The Serpent Gift Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  The Shamer Chronicles

  ‘An absorbing and fast-paced fantasy/mystery bursting with action and intrigue. The only question is: when will the next one come out?’

  BULLETIN OF THE CENTER FOR CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  ‘The series as a whole is in good standing alongside Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia’

  BOOKLIST, STARRED REVIEW

  ‘[A] fine novel … The term ‘page-turner’ is often used, but not always justified. It is deserved here, tenfold. I really, really couldn’t put the book down’

  SCHOOL LIBRARIAN

  ‘Full of passion’

  JULIA ECCLESHARE, GUARDIAN

  ‘I gobbled it up!’

  TAMORA PIERCE, AUTHOR OF THE SONG OF THE LIONESS

  ‘The most original new fiction of this kind … equally appealing to boys. Here be dragons, sorcery and battles’

  THE TIMES

  ‘Spiced with likable characters and an intriguing new magical ability – eagerly awaiting volume two’

  KIRKUS

  ‘This novel stands on its own and offers a satisfying conclusion even as it provides an intriguing setting and mythology for future adventures’

  PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  ‘Classic adventure fantasy, with the right combination of personalities, power, intrigue, and dragons – it will prove to be a sure hit’

  VOYA

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  ONE A Stranger

  TWO Heroes and Monsters

  THREE The Baying of Hounds

  FOUR Fog

  FIVE Beastie

  SIX Blackmaster

  SEVEN The Leaving

  EIGHT Owl Night

  NINE Skayark

  TEN The Soot-Monster

  ELEVEN Homeless Mice

  TWELVE Beans and Letters

  THIRTEEN Strange Looks

  FOURTEEN Copper tail

  FIFTEEN Torches in the Night

  SIXTEEN The Foundation

  SEVENTEEN The Reeds

  EIGHTEEN The Black Men

  NINETEEN The Telltale

  TWENTY The Court’s Justice

  TWENTY-ONE Six Years

  TWENTY-TWO Dinner at the Golden Swan

  TWENTY-THREE Trading with the Devil

  TWENTY-FOUR The Music of the Flute

  TWENTY-FIVE Dreams

  TWENTY-SIX The Donkey Thief

  TWENTY-SEVEN The Wyrm

  TWENTY-EIGHT Blank-back

  TWENTY-NINE The Key to Wisdom

  THIRTY At the Prince’s Table

  THIRTY-ONE The Hall of the Whisperers

  THIRTY-TWO The Golden Cup

  THIRTY-THREE Master and Shadow

  THIRTY-FOUR A Dead Man

  THIRTY-FIVE Not One Soul

  THIRTY-SIX The Moonshine Bridge

  THIRTY-SEVEN The Flute Player’s Gift

  THIRTY-EIGHT Yew Tree Cottage

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  DINA

  A Stranger

  When I first saw him, I had no idea he would change our lives. There was no tremor from the ground, no icy gust of wind, not even a real shiver down my back. Just a small twinge of unease. I didn’t even tell Mama about him. Maybe I should have? I don’t know. It wouldn’t have changed anything, not really. From the moment he caught sight of me, it was too late in any case.

  It was supposed to be a good day. I had been looking forward to it for a long time—the Midsummer Market, when all the clans meet to trade, and talk, and entertain each other with races and contests and music from dusk to dawn. Mama and I had worked our fingers to the bone, drying herbs and making ointments and remedies for all sorts of ailments, and Rose, my foster-sister and best friend, had carved bowls and spoons and shelf ends, and little dolls and animals for the children. She was clever with her knife, and in her hands a bit of kindling would suddenly turn into a cow or a dog, as if the animal had been there all the time, hiding in the grain of the wood. My older brother Davin had nothing to trade, but he thought he might win a prize in one of the races with Falk, our skittish black gelding.

  This would be my first Midsummer Market in the Highlands.

