Harelaw Tower
The Debatable Lands
Cracked Maisie Elliot is dreaming.
She knows this, and yet it makes no difference. Ever since her head struck a rock in the stream that day so many years ago, her dreams have come bright and clear and very, very real. Some people can open their eyes and wake up. Cracked Maisie opens her eyes, and dreams.
It is dark, and she sees the moors rush by beneath her; the air is cold under her wings, harsh in her nostrils. Rock and heather, stream and forest vanish behind her, and the night sky is open before her eyes, filled with a thousand thousand stars.
Now a bastle house looms up out of the gloom below her, towering over the moor, and Cracked Maisie feels a pang of dread, a sudden premonition that strikes her heart like the razor-sharp tip of a reiver lance. She looks again at the bastle house, and she sees that its walls are pale, irregular. They are not built of stone. The starlight gleams dully on pale bone, and the empty eyes of a million skulls stare out at Maisie from the roof of the bastle house.
Cracked Maisie flaps her wings, for she desires to fly away from this, from all of it, to leave it behind. But she does not move; she is pinned in place above the bastle house of skulls, and her heart rises in her throat. A great light blooms in the night sky in front of Maisie, and radiance washes over her, and there is something unspeakably beautiful there, hidden within the glory of the light, barely visible. A voice speaks from the light, and it is like music on the harp, like wee Fiona’s most lovely playing – and it is freighted with horror, this voice, and cold as ice, and Cracked Maisie quails when she hears it.
“Ye ride ta death,” the voice says. “I have sae ordained it. Ye ride ta death.”
And then Cracked Maisie Elliot remembers that she is not a hawk, and she does not have wings, and she falls from the sky with a long, long scream, down into the house of bones, and the skulls cackle with a laughter like stone dust falling down forever. The bones surround Cracked Maisie, and the sky disappears, and the stars vanish, and her breath dies in her throat, and the darkness goes on forever.
Then, only then, does she finally wake up.
* * *
Dawn comes late to the Border in winter. The light is pale and wan, almost grey, and the sun hovers low in the sky and small as the moon. Harelaw Tower has been awake for many hours. Men and women are out rounding up the Elliots’ cattle, checking to see if any have been lost to wolves or bandits. The reivers are outside practicing, and the distant ring of steel on steel echoes up through the tower. There is a distant crash as a young man’s helmet is torn from his head and dashed against the tower wall, and Red Duncan’s deep voice sends a raw-throated cry of triumph echoing up to the leaden sky.
Mither Lileas shakes her head. That man’s blood runs like fire. She turned to her brother. “They are coming?”
Roger Elliot, the Elliot of Harelaw, says nothing. His eyes are closed and his face is turned to one of the tower’s arrow-slits; the wan sunlight shines in to bathe his face in its dim and unforgiving glow, and Lileas can see every one of the wrinkles, liver spots, and faded scars that mark her brother’s face like lichen on a rock. His breath whistles distantly in the back of his throat, and Mither Lileas thinks of consumption, ague, plague. He was handsome, once, this man: his red hair swept back from a high brow, his jaw chiseled as if from the stone of the hills themselves. Mither Lileas remembers that, and smiles.
The old man does not hear her. Lileas touches his arm. “They are coming?”
Roger straightens, and his eyes open, and they are bright and clear and pale blue; for a moment his gaze is confused, and then Roger nods. “Aye,” he confirms. “They are coming. Some are already here: Isobel, and Red Duncan, and Job, and Joseph, and Old Widow Elspeth.” Lileas nods; she knows this already, for these kinsfolk all live at Harelaw. Roger seems to realize this, and his face twists grimly, and Lileas feels her heart go out to him; her brother knows that his reason is flowing away from him into the grave like sand between his fingers, and all he can do is sit and watch.
“The others?” Lileas asks, to take his mind off of the inevitable.
“Willie the Wolf is coming, wi his nephew the Walker. Clever Duff rides hither wi wee Fiona. Finlay is bringing his twa bairns also, and his uncle the smith; Robert comes wi his German dame as well.”
“Is Robert bringing his sister?”
“Cracked Maisie? Aye, though I canna see what use she’ll be at a family council.”
