Fell (The Sight 2) (24 page)

“It’s wondrous,” he whispered, thinking of how Alina had asked him if people were the same as animals, “truly miraculous. Enchantment seems to follow you wherever you go, changeling. But I’ve heard of such things before. Of children lost in the forest being reared by wolves. As for this power, this Sight, there are stranger things in the world, and some have deeper bonds with the animals than others. This wolf killed Malduk, didn’t it?”

“Yes, Lescu.”

“Then perhaps it’s your friend, and I realise now you’ve been protecting him too. But others will see it only as evil and witchcraft, and hunt you for it. As they will hate you too for trying to show the strength and skill of a man. And Catalin must never know of such a thing. He can be superstitious, and it would unsettle him deeply.”

“No, Lescu. I promise it.”

“What are you going to do, Alina WovenWord?” asked the blacksmith gravely.

“Go, and go quickly,” answered Alina firmly, feeling sick to her stomach. “I’m only a danger to you and Catalin now. Wherever I go I’m nothing but a curse.”

Alina was already knotting the hair on her head.

“Don’t say that, child. Ever.”

“It’s true!” cried the young woman in anguish. “Disaster and sorrow seem to follow me everywhere I go. I must begin my journey.”

“There’s another way,” said Lescu, looking towards the forests. “Make this wolf understand that you’re happy here, and that you’ve found a real home. The rumour will fade like a dream, and become just another fairy tale, peddled in the markets around Baba Yaga’s valley. The villagers from Moldov are looking for a boy now anyway, not a girl, and we keep ourselves far enough apart to stop people meddling in our affairs.”

Alina wanted nothing more desperately in all her life, but she thought of Fell and what she would say to him. She thought of the danger to Lescu and Catalin too.

“I … I must think, Lescu. Must walk awhile.”

“Of course, Alina.”

She turned and walked past the barn and the forge. She made for the stream and the edge of the forest, and as soon as she neared the great oak, she stood looking deep into the tangled trees and began to call.

“Fell. Are you there, Fell? I must talk to you, dear friend.”

Only the whispering of the breeze came back to answer the troubled young woman. Alina must have stood there for hours, wrestling with her desire to stay with Catalin and Lescu, and her duty to safeguard them, by leaving their home forever. She looked out into the wild and listened to the whispering voices in the trees. She thought of her meeting with Fell in the cave and the great destiny that awaited her. Alina thought too of what she had seen of Fell, and how hard it had been out there in the mountains.

She began to walk, calling in her mind to Fell, wrapped in confusion. The parchment had proven she wasn’t a changeling, but a real girl, but her meeting with Fell had been as strange as any witchcraft. If the Sight was a real power, a power greater than common magic, then perhaps this destiny she faced was true, and she was somehow important. Yet Alina doubted now even the tales that she and Catalin told, growing up as she had to face the true harshness of life.

Alina stopped suddenly. She had come to a part of the wood where the trees ended abruptly, and the ground suddenly sloped down towards a shallow ravine. Alina heard a strange sound, and what she saw stole her breath away. There, lurching across the grass, was a wooden house. Alina felt fear lock her to the ground, and as she realised that the noise was the clucking of a chicken, although she could see none about, a wonder and terror came to her greater than she had ever felt before.

“Baba Yaga,” she gasped. “It’s Baba Yaga’s house. Then this really is her valley. Magic does exist. It’s true, all of it.”

Even as she said it, fearful of arousing the old hag’s interest, or sending her rushing for her mortar and pestel, Alina noticed that the moving house didn’t have chicken legs at all. Instead, underneath it were rolling logs, carrying it along the gully, and behind it she now saw men, pushing it along.

It wasn’t a witch’s cottage at all, but one of the little wooden churches in the lands beyond the forest, that were built so small and light and compact that in times of danger from the Turk they might be lifted entire onto logs and taken to a safer place. For man will try to guard his faith more preciously even than his gold.

With that a rooster appeared behind a tree, crowing and darting its head haughtily, and Alina might have laughed, if she hadn’t felt so foolish. As she watched the funny male chicken, she wondered to herself again if this great secret of man and animals was really true. Then she remembered Lescu’s words of war and death, and she realised that it didn’t matter to her. Fell’s face was in her mind’s eye too, and she knew she cared greatly for the wild creature, but that other faces had come to her now, and they belonged to Catalin and Lescu. To her own.

