Silver Mantle Read online

  Silver Mantle

  The Chronicles of the Mantles: Book One

  Gail Merritt

  Copyright © 2001 Gail Merritt

  First edition published by Thomas C. Lothian Pty Ltd 2001

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Third Edition

  Cover design by KaeDe NoKi

  Map by Jonathan Merritt

  Library of Congress Control Number:

  Printed in the United States of America

  This book is dedicated to Paul, Jonathan, Julia and Helen, without whose help I could not have got this far.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  Glossary of Place Names

  About The Author

  The Mantle Chronicles

  1.

  The Fox

  I am Megwin, daughter of Remwith, from the Meed of Brak.

  My path has taken me to many strange places, shown me the beauty and the darkness of our world and, I hope, left me wiser. It has always led me back to Vellin, where my life was changed forever. I begin this history with doubts that it will ever be finished and, if you are reading it, this will mean that the Great Tower of the Talarin is no more, for I intend to use my arts to bury it deep below the foundations, where it might be discovered when we are all long gone.

  I will not begin with a long history of my family, although this is the fashion among the chroniclers of our time. I will simply say that my father, Remwith, was a Lord of the Gathering and he governed the Meed of Brak in Magra, the largest and most powerful of the Five Kingdoms. They tell me that my mother, Megan, was the daughter of Joris, the King’s Councillor. They said that she died at my birth. I have seen portraits of her, but I have no feelings of affection for the woman in those images. I do not share her features and she is a stranger to me. I remember my father as a tall, broad man with a shaggy beard and a voice like a growling bear, who would stride into the room, inquire about my health, pat my head and be gone again.

  I spent my early days in the sleepy town of Brak, in the Meed castle, which still overlooks the marketplace. I could sit at my window and watch the procession of farmers bringing vegetables and livestock, or tinkers with their bells and long streamers of coloured ribbons and lace. The sounds and smells drifted up to my window and distracted me from my studies, but Ruthen would be there to check my daydreaming. Ruthen was my father’s steward. He and his wife, Channa, had cared for me since the day of my birth. Channa was childless and fussed over me like a good mother. They never spoilt me, but they were always there to mend a grazed knee or scold me for losing my shoes. I was always losing my shoes.

  The Meed castle was little more than a rambling collection of rooms, strung together around a courtyard, where Channa’s geese and chickens terrorised my father’s horses. He often complained about the birds and vowed to have them slaughtered, but Channa would wring her hands and wail that the poor creatures had little pleasure in life before being eaten and that without them the cook would have to buy his eggs and flesh from the market.

  When I was nine, my father took a second wife. She was very young and pretty, and she brought her own servants with her. The castle was now quite crowded, as my father invited guests to the regular banquets he held in her honour. I was moved from my room and put in the attic above the stables, where my sleep was disturbed by the sound and the smell of the horses. I resented this new wife, not because she robbed me of my father but because she found Ruthen and Channa more important jobs to do than to care for me

  Instead of my daily study, I was left to wander about the castle, in bare feet, getting into mischief because I was bored. I once climbed up onto the roof above the great hall and spent a merry afternoon making a nest in the bowl of a chimney pot, as the storks did each spring. Unfortunately, I did not have the storks’ skill in choosing chimneys. When the cook stoked his fire for the evening meal, a collection of moss and twigs cascaded down the chimney, bringing an avalanche of soot to flavour the pork. For that, I was locked in my attic and given porridge for three days. Luckily, because the stables were old, I found it easy to dig my way out through the wattle and daub walls and wandered free among the elder bushes on the hill above the town.

  I had planned to run away and become a sea captain, but as I couldn’t see the sea, even from the top of the hill, I decided that it was too far for a little girl and that I would have to wait until my legs were longer. Instead, I hid in a grassy hollow and watched the skylarks. They rose vertically, singing to distract me from their nests. The song touched my heart and, although the beauty of it made me tremble, I felt sad that they were afraid for their young and I called out to them that I was a friend. Almost instantly, the song changed. The birds dropped lower and then soared, their voices merging like a choir. I felt a strange tingle inside my ribcage, and I sat up. Quite close to me, a little grey warbler was collecting dead leaves for her nest. She stopped, keeping quite still, her sharp little eyes blinking.

  ‘Don’t worry, little mother, I won’t hurt you,’ I said softly, but the warbler was unconvinced. ‘Here,’ I cooed. ‘Come show me your treasure.’ I held out my hand, inviting her to sit on it. It was a game, simply that childish game when we dare nature to step outside the usual relationships between man and beast. Nothing unusual was supposed to happen, but it did. Cautiously, the warbler hopped to a nearer branch, watching me all the time with her dark little eyes. The tingle spread to my throat. ‘Come,’ I whispered.

  There was a flutter of wings, a brown haze and the warbler was perched on my thumb, emptying her beak into my palm. I found it hard to breathe but I congratulated her on her collection. The bird regarded me thoughtfully. I felt her thoughts through my fingers.

