Lucien Read online

  Dedication

  For Lisa B.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1. Flotilla of Fear

  2. The Felan

  3. The Wyrdborn

  4. The Great Hall of Erebis

  5. The Circle of Elders

  6. Lucien in the Circle

  7. A Monster’s Magic

  8. A Magic Born of Love

  9. Invasion

  10. Armies of One Man Alone

  11. Death in the Meadow

  12. Hungry Beasts

  13. The Death of a Wyrdborn

  14. Blood on the Sand

  15. A Boy Bewildered

  16. On the Shoulders of a Monster

  17. A Rope Made of Hair

  18. A Different Kind of Love

  19. Bloody Field

  20. A King Without His Wyrdborn

  21. Through the Woods

  22. Homecoming

  23. Blisters

  24. Surprises

  25. Religo Norbett

  26. Strangers in the Woods

  27. Lucien

  28. The View from the Ridge

  29. On the Eve of Battle

  30. Melee

  31. The Queen of Athlane

  32. A Land Without Kings

  About the Author

  Praise

  Copyright

  1

  Flotilla of Fear

  ‘Will they welcome us, Silvermay, or kill us like dogs?’

  I couldn’t look into the face of the man who’d asked such a question, even though the gentle motion of the waves brushed us against one another every few moments. I couldn’t let him see the doubt that prickled every part of my body. The Felan would board our ship within minutes and if they discovered who we had brought to their shores, our plans would come to nothing and we would all be dead by sundown.

  Our plans! We wouldn’t have a plan, or even breath in our bodies, without Miston Dessar. He had sheltered us in his house while we searched the city of Vonne for Lucien, the little boy I thought of as my son. Through a precarious mix of Miston’s guidance, our own mistakes and sheer luck we had found him, hidden beneath the streets in the forgotten caverns hollowed out to provide stone for the buildings above. During our struggle to free Lucien from Lord Coyle those caverns had collapsed around us in a nightmare I relived each time I closed my eyes.

  And then escape. ‘Once you are free of the city walls, go to a village two miles along the eastern road, but no further,’ Miston had warned us. ‘Coyle is sure to search for you, and that road is one place he will send his men.’

  ‘Then how can we get to the coast?’ I’d asked hotly. ‘We need a ship if we’re to reach Erebis Felan.’ On that island lay our only hope that Tamlyn and Lucien might be freed from the curse in their blood.

  Miston had nodded, as though he’d been expecting the question. He wasn’t as old as his grey hair suggested, but his movements were measured and so was every word he spoke. ‘Seek out a boyhood friend of mine. He’s a shepherd who prefers to send his sheep north rather than take the paltry prices offered here in Vonne. You will need to make yourselves invisible, too, so Coyle’s men don’t see you if they do catch up with you.’

  ‘Magic?’ said Geran. ‘But even Felan magic can’t make people invisible.’ She would surely know since she was Felan herself.

  ‘No, not magic!’ cried Miston, throwing back his head in laughter. ‘I’m no wizard and neither is my shepherd friend, but I suppose there is a kind of magic in how you will slip past them. ‘Coyle’s men will be looking for a group, as you are now, one of you with a mechanical arm and a girl carrying a child of Lucien’s size. You must trick them so they see something else.’

  Then he leaned in close and explained how this particular magic would work. He even had a plan for hiding Ryall’s arm, which was the cleverest idea of all.

  ‘Take off your metal hand and keep it out of sight,’ he told Ryall. ‘Then tie up one foot behind your bottom and wear a smock over your clothing so that no one can see it. If you walk one-legged, with a crutch, Coyle’s men will see a cripple with an arm and leg missing, not the boy with a metal arm they’ve been sent to find.’

  He was right. The trick was awkward for Ryall — painfully slow and painful in the usual sense, too — but it worked. So did the deception Miston sketched out for the rest of us. Instead of moving his sheep along the road in one large flock, the shepherd divided it in two and sent Tamlyn and me with one group, and Geran and Ryall with the other. He brought along his own children, too, in a wagon — a girl of six and a baby of just a few months. Lucien became their four-year-old brother, and when Coyle’s searchers halted us on the road, they counted three children instead of one and let the wagon pass.

