Songs of the Earth (8 page)

No, the Greenway it had to be, then south. He was sure to be able to find a ship of some kind – hells, he’d earn his passage as deckhand if he had to; it wouldn’t be the first time – anything that would send him on his way to Fleet. If the Veil was failing, he had no time to waste.

Magic, rising, swelling into many voices. It filled the air around Gair and time slowed. Tiny details became sharply, painfully clear. Gorse-flowers blazed bright as flames on the viridian bushes. A billion motes of dust spangled the air. Hooves rose and fell as if through treacle and each hoof-beat boomed round his head like the fall of empires.

Oh Goddess, help me
. Sunset burned his eyes. All he could see through it was red – red as roses, red as blood, drenching the Knights and tipping their lances with gore. Goran’s captain swung his arm to urge his men forward and the cords flew like spatter from an opened vein.

Alderan opened his mouth to yell, but there were no words. There was no sound at all now but the song inside him and the tingling rush of it along his limbs.

Hail, Mother, full of grace, light and life of all the world. Blessed are the meek, for they shall find strength in you. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall find justice in you. Blessed are the lost, for they shall find salvation in you. Amen
.

Sparks spat from the chestnut’s shoes as Gair wheeled him round to face the way he had come. Muscles bunched in his hind-quarters and his ears snapped back; the granite stair was steep, but
the horse leapt forward. The landing jolted Gair in the saddle but he kept his seat and somehow the chestnut gathered himself for another leap.

Trust the horse. He had to trust the horse. Trust the horse trust the horse
Holy Mother Goddess I don’t want to die
. One more leap and Gair was back on the road. Dust swirled around him. Sensation thrilled along every nerve. The magic filled his entire being; he was bloated, potent with it, an overfilled wineskin about to burst. And it sang to him. Everything he’d been taught shrieked out the wrongness of it, but it was too late to fight: he was helpless in its grip. He had to use it before it consumed him. He would fly apart, explode into lightning and—

It was gone. Normality crashed back down on him, hard enough to knock the breath from his body. Slumped over the horse’s neck, he sucked air into his lungs and broke out coughing with the dust. He smelled sweat, heard jingling harness and restive horses and, oddly, a skylark, sweetly clear from invisibly far above, but the music was gone. It had never done that before. Dazed, he spat on the road to clear his mouth and straightened up.

Alderan seized his shoulder. ‘What in all hells did you think you were doing?’ he hissed.

‘I don’t want to die, Alderan. I won’t let them take me back.’

The old man leaned forward until his face was level with Gair’s. His fearsome brows knotted and he spoke quickly as the Knights gathered in, his voice pitched low. His grip did not relent. ‘Listen to me. No one is taking you anywhere today, do you understand? You have my word on it. Now stay calm, stay quiet and for the love of the Goddess keep a check on it. Do you understand?’ He shook Gair’s shoulder. ‘Gair, do you understand me?’

Gair nodded, spat again. The music was gone, but dread still had his heart clenched in a mailed fist. The grip on his shoulder became a pat.

‘How long until sunset?’ he asked.

‘A little under an hour. The parish boundary’s only a mile or so from here. We’ve ample time.’

Knights formed a ring around them, lances at the ready. Gair dropped his sword back into its scabbard and became aware of just how much his branded hand hurt. Bloody fluid stained the bandage and pain stabbed through his palm. He let it rest upturned on his thigh as the captain took off his helm and nudged his horse closer.

‘By order of Elder Goran, I am placing you under arrest,’ he declared. ‘Throw down your weapons.’

The witchfinder’s face appeared between the captain and the Knight next to him, pale eyes swimming from one captive to the other. His features sharpened into a grin, all narrow jaw and pointed teeth like the skull of a fox.

‘Arrested? On what charge?’ asked Alderan.

‘Trespass and theft.’

‘Trespass?’ The old man’s brows lifted. ‘This is a public thoroughfare.’

‘I did not say you were trespassing now.’ The Knight smiled, or at least showed his teeth. ‘You trespassed on Elder Goran’s private estate, five miles back.’

‘We went ten yards off the road to water the horses!’ Gair protested. ‘You can’t call that trespassing!’

The Knight gathered up his squad with a look. ‘I rather think I can call it what I like.’

‘And I suppose the theft relates to the water the horses drank?’

‘Of course not. Water is the Goddess’ bounty, freely given to all men and beasts.’

‘Then to what does the charge relate?’ Alderan’s tone was short. ‘I presume you are going to tell us?’

The sandy-haired captain bared his teeth again. ‘The charge relates to the disappearance of a small object from the Elder’s personal apartments. It is a trinket, nothing more, but one of immense
sentimental value. We shall have to search your baggage.’ He shrugged. ‘It could take some time.’

‘Would you mind telling us what this object is? Forgive me,’ Alderan said, ‘but I’d rather know now, before you find it in my saddlebags.’

Another of the Knights stared down his nose at them.

‘Confessing your guilt, old man?’

‘Me?’ Alderan spread his hands. ‘I’m sorry, my friend. I’ve had a long and interesting life, in the course of which I have undoubtedly been guilty of many things, but sadly, none of what you think.’

The captain frowned and motioned some of his men forward. ‘Search them! Search everywhere!’

Five Knights dismounted. One held the horses whilst the others rifled through the saddlebags, clumsy in their thick gauntlets. Alderan watched the nearest Knight until the man became so perturbed that he glared back.

‘What are you looking at?’