  ‘You are as nervous as I am.’ She seemed amused and took her time rearranging her leaves before flying off to a nearby elder bush. ‘You may see.’ She left the thought behind. I followed slowly, afraid to break the spell. The warbler was perched on the rim of her nest in which two blind, naked chicks opened their soundless beaks. I smiled at her and she smiled back, in her bird fashion. Then she was gone, off to find food for her young, while overhead, the skylarks hovered noisily. I left the bush, and began to walk back down to the castle, although my legs were shaking.

  Suddenly, a red fox dashed out from a clump of willow weed, startling us both. ‘Human child, bah!’ he hissed, standing his ground.

  ‘Be gone, fox,’ I laughed at him. ‘The skylarks have told everyone that you are here.

  The fox stepped back, lowering his head as if he were preparing to leap at me but instead, he caused an angry pain in my temples.

  ‘What witchery is it, then, that a child can know the Tongue?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I stammered, whining.

  ‘Liar,’ he growled. ‘Who taught you?’

  ‘No-one,’ I whimpered. ‘I only talked to the birds. I didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘Harm?’ The pain of his voice brought tears to my eyes. �
�You use the Tongue without permission, and you talk of harm?’

  ‘I didn’t know I needed permission. I didn’t know you could understand.’

  The fox tilted his head, his sly eyes doubting. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ I clutched my head, crying. ‘Please stop.’

  The fox moved closer, moderating his voice to a whisper. ‘The pain is not my doing. The Tongue is different among us all. You feel my thoughts in a painful way. It might always be so. You felt nothing when you talked to birds?’

  ‘No.’ I squeezed my head with my fists. It hurt and yet I wanted to keep talking.

  ‘Most strange.’ The fox sat back on his haunches and washed his paw. ‘I’ve only met one other human who knew the Tongue and he was old and very wise.’

  ‘Do you wash yourself to show that you trust me?’ I asked, sitting too.

  The fox’s eyes laughed. ‘No. I have mud on my paw.’ He regarded me silently for a moment. ‘You really don’t know how to use the Tongue properly, do you?’

  I shook my head. ‘Would you teach me?

  Again, he laughed. ‘Not I. Look, there are some things I just can’t do. I’m a fox. I don’t teach humans. Most of the time humans and foxes keep their distance. Besides, I don’t have time. I’ve got food to catch. I’ll let others know about you. A teacher might come for you.’ He started off towards the elder bushes. ‘Find the Green Mantle. He’ll teach you,’ he called.

  My head throbbed and I stumbled over the uneven ground as I scrambled back down towards the castle. My stomach twisted and I felt the vomit rising to the back of my throat. I slumped to my knees, crying and being sick, until my mind shut it all out and I fell unconscious. It was there they found me and brought me back to the castle.

  When I woke, I was back in my old room with Channa bending over me, dabbing my forehead with a cool, damp cloth.

  ‘Gracious, but you gave us all a turn.’ She shook her head. ‘Your father was half out of his mind with worry about you. Lucky for you that the Lady could give you something to make you well.’

  ‘I’m not ill,’ I said, suddenly aware of the lingering pain in my head.

  ‘Not ill!’ she piped, ‘Not ill, when it was out like a dead creature for three days, shaking its body and moaning and uttering such nonsense as ever I heard!’ Channa always referred to me as ‘it’ when she was worried about me.

  ‘Three days?’

  ‘Three long days.’ She helped me to sit up. ‘Three days without waking. Three days of moaning, and hot fever, and wild dreams. Three days to put ten years on an old woman.’

  ‘Then what was wrong with me?’ I asked. A bowl of broth was beside my bed and I felt three days’ hunger.

  ‘The Lady said some noble words, but I don’t know them.’ Channa watched me as I ate. ‘All I know is that what with the fevers, and the shaking, and the mad dreams about talking foxes, I couldn’t make head nor tail of it.’ Had I dreamed the fox? Was the illness already upon me when I went up the hill, and did I dream it all? Most likely, I felt empty in more than my stomach.

  ‘What lady?’ I asked. I couldn’t imagine my stepmother giving me anything to make me well.

  ‘Why, bless it, away for three days and it doesn’t know the half of what’s happened.’ Channa settled in to tell me. ‘The night you were found, there was a great commotion, with messengers arriving long past mealtime. The King himself and his friends were on their way to Malister for the hunting when the river Sarn got too big for them to cross. There’s been a lot of rain in the Grat Hills this winter. Well, so, they were having to take a long way round and so the King thought he’d come by way of Brak and visit your father.’

  ‘The King came here?’ I gasped.

  ‘Came and stayed.’ She chuckled. ‘Your father has you to thank for that. When they brought you back, you were screaming and kicking and burning up like an oven. Some people, like your stepmother’s physician, said that you had a fever that could kill us all, so when the King arrived, your father went out to warn him that it could be a plague. Then the King turns to the Lady and asks what she thinks. She says she didn’t think it sounded like a plague, but she’d look at you anyway, as she was interested. So, in come the King and his whole noisy herd of courtiers and your father’s rushing about getting a meal for him and all, and I have to show the Lady up to the stable attic.