As Alina thought of how her mind had suddenly tricked her into believing a church was Baba Yaga’s house, as she thought of Ivan’s words of being true to herself too, to her own nature, she suddenly made a decision. It was growing dark as she turned back to the house, and a three-quarter moon was peering through the skies, but there was a wonderful lightness in her tread.

“Lescu!” she cried happily, as she neared the oak again. “Catalin! I will stay with you. I don’t want a great destiny. I don’t care if they are my real parents. I’ll go into the mountains, until they’ve stopped looking, but then I’ll come back. I’ll come home.”

Alina was filled with joy as she ran, and the wonderful lightness of resolve, but as soon as she passed the forge, she knew something was desperately wrong. It was the strange silence that hung about, and the absence of smoke curling from the little chimney. Alina heard a nervous whinny and saw a group of horses corralled at the back of the house.

She rushed up to the porch and saw the front door broken in, and then the blood. It stained the entire front porch, and Alina recoiled. Poor Gwell was lying there, a silent, unmoving shape, for the hunting dog’s throat had been cut. Alina burst through the door with an angry shout, but she stopped in her tracks in horror.

“No!”

There sat Lescu, in a wooden chair. He looked as if he were asleep, but the blacksmith’s heavy arms were bound fast to the chair, and his head was slumped forwards. His jerkin was bloodstained and a dagger was poking from his chest, near his heart.

“No, Lescu. Please, no.”

Alina rushed towards him, but as soon as she touched him she knew that he was dead. She felt sick and heartbroken, and winced as she pulled the dagger out of the dead man. Alina sensed that she wasn’t alone in the room and swung round.

“So the hare’s taken the bait?” said a soft, cold voice in the shadows.

She recognised the man in the hood from the market. He stepped from the corner of the room, and as he lowered his hood slowly, Alina saw the vicious scar on his right cheek and gasped. “You!” It was the soldier who had warned her and Mia of the Turks that terrible night.

“What have you done?” she snarled. “Murderer. Assassin.”

The girl had never felt such terrible hatred in all her life, not even for Malduk and Ranna.

“You’re the murderer, are you not, Alin SkeinTale?” answered Vlascan, the captain of Vladeran’s Shield Guard. “By reputation at least. And we’re just soldiers, defending ourselves. He would not have died if he had not grabbed for the dagger, and he would have suffered far less if he had told us where you were.”

Alina felt salt tears burn her eyes, and hate churn in her stomach. She wondered where Catalin was. Perhaps he was safe. She was wrestling with the terrible fury inside her, a fury that brought a strange helplessness, and remembered what Lescu had said of control and balance. Alina tried to clear her mind, and calm her heart. To breathe.

“By what right do you do this?” she whispered coldly.

“Put the knife down, girl.”

Alina stepped forwards with the knife raised, but another soldier emerged from the shadows, clasping Catalin by the neck and holding a blade to the lad’s throat. Catalin’s eyes were burning and his cheeks were stained with tears.

“Alina.”

From his right stepped another soldier, as two more appeared with drawn swords on either side of Vlascan. The captain smiled contentedly.

“I missed you once, but your flight’s over, girl,” he said. “Now put down the dagger, or the boy dies.”

Alina’s mind was in turmoil, but slowly she placed the dagger on the table.

“Now roll up your sleeve,” ordered Vlascan, who nodded as she did so and he saw the little eagle on her arm.

“Long and hard we’ve searched for that through the winter snows, and now we have you, like a partridge for the pot.”

“What does it mean?” whispered the young woman, staring down at the eagle. “This mark.”

Alina Sculcuvant felt she was nearing the truth of who she was at last.

“That you should be dead already. For your noble blood.”

Alina felt something stiffen in her spine. Catalin was staring at Alina, and the young woman felt as if Vlascan’s words had just answered her prophetic heart.

“Then I do have noble blood. The mark means that I’m of the house of Castelu.”

“I know nothing of the mark,” answered Vlascan with a scowl, “except that it leads me to you, and though not of Castelu, it’s the same as your mother Romana bears.”

Alina was trembling. Her mother. She still feared to hear the truth.

“Then Romana is my mother?”

Vlascan nodded.

