The Circle of Stone (Darkest Age) (21 page)

A hand rested on her shoulder. Elspeth looked up and saw Cluaran, outlined in gold against the sky. ‘That’s enough,’ he said, and the gentleness in his voice showed he knew how much Elspeth wanted to stay.

Reluctantly, she sat back on her heels. Her hands slipped free of the water with a shower of droplets, a tiny rainbow captured in each one. The pain had gone; she felt as if she were wearing gauntlets of coolest silk, or grass woven soft against her skin.

Behind her she could hear Cluaran in animated discussion with the woman, Roslyn.

‘Use only words she can hear,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep no secrets from her now.’

‘But she’s not . . .’ Roslyn’s voice was shocked, and she lapsed into her own tongue again. Cluaran interrupted her.

‘Neither was my father! But you played with him as a child, so I was told.’

Elspeth looked up, startled. Roslyn seemed barely older than herself, and far younger than Cluaran, with her brown curls and clear eyes. The Fay woman nodded, her face suddenly stricken. ‘I miss Brokk, too,’ she murmured. ‘Your mother’s loss is shared by more than she knows.’

Cluaran’s voice was gentler now. ‘I already owe Elspeth a debt, Roslyn. If she succeeds in her task, our people will owe her even more. I’d have my own kin honour that debt, even if no one else here does.’

There was a long silence. Elspeth heard a soft footfall behind her, then Roslyn knelt beside her, holding a wooden bowl filled with water and strips of moss.

She gave Elspeth a cautious smile. ‘Give me your hands, and I’ll try this remedy.’ She wrapped Elspeth’s hands in the
damp moss, and bound them with threads as fine as spidersilk. As she worked, she and Cluaran talked, but in Elspeth’s language now. ‘And so I’ve seen Eolande again,’ Roslyn said, smiling a little sadly, Elspeth thought. ‘Cluaran – can you not persuade her to come back to us?’

The minstrel looked grave. ‘It would be best for her,’ he said. ‘But too much has happened.’

Roslyn sighed. ‘When you see her again, say that her sister misses her.’

Elspeth’s hands felt wrapped in countless layers of cool and softness, and she let herself slip into drowsiness. As her eyes closed, she thought she could hear Ioneth’s voice again: calmer this time, murmuring words that she could not make out.

She awoke to find that someone had moved her further from the pool, and laid her head on a folded cloak. The golden light was the same as it had been when she fell asleep, and the sky was still blue; she raised her head and looked in vain for the sun.

The Fay woman bent over her, smiling. ‘You’ve slept a long time,’ she said. ‘See how your hands have healed.’

The moss had gone, and they were covered in some greenish salve now. Under it the skin of both palms was still red and sore, but the blisters had gone, and her right hand had lost its rigid claw-look. She flexed it: there was no burning pain; just a deep throbbing. Was that Ioneth’s voice in her head again, whispering a greeting?

Cluaran had come up and knelt beside her. He smiled, as Roslyn did, but there was a new tension in him.

‘How long have I been asleep?’ she asked.

‘Two days, as we measure time here,’ Cluaran said. ‘As the world outside goes, much longer.’

‘How much longer?’ Elspeth tried to get up, but her limbs were too stiff. She pushed herself clumsily to her knees. ‘We must go, Cluaran! Edmund and the others will be waiting for us at the coast.’

Cluaran shook his head. ‘I told Eolande to wait no longer than three days. They’ll have gone by now.’

Elspeth stared at him in horror. ‘You told them to leave without us?’

‘I had to.’ Cluaran’s face was so grave that Elspeth fell silent. ‘Elspeth – the most important thing was for you to heal fully. In this land you are hidden from him. As soon as you cross the boundary, he’ll come after you. Would you really choose to meet him before you could use your hands?’

‘But how will we find them again?’ Elspeth tried to keep the tears from her voice.

‘Eolande and I have fixed a meeting place in Wessex,’ Cluaran said.

‘How will we get there?’

‘You said no secrets, Cluaran.’ Roslyn’s voice held an edge of reproach, and she placed a hand on Elspeth’s shoulder. ‘If you’re sending this child to fight the Burning One, should she not know all your plan first?’

‘I’m not
sending
her!’ Cluaran snapped. ‘And you don’t know the dangers we face – neither of you do. Outside our boundaries, Loki could have heard anything I told her. He could take any form, or make any creature his spy. Out there, nothing we say is safe from him. Even this land won’t keep him out for ever.’

