Fell (The Sight 2) (21 page)

“Don’t look sad, Alina. You mustn’t blame yourself for the whole world.”

Alina looked down at the wolf in surprise.

“No, Fell, perhaps I mustn’t.”

“How goes it with the humans?”

“They’re kind and I … I can trust them, I think. I’ve told them something of my story.”

Fell growled warily.

“It’s all right, Fell. They know nothing of you. But I must stay with them awhile, as the winter worsens, and learn from the blacksmith.”

“The one working with metal and the red flowers? I watched when you met him and that filthy dog nearly attacked you. I looked into the human’s thoughts. He has good thoughts. Better than mine, sometimes.”

Alina placed her hand on the wild wolf’s head. It felt right to touch the animal again.

“Yes, Fell, and I like him,” Alina paused. “His son, Catalin, too. He’s a fine storyteller. I think they can help us. The snows are still thick, but Lescu knows much that will aid us. I must learn from them all I can.”

“And they’ll miss you with the dawn, so you’d better be getting back. Learn from them indeed, human, and grow, but know that my eyes will be guarding you from the forests. But I’ll seek out the Guardian too.”

Alina suddenly felt desperately grateful to the wolf.

“And I’ll bring you food from the house, Fell, when I can,” she said eagerly. “I don’t want to steal, but it will be my own, and they’ll not miss it. I’ll leave it by that big oak, where we first saw their house.”

“No,” growled the wolf immediately. “It’s in sight of the human den.”

“Then further in the wood.”

“Leave it out in the open, and the other Lera will steal it. All are hungry now.”

“Then I’ll hide it under something.”

“How will I find it?”

Alina WovenWord pondered for a moment, and thought of Catalin’s tale of Baba Yaga, then thought of a story she had told Mia.

“Stones. I’ll leave a trail of little stones, leading from the big oak to the food.”

“Good, Alina. Staying in one place will make it hard for me to hunt, when the Lera in these parts know of my presence.”

“And be careful, Fell. There are more pits in the forest, and many are sewn with stakes.”

Fell nodded his black muzzle, and his yellow gold eyes flashed.

“I’ll find you when the snows thaw then, human cub. Until we meet again, Drappa. May it be soon …”

With a growl Fell turned and began to run. Like a panther he went, streaking through the forest, jumping log and stone, and glorying in his freedom once more, as Alina Sculcuvant watched her friend with relief, feeling the same pangs as Fell had, but also gratitude in her heart that he was safe again. Then the girl turned back towards her human home, thinking of one thing alone: the strange tale of Baba Yaga and Vasilissa the beautiful.

LESCU WAS AT WORK IN HIS FORGE AND Alina WovenWord stood behind him, marvelling at his skill. She was in a much finer dress now, another that had belonged to Lescu’s wife, and her red hair had started to grow out. The young woman had already begun to help with the chores: milking and baking, chopping wood and making food. But she had found herself drawn to what the blacksmith and Catalin did in the forge—men’s work.

As the wintery days had worsened, Alina Sculcuvant had been true to her word to Fell. She would hide away food at meals, as Mia had done for her, leaving it for her friend at the end of a trail of pebbles from the oak tree. Sometimes, she would go to Gwell’s kennel and, apologising to the dog, take some fresh meat for the wolf. She had not seen Fell at all, but when she saw the food gone, or his paw prints in the snow, and heard his calls in the night, Alina knew that he was still at her side, and she was glad.

As for Fell, he still ranged those hills, skirting the abandoned church and worrying for the human, wondering about Morgra and the horrible vision he had seen, as he sought out word of the Guardian. Often in the night he would look down though, and see orange firelight flickering in the windows of the blacksmith’s house, and wonder what it would be like to be nothing more than a tame dog, sleeping peacefully at Alina Sculcuvant’s side.

The blacksmith was standing now in a shaft of wintery sunlight slanting through the window, and there was a growing pile of new swords on the ground.

“So what will you do, Alina?” he asked, as he swung the hammer. “Journey to Castelu to find the truth about who your parents are?”

It was freezing outside, but with this heat, Alina thought it a wonder that all the snow on the mountains outside had not melted already.

“Yes,” she answered, with a heavy sigh. “When the spring comes, Lescu.”

Lescu’s kind eyes were suddenly filled with worry.

“Why, Alina? In crossing the mountains you’ve proved yourself as good as any boy, it’s true, but it’s madness what you plan. If Vladeran is your father he has broken every natural law. Anyway, he tried to kill you, and there must be some dark reason for it. They say he has sworn himself to upholding the Salic law throughout the lands beyond the forest. Perhaps that’s the reason.”

Alina’s hazel eyes flickered. “Salic law?”

“That women should have no rights equal to men.”

