The Black Raven

‘Good morrow, Frie,’ Admi said.

‘And to you both.’ Frie sat down across the table. ‘I did stop at old Hennis’s house, and he be too ill to come out in this cold, or so his servants did tell me.’

‘Huh!’ Admi snorted. ‘I’ll wager I know what does sicken him. He does hate to hold his tongue and smile when Werda talks of the gods and spirits.’

‘Can’t understand the man,’ Frie said. ‘Cursed obvious, it is, that the world be full of gods and spirits. Makes you wonder, it does, if his long years be muddling his mind.’

‘Well, now,’ Verrarc put in, ‘he does know the city laws off by heart still. His mind be sound enough on those matters.’

‘True enough,’ Admi said. ‘Now, where be Burra? Late, no doubt, as always.’

Frie grunted his agreement and wiped the melting frost from his moustache with the back of a soot-stained hand.

‘I’d hoped for a little chat among us before the Spirit Talker arrived,’ Admi went on. ‘Which we’ll not have if he doesn’t get himself here soon. I’d best have a private word with him. If he takes not his duty to the town seriously, well, then, there are others who long for a council seat.’

Not long after Burra did arrive, a skinny man with yellow hair, not much older than Verrarc and like him, a merchant who traded in the east. The councilmen barely had a chance at two private words, however, before Werda opened the door and strode in. Her apprentice followed with her arms full of bundled things. The Spirit Talker had bound her grey hair up into braids coiled round her head, and she wore the white cloak that normally she kept for ceremonial occasions. Without waiting to be asked, she pulled out a chair and sat down with her back to the fire. Athra laid her bundles down on the table, then stood behind her master’s chair.

‘I see that Hennis, he deigns not to join us,’ Werda said.

‘Er, just so,’ Admi said. ‘His servants did say that he be somewhat ill.’

‘Huh.’ Werda rolled her eyes. ‘It be a foolish thing to deny the power of the gods. He does get his blasphemies from the Mountain Folk, no doubt. They do mock the spirits, calling them but idle fancies.’

‘Er, mayhap,’ Admi said, ‘but no matter. There be four of us here in attendance upon the council, enough to make our decidings official.’ He paused, glancing around the table. ‘Now, then, by the power invested in me as Chief Speaker, I do open this meeting, come together to discuss the death of Demet, the weaver’s second son. Yesterday morn Verrarc, chief officer of the town militia, did venture that evil spirits did slay the lad. Does any here dispute this finding?’

Frie and Burra shook their heads in a no. Admi turned to Werda.

‘I too agree with Councilman Verrarc,’ Werda said. ‘This night past have I walked round Citadel, and in many a place did I find spirits lurking. These were all weak little things, and I did invoke the gods upon them, and they did flee. No one of them could have slain Demet, but together, in a pack, they would be dangerous.’

‘You have the thanks of the council,’ Admi said, ‘for sending them on their way.’

‘But will they come right back again?’ Frie broke in. ‘That’s what I be wanting to know.’

‘With spirits, it be a constant battle.’ Werda gestured at the bundles on the table. ‘I did bring spirit traps for each of you to take to your dwellings and one to stay here in the council house.’

‘You have our thanks,’ Admi said.

‘Most welcome,’ Werda continued. ‘And now I do ken that I’d best stay on guard against the spirits, which kenning be a weapon in itself. I have my own ways of standing watch.’

The councilmen all nodded as if they understood. Verrarc felt his stomach clench cold. If Raena insisted upon invoking her Lord Havoc again, Werda would be sure to know.

Lael brought Niffa the news of the council’s decision, when, late that afternoon, he carried home the wicker cage of ferrets from their day’s ratting. Niffa took the cage into the other room and released the weasels into their pen; Lael had already taken off their hunting hoods. She came back out to the great room and found him ladling himself a tankard of flat ale from the barrel near the hearth. Dera sat at table, eating a few slices of honeyed apples.

‘Do have some of this,’ she was saying.

‘I won’t,’ Lael said. ‘It be your medicaments, and I’d have you eat the lot, my love.’

Niffa set the empty cage down by the hearth. She was aware of her father watching her with sad eyes.

‘What be so wrong, Da?’ Niffa said.

‘Well, when I were down in town, I did hear the crier. The council, they do say that the matter of Demet’s death be closed. Evil spirits, and Werda, she did sanction their decision.’

Niffa stared down at the straw on the floor and wondered if she were going to weep.

‘Here now,’ Lael said softly. ‘Had they ruled different, he still would have been gone.’

