CHAPTER
17
The
Lost Clan
“THAT’S THE SITE of
the old roundhouse.”
Bram Cormac didn’t
need to follow Hew Mallin’s direction to recognize the spot where
the Lost Clan’s roundhouse had once stood. A perfect circle of
white heather marked the spot. So the legend was true then. Dhoone
had raised it to the ground and then salted the earth to prevent
anything from growing on the site. The white heather, it was told,
had seeded three hundred years later. A blessing from Hammada,
mother of the gods.
“What say we camp
there?” Hew Mallin’s hard, weathered face gave away nothing, but
Bram suspected a test.
To spend the night
sleeping on the white heather of the Lost Clan was the last thing
any sane clansmen would want to do. Bram took a breath, exhaled.
Ever since he had forsaken his oath to Castlemilk, he’d had the
sensation he was falling.
A month later and he
still hadn’t come to land.
“I’ll get some
firewood.” His voice sounded a bit strange so he covered it by
sliding from his horse. “I’ll meet you at the camp.”
Nothing got by
Mallin, but often it suited the ranger to act otherwise. Taking
Gabbie’s reins from Bram, he said only, “Take your
weapon.”
It was a struggle to
free the big two-handed sword from its mounting across Gabbie’s
rump. Suspecting that another struggle would be necessary to
cross-mount it against his back, Bram tucked the sheathed blade
under his arm and quickly turned away.
He was beginning to
hate Rob’s sword.
The Lost Clan was in
the highlands northeast of Dhoone and west of Bludd. They were on
the northern edge of the clanholds with only a stretch of Copper
Hills separating them from the Rift. The wind was high and fresh
and half of the snow had melted. Needle-thin streams and glint
ponds flashed in the late day sun. Bram was glad to be afoot,
though the weight and bulk of the greatsword slowed him. Any time
spent delaying camp on one of the most haunted and hallowed spots
in the clanholds was just fine with him.
The ground was soft
underfoot and most of the fallen wood was slimy. Tall, upright
trees didn’t grow in this part of the highlands; Bram had to make
do with pieces of wind-stunted yew and white pine. Lines of smoke
rose in the hills just to the east. He wondered if they marked the
site of one of the settlements that had sprung up in the disputed
territory of the Lost Clan. He liked the idea of new clans forming,
though he was pretty sure it wouldn’t be long before Robbie sent
bluecloaks to wipe them out. They know the
risks, Bram told himself. The question was: How would their
removal change the game?
Bram thrust a length
of yew with the needles still attached into his pack. Every day he
was sounding a little less like clan and a little more like the
Phage.
He glanced north
toward the campsite. Mallin had set up his tent dead center of the
ring. Instantly aware that Bram’s gaze was upon him, the ranger
turned and tipped his bearskin hat. Knowing he was outmatched, Bram
raised his hand in response.
Hew Mallin was
breaking him, and he, Bram Cormac, had no choice but to be broken.
He’d agreed to it. It wasn’t enough that his oath and ties to the
clanholds were severed. Old loyalties and ways of thinking had to
be destroyed along with them too. Camping on the site of the Lost
Clan’s roundhouse was part of that destruction.
Strange how you could
agree to something, know it was coming, and still be unprepared
when it came. Stuffing the last space in his daypack with
pine-cones, Bram headed for the camp.
The Lost Clan’s
roundhouse had been built on high meadowland with the River Sigh
guarding its southeastern approach and the Copper Hills like a
fortress to the north. Bram wondered how it had been broken. Surely
it would have been difficult to take by surprise?
Mallin was skinning
an ice hare as Bram approached. They’d been camping out for the
past four nights and Bram fell into the routine of building the
fire, setting water to boil and brushing down the horses. Both
Gabbie and Mallin’s stallion were grazing on the sacred heather.
Bram frowned, but they ignored him. He hoped it would grow
back.
