A Skillful Warrior (SoulNecklace Stories Book 2) Read online

  ‘Scouts,’ said Will. ‘They always post scouts. Small groups of men, three at the most. They ride light, and live off the land. They range far from the army, and report in regularly. And fire. If the Shield marches, they will need to signal the scouts. The smoke is their signal.’

  ‘The Shield?’

  ‘It’s what they call themselves.’

  Jed tightened his girth. ‘They have other names too. Like the Great Horde or the Arm of the Eternal.’ The horse lifted one ear, as if listening to his rider. ‘Think themselves mighty important with such names.’ He spat. ‘Matters little what they call themselves. More needful is to know what their actions will be.’

  ‘They kill, is what they do,’ said Will.

  ‘Aye, they’re good at that. You’ll be mighty lucky to spot their scouts, Lady. They’re expert at hiding. But for their signals, Will’s right. Watch for smoke or flames or flags.’

  ‘All three?’

  ‘On the plains they use flags or flames. But in woodland they use smoke.’

  N’tombe nodded and closed her eyes, shutting herself away.

  Jed turned to me. ‘You coming, Lady?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Listening to them I’d forgotten that I, too, needed to get on my horse.

  Jed and Will exchanged a look, but I pretended not to notice.

  We camped that night in a brush of thorn, The low hanging branches created a natural hut. Good for keeping away wolves, said Jed, and for hiding us from men. Will suggested drawing lots for the watch, but I offered to go first. Dreading the night and the dreaming, I preferred to remain awake.

  Built into a hollow of the land, the fire smoked a little. I tossed twigs and leaves onto the dying coals to watch them spark until Jed barked a sleepy order to leave the fire be. Sitting upwind on the hill above our wild hut, I watched the stars come out.

  What does one do on night vigil? There was nothing to see, just the shapes of the horses resting on the grass, the dulling embers and the stars. N’tombe loved the stars. She would often tread the battlements to watch them, saying that in her home world they were not as bright. How much more she would love them here, without the sentry’s torches flaring and dazzling her. But she lay silent, entombed in gold, breathing gently. I could see her chest rising and falling as the golden energy of the wilds ebbed and fell about her like a slow-moving tide.

  What was this golden light? At first, I had thought it a dream, something glimpsed between sleep and waking, until Rinpoche had shown me more. This energy was N’tombe’s air, her natural element. She still needed to eat, though; the golden light might give her spirit sustenance, but it wasn’t enough for her body. So Rosa had reminded her, teasing her gently.

  Rosa. My aunt, the Guardian. Where was she? I tried to reach towards her. But I felt and heard nothing, just the sighing of the breeze and the lonely cry of a crow. Was she well? And my parents, my brothers? Did they even notice that the world about them had changed? I rubbed my face. These were not tears on my cheeks; no, it was only the chill of the evening that made my eyes water.

  I tucked cold hands beneath my cloak. The stones about my wrist were a heavy weight. Five glass beads given to me less than a week ago, their power displayed at the Crossing, when their light had shone a beam into the clouds, separating land from sea and my homeland from this world. Now they were quiet grey shapes. Nothing remarkable. They had changed in form as Rosa had taken them from her necklace. When resting against her skin they had been precious stones: sapphires, emeralds, diamonds. Did they mind becoming glass?

  I missed the castle. It had winding stairs, walls of honey-colored stone and secret tunnels that stretched from the cellars into the heart of the mountain. The kitchens, hard against the south wall, had been full of noise and bustle and the smell of baking bread. I wanted the activity of the place; the sense that there was always something about to happen.

  Was Rosa well? The great ruby that hung at the base of the necklace was working upon her, wounding the flesh above her heart. Soon, too soon, she would be a bead upon the necklace, and I? Would I be in that tower, wearing the same necklace? I clenched my hands upon the beads. I do not want this thing. Even if it means keeping my homeland safe, I do not want to be a sacrifice.

  ‘I will watch, Princess.’ N’tombe’s dark face made her nearly invisible in the night.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I whispered.

  ‘Nevertheless, you must rest. Take my place. The soil there is warm.’

