Page 39 of Skysong

The shock of it was such that she lost hold of her form as she was forced downward, crashing through branches. And just like before, just like on the day this had all begun, Oriane found herself growing back into her human body as the ground hurtled up to meet her.

137She landed with a bone-jarring thud. Her breath left her in a rush and for a moment she could do nothing but fight for air.Run,she thought faintly, desperately, as her lungs burned and pain erupted through her body.Ihavetorun.

But as she tried to rise, she realised whatever had brought her down was still on her back. It felt like a dozen thin ropes, tangling up her arms and legs.

A net.

She tore at it desperately. A sob choked her throat. She was caught. It had been for nothing. The chance her father had given her, the cost – fornothing…

‘Don’t struggle, Lady Lark,’ said a low voice behind her.

Oriane spun around in a half-crouch, tripping on the netting as she did so and landing with another painfulthump. She scrabbled backwards as Terault advanced, stepping out of the shadow of a tree and into a shaft of pale morning light. His face was oddly expressionless, his eyes glassy as a doll’s.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ he murmured. ‘None of us will hurt you. The king simply sent us to retrieve you.’

‘My father,’ Oriane burst out. ‘Theystabbedmyfather.’

Terault frowned, tilting his head slightly.

‘Let me go back – let me go back to him,please!’

A stampede of hurried footfalls crashed through the undergrowth, and half a dozen soldiers burst through the trees at Terault’s back.

‘My lord,’ a woman panted, ‘she—’

Terault raised a hand and the guard fell silent. Her eyes and all the others went to Oriane, crumpled and trapped beneath the pile of netting. She felt like an animal still.

‘Help the lady out of there,’ Terault commanded softly. ‘Then get ready to leave.’ He turned and walked back in the direction of the house.138

Oriane thrashed wildly again, desperate to free herself from the net before the guards could get to her. Ice flooded her body as one of them stepped forward, pulling out a short, sharp dagger – but he merely used it to cut the netting around her so two others could get her free. Thoughfreewas not the right word, of course. A man and a woman each took one of her arms and held it fast. The woman was gentle, but the man’s grip dug into the skin of her arm, fingernails close to piercing the goosepimpled flesh.

Oriane barely felt the discomfort. She barely felt anything at all, numb but for a creeping, pervading sense of horror, an impossibly cavernous pit that grew steadily deeper and threatened to swallow her whole.

‘Get ready to move out!’

‘They got her!’

‘Leave it – time to go!’

The chorus of shouts grew louder as Oriane and her captors approached the edge of the woods. There was the sound of people moving about, preparing to leave; but there was another sound, too, strange in the still morning air. A faint crackling. Then awhooshof air, and a sound like splintering wood.

Fear like Oriane had never known took hold as she recognised that sound.

She saw the first flicker of flames as they passed the tree where she usually called the dawn. And then they were out in the clearing between the garden and the woods, and the sight rose up before her like some spectre from an unspeakable dream.

Her home was on fire.

Great gouts of flame shot through the upstairs windows, licking the wooden walls with hungry tongues. Part of the roof had collapsed.139

Someone, mercifully, had set the animals loose, and Oriane could hear the chickens squawking as they fluttered away from the house and its falling debris, could hear Snowpea braying fearfully as he retreated towards the woods.

She hoped, against all hope, that what she had feared initially was true: that her father had died mere moments after the soldier had withdrawn that blade from his chest.

Perhaps it was the horror of what she was hoping – that her father had died quickly then, so that he would not have to die slowly now – that set something loose within her.

Oriane barely knew what she was doing, then. All she knew was that she had somehow thrashed her way free of her captors, and that she was suddenly close to the burning house, close enough to feel its heat and fury on her face, and that she wasscreaming, screaming so loud her throat felt like it had torn, like blood should be pouring from her mouth with every cry. There were hands at her back an instant later, pulling her upright. She did not recall having fallen to her knees. She began to thrash again, lashing out with feet, fingernails, teeth. Her screams turned to wails. And soon the brightness of the day, of the fire, of her pain, all faded to dark, and Oriane knew no more.

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