Kestrion: Creatures of Flyn, #2

By Mark McKerracher

A brutal war.

An ancient curse.

A monster unleashed.

Terrible memories are stirred in Harriet's heart when she finds the body of a man on Wither Moor. Who is he? And what really happened on the weird night of his arrival? Harriet sets out to unravel the mystery, little knowing how much is truly at stake.

Meanwhile, troubling rumours creep across the land – rumours of war. A retired captain, yearning for vengeance upon the murderous raiders of Kavilar, has discovered an ancient secret that could finally bring victory… or so he thinks.

As paths intertwine and armies assemble, Harriet finds that dark powers have been shadowing her for longer than she ever imagined.

And now it is too late to stop them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark McKerracher
• Release date: May 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224867127

Book preview

The story so far

This is the second book in the Creatures of Flyn series. The first book, Mordicax, told of the terrible plague, the grit, which struck Witherbey parish in Astershire. Harriet Wren helped to care for the sick, but no cure could be found – until Adam came. Young Adam Lightfoot, the bright-eyed novice from Wolfern Priory, who quickly discovered a cure, then disappeared back to his monastic home. Heeding the words of a dying crone, Polly Weaver, Harriet became obsessed with Adam, fearing him to be evil and unnatural. She was determined to discover the strange boy’s secret. But after finally confronting him at Wolfern, Harriet found that she had been deceived – Polly had sown doubt, nightmares and hatred in her flyn. Adam was no demon, but a boy with a mysterious gift. His weird, bright blue eyes could see flyn.

Meanwhile, a new medicine was sweeping across the kingdom: the Mordant Sleep, devised by Lady Hawkes of the King’s Physick. The treatment offered perfect bliss, but at a hidden cost. For the Mordant Sleep was administered with a dark creature – the mordicax, the spirit-leech – which drinks the flyn of its victim until only a shadow remains. Adam alone could see this, with his gifted eyes, and knew that Lady Hawkes and the Mordant Sleep had to be stopped before all her many patients were reduced to nekthanis: flynless ones, sucked dry by mordicaxes. Lady Hawkes claimed that she wanted to make perfect people – so why was she creating these nekthanis, alive but empty for eternity?

Harriet, her sister Alice and their friend Charlie Partridge became apprenticed to Lady Hawkes, travelling to her estate at Farthingale to discover the true purpose of the Mordant Sleep. Adam joined them from a nearby farm, and one night they secretly explored Farthingale, finding a barn full of mordicax eggs – shining with pure flyn – and an eerily perfect carving of Alice. But then Lady Hawkes and her Mordant Sleepers captured them, and took them off to the Welden Woods, the feared home of witches.

Only then did the full horror become clear. Lady Hawkes had been using the Mordant Sleep to harvest vast amounts of flyn, with which to animate a samhael – a crafted person, a perfect individual, the carved Alice. In this she was instructed by a high witch: none other than Polly Weaver, now revealed as the Handmaiden of Hawgryde, dread demon of the deep. Polly and the nekthanis summoned Hawgryde into the woods. Lady Hawkes besought him to fill her samhael with the harvested flyn, now swirling in the enchanted crucible. For she thought he had promised her this. But Old Haw was a faithless devil. The samhael was for him, and he possessed it, taking flynful form in the world – monstrous, undefeatable. He began to devour Harriet’s flyn, until Alice threw herself into the crucible, drawing the flyn of a thousand souls into herself and out of Hawgryde. And so she fought the devil and won. Hawgryde returned to the Abyss. Lady Hawkes and Polly Weaver vanished.

Finally, Alice passed the gathered flyn into a flame, and thence into the barm ring of the Murtson family: a circle of yeast at the heart of their brewery. In this way, they brewed a panacea, an ale to cure the victims of the Mordant Sleep, restoring their stolen flyn.

But Polly, now made young and powerful, had sown one last seed of doubt in Harriet’s mind before she disappeared. She spoke one last time of Adam Lightfoot.

‘Surely you can see it now, my beauty? The unnatural bairn? The sinners’ brood? What else could he be, Harriet, but a Child of Travesty? A boy of new flyn? A samhael?

‘Believe what you will, girl. But his birth was a crime, and should never have happened. Beware of Adam Lightfoot, my beauty.’

But there were shadows in Harriet’s life long before she met Adam, and long before the grit.

Chapter 1

‘M améa, is father really going to war?’

‘Yes, my love.’

‘Can I go too?’