  I slid between Jed and Will. The wind sighed and called of sleep, and though I feared to dream I could not prevent my eyes from closing.

  ***

  I dreamed strange fragments; a woman in a white robe, her back to me. I called ‘Rosa!’ but when she turned, her face was mine. Screaming, I tumbled, falling from the tower onto a knife that ached in my chest and bled across my hands. I grabbed at it and it became but a heavy, hard stone, polished and precious.

  I sat on a stony beach, my hand on a dull green rock. Wood smoke stung my eyes, a woman wailed. Above arched a cliff, rimmed with green fronds from palms as tall as trees. A bird called, forlorn and lonely. It sounded like a small bell, tolling.

  A man laughed. ‘Death shall not take you, lord,’ and I fell again, tumbling and twisting, drifting like smoke across a dry plain beneath great mountains, capped with snow that gleamed in the moonlight.

  But the moon has not yet risen, I thought, and yes, this wasn’t the moon at all, but the eye of a great dragon that blinked slowly, a great half-eclipse of an eyelid.

  I heard another voice. ‘You come to me, my dear?’ It was old, and unused to talking.

  The creature smiled and huffed his breath, sending me tumbling again, whirling and twirling, falling onto a wall of daggers. And I woke then, tangled into a thornbush like a fly in a spider’s web. Two men stared at me.

  ‘You need to cut your hair,’ said one. I blinked, uncertain. Was this a dream?

  Will laughed, and I relaxed. ‘I’ll do it,’ he seized his knife, held it above my head. The morning sun gleamed on its blade.

  ‘No!’

  ‘What’s wrong? Dana, you panic so easily.’ He chuckled, set the knife’s edge against my throat.

  I seized his wrist, struggled with him.

  ‘Ow!’

  And there I was, straddling Will, his knife in my hand, while he blinked at me with sleepy eyes. ‘Dana! What are you doing?’

  Feeling sick, I put down the knife. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Your hair, Princess,’ Jed’s voice was a strange echo of my dream. He smiled but his eyes were alert, his sword drawn. ‘It’s tangled in the bush.’

  I begged to be put on watch, for then I had an excuse to sit wide-eyed, staring at the dark. But it’s impossible to keep awake forever, so I elected to doze on horseback. But even then I dreamt, strange fragments of dragons and towers and always, always, an ache in my chest, so strong that at times it stopped my breath. I grew heavy-eyed. Catching my reflection in a dawn-still pool, I saw dark shadows under my eyes. They looked like bruises.

  N’tombe watched me, anxious after I’d waken everyone with screams of a dragon eating my heart. She spun gold light out of the trees, wrapped it round me, and at night we lay together, two strange chrysalises. She slept, but I stared, saucer-eyed, at the stars. I sung snatches of song to keep me awake.

  ‘Ninny-nonny-no

  How do you pass

  All the way into town?

  Silly Nonny-no

  Where did you go?

  The world’s turned upside-down.’

  Next morning we continued onwards. We traveled upstream, following the river. N’tombe pushed her awareness out, watching for scouts or soldiers and we stayed alert for the smell of smoke. Yet there was still nothing.

  On the nineth day of our travels – the nineth day since we’d left the Kingdom – we reached a series of waterfalls. The walls of the valley grew steep and the trees had been pruned into strange shapes by the wind. The rough path was too st
oney for the horses, so we dismounted and led them onwards. Their hooves slid and clattered on the rocks. Finally, we reached the top of the valley and saw before us the empty moor. It was like staring at an ocean of grass.

  To the south loomed mountains, rounded and sombre. Granite tors, with odd and sudden shapes, looked like castles in the evening mists. Black lakes reflected the sky like an eye and swamps appeared, sudden and dangerous underfoot. The land seemed bare, scrubbed clean of inhabitants. A wild place, this land of mountain and moor. It was good to be here in midsummer, when the weather was kind and the days long. Traveling this land in winter was only for the hardy, or the foolish.

  ‘It’s strange, Dana.’ Will rode beside me. His mount, ears pricked, seemed to enjoy the wind off the heath. ‘When we landed on that beach I thought, Great! Now I can stop traveling.’

