The Amber Legacy (46 page)

Sunset took the horse pendant and stared at it. ‘This doesn’t mean that she’s dead,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Diamond. ‘But—’ and the Seer seemed reluctant to continue. He swallowed and nodded to the others gathered in the room. ‘There were two bodies on the rocks at the base of the bluff, Your Majesty. One—was a child. I’m certain that it was Amber’s—Lady Meg’s son.’

‘And the other?’

‘Leader Redsword, Your Majesty.’

‘But not Meg.’

Diamond cleared his throat. ‘Your Majesty, there was at least one other body. A woman’s leg and some articles of clothing were caught on the rocks as well. The men who were lowered down the cliff didn’t find anything else. The body parts they found had been mauled by a shark, it seems.’

After dismissing the Seers and the Guards, the Queen sat on a chair and cried for a long time. She’d lost her
sons, Future and Treasure, to the fanaticism of the Rebel Seers. Treasure was dead. His son—her grandson—Jon was dead. Meg had been her best hope at saving her kingdom, and now she was dead. How long did she have until the Rebel Seers and her lost son, Future, fought her for the kingdom again?

T
he vision of the big man leading the roan horse, the horse hauling a travois, followed by curious villagers, startled Dawn, and she quickly ushered Peter inside with, ‘You wait in there until I call,’ before she stepped off the veranda to confront the stranger. He was the biggest man she’d ever seen, at least a head taller than the tallest man in Summerbrook, and his chest was the size of a beer barrel. Unshaven and unkempt, he looked like his brown hair could do with a serious wash. As he halted, she saw that he was breathing heavily and his brow was awash with sweat. ‘Dawn Farmer?’ he wheezed, wiping perspiration from his nose.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

The stranger grinned, revealing a missing front tooth. ‘Burrows,’ he said, ‘but everyone calls me Wombat so that can do for you as well, eh. I take it you could spare me a drink?’

‘How did you know my name?’ Dawn asked, suspicion in her eyes.

‘If you look on the travois you’ll get your answer,’ he said. When she didn’t move, he urged, ‘Go on. Nothing there will bite you, eh.’

She looked for her sons in the crowd, but neither was in sight, so she gave the stranger a glance that warned he shouldn’t try any tricks on her, and approached the wood and canvas contraption dragged behind the horse as a wheelless cart. When she saw what was on the travois, she gasped and knelt. A shiny black rat sat up, sniffing the air, and dropped to nuzzle a lock of red hair poking from the edge of the dark blue blanket. ‘Meg,’ Dawn whispered. ‘Oh, in Jarudha’s name. Meg.’

The fire crackled in the hearth throwing shadows dancing across the ceiling and walls. Dawn glanced at the doorway to Meg’s bedroom where her daughter was soundly sleeping. ‘Another scoop?’ Wombat asked.

Dawn tilted the blackened stew pot and ladled a serve into Wombat’s bowl. ‘Anyone else?’ she asked.

The boys shook their heads. ‘Go on,’ Mykel begged. ‘Tell us what happened.’

Wombat swallowed a mouthful of the warm fare, licked his lips, and said, ‘Well, I looked at the rags heaped against the shed wall, wondering who’d dumped rubbish on my property, and bugger me if the rat’s head popped out. Now, I’m not one for rats, eh, quick to send them packing, but this one sat up on the pile of rags and looked like it was begging to me. I mean, I’d never seen a rat do that.’ He paused to eat another spoonful of stew. ‘I haven’t eaten food this good in years,’ he announced after he swallowed again.

‘Story,’ Peter insisted.

Wombat grinned and reached out to ruffle the little boy’s blond hair. ‘Well, the pile of rags turns out to be Meg. Couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t seen her since we’d parted after the Battle of The Whispering Forest. Saved my life, she did. You boys should be proud of your sister.’ He winked at them and ate another mouthful of stew. ‘Anyway, I knew that she came from these parts,
so I hitched up the horse and travois and brought her home.’

‘But what’s wrong with her?’ Daryn asked. ‘Why’s she sleeping?’

Wombat looked at Dawn, a mournful expression fleeting across his face, before he replied. ‘Your sister is exhausted, lad. She’s been on a long journey, and I think she’s seen and done things that might just have been too much for one person.’

‘Like what?’ Mykel asked.

Wombat shook his head. ‘Guess I don’t really know the answer to that one. She’s the only one who knows. And she might not be willing to tell you everything when she’s better, so don’t be pushing her, eh. She’s got a lot of healing to do.’

‘She didn’t look hurt to me,’ Mykel argued.

Wombat leaned towards him. ‘The hurt is on the inside, and that can take a long time to heal.’ When Mykel’s expression showed that he didn’t understand the stranger’s message, Wombat let the matter go and returned to eating.