  The summer before there had been strife and hostility among the clans, and no real Market had been held. Kensie, the clan we lived with, had clashed with Skaya, and it was only at the last moment that we had managed to stop the battle in Skara Vale before they ended up killing each other. It had all been Drakan’s fault, of course; Drakan who called himself Dragon Lord and ruled almost all the coastlands now, after having murdered the old castellan of Dunark. He was a bad enemy to have, was Drakan, both devious and ruthless. Instead of doing battle with the clans himself, he tricked them into warring with each other. And back when he killed Ebnezer Ravens, his daughter-in-law Adela, and her young son Bian, he managed to have the castellan’s own son, Nicodemus, accused of the murders. Nico would have ended up with his head on the block if it hadn’t been for Mama. And me, a little bit. On that day, Drakan had become our enemy. And his reach was long.

  We still couldn’t go anywhere without protection. Callan Kensie had been Mama’s bodyguard for two years now. He was big and steady and kind to us, and I liked him. But I still wished we didn’t need him.

  “Such a crowd,” said Mama. She had to keep a firm hold of the reins; Falk, who was serving as our cart-horse that morning, was not used to all the push-and-shove and hubbub. “Where do you think we should go?”

  I surveyed the crowded scene. At first it looked completely chaotic, with people milling about like ants in an anthill. But there was actually a pattern to the Market, streets and squares and crossroads, just like a real town, even if the Market town was made up of carts and wagons and tents instead of houses.

  “There’s a free spot,” I said, pointing. “There, at the end.”

  “Right,” said Mama, clicking her tongue at Falk. Our black horse snorted but walked on, stiff-gaited and suspicious of the crowd.

  “Copper kettles,” yelled a peddler woman. “Best copperware at even better prices!”

  “Three marks?” said a broad-backed Skaya man. “Bit steep for a pair of socks, if ye ask me!”

  “Pork sausage! Smoked venison! Have a taste, Medama. Ye’ll not regret it!”

  Falk laid back his ears and became even more stiff-legged. The cart was hardly moving at all, now.

  “Can’t you make him move a little faster?” I asked Mama. “Somebody else will grab our space.”

  “He doesn’t like all the ruckus,” said Mama. “Dina, I think you had better lead him.”

  I climbed off the cart and grabbed Falk’s bridle. This made him move a little faster, but not much. And just as we were about to reach the slot I had decided was ours, a cart coming from the other direction swung into it.

  “Hey,” I yelled. “That’s where we were planning to set up!”

  “Is that so?” said the carter. “Ye should have made better time, then.”

  I glared at him. He was a thickset man with curly brown hair and a smith’s apron round his heavy middle. And he didn’t look in the least bit sorry.

  “You saw us! You knew this was where we were heading!”

  “Hush, Dina,” said Mama. “We’ll find another spot.”

  The carter seemed to notice Mama properly for the first time. Or rather, the Shamer’s signet that hung fully visible on her chest. It was no more than a pewter circle enameled in black and white to look like an eye, but at the mere sight of it, the man blenched and changed his behavior completely.

  “Beg yer pardon,” he muttered, one hand releasing the reins to slip behind his back, “I had not seen—If Medama wants this space, then…
” He hauled back on the reins one-handedly, forcing his tough little Highland horse into a sharp turn.

  “No, that’s perfectly all right—”

  But he was already off, steering his horse and cart through the Market crowd as quickly as the bustle permitted.

  “Did you see his hand?” said Rose. “Did you see it?”

  “He made the witch sign,” I said tonelessly. “But at least he did it behind his back. Some people make it right in your face.”

  Mama sighed. “Yes. It’s sad. And it seems to be getting worse.” She raised a hand to touch her signet, but she didn’t say it out loud—the thing we were all thinking: that it had gone from bad to worse since Drakan had begun to burn Shamers down in the coastlands. “Well. We might as well take the space. Come on, girls. Let’s set up shop.”

  “If anyone will buy anything from the Shamer Witch and her family,” I muttered.

  Mama smiled, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Oh, they’ll buy. For some reason they seem to think that my herbs work better than other people’s.”

  Mama knew a lot about herbs and the way they worked on the various illnesses people get, but what she did was not magic. Anybody could make the same infusions, and many did. But because Mama was also the Shamer, people assumed that there was witchcraft involved. In reality, there was only one thing Mama could do that others couldn’t: she could look people in the eyes and make them confess their ill deeds, and she could make them ashamed of what they had done.

