‘Thank you, Maeve,’ she said with a relieved smile. Trousers were just far more practical. ‘Dresses are lovely, but having lost all the clothes I once owned… it means a lot to me.’ Maeve smiled and patted her shoulder.
‘Has Lady Ely been alone long?’ Issa asked.
‘Aye ten years or more, the time goes so quick. She’s never fully recovered, and never re-married, though there have been many a man keen to take her hand. Lady Ely dearly wanted children, but her husband died before they could. Such a sad story,’ Maeve sighed.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Issa said, feeling sorry for her.
‘There’s something on her mind of late, a worry or burden, though she won’t speak of it and says nothing’s wrong,’ Maeve continued, and looked up at the ceiling as if the answer might be there. ‘Well, now I think on it, we’ve all been feeling odd lately. Sort of pensive and highly strung as if something is about to happen, though we don’t know what. Never mind, it’s probably excitement for the Midsummer Celebrations. Anyway, you look like you’re falling asleep on your feet.’
Issa settled into bed, and Maeve pulled up the covers as if she were a child.
‘Good night, Maeve,’ she yawned.
‘Good night, dearie, sleep well,’ Maeve said, and softly shut the door behind her.
Chapter 26
The Awakening
ISSA was suddenly wide-awake. She stared from her bed at the scene in front of her. Gone was the wall of her bedroom, and instead she saw the ancient oaks, blue stones and sacred mound. What on Maioria was going on?
She slid out of bed and blinked many times, but the sacred mound remained. She stepped towards it, hands raised as if to find the solid wall of her room. But her hands touched nothing, and her feet left the wooden floor to tread upon grass.
Despite feeling very much awake, she rubbed her eyes and pinched her skin. It hurt and left a red mark. It didn’t feel like a dream. She stood before the dark entrance of the mound and looked back. Her bedroom was still there, oddly sitting in the middle of the forest.
She turned back to the mound and chewed her lip. She should obviously go inside, surely that was why it had appeared. After all, she’d never been hurt in there and had seen some amazing things. There would be that desert and the strange woman again. She could ask her lots of questions, especially about the prophecies, and then tell Freydel what she had said. She just couldn’t resist the chance of an adventure and stepped into the icy blackness.
The liquid cold lasted only a moment before she stumbled onto solid ground. It was dark, and the air was fresh and moist as if she were still outside in the forest. Surprise turned to worry, the desert wasn’t here. She turned to leave, but there was no doorway, her hands found only cold stone. How would she get out? Breathing deep, she tried to calm her racing heart. What had happened to the woman and the trilithon in the desert? Didn’t the mound always lead to the same place?
She swallowed and strained to see in the darkness. As her eyes adjusted, she noticed a soft diffuse light coming from above. She looked up and gasped. Above her was a sky filled with stars and whole galaxies swirling. Now and then a shooting star would blaze past and disappear. Where on Maioria was she? But this could not be Maioria, for she did not recognise any of the constellations.
She looked down and was surprised to find she no longer wore a nightshirt, but was dressed in tough leather trousers and tunic. The leather was flexible and slick, greenish-black, like oil. She fingered the surface, tracing the huge interlocking scales from which it was made. Scales from a reptile bigger than any she had ever seen. Except, of course, from a dragon. She tried not to think about dragons.
The fingerless gauntlets and long boots coming up to her knees were of the same material. In vulnerable places were dark metal studs and, for all intents and purposes, she knew it served as some kind of armour. Around her waist was her thick blacksmith’s belt, and at her sides hung two weapons. On her left was sheathed a short sword and on her right a dagger that emanated a magical aura.
‘What is this place?’ she whispered, half expecting an answer. In response, a doorway formed in the wall ahead, and a soft white light came from within. For a moment she imagined that many doors could form here, all leading to an infinite number of worlds. Even as she thought it, she knew that the doorways that appeared depended upon the will of the person and their chosen path. That knowledge disturbed her, for how could she know such things? And yet she felt it to be true.
The only door available was ahead, so she may as well step through it. It led into light, and the doorway disappeared into cold stone again. This time she did not feel unnerved but intrigued. The next chamber was warm and bright, and the walls were covered in life-sized drawings of animals and people. Strange letters and runes were interwoven with them.
She traced the pictures with her fingers, wondering at their meaning, and came upon one that made her stop. It was a raven. Behind and below it followed a huge golden dragon. It wasn’t a Dread Dragon, for it was majestic and its features calm, almost meditative. It reminded her of the dragon she’d seen in her ring.
The chamber grew brighter, and mist drifted in from somewhere. It swirled about her feet in tendrils of white. She looked up. The light came from two candles that burned atop a waist-high pillar on the opposite side of the room to the raven carving. She was certain it had not been there before. The pillar was ornately decorated in leaves and flowers. Rich green ivy had made its way through the ceiling and entwined itself around the stone. In the top of the pillar, a round bowl had been fashioned.
