“A family curse… ?”
He showed her a bitter smile. “Fear not. You don’t have it and neither did Kendrick.You are the lucky ones—the yellow-haired ones. Father told me that he had studied the Eddon family histories, and that he had never found any trace of the curse in any of the fair-haired children. Only the gods know why. You are the golden ones, in more ways than one.”
“But you have…” She suddenly understood. Again, it was like being struck a hard blow. “Oh, Barrick, you are afraid you might have this, too?”
“Might have it? No, Sister, I already do. The dreams started even earlier for me than they did for Father.” “You had a fever… !”
“Long before the fever.” He let out a shaky breath. “Although, since then, they have been worse. I wake up in the night cold with sweat, thinking only of killing, of blood. And since the fevers, I… I see things, too. Waking, sleeping, it almost makes no difference. I am watched. The house is full of shadows.”
She was stunned, helpless. She had never felt so distant from him, and for Briony that was a shocking, raw feeling, as though a part of her own body had been torn away. “I hardly know what to say—this is all so strange! But… but even if Father has some… madness, he still has managed to be a good man, a loving father. Perhaps you are worrying too…”
Again he interrupted her. “A loving father who threw me down the stairs. A loving father who told me he should never have sired me.” His face was stony. “You have not been listening very carefully. It started early in me. My madness won’t be mild, like Father’s—a few days a year when he must shut himself away from the rest of mankind. That is what he meant in the letter, do you see now? That he has not suffered badly from the madness since he has been captive. It is nothing to do with making jokes, he was talking to me about something ugly we both share—our tainted blood. But his will seem mild next to mine. Mine will grow and grow until you have no choice but to lock me away in a cage like a beast—or to kill me.”
“Barrick!”
“Go away, Briony.” He was weeping again, but without much movement this time and with his eyes half shut: the tears came out of some deep, hard place, like water through a cracked stone. “You know what you came to learn. I don’t want to talk anymore.”
“But I… I want to help you.” “Then leave me alone.”
The mists had grown so thick that they all had to travel like blind pilgrims, each one clinging to the one before him and being clung to in turn. Only the girl Willow who led them was not hung between two fellows front and back. She walked more slowly now in the smothering whiteness, but still with purpose, always forward.
Dab Dawley had hold of Vansen’s cloak. Sound was confused in the mist and it was sometimes hard to hear even words spoken in a loud voice by a man a few yards away, butVansen thought the young guardsman might be whimpering.
They had slept two times and walked for most of the waking hours between those sleeps, yet still had found no end to the terrible forest. Ferras Vansen did not have the sense they were walking in circles in the aimless way he and Collum Dyer did before, but he was still disheartened that two days’ march had not taken them back to the fields of men.
I could be that even if we’re not going in circles, we’ve turned the wrong direction. Perhaps I’ve trusted in the girl too much. The moon, after an initial appearance when they were setting out, had been as scarce as the sun. But perhaps we are going in the right direction, only the Shadowline has continued to spread. It was a hard, chill thought. Perhaps all the lands everywhere are now truly under shadow.
“Are you sure you know where home is?” he whispered to the girl when they were all standing together on a shelf of rock above what sounded like either a quiet stream just beneath them or a very noisy one far below. Whatever the distance stretching beneath them, they were taking no chances; they leaned back against the cliff face side by side as they rested.
She smiled at him. Her thin, dirty face was weary, but some of the early expression of almost religious ecstasy had worn away, along with some of the fear and confusion.”! will find it. They have just dragged it far away.”
“Dragged what?”
Willow shook her head. “Trust in the gods. They see through all the darkness.They see your good works.”
And my bad ones, Vansen couldn’t help thinking. The two days or however long it had been, struggling step by slow step through the murk, had left him much time to brood on his failures of command. Now that the worst shock of losing most of his company had worn down to a persistent, painful ache, he felt almost as wretched about losing the merchant’s nephew, Raemon Beck. He couldn’t help seeing Beck’s miserable face in his mind’s eye Hie poor fellow was certain something like this would happen — that we would drag him back into shadow, that he would meet his doom here. And it seems he was right. But perhaps Raemon Beck and the other guardsmen were alive, merely lost as he and Dyer had been lost. Perhaps he might even discover them before leaving the shadowlands. It was something to cling to, a hope to make the bleak hours a little less haunting.
“What’s that?” Dawley said in a sharp whisper, yanking Vansen’s thoughts back to the damp, mist-shrouded hillside where the company was resting.
“I heard nothing. What was it?”
“A tapping sound—there it is again! It sounds like… like claws clicking on stone.”
A thought that would make no one any happier, Vansen knew. He himself could not hear it, but Dawley had by far the sharpest ears of any of them. “Let’s move on, then,” Vansen said, doing his best to keep his voice calm. “Willow? We need you to lead us again, girl.”
“Lead us where, I’m asking?” said Southstead. “Right into the nest of some great cave bear or something like.” “None of that,” Dyer told him sharply. They had found something a little like military discipline again, but it was fragile.
They moved carefully along the narrow trail. Vansen held onto the girl’s tattered shift only lightly, wanting to be able to move his arms quickly if he stumbled and lost his balance. The unknown distance to the side of them began to feel even more frightening as they hurried along. In his imagination, Vansen could almost feel the invisible bottom of the ravine grow deeper, dropping away from them like water running out of a leaky bucket.
“There’s something there!” shouted Balk, the last in line; his voice seemed to come to them down a long tunnel. “Up there! Behind us!”
Vansen tightened his grip on the girl’s smock and turned to look back. For a moment he could see it coming along the top of the cliff face behind them, a grotesque, drawn-out shape like a scarecrow going on four legs, but more tattered and less comprehensible, then it reared up to an unbelievable height, stiltlike legs pawing, before the mist folded around it again.
Terror set his heart rattling in his chest. “Perin save us! Faster, girl!”
She did her best, but the trail was narrow and untrustworthy. The men behind him were cursing and even sobbing. Gravel slid from beneath Vansen’s feet.