Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Daughters of The Storm by Kim Wilkins - Chapter Sampler
Daughters of The Storm by Kim Wilkins - Chapter Sampler
Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilisation of this work in whole or in
part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information stor-
age or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be
lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a
similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by
Harlequin Mira
An imprint of Harlequin Enterprises (Australia) Pty Ltd.
Level 4, 132 Arthur Street
NORTH SYDNEY NSW 2060
AUSTRALIA
1
2 Kim Wilkins
Where was the noble, strong man he had been? The warrior
king, the Storm Bearer, Æthlric of Ælmesse?
And where was the woman she had been? Whose were these
thin-skinned hands, fearfully stroking an old man’s troubled
forehead?
Finally, the rain cleared, and she sent for Osred, the physician
who had accompanied her more than three years ago when she
came to marry Æthlric.
She should have known word would spread quickly.
The bowerhouse door opened, gusting air against the tapestries
so they swung then settled with a clatter. Three figures stood
there. Osred, tall and finely dressed; Byrta, the crone who had
attended Æthlric since she was a young maid; and Dunstan, a
grizzled war hero who was so old the hairs on his meaty fists were
silver.
Gudrun’s stomach coiled. Osred was her only ally. The others
were natives of Ælmesse. No matter that they had always been
friendly to her; she knew they thought her an interloper. She felt
old, frail. Far from home. The person she loved and depended on
the most was lost to her; lost, it seemed, to the world.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Byrta admonished, though gently,
as she hurried to Æthlric’s side. He was sleeping now, the deep,
impenetrable sleep that measured out the hours until his next fit.
‘I hoped he might get better on his own.’ Oh, how she had
hoped it. She had hoped so hard her ribs ached at night.
Osred came to Gudrun and laid his hand on her forearm. ‘You
mustn’t worry,’ he said in a cold, flat voice.
Dunstan closed the door carefully and pressed his back against
it, arms folded across his round belly. ‘No-one must know,’ he said.
‘If our enemies thought our king could not rule …’ He trailed off,
his voice tripping on tears he refused to shed. He straightened his
spine. ‘We must send for Bluebell.’
Daughters of the Storm 3
5
6 Kim Wilkins
in any situation. She tied a knot in her long, fair hair and yanked
open the door. He stood there with a lantern in his left hand.
‘How did you get past my entire hearthband to the door of my
room?’
‘I bribed the innkeeper to let me in the back door.’ He smiled
weakly. ‘Hello, Bluebell. It isn’t good news.’ He paused, took a
breath. Then said, ‘Your father.’
Her blood flashed hot. ‘Come in, quickly.’ She closed the door
behind him and stood, waiting. Anything, anything she could
endure: the world was a chaotic, amoral place. But not Father,
don’t let Father be dead.
‘You must keep your head when I tell you this,’ he said.
‘I can keep my head,’ she snapped. ‘Is he dead?’
‘No.’
Sweet word. Her stomach unclenched.
‘But he’s ill,’ he continued. ‘A rider was sent from Ælmesse to
our war band up on the border of Bradsey. Wylm was called away
urgently by his mother.’
‘Gudrun,’ Bluebell muttered. The flighty idiot her father had
chosen to marry. ‘She sent for Wylm?’
‘I overheard their conversation. King Æthlric is sick, terribly
sick.’
‘And she sent for Wylm instead of me?’ Misting fury tingled
over her skin.
‘Don’t kill her. Or Wylm. Rose wouldn’t want you to kill any-
one. Least of all your stepfamily.’
She glared at him. The beardless half-blood in front of her was
her sister’s lover. Bluebell had assigned him to a freezing, sedge-
strangled border town to keep him away from Rose. Three years
had passed, and still he went soft and sugary when his tongue took
her name. ‘I’m not a fool,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to kill anyone.
Despite what my itching fingers tell me to do.’
Daughters of the Storm 9
enough to miss his sleep. She rubbed his head roughly. Thrymm
and Thræc sniffed at her feet, straining against their chains.
‘At first light, tell Sighere where I have gone, but ask him not
to speak of it. We don’t know what the future holds for my father,
or for Ælmesse. If an idiot like Ricbert got wind of the idea that
Father was …’ Curse it, she couldn’t say the word.
