Chosen by Fire Read online

  C H O S E N B Y F I R E

  A novel by Harriet Locksley

  Copyright © 2021 All rights reserved

  Starlight whispered. It showed me the face of someone I did not know. Looking back, I think she hardly knew herself at that time. She would certainly have had no idea of the part she was to play in all of this – the lass whose name was forged in Fire.

  ONE

  Kaetha

  She stopped running. Her laughter died, lost in the wind which coursed over the hills, tugging at purple heather. Kaetha didn’t understand why the back of her neck began to prickle, trailing a shiver down her spine. Likewise, she couldn’t say why her gaze was transfixed by the river, glinting silver beyond the rise of the hill. However, a creeping suspicion clutched coldly at her. She hoped desperately that she was wrong.

  “Didn’t you hear what I was saying?” said Archie, panting as he caught up with her. “What is it?” His tone had changed to one of concern.

  She hardly knew how to answer him and was glad of the interruption of hooves thudding behind them. Morwena reined in her horse but she wasn’t looking at Kaetha or Archie. Instead, she stared out across the hills, her face drained of colour, her eyes drawn to the same point in the river that Kaetha had been looking at.

  “You shouldn’t go too close to the Eachburn today, my dear,” said Morwena in her soft, lilting accent.

  Kaetha rubbed the back of her neck, failing to rid herself of the tingly sensation. Catching Morwena’s eye, she was surprised by the searching look her guardian gave her. Then a smile touched Morwena’s face like a shadow.

  Archie tensed, shifting awkwardly as if he was uncomfortable in his own skin, but Kaetha couldn’t tell if that was because he’d sensed something uncanny too, or if it was simply due to his usual shyness of Morwena. Her guardian often made a striking impression on the villagers and not only from her unusually dark hair or the vivid colours in her clothing. The bone pins holding back sections of her hair; the bone handle of the knife at her belt; the leaves of silver in a chain around her neck and the stone and amber beads sewn into her blue tunic, all were marked by carvings of patterns and shapes which, to a Dalrathan eye, looked decidedly foreign.

  The most intricately fashioned item she wore was the silver clasp which secured her cloak and was shaped like a pair of herons in flight. Her array of carved, wrought and engraved images was echoed in the blue tattoos which draped her arms and wrists, never quite covered by her sleeves. Her years spent living here in Dalrath had never managed to make her want to hide or put away these signs that she was Edonian. Kaetha admired her honesty about who she was, her loyalty to her people.

  “It’s good to see you, Archie,” said Morwena.

  He cleared his throat, though he didn’t appear to know what to say, so he bobbed his head in a bow.

  “I’ve not seen you wearing the silver clasp and necklace for a long time,” said Kaetha. Then she realised. “You’re going to Ciadrath. Already.” She sighed, making no effort to hide her disappointment. “I thought you were going next week.”

  “I was meant to be but a messenger came from the citadel and now I’m wanted up there today. I know it’s late but I’ll get there before dark. Gwyn will be at the hall though, so you shouldn’t be lonely.” Kaetha lowered her eyes and didn’t comment. “I rode this way in hope of seeing you.”

  “Why do they want you there now?”

  Morwena leant forward in her saddle. “I hear that Princess Rhona’s suitor will arrive sooner than expected. I think what she really needs is some reassurance from her old nurse.”

  Kaetha had never met Princess Rhona and had only seen her from a distance a handful of times. However, she had long thought that they were somehow linked, both having known the love and care of this woman.

  “Ma says it’s about time the princess got married,” said Archie, finding his voice at last.

  Morwena gave a small laugh. “I think King Alran would agree with her,” she said. She studied Kaetha’s face again and a tangible silence followed.

  Archie turned to Kaetha. “I’ll wait for you at the oaks, shall I?”

  “Aye,” she replied. “I’d outrun you if you didn’t have a head start.”

  “You wish,” he muttered before leaving them.

