Fell (The Sight 2) (39 page)

“And no doubt builds one of his sainted churches to mark his glorious success,” whispered Ovidu bitterly, “while real lives are still in the balance in his own lands. I wish this were a dream. I wish the battles of men could be solved in their heads.”

He turned to Catalin.

“And now we’re alone, lad.”

Catalin felt the hand of fear all about them.

“King Stefan promises a court of enquiry,” said the scout, trying to lift the mood, “but it will not come for months.”

“By which time we’ll all be dead,” said Ovidu, “or the good Lord Vladeran.”

Even as he spoke it and they stood there, unaware that they were about to walk into a terrible trap, they heard a sound in the twinkling darkness that stirred the Helgra by their war fires, and made Catalin the storyteller wish bitterly that Fell had never left them. It was the howl of a wild wolf.

THE STORYTELLER STOOD IN THE BRIGHT sunlight in the neck of the gorge, and around him the Helgra carried their swords and antlers, ready for the fight. Their hearts were heavy, for their spies had told them of the strength of Vladeran’s army, and of course the girl they had set out to fight for was in his clutches, but the pale dawn had brought new courage and the way ahead looked clear.

Yet the Helgra did not know what terrible secrets were hidden in wait for them beyond the narrow gorge. The ground ahead strewn with Vladeran’s pits, and his soldiers waiting hungrily in the forests that edged the valley. If the Helgra moved ahead, they would be caught like flies in a trap.

“Well, storyteller?” said Ovidu, smiling at Catalin. “Shall I give the order to advance?”

The young man looked surprised that the Helgra should ask him, but he nodded, and Ovidu raised his arm.

“Alina!” cried the fighters as they began to move off. “Alina WolfPaw!”

Suddenly, from the side of the mountain, a shape came streaking towards them. Fell’s black coat was drenched in sweat, from so many nights without sleep as he had rushed to their aid, and Catalin saw a livid scar on his right side as the wolf reached them. Fell could not speak to the human, but the wolf stood there with raised tail, growling furiously at Catalin, as if he wished to bar their way. Fell had scouted the forest the night before and seen Vladeran’s soldiers in the trees, and he knew their traps only too well. Alina’s warning had been real.

“Fell,” whispered Catalin in amazement. “You’ve come. But what is wrong?”

Lifting his paw and clawing softly at his leg, Fell whined in frustration, as he tried to reach Catalin with his mind and warn him of the terrible danger they were in. Catalin knelt down, and placing a hand on the wolf’s head, calmed his panting snarls, but the wolf kept swinging his head towards the neck of the gorge and growling again.

“There’s something out there,” said Ovidu suddenly, stepping forwards. “The wolf senses it.”

“Yes,” whispered Catalin. “You think it’s a trap?”

“I don’t know, Catalin, but we must take counsel.”

The wolf calmed a little as he saw the Helgra leaders gathering together now and whispering amongst themselves, looking back at him and the pass. There was argument amongst them, for Ovidu was only first amongst equals with these men and many thought a direct attack the best, but the wolf’s sudden appearance and his demeanour had alerted them all. Catalin had his hand on Fell’s head still, as the council broke up and Ovidu strode towards him.

“We’re agreed,” he said. “We’ll split our forces and go around. Something’s wrong here.”

Fell was filled with pride as he took the lead at Catalin and Ovidu’s side, out along the mountain path that skirted the neck of the gorge, and he sensed that his presence had renewed the Helgra’s courage. But the black wolf’s heart was heavy. From the forest, he had seen far more than those soldiers and those traps. He had seen Vladeran’s palace and that great river that protected it, and if he had to cross it to reach Alina, he would have to face his old fear, death by water. The wolf had seen the size of the human army too, and he was only a lone wolf once more.

Yet far more than this clouded his heart and mind. Morgra had come to him once more in the night, tempting him to use the Summoning Howl. Like a blue spectre, she had stood before him in his dreams, promising that she would see him again, urging him to seek revenge. But worse, she had laughed at his talk of a Guardian and told him that tricksters were spreading lies eveywhere. Fell had thrown her off once more, but his heart was filled with his old terror for his aunt and her power.

