Amber and Willem Read online

  ​“You’re Galen’s son? I didn’t know Galen’s son was a...” Dariel looked at Willem in surprise, frowning. “I met your father a long time ago when I was still a boy but I remember it very well, the man with the incredible horses. You don’t look like him.”

  ​“My lord, the guests…”

  ​“I’m doing business Stem,” Lord Dariel snapped coldly. “You have some of your own, don’t you?”

  ​And Willem felt like even more of a fool. He had tried to help Amber but he hadn’t been able. How could he have ever thought he might influence someone like this man, a lord?

  ​“I will have this horse,” Dariel said using the same power that had sent Stem scurrying away. “It doesn’t matter that you’re Galen’s son; you can still work for me. You said you couldn’t ride so you can’t be worth that much to him. I’ll pay him to replace you and I’ll pay you as well, how’s that?”

  ​Willem couldn’t think. There was nothing to think about; no choice at all. That lord-man’s power was absolute, irresistible.

  ​“All right,” he said. He seemed to have managed to lose Amber her horse and at the same time lose everything in the world that he knew.

  Chapter Eight: The White Mare

  Amber could have cried when she saw them arrive without Arrelashantia, even though she had expected no different. Her heart hurt. “Where’s Willem?” she asked, looking round for him, confused, for there was only the boy and two mares returned from town.

  ​And Tully laughed. “They’ve kept him as well.”

  ​Amber pulled the boy down from Starsia and pushed him, hand on his chest, up against a horse-house wall. “What do you mean?” she demanded, gritting her teeth. Tully was a meaningless runt who generally said nothing and skulked in shadows. Amber had always thought him a halfwit, but perhaps she had always been wrong.

  ​“Willem’s a fool,” Tully said with surprising glee. “He was trying to stop them buying a horse, which is stupid enough, but he couldn’t even do that right. He went and sold himself!” He cracked up laughing again and Amber had just about made up her mind to knock his head off when Galen came striding along from nowhere, took hold of her arm roughly and dragged her away.

  ​“What’s all this?” he asked in his slow voice. “Amber, take the mares.”

  ​So Amber had to do that, looking over her shoulder but seeing nothing that helped her understand, just the man and the boy talking, and then Galen disappearing in the direction of the new house.

  Amber burned to know what was going on, but she sensed it would be reckless to ask. She made herself busy instead, so she didn’t have time to think, cleaning horse-houses and chopping feed until dusk began to fall and she itched with tiredness and desperation.

  ​“Come on. Time to go.” Jessa appeared, looking worn out.

  ​“Go where?” Amber asked, straightening up, bewildered. “It’s too late to go anywhere.”

  ​“To fetch that mare. Sunset might be the best time.” Jessa had seen a wild mare she liked the look of in the hills, and needed Amber to help catch her, but they’d talked about going in a day or two, when the weather was better. “If it isn’t we can sleep out and find her in the morning. She won’t go far with a foal at foot.”

  ​“Where’s Willem?” Amber asked, carefully.

  ​Jessa turned her head away. “He’s got himself a job in town, at the manor. He won’t be coming back.”

  ​“A job? But how could he…?”

  ​Jessa shook her head and wouldn’t say anything else, giving Amber no choice but to get the horses ready and then to just follow.

  “What’s wrong with everyone?” Merch complained, since they were still all silent, on the side of a hill, in a wood.

  ​Jessa twisted through the trees on her favourite mare, Moss, the witch-horse. Moss was a barren mare, old and ugly, one they couldn’t sell, and most people didn’t understand why Jessa liked her so much, but Amber did. Barren mares were revered among horses because they could see the spirits all year round.

  ​“There’s nothing wrong with anyone but you,” Moss said. “You’re an idiot.” And she turned her head and flattened her ears in his direction.

  ​Amber felt that everything in the world was wrong. Arrelashantia was gone forever. Now it seemed Willem was gone too, stolen away, just like that. She wondered how she was meant to feel because she couldn’t work it out; she was just numb and empty. She hardly ever talked to Willem these days, busy as she was, yet he was always there, round some corner, gossiping with birds and smiling his sweet, shy smile for her when she needed it.