‘No, my love.’

‘Why not?’

She held my hand. ‘Angels have no place in war, ezéa. You must stay with me. Look after me. And look after Alice.’

I groaned. Alice was shrieking a tantrum in the kitchen as Granny Salter tried to bathe her.

‘And babéo will come soon,’ she said, smiling down at her belly. ‘I will need your help with the little one.’ She stroked my hair. ‘I will need so much help from you, Harriet.’

‘Yes, Maméa.’

But part of me still wanted to ride a horse and go to fight with father.

I found him in the workshop with Lankin, laying out his armour and weapons.

‘Can I come with you, father?’

‘Away with you, girl. We ride to join the King tomorrow and I cannot waste time with your games.’

‘Aye, go away,’ muttered spotty Lankin.

I sighed loudly and scuffed my foot.

Father grunted.

Then he put down his sword and looked at me with his small sad eyes.

‘War is a wicked affair, Harriet. It would hurt you – body, mind and flyn. You might be killed. As might Lankin, and even I.’

‘But I could fight with you and look after you and – ’

‘No, Harriet, you could not. You are just a girl, a silly little girl, and you do not understand. Go and speak to your grandfather.’

Grandad took me for a walk by the river.

‘Your father is right, you cannot fight. And your mother will need you when babéo comes.’

‘But all the old women will help her, won’t they? Granny Salter and Granny Nettle and Sister Reseda, they’ll all help Maméa.’

‘Oh, I’m sure they will help, but they are not of our blood, and they will not live in our house. Your Maméa will need you, Harriet. And so will sweet Alice. Your little sister adores you.’

I sighed and nodded.

We walked on, then I stopped to flick tiny pebbles into the water.

‘Where is the war, Grandad?’

‘Kavilar.’

‘Kavilar…’ I tried to copy his richly rolled ‘rr’, but it just sounded spluttery.

He patted my hand. ‘The people there are called Larrs. Your father and Lankin are going to fight Larrs.’

‘But you’re Larrish! Maméa is Larrish!’

‘Yes, of course. But we are East Larrs. Not so very different from Alverners like your father. It’s the West Larrs who are the troublemakers. There is bad blood in the west of Kavilar, and folk who love to fight.’

‘But why are the Larrs fighting us? Do they want to kill us all?’

‘No, no. I’m sure they don’t even think about us, here in sleepy little Witherbey. But there are some very bad men among the Lords of Kavilar, with stains on their flyn. They still smart from the last war. You won’t remember it, ezéa, but that was when sweet Alice was born.’

‘But why? You haven’t said why.’ I kicked a stone into the water. ‘Why are they fighting us? Why do they hate us?’

‘There are deep reasons for the war. Old reasons. Old mistakes, on all our parts.’

‘Will they run away when father rides out with Lord Witherbey, and the King with all his armies, and the Knights of the Dun?’

I could picture their rippling yellow flags, see the flash of swords, hear the trumps and the drums, the whinnying white steeds.

But Grandad said nothing.

So father and Lankin rode off to war, with Lord Witherbey and fifty or sixty other men.

A week later, Maméa was groaning with pain every day. One night she woke up screaming.

‘Something is wrong with babéo,’ she sobbed, nursing her bump. ‘I know it. I feel it, deep in my flyn.’

Granny Salter, Granny Nettle and Sister Reseda all examined her, and agreed that something was wrong. But they couldn’t work out what.

‘A pigeon flew into your house last week, didn’t it?’ said old Granny Nettle. ‘That bodes ill. Never good fortune came of a bird in the house.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘It’s bad luck?’

‘Oh, aye. And maybe that’s the reason for your suffering, Luzia, you poor soul. I don’t know what we could do about that. Could be a matter for the Parson.’

‘For now, it would be best to go to Wolfern,’ said the Sister. ‘The Prioress will be able to help, if anybody can.’

‘Or,’ said Granny Salter, once the Sister had gone, ‘there is Lanius.’

‘Who is that? A doctor?’ said Maméa.

Granny Salter shook her head. ‘A sage. Lanius is a wise man, Luzia. Some might say a holy man. He has special gifts.’

‘How do you know of him?’

‘Well, I’ve met him. It was Lanius that helped to deliver our Rosie.’

‘Let’s go to Lanius,’ I cried, because Rosie Salter was my best friend.

Maméa hung her head. ‘I don’t know.’