  ‘Well, she says it isn’t fit for a pig and she’s not surprised you’re sick living there, so she insists that they give you back your own room. Later, she came back with herbs and potions and stayed with you for a long time, listening to your silly talk and shaking her head. I tell you, half the time you seemed to be speaking a foreign language. She just kept stroking your head and whispering to you.’

  ‘Was she the Queen?’ I asked in awe.

  ‘Bless it! The Queen’s been dead these twenty years, child. No, it was the Lady, the Silver Mantle herself, who tended you.’ Channa beamed as she took away the empty broth bowl.

  Silver Mantle herself, most powerful among the College of the Mantles, the King’s own adviser, had watched over me. Perhaps she had cured me with her magic for I felt better than I had for a long time. I stretched out, enjoying the luxury of my old bed, letting the familiar room welcome me back. Then I remembered the window. I could hear the muffed sounds from below and I crept across to the window seat. It felt wicked to be idle, sitting in this old room while the rest of the castle was in a frenzy for the King’s visit. The King. I’d never seen the King.

  In the small courtyard below my window, a group of riders were assembling. They were preparing for a hunt. My father was giving instructions to Ruthen, from the saddle, as he struggled to control his chestnut. I recognised some of the people with him, but others were strangers. In the middle, a very tall man was laughing as his horse backed away from a noisy goose. He was older than my father but lean and still handsome. He wore a plain grey hunting suit but on his shiny breastplate was a simple motif, a rampant lion. It was the King. He looked exactly how a king should look, proud, calm and stately. I might have gone on staring at him, if I had not sensed that someone was looking up at me. She was mounted too, but, instead of hunting dress, she wore leather breeches, like a man and a long silvery cloak which hid most of her hair and body. When our eyes met, I felt a familiar tingle as she held me in her gaze. The soft blue eyes smiled, and I felt no fear of her, until I realised that she was speaking in my head, just as the fox had done.

  ‘Later, Little One, we will speak later.’ Then she was gone, following the pack out of the gate and down to the marketplace.

  I shivered and crept back to my bed. She could use the Tongue. She talked without speaking, just as I had done up among the elder. Was it not a dream, after all? Had I really talked with a fox? The fox! I felt ice rush through my flesh. He was in danger. I had to find the fox.

  The hunters were taking the road to the high ground and making frequent stops for the King to speak with peasants, who waved to him from the fields. I had the advantage, going across country, clambering over dry-stone walls and ignoring brambles that barred my way. I was breathless when I got to the elder thicket and I tried to call the fox, but the throbbing of blood in my ears muffled the sounds around me. The skylarks rose from their nests and started the alarm. Desperate, I searched for the warbler. Perhaps she could help me, but the warbler was gone. Rabbits crossed my path, but they ignored me too. Perhaps Channa was right, it had all been a dream. I sank to my knees, growing aware of my own weakness. I felt light-headed and lay down on the grass.

  The ground was warm and smelt rich. The dew had long since evaporated and the tangle of herbs and grasses sent out a chaos of scents as my face crushed them. When I opened my eyes, I saw the bud of purple clover by the tip of my nose, the trefoil leaves tickling my skin where they touched. Clover is a delight to children. It readily yields its nectar and I have crushed many clover flowers to gain the sweet liquid. But this was a bud, green and unripe. I wished it was otherwise and, as I
watched, the bud swelled, ripened and coloured. Alarmed, I sat up and looked about me. Was this another dream brought on by the fever? I looked back at the clover, its purple head conspicuous among the early buds. I had made it blossom early and for no good reason. Wilfulness, Channa would scold. I apologised to it. It seemed the natural thing to do and to taste the sweetness of its gift, but I felt wretched.

  The horn sounded and the braying of the hounds began. From my spot among the elder, I could see the riders clear the field, following the untidy line of dogs as they drove the fox out of his hiding place. My fingers tingled. He was making for higher ground. Until that moment, I had no plan of how I should save him. I had hoped that I could simply go and warn him but now he needed more than that. He leapt over a stone wall, followed by the pack, the hunters closing in, and, although he was many yards away, I felt his terror deep inside me. We all shared it, the birds, the rabbits, the crawling beasts seeking shelter in the bark of the elders. I had to fight a strange urge to hide. Once more I tried to call him. Perhaps, in his fear, he would not hear me. I let my misery spread into the air, so that he could sense it.

  When he was less than twenty yards away, he felt it. There were no words between us, as there had been before. The time was too urgent for that. I offered him hope and he took it. He flew into my arms and I hoisted him into the lowest branches of a birch tree. I followed, but the pack was fast, and the leading hound caught the hem of my dress, tugging me back towards them. I was going to die. The hounds would kill me before the King and my father could save me. I tried to use the Tongue, but the hounds only understood their own urges. Desperately, I curled into a ball, screaming at the top of my voice, feeling the sharp teeth ripping at my clothes and then my flesh, hoping that I might faint before the final kill. The fox was hurling abuse at them from the tree branch, but the poor soul was unable to get down.