High The Vanes (The Change Book 2) (10 page)

We both rubbed our arms and legs as we waited for the inevitable moment when Nefyn returned. It did not take long. We heard him shuffling along the tunnel. When his head appeared, he lifted it, obviously expecting to see us tied down as he had left us. As a look of shock passed across his face, Eluned lifted her hand and brought the log down on the back of his head. There was a loud crack. It brought back a memory of the moment when he must have done the same to me. Nefyn’s body slumped. A thin line of blood trickled out of one nostril.

With the amazing strength that I only occasionally saw her use, Eluned dragged his body into the Room. Picking up the other log, she pulled back Nefyn’s head by the hair and smashed it across his throat. There was a brief gurgling noise. Again she smashed the log across his throat. Blood spurted from his neck and she let his head drop. There seemed little chance that there was life left in his body.

Despite what he had done to us, what he had threatened to do to us, I felt a slight twinge of guilt as I watched this. That Eluned belonged to a time when such savagery was commonplace was made abundantly clear to me at that moment. I could not have done it. Yet she had calmly planned it, while preparing what would be our evening meal. Planned and executed it. That indeed was what it was – an execution, plain and simple. Nefyn had committed a gross offence against the two of us, and, according to the morality that Eluned lived by, the only punishment he deserved was death. And she had no worries about being the one to administer the sentence.

“Soon it will begin to smell, my lady,” she said, turning to me. I was still sitting near the fire, looking at the drops of Nefyn’s blood that had struck my legs, now becoming indistinguishable from my own blood. “We must drag it outside where the birds will devour it. But not tonight. First we eat. Then we sleep. Tomorrow we must find some way to replace our clothes.”

Too shocked, too exhausted to argue, I drank a bowl of broth then wrapped myself in my blanket. I was soon asleep, only to be haunted by nightmare visions. I saw Nefyn tear out Eluned’s tongue with his hand, a look of sheer evil in his eyes, sheer terror in hers. Then I saw Eluned smashing his face with a log that dripped blood. She was laughing as she did this. I woke several times that night, to stare into the darkness before sleep overwhelmed me again.

When a feeble light eventually indicated that another day had come, Eluned rose from her blanket, folded it neatly and stepped over to me. She saw I was awake.

“We must go now, my lady,” she said. “We must not be away from this place for too long.”

“Why?” I said, barely awake.

“The Lady Gwenllian will return. She will expect us to be here. We have no more than two or three hours. Come, my lady.”

“What about him?” I said, pointing at Nefyn’s body, heaped in the corner.

“We will dispose of that later. Now we must leave.”

I dropped my blanket as she pushed me towards the entrance. When we reached daylight, even though it was still very early and the clouds were heavy overhead, I stood and took in several deep breaths. It was wonderful to be out of that hell hole at last. I spun around, my arms outstretched.

“Take care, my lady,” Eluned said as she rose up from the tunnel. “Your skirts.”

I stopped spinning. I had almost forgotten why we were leaving. “Where are we going, then?”

“I know not,” Eluned said. “We shall walk each day in a new direction. No more than one hour’s walking, maybe a little more. At the end of this time, we must return. If we find nothing, the next day we walk in a different direction. There will be some place in the end.”

She set off, at her usual fast pace. Today she headed in the opposite direction from where we had arrived. And so we continued to do so for the next several days. Each day we walked for an hour or so, before she stopped and we returned. Each day we found nothing. On the fourth day we saw some ruined buildings, but there was nothing to be found except broken walls.

When we returned that first night, Eluned made me help her drag Nefyn’s body out of the Room. It was heavy, but with her strength pulling and my feeble assistance pushing at the feet, we managed to drag him outside. Eluned then lifted the body by the armpits and pushed it over the nearest broken Roman wall. For the next two or three days there was a bad smell as we passed it, but soon the smell faded, as the crows gathered around it.

