The Gathering Read online

  Mariah had finished her bath and was tidying the kitchen. Yvonne sent Joel off for his bath, and helped Mariah sort through and wash out the crockery and cutlery stores.

  “It’s like they just left everything,” Mariah said.

  “I think they did.”

  “I know. But there’s cupboards full of sheets upstairs. There were some old housekeeping spells. No rats.” Mariah’s nose wrinkled. She did not like rats.

  “Well, we’ll see,” Yvonne said. The more she looked around the house, the more she wondered just what had driven successive families out of the place. And whether the property agent, who she thought had been honest, had actually been not telling the whole truth. The house was theirs as long as they needed it, a dizzying prospect after so much uncertainty. If they survived the night, of course.

  Meal over, Yvonne went to have her bath, sinking into warm, fresh, water with a sigh of relief that echoed around the tiled room. There had been no baths on the road, and she wanted to scrub her skin until it was pink and clean.

  She closed her eyes and rested her head back against the edge of the bath, feeling the warmth seep all the way into her bones. She felt like she had been cold for weeks.

  Ever since that awful afternoon in Ilfton when she had come back towards their house, diverted by the unmistakable, near-silent sounds of wulfkin fighting, and turned a corner to find most of the range gathered around two wulfkin, in their animal forms. A little larger than wild wolves, coats a mix of greys and browns that blended into shadow, eyes full of the sheen of wulfkin power, with fangs as long as her fingers. Predators. And this pair were Joel and Brias, the second in command of the range.

  Brias was one of the most unpleasant wulfkin she had ever met. A bully, through and through, making no secret that he thought all females were beneath him, constantly making remarks to Yvonne or Mariah that they had little chance of defending against if they wanted to stay within that range, making threats to teach Mariah a lesson, out of Mariah’s hearing but designed to get a reaction from Joel.

  Yvonne did not know then what had finally provoked Joel into fighting with Brias. But she did know that Joel was, by some way, the more powerful wulf.

  Behind her closed eyes, still warm in the bath, she could see, in colour and detail, the fight between the two and, moments later, her ears heard, again, the sharp and unmistakable crack as Brias’ neck broke. Joel’s first kill. The pain in her chest was as sharp now as it had been then. A first kill. In a fight that should never have happened.

  The other wulfkin had been too shocked to do anything at the time, but Yvonne had known that at least one of them would run for the cerro. She and her children had gathered everything together in a frantic rush, Joel still hollow-eyed and shocked from the fight, bloodied from various, minor, wounds that Brias had inflicted.

  They had been on their horses and riding out of the city within the hour, Yvonne not wanting to risk any retaliation. Or, worse, risk a fight between Joel and the cerro. Joel would win that fight, too, and she did not want that burden for him.

  ~

  It was strange waking up in a bed, covers warm around her, in the middle of the night and not hearing any sounds outside. There were no carriages rattling past, wheels loud against cobblestones. There were no drunks singing their way home. There were no couples arguing, the arguments often fuelled by beer and spirits.

  It was quite different to being on the road. The horses were always close by when they camped, and if she woke during the night she would often hear a soft sound from Lothar, reassuring her that all was well.

  Even in the country, there should still be sounds. There had been birds, earlier. She had left the window of her room slightly open to catch sound, and some fresh air over the smell of soap. And with the fields around having been neglected, she was sure that there should be wildlife rustling through the grasses and the trees. Something had sent the night predators to ground, hiding until the greater threat had passed.

  She got out of bed, not bothering with her boots, and settled her sword at her hip. She had put on clean clothes after her bath and not bothered getting undressed for bed, knowing she was likely to be up and about during the night.

  She might not have believed the property agent that the place was haunted. There was something wrong, though, for so many families to be driven away.

  The children were still sleeping as she crept past their rooms. She could hear Mariah’s faint snore and wondered what odd position she was sleeping in tonight. She had chosen the oddest places to sleep in, as a young child, and as a near-adult she might sleep in a bed, but she rarely slept straight and calm. Joel was silent, of course. He slept the same way as he did most things, with quiet and careful determination. If she needed them, they would both be alert within moments.

  She went down the creaking stairs, the sounds loud in the silence. As she made her way down the stairs, another sound emerged. A child sobbing. A quiet, desperate sound. The sound of a young thing whose world had ended, utterly, and they did not know how to make sense of it. It was a sound to pull anyone’s heart, to make them rush forward, wanting to help. And completely out of place in this old, neglected, house.

  She traced the sound, the sobs growing louder as she walked, to the long corridor that ran through the spine of the house. There was very little light here. She was sure they had left the doors open, to let the moonlight through into the corridor, but all the doors were shut now. The only thing she could see was a blur that looked like white cloth at the end of the corridor, and pitch black before it.

  She murmured a spell for light, magic coming easily to her command, and sent it out ahead of her, faint sparks like miniature candles carrying in the air before her, showing a few feet of floor boards in front of her, and then nothing. The ordinary house faded into black, with that white cloth bundled ahead of her, where she thought the end of the corridor would lie.