  We unhitched Falk and pushed the cart into the neat row of stalls and other carts.

  “Will you take Falk back to the camp?” I asked Rose. We had left the men—that is to say, Callan, Davin, and Davin’s friend Black-Arse—setting up the tent in the shelter of some rocks a bit farther up the slope, away from the worst of the crowding.

  Rose looked a little anxious. “Can’t you do it?” she said. “With all those people around he might get a little… wild.” Rose was still not all that comfortable around horses. In Swill Town, the meanest and poorest part of Dunark, where Rose used to live, not many people could afford to ride or keep a horse.

  I nodded. “Yes, all right. You have your own stuff to unpack, anyway.”

  On the slope, the men had finished their task. They stood there, side by side, looking at the tent as if it was a four-story building they had just managed to erect.

  “There,” said Davin, rubbing his hands. “Nothing to it when you know what you’re doing.” He gave me one of those big brother looks that clearly meant that girls were generally good for nothing except being a suitably admiring audience for manly deeds.

  I pretended not to notice and hitched Falk to the tethering line so that he could graze with the other three: Callan’s sturdy brown gelding, Black-Arse’s dun mare, and my own beautiful Silky that Helena Laclan had given me last summer.

  “Any sign of Nico?” I asked.

  Callan shook his head. “Not yet. But the lad will be around somewhere.”

  Originally, Nico had meant to ride with us to the Market. But that morning when we came to fetch him, he and Master Maunus had been in the middle of a full-blown row. We could hear them yelling at each other even as we came down the hill. The voices cut through the morning silence, and Master Maunus was shouting so loudly that Nico’s bay mare was all but choking herself, trying to tear loose from the post she was hitched to in the yard outside.

  “What will it take to make you understand, boy? It’s your damned duty—”

  “Like hell it is. Don’t preach duty at me. I couldn’t—”

  “Couldn’t care less, yes, I’ve realized that. You would rather jig and dance and brawl with a mob of drunken peasants. And get drunk. Isn’t that what you’re planning on, Master Guzzle-Gut?”

  “Don’t call me that!” Nico’s shout was nearly as loud as Master Maunus’s, now.

  “Oh? So truth is an unwelcome visitor?”

  “Is it so unthinkable that I just want to have a bit of fun for a change? Must you immediately assume that it’s all an excuse to get drunk? You don’t trust me.”

  “Have I reason to?”

  The words seemed to hang there for a moment, a bitter accusation that Nico apparently could find no answer to. Then the door was flung open, and they both came out, Nico first, pale as death, and Master Maunus on his heels.

  “Where are you going? Damn it, boy, you can’t just run away like that!”

  “Why not?” said Nico. “You don’t listen to a word I say anyway. And why should you? I’m just an irresponsible drunkard. Can’t trust guzzlers like me, can you now?”

  “Boy.” Maunus tried to put his hand on Nico’s arm. “Nico, wait.”

  But Nico wouldn’t wait. He threw one swift look at Rose, Davin, and me, but it was as if he barely saw us. With a quick jerk on the tethering rope, he unhitched the mare from the post and leaped onto her back without bothering to use the stirrups. The mare, already half-panicked from the noise and the anger she could feel in him, practically took flight. She tore up the hill in a series of wild lunges, and within moments, both of them were lost from sight.

  In Maudi’s yard, Master Maunus came to a halt, looking oddly helpless. He was a large man, with graying red hair and beard and strong, bushy eyebrows. Standing there so bewildered-looking and empty-handed did not suit him at all.

  “Damn the boy,” he muttered. “Why won’t he listen?”

  Actually, Nico was no boy. Not anymore. He was nineteen, and a grown young man. And the son of a castellan, to boot. Many people considered him the rightful lord of Dunark Castle, though Drakan ruled there now. But Master Maunus had been Nico’s tutor throughout his boyhood, and ruling his charge had become a habit. He had very firm opinions about what Nico should and shouldn’t do, and he would voice those opinions in no uncertain terms. Rows had become almost their normal way of talking, but even by their standards, this one had been a sizzler.