‘Tell us about the Battle of The Whispering Forest,’ Daryn requested.

‘She never ever told us about it,’ Mykel chimed in. ‘Did she really kill a famous soldier?’

Wombat grinned. ‘I’ll do better than that, gentlemen. I’ll sing you a ballad about it.’

The dreams were always there. They waited like flies on a windless Fuar day and when she slept they swarmed around her. Some of the old ones were gone. She no longer dreamed of Treasure or Jon. Some of the old ones were more insistent. Almost every time she slept she dreamed of the green shaft of light, the glyph, in the strange underworld chamber. The voice came and went with the dream. ‘Free me and I will
free you,’ the voice promised her. Always she asked, ‘Who are you?’ and always the reply was ‘You know who I am.’ But she didn’t know. How could she know? And she dreamed of the Demon Horsemen. She watched them tear through armies, their eerie blue light burning everything in their path to empty ashen dust. She stood on the battlements, staring at a swirling bank of dark clouds, knowing that the people beside her were people she was yet to meet, and saw the tiny blue dots riding towards her out of the teeth of the storm.

And there were new dreams, too. She saw Button Tailor caught in a battle and pinned to the earth by a lance through his left thigh, but he was always smiling as if his cruel fate pleased him. And she dreamed that she was standing in a lush field of golden wheat, holding a baby in her arms as she watched two more children playing with a dingo pup under the shade of a broad gum tree.

I’ve had many names, a voice said. She was perplexed because she was sure that she was awake, yet she was immersed in complete darkness, as if her eyes were shut on a moonless night.

Who are you? she asked.

Whichever name suits you best.

I don’t know you,’ she said, and she didn’t recognise the voice. It wasn’t the one that called to her from the glyph. There was a timbre to it that reminded her of Truth, but she knew it wasn’t his voice either.

I’ve had many names, the voice repeated. You carry me inside you and no matter where you hide I will be with you.

What names? she asked desperately.

Many names, the voice said.

‘Look, Meg!’ Peter balanced on a log strung between two stumps, his arms swinging for stability as he stumbled towards the end. Challenge mastered, he dismounted proudly.

‘I’m impressed,’ she told him. He ran to her and embraced her waist with gusto, ignoring her wet bundle of washing. He released her and ran towards the chickens, scattering them as he charged through the flock, with Whisper the rat scampering in his wake, enjoying the chaos. Meg laughed at her little brother’s antics, and the rat’s juvenile behaviour, before returning to hanging out the clothes. The morning was not at its midpoint, but it was hot and it reminded her of the days, three years past, before her adventures changed everything. Then, it had been a hot dry season, and everyone was waiting for the rains. It seemed odd that nothing had changed much in Summerbrook in that time.

But there were changes. Her brothers had grown into lanky young men. Samuel was dead. Her father was dead. Village men, like Button Tailor, had been taken away to war. Treasure was dead. And Jon. Sunfire was gone. And she was no longer a naive girl waiting for womanhood and her father’s return. She had changed, forever. She touched her chest, knowing the presence of the amber would never leave her. When Dawn queried the strange mark on her skin, she said that it was a scar from scalding water, an accident in the palace. She knew why her father ran to Summerbrook to escape his past. The inheritance was too great a burden for anyone.

She shook out another shirt and pegged it on the line. Peter was playing with Whisper under the house gum tree. Her mother was sitting on the veranda, darning a sock. Mykel and Daryn were running the traps out in the surrounding bush. After the mad and violent world of Port of Joy and Queen Sunset’s kingdom, Summerbrook was paradise. Much of the
truth of the intervening years she kept to herself. Her brothers persisted in asking her what she’d seen, where she’d been, who she’d met, so she told them stories about the Queen’s court and the great city. ‘Is it true you were made a Lady?’ Daryn asked. ‘Is it true you led the Queen’s army against the barbarians?’ Rumours and tales of her adventures had reached Summerbrook. She’d forgotten how quickly the minstrels travelled the kingdom, plying their songs and tales in exchange for food and shelter. But she deflected them from herself easily by denying any connection. ‘The Queen offered to make me a Marchlord because of what happened at the Battle of The Whispering Forest,’ she told her brothers, and her mother, and other villagers when they asked, ‘but I declined it. They made more of what happened than what was really the truth. It was another young man who actually killed Treasure Overbrook, and he was also killed in the battle, but some soldiers mistook him for me and they tried to make me a hero. It wasn’t true, and I said so.’

‘But what about being made a Lady?’ Mykel asked.

‘And what about being Lady Amber? That was you, wasn’t it?’ Daryn asked.