“And Lord Vladeran my father?” Alina asked, not wanting to believe.

Vlascan looked at Alina in amazement. “Vladeran your father?” he cried. “Of course not. You are Lord Dragomir’s child.”

Alina blinked.
Dragomir
. The name instantly brought an image to Alina’s mind, one she’d never been able to conjure when she thought of Vladeran—of the man in her dreams with the dark red hair. Aloof, yet kindly.
Dragomir
. A strange hope lit in the girl’s heart. Yet how could it be if Romana was her mother?

“Then who is …”

“Lord Vladeran? Your father’s best friend and lieutenant, of course, until Dragomir’s death.”

“Death?” said Alina in horror.

“On the battlefield, fighting the Turk.”

There were tears stinging Alina’s eyes.

“How the Lady Romana grieved then, until Vladeran wooed her. She didn’t heal fully though, until she bore him a fine son of his own. Your half brother, Elu.”

Suddenly Alina understood. The little baby she had been guarding was not her brother, but her half brother.

“How Vladeran hated you when his son was taken by wolves in the village below the castle where Romana bore him.” The castle that had towered over the dreams and nightmares of a wild wolf pack, whose destiny had been touched by the Legend of the Sight. Fell’s pack.

“That’s why he wanted me dead,” cried Alina, “because I didn’t protect Elu?”

Vlascan smiled. “Yes. He was filled with thoughts of revenge when Elu vanished. You had always opposed Vladeran’s love for your mother too, and stood in the way of his ambition.”

“Why? I’m only a girl.”

“Only a girl? Perhaps you are, child, but the true heir to Castelu.”

Alina WovenWord stepped back in amazement, and Catalin’s eyes were locked on hers. It couldn’t be. Not only was Alina the Lady Romana’s daughter, but she was the heir to Castelu. A destiny indeed.

“But how?” she whispered, trembling furiously, and feeling a horrible weakness.

“Don’t you know anything of it?” grunted Vlascan. “Well, it won’t hurt to tell you now. The line of descent in Castelu stands, by ancient custom that stretches back to Roman times, outside the common Salic laws in the lands beyond the forest, and is one of absolute primogeniture.”

Vlascan was scowling scornfully.

“I don’t understand,” whispered Alina.

“It means, girl, that unlike the true law, the Salic law, which always excludes female children from inheritance, it passes naturally to the eldest child, whatever their sex. As it once passed to your mother, Romana.”

Alina was trembling.

“Then why didn’t Vladeran just kill me himself?” cried Alina bitterly, remembering also how coldly her mother had treated her.

“Perhaps he tried,” answered Vlascan, “but my lord is deeply superstitious, like his cousin Draculea.”

Tried Lord Vladeran had indeed. When Romana had returned in mourning for Elu from the Helgra village, Vladeran had crept into Alina’s chamber to kill her himself. Vladeran had never liked the little girl. She was an impetuous, difficult child, full of will and instinct, and more like a boy than her feminine mother. She had always loved to pick up swords and fight the boys, to argue and to learn things he thought the natural right of men.

Yet fear and superstition had stayed Vladeran’s hand. He felt suddenly that a curse might fall if he did such a terrible thing within the realms of Castelu. It seemed also a betrayal too far of those holy principles he had once sworn to protect in his inauguration into the Order of the Griffin.

So Vladeran had found a man, a soldier, to drug Alina and take her beyond the borders of his land, in a world that guarded its borders as keenly as it fought for power and position against the threat of the Ottoman.

There his lieutenant was told to slay the girl. He would have done it too, if a pack of wolves had not called in the night as he rode with little Alina and startled his horse so badly that it had shied and slipped over a ledge.

Vladeran had often regretted that he hadn’t made sure of the thing himself, now more than ever.

“It’s a strange tale,” said Vlascan, “and grew stranger with the howls that rose when your mother returned to the village.”

“What do you mean?” said Alina, feeling a deep pain in her heart.

“She had gone there again, perhaps to mourn for your half brother, for she adored him.”

Alina’s heart tightened.

“Imagine your mother’s surprise, when a great chorus of wolf song went up, and rushing to investigate, she found that there in the snows was the boy child again, Vladeran’s son. Elu was alive and well, and although he had the scent of wolf on him, and even seemed to growl strangely as they approached—or so they say—he was unharmed.”