The Circle of Stone (Darkest Age) (8 page)

She saw him to the door herself, dismissing her guards, and stood with her hand raised in farewell as he rode away. Aagard hoped that her messenger to Heored would make haste – and that the other kings would be as prompt to respond to the danger. With enough men along the coast, they might hold off the armies that Loki sent against them.

But what of the demon himself? For days now, Aagard had not been able to glimpse the fiery presence in his visions.

‘He is everywhere and nowhere,’ he muttered as he rode. ‘And when he does choose to show himself – what can Elspeth do?’

Elspeth’s hand had been throbbing all day. But there was still no sign of the glowing light that heralded the crystal sword’s
appearance, and Ioneth’s voice had fallen silent again: try as she might, she could catch not a whisper of it inside her head. After all the days of travelling and searching, they were no closer to finding Loki. The ugly shrine by the roadside had seemed to taunt her, bringing the demon’s burning face before her eyes again, but Edmund was right: it could only be some local god. Loki
had
walked in the forest, she was sure of it – but there was no way of telling where he was now.

Elspeth’s frustration was tinged with relief. What could she do even if they found him, if Ioneth had not returned?

Once she had thought she heard the low voice again. After she had rescued the boy, Wulf, she had held out her hand to him and heard that his family were gone – and for a moment, Ioneth had cried out in her head and burned in the hand that touched him. She knew why. The child had lost his parents just as Ioneth had lost hers, taken by the same monster. Elspeth had vowed at that moment to protect the boy until they found a place of safety for him. It was some comfort, if their mad quest was foundering, to have this small, manageable responsibility.

Wulf had been holding her hand as they walked, but she had loosed it when the throbbing became too uncomfortable. Edmund, walking alongside, took the boy’s other hand instead, and Elspeth smiled at him. He had not had to come with her: he had a wealthy home to return to in Sussex – a kingdom, in fact. She still had to stifle a laugh at the thought of Edmund,
her quiet, thoughtful friend, commanding armies as his father must do. And here he was, cold and tired in an impossible search, without even a cloak to his back. Wulf was still wearing his thick fur, swathed in it almost to his feet, while Edmund was wrapped like a beggar in his sleeping blanket.

‘I’m heated with all this walking,’ she told him impulsively. ‘Would you take my cloak for a while?’

‘You won’t stay hot for long,’ Edmund warned her – but he allowed himself to be convinced, and took the heavy fur cloak. Feeling the cold wind cutting through her woollen sleeves, Elspeth realised how much he must have needed it. The sun was already high in a clear sky: it would get no warmer today.

The trees began to grow closer until they were walking down a narrow passage between brown trunks. Elspeth found the gloom under the trees oppressive, and could not forget the choking dust and charred stumps of their last venture into the forest. She stayed close to Edmund, whose spirits never seemed to waver, while Wulf held on to her arm. The throbbing pain in her right hand seemed a permanent part of her now, always there on the edge of her awareness; every now and then becoming fiercer, like lightning streaking up her arm. She wondered for the hundredth time whether it was a sign that Ioneth was growing stronger, and listened in vain for the voice inside her head.

‘Edmund,’ she said at last, giving up the attempt, ‘do you think we’ll ever find him?’

Edmund did not ask who she meant. He was silent a long time before answering. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘It seems impossible sometimes. We can’t track him, not as you’d track a brigand – we’re just following stories and rumours. But I
feel
that we’re close to him here, and I know Cluaran does too.’

The trees grew thicker and darker. Twice they found wooden shrines at the edge of the forest path, one showing another version of the bearded man with the sun’s rays behind him, and one with a crude image of a hand surrounded by the same rays.

‘Do you think these are new?’ Edmund wondered, inspecting the second shrine. It did have a recently cut look, Elspeth thought.

‘Menobert said there were new religions springing up everywhere.’

‘It’s a sign of the times, like Menobert said,’ Cathbar put in. ‘When there’s trouble and danger, everyone looks for something new to believe in. It doesn’t matter what.’

‘No one seems to be visiting the shrines, though,’ Elspeth pointed out. They had been heading south on the road for half a day or more, without meeting a living soul.

