The Cup of the World by John Dickinson

Author:John Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307518637
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2004-11-12T22:00:00+00:00

XII

On the Stair

t was nothing. It was always nothing; when she looked round, or raised her light, or turned the corner of the corridor. The nooks and passageways were empty They were frames of wood and stone and plaster that held no image and perhaps only the faintest smell – so thin that she could not have described it. She would wait and listen, staring at the blank walls for some sign. Nothing.

The incidents were fleeting, gone almost before she was aware of them. Her mind was playing tricks. And she remembered herself as a nine-year-old girl (half her life ago now), starting and turning when a man's voice spoke at her side; and when she turned, he would be gone. But he had been real. He had been Ulfin. And this … Ulfin had not seemed able to say.

As a girl, she had learned not to look. She had found that if she kept her eyes on some point ahead of her, he would remain, and could be spoken to. She had believed he was her brother Guy at first, who had not after all allowed death to make him abandon her. And by the time she had understood that he was not, she had already begun to trust him. This was different. She could not be still when she felt the presence of the watchers. To sit, watching her fingertips, thinking that one of them might be behind her – she neither dared nor wished to dare. It was better to look, knowing as she did so that the shadows would be empty. Let them trick her. Let them mock her, so long as the looking drove them away.

There was no one to talk to. She did not want to frighten Orani or Eridi: she could not afford to lose either of them. She dared not trust Brother Martin. As for Caw, if he had seen anything he gave no sign of it, although she watched him closely at chess and at other times. Perhaps the things were as invisible to him as the pale priest had been to Vermian on the road from Baer. Or perhaps he had indeed seen something, but was pretending he had not. Why? What did he guess? To speak to him would be to ask for help – even to be believed. She was not sure he would grant her either. He was more sullen than ever now that Ulfin had come and gone again, and left him once more in the post he hated.

So she spoke to no one of her trouble. She was Trant's daughter and Ulfin's wife – the Lady of Tarceny who should not be afraid. If the shapes she saw meant harm, then maybe they could be harmed, and she had armed men within call who could do harm if it came to that. For now, what she was seeing (if she was seeing it) had as much substance as the flick of a bat's wings. They troubled her pulse-rate; nothing more.

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