But that night she had a dream. She saw her own beloved mother saying, ‘Go to Lanius, ezéa, you must go to Lanius.’

So she decided, and we went to see Lanius.

Grandad took us in his old wagon: Maméa, Granny Salter, and me. We rolled along the riverside, through Rudlock and southwards into Dwin. It was high summer, warm and bright as the afternoon wore on. The shining slopes of the Sarlun Fells reared to the west, pine forests rustled to the east. I looked out, breathing deeply and enjoying the smells of pine and pony.

When I got bored, I nudged my wobbly tooth with my tongue, daring it to come out.

It didn’t.

The road wound down and down into a lush broad valley and eventually we saw a lake and rolling rough pasture scattered with sheep. There was a thin grey building near the lakeside, but it was too far off and hazy to see properly.

‘Not far now,’ said Granny Salter.

The sky was pink when we got to the sheep.

‘They’ve got such mucky bottoms,’ I said.

Grandad forced a chuckle. ‘They certainly have.’

Maméa moaned and stroked her bump. She hadn’t said much all day. There was a growing weight of worry in my little flyn.

Look after Maméa, I told myself.

But I didn’t know what to do, so I just held her hand.

I could see the thin grey building better now. It was a kind of stunted tower made of mossy old stone. The door was black with age, the windows bare and shutterless.

All around I could see grey lumps in the grass, some of them forming broken circles and semi-circles, some just sitting alone.

Granny Salter pointed at them and nodded. ‘They was houses once, in bygone days, time out of mind. Just stones now.’

They made me think of Alice’s teeth when she was a baby, little stubs jutting out of her gums.

‘Where are we?’ I asked.

‘Estani Vel. Or Stanny Well, as some call it.’

‘Did lots of people used to live here in the olden times?’

‘Oh yes, plenty. Just look how many houses there must have been.’

‘Who were they, Granny Salter?’

‘Them,’ she said, and pointed up the slopes. Silhouetted in the dusk were big humps in the grass, like the Witherbey Knocks back home.

Burial mounds.

‘Where did they all go? Why did they leave their village?’

She shrugged her narrow shoulders. ‘I don’t suppose anybody remembers, it was so long ago. But, well, there’s something not right about the place. Don’t you think so? Can you feel it? A darkness. An old shadow. Like something bad happened here, in the olden times.’

‘Granny Salter,’ said Grandad, sternly. ‘Please do not frighten Harriet.’

‘I’m not frightened,’ I said, sitting up as straight as I could.

But she was right, I could feel something strange. I could almost see it. Like a deep, cold shadow, right in the corner of my eye, nearly out of sight. But if I turned to look, it vanished.

We stopped and walked over to the tower. Maméa groaned, and I squeezed her hand.

Before Grandad could knock, the door creaked open and a lean old man peered out, blinking.

‘Good evening.’

His voice was a bit hoarse – but also warm, slow, and very soft.

‘Good evening, Mr Lanius,’ said Grandad, doffing his cap. ‘My daughter, she is – ’

‘Yes, indeed. Come in, all of you. Lanius will help.’

‘Thank you, Mr Lanius.’

‘You’re Larrish, yes? No matter, no matter. I have no quibbles with Larrs. No, no quibbles.’

We sat on stone benches in a dark room. I stared at the old man, as he slowly blinked and mumbled his way around, boiled a pot of water and made tea.

He gave me a tiny cup, but the tea was horrible, so I gave it to Grandad.

Lanius sat and listened while Maméa and Granny Salter talked to him.

I don’t remember what they said. I wasn’t really listening. I just kept thinking, look after Maméa, look after Maméa. But I still didn’t know what to do, so I just cuddled up beside her and stroked her bump. I felt a tiny tremor, barely more than a nudge on my flyn, but it was real. It was babéo.

Eventually I realised that they had all finished talking, and Lanius was making a funny noise, like a long, warm, quivering hum. I looked up at Maméa. Her eyes were shining, almost weeping.

Finally Lanius nodded. ‘I must examine you. Not as a midwife or doctor would, of course.’

Maméa looked anxiously at Granny Salter, who nodded. ‘It’s all right, lass.’

Lanius led us upstairs to a dull bedroom, and got Maméa to lie down on the bed. Then he drew black curtains over the windows.

I frowned and whispered to Grandad. ‘It’s all dark now, Grandad. How can he look at Maméa if it’s so dark?’

Lanius looked at me, blinking heavily, and held up his bony hands. ‘These are the eyes of Lanius.’