‘Oh, true spoken. But now I’ve naught left of him, but my memories. Not even vengeance – not so much as that for a keepsake.’

Still, she did have one thing more, of course: her dreams. That evening and in those that followed she turned to her childhood refuge, where she could see Demet and pretend that he lived again. In those dreams she would perhaps come into a room and find him sitting there, laughing at her while she reproached him for pretending to die, or perhaps they would walk together by the lake and talk of what they would do come spring. Yet she always knew that she was dreaming, no matter how urgently she wanted the dream to last forever. Other times she would dream they were making love in their bed back in his family’s house, and from those dreams she woke in tears. Yet as time went on, those dreams faded, to be replaced by something far stranger.

Many-towered cities rose in her nights, where she wandered with a lantern in hand while she searched for something she’d lost, though she could put no name to it. At other times she had walked in the city during a summer’s day and marvelled at the strange buildings and the people she saw among them. In the centre of this city rose a hill, circled at intervals by five stone walls. At the top, inside the highest wall, stood a fortress of some kind. In her dreams all she could see were squat towers clustering behind the stone. Sometimes she knew that she had to get into that fortress; in other dreams, she needed to escape it – though paradoxically, she never dreamt of being inside it.

When she woke of a morning, she would lie in bed and marvel at how clearly she saw the dream city. Even though its central hill reminded her of Citadel, the rest of it – the buildings, the people’s clothing – looked nothing like Cerr Cawnen, the only city she’d ever seen. By brooding over the dream images this way she reinforced them, so that the city took a permanent form. Whenever she went back, the same houses and shops would occupy the same locations; the same hill would loom over the familiar streets.

Finally Niffa turned bold. When in her dream she came to its gate, she walked through. All around the city lay meadows where the grass grew as high as her waist, but narrow paths ran through them. She followed one a little ways down the road, stopping often to look back at the towered hill to keep within its sight, but she woke before she’d gone far. Over the next few nights she would walk a little way through these meadows, then rush back to the city before it could disappear. She had learned, just lately, that things you loved could disappear without warning.

Eventually, as she walked through the grass she saw far off to one side something gleaming like fire in the green, but no smoke rose. She left the road and struggled through the grass under a sky growing dim with twilight. Off to her right a huge purple moon trembled on the horizon as night deepened. When she looked back, the city walls still rose nearby, with here and there a point of lantern light upon them. The sight gave her the courage to keep going toward the fire-gleam, a strange red glow like a beacon in the grass.

Two huge five-pointed stars, each taller than a man and twined of stranded red and gold light, hung in the air just above a stretch of beaten-down grass. Between them the earth opened into the mouth of a tunnel sloping down into some unseeable darkness. On the other side of the stars someone was standing in the grass – a woman, judging from her long ash-blonde hair, but she wore tight leather trousers and a tunic rather than dresses.

‘Here!’ the woman called out. You’re not Raena.’

‘And I do thank every god in my heart for that,’ Niffa called back. ‘Who be you?’

The woman walked around the stars and stood looking her over with her hands on her hips. Niffa had never seen anyone so beautiful, or so she thought at first glance. She had silver blonde hair with silver eyes that matched it. Her features were even and perfect – but her ears! They were long and strangely furled like a new fern in spring.

‘My name is Dallandra,’ the woman said at last. ‘And I made these wards to keep Raena away from a thing she seeks. Who are you?’

‘Niffa be my name.’

‘Jahdo’s sister!’

‘And is it that you know our Jahdo?’ In her joy Niffa forgot her fear. ‘Fares he well? Oh please, do tell me.’

‘Well and safe, truly, and you’ll be seeing him in the spring.’

The joy rose like a wave of pure water. All at once Niffa lay awake, tucked into her blankets with a ferret asleep on her chest and grey dawn flooding the window.

‘Tek-tek, whist!’ She shook the ferret awake, then picked her up and put her down on the bed next to her. ‘It’s needful I tell Mam straightaway.’

She found Dera awake, kneeling by the hearth and laying twigs upon blazing tinder. In the big bed at the far side of the room Lael still slept, wrapped around a pillow and snoring. Dera was concentrating on the fire, but she’d apparently heard her daughter approach.

‘Early for you to be up and about,’ Dera said.

‘Mam, I did have the most wonderful dream, and it be one of my true ones, I do know it deep my heart. I did meet a woman who does know our Jahdo. He be safe and well, she did tell me, and he’ll be returning in the spring.’

At that Dera did look up, and the warmth of her smile glowed like the spreading fire.