The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

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around, sections of plaster and gilt ceiling smashing on rubble, pieces of wall
collapsing. Their orders must be to bring down every last remnant of Nifferlin
Manor. How they’d crow when they found the cowering women, the girl and the
child cringing here, and gloat over the reward.
    ‘Hey,’ said a soldier’s voice just outside. ‘There’s a door
here.’
    ‘Can’t be, or we’d have seen it last time,’ said a more
distant voice.
    The latch was rattled, then a hammer thudded against the
timber. The bolt held, though the door couldn’t take many such blows. ‘Hoy!
Lantern-bearer,’ yelled the first soldier.
    ‘Fyllis!’ hissed Lyma.
    Fyllis glanced at her mother, took a deep breath, squeezed
her head between her hands and the fog thickened until all Maelys could make
out was a faint glow from the fire.
    ‘Don’t see no door nor wall,’ said the second soldier.
‘You’re imagining things. It’s just old magic lingering in the ruins.’ His
voice went squeaky as he said ‘old magic’, then he continued, ‘Give us a hand
to knock down this chimney. Seneschal Vomix wants the place razed.’
    ‘I definitely saw something and I’m not going to the torture
pits because we didn’t find it. I’m calling in the wisp-watcher. Hoy, scrier
– over here!’
    Maelys felt the cold creep up her legs. Fyllis’s talent
couldn’t hide four walls and a roof from a wisp-watcher, not this close. The
fog thinned momentarily and she saw something she’d never seen before –
stark terror in tough old Aunt Haga’s eyes. Maelys looked away. If Aunt Haga
had given up there was no hope at all.
    An axle squeaked as a cart was hauled their way, its
iron-shod wheels crunching through the rubble, and Maelys made out the faint,
hackle-raising buzz of a wisp-watcher. As it came closer, she began to feel
that familiar unpleasant itchy sensation inside her head, along with a distant
raspy whisper that she could never make out.
    ‘Back, you useless dogs,’ said the scrier in a dry,
crackling voice. Maelys smelt a foul odour, like burning bones. ‘Give the watcher room.’
    The soldiers scrambled away across the rubble and the buzz
rose in pitch. She struggled to control her breathing. Her mother was panting.
Fyllis let out a little gasping cry. The buzz became an irritating whine.
    A sudden wind wailed around the ragged fragments of wall,
muffling the wisp-watcher for a second, but it returned louder and more
chillingly than before. Outside, the hammers had fallen silent.
    It knew they were here. It was playing with them,
deliberately delaying, storing up their torment for its master’s pleasure.
    ‘Nothing!’ crackled the scrier. Another whiff of burned
bones drifted under the door. ‘I didn’t think there could be. It was just the
soldiers jumping at ghosts again. Get on with it – Seneschal Vomix has a
lot more watching for us tonight.
Bring down that last bit of wall.’
    The cart creaked and grated away. A fury of hammers attacked
the masonry nearby, chunks tumbled with a series of thuds, then silence fell.
    Maelys got up and went for the door. ‘No!’ hissed Aunt Haga.
    Maelys stopped. Everyone was staring at Fyllis, whose face
had gone blank. She swayed from side to side. Her mother steadied her, then
Fyllis looked up, bestowing a childlike, innocent smile on them as if it had
all been a game. Returning to the corner she took up her animal figures and
soon was immersed in her play as if nothing had happened.
    Aunt Haga drew her two sisters over to the brazier and began
to whisper urgently. Every so often, the three would turn to stare at Maelys
before putting their heads down again. She tried vainly to ignore them but the
knot in her stomach grew ever tighter.

 
    Maelys was woken from a restless sleep by her mother’s
cracked sobbing. Lyma often wept in the night when she thought the girls were
asleep. Maelys scrunched up into a tighter ball, for her straw pile was always
furthest from the embers and her