‘What do you mean?’ Roslyn exclaimed. ‘He couldn’t come here – no gate would open for him!’

‘And that would stop him, you think, if he had his full power?’ Cluaran’s voice was scornful. ‘Let him free himself of that last chain, Roslyn, and he’ll need no gate. He’ll break through the wall like bursting a bubble.’

Roslyn’s face was white. ‘But how can Elspeth fight him?’ she whispered.

‘There is a place in Wessex, a stone circle of great age, so ancient that men have long forgotten the time of its first building.’ He looked at Elspeth. ‘Your people call it the place of the Hanging Stones. It’s been turned to the worship of a dozen gods – but Loki was never one of them. If any place can block his power, it’s there.’

‘But how will we reach them in time?’ Elspeth demanded. ‘If they’ve already embarked, and we’re still here? They can’t wait there for days while we follow them.’

‘You are not in the kingdoms of men here,’ Roslyn said softly. ‘We have many gateways that lead to Wessex.’

Cluaran narrowed his eyes. ‘You told me . . . Ioneth was still with you,’ he said. ‘Will she be ready?’

Elspeth gazed at his face and Roslyn’s, her eyes pricking. She shook her head. ‘She hasn’t spoken to me since we left the Snowlands. I can feel that she’s there, but I don’t know how to call her.’

Cluaran reached out suddenly and took her right hand between both of his. Elspeth felt a surge of energy shoot down her arm to her burned palm. She let out a small cry, but Cluaran seemed not to notice.

‘Ioneth!’ he whispered. His voice seemed to echo around her, and an answering whisper sounded in Elspeth’s head. ‘Ioneth,’ he said again. ‘Come to us – help us! This is what you gave yourself to do.’ His voice fell until Elspeth could barely make out the words. ‘This is why you left me.’

And the voice was in Elspeth’s head, clear for the first time since Loki’s cave.

Cluaran! I’m here . . .

Cluaran gasped and dropped Elspeth’s hand. For a moment she thought he must have heard the voice too – then she saw where he and Roslyn were looking, open-mouthed.

Her hand was glowing. White light spilt from the palm, stretching towards Cluaran. It grew longer, defining pale edges, forming the shape of a blade. For an instant, Elspeth held the crystal sword again: translucent; almost solid. Then the light faded to the merest shimmer in the air, and was gone.

They must be halfway to the coast already
, Edmund thought.

It was a different journey, now that they had transport. The donkey, recovered from his bolt after a rest and a rub-down, took to the road with a will, apparently unworried by the extra burden in his cart.

‘He had full crates and barrels to drag on the way up,’ the carter explained. ‘You three won’t tire him.’

He was not as old a man as Edmund had thought at first: his hair and beard were mostly black, though streaked with grey, and his movements were vigorous. But he was thin to the point of emaciation, unkempt and poorly clad, in strange contrast to his trim cart and well-conditioned animal.

They had told him that they were travellers heading to the coast to take ship to Wessex. The carter introduced himself as Fardi.

‘You’re Frankish, then?’ Cathbar asked. ‘That name means “wanderer”, doesn’t it?’

The man’s face closed. ‘It’s what my master calls me,’ he said. ‘All the wandering I do nowadays is along this road, to sell his wares.’

By early evening they were approaching a more populated area: a rise in the road revealed cultivated fields and rooftops in the distance. Around the next corner was another ruined shrine. The wooden statue of the god had been smashed to splinters and dust, and the face of the Burning Man was scrawled on the one wall still standing.

‘It’s a danger to believe in anything, these days,’ Fardi said quietly.

‘Do you have a faith, Master Fardi?’ Edmund ventured.

‘Not any more,’ the man said shortly. He slowed his donkey to an amble and led it off the track, on to a patch of rough grass adjoining a sheep-pasture and backed by woods.

‘It’s not safe to travel after dark,’ he said. ‘We’ll stay here tonight.’

He went into the trees to hunt for supper, taking Cathbar with him. Edmund and Eolande collected branches, then Edmund built a fire while the Fay woman searched the hedgerow for early berries.

‘A strange man, our rescuer,’ she remarked, laying out her small haul on a cloth while Edmund coaxed sparks from his flint.

Privately Edmund agreed, but he said, ‘He saved our lives. And he’s been good to us: he didn’t have to take us all this way.’

Eolande nodded. ‘He does seem like a good man. But there’s a darkness in him.’