“Why?”

Lescu smiled.

“In seeing Eve as the cause of man’s fall from paradise,” he answered, “lords like Vladeran and the elders of the Church have long taught that you are inferior to men. Perhaps you do have noble blood. You’ve a fine quality about you.”

Alina was silent as she wondered.

“Yet that mark isn’t of Castelu,” the blacksmith went on. “It’s strange, and I beg you to forget this path, girl. Can you not let sleeping dogs lie? Vladeran would be a fearful opponent, and that road takes you through Helgra country.”

“Helgra?” said Alina, remembering the name from that last terrible night in Moldov.

“Magyar tribesmen, from the lands of Hungary, Alina,” said the blacksmith, “although united it’s said with a Dacian people in those parts. A wild, savage people. Their cult is nature, and they’re said to worship animals and the wild wolf. Their territory lies in Castelu’s domain. You’d have to cross it.”

Alina’s heart stirred, but at this talk of a cult of nature a question came into her mind.

“Will you tell me something, Lescu?” she asked suddenly. “Do you think people are … well, do you think we’re the same as animals?”

He stopped hammering and looked up in surprise.

“What a strange question, child. Don’t say things like that around the holy fathers.”

Lescu paused to think, though, holding the sword he was making in the air. “No, of course not,” he answered at last. “Yet I’ve seen men act like wild beasts.”

“Why?” asked Alina sadly, yet suddenly feeling it a childish question.

“That’s difficult to answer, Alina. Hate and fear? The search for power, and land and gold? Sometimes because of beliefs they’re brought up with. I often wonder.”

“What do you mean beliefs they’re brought up with?”

Lescu turned to look at Alina intently.

“Why should we accept the beliefs we’re born into, Alina?” he said. “Christians believe that God came amongst us as a man, do they not? Yet the Muselmen say he was only a prophet, and that God has no name. We paint our churches with images of man and beast, of angels and judgement, while in the East it is forbidden to show images of God’s creatures. We fight and kill each other so readily, yet if I had been born in the East, would I not believe the stories they believe, and if they had been born here, would they not be Christians?”

“I suppose so,” answered Alina Sculcuvant. It all seemed so strange. “Do you believe in God, Lescu?”

Lescu’s eyes flickered.

“God the Father? Well, my own father did, Alina, but I don’t know. I’d not make a fool of myself spending a lifetime searching for something that isn’t even there.”

Lescu suddenly lifted his hammer and looked at it.

“Did you know blacksmiths were once believed to be great magicians?” he whispered. “By those who did not have their knowledge.”

“No.”

“But the blacksmith’s true magic is mastering the nature of heat and metals, and of firing and blending. It’s a great scientia, and I think it is scientia that will one day free man from the fables he grows up with, Alina. But we stray from the matter at hand. You believe you must travel to Castelu along a dark path?”

Alina straightened her back.

“I must find out if they are my parents or not, and why Vladeran wanted me dead. And if my brother lives,” she answered firmly, “and what this mark means too.”

Alina was also thinking of what Fell had said of her destiny, and of nature itself. It suddenly seemed a terrible, impossible burden.

“Perhaps Vladeran still wants you dead, Alina. War comes, and the King is already on the march. The land will be dangerous to cross.”

“I thought you might help me.”

The blacksmith paused with his hammer arm.

“Help you? Indeed, but I’d rather you turned away from this road. If it’s my advice you seek, that’s my counsel.”

“But Ivan told me that you were more than a blacksmith once,” said Alina slowly, “that you were a soldier and a warrior. The Warrior Smith.”

Lescu brought the hammer down again, so hard that it made the metal sing angrily.

“I fought against the Turk, it’s true, and found some fame fighting and killing men.” A dark look came into Lescu’s sweating face. “There’s nothing uglier and more terrible than war, Alina. Why do you mention this, child?”

“I thought that you might …” The young woman hesitated. “Might teach me something of your skill.”

“As a blacksmith, and to earn a living as a Fierar?” said Lescu. “I can do that indeed, as can Catalin, although the people in these parts would not think it woman’s work. You’d fare better in the marketplaces as a storyteller.”

“No, Lescu. I meant teach me to be a warrior.”

The blacksmith swung round in amazement.

“A warrior!” he cried incredulously. “Teach a girl? A child?”

“I’m not a child,” said Alina indignantly, lifting her chin proudly. “Why won’t you teach me?”

“Why won’t I? Teach you how to wield a heavy metal sword, and march fifty miles in thick mud and pouring rain? Teach you to camp without sleep or food, then meet men trained since the cot to fight and kill?”

Lescu laughed, but he seemed angry at the memories, and he began hammering once more, and turned his face away from Alina Sculcuvant.

