Page 29 of Witchcraft and Fury (Chronicles of the Divided Isle #1)

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU STEAL

In remembrance of my young and foolish trainees who, in the recklessness of youth, strayed too far from our encampment fire and into the dark of the forest.

Hands pulled her roughly ashore. Solar collapsed onto her hands and knees, retching and heaving. Water streamed from her mouth as her body convulsed.

‘That’s right, get it all out,’ said a voice, friendly and comforting.

Father, is that you? her tired and desperate mind asked.

‘Thought that was the end of you for a moment back there, Solar.’

Solar looked up and saw the pale, scared faces of Bear and Pingot. They were soaked to the bone.

‘Where is he?’ she tried to say, but all that came out was a hoarse croak. She looked back down at the ground as another convulsion caused her to throw up yet more of the river.

‘What?’ asked Pingot nervously .

‘Where is he?’ she repeated, and this time the words came out.

‘Who?’ said Bear.

‘Binns! He tried to drown me! And would’ve succeeded, if you two hadn’t shown up!’

Bear and Pingot shared concerned looks.

‘Solar,’ said Pingot softly, as if speaking to someone very ill.

‘Binns is in his tent, asleep. We found you in the water, alone, floating face down on the surface. You were completely motionless. It was as if some magical force was keeping you from flowing away with the current. We … we thought you were dead. Why did you enter the river?’

‘My father – he’s just on the other side of the river! But then Binns tried to drown me, I swear! As soon as he knows I’m alive, he’ll try to kill us all! He’s got to be somewhere nearby, where are your swords?’

‘Your father …’ said Pingot doubtfully, now looking at Solar as if she was insane. ‘Your father was last seen in the Arid Lands, Solar. There’s no real chance that he is still alive.’

‘He’s not dead!’ she shouted. She couldn’t understand why they didn’t believe her. Was it all really so unlikely?

She looked over towards the rock. It was deserted. He must be looking for a place to cross the river. He never could swim , she told herself.

‘Follow me,’ she ordered, scrambling up the bank. ‘We’ll see if Binns is at camp.’ Bear and Pingot caught up with her as she broke into a run towards the campsite.

‘Have you lost your mind?’ hissed Bear, anger creeping into his tone as he ran beside her. ‘I know Binns isn’t the nicest man in the Divided Isle, but he is a knight! Knights don’t drown girls in rivers!’

Solar ignored him. She came to a halt only when she had reached the entrance to Binns’ tent. She raised a finger to her lips and glared at the other two for silence. The three of them held their breath, listening intently. From inside the tent came the unmistakeable sound of snoring.

Confusion creased Solar’s brow. He’s got to be pretending , she told herself.

She reached out a hand and silently drew back the flap.

Moonlight flooded in. Binns lay spreadeagled on a bed of furs, bare-chested and seemingly deep in sleep.

Solar gestured for Pingot to hold the flap. He did so with a quaking hand.

‘If we’re caught …’ he breathed, but Solar had already crept inside.

Outside there was a crash that shattered the silence of the night. Binns grunted and one eye flashed open. It fixed on Solar, and she remembered Binns’ murderous stare down in the river. She stood rooted to the spot, not daring to breathe. Then the eye closed, and Binns resumed his snoring.

Solar gave a sigh of relief.

‘Sorry!’ hissed Bear from outside. ‘I tripped on a saucepan. Pingot, you must have left it out!’

‘Shut up!’ snarled Pingot in a ferocious whisper.

Solar tiptoed round the master-at-arms’ feet. She knelt on the furs, a hair’s breadth from Binns’ outstretched hand. She leaned forward and felt the jet-black hair that fell almost to his elbow.

It was bone dry.

*

Pingot had second watch that night. Neither Solar nor Bear could even think of sleeping, and so the three of them huddled round the campfire with their hoods up, staring into the flames and mulling over the night’s events in hushed voices .

‘How did you even find me in the river?’ Solar asked.

Pingot retrieved a book that was leaning against the flap of the male trainees’ tent. He tossed it onto Solar’s lap.

‘This book came running – well, I know it doesn’t have legs or anything, but that’s the best way I can describe it – into our tent whilst we were all asleep and began flapping its pages in my face.

Then, before I could catch it, it darted back outside.

Bear was woken too by the noise, and the two of us followed it.

We saw you weren’t there on watch and knew something had to be wrong.

The book then started pointing with these little lunges towards the river.

So we ran down there. That’s when we saw you, motionless in the water,’ he explained. ‘Is it yours?’

