Taste of Lightning

  ‘Do it!’ commanded Skir.

  Perrin shot him a look of surprise. ‘All right.’

  Skir stared straight ahead. Perrin’s song began. The chantment quickened, and Skir felt the power of the magic reach for him, and pull. His knees bent beneath him, charged with a strength he didn’t know he possessed. Perrin’s voice tugged, a wind yanking a kite. Yes, thought Skir, and he jumped.

  As he flew, he sensed, without seeing it, the void that whistled below. He hung in mid-air, poised between earth and sky, between life and death. For a single heartbeat, the chantment held him, and then the crumbling ground slammed into his face and his chest. Pain radiated from his swollen nose; hands grabbed him and pulled him to his feet. He was safe. He was alive, in Cragonlands. He had crossed the border; not just the border between two lands, but the border between one life and another.

  Perrin kicked at the cliff’s edge. Stones and chunks of earth rattled to the bottom of the ravine. ‘Break it, quick, so they can’t follow!’

  This was another task that an ironcrafter could have accomplished in moments, but Perrin refrained from saying so. Tansy and Skir stamped at the lip of the abyss. Penthesi struck with his rear hoofs, and the clatter of rocks rose to the thunder of a small avalanche.

  Tansy said over and over, ‘I knew you could do it, I knew it!’

  Skir wondered if she was talking to him or to Perrin, but then her voice faded. A dark tunnel closed around his eyes. His knees buckled and there was roaring in his head. An arm gripped his shoulders. Skir swayed, and tried to lift his head. There was something important he had to say – very important – but the blackness bore down.

  Across the ravine, far away, in another country, in Baltimar, was a cloaked figure on horseback. Someone shouted his name. Then the blackness closed over him.

  ‘Put him on Penthesi,’ panted Tansy. She held Skir’s feet, while Perrin dragged him under the arms.

  ‘Very funny. I can hardly hold him, let alone lift him. He’s damn heavy for such a little runt . . .’

  Tansy dropped Skir’s feet. They were well back from the ravine’s edge, hidden behind curtains of needlewood. Tansy wriggled forward through the branches.

  ‘The Captain’s riding away,’ she reported. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘What about the Balts?’

  ‘Still crashing around. Wait. There’s something – wait.’ The needles clashed softly as Tansy vanished.

  A few moments later she returned with needles in her hair and a long scratch on her cheek. ‘There’s more coming along the bottom of the ravine, about half-a-dozen. Your lot. Ganis.’

  ‘They must have heard all those rocks fall, and come up from the bridge to take a look.’ Perrin scrubbed his hands through his hair. ‘This is a rotten place to hide. All right for us, but Penthesi . . .’

  He didn’t say we should have left him behind, but Tansy heard it in his voice. She said, ‘Pity they can’t all see Skir lying here looking dead. Then they’d leave us alone.’

  ‘Tansy,’ said Perrin slowly. ‘You’re a genius. Do you trust me?’

  ‘After today, what do you think? I don’t trust you no further than I can spit.’

  Perrin grinned. ‘That should be just about far enough.’ His face was radiant. ‘This is going to be magnificent.’

  There was only just enough time. Tansy scrambled down to where the cliff jutted out in a rough, wide shelf and lay down in a hollow in the rock.

  ‘Closer to the edge,’ hissed Perrin. ‘They have to see your hair. Don’t move, I’m sending Penthesi down.’

  There was a brief silence, then Tansy heard the hesitant steps of the big horse, and his uneasy breathing as he descended to the ledge. Perrin’s chantment, very faint, sounded from above. Of course it had to be faint, so no one else could hear it, but what if Penthesi couldn’t hear it either? Tansy felt a wave of fear. Penthesi gazed at her with a troubled expression. He lowered his nose to nuzzle her, and she stifled a gasp as his breath tickled her neck.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she whispered. ‘Good boy. Just do what Perrin tells you. We both got to trust him.’

  Penthesi knelt above her, then lowered his massive bulk on his side. There was just enough room for her to lie in the hollow beneath him. His head lolled over the edge of the rock shelf. He wouldn’t be able to lie like that for long, no matter what magic Perrin sang. Nor would she, come to that. Her breath came in shallow gasps. When she breathed in, her chest pressed against the hot, crushing weight of Penthesi’s body. If Penthesi rolled even a finger-span, he’d mash her to pulp . . .