She walked over to it and stared as the bowl filled with water that flowed from nowhere. The candle flames above turned blue and became still, unwavering in the air. They gave off no heat either but instead felt cool as she passed a finger through them. There was no reflection of her in the water, only of the blue flames. She touched the water, it was cold, but no ripples came from her touch, all was still.
‘How strange,’ she murmured, her voice sounding loud in the silence. An urgent thirst overcame her. It couldn’t be harmful to drink the water, could it? She laughed when a small ceramic cup appeared beside the bowl as if in answer to her unspoken question.
She filled it with the water and took a sip. It was tasteless, like pure spring water. She waited anxiously, but no adverse reaction came, instead it was wonderfully refreshing and she felt invigorated. She drained the cup and two more after it until her thirst was quenched.
Setting the cup aside, she noticed how beautiful the ivy was, how delicate were the leaves, how tiny and intricate its veins. She could feel its soft pulse of life and fancied she could even see it growing. Everything around her became alive, even the stones had a life force pulsing within them.
The sacred water filled her belly, and the blue flames soothed her mind, spreading stillness through her body and deepening her meditative state. She became aware of the room changing. The ivy parted before her, revealing a small doorway through which white light spilled.
She stepped through into a garden surrounded by a low wall with a gate at the far end. Beyond the wall was a forest. In the centre of the garden was a clear water pool, fed by a spring trickling beneath a willow tree on the far side. Its long streaming leaves dangled in the water as they moved gently in the breeze.
She thought it would have been a fishpond, being as it was in a garden, but there were stone steps leading down into it, and the water was very clear. Tendrils of mist rose above the pool, suggesting it was also warm.
Gleaming white, nude male and female statues stood in graceful poses surrounding the pool. Their faces were serene and they were so real she began to feel embarrassed to be clothed in armour beside them, and armed with swords as well. She dropped her sword belt and undid the leather, her fingers awkwardly searching for the numerous straps and buckles to unfasten.
Finally, she let the last piece fall from her hands. Naked, and for some reason free of embarrassment as if this was how it should
be, she stood a moment before the pool, not a ripple passed across its surface. She walked down the steps and slipped into warm waters. It seemed the right thing to do. The water slid over her body like silk, and she took a big breath and submerged completely. The pool was deep and she sank deeper, but still could not feel the bottom. She opened her mouth and found she could quite easily breathe this sacred water.
As she hung there motionless, her consciousness began to expand. Her essence became one with the water, with the world, with time and beyond it, until she and it were indistinguishable. The bubbles around her became stars and planets, and the dark waters were the cosmos.
She stared in awe at entire galaxies as they drifted past. Stars, planets and suns spun around her and fell away. She was still herself, but much more. She knew herself as the embodiment of all that is, was and will be. Her physical body was just the tiniest extension of her wider consciousness.
Her consciousness ceased expanding and began to contract, like a great intake of breath and its impending release. The stars rushed towards her, faster and faster. Then the darkness before creation engulfed her, and time fell away.
She became aware of several arms reaching down and surrounding her physical body, gently lifting her towards the surface. The water slid away, cool air engulfed her and she breathed deeply. There was singing from many beautiful voices, tinkling and flowing like the song of angels.
She opened her eyes and looked up at the tall pale men and women smiling serenely down at her. They had been the statues surrounding the pool earlier. They all wore shimmering robes of a material she had never seen before, and they wrapped a similar robe around her. The material felt softer and lighter than silk. White auras shone around each of them and they spoke in unison as one beautiful harmonious voice.
‘We are the Guardians of the Portals, we serve the One Truth, we serve the loving Source of All.’
They began to sing again, a beautiful song of words beyond human voices, and the air seemed to dance and shimmer to their tones. She smiled at them knowing she was safe here. They lifted her to her feet. Though she shone as pale as they, she was in stark contrast, for her hair was long and dark and her aura was an indigo hue. Issa looked at them questioningly.
‘You are of the purest dark light, your purpose is in the shadows from where a new living light will emerge,’ the beautiful beings told her. ‘You will help lead the incarnate world through the coming darkness so that pure light can be reborn brighter and stronger than before.’
She pondered their words as they led her from the pool into the forest of great oaks and yews and birches. The Guardians were so bright they moved like shining white lanterns amongst the trees. There came a soft murmuring, and when she listened she could hear the trees themselves singing softly along with the Guardians.
Soon the trees dwindled, and were replaced with tall grasses and purple flowers. They emerged from the trees onto high cliffs. Below the cliffs stretched out an ocean, pitch black in the moonless night. An oak tree, some eight feet in diameter, stood between the forest and cliff’s edge. Its age unfathomable, a great guardian of the woods, a silent observer of the changes of time, she thought.
The earth pulsed beneath her feet in time with her own heartbeat. The rhythmic tide of the ocean was indistinguishable from the blood that coursed through her veins. She was Issa, and she was the world around her, both were one.
She stopped beside the oak and turned to face the Guardians. They shimmered with an ethereal quality as they finished their song. After a moment of stillness, they passed between them a circular black object.
