Gemmell, David – Morningstar

At last my fingers became tired and the music died. Ilka stopped too, and looked at me with those wide, haunted eyes. Her expression was hard to read. I smiled and said something -I don’t remember what it was – but fear came back to her then and she scampered away into the gathering dusk.

Towards evening I saw Wulf and his killers striding towards the village.

For a moment only I was filled with stark terror; but then I saw the children running up to meet them. The hunchback lifted one small boy high into the air, perching him on his twisted shoulder, and the sound of laughter filled the village.

Jarek was right, in part at least.

This forest was a garden of evil.

Chapter Three

I see that you are quizzical, my ghostly friend. How, you wonder, does the laughter of children in such circumstances denote evil? Well, think on this … is it not comforting to believe that all acts of murder and malice are committed by brutes with no souls? Worshippers of Uncle’an Powers?

But how dispiriting to see a group of men coming home from a day of toil, ready to play for an hour with their children, to hold their wives close, to sit at their hearth-fires, when their work has been the foul slaughter of innocent travelers. You take my point? Evil is at its most vile when it is practised by ordinary men.

We can excuse a demon who stalks the night seeking blood. It is his nature, he was created for just such a purpose. But not a man who by day commits acts of murder and by night returns home to be a good, loving husband and father. For that is evil of a monstrous kind, and casts doubts upon us all.

But I am running ahead of myself. Where was I? Ah, yes, the village by the lake. I had watched the whore dance, and I had seen the return of the village men. And now, as the winter sunlight faded, I was standing outside the hut staring out over the cold lake.

An old woman came walking across the mud-flats. She was tall and thin, her bony body covered with a long woollen gown, her shoulders wrapped in a plaid shawl. Upon her head was a leather cap, with long ear-pieces tied with thongs beneath her chin. She was carrying a sack and she walked with the long strides of a man. I took her to be more than seventy years old.

‘Do you not bow in the presence of a lady, Owen Odell?’ she asked, stopping before me.

I was shocked and did not move for a moment; then good manners reasserted themselves. ‘My apologies,’ I said, extending my left leg and bowing low, sweeping my left arm out in a graceful half-circle. ‘Have we met before?’Perhaps,’ she answered, smiling. Her face was lined, but good

high cheekbones prevented the skin from sagging. Her lips were thin and her eyes, deep-set beneath shaggy brows, were bright blue. Forty years before she must have been a handsome woman. I thought.

‘Indeed I was,’ she said brightly. ‘Thank you for looking beyond the crone and seeing the true Megan.’You are a magicker then?’Of sorts,’ she agreed, walking past me to her hut.

Jarek was asleep on the bed. Megan carried her sack to the rear of the room, tipping the contents on to a wide table. All kinds of leaves and roots had been gathered, and these she began to separate into small mounds. I moved behind her, looking down at the first mound. I recognized the flowers instantly as Eyebright, downy leaves with white petals tinged with violet and with a yellow spot at the centre of the bloom.

‘You are a herbalist also, madam?’ I enquired.

‘Aye,’ she answered. ‘And doctor, meat-curer, midwife. You know this plant?’My nurse used to make an infusion of its leaves for winter colds,’ I told her.

‘It is also good for preventing infection in wounds,’ she said, ‘and for relieving swollen eyes.’I cast my eyes over the other plants. There was wild Thyme, Figwort, Dove’s Foot, Woundwort and Sanicle, and several others I could not recognize.

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