CHAPTER
28
In
the Guidehouse at Clan Gray
THEY CARRIED THE body
in on a stretcher woven from reeds. It was uncovered and it was
clear from its pallid nakedness that it had been pulled from the
water. Two Graywomen sang a death song, ululating like marsh birds.
The clan guide had grayed his face, smearing it with a mask of mud
and leaving it to dry. As he walked beside the body, he dropped
tiny gold skullcap seeds in its wake.
Effie stood on the
stairs above the Salamander Hall and watched. The corpse’s long red
hair spilled over the edge of the stretcher and whipped in the air
like flames. Flora, not named for a queen. Effie knew she wasn’t to
blame for the the girl’s death, but she also knew she should have
told someone about the girl sitting alone on the northern dock. An
adult had been needed, someone motherly enough to wake Flora from
her daydreams. Or someone strong enough to pick her up and carry
her in the house.
Instead they had
needed to haul her from the water. She had been found after sunrise
by a woman in one of the reed-clearing boats. No one had mentioned
how she died.
And no one seemed
surprised.
Feeling a little
flutter of worry, Effie glanced upstairs, toward Chedd’s room. She
had tried to see him again earlier but had been refused. Bruises
were forming around the rebuttal. She’d rebutted the guard quite a
bit. Now she had to wait until the guard was changed to try her
new, improved strategy on someone who didn’t know she was
trouble.
She had managed to learn that Chedd had slept through
most of the night. She took this as a good sign—sleeping through
the night seemed a healthy thing to do—and she held onto this fact.
Tight.
Spying the Croser
girl making her way toward the kitchen, Effie thought she might as
well go and speak to her. Flora’s words from last night were still
on her mind. And besides, she was hungry and it wouldn’t hurt to
get some food.
The mourners who had
gathered to watch the body being transferred to the guidehouse were
dispersing. Effie could hear the skullcap seeds popping under their
boots. It sounded like shots being fired.
No one questioned her
as she walked to the kitchens. Between Flora’s death and Chedd’s
sickness she supposed they didn’t have time to worry that the
roundhouse was sinking and no one was manning the pumps. Happily
they didn’t appear to have time for food either and the kitchen was
close to empty. Effie glanced out of the room’s only window, an
x-shaped opening in the clinker-and-timber wall. It was a few hours
after midday.
“You never told me
your name,” Effie said, approaching the Croser girl who was
standing over a pile of fish so fresh you couldn’t detect a
smell.
The girl looked
nervously to her right, where the cook was telling one of the
kitchen boys the correct way to scour a pan. Noticing the girl’s
gaze upon him, the cook halted the lesson to address
her.
“Lissit, before you
start on the fish, go to the buttery and get me a block of lard and
some mustard seed—and a hand of ginger if you can find
it.”
That was that then.
Lissit.
“I’ll help her,”
Effie told the cook as she followed Lissit out of a low alder door
in the kitchen’s west wall.
If the cook told her
not to do so Effie didn’t hear him. Unfortunately she made a lot of
noise closing the door and that might have blocked out the
sound.
Effie had never been
in this part of the roundhouse before and was surprised she had to
crouch to move along the low-ceilinged corridor. Light came from a
series of slits in the wall. “What’s the other way?” she asked
Lissit when the corridor branched out and Lissit took the fork to
the left.
“Guidehouse,” Lissit
told her flatly. “Sometimes we bring the guide hot coals from the
oven.” The branch ended abruptly, blocked off by another alder
door. Lissit turned. Her delicate face and pale hair looked wan in
the dim light. “You shouldn’t have said that to Cook. I’ll get in
trouble later.”
“I doubt it,” Effie
replied. “They need you here. They’re dropping like
flies.”
Lissit had nothing to
say to this and opened the door. Good smells and a few strange ones
wafted straight to Effie’s nose. The buttery was like a larder, she
realized, full of things a person could eat. Following Lissit
inside she looked around, deciding what to start on first. She was
devising a plan to punish Clan Gray for kidnapping her and Chedd.
It required eating them out of house and home.
Chedd’s special
powers were needed to make it succeed.
Chedd thoughts made
Effie mad and she closed the door, sealing her and Lissit inside.
It was dark. The slits in the wall had been covered with canvas
panels to prevent sunlight getting through. “Did you know Flora,
the girl they found today?”
Lissit’s glanced
jumped to the door. “A little. Everyone comes in the
kitchen.”
“Do you know what
happened to her?”
“No.”
“What about her
brother?”
