The Black Raven

‘I’ll look forward, then,’ Dera said. ‘It does my heart no good, all this looking back.’

‘I’ve got somewhat else for you to look forward to, Mam. I’ve not had my monthly bleeding.’

Dera rose, studying Niffa’s face.

‘Now here, don’t you be getting your hopes up, lass. Grief will do strange things to a woman; it well might dry her up for a while, like.’

Niffa felt tears rise, choked them back, and turned away. She felt her mother’s gentle hand on her shoulders.

‘I know how much you did love your Demet,’ Dera said. ‘Mayhap the goddesses will bless you after all. There be a need on us to wait and see.’

When Dallandra woke in the morning, she lay in bed for a while, considering Jahdo’s sister. How had Niffa got into the Gatelands of Sleep, and why did she seem so at home there? Later in the day Dallandra tracked Jahdo down, finding him at the servants’ hearth in the great hall with Cae, an orphan boy who worked in the kitchens. On the smooth stones in front of the fire, they were playing with little wooden tops. For a moment she watched as each boy set his top spinning with a flick that bumped it against another. She waited until Jahdo had lost a match, then called him away. They stood to one side where they wouldn’t be overheard.

‘I want to ask you somewhat about your sister,’ Dallandra said. ‘And it’s a very odd question.’

‘Very well, my lady,’ Jahdo said. ‘Niffa be a very odd lass, so fair’s fair.’

‘Odd? How do you mean, odd?’

‘Oh, all the folk in Cerr Cawnen, that’s what they did always say. Our Niffa, she be an odd little soul.’ Jahdo thought for a moment. ‘She did see things. And she had dreams.’

‘Tell me a bit more about that.’

‘We’d be sitting at our fire, and you’d look at Niffa, and her eyes – they’d be moving back and forth, and she’d smile, too, at whatever it was. Or in the lake, she’d be seeing things. And the clouds sometimes too. And then there be her dreams. Mam stopped her from telling them after a while, because when they did come true, our neighbours and townsfolk would be ever so scared by it.’

‘No doubt! Well, my thanks, Jahdo.’

‘But my lady, what be your question?’

‘You just answered it, lad. Now run along, go back to your game. The other lads are waiting for you.’

Only later did Dallandra remember that Jahdo was desperate for news of his family. How selfish of me! she thought. I’d best see what I can find out from Niffa – well, if I ever see her again! A girl little older than a child, with a raw gift for dweomer, wandering unknowingly around the astral plane – she might never stumble upon Dallandra’s vigil again. And yet, as she thought about it, Dallandra realized with an odd certainty that she would see Niffa again in the lands of sleep. The thought was so clear that she knew it must be a message from the Great Ones. Why they’d sent the message was a question of the sort they never answered directly, but Dallandra could venture a guess. No doubt Raena was continuing to work her evil magicks. And no doubt, Dallandra thought, it’s fallen to me to stop her.

‘And just where, pray tell, have you been?’ Verrarc felt his voice catch and growl.

In the pool of lantern light Raena half-crouched against the wall. Her cloak dripped wet snow onto the floor.

‘As if I knew not!’ Verrarc went on. ‘Up in the ruins, bain’t, with that cursed Havoc creature?’

‘And what’s it to you?’

‘What be it to me? Ye gods, have you gone daft? If the town should find out – you up there, consorting with evil spirits – ye gods! I could be ruined! And you – think, woman! They love you not as it is. If they thought you to bring evil among them –’

With a toss of her head Raena tried to push past him. Verrarc caught her wrist in one hand and pulled her round to face him. He held the lantern high and let the light shine down upon her. In the flickering glow her lips seemed bruised, her entire face swollen.

‘And just what might be so cursed important, Rae, that you would risk so much to have it? I’ll have the truth, and I’ll have it now.’

‘Let me go!’ She tried to pull her hand free, but he held on. ‘Oh very well! Truly, it were time. Let me go, and I’ll tell you.’