  ‘And then I arrived. At the time you seemed pleased.’

  ‘I was.’ He grinned, a private little embrace in his eyes, and for a moment my fog of tiredness lifted.

  I said it in a rush. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Does it worry you? Killing someone?’

  ‘It should,’ he said slowly. ‘Of course it should. Kill someone, you take away everything. All they are, all they will ever be. But ...’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Do you feel guilty about the coney we eat at night?’

  I shrugged. ‘One has to eat.’

  ‘That’s how an army thinks. They don’t worry about you as an individual. Soldiers won’t care about your family or your home. You are just an obstacle to overcome.’

  ‘So, should I feel like that, too?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m not saying they’re right, Dana. But while you try to avoid killing them, they will be trying to kill you.’

  ‘Those men at the crossing, they were doing a job. And I murdered them.’

  ‘Is that what’s bothering you?’

  I shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ That, and the dreams of dying. And dragons. And the ache in my chest that never went away. And the sudden disappearance of my country, my family. That was a little disturbing too.

  ‘Dana, they would have killed you. You had to stop them.’

  ‘But not by killing them.’

  ‘A dead enemy is a safe enemy, Dana. Call it self-defence, if it makes it easier.’

  I smiled and rubbed my chest. Will put his hand on mine. ‘Hey. You’re acting as though you’re the one who’s guilty. Remember, it was them who attacked us. Dana, think of it this way — you saved our lives.’

  ‘You killed their commander, Will, not I.’

  ‘The Noyan? I could only get to that man because you gave me an opening. Without you there, I would not have had the chance.’

  We rode silently for a while. My horse stretched her neck, pulled at the bit. I slackened the reins to let her find a space of comfort.

  ‘You’ve improved since I’ve been away.’ Will’s tone was light. He was trying to change the subject.

  ‘I’ve improved?’

  ‘Oh yes. Your fighting is better, too.’

  I grinned. ‘I’ve been practising.’ I told him of the Sergeant’s training, how I’d fought up to five guards at once, disarmed them all.

  ‘He should have let you kill them,’ Will muttered. ‘That way it wouldn’t be such a shock.’

  ‘I’m joking,’ he added.

  I caught his sideways look and wondered. ‘Will, who was the first man you killed?’

  He smiled grimly. ‘In Less Brittain, we’d left a tavern. We were strangers, equipped for a long journey. We must have had money. A group of men tried to rob us. It wasn’t much of a fight.’ For a second an older man, a hard man, peeped out of Will’s eyes.

  ‘Do you have nightmares?’

  ‘About the robbery?’ He snorted. ‘Not me. I bet the survivors do though.’

  Once I had dreamt of him and Jed being ambushed. They had been passing through a canyon and had been waylaid by bandits. That had also been a true dream, but in that dream I had not been terrified for myself, only for Will. ‘You remember those other bandits, those ones in the rocks? Would you say that was an easy fight?’

  He smiled, then, a softer, younger Will. My Will. ‘Then I thought there was no hope. Until you arrived. Like a miracle, you were. You and your flying fists.’

  ‘Flying fists?’ For a second it was as though nothing had changed between us. Old sparring partners, we knew each other in a way no one else could. I punched him on the shoulder and he punched back, but he was a rotten hitter on horseback and I ducked. ‘Hah!’

  N’tombe looked at us and smiled.

  It’s one thing to look out of a window at a distant mountain range and dream of exploring beyond their peaks. It’s quite another to go into the scenery and to know there is no return. Even worse is a one-way journey from comfort into danger; though your bones ache and your legs are chaffed from riding, there is no rest. You must continue.

  In the morning, stiff and coughing, I could smell my sweat. Then I got used to it. Finally, I found it useful, for the flies bothered me less. Although, that might not have been the smell, that might have been the cooler mountain air.

  In a way it was easier for Jed and Will. Used to the privations of a journey, they rode uncomplaining, pausing only for a brief stop at midday before pressing onwards. But I, used to the luxuries of mattresses and maids, found those first few weeks a form of hell. Only the nightmares distracted me from the pain.

  ***

  ‘You don’t have to accept them, you know,’ said the woman.

