“If it is hundreds of miles away,” I said, “it will take us weeks to get there. I have lost my old speed and—” Arawn grabbed my arm in one hand and Belis in the other and the world seemed to spin around us.
Chapter 9
Trees, rivers, valleys whooshed past us as Arawn moved. He led us through a blur of fields of wheat and barley, between apple orchards and vegetable plots. I was used to moving fast but even in my old body I could not have matched this pace.
We stopped so abruptly that I tripped, fell forward and would have careened into the dirt had Arawn not grabbed my collar. He helped me right myself and I brushed down the front of my tunic which was completely covered in dust.
“What was that?” I coughed. Arawn grinned.
“That wasrushing. You were always so proud of your speed, Mallt. I never mentioned that I can outpace you.” His smile died as he noticed Belis trying to peer past him.
Arawn stepped aside, revealing a wide-open paddock, completely overrun with thick black brambles which had grown up around trees, now cut down to stumps. Red ribbon had been strung around the edge of the miasma of thorns, dividing the fouled land from the fair.
“It grew up overnight. Seeds of darkness must have blown across the border. Only my strongest magic has been able to confine it within the ribbon and yet it edges a little wider every day.” Arawn eyed the knots of thorns with distaste. “When I send a work crew to cut it down, the thorns slash their skin and turn them to the shadow. When I take up a scythe and start towork, my mind clouds the same way it did when we attacked theshadowbitten.”
I stared at the field. I had little experience of farming, knowing only what I had gleaned from years of wandering through homesteads on my travels, but this seemed like more than a week’s work for a hundred farmers than for two women.
“We tried setting fires, but the brambles suck water from the earth and do not burn. I had leather gloves and aprons made but they are so cumbersome that we could cut only a small amount each day and the thorns bloomed again at night, doubling the land we had cleared.”
Belis glanced at me and then approached the thicket. She reached out a hand to the vines. A breeze shifted them and they seemed to curl in on themselves.
“We should test our theory,” she said. “See if the thorns can poison us.”
“Careful,” I whispered. Belis nodded at me then dropped her hand into the brambles.
She picked up a trailing branch, thumb-thick and covered in thorns. With a wince she closed her hand around it. I moved towards her but Arawn caught my shoulder.
“Drop the branch and come back towards us,” he said. “Let me see.”
Belis held out her palm. The thorns had bitten deep and the calloused skin was dotted with blood. Arawn picked up her hand and cradled it between his own. I felt tension building in my chest as he closed his eyes, concentrating on the rips in Belis’s skin. If this didn’t work, if Belis fell to the shadow…
“It’s clean,” Arawn said, and the relief in his voice was echoed in my sudden release of breath. “The corruption isn’t working on you. I can’t sense it in your blood.”
Belis grinned at me. “I told you it was a good idea.”
“It’s a start.” Arawn let go of her hand and stared over at the thicket. “You haven’t fallen to the shadow but it still injured you. If it hurt you badly enough you could die and then you would be as vulnerable as the rest of us.”
“We won’t then,” I said. “Belis has been teaching me how to fight, and I’m getting stronger already. We should come up with a plan, strike now!” Belis nodded eagerly beside me.
“No.” Arawn looked back at us. “One pinprick is not enough to prove you’re strong enough. We should wait. I willrushus back to Caer Sidi and call a council.”
“We are ready!” Belis insisted. “I’ve fought in battles, besieged towns, killed Roman soldiers with twice my experience. And Mallt was the Goddess of Death. We can do this.”
Arawn gave a half-smile. “You are very young, child.”
“I’m not a child,” Belis snapped, and in the morning sun she seemed to glow with fury. “I am a princess of the Iceni, baptised in the blood of battle. I have tasted defeat and victory and defeat again. Let me prove my mettle.”
Arawn glanced at me but I was still staring at Belis. “Very well then, my lady.” He gave the honorific enough of a twist that it hovered between respectful and ironic.
“If you want to prove yourself then here is a task for you. If you can clear this land by nightfall then I will consider moving faster. I want the thicket gone and the stumps uprooted or it will regrow in the darkness. When you have done that, it must be ploughed and sown with linseed. It must be sown by nightfall, so the crop will grow overnight, pushing out the corruption and ready to harvest by the time the morning dew has dried.”
Arawn nodded to his right. “You will find pitchforks and spades and scythes over there, beside a bag of seeds.” He extended a long finger towards the next field.
“By nightfall,” I whispered. Arawn grimaced and ran a hand through his hair as he stared out at the field.
“No citizen of Annwn could do this thing,” he said, “nor could I, the lord of this land. If you can do this then maybe there is a hope.”
He turned on his heel and was gone. Belis and I stood alone at the edge of the thicket, staring up at a sky that was suddenly filled with a twisting flock of starlings.
