“You might be too late.”
A face swam at her. Lank grey hair, and shadows in the deep lines, and candlelight glimmering on the golden wire.
“There is no time left.”
Strong fingers pressed at Rikke’s face, pressed at the sore flesh around her burning left eye, and she grunted, squirmed, but she was too weak to move.
“There must be a price.”
A hand lifted her head, the rim of a cup pressed to her mouth. She coughed on something bitter, shuddered as she swallowed.
“You have to choose, Rikke.”
She felt afraid. Terrified. She tried to twist away but strong hands held her down, held her tight.
“Which will it be?”
The woman reached for her. Something glittered in her hand. A cold needle.
“No,” whispered Rikke, closing her eyes. “This hasn’t happened yet.”
Shivers held her hand. Held so tight it hurt.
“Can’t lose you, Rikke.” The grey stubble on his grey cheek shifted as he clenched his jaw. “Can’t do it.”
“Not planning to be lost.” Her tongue felt all thick and clumsy, she could hardly make the words. “But if I am you’ll get through it. Lost your eye, didn’t you, and you were a good deal closer to that.”
“I’ve got another eye. There’s just one o’ you.”
It was dawn, she thought. Slap and suck of water on shingle. Cold light on rocks streaked with damp. A cobweb fluttered in the breeze, glittering dewdrops dancing.
“You don’t know what I was.” Shivers fussed at that ring with the red stone he wore on his little finger. “I cared for nothing. Hated everything. Came to serve your father ’cause of all the men I hated, he was the one I hated least. I walked in a nightmare.” He shut his eyes. Or the one that could see. The other showed a slit of gleaming metal still.
“You were so sick, then. No one thought you’d last another winter. Your mother dead and your father grieving. So sick, but so full of hope. You trusted me. Me, with nothing in him to trust. You sucked goat’s milk from a cloth, in my arms. Your father said I was the least likely nursemaid he ever saw. Said I brought you back from the brink.” He looked at her then, and a tear streaked from his good eye. “But it was you brought me back.”
“You soft fool,” she croaked through her cracked lips. “You can’t cry. Not you.”
“When I was a boy, my brother called me pig fat, I cried so easy. Then I forgot how. All I wanted was to be feared. But you never feared me.”
“Well, you’re not so scary as they all make out.” Rikke tried to shift, but nothing was comfortable. She felt her eyes drifting closed, and Shivers squeezed her hand so hard it made her gasp.
“Hold on, Rikke. She’s coming.”
“No,” she said, tears stinging her lids. “This hasn’t happened yet.”
Two great stones loomed into the evening, black fingers against the pink sky. Ancient, they were, splattered with moss and lichen, carved with symbols that time had pitted and smudged all meaning from. There was a hint of drizzle in the air and the hair was stuck to Rikke’s face and everything had a watery sheen.
A pair of guards stood by the stones, holding crude spears, so still Rikke took them for statues. As Shivers carried her closer, she saw there was something wrong about them. Misshapen.
“By the dead,” croaked Rikke. “They’re flatheads.”
“That they are,” said Scenn. The hillman stood grinning next to one of the Shanka and it narrowed its already narrow eyes at him while it used a splinter of bone to pick at one huge tooth. “They guard the witch. She can speak to ’em. Sings to ’em, some say. They’re tame. Long as we behave.”
“I always behave,” said Isern, frowning at those two flatheads with her grip tight on the dark haft of her spear. Far as Shanka have expressions beyond just a lot of teeth, these ones seemed to frown back. “Let’s go, then.”
Scenn shook his head. “I go no further.”
“I know you to be many things, Scenn, and most of ’em bad, but I never took you for a coward.”
“Take me for whatever you like, sister, but I know where I belong, and it’s on this side of the stones. My task was to bring you and my task is done. I don’t pretend to be—”
“Shit on you, then, you hill of blubber,” and Isern elbowed him out of their way and strode on.
“Just the three of us.” Shivers grunted as he shifted Rikke higher up his shoulders. Made her feel like a child again, being carried like this, his hands around her ankles. On between the stones and down a steep path through trees. Old, old trees with whispers in their high, high branches and their jealous roots delving deep, deep, knotted like misers’ fingers.
Around a bend and Rikke saw the shore. Grey shingle stretching down to grey water, blurred reflections of the tall trees prickled by rain-ripples. A few strides out, all was lost in a mist, and beyond that Rikke could see nothing, and somewhere a lonely owl hooted at the sunset.
“The forbidden lake,” said Isern. “Not far to go now.”
“Always has to be a mist, doesn’t there?” grunted Shivers.
Isern set off, her boots crunching in the shingle. “I guess nothing looks so magical, d’you see, as what can’t be seen at all.”
“No,” whispered Rikke, closing her eyes. “This hasn’t happened yet.”
Night, and firelight danced on the gathered faces. Withered old faces and fresh young ones. Faces pricked with the swirling tattoos of the hillmen. Faces that weren’t there yet, maybe, or had been there long ago. Rikke could hardly tell today from yesterday from tomorrow any longer. Meat spat and sizzled. The cold, crisp air of the hills on the back of Rikke’s head but the warmth of the fire on her face and she grinned at the simple pleasure of it, snuggled into a smelly old fur.
“I don’t like it,” said Scenn, shaking his great fat head.
“You’ve confused me with someone who’d spare a turd on what you like or don’t,” said Isern.
Two siblings could hardly have been less alike. Isern, spear-hard and dagger-faced with her crow-black hair in a long tangle. Scenn, huge as a house with hands like hams and a face like a pudding, hair shaved back to a red fuzz on his creased scalp.
“Don’t like going up there,” he said, frowning northwards, between the firelit hovels to the archway of crooked branches. “It’s forbidden for a reason.”
“I need you to take us, not voice your opinions. They’re as bloated with wind as you are.”
“You need not be so harsh about it,” said Scenn, kneading at his belly and looking a touch hurt. He frowned over at Shivers. “She’s harsh as a whipping, ain’t she?”
Shivers raised his brows. Or the one he had, anyway. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“She has to go up there and that’s all there is to it,” snapped Isern, harshly. “This girl matters, Scenn. She’s beloved of the moon. I’ve always known it.”
“You’ve confused me with someone who’d spare a turd on what you know or don’t,” said Scenn. “I’m not taking her just ’cause you say so.”