  ​“Who’s there?” Merch asked, suddenly stopping, head up, ears pricked. Merch was a diamond of a horse; tall and rangy, iron grey, but born to race and jump and never intended for tiptoeing through woods at a walk.

  ​His voice was loud enough for anyone to hear, and another horse replied: “Stay away!”

  ​“That’s her,” Jessa muttered, turning Moss off the track and bounding into the bracken.

  ​Merch went after, gliding in and out of the shadows effortlessly, and Amber caught a flash of pure white in the corner of her eye; she had never seen a horse so white. And with that astonishing white flash came a wave of fear, not talk or any kind of language, just raw emotion, strong enough to knock you over.

  ​Moss was fast, Merch was faster, but neither of them could catch her. She disappeared into the wilds of the wood and Jessa pulled her horse up in disgust.

  ​“I thought you said she had a foal,” Amber said.

  ​“She did. She does,” Jessa was out of breath. “We’ll get her in the morning.”

  ​The sun had slid most of the way down; almost done. Jessa lit a fire and handed Amber a lump of bread to chew. “It’s good for Willem, what happened,” she said unexpectedly. “He’ll be all right.”

  ​Maybe he will, Amber thought, but what about the rest of us? The thread between her and Willem had stretched thin, like gossamer, but it was still there. It would always be there.

  ​“Or it had better be good for Willem, I suppose,” Jessa said. She sounded bitter now, and her voice was thick, as if she might cry. “Those people just take whatever they want. There’s nothing you can do about it. And they paid for him, as if that matters!”

  ​“What people?” Amber asked.

  ​Jessa laughed. “Lords and ladies, kings. You don’t know anything about them do you? You’re better off not knowing. Whatever they have, whatever they can do to us, we live greater lives than they could possibly imagine, remember that. Urgh!” Jessa rinsed her mouth with water and spat. “We should go to sleep now I reckon, get up before those horses expect it.”

  ​Amber lay down under a pair of blankets and under a canopy of leafy boughs but she did not sleep, or at least, not straight away. She could see stars twinkling between the leaves and she thought about what Jessa had said. She simply could not accept it. Once, she remembered, all she had wanted was to be allowed to ride horses. Now she rode horses all day long, every day, and not just any horses, but the most wonderful horses anyone could ever ride. She had made that happen herself, with her own magic and her own power. She was responsible for Willem being taken away, she supposed, and so she ought to be able to get him back. I can do anything I want to do, she told herself.

  The stars disappeared in the night, every one, because clouds blew in and hid them, and rain fell. Amber did not sleep much. The noise of rain on bracken woke her, and the cold as well, cold water seeping into her blankets and her bones.

  ​And that rain continued into the next day, hiding sounds and smells and bringing good fortune.

  ​They left the harness where they’d camped and Amber sent the horses ahead on their own while the two women followed cautiously, wading through wet bracken, slipping and sliding in the mud.

  ​“Where are they?” Jessa hissed. Jessa had always distrusted Amber’s charm, as if she could not accept that someone else had more of a way with horses than she did herself, but
she had to acknowledge it. It was valuable to her after all.

  ​Amber did not know exactly where they were, but she was sure Moss and Merch would find the wild herd better than any human could, even herself, and she was right to. She and Jessa followed a stream, wading up against it over the rocks to a shallow pool and there were the horses, fifteen or twenty of them, the white mare with her foal, standing nose to nose with Merch.

  ​Amber signalled to Jessa to stay back, out of sight. She walked forward slowly, head down, trying to keep calm, but it was hard to do; she was brimming with excitement. She had seen wild horses before, but so long ago she could barely remember it. Wild horses were different from the horses she knew for they seemed to come from another world.