Lissit closed her
mouth. She was wearing a scoop-necked dress and the tail of her
tattoo was visible on her left breast.
Looking at it, Effie
wondered how old Flora’s brother had been. She’d assumed he was her
age or Chedd’s age, but what if he was older, like Raif or Drey?
“What was his name?”
“Gregor.”
Like the king. “How old was he?
“Seventeen.” Lissit
looked at her feet. “Like me.”
Effie heard something
in those words. It sounded like the noise made when two things
stuck together were pulled apart. She said, “What happened to
him?”
Muscles in Lissit’s
throat moved but she didn’t speak. She was still looking
down.
“Flora said the marsh
took him.”
The girl looked up.
Her eyes were full of water. “He paddled east and didn’t come
back.”
“But what
if—”
“No. They found the
boat. They found one of his boots.”
Effie watched two big
tears rolled down Lissit’s cheeks. They moved as if they were
thicker than salt water.
“Was he trying to
escape?”
Lissit shook her
head.
Effie frowned. She
was trying to be understanding and everything, but nothing was
making any sense. The roundhouse juddered. An apple rolled off a
shelf and Effie and Lissit watched it scoot across the floor like a
mouse. Effie tried again. “Where were Flora and Gregor
from?”
“Dregg.”
Raina’s clan. “And they both had . . . the old
skills. Sorcery.”
Lissit pinched her
mouth; Effie took it as a yes. Clan did not believe in sorcery and
they certainly weren’t going to talk about it or admit to
possessing any sorcerous abilities. “You know the children they
kidnap always have the old skills? You, me, Chedd, Flora,
Gregor.”
Lissit blinked a
nod.
“Why?”
“I’ve got to get the
lard. Cook’s expecting it.” Lissit spun on her heel, sliding a wet
box from a low shelf. Chunks of lard wrapped in linen were floating
in the water. The girl fished one out and set it on the
counter.
“Mustard and ginger,”
Effie told her. She didn’t think Lissit had the best
memory.
As the girl searched
for the ingredients, Effie thought about Flora. Those first days
after she and Chedd had arrived, Flora had always been on the
roundhouse’s main platform, looking east. The girl had probably
been watching for her brother’s return. Effie could understand that
after a while she might have to look in a different direction, take
herself somewhere else.
Raif. Drey.
Effie felt her lore,
or rather a tightening of the muscle in her throat where her lore
used to be. For some reason she recalled what the old clan guide
had said to Raif when Raif threw away his raven lore and the guide
found and returned it. Did you really think it
would be that easy to be rid of it? Here it is, Raif Sevrance. One
day you may be glad of it.
What if she couldn’t
get rid of her lore either? What if it found a way
back?
Looking carefully at
Lissit, Effie said, “Why was Gregor paddling east? Rime warned us
never to head in that direction. The Sull border’s out
there.”
Lissit now had the
mustard and ginger. She slid the block of lard from the counter,
pressed it against her chest and walked toward the door. “I have to
get these to Cook.”
Effie blocked her.
“What was Gregor doing?”
Lissit moved to the
side. So did Effie. Quite suddenly she knew she would hurt this
girl.
Even if she got hurt
back.
Perhaps Lissit saw it
in her face or perhaps she was just getting anxious about being
missed for she blurted out, “He was looking for the break. It’s in
the east—he knew that much—by the border. He was trying to save
everyone.” She pushed against Effie. The lard was melting through
its cover, depositing a dark stain on her dress. “Including you and
me.”
Effie gave, allowing
the girl to move past her. “He was trying to lift the
curse?”
Lissit opened the
door and then swung around to face Effie. She was breathing hard.
“It’s not a curse, you stupid girl. It’s a doom. The Endlords will walk Gray first.”
Effie watched as
Lissit fled.
She felt as if she
had been slapped. All she could do for a time was stand and absorb
the blow. Stupid girl stung because it
was right. Effie Sevrance was a stupid girl who didn’t know it—the
worst kind. Everyone kept telling her there wasn’t a curse, but she
hadn’t believed it. Gray was the Cursed Clan. She had thought that
meant that people were dying because of
a curse, like Maudelyn Dhoone’s unborn babies. But people were
really dying because it was a marsh, just like Rime had said. Cuts
got infected. People got sick. The marsh got inside their
lungs.
Like Chedd’s. It wasn’t a good place to raise a
family—it was risky—and people left. Warriors took their families
to Otler, HalfBludd and Hill. Then, when they were older, some came
back. That was why there were so many oldtimers here—because your
clan was always your clan.
Finding she was free
to move again, Effie searched the shelves for something to eat.
