My Swordhand Is Singing (5 page)

Peter found his father inside, as usual. For once, though, there was no drink in sight, and there was a pot bubbling on the top of the stove.

“There’s all sorts of commotion in the village,” Peter said, before he had even closed out the cold.

“What?” Tomas asked, looking up from stirring the pot.

“Sheep have been attacked. In their sheds. Cattle in the pasture too.”

“So the wolves are getting hungry,” Tomas said. “What of it?”

“It’s not wolves. Well, that’s what they’re saying in Chust.”

“So what is it then?” Tomas asked.

“I think you know what they’re saying,” Peter said.

“Pah!” Tomas spat on the floor. “Idiots! And you’re an idiot too for listening.”

“I’m just telling you what I heard,” said Peter. “That’s all. You know the miller who died last month? Willem? His widow says he visits her in the night.”

Tomas said nothing; he turned his attention back to the pot on the stove.

Peter kept going, for once seeing the chance to actually get his father to talk.

“She says he’s been visiting her for a week now. She’s very ill. Pale and won’t eat.”

“So what? She wouldn’t be the first silly old woman to say that! That snooty girl of yours. Agnes.”

“Yes?” said Peter angrily. “What about her?”

“They told me in the inn yesterday that her mother’s been saying the same thing about her husband.”

Peter looked at his father.

“They said what?”

“You heard,” Tomas said.

“And you didn’t tell me?”

Tomas whirled around, sending the pot of stew flying to the floor as he stormed over to Peter, who flinched, convinced his father was going to strike him.

“No,” Tomas shouted right into his face, “I didn’t tell you, because it’s all nonsense!”

Peter stood, breathing heavily, trembling. The stew was spreading across the floor. He looked back at his father, determined to hold his gaze.

“I’m going to see Agnes,” he said quietly. “I’m taking Sultan. I’ll be back late.”

Peter strode out of the hut and with a silent apology to Sultan put the horse’s saddle and bridle on again. He galloped into Chust, fuming about his father as he rode, happy to let him have to clear up the spilled stew.

In the hut, Tomas stared at the mess he’d made.

He got on his hands and knees and tried to scrape what he could back into the pot, but all he managed to do was fill it with a muddy slop. He took the pot outside and threw its contents into the river, then swilled it out and went back indoors. He threw sawdust over what was left on the floor.

He stood, breathing in quick gulps of air. His eyes fixed on the barrel of slivovitz, but he forced them to move on, and found himself staring at his bed.

He glanced at the door, but he knew Peter was way into the village by now. Nonetheless he threw the bolt and went and knelt by his low cot, as if he were about to pray.

Instead, he rummaged with both hands under the mattress and pulled out a long, flat wooden case.

He let the mattress fall onto the bed again, and placed the box on top. He waited for a moment or two, catching his breath, as if scared of what he was about to do.

The case had a simple catch and no lock, and was rather plain, made of a dark-colored wood, so unlike the pine and birch of the MotherForest. Tomas looked behind him once more, at the door, hesitating still. Then he took a deep breath and raised the lid, and from inside he lifted a strange and beautiful object up into the flickering orange lamplight.

It was a sword, and it was as frightening as it was beautiful, and as foreign as the sun in winter.

Its slim but lethal blade curved back halfway along from the hilt, widened out for its last third, then tapered to a fearsome point. The hilt itself was sheathed in horn, glossy, gray and mottled, and the crosspiece was an elegant brass creation.

The blade’s surface was completely smooth, though a strange device was engraved in the steel by the hilt. Two triangles interlocked, forming a six-pointed star, between each arm of which was a small circle. In the middle of the star was a seventh circle, and around the outside ran two concentric circles, keeping everything in order.

Tomas held the sword, not by the hilt, but with its blade resting gently on his palms. He seemed hypnotized by it; even his breathing appeared to have stopped.

The only things that moved in the whole hut were the flames dancing in the stove and the tear that fell from Tomas’s cheek onto the blade.