Heath pointedly looked away.
‘People would panic. Just don’t tell anyone. Urgent business.
That’s all.’ She let the dogs off the chain and vaulted onto Isern’s
back.
Heath grasped Isern’s reins. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Your sisters?’
Her chin stiffened. He was right: they needed to be told. A chill
wind rattled through the trees. She spat hair out of her mouth.
While she didn’t want to send him to Rose — it was better if they
were apart — she was sensitive to her sister’s feelings. This news
shouldn’t come from a stranger. ‘Ride at first light to Rose. Tell
her to join me in Blicstowe immediately.’
‘And Ash?’
Bluebell frowned. ‘Get Rose to send a messenger. Ash will
likely feel us on the move.’ Her words turned to mist in front of
her. She dropped her voice. ‘Perhaps she already knows.’
‘My lord.’ Heath nodded and stepped back.
Bluebell picked up the reins and urged Isern forwards, thun-
dering down to the moonlit road with the dogs barking in her
wake.
•
The night began to lift as Bluebell approached the Giant Road.
She glimpsed the first curve of the bright sun as she galloped
over a wooden bridge and down towards the wide road. In some
ancient misted past, grey paving stones — the length of two men
and easily as wide — had been lined up five across for hundreds
Daughters of the Storm 11
fallen logs, blackbirds and robins sang in the sycamore trees. Life
bloomed around her, even as she made this journey towards death.
Bluebell urged Isern to canter, then let him walk, then pressed
him forwards again. Every two hours she stopped — her stomach
itching the whole time — to rest him. The day drew out. Around
dusk, Bluebell flagged a caravan to stop. The woman at the front
of the caravan grudgingly reined in her horses. She wore gold
rings on every finger, and a richly dyed robe of red.
‘Have you seen a young man, travelling south alone?’ Bluebell
asked.
‘I’ve seen many travellers today.’ The woman’s eyes narrowed.
‘A young man. Dark-haired.’ Mean-spirited. Dull-witted. Snide.
‘Less than an hour since I saw a dark-haired man on a bay
horse.’ The woman shrugged. ‘Could have been your man.’ She
eyed Bluebell’s baggage, the dented shield that hung on Isern’s
rump, the axe and the helm. ‘Are you going to kill him?’
‘No,’ Bluebell said, kicking Isern forwards. With his big stride
and some speed, surely she would catch Wylm.
Poor Isern. Even the dogs were exhausted. Even Bluebell was
exhausted.
At the crest of the next rise, she thought she saw Wylm. But
then the road wound into the trees.
At the trees, she thought she heard his horse’s footfalls. Long
shadows drew across the grey-green road. Robins returned to
their beds. Isern began to slow. Bluebell’s heart was hot. She didn’t
want to kill her horse, but she wanted to catch Wylm.
Through the other side of the wood, she saw him on the open
road. She whistled the dogs forwards and they streaked ahead,
barking loudly.
Wylm slowed and turned as the dogs caught up with him, yap-
ping at his horse’s feet. His horse shied, but Wylm held steady. He
glanced up and saw her approaching. She urged Isern forwards,
14 Kim Wilkins
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the only sign
he wasn’t comfortable with the suggestion. ‘As you wish, my lord.
It’s twelve miles to the next town. I intended to stop there the
night.’
Bluebell glanced about. Her dogs had found a soft patch of
long grass and both lay on their sides, panting. Isern sagged, his
eyes pleading with her to take off his saddle. They could travel no
further.
‘No, we’ll camp nearby.’ She indicated the edge of a lake, a
mile off. ‘Over there,’ she said.
He began to protest, but she interrupted him. ‘You’re not afraid
of the dark, are you?’
Wylm lifted his shoulders lightly. ‘No,’ he said.
His calm coolness was like a burr in her blood. ‘Follow,’ she
said. ‘I have to tend to my animals.’
•
Wylm took a long time to go to sleep. It wasn’t the cold night sky
above him: cold had long since ceased to worry him. Bluebell had
shipped him off to the northern borders the day he turned eigh-
teen, six months ago. It had been an instruction in hardship, as
well as an instruction in how his stepsister felt about him.
Rather, what kept him awake was how he felt about Bluebell.