‘Are you blind?’

‘No, no, not blind, not yet.’ He smiled and held up a long strip of dark cloth. ‘But bind this around my head, Harriet, and then I will be blind.’

I couldn’t tie knots, so Grandad did it.

Then Lanius lowered his hands close to Maméa’s bump, but he didn’t touch her. His hands hovered just above her, moving this way and that over her belly, almost – but never quite – brushing her skin.

We watched in silence.

At last he stepped back with a huge deep breath, and removed the blindfold.

‘I am very sorry,’ he said.

Maméa gasped. ‘What is wrong?’

‘Your flyn, and that of your child, should be like this.’ He laced his thin fingers together. ‘But instead they are like this.’ He drew his hands apart until they just touched at the fingertips. ‘It is too soon, too soon for the bond to break. Your child must be bound to your flyn until the birth.’

I laced my fingers like he had done. ‘Can you put them back together?’

‘Alas, no.’

‘Oh, babéo!’ Maméa’s eyes glistened. ‘Save my child, Lanius. Please, save my babéo.’

Grandad took him by the shoulders. ‘Can you do it, sir?’

‘I know only one way.’

He went to a table in the corner, opened a box, and took out a knife.

I squealed and flung my arms around Grandad.

‘You will cut out babéo?’ whispered Maméa. ‘Will he live?’

‘I will do my best.’

‘What about my Luzia?’ asked Grandad. ‘Will she live?’

‘I will do my best.’

‘Maméa!’ I cried. ‘I’ll stay with you! I’ll hold your hand!’

‘No, ezéa. Stay with your grandfather. Look after each other.’

It tore my flyn to do it, but I left her. As Lanius and Granny Salter started lighting candles, I went downstairs with Grandad. We hugged each other for a while, then we heard a muffled scream.

Then another, louder.

And another, louder still.

I curled up into a ball on the floor.

Grandad paced about the room and lapsed into Kavilalion, muttering luzni kresna, luzni kresna over and over again.

It was so cold and hard on the floor, but I didn’t want to move.

I screwed up my eyes and shivered, and flinched at every shriek.

But then… something else.

Crying from a tiny throat.

‘Babéo,’ cried Grandad. He hauled me back onto my feet. ‘It is babéo, Harriet!’

He picked me up and ran upstairs.

We burst in and I screamed. There was Granny Salter, blood all down her front, cradling a red-faced, dark-haired, glistening, bawling baby.

‘Your brother, Harriet,’ said Granny Salter, her face all creased up.

I stared dizzily at the baby.

Then I tried to run to Maméa’s bedside, but Grandad held me back.

‘Maméa,’ I shouted. ‘Maméa!’

‘Lanius,’ shouted Grandad over the baby’s cries. ‘Tell us.’

Lanius turned to us, holding a needle and bloody thread.

The world had changed, there was so much blood, my flyn was shaking.

I threw up on the floor.

‘She lives,’ breathed Lanius. ‘But she must rest, and I must stay with her through the night. Clean the baby. Swaddle him. There are blankets in that chest, Mrs Salter. I’m sure you know what to do.’

‘I want to see Maméa. Let me see Maméa!’

‘Of course,’ said Lanius, softly. ‘Come, Harriet. Comfort your mother.’

I staggered across and took her hand. She turned and looked at me. Her face was so pale.

I kissed her, and kissed her again.

‘Maméa, Maméa,’ I gasped. ‘Babéo is a boy.’

‘I know, my love.’

‘Can I cuddle him? What’s his name?’

‘Padimar. You can call him Paddy.’

‘Paddy,’ I whispered.

‘Go and love him.’

‘I’m going to look after you, Maméa.’

‘I know, I know, my love. But Lanius will look after me tonight.’

‘Will you be all right?’

‘She will,’ said Lanius, resting his sticky hand on my shoulder. ‘And so will Paddy, thank the Lord. It was no easy matter, but I did my best, and the best has come to pass. Now go to your brother. Go and cherish him. Nurture his flyn. And most importantly, Harriet, keep this with him for twelve months and a day.’

He pressed a stone into my trembling hand. A small, smooth, glassy white stone, with a smear of Maméa’s blood and a strange little sign scratched onto the surface.

‘Twelve months and a day,’ he whispered, patting my shoulder. ‘Keep it with him.’

We stayed with Lanius for one more day and night. He kept watch over Maméa and my new brother, especially when Paddy was feeding. Every couple of hours Lanius moved his hands over them both, fingers twitching but never touching – and always with his eyes closed.

