My Swordhand is Singing Page 4

  8

  The Shadow Queen

  “Go away, Peter!”

  Agnes leant from the upstairs window, looking down at where he stood in the street, holding Sultan loosely by the reins. Dusk had fallen across the village. Agnes’s father had been a well-to-do merchant, a draper, and the house was one of the very few with two floors.

  “Let me in, Agnes,” Peter called up to her, as quietly as he could. Here and there people came and went down the long street, and Peter was wary of them, wanting to avoid prying eyes. In truth, however, they were all hurrying home, eager to be out of the coming night. As so often, the streets of Chust seemed filled with a subtle menace that Peter could not have named.

  “I will not,” Agnes said, for the fourth time. “I told you. We have barricaded the doors. And the windows downstairs.”

  “Well, open them again,” Peter said, exasperated now.

  “No, Peter. Are you mad? It’s getting dark. Go home.”

  As if in agreement, Sultan whinnied gently. Peter put his hand out and patted Sultan’s neck to reassure him. There was little he could do. He had ridden to see Agnes, and now she wouldn’t even let him in.

  “Agnes,” he tried again. “Agnes, you must tell me that you are all right. I’ve heard a story, that your—”

  He stopped, waiting for an old man to hobble slowly by and out of earshot. In that little space of time Peter pondered what Tomas had told him. He didn’t know that he believed what he’d heard, but he wasn’t entirely sure that he didn’t.

  “What, Peter?”

  “I heard that your mother said…that your…father…Your father has been back to visit her.”

  He whispered as loud as he dared, glancing up and down the street as he did so. Agnes’s reply was almost inaudible.

  “What of it?”

  “So it’s true?”

  She glared down at him. Peter was getting cross as well as cold. Why couldn’t she give him a straight answer? He couldn’t believe she seemed so calm about it, but then an awful thought crossed his mind.

  “Have you seen him, Agnes?”

  For a moment her face softened. She looked away across the rooftops, toward, Peter thought, the church.

  “No, I haven’t,” she said, quietly. Almost sadly. “I haven’t seen him. And I don’t know if Mother has, or if she’s just…” She trailed off.

  “Agnes, I’m sorry. I want to help you. Won’t you let me in? Let me check that everything’s all right. Can I bring you anything?”

  “No, Peter. What could you do anyway? I can manage. I’ve blocked all the doors. I’ve protected the windows. We’ll be all right. You should go away. It’s not safe out there. In the dark. You know what people are saying, don’t you?”

  Her voice dropped to a whisper, so that Peter had to strain on tiptoe to catch the gentle words as they fell down to him.

  “It’s the Shadow Queen. People are saying she’s back, that she’s coming to make Chust her own. Some people even say they’ve seen her!”

  With that Agnes seemed to have scared herself. With a wave of her hand, she indicated that the interview was over.

  The Shadow Queen.

  Peter knew what his father would say about that. All nonsense and tittle-tattle. Nevertheless he suddenly felt very exposed in the lonely village street, with no one but Sultan for company.

  He swung his leg over Sultan’s back and wearily headed for home again.

  9

  The Eternal Return

  “Come on, Sultan.”

  Peter bent over Sultan’s neck and whispered in his ear. “I’m tired too, but we should get back to Father.”

  That was true, but it was also true that, despite himself, Peter had been unsettled by Agnes.

  Locking herself and her mother away every night seemed a desperate measure, and her talk of the Shadow Queen might just have been village gossip, but as he rode through the deserted streets, the darkness began to eat at him.

  He steadied himself and rode on, but it was not long before he began to catch himself peering into the shadows that curled at the street corners. Then he’d snatch his eyes away again, like a frightened child. The darkness seemed to press in on him from all sides, ominously. What if it was true? What if the Shadow Queen was true, and was coming to take them all?

  Peter and his father might not ever have seen her, but they had met plenty of people on their travels who said they had.