  I blinked. ‘What?’

  Only a moment ago, I’d been staring at the stars, now it was bright daylight. This is the worst thing about true dreams; they are so intense, that it’s hard to be sure sometimes what is real and what is the dream. Such dreams are deeply seductive; enticing and disturbing. It would be so easy to stay in the dream for ever.

  ‘You can control it, Dana.’

  ‘Am I dreaming now?’

  The woman had long flaxen hair, deep lines between nose and mouth and a resolute jaw. Robed in plain, tight-sleeved linen, she could be from any place and any time. I had not seen her before and yet she felt familiar, as if I knew her.

  With that thought came understanding. ‘You are?’

  She nodded. ‘One of the beads around your wrist. Yes.’ She lifted her face to the sun. ‘A bead, that’s all I am.’

  ‘I think,’ I said slowly, ‘that you are more than a piece of glass.’

  ‘I was a diamond, once,’ she spoke with a flash of pride. ‘Then when others came, I changed. We have to match, you know. Co-ordination is important.’

  ‘You change just so you look good? Isn’t that a bit superficial?’

  ‘We change because we work together. The outward appearance is just an expression of the transformation.’ She smiled. ‘And of course, we like to look good, too.’

  There were laughter lines at the corner of her eyes and I relaxed. There was nothing to hurt me here.

  ‘No, child. In this dream, nothing will harm you.’ She touched my wrist. ‘You must not live in fear. You have a rare gift. You can take the dream, and change it.’

  What was she talking of? I had had terrible nightmares — I’d dreamed of being chased by a dragon, being stabbed through the heart. In these dreams, I had no power; I was a most unwilling participant. I rubbed my chest. The echo of pain was strong.

  She looked at me. ‘And haven’t you fought and killed, in your dreams?’

  I remembered Will and his talk of flying fists, and me dreaming of his danger and fighting to defend him.

  She nodded. ‘Yes. Those bandits. You awoke, but they did not.’

  So, those men at the Crossing had not been my first deaths. Strangely, this was a relief. It was not a good thing to have killed these men, was it? And yet, at the time I had no choice. If I had not killed them, they would have shot Will with their arrows. Maybe that’s all one can do; s
top the moment before it happens.

  ‘In that dream,’ said the woman, ‘you had power.’

  ‘If I had done nothing, Will would have been killed.’

  ‘So you thought not of yourself, but of someone else.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well,’ she said briskly. ‘You’ll have to start thinking of yourself, child. Or your dreams will turn you mad. Listen to me. Your dreams are yours and yours alone, and you make your own choices within them. When someone close to you is threatened, you don’t hesitate, do you? Well. Now it is you who are under threat. The enemy you face is old. And powerful. With strong armies to command and brave men who have fought many battles for him.’

  ‘Will spoke about a king, an emperor. He’s very old,’ I said. ‘But I don’t dream of him.’

  ‘Well, what do you see in your dreams?’

  I rubbed the spot over my heart. ‘I see a dragon. And a sword in my chest.’

  She sucked in breath. ‘Ah, he is clever. This makes it hard for you to sleep, yes?’

  I nodded. Yes. A sword in my chest did make it difficult to sleep.

  ‘He will make you distrust those about you.’

  ‘He can do this?’

  ‘Of course. He has many agents. You have met some already, some you have not. Pray you do not. They are terrible.’

  I remembered the magic worker who had invaded the Kingdom and taken Alden, my brother, hostage. N’tombe and Rinpoche had fought him. Dissolving, Rinpoche had destroyed the evil, but at great cost, for I no longer heard his laughter in my dreams.

  She looked at me with pity. ‘Poor girl, to carry this heavy burden.’

  The knowledge of power seeking me should be terrifying, and yes, at some level it was chilling. But that morning, in that dreamland, I felt only relief. An enemy I could cope with. Having an enemy meant I had a goal, a mission. Someone to target, something to train against. I can do it, I thought. I can fight and I can kill. This is the strange thing; an enemy gives one hope.

  I spread my fingers in the dream sunlight. ‘So. What must I do?’

  She patted my shoulder. ‘Good girl.’