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CANDLE IRON
Winner
- Aurealis Award for Best Long Fiction (Children's).
CHAPTER
ONE.
BLOODLINE
(Winterwane
- 10th Moon of the Year of the Hound.)
'WE can't hold out much longer, Allyso.' Merrit's voice was little more than a thread-like whisper, and Allyso had to bend close to hear what he said. 'We can't hold out,' he repeated. 'This castle is going to fall.'
Merrit was Allyso's uncle, and both of them were of the Blood of Torm. Merrit often used to say they were the Blood of Torm, for there was no-one else to carry on the line. The Tormblood family had never been large, and now it had dwindled to just these two; a middle-aged man and a girl.
'I used to think I might have a child one day,' said Merrit sometimes, 'but it never happened. It seems it's left to Allyso to carry on the Blood.'
The two were alike in many ways. Both had the gilden skin and bronze hair of the Torm Bloodline, both had the same gold-hazel eyes. In colour and feature they were similar, but the resemblance between them ended there. Merrit Tormblood was as tall and strong as a stonewood tree, but Allyso was more like a honeybark sapling, very slight and skinny for a girl who was nearly fourteen. Folk shook their heads and whispered that the Blood must be weak if Allyso were the best heir it could produce.
Merrit put them right about that. 'And what,' he demanded, 'has weakness to do with size? It's the brain and the heart that count, not the body that houses them. And besides,' he would add with a grin, 'small folk have a practical advantage. They can last much longer in a siege.'
'Is that true?' asked Allyso the first time she heard him say it. Her lack of stature had been a trial to her for as long as she could remember. Strangers usually thought she was a child of eleven or so, and thinking her so young, they tended to speak over her head or past her as if she didn't matter. That was very galling, for Allyso had ideas and opinions of her own.
'Is it true that small people are useful in a siege?' she asked again. Even Merrit, who knew her age to the hour, was sometimes inclined to forget to answer her.
He answered her this time, though. 'Very useful,' he said with his lazy, gleaming smile. 'Small folk don't eat so much as their larger brothers. They can also slip away into corners and out through windows and tunnels and not be seen. Big ones like me are much too easy for the enemy to find.'
The idea that Merrit could have an enemy made Allyso laugh at the time. Merrit was such a favourite with everyone. The castlers loved him and even the folk of the villages thought him a better lord than most. But of course she wasn't laughing now. Disaster had come to Torm and no-one was laughing.
All her life, Merrit had been strong and proud and fearless. Now, since that shocking Midwinter of less than a moonspan before, he was helpless; weak and ailing.
Allyso fetched some food from the buttery, but Merrit refused it.
'How can I eat when my castlers are starving?'
'If you don't eat you'll die,' she said sharply. 'And that means that Torm will fall. I can't hold it, since I'm not a Mistra yet, so what will happen to your castlers then? And what will happen to me?'
If Merrit died then Allyso would be the last of the Blood and, thanks to the hints that Healer Hilz had dropped, she had a nasty notion of what would happen if the invaders managed to catch her.
Lord Toombs and Lord Sheels could win the castle and lands, but if one of the Blood went free, they could never be sure of holding what they had won. She was not a Mistra yet, but how could they risk what she might become and the support she might gather in years to come?
'Torm will fall, whether I live or die,' sighed Merrit.
Allyso clenched her hands. He was weak and ill, but why did he have to sound resigned? It wasn't like Merrit to be resigned. He was the one who made things happen his way.
'There must be something we can do! You're the one who says we must never give up.'
'Truth must be faced, no matter how ugly its visage,' said Merrit. His long face was sallow and greyed beneath its usual golden tan and his eyes were almost closed. He had given up on himself and Torm which meant he had given up on her as well.
Allyso had never felt so lonely.
'You can make things right,' she said desperately. 'You must!'
But Merrit was in despair.
Allyso sat by his bedside and chewed her knuckles. Her heart hammered as she listened to the muted sounds of the castle. Torm was her home and her heritage, yet Torm was rotten and about to fall.
The rot had entered the castle over six moonspans before... It was Winterwane now, as hope was dying, but the trouble had come with the bright Highsummer days.
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