Goldenhand by Garth Nix
Yellowsands, in the North of the Old Kingdom
Ferin regained consciousness as she was being lifted out of the fishing boat to the jetty, one of a dozen rickety constructions that lined the waterfront of Yellowsands. The harbor was sheltered from the sea by a high breakwater, an ancient and much more imposing edifice than the jetty, made of huge blocks of black stone expertly placed together so there were no gaps for the sea to exploit.
“Welcome to Yellowsands!” said Tolther. “Huire’s going to put you on my back, so I can carry you more easily. Is that all right?”
“Yes,” said Ferin. “Where do you carry me?”
She was pleased to have come closer to delivering her message and to see another day, a day that felt more promising. It was warmer already, the sun was coming up over the ocean, the sky was a soft blue, and her foot didn’t hurt as much as it had. Though she wasn’t sure whether this was a good thing or not, and when she looked her leg was very swollen above the ankle.
“To the Charter Stone,” said Tolther. “We’ll meet Astilaran there, the healer, get your foot looked at while everyone’s getting ready to go.”
“Go?” asked Ferin. She screwed her eyes shut for a moment as Huire hoisted her onto Tolther’s broad back, the pain in her foot returning like a surprise charge on an unsuspecting enemy. She told herself shutting her eyes was not a sign of weakness if no one could see.
“That raider’s still following, or it was,” said Tolther. “Put your arms around, a bit lower, not on my neck. We haven’t the strength to fight them here, the village can’t be defended, so everyone’s heading out to the old tower a ways off.”
“Ah,” said Ferin carefully, trying to keep the pain out of her voice. “I have brought this on you, and I am sorry.”
“Oh well,” said Tolther, carefully picking his way along the jetty, with Huire walking behind, carrying Ferin’s bow and arrow case, and her pack. “With the Sky Horses coming so far south and everything, your message must be as important as you said to Ma. So best we help you.”
“Yes.” It took considerable effort to talk without showing that she was in pain, but she managed it. She was glad Tolther hadn’t said anything requiring a longer answer.
Ferin looked about as Tolther carried her from the jetty onto the paved waterfront, with its big open-sided timber building for sorting and packing fish, where right now a cluster of fisher-folk were talking excitedly with Karrilke rather than working. They hurried past this fish-packing shed and Ferin saw a line of well-made houses stretching up both sides of a road that speared directly up a low hill. The houses were all whitewashed stone with red tiled roofs, very different from the goatskin tent camps of the Athask. From the dockside they followed the cobbled road, Tolther puffing as they began to climb, though the slope was gentle.
Fisher-folk came out of the houses as they passed, and asked what was happening. Huire told them, quickly. The result reminded Ferin of shooting ducks on the high lakes: one bird would drop to the first arrow and most of the others would take flight, quacking in alarm. But there were always some ducks who didn’t fly with the rest. They were the ones that would fall to the next shot. Most of the people here started to run back into their houses, shouting as soon as they understood what Tolther had told them, but a few stood where they were, their mouths agape. They were like the sitting ducks on the lakes.
Tolther and Ferin were near the top of the hill, where the houses stopped, when a loud, low-voiced horn sounded from somewhere about the harbor below, immediately followed by another two sharp, loud blasts.
“Alarm,” puffed Tolther. “Guess Ma got Megril to act fast for once.”
“But it’s the same as the one for fire,” said Huire doubtfully.
“It’ll get everyone out, and word travels fast,” said Tolther.
Ferin turned her head to look below. Even more people were running about, and there was also more shouting. It didn’t look very organized, but she thought it might just be the different way these southerners did things. Among the Athask, there were many different horn blasts for various situations; if one were sounded, the response would be ordered and disciplined, and above all, quiet. There would be none of this excessive shouting, and particularly there would not be any of the screams Ferin could hear.
Huire had paused to look too. She pointed out to sea and said, “The raider is coming! See, two fingers left of the sun?”