Lileas shakes her head. “Ye ought not ta prize her sae low, brother. She sees things differently. That can be a good thing now and again.”
Roger grumbles something, and then coughs, and coughs again. Lileas closes her eyes. The old man draws himself upright, pulling his dignity about him like a frayed old jack o plaite. “I do na think there will be sae much ta discuss, anyway,” the Elliot remarks wearily. “Twa years tis been since the Scott o Buccleuch hanged your boys. It is time, Lileas. It was time long since. To wait any longer would make us look weak.”
“Red Duncan has been saying the same for months,” Lileas observes quietly.
“Red Duncan has a good head on his shoulders.” Lileas merely arches an eyebrow, and Roger spits unhappily. “Aye, sure and perhaps that puts it too strongly. But Duncan has a warrior’s heart, and that is enow, and more than enow, for times like these. If we do na avenge our own, we shall be every man’s prey.”
“I know,” Lileas says quietly. She searches her soul, for the thousandth time, for the spark of anger: the desire to see old Wat Scott’s head on a pike in payment for his abuse of power. She thinks of Four-fingers Tam playing with the children in the courtyard of Harelaw, his vast hands whirling the little ones through the air with such a tender gentleness.
Blood for blood. It is the code of every reiving Name. It is necessary. Mither Lileas knows that. But the knowledge leaves her heart cold within her breast, frozen as if she had sold it to some elf in exchange for a secret that she should never have learned at all.
From outside, the sound of hoofbeats echoes over the moors. Red Duncan lowers his sword in the courtyard, and then gives a cry of welcome. Distant mounted figures move toward Harelaw through the heather, silhouetted against the grey dawn. Clan Elliot is gathering.
Roger Elliot grasps a clay vial in one trembling hand, and he pours the contents down his throat. The old man’s face twists in discomfort. “Sweet Jesu, woman, if ye were ta poison me I’d never ken the difference.”
Mither Lileas smiles, but she says nothing, and there is pain behind her eyes. She has told Roger again and again – the philter will give him strength and clarity for a day, but over time it will waste him away. There is no cure for age.
Roger looks away from his sister’s eyes. “Aye,” he murmurs. “So, then.” He stands. “Time to talk. And then – we ride.”
* * *
The Elliots gather in the ground floor of Harelaw tower. As with most towers, Harelaw's ground-level area is one large chamber, its floor covered in flagstones, its round wall adorned with ancient swords and halberds. Great trestle tables have been set up, and bread and cheese and ale are being served by some of the younger children. Most of the Elliots who live at Harelaw have already drifted into the great circular chamber, and a quiet murmur of conversation fills the room. It is the sound, Reverend Joseph always says, of tales a-growing in the telling.
Now, the first of the folk who have ridden in from their scattered homesteads are arriving. Their ponies are tied to the hitching posts outside under the watchful eye of Grim Matthias and his son, and the visitors stride into the tower. Men and women, clothes stained with the grey dust of the moors, embrace and chuckle together. The sound is as hard as the grinding of stones.
Red Duncan saunters over to his younger brother, Job. He nods and twists his neck, and his spine crackles. "We will ride," Duncan says with a savage smile. "Against the Scotts. At last. The old man may be slow, but he can na delay forever. Tis time."
Joseph, for his part, strides over to Clever Duff and Bonnie Hands Fiona. The Elliots part for this strange man with soft hands only reluctantly, and Blind Hamish hacks and spits as Joseph passes. The young minister's face flickers with contempt, and then he is smiling, clasping Clever Duff's forearm and offering Fiona a small bow. "Tis good ta see ye both," he grins, his pale grey eyes moving back and forth between the two. "I have a few new books here; I found them in Canonbie. Perhaps there may be time ta see what ye make o them, no?"
Blind Hamish just shakes his head. He turns to the child who is leading him by one wizened, still-calloused hand. "Boy, where is the smith? Where is Iron Kenneth? Go fetch the smith, boy! Christ knows that he's the only one left worth the breath o speaking with." The lad, whose surly expression went entirely undisguised in light of Hamish's condition, set off through the growing crowd to do exactly that.