  Two days later, we were aboard the ship meant to take the flock to market in the north, with the shepherd waving us off from the dock. ‘Miston is as good a man as I know,’ he’d confided to us earlier. ‘If he says you need this ship more than I do, I’m happy to wait for another.’

  During the voyage, Geran had confirmed everything we’d been told about the Felan and their fear of the Wyrdborn. ‘All our children grow up learning the ancient stories from their mothers. We celebrate our vigilance in songs and ceremonies so that every Felan knows what to do if a Wyrdborn invades our land. We are trained to cut him down instantly and without mercy.’

  Her words made me shudder. Lucien was a Wyrdborn and Tamlyn, too.

  ‘There is a way to stay their hands, though,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Geran asked.

  ‘The tattoo. You saw it while we were still in Miston’s cellar.’

  Lucien was playing under the table while we talked. I’d coaxed him out and pulled up the sleeve of his shirt to reveal a bird unlike any I had ever seen in the skies, its outstretched wings enclosed within a circle of leaves and vines.

  Geran sat back in her chair, her eyes lingering on the tattoo. ‘The bird is a sortelle. It exists only in the stories of our gods. Whenever the gods are pleased with the mortals they watch over, they release a sortelle as a sign of their good will. You might call it the symbol of everything good in life, so it is a grave sin for any Felan to destroy a building or even a book that has a sortelle carved into it.’

  ‘That means they won’t harm Lucien then, doesn’t it?’

  To my dismay, she shook her head. ‘It’s not as simple as that, Silvermay. The Circle of Elders has the final say. If they judge something unfit to bear the sortelle, then it is the duty of every Felan to destroy it before the gods become offended. What the tattoo will give Lucien is a fair hearing before the Circle.’

  ‘And Tamlyn? Should we tattoo —’

  ‘No,’ said Geran, before I had finished. ‘It will look like a Wyrdborn trick if they both claim the protection of the sortelle. I will seek safe passage for Tamlyn until he speaks for himself before the Circle.’

  ‘And if the Elders refuse?’

  ‘You can only pray they do not.’

  Her words had set my nerves dancing like barefoot children on summer cobblestones. Seeing my distress, Tamlyn had taken the lead. ‘You and I must pretend to be Lucien’s parents, Silvermay. And, Ryall, you will be Silvermay’s brother.’

  I must confess, the role of wife to Tamlyn had certain attractions for me, even if it would be play-acting.

  With this decided, Geran explained what would happen when we reached Erebis Felan. ‘I will go ahead, and speak for you before the Circle. The Elders will want to inspect you before you are allowed ashore. I wish I could guarantee that you will be safe, but I cannot. It is simply a risk you must take. No one has ever come to Erebis Felan asking for such magic before.’

  With no more than Geran’s uncertain
promise, we had sailed on through fog and treacherous seas to Erebis Felan. Yesterday, in the last light of the afternoon, we had dropped anchor in sight of a city’s glow. A rowing boat had been lowered onto the waves and Geran had set out for the shore.

  We’d heard nothing, seen nothing, until this morning when the flotilla set out towards us. It wouldn’t be long before the first ship was only an arrow’s flight from our own.

  ‘What do you think, Silvermay?’ Tamlyn asked again, urging me to respond, and this time I did turn to face him.

  What I think is that you love me, Tamlyn Strongbow.

  The words lay ready on my tongue, despite my fear, but I wasn’t ready to say them openly when Tamlyn had never spoken of his love for me. Until then I had to be content with what I did know for certain — that I loved him. There are those who live a hundred years and never experience such a love, yet at sixteen I already knew the feel of it, sometimes like the comfort of a favourite dress and at other times as a thrill I could barely keep inside my skin.