Tolther turned around. Ferin grimaced as her leg was swung about and her neck jolted. She looked over Tolther’s shoulder, squinting against the rising sun.
Sure enough, there was the raiding ship, making its way along a broad channel, a black smudge amid the blue-green sea and golden sands. From the hill Ferin could see many other channels: forking, joining, splitting, rejoining, a complicated tracery of darker arteries and capillaries cutting through the great drifts of yellow sand that formed the banks and bars.
Some of the channels looked wide to begin with, but soon narrowed or led nowhere, and at sea level Ferin thought it would be very easy to take the wrong one. But the raiders hadn’t done so, or at least hadn’t taken one that would greatly slow them down. They were not in the widest and most direct channel, but one parallel to it that would rejoin soon enough. From the wake of the ship, the wood-weirds were continuing to row at an unnatural pace.
“Pity the tide’s in,” said Tolther. “They might’ve gone aground otherwise.”
“Might have been and could have done, neither worth thinking on,” said Huire, repeating one of their mother’s favorite sayings.
“They’ll be inside the breakwater, lie alongside a jetty inside of an hour, I reckon,” said Tolther. “Not much of a start for us . . .”
He increased his pace, puffing harder. He was very strong, Ferin thought, but did not have the endurance of her people. At least not for walking and running, no doubt due to spending most of his life on a boat.
“Stone’s up ahead,” said Tolther. “I’ll lay you down there to wait for Astilaran and run back to help Da get our gear together. Huire, you stay with Ferin.”
“Why don’t you stay!” protested Huire. “I’ve got things I’d like to get too!”
“It isn’t about that,” said Tolther. “I’m older, so do as I say.”
“I will stay but not because you’re older,” said Huire. “Someone sensible has to be with Ferin.”
“I am grateful for all your help,” said Ferin. She felt very old all of a sudden, an adult among small children. They clearly had no idea of what wood-weirds could do, or the powers of the shamans and witches on board the approaching raider, or they would not spare energy for childish squabbles. Or be helping a wounded stranger, because if they knew what was coming after them they would run away right now. “From both of you.”
The top of the hill was a pleasant, flat area that when spring became fully established would doubtless be under grass. The first shoots were coming through now, patches of green dotting the bare earth, legacy of the past winter. In the middle of this flat soon-to-be pasture, there was a tall grey stone, reminiscent of a fir cone in shape, round at the bottom and tapering to a point at the top. It was about twice as tall as Ferin, and as they drew closer she saw many strange symbols were carved everywhere, all over the stone, from foot to crown.
As she watched, the symbols moved, and suddenly shone bright as if they were made of beaten gold that had caught the sun. Ferin blinked several times, wondering if she was becoming feverish again. But she didn’t feel feverish, and the symbols were very definitely moving, crawling about and shifting position. Some were also changing, flowing out of one shape into another, and they shone brighter and brighter, as bright as molten gold poured from a crucible, so bright Ferin had to hood her eyes and look away.
“What . . . what is that?” croaked Ferin.
“The Charter Stone,” said Tolther. “Good magic. The marks aren’t always so bright, though. Something must have stirred them up. Help me put Ferin down, Huire.”
After a minute or two, most of the radiant marks dimmed, and the moving ones became slower, and soon the rock simply looked like a much-carved-upon standing stone again.
“The little carvings, what do they mean?” asked Ferin. “Are they letters? There are so many . . .”
“Need to be a Charter Mage to know,” said Huire. “Ma is one, a little bit. We’ve all got the mark, Ma insisted, but I never had time to study. I know how to make a light, that’s about it. You don’t want to mess with marks you don’t understand.”
Huire pushed her fringe back and showed Ferin the Charter mark on her forehead.
“I thought that was just a brand, marking your clan,” said Ferin. “I have one such, here.”
She tapped her stomach, just above her navel.
