Читать книгу Witchsign - Den Patrick - Страница 11

Though there is still much we do not understand, it has been documented that witchsign results in powers belonging to four schools, each with a ruling element. Telepathy and prescience are derived from those born with the element of wind, for example.

– From the field notes of Hierarch Khigir, Vigilant of the Imperial Synod.

Steiner’s departure marked the beginning of yet another long silence, a silence that Kjellrunn longed to shatter. She stood at the double doors to the smithy wanting to scream. She wanted the whole town to know of her frustration. She wanted to scream loud enough so the dead might hear her in Hel. She wanted to scream that Steiner come back and scream for the witchsign be taken away.

Her eye rested on the few lanterns in the harbour, bobbing gently with the tide, revealing the location of the frigate, but not the form. She could feel the way sea swirled against the hull, just as she could feel the cold wind on her skin. Come the morning the blood-red ship would spirit Steiner away and there was nothing she could do about it.

‘Come in from the cold,’ said Marek, laying a hand on her shoulder and pulling her into a rough embrace. She let his arms enfold her with reluctance, feeling an icy fury for the man who had suspected her of witchsign and said nothing.

‘I take after her, do I?’ There was no wistfulness in her voice, only a resentment that he’d not told her sooner. Discovering tiny truths about her mother should have been a happy event tinged with tears, not a revelation on Steiner’s last night in Cinderfell.

‘You have her eyes, and her hair too if you’d ever care to pull a brush through it.’

‘And where is she now?’

‘The Empire took her,’ said Marek. He stepped away, not meeting her eyes, gazing into the darkness outside their door. ‘We had a handful of happy years together, and two beautiful children, but she was always looking over her shoulder, waiting, waiting.’

‘Waiting for the Vigilants to find her,’ said Kjellrunn.

‘They can track anyone down given enough time.’ Marek prodded the anvil with his boot. ‘In the end she went of her own accord. Better that way.’

‘The Empire doesn’t know she had children?’

‘Of course not.’ He pushed the door closed and set the latch in place, locking the night outside. ‘They’d have killed you to make an example to the others.’

‘What others?’

He ignored that question and provided one of his own. ‘How are you …’ He frowned and tried again. ‘How are your powers?’

‘Powers?’ She gave a lop-sided smile, filling the word with disdain. ‘I don’t feel very powerful. I don’t feel powerful at all. They’re just sensations really. I know when it will rain, and what tide it is.’

‘That’s it?’ said Marek, and Kjellrunn felt a sting of shame.

‘Were you expecting some great sorcerer?’

‘Sorry, Kjell. I don’t know how it works and I forgot that you’ve not been trained.’

‘And that I’m just sixteen. You forgot that too.’

‘Yes, sorry, Kjell.’ Marek pressed his fingertips into the corners of his eyes and she could almost see the wave of tiredness wash over him. ‘So just senses then?’

‘I’m happiest when I’m in the forest; it feels more natural there. I imagine I can feel the animals moving around in their lairs and sets under the earth.’

‘You may not be imagining that so much as feeling it.’ He fixed her with a long appraising look, then gestured that she follow him into the kitchen.

Verner sat at the table, cleaning his nails with a small knife. He looked up at Kjellrunn but no expression crossed his face. The way Steiner told it, Kjellrunn was Verner’s favourite out of the two of them. She didn’t care. To her mind Steiner had long been their father’s favourite so it was almost fair, inasmuch as families are ever fair.

‘Don’t worry, Uncle, I’ll not call a storm down on your little boat next time you sail.’

Verner didn’t smile, simply put away his knife and stared into the fireplace where the embers glowed orange.

‘You shouldn’t joke about such things. People have died for the power you hold, died and suffered for it.’

‘You think I’m not suffering?’ she replied, her tone as cold and unforgiving as the Sommerende Ocean. ‘My only brother has no choice but to go to the island to be killed.’

‘We don’t know for sure he’ll be killed,’ replied Verner, getting to his feet. ‘And he may learn something useful if he keeps his wits about him.’

