‘No, but she took me to her family’s burial place. She asked me whether I was telling the truth about the Azawan…’

  ‘But really, she was asking her ancestors,’ said Skelda with an approving smile. ‘Or trying to, and failing, since the skulls have been silent. Clever girl.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘No spey reveals another spey. That has been our most cherished vow since the day our art was outlawed. The princess is waking up, I think.’

  ‘I’m awake,’ said Runa, her voice faint. She opened her eyes. Had she heard what they said?

  ‘I’m glad of it,’ said Skelda. She put a hand under Runa’s head and helped her to sit up. Next she took a small vial from her pack, unstoppered it and held it to Runa’s lips. ‘Skollish fire-water,’ she said. ‘Drink.’

  Runa did as directed, shivering as she swallowed the brew. ‘What will happen now?’ she said.

  ‘You mean up here, or on Orka?’ asked Skelda.

  ‘On Orka.’

  ‘I thought so,’ said Skelda. Runa wasn’t one to waste time, and talking about this meant they avoided any further talk about her speying. ‘We have been broken. Only battle-magic could serve against the finman, and Brog is not powerful enough to locate him alone. I fear the speys have failed.’

  ‘Then it will be war,’ said Runa.

  ‘So it would seem,’ said Skelda.

  ‘We need to get back to Gurn,’ said Runa. Talorc felt a sharp pang of sympathy for her. She wanted to get back up and carry on working; but they all knew there was nothing she could do. Anga had given them four days to find the finman before he went to war. The fourth day was dawning. They had failed.

  They stood together. The day had dawned bright enough to see the rippling peaks of Groda laid out before them and the faint smudge on the horizon that was the Skollish coast. The defeated speys sat in groups or else were gathering their things, preparing to leave.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Runa to Skelda. It was clear she didn’t want to talk about what had happened, or what had been revealed. ‘I will see that your pardon is upheld.’

  ‘I’ll see you back to Ork,’ said Skelda. Runa nodded, and after Skelda had spoken to some of the other spey-wives, she rejoined them and they set off on the path down the hill.

  ‘Wait.’

  They had walked in silence all the way down the hill, through the Trowie Glen and to the shore. The wind was blowing away the night’s mist, the rising sun bright in a clear blue sky.

  Talorc held on to the side of the curragh, looking back at Skelda who stood on the stones of the bay. Runa was already in the curragh, and Talorc had been about to jump in.

  ‘What is it?’ said Talorc. He turned and scanned the water but could see no disturbance. There were no other boats out on the sea; people must be keeping ashore for fear of the Azawan.

  ‘This war of your father’s,’ said Skelda. ‘It feels wrong to me. It feels like the finman and his people planned for things to go just this way.’

  ‘Maybe he did plan for us to go to war with the fins,’ said Runa. ‘That doesn’t mean they will win. They went to war with us once before. They lost.’

  ‘They have the Azawan,’ said Talorc.

  ‘We have the Orkadi,’ said Runa.

  Skelda looked away towards the rising sun, the lines around her eyes deepening as she narrowed her eyes. ‘There may be another way,’ she said. ‘One the finman will not expect us to take.’

  ‘What way is that?’ asked Runa.

  At a wave from the spey-wife Talorc and Runa returned to the shore, the curragh on their shoulders. Skelda looked troubled, glancing repeatedly to the east as she spoke.

  ‘I didn’t want to involve her,’ said Skelda. ‘In this or anything. She deserves to be left in peace. But if the fins win, she will have peace no longer. They will have her again.’

  ‘Have who?’ asked Talorc.

  ‘The one who escaped them.’

  The old spey-wife sat down heavily and gestured for them to join her. She looked between Talorc and Runa as if struggling to decide whether to share a secret with them.

  ‘I found her out at sea,’ she continued, ‘east of Calag. At first sight I thought she was a corpse; she nearly was. I treated her as best as I could with what I had, and rowed her back to shore on Calag. I didn’t think she’d make it. The girl was near starved, thin as a bird’s leg, and what was left of her was covered in layer upon layer of scars.