Mallin was a good
cook and once the fire was settled he laid the spiced and quartered
hare on the hot rocks. Bram’s mouth watered as the fat began to
sizzle and the sweet aroma of thyme and wild garlic was released
with the steam.
“Keep your bow at
hand,” Mallin said, leaning back against his bedroll.
Bram rose to fetch
his bow and arrow case from his saddlebag. The sun was failing in
the west, sending out a blaze of red light. He wondered what they
were doing here, on the edge of the clanholds. When he had accepted
Mallin’s offer to join the Phage he had imagined they would travel
to the mountain cities—Trance Vor, Morning Star, Spire Vanis, Ille
Glaive—places that were worlds apart from the clans. Instead they
had traveled through the very places he knew best: Dhoone,
Wellhouse and Castlemilk.
It had been at
Wellhouse where Mallin had made the decision to head north. They
had been working their way east from Dhoone when they met a group
of tied Wellmen on the Bluddroad. They were miners, heading west to
look for work. Mallin had spoken to them at length. He was a good
listener and he knew how to make people talk. Bram couldn’t tell
what piece of information had caught Mallin’s interest—the ranger
always held his cards close to his chest—but Bram did know that
something Mallin learned from one of the old miners had been enough
to change his course. Before the miners were out of sight, Mallin
had turned north.
They’d spent the next
five days and nights at Ebb’s stovehouse on the River Ebb, north of
the Wellhold. Hannie May, the stovemaster, had welcomed Mallin like
an old friend. She’d turfed a Croserman from his quarters to make
room for him, and always gave him the best table at supper—the one
closest to her stove. Hannie kept a rookery above her stables and
Mallin had taken Bram up there the first evening and showed him how
the Phage sent messages by bird.
“That’s my beauty
there,” Mallin said, pointing to a raven with glossy blue-black
plumage and yellow claws and toes that was perched in a large
bamboo cage with other corvids. “Take her out.”
Bram had hesitated.
The bird looked mean.
“Take her firmly by
the breast. Talk to her. Don’t hesitate.”
Bram unhooked the
little brass catch that held the cage door closed. He had no idea
how to talk to a bird so he talked to her like a horse instead.
“Easy, girl. Want some treats? How about some carrots, eh?” To
reach the raven he had to slide his hand past a magpie and a blue
jay. The blue jay looked ready to peck him so he quickly grabbed
the raven.
“That’s her
throat.”
Bram adjusted his
grip. The bird was was lively and surprisingly light in his hand.
She chuffed as he stroked her
head.
“See the collar on
her left foot. That’s where the message goes. Here.” Mallin slipped
Bram a slender roll of paper. “Push it in.”
Bram was aware he had
not been asked to read it. The collar was made of a metal he wasn’t
familiar with; ash gray and very light. He molded the paper to fit
the hollow ring and with a little bit of jiggling managed to slot
it in place.
“Now we seal it with
resin.” Mallin took a small vial from one of the pouches in his
saddle coat, uncorked it, and handed it to Bram. “Work quickly. It
hardens on contact with air.”
Pressing the bird’s
body against his lap to still her, Bram poured a line of resin onto
the ring. It was yellow-red and smelled strongly of pine. Some got
onto the bird’s foot and onto his fingers. It tingled as it
hardened, pulling on his skin.
“Wipe it off.” Mallin
handed him a strip of linen soaked in alcohol. “Otherwise she’ll
peck it and might damage the load.”
“Won’t she peck the
collar anyway?”
“No. She’s had it
since she was a chick. It’s normal to her, but bits of hardened
resin aren’t.”
Bram took it in. He
was hungry to know more about the Phage but had learned that Mallin
never revealed anything before he was ready. “How will she know
where to go?”
“She’ll home.”
Mallin’s yellow-green eyes narrowed and Bram guessed he wouldn’t be
learning where home was anytime soon. “And then we wait on a
reply.”
Bram thought about
this. “Will the same bird be sent back?”