She lay three feet away from him, on a rolled-out blanket by
the fire. She was on her side, her back turned to him, her hair tied
in a knot on top of her head. She’d barely spoken a dozen words
to him since they met on the road, and sleep had come to her as
though she commanded it. Now he watched her pale neck. It was
the only part of her that looked as though it belonged to a woman.
He loathed Bluebell and yet was fascinated by her. There was no
more famous soldier in Thyrsland, unless one counted her father.
Up at the border camp, they told tales of her reckless courage, of
16 Kim Wilkins
Don’t dream.
Ash hauled herself up through leaden sleep to wake gasping in
her dark room. The soft hush of the moving sea in the distance.
The slow breathing of the women in the other beds. The twitch
and pull of her own blood pressure.
But she had done it. She had avoided the dream that had been
trying to press itself into her mind for the last six months. She
filled her lungs. The room was dim, dawn swallowed by early
morning rain, but Ash didn’t dare fall back to sleep in case the
dream was still waiting for her. So she rose, tiptoed past the beds
around her, and went to the shutter. She pushed it open an inch,
letting in a fist of cold air and the smell of damp earth. Rain fell
between the bowerhouses in the grey light. Early morning rain
was common here on the south-east coast. It would clear to a
fine day, the gulls would spread their wings to dry on the gable
finishings of the great study hall and the grim darkness would be
forgotten. But the clouds in Ash’s mind would not lift so easily.
Only two days had passed now, since last time she stopped herself
having the dream. Before that four days. Before that eleven. It was
becoming more urgent; of that there could be no doubt. But if
18
Daughters of the Storm 19
she let herself dream it, then she would know what it was about.
And every sign told her she did not want to know. Knowledge
was irreversible.
Ash closed the shutter and sat on the end of her bed to plait
her long, dark hair: hand over hand in practised movements. A
gust of battle-keen north wind buffeted the shutters, and one of
her bower-sisters stirred, then settled again: untroubled sleep. Ash
opened the chest at the end of her bed and pulled out a dress to
go over her shift; she belted it on tightly and pinned on a long,
green jacket. Then she slipped into her shoes and quietly left the
bowerhouse, closing the door behind her. She stood for a moment
under the gable. The sudden rush of damp cold pierced her warm
clothes, and the rain fell steadily. Head down, she dashed across
the muddy wooden boards to the great study hall, careful not to
slip. She pulled open the heavy doors and hurried inside. The
doors thudded closed behind her, shutting out the cold and the
wet. In the dry, firelit room, she listened to the rain falling on
the tiles, above the high, arched ceiling. Rain spat down the chim-
ney hole and hissed onto the fire, freshly lit by the new scholars.
Ash remembered her first year here, how much she’d hated rising
early to light the fires and change the rushes and cook the break-
fasts. Her father was a king; for her to be servile was unnatural,
like speaking in another tongue. But she’d soon grown used to
it and come to appreciate the lessons it taught her. To know the
common faith and practise it in the community — whether it
was offering medicine or advice or a soft shoulder for sorrow to
spill upon — meant understanding how common people lived.
Besides, the first difficult year had passed soon enough. Now she
was in her fifth and final year of study.
She sat heavily at one of the long tables where they took their
lessons. Behind her were shelves and tables overflowing with
vellum scripts, but Ash read only grudgingly and most of their
20 Kim Wilkins
causing a long coughing fit. Tears welled in her eyes. ‘I’m going to
die, aren’t I? I could see you standing there and you knew.’
Ash turned her gaze to the little boy. He hummed a tune to
himself.
Ingrid caught the direction of her gaze and began to sob.
‘Is there somebody who can come for him?’ Ash said.
‘How am I to let him go?’
‘By telling yourself that, in him, you live still. And in his chil-
dren, and in their children.’ Ash measured her tone calmly even
though her own heart was clenching. ‘We all die, Ingrid. We are
here but a brief bright moment then thrust out again into the
darkness. To leave our trace in the light is the best thing we can
do.’ Just as she had been told to say. The sentiment that was sup-
posed to bring so much comfort, but which Ash found no comfort
in herself. Perhaps when she was older she would feel it, really feel
it, but now, she was as terrified to die as a cow in a slaughter pen.