  “Come here, my lass,” said Morwena. Kaetha reached towards her and Morwena squeezed her hand, her smile faltering. “Growing up so quickly,” she said, tucking a lock of unruly auburn hair behind Kaetha’s ear. She seemed about to say something else. Kaetha could almost feel the unspoken words hanging in the air between them. But then they were gone as if the wind had blown them away. “Stroud will follow on tomorrow with my things. I hope to be back within the fortnight.”

  Kaetha raised her eyebrows.

  “I’ll try to be,” Morwena added before straightening up in the saddle and turning her horse. She glanced once more out across to the river. “We’ll have a good talk, you and I, when I return.”

  Kaetha’s hand had been warm a moment before, held tightly in Morwena’s, but now it felt cold as she watched her ride off down the road, a flutter of blue sinking towards the steely clouds which billowed out across the horizon.

  Catching up with Archie, just as he reached their best oak for climbing, she dropped her bag on the ground and dug her fingertips into the bark of a low branch. “Ready?”

  “Is everything alright?” he said. “With you and Lady Morwena?”

  “Aye. Everything’s fine. You ready?”

  “If you’re ready to lose.”

  She grinned. “And what’s that like, Archie? I’ve always wondered.”

  At fifteen, Kaetha was a year older than Archie, yet he was already a foot taller. Still, she wasn’t about to let her stature hinder her, nor the rough bark which scratched against her hands. She focussed on securing footholds, gripping branches and hauling herself higher, squirrels scampering away before her.

  “Ha,” she said as she sat on a high branch and untwisted her red skirts, thinking how it would be so much easier if Gwyn let her wear a tunic with slits over a pair of trews as Morwena did, but Gwyn said it wasn’t Dalrathan enough. “You try doing that in an ankle length gown.”

  Archie laughed as he caught up with her. “Maybe some other time.” His smile buckled. “Oh, no.”

  “What?” Following his gaze, she saw two people approaching.

  “Bit late for bairns to be out on the braes, wouldn’t you say?” A tall lass with frizzy, blonde hair squinted up at them, her muscular arms wrapped around bundles of firewood. The Clatcher siblings were only a little older than Kaetha; it was a stupid insult to call them bairns.

  “Aye, Morag,” said the lass’s brother, Raghnall, who looked like a larger, uglier version of his sister, with uneven tufts of fluff growing on his chin. Two dead rabbits swung from a string in his hand. “I see Archie’s trying his luck with Lady Rich Lass. Look at him. His face red as a skelpt arse.”

  “Away and boil your head, Raghnall. And I’m not a ‘Lady’,” said Kaetha, climbing to the ground with the agility of a cat.

  Raghnall picked up her bag from the ground.

  “Give that back,” she said.

  “No.”

  When she reached for it, he shoved her and she fell, her backside stinging against a thistle. “You might throw your fists around, Raghnall Clatcher,” she said, getting to her feet again and jutting out her jaw defiantly, “but it’s clear that you use your brawn because you have no brains.”

  “I have more brains than you, you little bitch,” he said.

  Her eyes flashed and she held his gaze. “I bet you can’t even read your own name.” She ignored Archie’s tugs at her sleeve.

  “There’s no point to reading.” Raghnall sounded li
ke he didn’t care but the flush spreading across his face suggested otherwise. “Bet you can’t either anyway.”

  “Of course I can. I had a tutor.”

  “Liar.”

  “Ask my guardians, if you like.”

  “We should go,” muttered Archie with a tentative touch to her shoulder. She ignored him.

  Raghnall bore down on her, his face inches from hers. “Your guardian, Lady Morwena Trylenn,” he sneered, “is a witch.” He spat on the ground at her feet.

  A fire flared up in her then and, without a thought, she slapped Raghnall hard around the face. He let out a cry of pain and dropped the rabbits to the ground. Archie’s jaw dropped and Morag stood blinking in surprise. Finally, Kaetha edged back a step. She looked at her palm and flexed her fingers. Her skin looked normal yet waves of heat prickled across its surface. A hand print was appearing on Raghnall’s face but it looked more like he’d been burned than slapped. He stepped toward her, raising a clenched fist and Kaetha’s breath caught in her throat.

  “Enough, Raghnall,” said his sister.

  He put his fingers to his cheek and winced.