  I blushed whenever I thought of how quickly I’d wanted Tamlyn for myself. Just one sight of his face had been enough. There was more to it, of course. I had seen handsome strangers in our village before — tall men with broad shoulders and hair that hung like dark silk to their collars, as Tamlyn’s did — but all had proved disappointing once they began to boast in Mr Nettlefield’s inn. Tamlyn was not like that. When I’d first met him, his only care had been for the young mother who accompanied him. Her name was Nerigold and, as if Tamlyn’s devotion to her wasn’t enough to stand in my way, I had made things harder by becoming her friend. How could I not like her when she’d shown us all what a good heart beat inside her frail body.

  Sweet Nerigold. Was it really only five months since Tamlyn and I had buried her among the ruins of the ancient city in Nan Tocha? In those far-off mountains, where she now lay for eternity, Nerigold’s image could still be seen in pictures pieced together from tiny fragments of coloured stone and glass fixed onto the wall of an extraordinary cave. The mosaics had been created centuries before, yet the likeness was remarkable and the story they told even more so. Months had passed since I had seen those terrible images, yet I still shuddered at the misery they depicted. The young woman with Nerigold’s face had given birth to a little boy, a child who seemed destined to destroy an entire civilisation. We had come to Erebis Felan to make sure it never happened.

  Now, I stood on the deck of a battered frigate with Erebis Felan filling my eyes and Nerigold’s son in my arms. Lucien was no ordinary child. Even though he’d been born into this troublesome world only six months before, he could walk and talk like my four-year-old niece. It was for his sake that we’d come to seek help from the Felan, to fulfil a promise Tamlyn and I had made to Nerigold only moments before she died.

  The morning sun was already an hour above the ocean as the Felan’s ships approached us. None was as large as the frigate, but as every minute brought them closer, I counted more. The breeze was behind them, making easy work for their sails, which billowed white and pristine against the blue of the harbour. If I had not been so anxious, I might have admired the spectacle they made amid the beauty of the bay with its sweeping arc of beaches and the many houses painted in washes of green and yellow and red.

  Beauty could be deceptive, though, as I knew better than most. There were some in Athlane who used it only to cast a false charm over others; once their skin-deep prettiness had disarmed their unsuspecting victim, the most savage betrayal would follow. My dearest friend, Hespa, had almost fallen under such a spell. Yes, I knew to be wary of beauty, and so my eyes watched the flotilla with dread, even as I dared hope it brought the salvation we had come for.

  2

  The Felan

  I held Lucien in my arms, so close he was almost an extra limb of my own body. He detected my nerves and began to wriggle, wanting to be put down onto the deck.

  ‘No, darling. You must stay with me when the strangers come aboard,’ I told him. ‘Come on, give me your hand. Let me see if it has grown bigger than mine yet.’

  This was a game I had invented in which we touched, skin to skin, in a deliberate act of intimacy. The game was an important part of the lessons about human feelings I was trying to teach Lucien. As a Wyrdborn, he had been born without them.

  He pressed his hand against mine and laughed at how much smaller his was. Then the game was over and he squirmed in my embrace once more. If he’d been determined to break free, he could certainly have done it, for the same magic that saw him grow so rapidly made him stronger than me — stronger than everyone aboard this ship, except for Tamlyn, of course, who was also a Wyrdborn.

  ‘Silvermay,’ Tamlyn said gently, ‘it would be better if you let Lucien stand alone.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ I snapped in alarm. ‘I’m not going to leave him to fend for himself, not now.’

  He put up his hand to stop my sudden anger. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t choose my words very well. What I mean is it would be best if you weren’t holding him like that when the Felan see him.’

  I still didn’t understand. What difference would it make whether I held Lucien in my arms or let him stand on the deck?

  Tamlyn saw my confusion. ‘Think of the mosaics, Silvermay. The pair of you look like the picture of Nerigold and the child in Nan Tocha.’

  I slapped my free hand to my mouth. What a fool I was not to see it. But, of course, it needed the eyes of another to see me in the way Tamlyn warned of.

  I kissed Lucien, then swung him from my hip onto the bare planks of the deck. He immediately scooted over to Ryall at the ship’s railing. I followed and found Ryall tugging at the wires of his mechanical arm.

  ‘Have you got it working properly yet?’ I asked.