“It does look just like a painted sign or a brand,” said Huire. “Until someone else with a Charter mark touches it, or if you touch a Charter Stone. Then it will shine and move, like the ones over there, and if you have one, you feel . . . joined to the Charter. It’s kind of difficult to describe—”
“I’m going back down to help,” interrupted Tolther. “You stay with Ferin, Huire.”
“I am staying, aren’t I?” snapped his sister. “Get my blue cloak and the woolen hat with the long bit at the back if you’re going home, and make sure Da remembers to bring all the good knives.”
“All right,” said Tolther, and he was away, running back down the road.
“Boys,” said Huire. “Thinks he’ll miss out on some fighting. Should be hoping it doesn’t come to that.”
Ferin nodded, saving her strength. Huire had laid the bow and arrow case close by, which was good. Ferin wished she had some spirit-glass arrows left, or rather that she had many more than she had started out with. But even without them, if she could shoot the keepers, then there was a chance the shamans or witches would run off, or turn on their masters. If even two or three of the sorcerers and their wood-weirds attacked the others, that would be a great help.
A hawk swooped down above them. For a moment Ferin thought it was going to attack and reached for her bow, but it flew over Huire’s head and landed atop the Charter Stone. It was brown but had streaks of pale yellow in its wings, and fierce amber eyes. As it perched on the stone, Charter marks shimmered up and wrapped themselves around the bird’s feet and talons, wreathing it in light. The hawk launched itself into the sky again, the marks falling back into the stone, becoming dull carvings once more.
“Message-hawk,” said Huire. “Astilaran, that’s the healer who’s coming to sort you out, he says that in the old days, I mean the real old days, Charter Mages could make messenger birds just with magic, they didn’t need an egg to start with, or to train up a real bird. Imagine that!”
Ferin nodded again, watching the quick beat of the hawk’s wings as it rose up into the sky. Magic birds that flew messages would be extremely useful, particularly in raids on other clans. She had never been allowed to go on a raid herself, being too valuable to the clan, but she had joined many practices. Things often went wrong because the five or six parties in a typical big raid had no way to quickly send messages to one another.
A stab of pain from her leg brought Ferin back to the present. She leaned forward and saw that the swelling above the ankle was so great that her breeches leg was tight against the skin, adding to the discomfort. She took her knife and carefully unpicked the red thread along a seam, opening the goatskin from the knee down.
She was thinking about cutting off the dirty, blood-encrusted bandage as well but was prevented from doing so by the sudden arrival of a short, very thin man of indeterminate age with bulbous eyes and something of a permanent frown. He wore a strange sort of pale blue robe which was liberally equipped with at least a dozen buttoned pockets, many of them bulging, and carried a leather satchel over his shoulder.
“Now, now!” he called. “Let me see if there is cutting to be done, for if there is, I’ll do it. I am Astilaran, doctor and Charter Mage, neither of these things in any extraordinary manner, but perhaps sufficient unto your needs. What a very impressive fur cloak.”
He crouched down low by Ferin’s side and sniffed around the bandage like a small dog unsure of whether it might find a snack or something that would bite its nose.
“A crossbow bolt, I believe?”
“Yes,” said Ferin.
“And Karrilke tried a healing spell which didn’t work?”
“Yes,” said Huire. “The one she always uses.”
“Hmm,” said Astilaran. “Have you any talismans, charms, or suchlike about you? Ferin, that is your name?”
“Yes, I am Ferin. I have no charms. Our shaman gave me three spirit-glass arrows, but those I have used.”
“I will essay another healing spell in a moment,” said Astilaran. “But first I want to take a look at the wound. It does not smell bad, not yet, though there is some reason to fear corruption will occur.”
He unbuttoned several pockets, taking a clean bandage from one, and a small silver bottle from another, and a tube of canvas from his satchel, which he swiftly unrolled to reveal a number of very sharp-looking short knives. Taking one of these, he swiftly and expertly cut off Ferin’s makeshift bandage, using the point to pry away pieces that were stuck on with dried blood. The mountain girl forced herself to watch as if this was nothing, though she did almost cry out when Astilaran poured whatever was in the silver bottle over and into the wound. It wasn’t water.