  Tansy closed her eyes. Perrin’s song was soft and sweet as a lullaby. Bright stars flared behind her eyelids, firebursts of lightning, whorls of flame.

  Voices. She froze, listening hard. Men’s voices floated from the other side of the ravine. High, excited voices. They’d seen them.

  ‘There! Sarge! Down there!’

  A low whistle. ‘Shame. Nice-looking animal.’

  ‘What’s that, Sarge? Underneath.’

  Silence. Then: ‘Red hair. Kid’s got red hair.’

  Someone swore. ‘Any sign of the others?’

  ‘Nah. The girl wouldn’t have made it this far. And if the Gani was dumb enough to jump the border, a patrol’ll pick him up.’

  A nasty laugh. Tansy forced herself to breathe slowly, to control the flush of anger that threatened to burn her face. It was stiflingly hot beneath Penthesi; sweat trickled down her eyebrows. Her nose prickled. Tansy prayed to every god she could think of, not to let her sneeze. She missed the next few words.

  ‘– retrieve the body?’

  Tansy held her breath, heart pounding.

  There was the sound of a gob of spittle hitting the forest floor. ‘What for? Kid’s no good to anyone dead. We’re still pretending we’ve got him tucked up in Arvestel. No one’s going to find the poor bastard here. Leave him to the birds.’

  Someone shouted: ‘All right, men! Keep searching the woods for the Gani.’

  Muttered laughter. ‘He’s long gone, mate. Long gone.’

  Tansy heard a whistle, then a sharp cry. The hiss of arrows. A barked command, a clatter of stones. The Renganis down in the ravine had been watching the Baltimaran soldiers. There was a sudden din of shouts, the harsh metallic swish of weapons being drawn. Penthesi shifted uneasily above Tansy as the noise rose and drowned out Perrin’s song, and Tansy bit her lip to stop herself crying out.

  But now, thank the gods, the sounds faded as the fight shifted further down the ravine. As the noise grew more distant, Perrin’s chantment became louder, and Penthesi raised his head. He rolled laboriously onto his knees, then stood, snorting his disdain for the whole human enterprise.

  Tansy scrambled from under his shadow. Her arms and legs shook so violently she couldn’t stand.

  Perrin hissed down to her, ‘All right?’

  She nodded, but she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t let him know how frightened she’d been as she lay in that hollow, with only his frail song between her and the deadly bulk of Penthesi.

  ‘It worked,’ said Perrin. ‘Your lot have chased my lot back to their boat. Everyone thinks Skir’s dead, for now, anyway. Can you hold Penthesi’s head, Tansy? I can’t see where he should step – that’s it. Give me your hand.’

  Perrin clasped Tansy’s wrist and hauled her up the steep slope, steadying her with both hands. At the top they stood close to each other in the dappled sunlight of late afternoon. Perrin searched her face with his eyes.

  ‘All right? Truly?’

  It was the first time Tansy had seen anxiety in those dark blue eyes.

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  ‘Have you forgiven me?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  They stared at each other, on the verge of anger, or something else; then Perrin laughed, and released her. He said solemnly, ‘Now then. Skir’s dead. Will you tell him, or shall I?’

  PART THREE

  Cragonlands

  CHAPTER 12
>
  Over the Border

  I’M HOME, Skir told himself. This is my homeland.

  His head was aching, and his nose still hurt, but every breath of crystal-cold air seemed to cleanse his lungs and clear his clouded brain. He stared about, trying to match what he saw to his blurred memories.

  As soon as Skir had recovered and they emerged from the forest, it was obvious that they’d crossed the border into a different country. Instead of sunny meadows and tall trees, there were stony uplands and dusty mountains, bleak with light. Skir had forgotten the quality of the light: the harsh, metallic sunlight, the brightness of the sky and the shifting veils of cloud around the peaks faintly dusted with snow.

  Tansy had been raised among soft grassy hills and gurgling streams; it was hard for her to see the beauty in this rough, unforgiving landscape, though she tried for Skir’s sake. The barren land seemed to shoulder her away: not exactly hostile, but supremely indifferent. If Baltimar was swathes of billowing green velvet, then Cragonlands was coarse brown sacking, dumped indifferently down.