Memories flooded his brain, unbidden and uncaring. Suddenly he snapped from the reverie, roughly put the sword away in its case, and rammed the case under the bed, as if it were worthless, though nothing could have been further from the truth.

He grabbed a mug from the table, filled it to the brim with slivovitz, and began to drink, trying to wash the memories away.

Outside, there was a noise. Footsteps sounded on the log bridge to the island.

“Peter?” Tomas called, unsettled by something he could not place.

But Peter was by then knocking on the door of Agnes’s house.

8

The Shadow Queen

“Go away, Peter!”

Agnes leant from the upstairs window, looking down at where he stood in the street, holding Sultan loosely by the reins. Dusk had fallen across the village. Agnes’s father had been a well-to-do merchant, a draper, and the house was one of the very few with two floors.

“Let me in, Agnes,” Peter called up to her, as quietly as he could. Here and there people came and went down the long street, and Peter was wary of them, wanting to avoid prying eyes. In truth, however, they were all hurrying home, eager to be out of the coming night. As so often, the streets of Chust seemed filled with a subtle menace that Peter could not have named.

“I will not,” Agnes said, for the fourth time. “I told you. We have barricaded the doors. And the windows downstairs.”

“Well, open them again,” Peter said, exasperated now.

“No, Peter. Are you mad? It’s getting dark. Go home.”

As if in agreement, Sultan whinnied gently. Peter put his hand out and patted Sultan’s neck to reassure him. There was little he could do. He had ridden to see Agnes, and now she wouldn’t even let him in.

“Agnes,” he tried again. “Agnes, you must tell me that you are all right. I’ve heard a story, that your—”

He stopped, waiting for an old man to hobble slowly by and out of earshot. In that little space of time Peter pondered what Tomas had told him. He didn’t know that he believed what he’d heard, but he wasn’t entirely sure that he didn’t.

“What, Peter?”

“I heard that your mother said…that your…father…Your father has been back to visit her.”

He whispered as loud as he dared, glancing up and down the street as he did so. Agnes’s reply was almost inaudible.

“What of it?”

“So it’s true?”

She glared down at him. Peter was getting cross as well as cold. Why couldn’t she give him a straight answer? He couldn’t believe she seemed so calm about it, but then an awful thought crossed his mind.

“Have you seen him, Agnes?”

For a moment her face softened. She looked away across the rooftops, toward, Peter thought, the church.

“No, I haven’t,” she said, quietly. Almost sadly. “I haven’t seen him. And I don’t know if Mother has, or if she’s just…” She trailed off.

“Agnes, I’m sorry. I want to help you. Won’t you let me in? Let me check that everything’s all right. Can I bring you anything?”

“No, Peter. What could you do anyway? I can manage. I’ve blocked all the doors. I’ve protected the windows. We’ll be all right. You should go away. It’s not safe out there. In the dark. You know what people are saying, don’t you?”

Her voice dropped to a whisper, so that Peter had to strain on tiptoe to catch the gentle words as they fell down to him.

“It’s the Shadow Queen. People are saying she’s back, that she’s coming to make Chust her own. Some people even say they’ve seen her!”

With that Agnes seemed to have scared herself. With a wave of her hand, she indicated that the interview was over.

The Shadow Queen.

Peter knew what his father would say about that. All nonsense and tittle-tattle. Nevertheless he suddenly felt very exposed in the lonely village street, with no one but Sultan for company.

He swung his leg over Sultan’s back and wearily headed for home again.

9

The Eternal Return

“Come on, Sultan.”

Peter bent over Sultan’s neck and whispered in his ear. “I’m tired too, but we should get back to Father.”

That was true, but it was also true that, despite himself, Peter had been unsettled by Agnes.

Locking herself and her mother away every night seemed a desperate measure, and her talk of the Shadow Queen might just have been village gossip, but as he rode through the deserted streets, the darkness began to eat at him.