The wound began to bleed again. The blood was welling rather than rushing out, but there was enough to alarm Ferin, who instinctively moved to press her hand against the flow.
“No, no, stay as you are, I’ll not let you bleed too much,” said Astilaran. “I want to allow the ill humors that have suppurated near the surface to flow away, and I will cast a spell to both cleanse and mend in a moment. Does it hurt a great deal here?”
Ferin nodded very slightly as the healer pressed his finger just below her knee.
“Hmm,” said Astilaran. He looked at her intently. “You wouldn’t say if it did, would you? Your people believe in not showing pain?”
“Pain is a challenge to be met and overcome,” said Ferin through clenched teeth, as Astilaran pressed in several other points.
“Fortunately for my purposes, observation of your pupils, skin, and that clenched jaw provides me with sufficient response to my questions,” said Astilaran. “Now, I am going to cast a Charter spell of healing. You have seen this done before?”
“No,” said Ferin. She’d been unconscious when Karrilke had tried to cast the healing spell on the boat.
“You have seen the marks move on the Charter Stone,” said Astilaran. “I will call marks like that and join them to make a spell, which will enter your leg. Do not move, or be alarmed. The spell will take away most of the pain, knit the flesh together, and cleanse the wound.”
“We do not have any such spells,” said Ferin. “Our shamans and witches only have spells to cause harm, destroy things, bend others to their will. That is why they must be kept in check with neck-rings and keepers. Our healers have no magic; they use herbs and make potions and pastes.”
“I do that too,” said Astilaran. “Charter Magic is not without cost, or danger, and if healing can be done in other ways, I do it. Now, as I said, do not move.”
The healer shut his eyes and reached up with his hands, stretching his long and surprisingly elegant fingers wide. Glowing Charter marks began to form around his hands, marks slowly drifting around one another, linking and changing. After a few seconds, he held a chain of glowing marks, which stopped shifting ab
Astilaran lowered his fingers and the glowing chain fell upon Ferin’s ankle. As it did so, a savage, overwhelming pain struck her in the stomach. She made a choking sound, her eyes rolled back, and her head lolled to one side. The chain of marks broke and the individual marks rolled away, sank into the ground, and disappeared.
The spell had failed.
“Hmm,” said Astilaran. He raised his left hand, clenching his fingers into a claw, which he pointed at the Charter Stone, closing his eyes in concentration again. This time, Charter marks came boiling up out of the stone and danced across the air to his clawed hand, surrounded his fingers, and continued along his arm into his body. More and more marks came, making a flowing vine of golden light from stone to man.
Ferin recovered consciousness a few seconds later, the pain in her belly dissipating, and saw this line of light and Astilaran kneeling by her side. She tried to say something, but her mouth was extraordinarily dry, so she could merely growl and cough.
Astilaran spoke a word and a particularly bright Charter mark appeared in the air above her leg and began to slowly turn, as it did so sending out a shower of small, cool sparks of brilliant light. Other marks joined this one, coming out of Astilaran’s mouth, and then he suddenly brought his right hand down on Ferin’s ankle and the super-bright Charter mark and all the others with it that had come from the stone flowed from his hand into her leg with a flash like sudden, close lightning out of a clear sky.
The pain in Ferin’s stomach struck again, more intense than ever, and she fainted from the shock.
When she came to, perhaps a minute later, Astilaran was examining the clan sign above Ferin’s navel, his hands hovering above her skin as if he were warming them at a particularly hot fire he dared not approach too closely.
Like all the Athask people’s, Ferin’s clan sign had been made when she was very young, using the point of a red-hot knife to carve a very simple, stylized design of the mountain cat from which they took their name. The resulting scars were no wider than a knife’s edge, and slightly red, though in most of the older people the red faded until all that was left were lines of white.