  ​“Peace,” she said to the mare. That mare was so white that she glowed, even in the rain and mist, but she was terrified too, just as she had been before. She lifted her head and showed the whites of her eyes. She wanted to run, Amber could tell that, but Merch and Moss had come between her and her herd and Merch was stood hind to her foal, ready to kick it. Oh Merch! Amber thought. He was only doing it because she had asked him to.

  ​“You don’t need to be afraid,” she said to the mare.

  ​The mare gave off a strange energy that was filled with feeling so intense that Amber could sense it in all of her body. She seemed to have her own language, that mare, and in it, spoke of so many things Amber had never heard of that she was dizzy with desire to know them. Amber put her hand on the mare’s shoulder and it felt as if she was touching heaven, or touching God.

  ​The mare lowered her head. She was beautiful, like a small star.

  ​“You will like our world,” Amber said. She hoped it was true. “It’s safe there. You will be safe.”

  ​“Amber!” Jessa called.

  ​And the mare lifted her head once more, prepared to fly.

  ​Amber was paralysed suddenly. She could let the mare go, she should! Her heart thudded. It would be worth it surely, whatever Jessa was going to say about it? Let her go and be her wild self, why not? But the mare moved under her hand, jolting her back into that intoxicating world; the new real world. She would never let this mare go, and Jessa had nothing to do with it. She turned and began walking back down the stream with the white mare and her foal following, and Moss and Merch as well. They will all follow me, Amber thought. They belong to me. All of them do.

  Chapter Nine: Balance

  They burned Yuli’s body, as the sun was setting. Everyone stood around and stared solemn into the fire and they sang together. And later, when the solemn wore off, they sat drinking Hargri’s wine and talking, telling Yuli stories. Alexander thought he had heard all of those stories, but he was wrong.

  ​Sage had known Yuli longer than anyone. He told a tale from their army days, about ‘borrowing’ the best horses from the officers and staging race meets in the towns as they travelled through the country.

  ​“We made money,” Sage said. “But then we figured out people would pay as much just to watch Yuli’s trick riding. It wasn’t long after that we split out. I didn’t want to, especially with stealing the horses, but…”

  ​But nobody ever said no to Yuli, Alexander could just imagine. Sage was a giant of a man, but even so, Yuli had always been the master, filled with furious energy.

  ​Sorchia told of building the big house. “Do you remember, Tjeika?” she asked. “Those drawings? And even the colour; he painted them. They were beautiful.”

  ​“I remember spending three months cutting trees,” Tjeika said. “In the winter as well, when it was freezing.”

  ​“Good way to keep warm,” said Hargri.

  ​This was a story Alexander did know. How Yuli and his small group of trick riders and acrobats had spent one winter building the big house and its vans. Yuli had known nothing of building or of wood craft; he just pieced it all out in his mind and made it real by sheer determination. And brutality. But nobody wanted to talk about that.

  ​Alexander remembered how impossible the big house had seemed when he first saw it, skinny rat of a boy as he was then. And when he saw how quickly it came down he thought it was magic.

  ​“There’s no magic in my company,” Yuli said, in a voice that had chilled Alexander to the bone. “Nor ever will be. Just hard work.”

  ​Alexander was well and truly caught by then anyway. He’d scrambled under the canvass and under the crowd’s feet to get in because he had no money, but Yuli had seen him. Yuli saw everything. “You stole from me when you crept into my house,” Yuli had said, shaking Alexander till he rattled. “And now you must work to pay it back.” And hadn’t he? He’d worked his whole life since then, for Yuli.

  ​Alexander realised he was telling his own Yuli story, but only to himself. The company had dispersed further, into smaller groups, some sitting and talking, some playing tunes and dancing, some heading to their vans or their houses to sleep. Alexander was sat alone.

  ​“Alexander.”

  ​He looked up to see Ulrich stood there, looking nervous, but then Ulrich always looked nervous. “Ulrich,” he said, smiling and holding out his wine skin genially.

  ​Ulrich sat down and took the wine to be polite. “Are we still going to Bayley’s town?” he asked.

  ​“Of course we are,” Alexander replied. “What else would we do?”

  ​“We’re a day late.”

  ​“Well, we had something important to do.”

