Heart's Blood

My heart sank. I made myself speak up. “I have only four coppers. I don’t suppose that’s enough to pay for soup as well as a bed. I can manage without food. I just need to get warm.”

The two of them turned searching looks on me. I could see questions coming, questions I wouldn’t want to answer.

“That’s all right, lass,” Orna said, shifting a pot onto the fire. “Where are you headed? We don’t get many visitors here.”

“I’m . . .” I hesitated, caught without a satisfactory answer. I could hardly tell them the truth: that I had left home with no plan other than to set as much distance between myself and Cillian as I could. But I did not feel comfortable lying. “I have kin in these parts,” I said. “A little further on.”

“You’ll likely not get another ride for a long while,” said the innkeeper.

“Is Whistling Tor so far off the main roads?” I asked.

“Not so far that a carter couldn’t bring a person down here quickly enough,” said Orna, stirring the pot. A savory smell arose, making my mouth water. “But they won’t do it. Folk skirt around us. Nobody comes here.This place is under a curse.”

“A curse?” This grew stranger and stranger.

“That’s right,” said Tomas. “Step outside that barrier at night and you put yourself in deadly danger from what’s up the hill there. Even by day, folk don’t pass the way you came if they can avoid it.”

“The name is unusual.Whistling Tor.The hill you mention is the tor, I suppose. But why whistling?”

Tomas poured ale for himself and his wife and settled on a bench. “I suppose it once was a bare hill, the kind you’d call a tor, but that would have been a long time ago.The forest has grown up all over it, and it’s full of presences. Things that lead you out of your way, then swallow you up and spit out the pieces.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

“Manifestations,” said Tomas weightily. “They’re everywhere; there’s no getting rid of them.They were called forth long ago; nigh on a hundred years they’ve plagued this place.”

“Nobody can say exactly what they are,” put in Orna.“All we know is, the hill’s swarming with them. All kinds, from little tiny ones that whisper in your ear to great slavering monsters of things. Here, get this into you.” She put a steaming bowl of soup in front of me, with a wedge of coarse bread beside it. Monsters or no monsters, I set to with enthusiasm as my hostess went on.“Whistling Tor, that’s fair enough.The wind does make an eerie sound in the trees on the hill. But Whispering Tor would be closer to the mark. Go too far up there and you’ll start to hear their little voices, and what they tell you won’t be pleasant.”

It was hard to know what question to ask. “How did they get there, these . . . presences?”

“They were called forth in the time of my great-grandmother, and they’ve been here ever since, them and the curse that came with them. It’s hung over us like a shadow for close on four generations.”

“So the barrier around this settlement, and the guards, are not to protect you against Norman attacks?”

“Folk say those poxy iron-shirts won’t come so far west.”Tomas took a mouthful of his ale, watching me as I ate. “Myself, I’m not so sure. I’ve heard that some of the chieftains are calling their men to arms, and one or two have brought in fighters from the isles, big brutes of gallóglaigh

with heavy axes. If the Normans come to Whistling Tor, we’re done for.There’s nobody to protect us; no leader, no fighters, no funds to pay for help.”

“What about the high king? And don’t you have a chieftain of your own? Can’t he protect you?”

“Huh!” There was profound scorn in Tomas’s voice.“Ruaridh Uí Conchubhair isn’t interested in the likes of us. As for a chieftain, the one we’ve got makes a mockery of the title. He’s worse than useless. Stays holed up in his big fortress, on top of the Tor there,” he waved in the general direction of the woodland path I had taken to reach the settlement, “surrounded by his malevolent creatures. Sends his man down for supplies, pays a few measly coppers now and then to get a bit of work done, but take action? Make an effort to defend his people? Not likely.Takes his tributes in good grain and livestock, gives back nothing at all. Hasn’t set foot beyond the hill since I can remember, and that’s a good while.”

“That man’s warped and twisted like thread gone awry on the loom,” put in Orna.“The curse got him with a vengeance. But maybe we shouldn’t be speaking of this. I wouldn’t want to give you nightmares.”

I refrained from telling them that my own story provided more than enough material for night after night of bad dreams. Their fanciful tales were a welcome diversion from the problems that would face me tomorrow. For, after all, I could pay for only one night in the safety of this inn.“I did meet two men on my way here,” I said.“One was a monk.They guided me down to the settlement, but they left rather quickly when your friends out there started throwing stones.”