‘I was wondering whether that was such a good idea.’ Alderan nodded towards the man’s arm, elbow-deep in spare clothes. ‘I mean, you never know what you’re going to find in a witch’s pockets.’

The Knight scowled and turned back to his task. Abruptly he yelped and snatched his hand back. He stripped off his gauntlets and rubbed his fingers. A moment later, the other three Knights were doing the same.

Gair flashed a look at Alderan and saw the old man shortening up his reins.

‘Ready?’ Alderan never took his eyes off the captain, who was shouting shrilly and pushing his men back to their task. The remaining Knights watched them instead of their prisoners. It would take only a moment.

With a wild yell Alderan urged his horse towards the gap in the line left by the captain and his five men. Gair was only a second
behind, the chestnut stretching into a gallop. As they broke the line Alderan laid about him with the flat of his hand on the rumps of the nearest horses, making them squeal and dance to add to the confusion.

‘Stop them!’ the captain bellowed. ‘By the Goddess, I’ll have your hides for boot leather!
Move!
’

Too late. Gair had clear road ahead of him to the crest of the rise. He dared a glance back over his shoulder. A handful of Knights had organised a pursuit, rowelling their greys ruthlessly, but they were a good way back. He bent low over the chestnut’s neck and urged him on.

‘A thousand yards!’ Alderan pointed at the ridge ahead, where the road wound up out of the deepening shadows. A stubby stone marker stood silhouetted against the ruddy sky. Once past that they would be out of Goran’s diocese, out of danger.

Gair set his heels and asked for one last effort from his mount.

Five hundred yards on, the horse was tiring. At a thousand, sweat and foam curdled on his coat. Each breath rasped through nostrils stretched wide, but he kept running, and every stride brought safety closer.

A hundred yards more, Gair whispered to the horse. Just a hundred yards, less than that now, barely fifty, good lad, just a little further, come on now, there’s the stone, and then they were past. He sat up and reined the blowing horse to a halt, then swung down to walk the few yards back to the marker. Below the rise, the Knights milled around their captain, who crossed his forearms on his saddle-horn and glowered.

‘Goran won’t be pleased when he learns his hounds have failed,’ said Alderan, leaning down from his saddle to catch the chestnut’s reins. Gair plucked his shirt away from his sweaty back.

‘There were forty of them, Alderan. That’s a lot to send after just the two of us.’

‘And a seeker too.’

‘The witchfinder?’

‘During the Inquisition, the Church called them seekers after truth. Most of the ones who call themselves witchfinders today are just prodnoses with nothing better to do than spy on their neighbours for a shilling, but there’re a handful with a genuine talent, like that fellow there.’

The Knights on the road had formed up to ride back to Dremen. A few yards behind them, an unremarkable man sat his pony and stared up at the ridge. The prickling across Gair’s forebrain was less intrusive now, but it lingered, even after the witchfinder swung his pony round and trotted after the retreating soldiers.

‘I can still feel him, in my head. How does he do it?’

‘Perhaps he has the ability to sense what you can do, somehow.’ Alderan shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him, unless Goran does us all a favour and drops dead of an apoplexy – saints know, he’s fat enough.’

Gair stared, startled by the old man’s venom. ‘What?’

‘Let’s just say I’ve heard a few stories about Elder Ignatio Goran. If even half of them are true he’s not fit to wear the scarlet. Come on. We should find somewhere to rest up.’

‘He believes what he’s doing is for my own good.’

‘Then Goddess spare us from believers like him! Preserving your eternal soul from damnation by purifying your body with fire? Do you really think She wants that?’ Alderan handed Gair the reins to his horse.

‘I was raised to believe that no one is so far gone that they cannot be redeemed.’

‘But the same people who taught you that locked you in a cell for three months and put a red-hot iron to your hand.’

Other things had been done to him too, in the name of truth and redemption. Not all of them had been painful. Some had been designed instead to humiliate, to debase, to break his will. Alderan was right. It really did not make any kind of sense. Abruptly Gair felt exhausted, more utterly spent than he could ever recall being
in his life. ‘I believe the Goddess forgives,’ he said at last. ‘It’s just the Church that doesn’t.’

Not far from the marker they found a hollow in the lee of a craggy tor where a stream danced down to the river below. After watering the horses, they stripped off the saddles and whilst the animals cropped, rubbed them down with handfuls of grass.

‘Are you still sure you don’t want to turn south a ways?’ Alderan asked over his horse’s back. ‘It’s not too late.’

‘I’m sure. There’s nothing there for me.’

‘One day you might be surprised.’

‘Maybe.’ Enough had happened on that one day without looking for old wounds to pick at. ‘Alderan, what did you have in your saddlebags?’

The old man straightened up, tossing the wad of grass to one side. ‘Mouse traps,’ he said.

‘Mouse traps?’

‘Have you not heard about the problems with slitpockets in the cities these days? You can’t trust a soul.’

Supper was cold pork and pickles, washed down with hot sweet tea. Afterwards, Alderan produced a clay pipe and tobacco pouch and settled back against his saddle for a smoke. Stretched out on a blanket, Gair tried to sleep. In spite of his weariness, the heavy aching in his limbs, his eyes would not close. The stream chattered constantly. Small things scampered in the tussocky grass and night birds called to each other. Loudest of all was the sound he could not hear, the song of the magic within him.

Part of him wished it would never come back, even as his belly hollowed at the thought of never hearing the music again, never experiencing the sweet rush of its power. Not that it would make any difference if it did stay silent; he was already damned. He had spurned the Goddess’ teachings the instant he had surrendered to temptation, and it had cost him everything except, somehow, his life.