On the seventh day, Eluned set out at a much slower pace than before. I wondered if she was beginning to think what I had feared for two or three days. There was nothing to be found. The area around Uricon was deserted. We would not find any where useful unless we ventured into one of the Casters, something neither of us wished to do. The hour passed as usual until, just as she was about to turn back, I spotted what looked like a light off to the side. We turned towards it.

As we approached, it became clear that the light was coming from a house. Immediately, I stopped. In a flash, I thought I knew what this was. It was just like the one we had come across what now seemed to be years ago. Eluned took a few more steps before she turned.

“Why have you stopped, my lady?”

“Vagabondi,” I said.

“There are no crwydwyr around here,” she said.

“You said they are everywhere. Have you any idea in which direction we have been walking today?”

“No. Only that it is not the same as those we have walked before.”

“How far is Uricon from that big city – what is it called - ‘Deva Caster’?”

“It is far, my lady. Much further than we could walk in one hour.”

“And the other one? I think it was called ‘Salopian Caster’?”

“Not so far. But still further than one hour. More like one day.”

“One day for us. Not one day for them. You must remember that place we passed before? We were nearly caught there. This place looks exactly the same.”

“I fear you may be right, my lady. But we have found nothing else. And we have been searching for many days. I will go closer. Perhaps you should stay here.”

“I will not, Eluned. Where you go, I go. What if they were to see you? To capture you? How would I know? What would I do? If we are going to see what is there, we go together.”
 

As if to prove my point, I set off towards the house. Eluned quickly followed.

Unlike our previous encounter with a vagabondi outpost, there were no hedges to hide our approach. Once we could see the house clearly, we lay down on our stomachs, the long grass hiding us a little. For a long time we lay there, watching, but nothing stirred. Finally, my legs wet from the damp grass, what remained of my shift beginning to soak up the moisture, I rose up to my knees.

“I think it’s empty,” I whispered. “Should we move closer?”

Eluned struggled to her feet. “We must take care,” she said, moving slowly forward. Step by stealthy step we approached the house. It stood alone on this open, grass-covered plain. Long and low, it was only one storey high, with a door at one end and two windows along the side. In the window furthest from us we could see the bright light which had first attracted my attention.

Quickening our pace, we covered the short distance between us until we were crouched against the wall between the windows. Eluned slid sideways, passing under the window before raising herself to look in. She put her finger to her lips and beckoned me forward. I slid along and stood up so that I could see in.

On a table in the middle of the room, there was a lamp from which came the brightest light I think I had ever seen. It shone on a large, open book. Sat poring over the book was a young woman. She was so deeply engrossed in her reading that she had not heard our approach at all. It reminded me of how I had been when I was in school, ploughing through the Bible, struggling to comprehend every word. This young woman looked just as if she was a student in a Schola, not sat alone at a table in a house in the middle of nowhere.

Eluned caught my eye. “Who?” she mouthed. I shook my head.

“Guard?” she mouthed. I shrugged my shoulders. The woman seemed to be too old to be a student, but was she old enough to be a Guard? Left alone out here? Presumably very far from her Caster?

Eluned crouched down again, slid sideways beneath the window and ran, crouching, past me, towards the door. I turned back to look again through the window at the woman. Could this have been me, I thought. Had I stayed in my Caster, finished my schooling, would I have become a Guard like her? Would I have been able to sit, alone, in such a place, with nothing but the Bible for company? Maybe I would. After all, I had now seen far more than this woman could probably even imagine existed in the world around her.

Suddenly, as I watched, the door behind her opened. As she turned, Eluned appeared behind her. With swift movements she covered the woman’s mouth with one hand as she struck the side of her head with the other. The woman’s body sagged limply into Eluned’s arms. She dragged her off the chair and laid her on the floor next to the table.

Unable to stop myself, I screamed. Eluned rushed up to the window and pulled it open. Leaning out, she said, “Stop, my lady. Stop this noise.”

“You’ve killed her,” I wailed. “Why? What has she done to you?”

“She is not dead. Merely sleeping. Come inside. We will see what there is for us here. We will be gone before she wakes.”