The men came back with a hare, and Edmund forgot his uncertainty in skinning the beast and improvising tripods of sticks to balance the spit. But later, as they sat around the fire beneath the cold stars, he found himself watching Fardi. The carter ate little and said less, and he seemed ill at ease when asked about himself. He worked for a fisherman in the coastal town of Harofluet, he told them, selling the catches from his master’s boat and the ale his mistress brewed. He was a bonded man, tied for life to his master’s service. Cathbar exclaimed at this.

‘A lifetime is long to spend as a slave!’ he protested. ‘And you have the air of a freeborn man, Master Fardi. Would this master of yours not allow you to earn your liberty again?’

‘I gave it of my own free will,’ the carter replied. ‘I owe him my life, such as it is.’ He bent his head over his meat, and the talk turned to other things.

As they prepared to sleep, Edmund took Cathbar aside and told him what Eolande had said to him earlier: that Fardi was keeping something from them. The captain seemed unperturbed.

‘Well, and what if he is?’ he said. ‘A man has a right to his privacy. Do you mistrust him, after he saved our lives and shared his food with us?’

‘Wulf found us food, too,’ Edmund pointed out.

Cathbar frowned. ‘So we must suspect every stranger we meet, in case he’s . . . that one in disguise? But that’s what he
wants – to set each man against his neighbour. Go down that road, and how can we unite against him?’

‘At least say nothing of Elspeth or Cluaran while we’re with him,’ Edmund urged. ‘Even if Fardi is truly helping us, there’s no saying who might overhear.’

‘There’s sense in that,’ Cathbar agreed. ‘We’ve spoken of Wessex already – but not of who we’ll meet there, or why.’ He turned away to lay out his blanket, and Edmund thought his face looked troubled.

The carter was no more talkative the next day, though Edmund caught the man looking at him once or twice: sidelong glances which Edmund could not read. He told them all to stay on the cart, sending the donkey along at a brisk pace. The heavily trodden mud at each side of the track, and the whiff of burning that came to them when the wind changed, told them the marauders were still around them. At one point, as they approached a bridge over a river, Fardi made them lie flat on the fish-smelling boards while he covered them with sacks. But it seemed the bridge’s guards were local men, known to the carter; Edmund, lying still in the reeking darkness, heard friendly-sounding voices and laughter before the cart rolled on again.

Fardi released them from hiding further down the road. ‘We’re in the Frankish kingdom now,’ he told them. ‘The border guards say that some of those cursed wreckers got over the bridge, but nothing the emperor’s men can’t contain.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that,’ Cathbar muttered.

Edmund crouched at the back of the cart, watching the road unroll behind them. The road grew wider and for the first time they passed a number of other carts: one or two of the drivers greeted Fardi. The track veered to the west, and suddenly Edmund could see the pearly haze of the sea.

‘We’ll be there before nightfall,’ Cathbar said, and Edmund felt his heart lift.

Harofluet was the largest settlement they had seen since Alebu, and like that town, all its life eddied around the harbour. Many of the houses were caulked with tar to protect them from the biting sea-winds, and the sharp scent mingled with the smell of fish as they rattled past. Fardi halted the cart outside a house that was larger than most and introduced them to his master, a red-faced elderly man who spoke only Frankish. Cathbar seemed to understand the language well enough, but Edmund could pick out only a few words.

Both the fisherman and his wife looked nervously at their unexpected guests, and the man drew Fardi aside to ask him rapid questions in Frankish. But the carter must have given his master and mistress a good account of them, for at the end of the conversation the old woman turned to them with a smile, and beckoned them into her house for a meal of fish soup and ale. As they sank gratefully on to wooden stools by the fire, Eolande asked Fardi to pass on their thanks.

‘You told us your master owns his own boat,’ she added. ‘Do you think the three of us might buy passage on your next voyage? We’re anxious to return to our homeland of Wessex.’

‘No!’ Edmund started to protest, but Eolande shot him a warning look.

As Fardi relayed the request the old fisherman’s face fell, and when he replied his voice was angry. Edmund tensed, wondering if they had given offence. But Fardi, too, was grim-faced as he translated.

‘My master says he would gladly help you,’ he said, ‘but he has no men. A week ago a band of rabble-rousers came to the town, recruiting for a cult, and many of the young men joined them, stealing boats to set sail with their new companions. His fishing boat is still here, but half of his crew have run off with the madmen.’