  “And don’t make such a fuss,” Morag added. “You deserved that, insulting her guardian and one of your betters.”

  “Betters?” He spat again. “I’m better than some clatty witch!”

  “How dare you call her that!” shouted Kaetha.

  “She is though. That’s what people say.”

  “What else are they saying exactly?” she said through clenched teeth, the fire of her anger tangled with icy threads of fear.

  “Lots of things.” He lowered his fist now, a hint of a smile suggesting that he knew other ways to hurt her. “What other village has a Lady but no Laird? They say Morwena bewitched people to get that grand hall for her and her sister.”

  “It was Queen Donella’s land to bequeath to whomever she wished and the king respected—”

  “And farmer Underwood insulted her one day and next morning his cow gave no milk. And that fever that was going through the village a few weeks back – no one else caught it after Lady Morwena left on her trip. They say she goes to the devil’s court—”

  “She goes to King Alran’s court—”

  “And those Edonian carvings in the stones and things she wears. How do we know they aren’t spells and charms?”

  “Don’t be stupid. Stones don’t have magic, they’re just—”

  “I reckon your guardians could be behind what happened at Loch Eachburn two days ago too. That wave of water that flooded the fishermen’s huts, even reached our doorstep. When the water went down again, it left a trail of ice. In midsummer.” He turned to Archie. “Surely, you heard about that?”

  Archie made a non-committal grunt.

  Kaetha wanted to object to these absurd slanders but, in her outrage, speech eluded her and she just gaped, shaking her head.

  “Fish floated up dead and rotten,” continued Raghnall. “Can’t trust Edonians. You’re all savages, servants of the devil, a bunch of filthy foreigners.”

  “I’m not Edonian,” said Kaetha, though even as she said it, guilt twisted within her for feeling the need to separate herself from her guardians, Gwyn and Morwena, in this way. “I’m Dalrathan,” she continued, “my parents were from Bris.”

  He squinted at her, his gaze tracing her face. “Strange. Another thing people talk about . . . How come you, an orphan, look so much like Lady Morwena?”

  “I don’t know,” she croaked, her throat dry. “How come you, an eejit, look so much like a pig?”

  He scowled. “People say you look like her because she’s a whore – and you’re her bastard. And a witch, just like her, more than likely.”

  “You’re talking arse-haggis, you liar.” Heat rose in her cheeks. She wanted to pummel him into the ground. As she raised her fists, there was a flicker of fear in Raghnall’s eyes. Archie pulled her back, holding her arms down. Raghnall stepped towards her and she struggled in Archie’s grip, letting out a cry of rage.

  “Stop Raghnall. Just give back the bag and let’s go,” said Morag. She tried to pull him away but he shook her off.

  “Here,” he said, holding out the bag. But instead of giving it back, he threw it as far as he could. They all watched as it splashed into the river, the strap catching on a rock.

  Kaetha’s hair flicked his face as she spun around, chin raised proudly as she marched towards the river.

  “Kaetha, leave it,” Archie called. “You might fall in.”

  “Oh, Skelpt-Arse here is scared of kelpies.” Raghnall laughed. “Don’t worry Lady Rich Lass,” he called. “I’ll make sure your wee pet gets home safe after you’ve been eaten.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Kaetha,” said Morag.

  Kaetha ignored them. She reached the riverbank, water seething and frothing, smacking against rock. Her heart began to race and a chill crept over her again which had nothing to do with the cold. The churning waters seemed alive. And angry. She shook her head. How can water be angry?

  Despite herself, she couldn’t help but recall the stories. Water spirit, kelpie, Fuathan – over time, the peoples of this land had given different names to the creature said to haunt the river and the loch, yet all of the tales evoked the same horror.

  It had long been said that only witches could feel the presence of the creature, being aware of its proximity when there was no sight or sound of it. Can I sense it? Did Morwena? She felt sick. She couldn’t be a witch. Neither of them could be. It wasn’t possible. Yet the idea whirled relentlessly through her mind, piercing her with more terror than the thought of being snatched into the river.