  Was it last year? Or the year before? Peter couldn’t remember, but once, he and his father had been passing through a district away to the southeast, nestled up against the Karpat Mountains. They had stopped in a village for the night. All evening, as they sat in the inn, there was talk of only one thing. The Shadow Queen. The locals spoke in hushed whispers, as if she was standing at the window of the inn, intent on catching anyone maligning her.

  “She’s a thousand years old!” someone said.

  “Rubbish! She was born at the beginning of time. She has no age.”

  “Yes,” someone else agreed. “And she’s ten feet tall and has a hundred teeth! She can devour five children at once!”

  “Ah!”

  The audience grew fat on these morsels, while more beer was drunk and songs were sung. Peter found himself glancing over his shoulder, and after a while he moved closer to the fire.

  The following day was a Sunday, and as it turned out, Palm Sunday, but Peter and Tomas were surprised to hear the locals call it Shadow Day. They were even more surprised when they learnt that they would be seeing the Shadow Queen herself later that day. After all the talk the previous night, it seemed absurd to hear the villagers discussing her imminent arrival.

  Tomas announced that it was time to leave, but Peter was intrigued, and eventually he persuaded his father to stay for an hour more.

  “Very well,” Tomas said abruptly. “Maybe then you’ll see what sort of superstitious buffoonery we are talking about.”

  They found a heavy oak, climbed to one of its massive lower branches, and watched.

  They didn’t have long to wait before the Shadow Queen arrived. All morning the villagers had been busy. Everyone had something to do or somewhere to be, but finally, just after noon, they made their way outside the village to a large field that led down to a wide, fast-flowing river. Here, on the grass, a large bonfire had been built, of birch logs on willow branches, kindled by hay from the village barns. Some people milled about, while others had much to do. Finally there was a sudden lull in all the hustle and bustle and a hush spread across the pasture.

  Then, so quietly that at first Peter wondered if it was just the wind, came the voices of the village.

  “The Shadow Queen! The Shadow Queen!”

  Not a cry, but a thousand awed whispers that spread through the crowd. Now even Tomas sat up and shifted his position to get a better view. All eyes turned to the edge of the village, where a cart slowly trundled out to the field. It was pulled by a single white horse, driven by a young woman. And in the back of the cart sat what could only be the Shadow Queen.

  Tomas began to laugh.

  The Shadow Queen was made of straw. A simple effigy dressed, strangely, in a man’s clothes. She was a life-size figure, though, and she lolled about as the cart rolled awkwardly out into the field.

  “The Shadow Queen!” Tomas said mockingly, but Peter threw a twig at him and glared. It was never a good idea to make fun of strangers, they knew that well enough.

  The cart reached the margin of the field, near the bonfire and the river. Tomas and Peter got down from their tree and went to watch the rest of the ceremony.

  Solemnly, the Shadow Queen was sawn in half, and the two halves thrown onto the blazing bonfire, which snapped and cracked, sending blackened stalks of straw high into the warm spring air. Eventually the fire burned through, but there was one last ritual to observe. The ashes were gathered and cast into the river, where they sped away south, never to be seen again.

  Peter tried to ask the villagers about it, but
the answers he got only confused him more. Was that really the Shadow Queen he had seen? Who had been burnt? Was it just a straw dummy? Everyone he asked gave him a different answer, but it seemed that the locals knew it was just a straw figure, though somehow, at the same time, it was the real Shadow Queen too. In burning her, here, at the start of spring, they had sent her away, sent her underground for the spring, the summer and the autumn, so that she would plague them no more. At least until St. Andrew’s Eve, and the start of winter. Then, as the long cold nights spread across the land, she would return, bringing illness, plague and pestilence with her once more. Evil would wash before her in a wave of malevolence.

  Peter was unable to understand how the villagers made sense of it—the frightening figure of hideous power described in the inn the previous night was such a far cry from the laughable doll that had been sawn and burnt in the field.

  As Peter got talking to more locals, there were those who claimed to have really seen her, up in the mountains, or in the depths of the forest, or lurking in the graveyard.