Mallin crossed his
legs. He was sitting on a bale of hay, leaning against the dusty
red-stained boards of the stable wall. “No.”
“How will the new
bird know where to go?”
“It will fly directly
to this hayloft.”
“How?”
Mallin smiled, his
lips paling as he stretched them. “No need to ask
why?”
Bram shook his head.
This was a stovehouse. It was a place where people met, drank,
talked, slept. Neutral territory in a land of warring clans. It
made sense that the Phage kept birds here. “No.”
“Good.” The ranger
took an apple from one of his pouches and bit on it. “Check the
resin. If it’s set take the bird to the window and release
her.”
Bram checked. “Is it
meant to be rubbery?”
Mallin
nodded
Taking the bird in
both hands, Bram rose and crossed to the small triangular window at
the end of the loft. The window faced southwest and Bram wondered
if he could see the Dhoonehold in the distance.
“Throw
her.”
Bram did just that,
tossing the raven into the cloudy afternoon sky. She opened her
wings immediately and beat hard to keep aloft.
“Ravens home to where
they were raised,” Mallin said, surprising Bram. “When they fly
from this stovehouse they are homing to the Phage. That bird was
brought here overland in a cart and caged until needed. Now it’s
been released it will home. The person who receives the message
will send a reply with a bird who was raised here, in this
stovehouse.”
Bram counted five
major stovehouses in his head, and there had to be a dozen lesser
ones. “That’s a lot of birds . . . and a lot of carts back and
forth.”
Again there was that
smile from Hew Mallin. Standing, he leant forward and fed the apple
core to the magpie. “People work for us every day without knowing
that they do so.”
Hearing the low and
pointed tone of the ranger’s voice, Bram decided they weren’t
talking about birds anymore.
Mallin’s gaze was
surprisingly frank. Yes, it confirmed.
Everything you imagine is
correct.
Bram hardly knew what
he imagined. He had an image of hundreds of tentacles reaching out
and spinning things . . . and the spinning things did not realize
why they spun.
The sun broke through
the clouds sending a prism of light streaming through the window.
Feathers and haydust stirred in the warm air as Mallin let his
silence speak real and vital truths about the Phage: the scale and
reach of its connections and resources, the subtlety and longevity
of its plans.
“Let’s get some
food,” Mallin said abruptly, ending the lesson. “Nothing makes me
hungry like knowing I must wait.”
Five days passed
before the reply arrived. Mallin had spent the time grooming—he’d
had a local woman rebraid his hair—bartering goods, extracting
information from stovehouse patrons, eating well and often and
bedding whores. Bram spent time with the birds. Hannie May let him
feed them. It was a revelation. They were continually mounting one
another and even the pigeons ate meat. It was Hannie who informed
Bram the message had arrived.
“Got a live one,” she
told him as he was sitting by the stove, breakfasting on scrambled
egg and trout. Mallin wasn’t around. He’d spent last night with one
of Hannie’s girls. Bram decided to head to the hayloft without
him.
The new raven was on
top of the corvid cage, goose-stepping from bar to bar and
screaming up a racket. Bram had learned a little about handling
birds by then and bundled her in a blanket to calm her while he
retrieved the message. Using his handknife, he broke the resin seal
on the collar and winkled out the small roll of parchment. Ink had
run through the paper and Bram could clearly see letters on the
other side.
“I’ll take
that.”
Hew Mallin climbed
through the loft hatch. His expression was blank as he held out his
hand. Bram had not heard him coming. Aware his cheeks were heating
up, Bram handed over the paper and caged the raven.
Mallin read the
message, rolled it back into a cylinder and fed it to the raven.
“Get the horses ready,” he told Bram. “We leave within the
quarter.”
As Bram saddled the
horses on the stovehouse’s hard standing, a party of Wellmen rode
in from the south. Bram’s mind kept slipping from its task and he
was having trouble latching Gabbie’s belly strap. He kept thinking
about the message, wondering what it said and where it was sending
them, and worrying about what Mallin thought of him. Had he
concluded that Bram was about to read the message?