  The sobbing died. The cloth moved, becoming a small child. Girl or boy, she could not tell at this distance and with the faint light.

  “Will you help me?” The voice was singsong, a child’s plea for aid.

  A plea for aid made to a Hunar would normally pull the magic in them, an invisible tug that told her that there was someone in need. Work to be done. This plea did nothing apart from prickle the skin across her body.

  Yvonne stopped where she was, the miniature candles gathered around her, and set her hand on her sword hilt.

  “I know what you are,” she told the creature ahead of her. “I’ve met your kind before.”

  “Will you help me, then?” It was still a child’s voice, layered with something else.

  “Let me see your true face,” Yvonne asked. She did not order or command. Not yet. If she was right about what this thing was, there would be time for that later.

  “This is my face.” The child’s body in the white nightgown straightened at the end of the corridor, light gathering around it so she could see it more clearly. A small child. Perhaps five or six years old, thin and malnourished with eyes bulging in a hollow face. It did not look threatening. Unpleasant, perhaps, but not threatening.

  “I don’t believe you.” One hand on her sword hilt, the other hooked into her belt. She had spells tucked in a pouch at her belt, including a powerful counter-agent to most hauntings. The spell should work. If this thing was what she thought it was. There were a few evil spirits that disguised themselves as children, knowing that humans, in particular, found a child in distress almost impossible to resist.

  “Don’t believe me,” the voice answered. The child’s veneer was fading, replaced by a mocking tone she knew well. It was, indeed, what she thought it was. Deadly and vicious. Lethal, at close quarters. The trick was not to let it into close quarters.

  She slid the spell out of the pouch, a stealthy movement perfected over the years, the slender bit of parchment crackling between her fingers. It needed only a bit of power to ignite it, like one of the miniature candles hovering around her he
ad, and for the banishment to take effect. The problem was, this kind of spell needed close quarters, and she did not want to move closer.

  “Let me.” Joel’s voice sounded just behind her. She did not start. She may not have heard him approach, but she trusted her children. She put her hand behind her back, without looking at him, and felt the little bit of parchment leave her fingers. She called down one of the miniature candles, and sent it behind her and heard, and felt, the slight puff of air as the candle lit the spell parchment. A moment later, an arrow flew past her shoulder, striking the white nightgown dead centre, catching fire.

  The creature screamed. The veneer of a child fell away, revealing a twisted beast. Not the most hideous thing she had seen in her life, but close to it. Vaguely human in shape, it had blackened skin that was scored with years of hard living, and huge, reddened eyes. Fangs as long as her fingers, and claws to match. The spell took hold of it, burning through its flesh and bone, and it screamed again. It fell forward, towards them, across the pitch black space in between. Forgetting the trap it had laid.

  Another one of Joel’s arrows shot it straight through the eye. He was an excellent shot. It shrieked again, and fell, down into the pitch dark, the flames of its burning body revealing the deadly trap it had set. The floor had been taken away, and there were iron spikes on the bottom, coated with old blood and tangled with the bare bones of previous victims. These sorts of creatures liked to eat their kills.

  Joel moved to stand next to her shoulder, watching as the thing burned down to ash.

  “We’ll need to get that out,” he said, voice calm. It was not the most hideous thing that he had seen in his life, either.

  “I have some ideas about that,” she answered.

  “You think this is all there is?”

  It was a reasonable question. A more than reasonable question, and a sign of how difficult their lives had been up till this point. She pulled another spell from the belt pouch and sent it out, with another spark of power from the candles. There was nothing else magical in the whole house, no other spells apart from hers, and nothing had come past the ward stones.

  “That’s all there is. All I can find, anyway. We’ll need to be careful a few more nights. But if you don’t know what they are, that thing would have been deadly.”

  “Everything is returning to normal outside,” he told her. His sense of hearing, like his sense of smell, were far superior to hers.

  “Good.”

  “It’s going to be morning soon,” he observed.

  “There’s some hot chocolate in the supplies,” she answered. She didn’t want to go back to bed, either. The thing was dead, and she knew some would call it foolish, but she did not want to go back to sleep, knowing that there was this open pit full of old blood and bones in her house.

  “The landowner will probably charge us more rent now,” Joel said, humour brightening his eyes.

  “Not without a lot of cost for him. We have a binding contract. Five year lease, money paid upfront. If we remove the haunting, we can still stay on the same terms. If we don’t want it, they get the house back at the end of five years, and they can get more rent after that.”

  “Five years?” Joel was startled. She had told them they could be here a while, just not how long. It was the longest time they had planned to stay in one place, and she could understand why he was surprised.

  “This is a good place,” she told him, walking with him to the kitchen. “Sephenamin is a good cerro. The town is peaceful. I did my research.”

  “I trust you, Kalla,” he assured her. “It will be nice to be in one place for a while.”

  “Yes. Or, at least, have a base to come back to,” she added, thinking of the small hoard of coins that were tucked into her bags upstairs. Work was needed.

  “Did someone say hot chocolate?” Mariah asked, voice full of sleep. Yvonne turned and was not surprised to see her daughter armed, eyes alert despite her tousled hair. “What did I miss?”