  ‘It was summer and the weather was kind, thankfully. I made a fire, warmed her and revived her. She didn’t know where she was. She was terrified of me and everything that moved, it seemed. But I fed her and won her trust, and in time learnt her story.

  ‘Sariad was born on Narm. As can happen,’ Skelda said with a sly glance at Runa, ‘she had the gift pouring out of her, even as a bairn. I don’t know whether you managed to hide your gift from your father, and I won’t ask. But Sariad was not so fortunate as you. Her parents hated speys, like all the good, decent folk around there. So they did what most parents do in their situation; they tried to beat it out of her. There’s a belief that a whip made of birch can drive speying from a person.

  ‘They tried, they failed, and when they failed, they took her to a quiet beach and tied her up, to let the waves do what they could not.’

  ‘But the fins found her?’ said Talorc.

  ‘Aye,’ said Skelda. ‘They found her. Took her to Fin Island and one way or another she ended up as a slave to one of their sorcerers, or divers as they call them. A finman named Mordak.

  ‘Mordak hated dries, as they call us, even more than most fins do. He took his hatred out on Sariad, bullying and beating her. He didn’t like that she could spey. But what he really hated was that she was a diver. Somehow, whether from birth or from being around it night and day, she picked up fin magic. And oh, did he hate her for that.’

  ‘What is diving?’ asked Runa. ‘Is it different to speying?’

  ‘Speys talk to skulls,’ said Skelda. ‘Divers send their minds out of their bodies. The stronger their magic, the further they can go. Most fins have a little of the gift, enough to hear the voices of living sea creatures on occasion, or to sense their presence, for diving is easiest at sea. But some divers can do far more than that. Some can look into the minds of others. Even control them.

  ‘Mordak used magic to try to tear Sariad's gift from her. He tried over many years, in many ways, most of them unspeakable. None worked. She was a few winters older than you are when he finally gave up. Beat her almost to death and threw her from a clifftop. She would have died; she should have died, but the Sea Mother kept her alive and led me to her. Now she lives alone in a quiet place, and she knows peace, for Mordak believes she is dead.’

  Talorc and Runa were both quiet. He could see the horror he felt reflected in Runa’s eyes as they both tried to imagine what the girl had gone through. Jed and Kellin’s bullying didn’t seem so bad anymore.

  ‘I don’t understand how any creature – even a fin – could do such things,’ said Runa. ‘Why does the Sea Mother allow it?’

  Skelda gave a humourless laugh. ‘She guides us; she does not control us. The Sea Mother is a god, but she is just one god. There are many powers between the seabed and the stars, and none of them are all-powerful.’

  ‘Do you think Sariad could help us?’ asked Runa.

  ‘Sariad is a diver,’ said Skelda.

  ‘So she could use her power to find the finman. Find out what he is doing and how we could stop him,’ said Talorc.

  ‘I know she could,’ said Skelda. ‘All the time they lived together, Mordak could hear her thoughts and she could hear his.’

  ‘You believe Mordak is the finman who summoned the Azawan,’ said Runa.

  Skelda nodded. ‘He is their most powerful diver, and he hates dries. Nothing would please him more than to wipe us out.’

  ‘Where is she?’ asked Runa.

  Skelda hesitated. She looked to the east again. ‘On Fior,’ she said. ‘In a bone-house on a clifftop.’

  ‘She lives in a bone-house?’ asked Talorc.

  ‘She trusts the dead better than the living. I visit her there when I can, and have a man whom I trust bring food for her. Row round the south coast of Fior and you’ll see it just before the coast curves north.’

  ‘You’re not coming with us?’ asked Runa.

  ‘I have work to do among my sisters.’

  ‘But she trusts you. She won’t trust us,’ said Runa.

  ‘No,’ said Skelda. ‘But when she looks into your thoughts she will see that I sent you. You have true hearts, each of you. Anger, but no malice. You will win her trust, for you each deserve it.’

  ‘We’ll go,’ said Runa. ‘I’ll see that your curragh is returned to you. And thank you.’