‘What are you doing to Maméa and Paddy?’ I asked him, while he was pottering about in the scrappy garden beside his home.

‘It is hard to explain the ways of Lanius, at least with words. But perhaps this will help. Stand up straight, Harriet.’

‘I’m already standing up straight.’

‘Good, good. Now hold steady while I…’

Lanius closed his eyes. He hovered his hands over my shoulders, and slowly, slowly moved them down my arms – fingers twitching, never touching – until he reached my fingertips. Then slowly, slowly he moved them back up again, all the way to the top of my head.

It was weird. It felt like he was combing my flyn, teasing out the tangles of worry and horror from the day before. It made me feel stronger, calmer, steadier.

At the end, he brought his hands together under his chin, as if he was praying.

We were silent for a time.

Then we both took deep breaths, and he opened his eyes, and I stared at him.

‘Is it magic?’

‘No, no, not magic.’

‘What is it?’

‘I do not know if it has a name.’

‘But everything has a name, doesn’t it?’

‘Not everything has a name that we can know.’

‘What does that mean?’

He rested his hand on my shoulder and smiled.

‘Some things are a mystery, even to Lanius.’

There was a strange noise from the sky, a piercing pe-yow, pe-yow.

I looked up. There was a bird wheeling high, high above.

‘What’s that?’

‘That, Harriet, is my friend. Please excuse me.’

And he walked away, up and up the slopes, up to a rocky point. The bird, something like a goshawk with gleaming silver-copper feathers, slowly circled down and perched beside him on a rock. I shaded my eyes and tried to see what they were doing. But they didn’t seem to be doing anything as far as I could tell, so I went back inside to talk to Maméa and to cuddle Paddy.

After a while, they both needed to sleep. Granny Salter had nodded off too, and Grandad had gone to catch fish at the lakeside. So I walked out to find Lanius, and saw him still on that rock, high above us. The bird had gone. He was just sitting there. It was very quiet.

I got down on the grass and lay on my back, watching the wind chase the clouds, until eventually I heard the sound again.

Pe-yow… pe-yow…

I got up and watched the bird circle back down to Lanius. With the sky so bright behind them, I couldn’t really see what happened, but after a couple of minutes the bird flew away and Lanius came ambling down the hill.

‘Harriet,’ he called, ‘it’s time to check on your brave mother and young Paddy, I think.’

He nearly touched my arm as he passed by, and a pleasant little quiver passed through my flyn.

‘Magic,’ I whispered, and I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Alice all about it.

‘Snag!’ I shouted, and ran off laughing.

‘No chance, Harriet!’ cried Sarah. ‘I’ll get you.’

It was a chilly day, with the sharp smell of winter in the air. I was playing snag in the farmyard with Rosie, Sarah and Odwin. Alice was too slow to join in properly, but she pretended to, squealing with delight and running around all over the place.

Maméa sat on a stool in the doorway, nursing Paddy and smiling. Around her neck was a pendant that Grandad had made: the glassy white stone from Lanius, set in a silver ring.

‘It’s always with me, and I’m always with Paddy,’ Maméa liked to say. ‘So the stone always stays with him, just as Lanius told us.’

Whatever the stone did, it was working.

Maméa was getting a little bit stronger every day, though she still couldn’t walk without a crutch. Paddy seemed to be thriving, even though he cried a lot. Everyone said it was a miracle when they learned that Lanius had cut Paddy out of Maméa’s belly and saved them both.

‘I’ve never heard the like,’ said Sister Reseda. ‘For the mother to survive as well… thank the Lord, indeed. What a marvel this Lanius must be.’

Maméa even wanted to name Paddy after him – Padimar Walter Lanius Wren – but of course father would need to agree when he came back from the war.

Anyway, Sarah was about to snag Odwin when Giles Blacksmith came racing up into the farmyard.

‘The Larrs,’ he called, staggering to a halt. ‘The Larrs are coming.’

We skidded to a halt and looked at him.

‘What?’ said Maméa, suddenly pale.

Giles was fighting for breath, he’d been running so hard.

‘Come inside, Giles. Come in, all of you.’

In the kitchen, we gathered around Giles as he gulped down a cup of small beer and caught his breath.

‘A couple of riders from Eddershire just rode into the village,’ he said at last. ‘They’re warning everyone, every parish, every farm. They’re coming,