  However, the chill of dread hadn’t cooled her temper. Oh no. She would not return without the bag and face humiliation. She knelt at the water’s edge, her bag just a few feet away. Water gushed over it, the strap still caught on the rock.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered as she stretched out her arm, hoping there was no one there to hear her. Her fingertips slid against the leather, her other hand gripping a clump of long grass on the bank. Then she gasped as a shock of cold water drenched her. A hand clamped around the wrist of her outstretched arm. Her eyes widened at the sight of long, scaly fingers. Her heart pounded in her chest, her breathing short and sharp.

  The creature pulled her arm and now her head was underwater. She struggled, keeping hold of the clump of grass on the bank.

  “Human.” The word came from the shadowy form below her, indistinct like a muffled scream. “Defiler.”

  “Let me go— Please.” Kaetha didn’t hear her own voice, only the bubbles that escaped her mouth. The murky water cleared for a moment, revealing a slithering of mottled scales, blades of kelp sewn together, floating like a garment, and a swish of hair like river weeds. She scrabbled for the right words that might save her, trying to remember what Morwena had told her long ago in her old Edonian tales of Fuathans. Fuathans love anything that sparkles in the light, like water, Morwena had told her. “I have silver. I can trade,” she said, seeing the last of her breath escape, hoping desperately that the creature could hear her.

  The water began to darken around her. Then she was coughing, her body slammed down onto the bank, her fingers digging into the mud. For a heartbeat, she saw its face, obscured beneath the rippling surface of the water. Silver-blue scales speckled with dark green ones. Round, black eyes. Rows of pointed teeth. Its head was inclined to one side as if trying to decipher a riddle.

  She pulled her silver ring from her thumb and lowered it into the water. Something like wet moss brushed against her hand, drawing away again with a scratch of claws like mussel shells, and the ring was gone. Then there was a splash and all that Kaetha could see where the Fuathan had been was a shoal of blue-green fish swimming downriver.

  A moment later, her bag was flung onto the river bank. She grabbed it and spun around, colliding into Archie. She took his arm and ran.

  Her hands were shaking but she managed to appear confident
, grinning smugly at the Clatchers. Raghnall was ash pale and there was fear in Morag’s eyes as she pulled at his sleeve, hurriedly leaving without a word.

  “Feartie-shitebags,” shouted Kaetha, hiding her trepidation at what the Clatchers would say about her now. She hoped Archie would agree with her but he remained strangely quiet.

  They walked back over the hills without speaking a word. When they reached the road that ran through the village of Feodail, they stopped. Archie turned to her as if he wanted to speak but the words took a while to come.

  “That was a kelpie, wasn’t it?” he said. “Were you . . . speaking with it?”

  “Did you expect me to just let it kill me? I had to reason with it.”

  Archie said nothing. He seemed very interested in the dirt he was scuffing with his feet.

  “Would you rather I’d been eaten?”

  “Of course not.” He swiped his hand through the air, seeming to push away an idea which frightened him, but to Kaetha it felt as though, with that movement, he made an invisible barrier between them. He squinted at her before dropping his gaze again. “I can’t read a word. I thought you should know that. Maybe I’m not clever enough for us to be friends.”

  “I don’t think that, Archie. Don’t be such a bampot.” At his look, she felt heat rising into her cheeks. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Goodbye, Kaetha.”

  Before he turned away, she thought that he had looked at her differently, as if they were strangers, even though they’d been friends for years.

  “Shall we meet up again tomorrow?” she asked.

  Perhaps he hadn’t heard her. He had already reached his front door.

  TWO

  Visitation

  The low sun fought feebly against the oncoming darkness as Kaetha trudged up the road. Muffled chatter – baby crying – dog barking – axe biting into wood. Sounds of everyday life swam around her from the cottages and workshops, from the lives of the villagers she now feared to run into. She halted, her gaze caught by a bunch of leaves which hung from a hook on a door, scraping softly against the wood in the breeze. Another, she thought, lowering her eyes as she passed other dwellings which had long since kept similar hangings on their doors. Someone peered at her through a window shutter, disappearing when she glanced back at them. She felt a tight knot in her stomach long after she’d left the village behind her.