  As he was being told that the clothes the figure wore were those of the most recent widow’s husband, intended to keep him from “coming back,” he noticed that Tomas was rolling out of the village on their own cart, having decided to waste no more time.

  “Stop him from coming back?” Peter asked the man. “What do you mean, coming back?”

  10

  Refusal

  As Peter rode through the murk on Sultan, his thoughts had drifted to a sunny field, a long time ago, and this should have done something to keep the power of the night at bay. In fact, it did nothing to make him less scared. There was a little starlight, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to gallop Sultan once they were in the forest. Still, there was nothing to stop him from hurrying up the last street to the edge of the village.

  He kicked Sultan on, suddenly feeling more terrified by the admission of his own fear, but just as they picked up speed something rushed into their path.

  Sultan, usually so sure-footed, shied and reared. There was a scream. Peter fought for a moment to stay on Sultan’s back, but lost the fight and hit the ground hard. In a moment’s confusion, it seemed that Sultan was going to fall and crush him, but then he rolled beside Peter, struggled to his feet, and limped away, frightened.

  Peter spun off his back and onto his front, worried that Sultan was going to bolt for home. Then he remembered the scream just before he fell.

  “You nearly killed me!” cried a voice.

  All Peter could see at first was hair, lots of it, coiling like small black snakes.

  The figure moved into a sitting position and began to smooth her long skirts into place, checking that nothing was broken. Now he knew who it was. The Gypsy girl, the singer.

  “You ride very badly!” she said, pointing a finger right at him.

  “Me?” Peter spluttered. “It was your fault! What in Heaven’s name were you doing? Running in front of a horse like that!”

  She ignored Peter’s anger, but with it, her own rage seemed to have vanished.

  She smiled at him and tried to stand, but immediately shrieked.

  “My back!” she cried, sinking to the ground. “Oh! I think it is broken!”

  Peter doubted that very much, but nonetheless she appeared to be in pain.

  “You must help me,” she declared. “You nearly killed me! So get me out of this road.”

  Peter stood up slowly. He hurt too, but there was no point in protesting.

  “Carry me. Over there.”

  She nodded toward the side of the road, and a low bank of grass.

  Peter sighed and bent over her. For a moment he considered how best to pick her up; then he slid one arm under her legs and the other under her shoulders. She was light enough for him, he was used to carrying logs all day. But logs didn’t wriggle, or complain, or hiss in pain, and he was glad when he had taken her the short distance and placed her on the soft grass, the start of a narrow strip that kept the forest away from the village.

  They were just beyond the ragged edge of the huts here, with only the odd one or two dotted about, the street turning into nothing more than a snow-covered track that wound away into the trees. The puny thatched fence that marked the end of the village was defense against nothing, and yet being beyond it was disturbing. The Shadow Queen had already settled in the back of Peter’s mind.

  “Your back isn’t broken,” he said, looking down at the girl. “You couldn’t move your legs if it were.”

  “My name’s Sofia,” she said. “What’s yours?”

  He sighed, looking around to see that Sultan was still close by.

  “Peter,” he said.

  “I think my head is maybe hurt,” Sofia announced.

  Peter opened his mouth, then shut it again. She might sing beautifully, but he was finding her enormously irritating. Still, as he was carrying her, he hadn’t stopped himself from noticing that her legs were long, and that her dress was cut very low. Nor had he stopped himself from looking at her brown skin, so different from that of everyone else in the village, and more like his own.

  “My head hurts,” Sofia said again, “Here. You must feel it. Come here!”

  Peter stood where he was.

  “Come!” she demanded, and reluctantly he knelt down beside her. She grabbed his hand nimbly and pushed it into her thick hair. “There’s a bump. Yes? No?”

  Peter gingerly moved his fingers through the girl’s hair, but could feel nothing.

  “I think you’re fine.” He pulled his hand away.

  As he did, Sofia took his hand in hers and didn’t let go.

  “I think I’m lucky you didn’t kill me,” she said, but gently this time.

  Awkwardly, Peter sat next to her. Still she didn’t let go of his hand.