Locating a wet box containing dairy products, she picked out a huge
wheel of cheese and bit on it. That’ll cost
them, she thought, putting it back.
So, some people died
because the marsh made them sick. And others, like Gregor, died
because they were trying to prevent the doom. Lissit said he had
gone east looking for what? The break?
Magic to find it. Magic to block it.
Effie recalled Bitty
Shank telling her that he could still feel the two fingers he lost
to the bite. He said they got cold and hot and tingly even though
they weren’t there. That was how she felt about her lore right now.
It tingled.
Things were starting
to make sense. Effie picked up the fallen apple from the floor,
dusted it off and stuck it down her dress for later. Deep in
thought, she left the buttery and took the fork in the corridor
toward the guidehouse.
The Grayhouse was
cool and quiet. A faint mist stirred at her feet as she walked, and
she was glad when the corridor gave way to stairs, glad to climb
above waterlevel. As she approached the guidehouse door, she
slowed, unsure whether to knock or enter unannounced. Then she
recalled that Flora’s body had been brought here only a few hours
earlier.
No point in knocking
for the dead.
Raising the latch,
she entered a room so thick with smoke she couldn’t tell its size
or shape. The only thing she knew for certain was that the Gray
guidestone was here. She could feel it pull along the small bones
in her ear. Closing the door softly behind her, she waited for her
eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness.
Over the course of
several minutes the Graystone emerged from the smoke. With a shock
of wonder Effie saw that it wasn’t oblong like the Hailstone or
other guidestones. The Graystone was round.
And it looked as much
metal as stone.
It gleamed in the
dull red light of the smokefires, a smoothly rounded lump of
strangely sheared metals fused with scorched and flinty stone.
How would you grind it, Effie wondered,
without producing sparks?
Because it didn’t
seem as if she had any choice, she walked forward and touched it.
For a brief instant she saw her hand reflected in the metal and
then she saw through the guidestone to
the place on the other side.
Things immeasurably
old and powerful waited. Effie didn’t have a word for them—gods
would not do. They were more like storms, black and destructive,
lit by metallic flashes of lightning. Only they were aware and they
knew her and they turned their great thunderheads toward her, and
Effie felt her bladder loosen and wetness streak down her legs. As
she yanked back her hand, they followed her, cracking like thunder,
bolting toward her, their clouds forming the shape of a . .
.
“Girl!”
Effie switched. She
was somewhere other and then she was
back in the roundhouse, and her dress was wet and she was shaking
and she thought she might just as well faint.
“Sit.” A chair was
thrust with perfect precision under her bottom and she dropped onto
it. Luckily it had a back. Unluckily, someone yanked her and the
chair round, sending its legs screeching over the stone and
propelling Effie forward so that she had to stay alert and pay
attention to prevent herself from careening to the
floor.
A face covered with
mud and not at all friendly thrust itself in front of her eyes.
“What the hell are you doing in my guidehouse?”
Effie blinked.
Spittle had landed on her mouth and eyelids.
“Visiting?”
The guide, for that’s
who the face belonged to, thumped the back of the chair and stalked
away. Effie just sat. She didn’t smell so good, she realized, and
her skirt felt yucky.
“Here.” The guide
thrust something at her. “Take off your dress and put this
on.”
She
hesitated.
“Now. I will turn and I will not look. Your child’s
body does not interest me.”
Effie believed him.
She was surprised by the effort it took to leave the chair,
undress, and slip on the robe provided by the guide. The apple she
had stowed in her bodice went flying. Its fate seemed to be to roll
across the floor. The guide, who was indeed facing away from her,
tracked it as it trundled past his feet.
Unsure what to to
with the discarded dress, Effie dropped it tactfully under the
chair. She sat again. The robe was as heavy as a dog.
“Are you
dressed?”
Effie nodded,
realized the guide wouldn’t be able to see her so spoke instead.
“Yes.”
He turned and the
smoke revolved with him. All guides were physically strong—they
spent their days grinding stone—and Gray’s guide was no different.
He looked ready for a brawl. “How did you get in?”
“The corridor behind
the kitchen.”
“How long were you
touching the stone?”
“Don’t
know.”
“What did you
see?”
Effie couldn’t
understand why her eyes began to sting. Stupid eyes. Stupid
sting.
The guide moved
closer. The dried mud on his face was cracked around his mouth.
When he spoke he made a sentence of each word.
“What. Did. You.
See.”
“Storms,” Effie said,
aware she was sounding a bit hysterical but unable to control
herself. “Things coming. Bad things.”
