Runemarks Read Free Page B

little to do with the world outside.
    There were a dozen little settlements in the valley, from Farnley Tyas at the foot of the mountains to Pease Green at the far side of Little Bear Wood. But Malbry was the biggest and the most important. It housed the valley’s only parson, the largest church, the best inns, and the wealthiest farmers. Its houses were built of stone, not wood; there was a smithy, a glassworks, a covered market. Its inhabitants thought themselves better than most and looked down on the folk of Pog Hill or Fettlefields and laughed in secret at their country ways. The only thorn in Malbry’s side stood roughly two miles from the village. The locals called it Red Horse Hill, and most folk avoided it because of the tales that collected there and the goblins who lived beneath its flanks.
    Once, it was said, there had been a castle on the Hill. Malbry itself had been part of its fiefdom, growing crops for the lord of that land—but all that had been a long time ago, before Tribulation and the End of the World. Nowadays there was nothing to see: only a few standing stones, too large to have been looted from the ruins, and, of course, the Red Horse cut into the clay.
    It had long been known as a goblin stronghold. Such places drew them, the villagers said, lured them with promises of treasure and tales of the Elder Age. But it was only in recent years that the Good Folk had ventured as far as the village.
    Fourteen years, to be precise, which was exactly when Jed Smith’s pretty wife, Julia, had died giving birth to their second daughter. Few doubted that the two things were linked or that the rust-colored mark on the palm of the child’s hand was the sign of some dreadful misfortune to come.
    And so it was. From that day forth, that Harvestmonth, the goblins had been drawn to the blacksmith’s child. The midwife had seen them, so she said, perched on the baby’s pinewood crib, or grinning from inside the warming pan, or tumbling the blankets. At first the rumors were scarcely voiced. Nan Fey was mad, just like her old grandam, and it was best to take anything she said with a dose of salt. But as time passed and goblin sightings were reported by such respectable sources as the parson, his wife, Ethelberta, and even Torval Bishop from over the pass, the rumors grew and soon everyone was wondering how the Smiths, of all people—the Smiths, who never dreamed, went to church every day, and would no more have flung themselves into the river Strond than truckle with the Good Folk—could have given birth to two so very different daughters.
    Mae Smith, with her cowslip curls, was widely held to be the prettiest and least imaginative girl in the valley. Jed Smith said she was the image of her poor mother, and it almost broke his heart to see her so, though he smiled when he said it, and his eyes were like stars.
    But Maddy was dark, just like an Outlander, and there was no light in Jed’s eyes when he looked at
her,
only an odd kind of measuring look, as if he were weighing Maddy against her dead mother and finding that he had been sold short.
    Jed Smith was not the only one to think so. As she grew older, Maddy discovered that she had disappointed almost everyone. An awkward girl with a sullen mouth, a curtain of hair, and a tendency to slouch, she had neither Mae’s sweet nature nor her sweet face. Her eyes were rather beautiful, halfway between gray and gold, but few people ever noticed this, and it was widely believed that Maddy Smith was ugly, a troublemaker, too clever for her own good, too stubborn—or too slack—to change.
    Of course folk agreed that it was not
her
fault she was so brown or her sister so pretty, but
a smile costs nothing,
as the saying goes, and if only the girl had made an effort once in a while, or even showed a little gratitude for all the help and free advice she had been given, then maybe she would have settled down.
    But she did not. From the beginning Maddy was wild: never