Shadowfell by Juliet Marillier Page B

remembering the terrible night when the Enforcers came to Grandmother’s cottage, I thought, You know how good you are at that. Breathing into a fold of the cloak, I made myself think of Flint, my unlikely saviour. What his true motives had been, I had no idea. But he was proof that here and there in Alban, kindness still existed.
    The lamp of that good memory lit my way through the lonely hours of night. With the rising sun, the urisk fell silent. When I rose I found a circle of wet footprints all around me. Each was as long as a man’s but narrow, with the marks of webs between its three toes.

    From the Maiden’s Tears, it was two days’ walking to the eastern end of Silverwater. Here the terrain opened up to grazing land. Beyond those fields lay a line of barren hills, with a track running up to the lonely tarn named Hiddenwater, a place of dark memories. There had been a battle there once, chieftain against chieftain, clan against clan, son of Alban against son of Alban. Many had fallen. When Father and I had passed through that place, coming the other way, the air had been full of voices, as if a whole troop of dead warriors lingered in the loch’s stony basin, the echoes of their dying cries sounding from the rocks all around. I did not want to go there again, but there was no other way.
    I waited under the last fringe of trees until dusk fell, studying the terrain ahead and fixing in my mind the places of hiding. When I judged it to be dark enough, I moved. I went like a shadow, darting from one place of concealment to the next, every part of me alert to danger. A group of rocks, a dry-stone wall. A midden heap, a stack of turf drying under a makeshift shelter. There were strips of walled pasture, outbuildings in which sleepy hens clucked or restless cows shuffled in their straw, and a farmhouse with light glowing from behind closed shutters. A foot set wrong might bring dogs out to the attack, or worse. I thought of eggs, of barley bread, of fresh milk and butter. I moved on. When I was clear of the last farm, the last warm lamplight, the last sleepily bleating ewe, and the rocky hillside loomed before me, I scrambled into the shelter of a shallow cave and curled up to rest. Somewhere nearby I could hear water flowing. If I remembered rightly, that was the stream known as the Churn, and the path to Hiddenwater lay beside it. I would move on before dawn.
    The ground was hard. I couldn’t sleep. Cold pierced through to my marrow; even Flint’s thick cloak could not keep it out. I couldn’t make fire. That would be like lighting a beacon to show that I was here. My body was all aches and pains. Worse, my mind was playing tricks on me. I had seen nothing of the Good Folk since the night they had argued about the seven of whatever it was, though sometimes, coming along Silverwater, I had sensed a soft footfall behind me and, turning, had peered into the forest to see nothing more than shifting shadows. Here on this inhospitable hillside I could not escape the sensation that I was being watched. Once or twice, as the long night wore on, I thought the gurgle of the stream held voices, a flow of words in which the only one I recognised was Neryn . An owl flew overhead, hooting strangely. Such sorrow was in its cry that tears sprang to my eyes.
    Stop it , I told myself sternly as my teeth chattered with cold. There’s nobody out there, and if there is, you’re not going to let them know you know. Now sleep, or you’ll be too tired to go on in the morning . But sleep would not come.
    After what seemed an endless night, I rose to the first lightening of the sullen, cloud-veiled sky, and set off along the track to Hiddenwater. As if it had only been waiting for me to emerge from my bolthole, the wind got up, and by the time I came over the crest of the hill and headed down the steep path to the loch shore, the water before me was whipped to a turmoil of angry grey. Hiddenwater was a small loch. It lay in a steep stone