“The
Endlords?”
Effie felt a prick of
fear. There was that word again. “I don’t know.”
The guide breathed
heavily and deeply as if she had given him the worst possible
answer. “Were they close?”
She closed her eyes
and saw them tearing through the guidestone. In a whisper she said,
“They’re almost here.”
Clan Gray’s guide put
his hands over his face and rested. His bulk and his vitality
appeared to shrink and when he removed his hand and spoke to her he
was in some fundamental way a different man from the one who had
challenged her by the stone.
“Go,” he told
her.
“What does it
mean?”
“It means we’ll be
the first to fall.”
“But—”
He looked at her with
eyes that held terrible knowledge. “Do you think what you saw will
stop at the border of Clan Gray?”
She did not. She
rose, picked up her dress.
“Go the way you
came,” he said as she made a move toward the front of the
guidehouse. “We keep a three-day deathwatch on Flora Dunladen and
you will not disturb her peace.”
Effie looked into the
smoke. Perhaps she saw a table with a dead girl upon it; she didn’t
know.
She turned and left
the way she came. The guide watched her. In some sense she felt she
deserted him.
As soon as the door
was closed she broke into a run. It was suddenly vital to her peace
of mind to see Chedd. Chedd would know what to do. Chedd would calm
her down, point out exactly where and how she was being silly. And
they’d laugh about her peeing her dress—in front of the guidestone,
no less. Couldn’t you be damned in the seventh circle of hell for
that?
She raced though the
corridor and into the kitchen. Lissit was heading the fish and
Effie made her wipe her hands and fetch a jug of hot
water.
“Put some mustard
seeds in it,” Effie told her, making a last minute improvement to
her sneaky get-in-to-see-Chedd plan. “And some of the ginger
too.”
Lissit didn’t look
happy at this but she was accustomed to taking orders and did as
she was told. Cook was busy cranking spitted muskrats above the
hearth flames and paid no heed to Lissit grating ginger and
cracking seeds.
You couldn’t run with
a jug of hot water, couldn’t even walk quickly, Effie found as she
plodded through the Salamander Hall and up the stairs. Steam from
the water coated her face. It smelled just about perfect.
Medicinal, definitely medicinal.
Luck stayed with her
as she turned into her hallway. The guard outside Chedd’s
door—which was really her door—had
changed. Composing herself, she approached him.
“The healer sent me
to fetch this,” she said, holding up the jug. “Said I have to give
it to him straightaway.”
The guard didn’t look
at the jug. He was gray-haired with hard belly fat and a soldier’s
useful muscles and she knew straightaway she hadn’t fooled him. He
wasn’t unkind, just firm. “Go away, girl. There’s sickness here and
you don’t want any part of it.”
She looked at him. “I
need to see him.”
“Can’t do
it.”
“How is
he?”
“Healer’s in with him
now.”
“Let me
wait.”
He sucked in a
thoughtful breath. “How old are you?”
“Nearly
ten.”
For some reason this
answer made him smile. “Set down the jug and go and sit against the
wall.”
Effie did as she was
told. She was tired out and shivery and the guide’s robe itched the
back of her neck. More than anything in the world she wanted to see
Chedd.
She waited. If she
concentrated hard she could hear voices. It sounded as if Tull
Buckler was in there too. She listened and listened but couldn’t
hear Chedd. After a while she got thirsty and drank some of the
water.
Footsteps pounding
toward the door made her start. Voices were suddenly louder. The
latch was lifted and the door swept open. Effie made a run for it,
aiming head first for the opening. She bowled right into Tull
Buckler. The warrior pinned her by the shoulders as if she weighed
next to nothing and then calmly moved her aside. His face was grim.
He nodded to the guard, who took Effie by the arm and pulled her
away from the door.
The healer came out.
Her expression filled Effie with fear, and Effie bucked against the
guard, slamming and grasping, desperate to get free. “Let me see
him,” she screamed. “Chedd! It’s me.
Eff.”
The healer pushed her
lovely silver hair from her face. “Let her see him,” she
said.
Instantly Effie was
free.
Forever she would
remember those seconds, the four seconds it took to get to Chedd’s
bed. Four seconds when the world hadn’t collapsed and she was
moving with purpose, not thinking, just moving, and possibilities
still existed and as long as she didn’t arrive at her destination
everything hung in the balance, undecided.
She got into bed with
him. He was still warm and he still felt like Chedd.
Softly she said in
his ear. “It’s me.” She told him she loved him and then waited
patiently for his reply.