Ingrid nodded, catching her breath. ‘My sister Gyrda lives out-
side town, behind the mill. Could you send for her?’
‘I’ll go to her myself.’ Ash rose. ‘You must never tell anyone I
came to you. And nor must she.’
Ingrid shook her head. Her body trembled and hunched, strug-
gling with terror and sorrow. ‘Can I cuddle my boy until she comes?’
‘Of course. Of course.’
She hesitated, then said, ‘When will I die?’
Ash looked at her. The day after tomorrow, as the sun disappears
behind the town. But she said, ‘I don’t know.’
The little boy had scrambled onto the bed and Ingrid reached
for him with shuddering arms. ‘A lifetime of kisses,’ she said to
him, her voice breaking.
Ash couldn’t watch. She turned away and headed outside.
•
Daughters of the Storm 25
foolish person who did not come to love and respect the sea. The
wind picked up, the gulls screeched overhead. Ash closed her eyes
and breathed the raw scent of the morning.
Light broke over the clouds, and pressed gold on her eyelids.
She opened her eyes to see the first orange-gold bow of the sun. A
sharp shred of the dream flashed into her mind: a cliff, an orange
light, fire and claws. She shook herself, put her hands on the rock
to feel the earth and keep herself on it.
‘Hello there!’ A distant voice, calling.
Ash turned. Conrad was trudging up the path towards her, his
hands in the pockets of his brown tunic, his shoulders hunched
against the cold morning air. She was glad to see him, to have
ordinary things to fill her mind. Her panicked heart slowed and
she rose and came down the path to greet him.
‘Good morning,’ she said with a smile.
He nodded once, but didn’t smile in return, making her cau-
tious. The wind tangled in his soft, brown curls. ‘I’ve been look-
ing for you,’ he said.
‘A fine clear morning.’ She gestured to the rising sun. ‘I couldn’t
stay in bed and let it go unwitnessed.’
He glanced over his shoulder towards the study hall, as though
he feared they were being watched.
‘What is it?’ she said.
He smiled weakly. ‘I overhead Myrren talking to some of the
elder seers this morning when I was lighting the fires. About you.’
A coil of guilt in her stomach. ‘I see.’
He wouldn’t meet her gaze, squinted his dark eyes against the
sun. ‘They say a woman in town died yesterday afternoon. Her
little boy was nowhere to be found. They eventually located him
at his aunt’s house. The aunt said you had arranged for him to
be there, that you had seen his mother’s death, and his, too, if he
wasn’t moved.’
Daughters of the Storm 27
Ash swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’ Why had Ingrid’s sister gone back
on her promise not to speak of it? She had probably crumbled
the moment Myrren set her grey gaze on her. Old age was to be
feared, and Ash was too young to frighten anyone into silence.
‘Did they sound angry?’
He hesitated. Then said, ‘I couldn’t read their voices. Angry,
perhaps. Myrren certainly was. But the seers sounded … puzzled.’
He shrugged. ‘Worried.’
‘For me, or for themselves?’
‘Impossible to tell.’
Ash chewed her lip, glancing away to the sea.
‘Ash,’ he said slowly, ‘I’ve been taught one can’t be a seer until …
well, you’re only a year older than me. You saw her Becoming?’
She considered him in the golden light. The desire in his eyes was
gone, squeezed out by fear. ‘Thank you for the warning,’ she said.
He waited a moment, to see if she would say anything else.
‘I need to think,’ she said kindly. ‘I’ll see you back at the study
hall.’
Conrad nodded, his dark eyes careful not to hold hers too long.
She watched him retreat then turned her attention to the sea once
again, to the orange sun low on the horizon. Here it was, her
chance to tell them what was happening to her. The dream, the
constant interference of the sight, the hollow fear that inhabited
her as her power intensified. Only her sisters and Byrta knew of
her ability, and none of them guessed at how fast and wild it grew.
Perhaps the elder seers might even help her.
The sea roared. The sun was bright on her cheeks.
And then a voice was in her head.
Ash.
Just one word: her name. But with it a cascade of sensations.
Bluebell, lying on grass by a stream. Her sister’s body ached, but
not from battle. Inside her heart beat a bruising dread.
28 Kim Wilkins