She smoothed her hands over her dusty, trail-marked clothing and followed them down.

CHAPTER THREE

Reva

She ran, until her lungs burned and her legs ached, she ran. Away from the road, away from him, away from the lies, through the long grass and into the trees. She ran until exhaustion sent her sprawling in a painful tangle of sword and cloak. Scrambling to her feet, she cast about for landmarks, chest heaving from exertion and panic. He’ll come after me, hunt me down, make me listen to more lies . . .

She began to run again, tripping almost immediately as her fatigued foot found a tree root. She fell to her arms and knees, sobbing in hard, aching jerks, her mind racing. If he did exist, his bishops say he hates you for what you are . . . You were sent in search of a thing that can’t be found in the hope that I would kill you . . . A fresh martyr . . .

“LIES!” Her voice resounded through the trees, wild and feral. The trees, however, had no answer save for the creak of wind-stirred branches.

She sat back on her haunches, face raised to the sky, mouth wide as she drank the air. She knew now Al Sorna wasn’t coming in pursuit, his skills were such that finding her would have been a simple matter, but here she sat, alone. She remembered the edge of despair in his voice as he called after her, a note of defeat . . . I now deny my song though it screams at me to let you go.

Follow your song, Darkblade, she thought. I’ll make my own.

She ran a shaking hand through her too-long hair, her sluttish, Asraelin hair. Filthy, Fatherless sinner . . .

The priest! The priest will have answers to these lies. She would return to him and he would speak the truth and the World Father would once again bless her with his love, prove she was not hated, prove the sin had been beaten from her, prove she was worthy of His holy mission . . . Worthy to carry her father’s sword.

The sword. The prospect of returning to the priest without it, demanding he answer the Darkblade’s lies no less, was absurd. But if she had the sword, his face would reveal all the truth she needed. The sword was the truth.

She opened her eyes to the stars, picking out the Stag. The fore-hoof, she knew, pointed almost directly due south, towards Cumbrael, the Greypeaks . . . and the High Keep. Perhaps it was still there, lying unclaimed in a shadowed corner of the Lord’s chamber, waiting for her. If not, then she had little chance of finding it elsewhere.

The thought came to her as she started to rise, a swift treacherous whisper in her mind. Go back. They will welcome you.

“With lies!” she hissed back.

With love. When did the priest ever show you that?

“I care nothing for his love, or theirs. The love of the Father is the only love I need.”

She got to her feet, brushing loose soil from her clothes, and began to walk towards the south.

? ? ?

The bow was fashioned from wych elm and pale cream in colour, the centre of the stave smooth and shiny with use, the wood on either side ornately carved, one side showing a stag the other a wolf. It was different to the ash bow Al Sorna had made for her, abandoned the day she ran from him, longer and somewhat thicker, no doubt making for greater power and range.

The bow’s owner lay on a blanket of grass in the lee of an aged tree stump, several miles from the nearest road. His eyes were closed in an apparently blissful slumber, his mostly white beard stained red and an empty earthenware wine jug in his lap. At his side a bored-looking sheep-hound, all shaggy fur and dolorous eyes, gazed up at Reva with a complete absence of alarm, only angling its head in a curious manner as she crept closer to gently lift the bow from the drunkard’s arms. The quiver of arrows was too firmly wedged beneath his back so she left it. Arrows were more easily made than bows.

She had gone about twenty paces when she stopped, eyeing the carving on the stave and finding it even more fine than she first thought. On the upper side the stag stood with its antlers lowered in readiness for combat whilst below it the wolf crouched, teeth bared in a snarl. The craftsmanship was remarkable, the carvings finished to a level that told her this was an item of considerable worth.

The sword is all, the priest had said. The Father will forgive all sins committed in pursuit of the sword.

Reva sighed, retraced her steps, placed the bow back in the drunkard’s arms and sat down to wait for him to wake. After a while the sheep-hound came over, sniffing and whining for scraps of the rabbit she had snared the day before. The old man woke with a start at the dog’s appreciative bark as she fed him a morsel.

“What!” He clutched at his bow, fumbling for an arrow. “Whaddya want, ya whore ya!”