‘You can’t send him to the island.’ She gazed up into the fisherman’s eyes. ‘I won’t let you.’

Marek and Verner exchanged a glance and both turned to her with wary expressions on their faces.

‘Kjell, it’s not up to us. If there was a way to stop the Empire I would, but …’ Marek held out a placating hand to her but she had no mind to take it, no mind to be held by him when he had held back so much. The urge to scream came again, to howl like a trapped animal. Her hands closed into fists and the room took on a dreamlike sheen; she was suddenly light-headed and took a deep breath to steady herself.

The Empire mean to take my brother.

The kitchen door rattled on its hinges and blew open, smashing into the kitchen counter behind it. The fire in the grate was swept up and cinders and ashes swirled about the dim chamber, an angry blizzard of grey and radiant embers. An old rag was blown about like a discarded flag of surrender. Marek and Verner stumbled backwards, one of them calling out in alarm. Kjellrunn fled the kitchen, her eyes shut tight, almost tumbling through the door and out into the street.

Marek was at the door coughing, reaching after her, but she retreated from the man who used the truth so sparingly when it meant so much.

‘Kjell, please. You don’t know what it does to a person.’ His voice was a harsh whisper, afraid of being overheard on the quiet street. ‘Over time the body rejects the arcane, or is burned up by it. I’ve seen people turned to stone, petrified for all time.’

‘I won’t let them take him,’ she said, loud enough that a few curtains twitched in the neighbouring windows.

She sprinted down the street, glad to be away from the smithy and the smell of metal and fire, glad to be away from the low-ceilinged kitchen and the over-large table. And though she was loath to admit it, she was glad to be away from people, even her own father, her own uncle. People. She’d rather have the company of trees and her own restful solitude.

The wind howled, given voice by the jagged cliffs. It wailed and sang, filling Kjellrunn’s senses with a deep unease. She squinted through a flurry of grey snow, finding her way through the drab town, slinking through side streets and shadows so she might avoid the patrols of Imperial soldiers.

The winding roads were almost completely dark at this time of night and she’d fled without torch or lantern to light her way. Slivers of illumination spilled from windows, ribbons of glowing gold shining from the cobbles or glittering on the snows. How many families lived in Cinderfell, she wondered? How many families lived in these shuttered cottages? How many people with nothing to consume their thoughts but the simple pressure of existence? Where to work? Where to find food, find comfort, find peace? Here they slept, these simple families, beneath thatched roofs, untroubled by old secrets and unearthly powers. Only the howling wind and the ever-present cold troubled them, and Kjellrunn felt a deep wellspring of envy.

Bjørner’s tavern was a beacon in the darkness, light streaming from windows, declaring a welcome to any who might climb the steep street leading to its door. Kjellrunn’s teeth chattered as she pushed herself onward. She had no desire to be here, but it was the only place she could think of where Steiner might seek refuge. A burst of laughter sounded from inside, though it sounded coarse and unfriendly, and the smells that greeted her were no different. She wrinkled her nose as she lifted the latch on the door, pressing her shoulder against it.

‘Everything seems coarse and unfriendly tonight,’ she muttered to herself, willing the courage to look for Steiner and find him and bring him home.

She had no sooner placed one tentative foot across the threshold of the tavern when the wind gusted in behind her, blowing the door wide open. All eyes in the tavern turned to her and chagrin made her small as she struggled to close the door. No one moved to help her, no one spoke.

Bjørner came out from behind the bar, hands fussing with a cloth, struggling for a serious expression if Kjellrunn had to guess, though she hadn’t missed the shock in his eyes as she’d entered.

‘Kjellrunn Vartiainen,’ was all he said, and still no one spoke. Håkon the butcher stood behind the tavern owner and two dozen faces all gawped, mouths open, like fish caught up in nets and just as stuck.

‘I’m looking for my brother,’ she said, though the silence of the room made her words sound frail and weak.