  ‘No need to thank me, Princess. I serve Orka, not your father.’

  Runa looked offended by this, but chose not to say so. She gave Talorc a nod. They stood and pulled the curragh back into the water.

  ‘One more thing,’ said Skelda as they readied themselves to row. ‘Sariad doesn’t like secrets. Beware of lies you tell yourselves, and each other.’ Talorc nodded and they pulled on the oars.

  He had the feeling the spey-wife’s words were meant for him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘This isn’t right,’ said Runa from behind Talorc.

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘The sea.’

  He looked around. It was mid-afternoon. They were rowing south-east across open water on the way to Fior. After leaving Skelda they had followed the coast of Groda until it veered away south before making for a tiny islet called Switha. There they had come ashore and rested, eating bread, cheese, bannocks and pig-meat from Runa’s dwindling supplies before making an offering to the Sea Mother and falling asleep on the sand.

  In all that time they hadn’t spoken except when they had to. The atmosphere between them had grown steadily more tense; or so it seemed to Talorc. He could have been imagining it. Neither of them had taken more than a few snatches of sleep since they left Gurn the previous morning; maybe Runa wasn’t talking simply because she was tired. Or maybe she had guessed that Talorc was keeping a secret from her, and she was angry.

  ‘It’s like the sea is dead,’ said Runa. ‘We should be seeing moon-ducks, terns, cormorants, seals, whales. But there’s nothing.’

  Talorc thought back to his journey from Odhran to Gurn. It was true; the sea had thrummed with life on those days, or so it had seemed to him. He had noticed that it was quiet today, but had assumed the open sea was just like that some days.

  ‘There are no boats out either,’ she said. ‘The sea creatures are deserting our waters, and the Orkadi are staying on land.’ There was no need to say why. For the hundredth time, Talorc scanned the horizon for signs of the Azawan. Nothing; only the white wings of the waves and the shimmering humps of distant islands. Turning again and looking past Runa, he could see the island that must be Fior in the distance, drawing steadily closer. There was no sign of the Azawan. But it was out there.

  ‘I think it must be leaving Orka to go hunting, then returning here,’ said Talorc. ‘It’s so big, even a village-full of us couldn’t be enough for it.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ agreed Runa. ‘But no-one knows when it will return, and people are terrified. The sea creatures must know that it has claimed these waters. The ones that can leave are leaving.’

  Talorc knew she would be thinking about food supplies across Orka. Food from the fields would keep people alive, but there was no knowing how people might react to being unable to fish because they were too scared to take their boats out. If word had got round about a finman being responsible, people would be pushing for Anga to go to war. If Talorc and Runa didn’t return tonight, which was inevitable now, war was certain. Unless they could find Sariad and bring her back to Gurn in time to stop him.

  Would Sariad trust them? Not if they were keeping secrets, Skelda had said. Which meant he had to tell Runa his secret before they got to the bone-house. If they went on rowing hard, they should make it before sunset.

  He could wait a little longer.

  ‘Runa.’

  ‘What?’

  Talorc drew in his oars, laid them down in the hull and turned round on the bench to face her. She squinted her eyes against the light of the setting sun. Beyond her, the cliffs of Fior were close. They would make it to the south coast before nightfall.

  ‘Pull in your oars,’ he said.

  ‘We need to get to Fior before dark.’

  ‘I need to tell you something.’

  Runa opened her mouth to argue, closed it, and did as Talorc asked.

  ‘I’ve been keeping a secret from you,’ he said.

  ‘Fine. Tell me,’ said Runa.

  Talorc reached down and tugged off one boot, then the other.

  He heard Runa’s sharp intake of breath as she realised what she was looking at. His long, finger-like toes. The stretches of pale skin between them, so pale they were almost blue.

  He looked up into her eyes.

  ‘Fin-feet,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, matching her stare.

  He hated her in that moment. Runa had a secret, too; but her secret allowed her to speak to her mother, her grandparents, all her royal ancestors. To speak to them and know she was loved by them, just as her father and all of Orka loved her. No-one ever kicked her, twisted her arm, beat her, starved her. She was looking at him like he was filth; and compared to her, he was.