Was I?
Bram’s thoughts were
interrupted by shouts from the Wellmen. They were sworn warriors,
road-weary with a heavy complement of arms and armaments, and they
made the assumption Bram was the stable-boy. They were anxious to
get inside to rest so Bram took their horses from them. The groom
was out exercising Hannie’s mare and would not be back for a couple
of minutes.
The senior warrior
threw Bram a coin for his trouble. Bram caught it and opened his
fist to look at it.
“It’s only a copper,”
the warrior said, mistaking Bram’s silence for disappointment. “But
I’ll give you a gold coin’s worth of news to top it. Robbie Dun
Dhoone has taken the Withyhouse and crowned himself a
king.”
Bram couldn’t recall
much for a while after that. Gabbie’s belly strap must have been
successfully fastened and both horses saddled and loaded but he
couldn’t remember doing it. He hadn’t even mustered much surprise
when Mallin had informed him they’d be heading north.
Kingmaker, Bram kept thinking. Bram Cormac had
helped Robbie Dhoone become king. He still wasn’t sure what he felt
about it. Mostly it didn’t feel good, but there were moments when
he felt small thrills of triumph. Power had shifted in the
clanholds because of a message he had delivered.
To become king,
Robbie had needed his brother’s help.
Bram sat down by the
campfire and strung his bow. It was dark now and the wind had
dropped. Mallin was turning over the quartered ice hare with his
knife. The juices were running clear.
“There’s no need to
unsheathe the sword.”
Mallin was always
watching him. Bram nodded toward the strung bow and half dozen
arrows he’d taken from their case at Mallin’s request. “I thought
we had to be ready for attack?”
A sound came from
Mallin’s throat. Leaning forward, he speared the hare and set it on
his plate to cool.
Bram was busy
thinking. Why only a bow? What if they were surprised at close
quarters? They’d need swords then.
Mallin transferred
one of the hare pieces onto Bram’s plate and handed it to him. “Why
was the Morrowhouse built here?”
Morrow, the name of
the Lost Clan. No clansmen worth his salt would speak it. Bram
cleared his throat. “Good defensive position.”
“And?”
“The
river?”
“Eat,” Mallin said.
He might as well have said, Don’t
speak.
Bram ate. By the time
he’d reached the bone he’d worked it out. “Good
hunting.”
Mallin wrapped the
remaining hare, turfed the fire to extinguish it, and grabbed his
bow. “Let’s see what we can bring down.”
It was a long night.
They took up position by the river and then did a slow circuit of
the meadow. Mallin, who was an excellent shot by day, compensated
for poor nightvision with stealth. Bram was glad to have something
useful to contribute: he’d always been known for his eyes. They
brought down a goat, and a sheep without markings that Mallin said
was probably part of a wild flock that had been founded by strays.
By the time the carcasses had been split and bled the sun was up
and it was another day.
Bram ran his hand
knife along the whetstone, honing the edge. He was anxious to get
the butchering done so he could bathe in the river. He was tired
and he stank of goat.
“No skinning,” Mallin
said. “We’re loading them onto the horses.”
“Whole?”
Mallin threw his tent
canvas over the back of his stallion. “They’re gifts,” he explained
lightly, “for the Maimed Men.”
Bram managed to close
his mouth about an hour later, as they walked the horses through a
pass in the Copper Hills. The Maimed Men. He had never imagined a
future where he visited the world beyond the Rift. What was Mallin
up to? What had that message said?
Excitement stopped
Bram feeling weary for half a day. Mallin kept his own counsel, but
Bram knew the ranger well enough to sense that he was anxious for
the journey to be done. They stopped briefly at midday to rest the
horses and reposition the carcasses. Both tent canvasses were stiff
with blood. In the afternoon, the land began to descend and Bram
spotted the thin black line on the horizon. He knew it instantly.