He steadied himself and rode on, but it was not long before he began to catch himself peering into the shadows that curled at the street corners. Then he’d snatch his eyes away again, like a frightened child. The darkness seemed to press in on him from all sides, ominously. What if it was true? What if the Shadow Queen was true, and was coming to take them all?

Peter and his father might not ever have seen her, but they had met plenty of people on their travels who said they had.

Was it last year? Or the year before? Peter couldn’t remember, but once, he and his father had been passing through a district away to the southeast, nestled up against the KarpatMountains. They had stopped in a village for the night. All evening, as they sat in the inn, there was talk of only one thing. The Shadow Queen. The locals spoke in hushed whispers, as if she was standing at the window of the inn, intent on catching anyone maligning her.

“She’s a thousand years old!” someone said.

“Rubbish! She was born at the beginning of time. She has no age.”

“Yes,” someone else agreed. “And she’s ten feet tall and has a hundred teeth! She can devour five children at once!”

“Ah!”

The audience grew fat on these morsels, while more beer was drunk and songs were sung. Peter found himself glancing over his shoulder, and after a while he moved closer to the fire.

The following day was a Sunday, and as it turned out, Palm Sunday, but Peter and Tomas were surprised to hear the locals call it Shadow Day. They were even more surprised when they learnt that they would be seeing the Shadow Queen herself later that day. After all the talk the previous night, it seemed absurd to hear the villagers discussing her imminent arrival.

Tomas announced that it was time to leave, but Peter was intrigued, and eventually he persuaded his father to stay for an hour more.

“Very well,” Tomas said abruptly. “Maybe then you’ll see what sort of superstitious buffoonery we are talking about.”

They found a heavy oak, climbed to one of its massive lower branches, and watched.

They didn’t have long to wait before the Shadow Queen arrived. All morning the villagers had been busy. Everyone had something to do or somewhere to be, but finally, just after noon, they made their way outside the village to a large field that led down to a wide, fast-flowing river. Here, on the grass, a large bonfire had been built, of birch logs on willow branches, kindled by hay from the village barns. Some people milled about, while others had much to do. Finally there was a sudden lull in all the hustle and bustle and a hush spread across the pasture.

Then, so quietly that at first Peter wondered if it was just the wind, came the voices of the village.

“The Shadow Queen! The Shadow Queen!”

Not a cry, but a thousand awed whispers that spread through the crowd. Now even Tomas sat up and shifted his position to get a better view. All eyes turned to the edge of the village, where a cart slowly trundled out to the field. It was pulled by a single white horse, driven by a young woman. And in the back of the cart sat what could only be the Shadow Queen.

Tomas began to laugh.

The Shadow Queen was made of straw. A simple effigy dressed, strangely, in a man’s clothes. She was a life-size figure, though, and she lolled about as the cart rolled awkwardly out into the field.

“The Shadow Queen!” Tomas said mockingly, but Peter threw a twig at him and glared. It was never a good idea to make fun of strangers, they knew that well enough.

The cart reached the margin of the field, near the bonfire and the river. Tomas and Peter got down from their tree and went to watch the rest of the ceremony.

Solemnly, the Shadow Queen was sawn in half, and the two halves thrown onto the blazing bonfire, which snapped and cracked, sending blackened stalks of straw high into the warm spring air. Eventually the fire burned through, but there was one last ritual to observe. The ashes were gathered and cast into the river, where they sped away south, never to be seen again.

Peter tried to ask the villagers about it, but the answers he got only confused him more. Was that really the Shadow Queen he had seen? Who had been burnt? Was it just a straw dummy? Everyone he asked gave him a different answer, but it seemed that the locals knew it was just a straw figure, though somehow, at the same time, it was the real Shadow Queen too. In burning her, here, at the start of spring, they had sent her away, sent her underground for the spring, the summer and the autumn, so that she would plague them no more. At least until St. Andrew’s Eve, and the start of winter. Then, as the long cold nights spread across the land, she would return, bringing illness, plague and pestilence with her once more. Evil would wash before her in a wave of malevolence.