Feeling only slightly relieved, I walked along the wall and entered the house. Just inside the door there was a small kitchen. A door led out of this into what was clearly a bedroom. There was one bed, neatly made up. There was also a large cupboard, built in to the side wall. A door from the bedroom led into the room we had seen from outside. As I entered it I nearly tripped over the young woman who lay sprawled on the floor. It was clear from her breathing that she was unconscious, not dead, for which I felt thankful.

“Is she a Guard?” Eluned asked as I came in.

“I think so,” I said. “She is wearing part of a uniform. It looks like a Guard’s uniform. The trousers. The blue shirt. She is not wearing the coat. Or the helmet.”

‘Why would she wear a coat or a helmet inside?’ I thought to myself.

“She will have other clothes?”

“Maybe. Perhaps another uniform. It’s hard to say. There only appears to be one bed here, so I think she must be alone. Other Guards must presumably pass by. There is a cupboard in the bedroom.”

Eluned went into the bedroom and I heard her pulling open the doors of the cupboard. Pushing the chair under the table – again, I noticed, there was only the one chair – I kneeled down beside the woman. She was indeed young. Slightly older than me, I guessed at first, but not by much. She had short black hair which framed a very pale face. At the moment her face was turned away from me and I could see a bruise starting to show where Eluned had struck her. It was difficult to tell because of the way she was lying, but I guessed that she was not as tall as me, or Eluned. She seemed somehow quite short, and this made her look almost child-like.

As I looked at her it became clear to me that her body was also child-like. She had no chest or hips such as I had developed in these past years. I began to wonder if she was indeed a child. I turned her face towards me. It was the face of a young girl, hardly a woman. ‘A child-woman’ as Nefyn had described me. Yet next to this creature I was definitely not a child. Her eyelids flickered. She opened her eyes. The look of sheer terror that appeared in them melted my heart.

“Eluned,” I called softly. “She’s awake. I think she’s little more than a child.”

“There are some clothes in here,” Eluned called.

“Never mind those for now. Come in here.”

I had put my arm beneath the girl’s shoulders and lifted her into a sitting position. As I did so, she moved her legs and tried to get up.

“Stop,” I said. “Take your time. That was a hard blow. You’ve been unconscious.”

She turned her head to look at me. I could still see the fear in her eyes. She was terrified. Eluned came in. She stopped when she saw me kneeling, cradling the girl.

“You must leave her, my lady. She will report us.”

“We can’t leave her in this state. It’s because of you that she looks so afraid. And so shaken.” I turned back to the girl. “What is your name? Why are you here?”

She mumbled something that I did not catch.

“Say that again. What is your name?”

“Arachne0644,” she said, more clearly. “I will say nothing else.”

She turned on her side and pushed herself into a kneeling position, from which she stood up. She was indeed as small as I had thought. She barely reached to our shoulders. She looked at the door, but Eluned was blocking it. She scuttled round the other side of the table, grabbing her Bible as she did so. She held it to her chest, protectively.

“Arachne0644 is your Ovidian name. Mine is Semele0442. Do you have a family name? I am Non. This is Eluned.”

She said nothing, staring at us. I realised that we must have looked very strange to her. Two tall women, dressed in ragged shifts that barely covered the tops of our legs, one blonde, the other dark-haired. We were both frightening to look at for someone such as this girl, straight out of the world I had left.

She stopped staring at Eluned and looked at me. “You have an Ovidian name? You are from the Change?”

“I was. Many years ago. No longer.” I smiled.

“Why …?” she started. She did not continue.

“It’s a long, long story,” I said. “We do not have the time to explain. We need your clothes. As you can see, those we have are ruined. It would be better if you gave them to us. And then forget you ever saw us.”

“That is not possible, my lady,” Eluned said.

“What?” I said.

“She cannot forget us. That is why I wished to leave before she awoke. Now it is too late. She will have to be disposed of.”

I laughed. The girl shrank into herself. “Disposed of? Like a piece of rubbish? Like you did with Nefyn? To be picked over by the birds?”

I turned back to the girl. “0644. She’s two years younger than me.”

“How do you know this?” Eluned said.