“You’re a girl, Alina, and growing into a young woman, but you’ve spent too long wearing clothes not your own, and it makes you foolish. Life isn’t a fairy tale, WovenWord, even if we live in Baba Yaga’s valley.”

Alina felt her cheeks burn, but she stood her ground.

“It’s because life isn’t a fairy tale,” she said hotly, “that I need to learn about the real world. Because there are no changelings, or goblins, or walking houses. Because I have no parents worth the name.”

The blacksmith shook his head angrily and was silent.

“If not to be a warrior, Lescu, then at least teach me how to defend myself,” begged Alina. “You could make me a sword of my own.”

The blacksmith turned and smiled coldly.

“Defend yourself? If you don’t put yourself in danger, you will not need to defend yourself,” he answered simply. “You look pretty indeed in that dress; my wife wore it the day she first came to this house, and your hair is growing. One day you’ll be married, and find your happiness. Know your nature then, and don’t try to step beyond what you are, or can be.”

Alina thought darkly of nature. For the first time since they had met, she felt furious with the blacksmith. In touching the powers of the Sight, and in the link with the black wolf, had she not already stepped beyond her own nature? Yet it didn’t feel unnatural, her friendship with the wolf.

“I didn’t put myself in danger,” she said. “They did. I’ve been in danger ever since I was a stupid child.”

“And you’re right to shout out the injustice loud and clear,” said the blacksmith. “But why do you talk so scornfully of being a child? Children want to grow up so badly, but it takes time and care and love, and it’s a thing that should be guarded and enjoyed. While the greatest duty of an adult is to protect the young. To teach them the borders of the world. To help them make the future.”

“Adults need to teach children to grow up too,” said Alina angrily. “And that stories of magic are all a pack of lies.”

Lescu’s eyes flamed. “Silence!” he cried. “What you ask I shall never do. I do not even teach Catalin the arts of war. War’s not a game for silly children.”

“But Lescu…”

“Enough. Don’t raise my anger further, SkeinTale. What you ask’s unnatural, and foolish too. There’s milking to be done.”

Alina glared at Lescu, and turned and stomped from the forge. As the blacksmith watched her go, and thought of Alina’s dark, lonely history, he felt sorry for her, but he went on hammering at the metal with renewed urgency, and shook his head.

Alina’s request set a rift between the girl and the blacksmith that did not heal for some time. Alina would grow silent and sullen in his presence, often stilling her storytelling in the house, but whenever Catalin asked her what was wrong, she would shake her head and tell him angrily it was nothing.

The girl was smarting deeply inside though, and she realised now that it was because of a feeling that had long been locked within her. A feeling that made her as angry and bitterly resentful as Baba Yaga had been of Vasilissa in the story. She would wake suddenly, feeling a dreadful rage inside her, and then she would think of Fell, and want to strike out, and harm the world about her, for all the harm and injustice that had been done to her. For what her own parents had done, perhaps.

Sometimes it was so painful that it was as if she were locked in chains, and wrestling to throw them off, but the young woman felt that she had not the strength, yet she fought nonetheless, feeding only on anger and hurt, and really fighting with herself. She grew sharp and brittle in the presence of the men, thinking of the shepherds and Malduk, and at times almost hating Lescu and Catalin as much as they.

She had not the experience to realise that there was a deep hole in her heart. For all things need the nurturing love of strong protectors, to grow happily and well, like the sunlight drawing flowers from the earth.

There was other resentment inside her, too. In order to enter the tough world of men, so she could work tirelessly for Malduk and Ranna, Alina had already had to dissemble, and hide her true nature. But now, when she had asked her new friend openly about the world of men, he had denied her. Alina had felt his scorn, and amusement too, at the very idea that she could be as good or as strong as a man.

Yet what was her true nature? Alina wondered, as she wondered what nature really meant, or if she could have anything to do with its survival. Like the children of Moldov, Alina had grown up believing many things about how men and women are, and about the world around her, yet what she was learning now was telling her that those things hadn’t been true at all. Something else was eating at the young woman’s heart though. As she looked out into the snows, and listened to the sounds of the forest, wondering what Fell was doing in the wild and if he had found the Guardian, Alina was afraid of the future.

On several evenings Lescu saw in her eyes the anger and fear that she held for her journey, mixed with her determination, as she gazed fixedly through the window in the blacksmith’s house or she sat at table. But the blacksmith had known blood and terror in the East, and seen grown men break down and cry like little children, before their thankless deaths. That was no fate for the girl. Concealment was a far better ally in her journey.

Then one day, as the snows grew thinner, a man came riding through in search of new shoes for his horse. As Lescu worked away on the nervous animal, calming him with his strength and precision, the cheerful stranger began to tell him more of the wars that were coming to the lands beyond the forest.