Catherine Fisher - The Lost Heiress

“As far as I’m concerned, you can rot!” she snapped, turning savagely.

“But I won’t rot.” The black eyes were sharp in his flabby face. “I’m rich, Carys,” he hissed, “and the dwarf’s greedy. I can buy freedom. When I do, believe me, I’ll have your name on every hanging-list from here to Maar. So hurry up and decide!”

But she urged the horse on, past him, and for a long time after, even when Raffi spoke to her, she wouldn’t say a word.

THE WOOD WAS A MORASS, and the gale had brought all the leaves down. In the afternoon, drizzle began again; every rider became a gray shape, slithering and splashing through mud and over slippery rutted tracks. As he jolted, Raffi let his third eye open and looked out into the wood, feeling it cower under the leaden weather, the gray, dragging rain, all the bare thorns scattering great drops down on his face. Soon he was soaked, holding loosely to Carys’s coat, and far off in his dream-sight he watched a skeat-pack splash through a swollen stream, tiny larvae scattering between their paws.

The world was dissolving; he felt the whole hemisphere reeling into winter, the long, bitter Anaran winter of icestorms and raw gales, each year worse than the last; the time when the grass froze and the carnage-wolves prowled down from the Unfinished Lands, when the seven moons glinted frost-bright among the Maker-stars. He shivered. Last year he and Galen had barely come through it. But this year things would be better; they would be in Sarres. If only Galen would stay there.

Darkness came early, a dank autumn twilight, a raingloom gathering between the wet twisted boles of the trees. Boulders and great shattered cliffs of dark rock rose around them. Flittermice came out; owls began to hoot from the caves far above. The Sekoi looked up and listened to them, holding Felnia carefully.

Late in the evening they stopped briefly to eat, but lit no fires; Alberic was determined to press on. He had given up riding; four of his toughest men carried him now in a litter that was gaudily painted and hung with sodden crimson cloth. Godric took him some food but ducked away quickly, the plate flung furiously at his head. Some of the war-band laughed; others looked evilly at Galen. Raffi felt afraid.

In the dismal rain it was difficult to see; Raffi sheltered under a larch tree eating bread miserably, water dripping from his hair and fingers. Suddenly everything seemed wrong: Sarres a hundred miles away, his senses dulled and shivering, all the power-lines drawn into the earth like a snail draws into its shell.

Then Galen came up and grabbed him. “Where is she? Is she with you?”

Bewildered, Raffi stared. “Carys?”

“Felnia!” Galen’s hawk-face was anxious, his hair plastered to his forehead. “Have you seen her?”

A rainsquall gusted into their eyes. Among the trees, Carys yelled; Galen raced toward her, crashing through the decaying bracken and fat stumps of puffballs, shoving through an interested crowd of the thief-band. Raffi ran after him, dropping the bread.

The Sekoi lay on its back, eyes wide open, staring sightlessly up. Godric was feeling its limbs over carefully. “Not dead. Some sort of blow to the head.”

Galen whirled around. “She must have run off!”

“No.” Carys stood stock-still. She was staring at something dim in the rainy wood; Braylwin’s great packhorse, cropping lichen from a dead log. Sliced rope hung from its neck.

“Oh God, Galen,” she breathed. “He’s got her.”

23

Bind a bright web about the doubtful

soul.

If you pull hard, it will come to you.

Apocalypse of Tamar

AND WHY SHOULD I?” Alberic was peevish; he shivered in his quilted robe, a fur-lined cloak clutched tight around him.

“Because if you don’t,” Galen stormed, “I’ll go alone and you can burn in your own hell!” The keeper was reckless with black fury; Raffi knew that in this mood he might do anything.

Alberic knew it too.

“All right.” The thief-lord waved a sickly hand. “Get the lads out, Taran. Search groups of ten. We want the child alive.” He looked at Galen slyly. “And the fat man? He’s good for a thousand marks.”

“I don’t care.” The keeper snatched his staff down from the horse, the rain lashing between them. “Raffi, come with me.” He glanced at Carys. “You too, if you want.”

She nodded, loading the bow. Her face was taut and white. Raffi felt strange memories in her, and anger. Deep anger.

They slipped between the trees. Galen had his own way of tracking; he followed the glints and taints of feelings, the tiny intricate sense-traces. He led them down a gloomy trail between holly and larch, the trees thickening as they went, the ravine’s shattered cliff looming somewhere behind the rain.

Shouts rang in the wood. Behind them Alberic came, scowling and limping, Godric a big shadow behind him.

Galen questioned trees and owls, swiftly, silently, bursting straight to their deep consciousness, leaving them dizzy. He was ruthless, and Raffi felt the sore echoes of it. But Braylwin had come this way. Pictures of them flickered in his third eye: the big man carrying the child easily, under his arm.

“I’m surprised he could go this fast,” he gasped.

Carys glanced back. “He’s fitter than you’d think. He can run when he wants to. All that puffing is an act.”

The trail scrambled down, broke into scree and falling rock. It was dark down here, softened with mist, every branch black and dripping. A were-bird screeched, and Galen slipped, jamming his stick into the mud with a curse.

At the bottom, distorted rowans sprouted, their thin boles white and spindly. The track split in two. Galen crouched, hands on the wet rocks, sending his mind far into soil and puddles and clotted leaves. But Carys darted forward and picked something out of the left-hand track. “Don’t bother. She’s Watchtrained, remember?”

It was the toy night-cub. She threw it to Raffi, who jammed it into his pocket; Galen was already gone, pushing his way among the sprawling branches. Moss and lichen coated everything; down here the rocks and trees were green in the gloom. It all smelled rich and rotten, the path choked with strange ghostly moonflowers that grew too high, grotesquely twisting after the light.

Crashing through them, Raffi heard water; the roar of it, falling from some unguessed height. Then his sense-lines touched it, and were swept away into a moving flow of energy, patterned by rainbows.

“He’s close!” Galen yelled. “Get ready!”

They burst out into a clearing; before them the black waters of a torrent glinted over the stones. Down the cliff a great waterfall roared, a deafening crash of water, the foam at its base endlessly breaking and whirling away in bubbled white patches.

It was almost too loud to think; the sense-lines jangled, and Raffi felt suddenly dizzy, as if someone had slapped him hard on the side of the head. Galen looked around too, disoriented. “Can you see him?”

A crossbow bolt thumped into wood behind them; Carys yanked Raffi down among the moonflowers.

“Idiot!” she yelled above the water-crash. “Keep down!”

At least now they knew Braylwin was armed. And just then, as if the Makers had ordered it, the river mist thinned, and through its frail wisps the seven moons shone clear, a ragged formation that was almost the Arch, though Lar was just a crescent and the strange pitted surface of Karnos was too far down among the trees.

Galen glanced up. He said nothing aloud, but Raffi sensed his prayer, some deep affirmation he couldn’t recognize.