When he released her she walked a few steps away, then took off the damp cloak. Except for the dancing gleam of his lantern, the great room lay dark around them, silent in the dead of night.

‘Come into our chamber,’ Verrarc said. ‘I’d not have the servants waking to hear this.’

Raena threw the cloak onto the floor and stomped off into the bedchamber, where a small fire burned in the hearth. She flopped down on the edge of the bed like a sulky child and began to pull off her wet boots. He set the lantern down on the mantle and took a chair opposite her. Once the boots were off she calmed. She set them carefully to dry near the hearthstone, then perched on the bed again.

‘Truly, I did promise that you should know,’ Raena said. ‘I were but angry that you did snap at me.’

‘I be frightened, Rae. That’s the sad truth of it.’

She stopped on the edge of speaking and considered him.

‘Not of you,’ Verrarc went on, ‘nor truly of what witchery you might work, but of the town and for the town. I’d not have any more of my fellow citizens murdered by your treacherous little spirits.’

‘Well, that be fair, and my heart does ache for poor Niffa.’ Raena sounded surprisingly genuine. ‘But there were a need on me, a desperate need, Verro, to learn a thing Havoc could tell me.’

‘It must have been desperate, all right, to risk so much for it.’

‘It is, truly it is.’ Raena looked at the fire and frowned, thinking. ‘It be such a hard tale to start, my love. Here – what would you say if I did tell you that there be a new goddess in the world?’

For a long moment Verrarc could only stare at her.

‘A what?’ he said at last. ‘A goddess? This be the last thing I thought you’d –’

‘No doubt.’ All at once Raena smiled in gathered confidence. ‘It came as a strike of lightning to me as well, such a strange and marvellous thing it were. But she did reveal herself to me, and she did mark me out to be her priestess, to serve her all my born days and to live with her ever after in her glorious country beyond death.’ She paused, and never had he seen her smile this way, as if she looked through the dark snowy night around them to the warm light of a spring day. ‘Her name, it be Alshandra.’

Verrarc felt like a sudden half-wit, stripped of words.

‘What?’ he managed to say. ‘What do you mean? A new goddess? How can there be such a thing? The gods did make the world, and they’ve been in it always.’

‘Mayhap I speak wrongly, then.’ Raena considered the fire and frowned again. ‘She were hidden before, you see. Always has she been in the world, off in her own true country, but she never did show herself to the world.’

‘Ah.’ He felt his mind turn to an ugly thought: had Raena gone utterly mad? ‘But she did show herself to you. Somehow.’

‘It be a simple tale. When I was still the wife of my pig of a husband I did spend long hours weeping. You do remember that, I’m sure. And I would leave Penli and go walk among the trees, and I would sit upon the ground and weep some more. One afternoon she did come to me and ask me why I wept.’ Raena’s voice dropped, heavy with awe. ‘She were huge and tall, floating down from the sky to stand before me, and she were so beautiful, too, and so kind, I did fall to my knees before her. That pleased her. She did tell me how to call to her, and when I would call, she would come to me.’

‘Wait! Why did you not tell me about her, back then?’

‘I did think you’d mock and say that she were but my fancy, and truly, I see naught but doubt upon your face now.’

‘How could I not doubt, since you did never so much as mention her before?’

Raena shrugged his objection away.

‘She did call me her chosen one,’ Raena continued. ‘She did tell me that she had watched me always, long before I were born, even. Oh, she did tell me so many marvellous things, and she did take me to her beautiful country, where there were green meadows and a river like silver, and strange cities to walk within! Gone now, all of it but the meadows, because her enemies, and she does have many, all of them evil in their very hearts, but they did destroy it to spite her. But she has another country, she told me, where there be no Time and no Death, and those that worship her shall travel there with her, to live forever in joy.’

Her eyes seemed to glow from within, all silver. She spoke so warmly, so sincerely, that Verrarc found himself wondering if she could possibly be speaking the truth.

‘It would be a grand thing,’ he said, ‘never to die.’