It was a power that seemed so much stronger than his own now. What could a lone wolf do in a human battle? Nothing at all. Pantheos had spoken of a great mind, moving through nature, of the animals turning to help Alina Sculcuvant, help for their very survival. Yet as Fell had neared the armies, he had noticed that the land about them was strangely devoid of animals, who seemed to have run away in fear, just as they feared the wolf. Was Morgra right?

It was a foolish dream, Fell told himself. Somehow he was being tricked. The Lera would never come to their aid. Fell was now convinced that this Guardian had been nothing more than a Borar. Perhaps the bear had believed his own words. Even Skart’s words, so many of which had come true, seemed absurd to the wolf. A human male had spoken through a wolf, and Fell had touched the elements and risen from a river again, but it was the last words of that riddle that had put a final doubt in Fell’s mind. A clawed Putnar open its wings? Or a wolf sprout two heads? It was utterly impossible. It was all a stupid story.

As they ran, Fell tried to tell himself to believe and trust, as Pantheos had urged him, but he doubted even Pantheos now, as he doubted so many of the stories that mingled with the real, hard life of the wolf, only to sow confusion. Fell thought, with a certainty he had never known, that he was running to his own death, and the death of these humans about him too. Yet the wolf would face what was to come, not to fulfil a destiny and save nature itself, but for Alina Sculcuvant alone.

“Fell. It is you, Fell. You’re near now, I can feel it. I knew you wouldn’t abandon us. You must save the Helgra from the trap. Must save my people. I wish I’d never brought them to this.”

In Alina’s vivid dream she felt hope swelling in her heart. She could hear the panting wolf nearby, and felt her feet touching the fresh, clean grass, running free through the forest.

But the images changed and she saw a terrible vision of men and banners tumbling into open wolf pits, their bodies pierced by sharpened sticks, like a thousand ghostly vampires with stakes plunged into their hearts. Alina groaned, as she had in a barn long ago with her dreams of goblins and fairies. Her journey had taught her that there was no magic in the real world, and it was she that had brought her people to despair and destruction.

“
No!
” she screamed.

“Alina.”

“Yes, Fell. It’s me. I’m here. Where are you, Fell? I can’t see you anymore.”

“Alina, wake up.”

Fell’s words had been nothing but a dream, and the whispering that was telling her gently to wake wasn’t Fell at all, but a human voice in her prison cell. Alina WovenWord opened her eyes and stirred in the straw. A tall figure in a grey hooded cloak—a monk—stood before her. She felt the sudden rush of terror. The priest. Her final blessing had come at last, and so had Alina’s execution.

“Get up, child. Hurry now.”

“You’ve come for me then, Father?” she whispered sadly. “The Helgra are vanquished so quickly? Is Catalin dead?”

“Has it been so very long, Alina of Castelu? Don’t you recognise my voice?”

The monk had raised his hands to his cowl to uncloak his face, and Alina’s heart clenched. Before her was that face of her dreams and that tumbling, curling black hair—her mother, Romana.

Then Alina saw the dagger she was clutching in her hand.

“So it is you who has come to kill me, Mother,” she hissed bitterly, “because you really love my half brother. And want him to rule in Castelu.”

Romana looked down at the dagger. “Kill you, Alina?” she whispered. “Never. This is for him. For Vladeran.”

Doubt filled Alina’s hazel eyes.

“Then you …”

“Knew nothing, I swear it. Until I overheard Vladeran talking in the great chamber.”

Alina’s eyes flickered. She so wanted to believe. “Oh, Mother,” she said.

The beautiful woman held back, as if still uncertain, then suddenly she was kneeling before her daughter, holding Alina’s face in her trembling hands and dropping the dagger.

“Yes, I’m your mother, Alina. If one so foolish and wicked as I deserves such a name. Can you ever forgive me?”

“Forgive you?”

“I treated you so coldy, Alina, after I lost your father. You so much remind me of him, and I turned my love towards the baby. I was angry too when the wolves took Elu. It blinded me to my true feelings, and made me believe Vladeran’s filthy lies.”

Romana reached out and clasped her daughter’s hands. Tears were streaming down their cheeks, and she pulled the girl towards her and began to kiss her face desperately, between her anguished sobs.

“Forgive me, Alina. Please.”

Romana pulled back again and looked deep into her daughter’s hazel eyes, with the strange fleck of green.

“If I’d ever known, my child, ever suspected for a single moment, I wouldn’t have rested until I found you, I swear it. But I thought you were dead. Taken and murdered by Turks, like your father, Dragomir.”