  They walked. In half a day, Penthesi’s coat and their own clothes were grey-brown with dust. They followed a winding road along a valley floor, with low mountains slumped on either side. Cragonlands was a tired country, worn out by fighting.

  Squares of pale green flourished here and there on the lower slopes: gardens of chaka-weed, carefully tended by farmers who were now too poor to grow their own food. Instead, the rust-lords paid them to grow chaka-weed, to spread precious dung around its roots, to dribble water over it, to harvest the tender shoots with fingers that bled from chaka-thorns, and to hope that the poison that lurked in the berries didn’t seep under their broken skin. Skir thought of Elvie’s blind eyes, and other memories returned: a crowded cottage, a boiling pot, the sludge carefully scraped from its rim and dried in the sun to red powder; children with blackened, swollen stumps for hands. If the priests hadn’t chosen him, he might have been one of those children.

  ‘Only place in Tremaris that’s poorer than Rengan,’ said Perrin. ‘Makes you wonder why they bother fighting over it.’

  ‘You know why,’ said Skir. ‘For rust. But I’ll put a stop to that.’

  ‘You’ll put a stop to it?’

  ‘Somehow. If they let me stay,’ said Skir. Perrin glanced at him; his eyes were brighter, and there was a glow in his cheeks. Skir quickened his pace, and Perrin dropped back to let him take the lead.

  They passed a broken, blackened bridge, and twisted fragments of metal that had been a cannon. The slopes were pock-marked from shelling, scarred and scabbed with black. There had been battles here, years ago, all up and down the border. Now the centre of the conflict was in the north, along the border with Rengan. That was where Perrin had done his fighting.

  They walked through a ruined village with few trees and little shade. The houses were mud-brick cubes, roofed with clay tiles; many had been smashed by the fighting. Tansy was startled to see children peering from darkened doorways.

  ‘People still live here!’

  ‘Nowhere else to go,’ said Perrin.

  ‘Why don’t they fix the houses?’

  ‘They have.’ Skir pointed out the makeshift repairs. The villagers had converted the remains of an armoured cart into a roof, stitched Baltimaran Army flour-sacks into a shade-cloth, piled stones together to make a wall. He was proud of his people, their courage, their ingenuity. Courage is to go on living. He almost wished someone would recognise him, so he could tell them how he felt. He wished, too, that his homecoming could be the way it ought to be: the triumphant return of the leader from exile, shaking the mountains in rage and vengeance. That was what his people deserved – not this sneaking home with dyed hair and a dirty shirt, as if he were ashamed . . .

  He realised with a start that his shame, for what he’d done, and what he was – or rather, what he wasn’t – had disappeared. It was as if it had tumbled into the ravine along with their supplies. He still regretted killing the soldier at Rarr, regretted it with his whole heart, but the crippling guilt was gone. And with every step deeper into Cragonlands, Skir was more convinced that he had come to the place he belonged.

  They spent the first night in the open, huddled beside the shelter of Penthesi’s big, warm body. They ate the last of their food, the scraps they’d carried in their pockets. Everything else was lost.

  Skir stared at the familiar pattern of the stars. There were only two moons, both in crescent, and he could see the constellation of the Eagle clearly. He’d never seen that in Arvestel; it was too far south. He felt sick with excitement, and fear, and longing, and impatience. Soon he’d be in Gleve, back in the Temple. Home. But would they let him stay, could he still be a priest? If they threw him out, he might find his home village, the family he could barely remember. What would he do there? He knew so many things, all of them useless. He might go to Rengan with Tansy; Perrin said they needed horse-trainers. He drifted into a dream in which he helped Tansy to break wild colts . . .

  In the morning he woke stiff and sore, ready to tell Tansy his dream. But she and Perrin were still asleep. They were leaning into each other under one cloak, with a dusting of snow on their shoulders.

  Skir lay down again and drew his coat around him. So that was how it was. He felt as if he’d just noticed something that he should have seen long before. All this time he’d taken it for granted that Tansy was his. Not that she was in love with him, but that she and Skir somehow belonged together, with Perrin on the outside . . . And under his nose things had shifted. Well, he wouldn’t let it stay like that; he could make it change. He believed that now.