  ​“Yes,” Ulrich said. He had put the wineskin down beside him without drinking any, and sat with his arms wrapped round his bony knees. “But we don’t have time to waste. We’re short of money.”

  ​“How short?” Alexander asked, suddenly alert.

  ​Ulrich was a skywalker, but he also understood finances, and even though Yuli wanted to be in control of everything, he had always let Ulrich count his money for him. “We should be all right,” Ulrich said, “if we’re careful. I’m going to bed.” He rose abruptly and Alexander got up too.

  ​The younger ones were still playing and dancing, and Lida was stood looking deep into the fire. Lida had been one of the younger ones not long ago. Alexander remembered Yuli’s last wife, Sunaya, who had left him before he got sick. Sunaya was beautiful and charismatic, a force to be reckoned with, and she and Yuli had fought like cat and dog.

  ​But now it was Lida, weeping dutifully. “Oh, Alexander,” she said. “I feel as if the greater part of me has been ripped out, and I’m just hollow.”

  ​Alexander put his arm around her, but she twisted away. “Look at all of this,” she said. “Here is everything he made, it’s amazing isn’t it? And he left it for us!”

  The next day they packed up and travelled over a mountain pass to Bayley’s town in the valley below. It took all day. There was enough light, just about, to get the big house up, and then everyone went to bed without saying much. Or at least most people did.

  ​Alexander walked around the camp, checking all the ropes on the big house from the outside. Then he went inside where the performing horses were stalled, to rub faces and breathe into noses. Alexander had always loved horses, his whole life. He went to talk to Orchid, the mare who was to succeed Shallia as the flying horse.

  ​“Alexander.” Traveller was up.

  ​“Traveller,” Alexander said, without looking him in the eye.

  ​Traveller stayed in the big house with the horses most of the time. He didn’t have a van, or a house, and never had. Sometimes he slept outside under the stars. But he wasn’t usually around this late.

  ​“What’s wrong?” Alexander asked.

  ​“Something’s up with Poll,” Traveller said. Poll was next to Orchid. Traveller stood with his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t know what. She’s missing Shallia, but it’s not just that.”

  ​Alexander nodded and looked at the floor. Traveller had said more words than he usually did, and Alexander didn’t expect any more.

  ​“These horses,” Traveller said su
ddenly. “They’re not young horses.” He turned and walked away and the mare, Poll, went with him, nose touching his back, all the way out of the big house and into the night.

  ​And it was true what Traveller said. The whites were all at least twelve years old. Shallia had been fifteen and some of the others were older than that. There had been no new horses bought for years, nor any bred, like they used to be once upon a time. And how could they buy any now, when Ulrich said there was no money?

  Alexander was surprised to wake up because he had not expected he would ever be able to sleep. He was in his own van, and that was a surprise too, since he could not remember coming in or getting into bed. There were nine vans in the company, not counting the two that carried the big house, and Alexander had one to himself; even Yuli had never had that.

  ​But it was early still. Alexander lay and listened and he could hear nothing but the birds singing. He got up and ventured out into the incredible dawn with its pink sunrise and its delicate mist hanging at the bottom of the sky around the grazing vanners’ feet.

  ​The big house was filled with light. The horses stood still, huffing and making clouds of heat so that the air was rich with their soft breath and their sweet smell. Alexander looked up and smiled because Pattan was there, walking in the sky.

  ​And she saw him. Pattan was like Yuli; she saw everything. “Come up,” she said. “You could do with the practice.”

  ​Alexander shinned up a rope to where she was. She was right. Pattan was always right. He followed her and copied her movements as best he could until he was in another world, that world of complete certainty and purpose that was only to be found at moments like these. People said Yuli Skyrider’s company could walk in the sky like ordinary people could walk on the ground, but it was not true. Skywalking was not like that. It was more like having a new dimension for movement; like being a bird and flying perhaps. And all of it made possible by fear, the extra sense, running through you all the time.

  ​“I don’t know what to do Pattan,” Alexander said in a moment of her stillness.