“Then you know everything now?”

“I knew nothing until I overheard Vladeran talking of a young woman in the great chamber and a wolf and our people,” answered Romana’s shaking voice, between her bitter tears. “Since then I’ve hardly been able to sleep or rest, worrying for you and them. I knew as soon as the Shield Guard came they were trying to keep all knowledge of you from me, but that you must be near.”

Romana was looking about in disgust and anger.

“I felt it though, Alina, sensed that you were close, but I hardly dared believe the magic.”

The young woman could hardly believe that her own mother was suddenly here, holding her hands so lovingly.

“Dearest Alina, let me look at you and see you with restored eyes. For years I’ve been blind, daughter.”

Alina almost blushed as her mother lifted her chin with her hand and looked at her. She rubbed away some of the dirt on her face and touched the fringe of her short, boyish red hair.

“What have they done to you, my darling?”

“It’s all right, Mother. I came disguised as a man, for I had man’s work to do. And I can fight like them too, as a Helgra woman.”

Romana’s tearful eyes glinted proudly.

“And more, from what I hear of you, Alina,” she whispered wonderingly. “They speak of a black wolf and a power. It’s like the ancient myths.”

“It is the Sight,” said Alina, wondering where Fell was now and thinking with sudden worry of Catalin and the Helgra. “It’s all so strange, Mother, as though I’ve been living through a dark dream. There’s a bond between us, and somehow we’re linked.”

“As the house of Castelu seems always to have been linked to the fortunes of the wolf,” said Romana, nodding. “As your brother Elu was taken by wolves that night, but then restored to us, just as mysteriously. I blamed you then, my child, for Elu’s disappearance and almost wanted you banished. It closed my heart to the truth too. Forgive me, I beg of you.”

“And I shouldn’t have left him alone,” said Alina, “though I was very young. It’s all right now, Mother.”

“Yes, Alina,” said Romana more cheerfully. “If only your father could see you now, if only he hadn’t died …”

“Been murdered you mean.”

Romana’s hands closed around Alina’s wrists.

“What are you saying?”

“The day Father fell from his horse on the battlefield and was cut down,” said Alina angrily, “his saddle had been tampered with.”

Romana pulled back in horror, as if she feared to hear what she already knew in her own secret heart.

“By his best friend?” she whispered coldly. “By my husband, Vladeran?”

“Yes.”

Again scalding tears were falling from Romana’s eyes.

“Can you ever forgive me? You must forgive me.”

Alina’s kind heart suddenly melted.

“Hush, Mother. There’s nothing to forgive now.”

“I would have acted if I’d known anything, I swear it, but I had turned in on myself, when I should have been looking outwards to my people. I didn’t know that Vladeran had been persecuting the Helgra. I should have known, I should. But after Elu came back I wanted nothing more to do with wolves.”

“Mother,” said Alina urgently, struggling to get up, “our people, and my friend Catalin, are in terrible danger, and I brought it on them. They come to save me, but Vladeran has set a trap for them. We must do something before it’s too late.”

Before her mind’s eye, Alina could see the Helgra tipping towards those ghastly pits fanning the gorge. Catalin too. She had to stop it.

“Peace, Alina,” said Romana softly, raising the young woman to her feet. “Somehow they learnt of this trap and broke ranks, circling the main body of our army, and avoiding the pass towards the palace. They are on the plain before these gates and they try to cross the ditch.”

Alina’s heart leapt. Had Fell somehow managed to reach Catalin and the Helgra and warn them after all? Had she summoned him with the Sight? As she stood there, she began to hear faint sound from the corridor outside. Not the wails and moans of prisoners, but distant cries and shouts beyond. The blaring of horns and the clash of metal on metal.

“There’s hard fighting,” said her mother, “and all will be swept up in it. We must hurry.”

A man moved out of the shadow of the prison door. It was a Shield Guard.

“It’s all right, Alina,” said Romana, looking sternly at him. “Landu has remembered his true loyalties at last. It’s how I discovered you were here.”

“And you’re right, my lady, we must hurry,” said Landu gravely, and guiltily too. “Elu waits in your chamber. There are fresh horses saddled and ready in the courtyard nearby. We must get you all away behind the Helgra lines, or even better, and far safer, to the armies of King Stefan.”