  His reply was laced with foul curses, but once the anger passed, he settled for gentler words. ‘There are pieces missing — I can’t do a thing with it. May as well toss it into the ocean.’

  For a moment I thought he would do just that and stretched out my hand to stop him. No young man would choose to lose an arm, but it was especially cruel for Ryall who had been a skilled trapper before he’d joined us. Yet out of his misery had come a triumph — the mechanical arm he had crafted with the help of Mr Stenglass, the blacksmith back home in Haywode. I had contributed a few ideas, too, and the contraption was a marvel, even if I say so myself.

  Then came our escape from Vonne. Tamlyn had used his Wyrdborn strength to loosen the stone blocks beneath the city walls, driving a steel spike into the mortar. We had been almost through the hole when a weakened stone shattered above our heads. It would have brought down the wall above, crushing us horribly, except Ryall had jammed his mechanical arm into the breach. In saving us, though, his arm had become hopelessly wedged, and when Tamlyn pulled too hard to free it one of the struts had broken off. Once we were on board the frigate, Ryall had tried to get it working again, without success.

  ‘We’ll be back in Haywode before long,’ I said. ‘Mr Stenglass will fix it.’

  Ryall grunted, but at least he didn’t drop the damaged contraption over the rail.

  Tamlyn came to join us. As always, I savoured his presence, even if he had eyes only for the flotilla.

  ‘They’re not far off now, Silvermay. I can feel their magic. It’s like nothing I’ve ever known before. The Wyrdborn have a way of deadening the air around them, but these people …’ He hesitated, struggling for words, and made a face when none seemed quite right. ‘There was a faint sense of it in Geran, once I knew who she was. This is stronger, though, and it’s that strength that makes me so aware of it. So many together.’

  ‘The Wyrdborn never gather in such numbers,’ I pointed out. ‘They’d be at each other’s throats if they ever tried.’

  The Wyrdborn could not bear closeness to others, even those of their own kind. They were a fearsome, hateful breed, but they were also the saddest race ever to walk the earth. Each thought only of himself — or herself, for there were
women among the Wyrdborn, as well. Yet even the women, including those who had borne children, seemed to feel none of the compassion that warmed the blood of the commonfolk. Tamlyn had found the best words, after all — the Wyrdborn’s magic deadened the very air around them.

  ‘Look,’ he said, turning aside and inviting my eyes to follow his gaze to where Lucien stood with his nose pressed against the rail of the ship, straining to see over.

  ‘He’s sensed them, too,’ I said.

  What did he feel, I wondered. He was too young to understand what was about to happen, although the tension he sensed among us had turned his face into a solemn mask.

  In the days when Nerigold had first left him in my care, I had searched his little face for signs of a smile. ‘Don’t be a fool, girl,’ my mother had told me. ‘Babies don’t smile until they are much older.’ Yet I had proved her wrong, and so I had nicknamed Lucien ‘Smiler’. Those too-early smiles were the first sign that Lucien wasn’t going to obey the usual laws of growing up. That was something we had come to Erebis Felan to change.

  ‘What if Geran has told them about Lucien?’ said Ryall.

  ‘She betrayed us once before, don’t forget,’ Tamlyn added. ‘She’s back among her own people now. It’s easy to change your mind when you have the comfort of home around you.’

  ‘I trust her,’ I said, but wished I could have spoken with enough conviction to settle my own doubts.

  While I was defending Geran with those simple words, I spotted her among the Felan in the approaching ships. She stood in the prow of the leading ship, resplendent in a blue velvet dress cinched at her waist with a gold sash. The same gold adorned the dress’s hem and decorated its sleeves. Even from a distance, I could see she was more beautiful than I’d realised.

  When I had first met Geran I hadn’t known she was a woman at all. Like everyone else, I had fallen for her disguise of loose-fitting pants, a man’s shirt and boots, and her hair tied up under her hat. Now, even as I admired her, I felt my heart sink. Safely home with her own kind, Geran had no reason to hide herself any more, as the pretty dress showed — and no reason to help us, either.