‘He’s not welcome here,’ said Bjørner. ‘And neither are you, Kjellrunn.’

‘Has anyone seen him?’ She turned to the room, trying to make eye contact with any one of them, but they all turned to their drinks or cast guilty glances at their boots. ‘Has anyone seen Steiner?’ she said, and now her voice was loud, too loud in the strangling quiet of the tavern.

‘Best you head home now, girl,’ said Håkon, rubbing one hand over his huge beard.

Kjellrunn looked around desperately. ‘Someone must have seen him.’

‘You need to go now,’ repeated Bjørner. He stood a little taller now with Håkon beside him.

Kjellrunn glared at them, then held up four fingers. ‘Go to Hel, all of you can go to Hel for all I care.’ The door slammed after her and she stalked down the street trailing curses.

Marek and Verner were waiting for her when she returned. They had built up the fire and swept out the ashes, but made a bad job of it as men are wont to do. A lantern had been lit and the room had a cosy glow to it after the bright light and stark truth of the tavern.

He’s not welcome here, and neither are you, Kjellrunn. Had Bjørner meant the tavern, or all of Cinderfell?

‘You didn’t find him then,’ said Verner. He looked strange, with his beard fringed in milk. A steaming mug sat before him and another before Marek.

‘Why are you drinking hot milk like old women?’ she replied. ‘I would have thought you’d be well into the mead by now.’

‘Mind your mouth,’ growled Marek. ‘No good comes of getting drunk at a time like this. It’s a cold night is all. Perhaps if you keep a civil tongue in your head you can have some too.’

Kjellrunn dragged a chair out and slumped into it, crossed her arms on the table and rested her head on her forearms.

‘Where did you go?’ asked Verner softly.

‘To Bjørner’s, of course,’ replied Kjellrunn, not looking up. ‘Where else?’

‘Not much of a welcome there, I suspect,’ said Verner.

‘There won’t be much of a welcome anywhere after this,’ said Marek. ‘We’ll be lucky not to be run out of town.’

‘Why is the witchsign regarded as a bad thing?’ asked Kjellrunn. ‘I’m hardly a great danger, am I? A girl of sixteen who can predict the weather.’

‘You’ve heard the tales, Kjell,’ said Verner. ‘You’ve been asking me for stories of dragons and the arcane for as long as I can recall.’

‘But surely that’s all they are. Stories. The dragons have been dead for nearly a hundred years—’

‘Seventy-five,’ said Marek, pouring hot milk from the pan into a mug.

‘Longer than living memory,’ replied Kjellrunn, determined to make her point.

‘There are those who remember the war, Kjell,’ said Marek. ‘And those whose fathers fought in it passed their memories to their sons.’

‘But the witchsign as something dangerous?’ Kjellrunn frowned. ‘That’s just old tales, embellished by time.’

‘Embellished,’ said Verner, and grinned. ‘She even speaks like her mother.’

‘She certainly doesn’t get her vocabulary from me,’ said Marek. Kjellrunn slipped her chilled fingers around the mug and felt the warmth.

‘The Empire blames the emergence of the arcane on the dragons,’ said Marek. ‘And for that they will not rest until all trace of it is scoured from the world.’

‘Even if it means murdering children?’ asked Kjellrunn, her thoughts straying to Steiner, though he could hardly be mistaken for a child these days.

‘Even if it means murdering children,’ replied Marek. ‘There is nothing they will not do to keep the arcane out of the hands of commoners and serfs.’

Kjellrunn drank and drank deep, but there was a bitter note to the milk that caused her to hesitate. Marek and Verner continued to sup and stare at the fire, as if the answers to Steiner’s predicament might be found there.

‘Drink up now,’ said Marek, and she did. The stairs to the loft seemed many, and harder to climb than ever before. How had she become so tired? It had been a long day, true enough, but she fell into bed still dressed, too exhausted to rise again. She shucked off her boots, and curled into a ball.

‘Where are you, Steiner?’ she whispered to the darkness, but no answer came.