‘It is,’ said Solar.

It was the book that she had stolen in Queen’s Port.

The book that hadn’t been stamped, that should have been incinerated in the Arid Lands but had somehow found its way into her possession.

The book that really did, it seemed, have a life of its own.

She had more or less forgotten about An Instructive Manual in Wizardry ever since she began learning magic with Loveday.

‘You should tell Loveday what happened in the river. He’ll be able to explain everything,’ said Bear for what must have been the hundredth time.

‘I can’t ,’ said Solar, looking up from the book. ‘I’ve already told you. I was meant to be on watch duty. If I tell him I left the campsite he’ll be livid. Besides, I have no evidence that Binns just tried to drown me. It’d be my word against his.’

‘You’ve just seen for yourself that Binns has been in his tent all along. He can’t have tried to drown you,’ reasoned Pingot. As if to back him up, they heard a thunderous snore from within Binns’ tent. ‘There’s got to be another explanation.’

‘Such as?’ asked Solar sceptically.

‘How about this: perhaps you really did see a figure on the far side of the water that looked a little bit like your father, tried to swim across to him and nearly drowned. Then you had some kind of near-death experience that made you hallucinate vividly about Binns.’

‘I felt his hands on my head, Pingot, in my hair and pushing me below the water. It was no hallucination!’

Bear reached for Solar’s head and she pulled away from him instinctively. ‘What’re you doing?’ she asked irritably.

‘What do you think? Checking your head for marks. That will prove if you nearly drowned by yourself or if someone really did push you under.’

‘Fine,’ she said reluctantly, letting her hood down. ‘Take a good long look then.’

Bear knelt beside her and parted her hair gently with his hands.

‘By the gods!’ he exclaimed.

‘What, what do you see?’ asked Pingot excitedly.

‘Solar, you’ve got great long scratches on your head. Something has even drawn blood, right here, above your ear! Why didn’t you mention this – doesn’t it hurt?’

‘Everywhere aches, to be quite frank, after heaving up half a river. You should try drowning sometime and see if you’re able to notice a few scratches. But now you’ve drawn attention to it, yes, it does sting a little.’

‘Interesting,’ mused Pingot, ‘but hardly what I’d call conclusive proof.’

‘What more evidence do you need?’ demanded Solar, pulling her hood back up .

‘Fine, so you’ve got scratches. But we just saw Binns with our own eyes, sleeping in his own tent, half-naked and dry as the desert!’

‘How can you deny that I was attacked? The cuts are still fresh on my head!’ Solar could feel rage welling up inside her. The strain of the night had been almost overwhelming, and her two best friends wouldn’t back her up.

‘Look, I admit that you were attacked. Your scratches clearly indicate that. But it was not Binns who did the attacking, though it may have looked like him. And that was certainly not your father up on the rock.’

‘I think I can recognise my own father!’ protested Solar hotly, but Pingot held up a hand for silence.

‘Just listen. What are the odds of your father turning up at the very moment an attempt is made on your life? How would your father even know to find us in the middle of a forest? And why didn’t he attempt to rescue you when you began to drown?’

‘All fair questions,’ said Bear. Solar cuffed him round the head.

‘I think there’s dark magic at play here,’ Pingot continued.

‘I’d wager that some evil power conjured up an apparition of your father, knowing that he is the only person who could lure you into swimming in a deep and dangerous river at night.

Then the conjurer himself, or itself, took on the form of the person you find most terrifying in the world: Binns.

Then it swam into the river and tried to murder you. ’

‘I’m not scared of Binns!’ lied Solar.

‘Yes, you are,’ snorted Bear. ‘We’re all scared of him!’

Solar didn’t respond. She didn’t think much of Pingot’s theory.

It had to have been Binns, just as it had to have been her father that she had seen.

She couldn’t let go of the possibility that he was there, in the forest with them, and that at any moment he might come through the trees and sweep her up in one of his enormous bear hugs.

She picked up a stick from a pile of firewood and placed it in the flames.

As she did so her sleeve drew back to reveal the bracelet she had found at the bottom of the sack from Gib Ralston’s cellar.

The silver leaves gleamed in the moonlight.

‘What’s that?’ asked Bear forcefully.

‘Nothing,’ Solar said, hastily covering the bracelet with her sleeve.

Bear grabbed at her arm and pulled back her sleeve to reveal it again.

The three of them stared in dumbstruck silence, but not at the bracelet. The skin around the trinket was a mass of angry red tissue, cracked and oozing.

‘When did that happen?’ demanded Pingot.