Cluaran led the way, with Eolande beside him. He seemed resigned to Wulf’s continued presence, and Elspeth made sure that the child stayed close to her, determined that he should not be thought of as a burden. She was reassured to find that Wulf had no trouble matching their pace and never complained of tiredness, though his rag-bound shoes slid about
on the leaf-mulch underfoot. When they stopped for the night, it was clear that he was determined to be useful. He ran deep into the trees to collect firewood, and returned dragging a branch longer than himself and so thick that Elspeth was amazed he could lift it at all. While they struggled to break his prize into sections, the boy ran off again.

‘Don’t go too far, Wulf!’ Elspeth called. ‘It’s getting dark.’

‘Leave the boy,’ Cluaran told her. ‘You can see he’s at home in the woods; he won’t come to harm.’ The confidence in his voice cheered Elspeth: Wulf was becoming accepted as a member of their group.

Wulf returned at sunset, very muddy and holding out the front of his overshirt filled with mushrooms. Cluaran inspected them and pronounced them edible, his voice filled with surprise. ‘Who taught you to know mushrooms, boy?’ he demanded. Wulf laughed delightedly, but did not answer.

They cooked the mushrooms with wild onions in Cluaran’s cooking pan, and shared out the stew with the last of their bread, sitting around the fire. The bitter wind had died down, or was stopped by the trees, and looking around at the flame-lit faces of her friends, Elspeth felt an unexpected peace. Tonight there was no ravening wildfire, destroying all it touched; their fire was a kindly thing, casting a small circle of warmth and light against the darkness.

‘This is good food,’ said Eolande, and Elspeth was startled by the sound of the Fay woman’s voice. Cluaran offered his mother more of the stew, while Wulf beamed with pride.
Edmund, wrapped in his own cloak once again, raised his water flask to the boy like a cup, in friendly salute. The ring of firelight was a haven, Elspeth thought, if only for one night. While the circle lasted, nothing would harm them.

Cluaran banked the fire at last, and they lay down to sleep in its mild glow. Wulf lay between Elspeth and Edmund, wrapped in the blanket from Eikstofn, and smiled as he slept.

Elspeth woke suddenly in the night. For a moment she remembered other midnight alarms and her skin prickled, but there was no sound or movement. The fire’s embers still warmed her feet, and all around her was soft breathing. She relaxed, trying to recover the fragments of her dream. She had been Ioneth again, the child of the ice caves; not running or frightened this time but sitting at home with her mother and sisters, singing and learning to weave a mat, the melody winding in and out with the to-and-fro of the shuttle. A good dream – though Elspeth had never known her own mother, nor learned to weave.
Were you skilled at it, Ioneth?
she asked inside her head, and wondered if there had been a whispered reply, too faint to catch. The song continued to wind around her thoughts, and she hummed a snatch of it, thinking she would sing it to Wulf in the morning.

Wulf! With a shock, Elspeth felt the empty ground beside her. Edmund was a gently snoring mound a little further away, but between them was only a crumpled blanket. The boy had gone.

Elspeth pulled herself up, looking about in panic. A bright quarter-moon showed the empty road stretching away to both sides. She caught a glimpse of bright hair.

‘Wulf!’ she hissed, angry and weak with relief at the same time. ‘Come back here!’ But the boy had already skipped back behind one of the trees.

‘Wulf!’ she called, louder now. The only answer was a distant rustling as Wulf made his way deeper into the forest. With a sigh, she wrapped her cloak more closely around her and followed him, still calling.

There was no clear track through the trees, and the moonlight that filtered through the branches turned the undergrowth into a mesh of shifting gleams and shadows. Elspeth pushed on in the direction Wulf had taken, blundering into thickets and cursing under her breath as she barked her shin on a hidden stump. There was no sign of the boy up ahead, and after a few more paces she stopped and listened for him. There it was, a soft footfall over to her right. She turned to follow the sound, hoping that she would be able to find her way back. At the same moment she heard something else behind her.

There were bears in the forest, the pedlar Menobert had told them, and great hoofed beasts, elk and aurochs, that could outrun a man and trample him to death. She had not even thought to pick up the new sword. ‘Wulf!’ she cried desperately. Prickly branches pulled at her as she forced her way on.

A bush just ahead of her shook with laughter. A small hand pulled aside the branches and Wulf’s face poked out, pale with moonlight and glowing with mischief.

‘I found something, Elsbet!’ he crowed. ‘I’ll show you – come.’