‘The Queen was very generous and kind. But there is no Lady Amber. She’s a made-up person—a hero for the ballads you’ve been hearing. People like to hear stories about heroes. It makes them feel safer. But Lady Amber doesn’t really exist. Believe me, if she did exist, I would have met her in Port of Joy. True?’

‘Yes, but—’ Daryn started to argue.

‘No buts,’ Meg cut in. ‘Think about it. Can you imagine your sister being able to do all those things they say in the stories you’ve heard?’ Daryn and Mykel exchanged glances, and grinned. ‘See?’ she asked.

‘But we overheard Emma tell Mum that you were going to Port of Joy to fulfil your destiny,’ said Daryn.

So Emma had said something
, she thought. ‘What else did she say?’

Daryn shrugged. ‘That was it, I guess.’

Meg sighed and petted Whisper who was curled up on her lap. ‘Well, I did find my destiny,’ she said, ‘and it’s to be here, in Summerbrook.’

‘That’s hardly very exciting,’ Mykel grumbled.

‘It’s who I am,’ she answered.

‘But what about the men who came looking for you?’ Daryn persisted.

‘What men?’

‘A stranger. And Queen’s soldiers. They came here a cycle ago, looking for you, saying that you’d gone missing and no one could find you. They said the Queen hoped that you were safe and if we knew where you were that she wanted you to go back to Port of Joy.’

‘What did you tell them?’ she asked.

‘They spoke to Mum. She told them we hadn’t seen you for two years. We had as much an idea as they did about where you were.’

‘Then we’ll keep it that way.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that’s how I want it to be.’

‘And what about the other man?’ Mykel asked.

Meg turned to him for an explanation. ‘There was a stranger came through here just before the Queen’s soldiers. He was asking everyone about you.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Short. Thin. He looked like he was a minstrel, but he didn’t sing any tunes and he didn’t have an instrument. Nobody liked the look of him.’

‘We told him exactly what we told the Queen’s soldiers when they came,’ said Daryn.

‘And what happened to him?’

‘He went to see old Emma and that’s the last any of us saw of him. We didn’t even see him leave the village. He sneaked out at night.’

‘He was probably a scout,’ she told her brothers, remembering Treasure’s visit to Summerbrook. ‘It’s best to tell someone like that nothing at all.’

‘But are you going to tell the Queen where you are?’ Mykel asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘And everyone else has to keep it quiet too. I don’t want to go back to Port of Joy. I’ve come home to stay home. I’m Meg Farmer only. You two remember that.’ And she refuted the references to tales and ballads that circulated, knowing that most of the village would believe her, sooner or later.

Six days after she’d woken from what seemed an endless sleep, Meg scooped up Whisper, kissed Peter’s forehead in the common room as he was polishing a pot, and told Dawn that she was going to see Emma. ‘Nobody’s seen much of her lately,’ Dawn said. ‘She’s stuck to her cottage. I’ve taken some soup and vegetables occasionally. She says she’s not sick, just tired of seeing people.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘Not that she was ever much of a social being.’

The sky was painfully blue and utterly cloudless, but the morning air was mild and soothing to Meg’s skin. People waved as she passed through the village, and a group of children fishing and playing at the bridge called to her. Regardless of whether they believed the popular tales or her denial of them, she was a village celebrity for having travelled to Port of Joy and lived in the company of the Queen, something no other person had done in the living memory of Summerbrook. That tale of fame and reputation would remain for her lifetime, and become part of local folklore. She liked the inner warmth generated by the quiet adulation and
recognition, but she promised herself to never let it be her source of identity. The journey from Summerbrook to Port of Joy, from farm girl to almost Royal Seer, from trying to make a frog fly to unleashing the Demon Horsemen, had taught her more than she’d ever wanted to know, and one lesson that she’d learned, above all, was the benefit of humility.

The familiar path to Emma’s cottage was overgrown, and she walked carefully through the tall yellow grass, watchful for snakes. Whisper scrambled from her shoulder and darted towards the cottage, reminding her of how Sunfire always liked coming to the old crone’s place to fossick in her unkempt garden. The last time she’d seen her dingo was when Truth brought him to the island to track her. And then what had happened to him?

Emma’s garden was in a far worse state than she remembered. Plants had gone to seed, bushes were straggly and beyond the point where pruning would restore them. Clumps of wildflowers gave the chaos colour, but the effect only made her think of madness. Three black crows were arguing in the boughs of a gum tree at the foot of the hills, their cawing echoing across the bush.

The cottage door was leaning from one hinge, and she was surprised and disappointed because if Emma couldn’t fix her own door it was customary in the village for someone to offer to fix it out of kindness. Yet no one, it seemed, was extending that village courtesy to the old woman. As Meg went to knock, Emma called, ‘Come in, Meg Farmer.’ Meg eased the rickety door open and entered.