  Not sorry to miss the haunting, but Mariah would have been annoyed to miss the hot chocolate, Yvonne thought, hiding a smile. She knew her children well.

  CHAPTER THREE

  With the grisly task of clearing the bone pit done, and the hole filled in with a use of magic that had left her weak for a while, the house was returned to an ordinary building again. They had opened all the windows to let fresh air in, chasing away the last possible remnants of the haunting, breeze drifting through the rooms, around the staircase, and along the corridors. Yvonne followed the breeze through the house for a while, making sure there was nothing else. She didn’t find anything and came back downstairs with a lighter step. The building was now truly theirs, a place to settle for a while.

  Satisfied the haunting was dealt with, she left the children with a list of chores when the sun was fully up, saddled Lothar and rode into town.

  They needed more chocolate, according to Mariah. More practically, Yvonne knew, they needed basic supplies, now that they were in one place for a while. And, just as importantly, she needed to make herself known to the local dignitaries. Bitter previous experience told her that many of them would not be pleased to find there was a Hunar within the town limits that they had not been told about. Their short stay in Ilfton had been challenging for her as well as her children.

  It was a beautiful morning, with fresh blue skies above, the slightest bite of cold in the air, and birdsong around as she rode. Once over the small, stone, bridge there was farmland to the town’s edge, the fields well-maintained, a mix of fields full of crops, or healthy-looking livestock grazing on lush grass. It had all the hallmarks of a prosperous farming area, even though she knew that was not where the real wealth came from. The town was a calm mooring point along the Great River, a stopping point for merchants bound for the Royal City to the north, or for the glorious city of Abar al Endell to the south, the last city before the desert and the Forbidden Lands.

  The river was the thing that made the town prosperous. Just beyond the town, as she got closer to it, she could see the flat marshland that stretched for miles, preventing direct overland travel further north. Travelling overland added days to any journey, compared to river travel.

  Fir Tree Crossing, seen in sunshine after the grey skies from the day before, looked like a large, prosperous town. The houses were well-maintained, streets clear of debris, and the townsfolk she saw were all adequately dressed for the weather. Some of the householders had even planted flowers in front of their houses, adding some colour and cheer as she rode past.

  The groom at The Tavern was pleased to see her again, and happy to take a horse for a few hours. It was a common arrangement with town or city centre taverns and she left Lothar, knowing he would be spoiled rotten, and probably not want to leave when she got back.

  On foot, and with the clear skies meaning her feet were warm and dry, she made her way to the biggest building in town. The residence of the town’s mayor and the offices of whatever local governance there was. She had not met the mayor on her previous visit, not wanting to alert him to her presence before she had to. Now she was here, and could not avoid it.

  The building itself had a grand exterior, lots of carved stone and intricate banding around the windows. It was well-maintained, with no cracked glass or peeling paint that she could see. Based on the outside, and previous mayor’s buildings, she expected a grand interior, full of treasures of art, thick rugs under foot, and richly dressed officials.

  Instead, when she went through the open doors of the building, she found an almost austere interior. It could be grand. There were niches around the entrance hall where statues had probably once stood, and, in the blank spaces between the niches, rods fixed to the wall that would hold tapestries or other art. But there were no tapestries, and no statues, and no other art. Instead, there was a large, imposing desk with a plainly dressed middle-aged woman sat behind it, with a stack of papers that she was methodically sorting through, and a series of small handbells within
reach.

  “Good morning,” Yvonne said.

  “Good day to you,” the woman said, looking up. Her eyes widened slightly. She rose to her feet, and bowed slightly. “Hunar, it is a pleasure to welcome you.”

  It was not quite the greeting that Yvonne had been expecting.

  “I am newly arrived in town, and wanted to introduce myself to the mayor,” she said.

  “Of course. He will be delighted to meet you,” the woman said, a smile transforming her face from austere and stern to warm and welcoming. “It has been years since we had a Hunar visit.”

  There was no waiting, or checking to see if the mayor would be free to see her, or telling her that she should come back in a day or two’s time when the very important official she had come to see might be able to squeeze her into his calendar. Instead, the woman led Yvonne along one of the side corridors, also bare of any art or statues, and opened a plain wooden door, beckoning Yvonne inside.

  The door opened onto a functional office. There were desks, and shelves, and piles of parchment and ledgers on the desks and shelves. A pair of young people, clerks by the look of them, were busy working at two of the desks. The biggest desk in the room was piled highest with the papers and ledgers, and behind it was a small, slender man who Yvonne thought might be related to the woman she had met, judging by a similar cast to their features. He was dressed as plainly as the rest of them, with no ornate robes, or any badge of office, or gold chains around his neck. He looked up when she approached him, eyes widening slightly in surprise. Definitely related to the woman, Yvonne thought.

  “Priadan, this is the Hunar, wanting to meet you,” the woman said, with no formality, or bow or curtsy.

  “Oh, a good morning indeed.” The man’s voice was calm and mellow, his face breaking into a smile as warm as the woman’s. “I am delighted to meet you, Hunar.”