Reva watched him fail to pull an arrow from the quiver, abandon the attempt and reach instead for the small knife in his boot, wild eyes becoming still and rapt at the sight of the single gold piece she held up.

“That’s a nice bow,” she said.

? ? ?

The arrow smacked into the tree trunk with a sharp thwack, buried in the wood up to at least a handspan of its length. It was a practice arrow, just a sharpened yard of wind-fallen ash with no head or fletching, and yet she had found her mark from a distance of twenty paces.

The old man had named himself a shepherd although there was no sign of a flock for miles around. He claimed the bow was a souvenir from a forgotten campaign against the Cumbraelins, when he was but a lad and the lord’s men came to take him for a soldier, though his poor mother wept. Reva thought the tale unlikely. The bow was a fine weapon but it was not Cumbraelin in design. She assumed the shepherd had either stolen it or won it at gaming. In any case he had been too eager to be off with his new-found wealth to provide a fuller explanation of the bow’s origins, striding his unsteady way across the sheepless meadow, wine jug in hand and his sad-eyed dog trailing after.

She had been travelling for two weeks now, keeping off the roads and sheltering in woodland at night, hunting where opportunity rose, suppressing her hunger and always following the Stag’s hoof south. There were few people about, the drunken shepherd the first she had seen for several days. This far from the roads there was little chance of encountering either traveller or outlaw, although she kept a wary eye out for the latter.

That evening the bow reaped a moor hen, plucked, spitted, cooked and eaten before the sun fell. She knew her time with Al Sorna had weakened her, the weeks of sleeping on a full belly leaving her too much in thrall to her hunger. Every night she offered thanks to the Father for delivering her from the Darkblade’s lies and begged His forgiveness for her sinful indulgence.

After eating she drew her knife, taking hold of a length of her ever-growing hair and making ready to cut. It had become a nightly ritual, her determined purpose waning as she touched the blade to the sluttish curls, never actually cutting. She told herself she needed to maintain the disguise. Asraelin women don’t wear their hair so short . . . And she had yet to cross into Cumbrael. It had nothing to do with vanity, or the many times Alornis had said how she liked the way it caught the sun.

Liar. The priest’s voice followed her into sleep as she sheathed her knife and huddled in her cloak. Fatherless, sinning liar . . .

? ? ?

Another week brought her within sight of the Greypeaks, a jagged blue-misted outline on the horizon. Woodland grew thicker here, covering the foothills rising in height the further south she walked. Game was sparse, her kills amounting to a solitary partridge and a somewhat aged hare too slow to scamper out of the arrow’s path. Two nights more and she judged herself within a half-day’s march to the mountains proper. The exact location of the High Keep was unknown to her but the days when it had been forbidden for any Cumbraelin to even speak of it were long over, her father’s martyrdom had seen to that. She knew of a village situated just over the river forming the border with Asrael. The priest had indicated that pilgrims could find assistance there, for all Sons of the Trueblade must journey to the High Keep to honour the Father’s most blessed servant.

She found a pool of clean water beneath a small cascading waterfall, stripped and bathed, washed her clothes as best she could and lay them out to dry as she reclined on a rock in the sunlight, gazing up at the drifting majesty of the clouds. As ever, when her thoughts strayed, she thought of Al Sorna and his lessons, of Alornis and her drawings, even of the drunken poet and his awful songs. It was wrong, she knew, indulgent, sinful, and she always begged the Father for forgiveness afterwards, but for a short time every day, she let her thoughts wander over the memories, waiting for the moment when the treacherous voice would whisper its enticements: It’s not too late. Turn around, go north. Take ship to the Reaches. They will welcome you . . .

She punished herself with sword practice, flashing through the scales faster and faster until her vision swam and she nearly dropped from exhaustion. As the light faded she piled up some ferns for a bed and settled down to sleep, for once not bothering to hold the knife to her hair, though in truth it was now long enough to warrant a trim, just enough to keep it out of her eyes.

? ? ?

She awoke to screams, the sword coming free of the scabbard in a blur as she rolled to a crouch, eyes searching the blackness of the forest for enemies. Nothing . . . Wait.

Her nose picked up the scent before she saw it, smoke on the breeze, the yellow flicker of a tall fire through the trees. The scream came again, shrill, agonised . . . female.