Free The Circle of Stone (Darkest Age) by A. J. Lake Page A

Edmund was wrapped like a beggar in his sleeping blanket.
    ‘I’m heated with all this walking,’ she told him impulsively. ‘Would you take my cloak for a while?’
    ‘You won’t stay hot for long,’ Edmund warned her – but he allowed himself to be convinced, and took the heavy fur cloak. Feeling the cold wind cutting through her woollen sleeves, Elspeth realised how much he must have needed it. The sun was already high in a clear sky: it would get no warmer today.
    The trees began to grow closer until they were walking down a narrow passage between brown trunks. Elspeth found the gloom under the trees oppressive, and could not forget the choking dust and charred stumps of their last venture into the forest. She stayed close to Edmund, whose spirits never seemed to waver, while Wulf held on to her arm. The throbbing pain in her right hand seemed a permanent part of her now, always there on the edge of her awareness; every now and then becoming fiercer, like lightning streaking up her arm. She wondered for the hundredth time whether it was a sign that Ioneth was growing stronger, and listened in vain for the voice inside her head.
    ‘Edmund,’ she said at last, giving up the attempt, ‘do you think we’ll ever find him?’
    Edmund did not ask who she meant. He was silent a long time before answering. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘It seems impossible sometimes. We can’t track him, not as you’d track a brigand – we’re just following stories and rumours. But I
feel
that we’re close to him here, and I know Cluaran does too.’
    The trees grew thicker and darker. Twice they found wooden shrines at the edge of the forest path, one showing another version of the bearded man with the sun’s rays behind him, and one with a crude image of a hand surrounded by the same rays.
    ‘Do you think these are new?’ Edmund wondered, inspecting the second shrine. It did have a recently cut look, Elspeth thought.
    ‘Menobert said there were new religions springing up everywhere.’
    ‘It’s a sign of the times, like Menobert said,’ Cathbar put in. ‘When there’s trouble and danger, everyone looks for something new to believe in. It doesn’t matter what.’
    ‘No one seems to be visiting the shrines, though,’ Elspeth pointed out. They had been heading south on the road for half a day or more, without meeting a living soul.
    Cluaran led the way, with Eolande beside him. He seemed resigned to Wulf’s continued presence, and Elspeth made sure that the child stayed close to her, determined that he should not be thought of as a burden. She was reassured to find that Wulf had no trouble matching their pace and never complained of tiredness, though his rag-bound shoes slid abouton the leaf-mulch underfoot. When they stopped for the night, it was clear that he was determined to be useful. He ran deep into the trees to collect firewood, and returned dragging a branch longer than himself and so thick that Elspeth was amazed he could lift it at all. While they struggled to break his prize into sections, the boy ran off again.
    ‘Don’t go too far, Wulf!’ Elspeth called. ‘It’s getting dark.’
    ‘Leave the boy,’ Cluaran told her. ‘You can see he’s at home in the woods; he won’t come to harm.’ The confidence in his voice cheered Elspeth: Wulf was becoming accepted as a member of their group.
    Wulf returned at sunset, very muddy and holding out the front of his overshirt filled with mushrooms. Cluaran inspected them and pronounced them edible, his voice filled with surprise. ‘Who taught you to know mushrooms, boy?’ he demanded. Wulf laughed delightedly, but did not answer.
    They cooked the mushrooms with wild onions in Cluaran’s cooking pan, and shared out the stew with the last of their bread, sitting around the fire. The bitter wind had died down, or was stopped by the trees, and looking around at the flame-lit faces of her friends, Elspeth felt an unexpected peace. Tonight there was no