The break in the continent, the Rift.
They walked toward it
for the rest of the day and into the night. When they reached level
headland the wind picked up, blowing hard into their faces. Bram
began to notice lights in the distance and then, as they drew
closer, he saw how heat venting from the Rift distorted those
lights and the stars above them. A low current of fear kept him
alert.
“What’s that sound?”
he whispered as they turned on to a well-maintained path that
headed straight for the edge.
“Rift
music.”
It didn’t really
clear things up, but Bram could tell from Mallin’s voice that no
further explanation would be offered. Bram had never seen the
ranger so alert. His hands and eyes were never still. As they
approached the edge, Mallin slid his hat from one of his coat
pouches and put it on. It was his badge, the means by which people
identified him from a distance. He was the man in the bearskin
hat.
It meant they were
being watched. Bram dusted down his cloak and pants. It seemed to
intensify the smell of goat. They were very close now and Bram
could see the Rift spread out before him. It was the darkest object
on a dark night, a gap that held nothing to please or rest the
eye.
Yet something was
moving across it. A light appeared to be suspended above it. As
Bram watched he realized it was a torch. Somehow, someone was
crossing the Rift.
The path ahead
suddenly turned and they were there, on the ledge. Bram could smell
the center of the earth.
“You’re lucky,”
Mallin said, coming to stand by him. “A night crossing’s always
best first time.”
Bram’s gaze was on
the torch. It was very close now and he could see the figure
carrying it. He could also see that figure was walking on a rope
bridge, not air.
“Take the kills off
the horses and spread some feed by the rocks.”
“Gabbie and Strife
stay here?”
“Horses won’t cross
the Rift.”
Bram found nothing
reassuring about that statement. As he untied the sheep carcass
from Gabbie, Mallin called out a greeting to the figure on the
bridge.
“Welcome, friend,”
came the response. “I’ll send a boy over to watch the horses.” The
figure stepped from the bridge onto the suspension platform and
looked with interest at Bram. “And who else do I
greet?”
“Bram Cormac,” Bram
said, acutely aware of the space after his name where of Castlemilk or of
Dhoone should have gone.
It seemed to him that
the stranger from the Rift heard the space too. “Welcome, Bram
Cormac,” he said, raising the torch to reveal his
face.
“I am Thomas Argola,
Rift Brother. Once of Hanatta . . . in a different time and
life.”
Seeing his features
and hearing his voice, Bram realized the man was from the Far
South. He was slightly built, with olive skin and clever features.
A speck of blood floated in his left eye.
“Keep your gaze on
the horizon,” he told Bram, turning, “and don’t forget to
breathe.”
Crossing the Rift
with a sheep carcass slung over his shoulder after two days without
sleep was something Bram would never forget. The rope bridge swung
and some of the treads were gone and the light from Argola’s torch
was fitful. Bram’s cloak filled with air and as he tried to flatten
it he dropped a glove. Before a man could blink it was swallowed by
the darkness. Bram stared at the spot where it had disappeared. He
had an impulse to chuck away Robbie’s sword, and let it fall for a
very long time.
By the time they
completed the crossing, Maimed Men had gathered in the landing area
to inspect them. They didn’t look friendly. Bram watched Mallin
closely, following the ranger’s lead.
“Meat,” Mallin said,
shucking off the goat carcass and letting it fall to the ground.
“Brought down yesterday.”
Bram copied the
maneuver with the sheep carcass. He was glad to have it gone. A
fire was burning on the ledge and the flickering flames made the
Maimed Men look like ghouls. None of them made a move toward the
carcasses but Bram sensed that some vital requirement had been
met.
Argola led the way
through them. “Stillborn will want to see you,” he told Mallin. “He
calls himself the Scar Chief now.”
Mallin nodded
tersely, and Bram followed him and Argola into the city on the edge
of the abyss.