  Yet as much as he hated her in that moment, he hated himself more. Himself, and his feet. Everything he had suffered was because of them. All the shoves, all the mockery. Monster. All the evenings since Grunna’s death that he had sat at the quern-stones, listening to the family and the villagers talk, with never a single word said to him. He had crawled into a bone-house and tried to speak to skulls; what could be more pathetic than that? If he had died when the Azawan struck on Odhran, no-one in all the world would have known and no-one would have cared. His life would have come and gone like a wave on the sea, and mattered less.

  All because of his fin-feet.

  ‘Why are you still alive?’ asked Runa.

  Talorc didn’t reply. So she did hate him. Fine. She could hate him all she liked. He was used to it.

  ‘There’s a law,’ said Runa. ‘Babies born with fin-feet are to be exposed.’

  Exposure. By law he should have been left out on the land to be killed by the cold or eaten by eagles. His family had never told him that.

  ‘Their families aren’t punished?’ he asked.

  ‘They are punished if the child isn’t exposed.’

  ‘But…’

  Talorc’s mind reeled. It didn’t make sense. His family hated him. All of them. Except Grunna. They would have liked nothing better than for him to be dead. So why hadn’t they exposed him at birth? Why had they risked themselves to protect him?

  Whatever the truth was, he would never know it, for they were all dead. They had died, he had survived. Until now.

  ‘Does the law still apply if the baby isn’t exposed, and grows up?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Runa.

  A gust of wind blew from the north, rocking the curragh.

  ‘People say that the fins make it happen,’ said Runa. ‘They put curses on pregnant women. Mothers aren’t supposed to go out to sea or even near the shore until their child is born. If a pregnant woman sees a fin in a dream, that means she has been cursed and her child will have fin-feet. The only cure is to slash her belly with a bronze blade, or iron.’

  Talorc imagined his father slashing his mother’s belly with his iron sword. If only he had done so.

  It didn’t matter. What mattered was what Runa did now.

  ‘Will you tell your father?’ he asked.

  ‘I have to.’

  Talorc pulled his boots back on. ‘We should keep going,’ he said. He took hold of the oars and was about to set them in place when Runa spoke.

  ‘I know what it’s like,’ she said.

  ‘Having fin-feet?’

  ‘Keeping a secret.’

  ‘Of course you do. You’re a princess. You know exactly what my life has been like,’ said Talorc.

  ‘You think being a princess means having a perfect life,’ said Runa. ‘That because I’ve never gone hungry, because everyone knows my name and no-one – except you – would dare hurt me, I can’t complain about anything.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The law against speying was made by my ancestor. Speys have been hanged under my family’s rule. And I am a spey.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve never said it before. I’m saying it to you now. I am a spey. What do you think would happen if people found out?’

  ‘Your father pardoned –’

  ‘I don’t care about the pardon! I care about my people learning I’ve lied to them, betrayed them since I was born!’

  ‘You say the words “my people”,’ said Talorc, ‘and say you have problems. My people were my family. My village. They’re all dead, and when they were alive, they hated me. My brothers tormented me and my mother and father watched and said nothing.’

  ‘Your family broke the law to protect you. They kept your fin-feet secret to protect you,’ said Runa.

  Talorc couldn’t think of a response, which only made him angrier.

  ‘We need to move,’ he said. ‘The sooner we get there, the sooner we can head back to Gurn so you can tell your father about me.’

  ‘I didn’t say I would tell him.’

  ‘You didn’t say you wouldn’t.’

  ‘He’s a lawbreaker too.’

  Talorc frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t you understand? He knows about my speying,’ said Runa. Her face softened. ‘When I was little, and we went to pay homage at the mounds of our ancestors, I would tell him I could hear people talking. He said I was just imagining it. Then one time I heard my mother’s spirit speak. She told me who she was and told me to say things to him. Secrets, memories they had shared, things I couldn’t know.’

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23