  That day they saw Baltimaran soldiers. They marched in columns beneath blue-and-scarlet banners, or rode in twos and threes on horseback. There was nowhere to take cover, so the three shuffled in the dust as the Cragonlanders did, stooped, heads down. ‘We’re cousins, walking to the next village,’ said Perrin, but no one stopped them. No one asked them anything. The soldiers glanced at them with the casual contempt of the victorious for the conquered, and passed by.

  ‘We’re walking like we’ve been flogged,’ said Skir bitterly.

  ‘If they think we look too uppity, we’ll be flogged,’ said Perrin. ‘Look down, Tansy. You too, Penthesi, you’re a sad old horse.’ And Penthesi dropped his head and limped along like a broken-winded old nag.

  They walked through one dusty village, then another. The air was bright and cold. They were hungry, but Skir’s purse of Baltimaran coins was of no use here. They had nothing to barter, and in any case the villagers looked so poor that perhaps they had no food to offer.

  ‘We must find a temple,’ said Skir. ‘The priests give hospitality to travellers. Look for a red roof, and bells outside.’

  Late in the day, in the fourth village, there was a temple. It was low to the ground, no higher than the tumbledown huts that clustered around it, but its roof-tiles were red, and three bells were arrayed outside on a heavy iron frame.

  Skir picked up the little hammer and tapped each bell in turn, and as the last and deepest echo died away, a priest appeared in the doorway. She was about thirty years old, with a thin, lined face. She wore blue robes, and her hair was hidden under a blue cap held in place with a twisted circlet of wire. Her eyes went straight to Skir.

  He said, ‘We’re sorry to trouble you, but we’re travellers. We beg food and shelter.’

  The priest looked them over, unsmiling. ‘By the tenets of the Faith, we must share what we have, little though it is.’ She stepped aside. ‘My name is Lora. Come in.’

  ‘What about our horse?’ said Tansy.

  ‘Bring him, too.’

  ‘We’ve trained him well,’ said Perrin with his most engaging smile. ‘He eats less than we do.’

  Lora did not smile back. She led them through the wide double doors into the temple yard. As soon as they were inside, she closed the heavy doors and bolted them.

  ‘You do us a discourtesy,’ she said at once. Her words we
re aimed at Skir. ‘You bring danger here, and we are defenceless.’

  Skir’s jaw dropped, but he recovered almost immediately. ‘Are strangers no longer welcome in the temples of the Faith?’

  ‘Strangers!’ Lora stared at him with her pale blue eyes. ‘We turn no one away. But you, My Lord, are no stranger to any temple.’

  ‘Do you know who he is?’ said Perrin.

  ‘Of course,’ said Lora scornfully. ‘If your brother walks into your house, even after ten years away, do you not know him? Should we not know our Priest and King, though he left us so long ago?’

  ‘I didn’t leave you,’ said Skir. ‘I was taken away. It wasn’t my choice.’

  ‘We don’t want to put you out,’ said Tansy sharply. ‘We just need some food and a place to sleep. We’ll be gone by morning.’

  ‘A place to sleep!’ muttered Lora, as if Tansy had asked for the three moons on a platter. She never took her eyes from Skir’s face. ‘Forgive me, My – My Lord.’ The title seemed to catch in her teeth. ‘But you cannot stay here. This temple is already under suspicion. If you bring the soldiers here, they will burn it to the ground.’

  Tansy began hotly, ‘But we –’

  Skir put his hand on her arm. ‘We have no wish to bring you danger, Lora. If you can spare us some food, we’ll leave at once.’ He spoke calmly, with authority.

  Perrin thought, By the bones, for once he does sound like a king!

  Even Lora faltered before Skir’s steady gaze. ‘No, wait. Someone will come tonight who can take you to Gleve.’

  ‘Make up your mind!’ said Tansy. ‘Can we stay or not?’

  ‘Tansy, remember we’re guests here,’ said Skir. ‘Thank you, Lora. Please have someone bring us food. We’ll wait here.’

  ‘Very well, My Lord.’ Lora dropped her eyes and walked away.

  Perrin let out a long breath. ‘Well done.’

  Skir shrugged. ‘I’ve had years of lessons in how to talk to – people like her.’

  ‘Officer material,’ said Perrin.

  Skir half-smiled. ‘It’s only people like you I don’t know how to deal with.’