  “What were you doing anyway?” he asked. “Out here, in the night? You shouldn’t even be in the village after dark.”

  “Because of who we are?” Sofia said haughtily.

  “Yes,” Peter said. Then he added, “But I don’t make the rules around here.”

  The girl laughed.

  “No, I am sure of that.”

  Peter felt offended, at the same time wondering why Sofia was still clutching his hand. He realized that he didn’t want her to let go.

  “What do you want?” he asked. “It’s dangerous out here.”

  “Let me tell you,” she whispered, so quietly that despite himself Peter leant closer to her.

  Peter was aware of the warmth from her body, and could smell her long raven locks. In that split second he wouldn’t have cared if the Shadow Queen was right behind him.

  “I want you to stay with me awhile,” Sofia said.

  Then she pulled his hand quickly, catching him off balance. He half fell on top of Sofia, who lifted herself high enough to plant a kiss on his lips.

  Peter yelped as if he had been bitten by a dog and jumped to his feet.

  She laughed.

  “Peter!” she said, smiling.

  He backed away and ran to Sultan.

  “Peter!” Sofia called, this time more urgently. “Stay with me! My back hurts! I can’t walk!”

  But Peter wasn’t fooled by Sofia’s tricks anymore; his thoughts were full of Father and the hut, and Agnes. What would she say if she knew what the girl had done?

  Sultan seemed sound enough after his fall, and Peter plunged into the forest, heedless of the danger of galloping over difficult ground in the dark. Behind him Sofia’s cries grew fainter.

  “Come back! Come back and help me. Peter!”

  He rode.

  11

  Visitors

  As Peter rode he saw neither trees nor snow, but instead a glorious vision of Sofia. The girl was arrogant for sure, but all he could see were the rich tresses of her hair, her welcoming brown eyes and dark skin. With a wrench he shook himself, and tried to push Agnes back into Sofia’s place. He found Sofia floating into his mind again, and started to work on the image
, lightening and shortening the hair, turning the brown eyes gray. Finally he watched as the brown skin grew paler, paler, paler. There, that was Agnes.

  But no! He watched in horror, transfixed as Agnes’s skin took on an evil whiteness, the whiteness of death, and became impossibly wrinkled and old. Her lips shriveled, her nose became pointed and thin, her hair grew lank and noisome. Her eyes flattened and widened, darkening and disappearing in shadow.

  Shadow.

  “No!” Peter cried into the air, then snatched himself away from the grotesque vision.

  He let Sultan slow to a walk once Sofia was out of earshot. They followed the bank of the river Chust out to the hut. But Sultan was uneasy. He sensed something up ahead and now stopped completely.

  For a while Peter urged him to walk on, and they managed to go a few more steps. Then once again Sultan stopped, this time for good.

  “What’s wrong, boy?” Peter whispered, his attention divided between the horse and whatever might be up ahead that was bothering him.

  Sultan made no noise, but merely stood as still as any horse can.

  “Well, you’ll have to stay here.”

  Knowing what Tomas would say about leaving their most expensive possession alone in the forest in the night, he reluctantly tied Sultan’s reins to a sturdy birch.

  Peter turned around and all there was to see were the shadows of the night forest. Trees stretched off into the distance in every direction, becoming gray ghosts and then no more than suggestions of ghosts. In the gloom the river chugged softly somewhere away to his right, but there was just enough starlight to make his way, so he started off toward the hut.

  As he went, Sultan gave one final snort, then was silent.

  Peter knew Sultan well, knew that he was trustworthy, not the sort of horse that spooked easily. Sultan’s refusal to go any closer to the hut was a sign that something was wrong. Peter slowed his walk to a crawl as he stepped as gently as he could along the riverbank, and was glad at least for the sound of the water rushing, hiding his quiet footfall.

  There was the hut in front of him, across the log bridge. At first sight nothing seemed to be amiss, but Peter’s heart froze as he made out the shapes of not one but two horses on the bank, just beyond the bridge. The horses were tethered, and alone.