‘No, Wulf!’ Elspeth tried to sound stern. ‘We must go back right now!’ She wondered if she could tell what direction to take. She tugged at Wulf’s hand, and the boy scrambled out of the bushes.

‘Let me show you, Elsbet!’ he pleaded, pulling at her hand. ‘It’s so funny!’

There was a sudden movement in the trees behind them. Elspeth wheeled to find Cluaran striding towards her, his face thunderous.

‘Back now – both of you!’ was all he said.

Wulf seemed to know when he was beaten. He shrugged and turned back at once, running past Cluaran as if he knew the way perfectly, slipping through the prickly branches with ease.

‘I expected more sense from you, Elspeth,’ Cluaran told her. ‘Wulf is a child – but what were
you
thinking of, losing yourself in the forest at night?’

‘Wulf ran off,’ Elspeth said defensively. ‘I went after him to bring him back.’

‘And never thought to wake anyone?’ Cluaran demanded. ‘Your fondness for the boy is addling your brain! What use is this journey – is all that we’re doing here – if you get yourself lost or killed?’

That was the reason for his anger, Elspeth realised suddenly. When Wulf had run off into the trees earlier that evening Cluaran had been unworried: it was the danger to
her
that had scared him.

Or not so much her, as the fear of losing Ioneth again.

Half abashed and half angry, she said no more while they made their way back to the camp. Cluaran had shown friendship to her before – of course he had, she told herself – but never this much concern. This must be because she was his last link with his beloved. She had told Cluaran that Ioneth was still inside her head – and it was true, even if the voice no longer spoke to her. Those dreams she had been having, of the small girl in the ice caves, they must come from Ioneth. A scene from tonight’s dream came vividly back to her: sitting at the loom, helping to push the heavy shuttle back and forth. The melody from her dream filled her head.

Cluaran gave an exclamation, and she realised that he was staring at her. ‘What are you singing?’ he asked.

‘Oh, just a tune,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘I heard it somewhere.’

He shot an odd, intense look at her, but said no more.

Wulf was waiting for them when they reached the camp, unabashed and unharmed by the adventure. It was almost daybreak, so Cluaran busied himself scattering the remains of the fire and Elspeth helped the boy to roll up his bedding while the others roused themselves. The morning dawned
grey and cold, and they moved on as soon as there was light to see by.

Wulf was the only one of the party in high spirits. The boy ran on ahead to inspect another wayside shrine and look for squirrels, and chattered about them to Elspeth and Edmund. Cluaran stayed close to Eolande; both of them seemed to have lost the pleasure they had taken in the forest the day before. Elspeth was still out of humour with Wulf for last night’s escapade, and even Edmund was tense, answering Wulf in very few words. It seemed that a cloud hung over all of them.

‘Have you noticed how quiet it is?’ Edmund asked Elspeth after a while. ‘No birds.’

He was right. When they moved off at dawn the trees above them had been full of birdsong. Now there was none at all.

The path widened, and abruptly emerged from the trees to join a larger road, running towards the south-east. They stood at the roadside, staring.

The mud of the road, and some of the field beside it, had been churned up by men’s feet; many of them. There were dropped hunks of bread in the ditch along the road’s near side, and a torn piece of grey cloth lay in the mud, stained with what looked like blood. Further along, at a spot where the travellers seemed to have made camp, the roadside trees were scarred and blackened, their lower branches ripped off. A young sapling had been torn up by the roots and partly burned, and the rubbish included smashed barrels and animal carcasses, some of them half-eaten.

Cathbar bent to look at the footprints. ‘I reckon they stopped here yesterday; maybe last night,’ he said. ‘They won’t be close enough to hear us now, but they’ll be camped somewhere ahead of us. Several dozen of them, I’d say: look how they’ve covered the road.’

‘Who do you think they are?’ Edmund asked. ‘Would bandits walk in such a big group?

‘Not normally, but these are not normal times and I’ll wager these bandits are certainly more than they seem.’ He frowned at the pile of debris, and the slaughtered animals. ‘I think we should go carefully,’ he said.

They kept to the ditched side of the road, walking in single file; accompanied all the way by the massed footprints and the scraps that the men had dropped. Then Cathbar, in the lead, stopped with a muffled curse. In the ditch ahead of him, a man lay face down.