Relieved, she had nodded, but at the door had turned and said, hesitating, “I could take the boy with me. Is it right to put the boy in danger?”

Galen hadn’t even looked up. “The boy is a scholar of the Order. How else will he learn?”

When she’d gone, they’d come up here, to the highest rooms; Galen had taken his time choosing this one. Raffi broke mud-clots off his boots nervously. He wished he were back on Sarres, or anywhere, even at the fair. At least that had been out in the open; he could breathe or run. Here he felt as if the ancient house was stifling him, all its shutters tight, the carpet of dust, the webs, the mildewed walls. It was quiet, all the sense-lines were still, but there was something wrong with them, bizarrely wrong—they were warped, as if something else was here inside them, bulging them out.