  Master Maunus seemed to see us properly for the first time. He dabbed his forehead with a worn green velvet sleeve, trying to regain his composure.

  “Good morning, girls,” he said. “Good morning, young Davin. How is your lady mother?”

  He always asked. Like most people, he had a great deal of respect for my mother.

  “Good morning, Master,” I said. “She’s fine, thank you.”

  “Glad to hear it. What can I do for you?”

  I exchanged glances with Rose and Davin. Judging from the row, Master Maunus would not be thrilled with our errand.

  “We came to ask Nico and you, Master, if… if you were ready to ride to the Market with us,” Davin finally said.

  Master Maunus looked at us for a moment. “The Market. Yes. I see.” He raised his eyes to the morning sun and looked indecisive. “I—I do not feel like going myself. And somebody has to stay here and mind the animals, after all. But the young lord… I think he has already left. At least, I think that is where he is going. And I thought, perhaps you would do me the favor of keeping an eye on him there. If he is with you, then, well, I would feel better about it.”

  You wouldn’t be so afraid that he would drink himself senseless, I thought. But I didn’t say it out loud.

  Davin looked annoyed. Nico was not his favorite person in all the world, and acting as nursemaid to a nineteen-year-old “young lord” was probably not what he had had in mind for his first Highland Market.

  “Of course we will,” I said, before he could say anything.

  Now it looked as if I might have cause to regret that rash promise. Merely finding Nico looked like a steep task in this circus.

  “I’m not spending my time playing sheepdog to Nico’s sheep,” said Davin. “He’s a big boy now. He can look after himself.”

  “But we promised Master Maunus—”

  “You promised. You look. I’m going to check out the race-course.”

  “Best ye stick together,” said Callan. “I cannot mind ye all if ye go wandering off by yerselves.”

  “Bu
t you don’t have to,” I said. “Callan, there are so many clansmen here. Nothing will happen to us here. Even if somebody did try anything, I could just call for help.”

  He looked at me for a while, then nodded slowly. “So ye could. But…” He prodded my shoulder with one finger. “Be careful now, ye hear? Do not let me catch ye going off with strangers.”

  “Of course not.”

  He had reason to be cautious. Last year, when Drakan’s cousin Valdracu captured me, it had been Callan who had to tell my mother that I was missing and that they feared I might be dead. It was not an experience he was likely to have forgotten. I hadn’t either, of course, and I was sometimes scared that something like that could happen again. But here, at the crowded Market, surrounded by clansmen and market vendors, I felt very safe. All I had to do was raise my voice and help would be at hand.

  Callan, however, had not quite finished with me yet.

  “Perhaps I had best… it might be best if ye did not go alone.”

  “Callan. Please. Nothing will happen.” It would be a very boring Market, I thought, if I had to have Callan trailing me everywhere I went.

  He sighed. “Aye, well. I cannot cage you, can I? Be off then. But watch yer step!”

  “I will.”

  Davin and Black-Arse were already headed for the race-tracks, and I skipped off down the slope, to launch myself into the crowded Market once more. It was a little overwhelming at first: smells and sounds, people and animals, hawkers shouting at the top of their voices, mummers and mountebanks all eager to entertain you for the price of a copper penny. On one corner, a man was juggling three flaming torches; he had a trained dog that went around the watching crowd, sitting down in front of each of the onlookers in turn. It had a tin tied to its collar, and if you didn’t drop a penny, it began to bark and howl and make a terrific fuss. It was fun to watch, but I hurried along all the same because I didn’t want the dog to sit down in front of me.

  I moved through the throng, searching for a familiar face, but Nico was nowhere to be found. Not at the races, where Davin and Black-Arse were watching the other contestants judiciously and making remarks like “a bit narrow in the bone” or “not enough chest.” Nor at the wrestling ring, where a mob of Laclan men were roaring their heads off, cheering for their man. I looked in every beer tent I passed, but didn’t find him there either. Instead, I bumped into the carter who had nearly taken our space. I was so busy peering at the beer drinkers that I didn’t notice him until I backed into his heavy aproned middle.