‘This belongs to you, if you accept it,’ they spoke as one, and passed it to her.
She looked at the circlet of raven feathers and knew what she had to say, what was in her heart.
‘I accept it, though I am not ready to wear it,’ tears filled her eyes at the deep reverence she felt as if the Great Goddess Herself had given her the circlet. Carefully she placed the circlet upon her head. ‘I accept the mantle of Zanufey, the dark light of the Great Goddess.’
She looked upon the face of the nearest woman. Amethyst eyes beheld hers. She reached forward and touched the woman’s forehead. The woman became her reflection, head crowned with raven feathers, eyes dark like the sky above, the same shimmering indigo aura, the same smile.
There was stillness for a moment as they looked at each other. Where she had touched, lines of age began to form and deepen. She watched as her double withered and bent until she was haggard and old. Finally, she collapsed in death, her lifeless body shrinking with decay and fragmenting until it was nothing but dust.
She murmured a word and a wind blew, picking up the dust. The swirling specks drew together again, and became the form of a raven. The raven cawed and circled around her. At her gesture it flew away into the night, carrying the woman’s essence with it. The Guardians were sad, but she remained undisturbed by what had happened.
‘Because of the Dark Rift,’ she explained, her words were low and deep, vibrating through her whole being, ‘it is the truth of things within the incarnate world of Maioria, that all must grow old and die. Ageing is not the natural way of things. Death is not the natural way of things.
‘One day there will be no ageing and no death, as the loving Source of All had originally intended. True life is eternal. Until the darkness has passed, all who die will see the loving face of Zanufey, whose raven will carry their soul into the loving eternal light. Return to us, beloved.’
Sparkles of light formed before her, silver and gold and all the colours of the rainbow. They flashed and multiplied into millions of tiny stars, and came together into the shape of a person. The same young woman stood beside her once more, un-aged, smiling and whole. Issa smiled and bowed to her, and then watched the next object that was being passed along.
It was a brilliant white dagger, double-edged and undulating to a deadly point. Carved inscriptions adorned it from haft to hilt. Though it was beautiful, it was ice cold to the touch, and filled with a terrible vengeful magic. Its power was dark and awesome. She held it aloft and spoke again in that same low, reverberating voice.
‘A dagger with a single deadly purpose. It is a dealer of destiny to one who has caused much pain within the world. Despite its destructive purpose, I feel much healing will come after its purpose has been fulfilled. Like the circlet of feathers upon my head, this dagger belongs to me, if I can wield it, but it is not mine to keep.’ She carefully placed it on the grass where it gleamed.
The sky above turned orange, heralding the oncoming dawn. They all waited for the third object to form, for what it was had yet to be decided. The sun broke over the horizon behind her, spilling its warm light over the sea, setting them ablaze in fiery red. It was the sun that proclaimed the final item.
They passed to her an object wrapped in golden threaded cloth. She took it carefully from them, for it was long and heavy. The same hot energy that flooded from the sun also flooded from it.
‘This is not a thing of darkness, like the others, but of light - of fire and passion and life,’ she said in surprise, then frowned. ‘This does not belong to me, but to another. I see the owner’s face. Eyes like sapphires… filled with fire and passion, like the object itself. I know this man…’ she trailed off, warmth flooding through her body as she saw Asaph’s face.
She peeled back the cloth and stared in wonder. The cold steel of the ancient sword shone like fire in the sunlight - red like the dragon blood it had spilt eons past. Upon the cross-guard were etched two crescent moons, back to back. The pommel was a round red stone formed from the blood of the last dragon it had slain. The sword whispered to her, and she spoke aloud what she heard.
‘Blood is what made it - the essence of Qurenn and Slevina - for it is a sword of war and death, but also a symbol of union and peace. The mingling of the blood of human and dragon. It is the sword of Dragon Lords, the Great Sword of Binding, and none but their like can wield it.’ Her voice rang out
loudly as she spoke of things her earthly being had never known.
Dimly she heard a dull tolling, like drums beating in the distance, but it was far away and she paid it no heed. Though her body screamed at her not to touch the sword, such was the danger of its enchantment, a greater need forced her hand.
She let the wrappings fall away, and gripped the hilt firmly. Burning heat exploded through her fingers, but she did not flinch or pull away, and instead let the pain consume her. With great effort she hefted the sword and held it high above her head, sweat trickled down her face from the pain and concentration as she fought to hold it. Blinding white light exploded out from it and the tolling grew louder until it was deafening.
‘The drums are the drums of war,’ the Guardians spoke as one and fell back, shielding their eyes from the light of the sword.
Issa’s body was in burning agony, but still she held it. She closed her eyes against the pain, and in her mind saw a massive orb rising beneath the sun. She glanced behind her. The dark moon covered the sun completely, its circumference framed in the fire of the sun behind it. The light of dawn grew dark, casting them in blue light.
‘Behold, the dark moon rising,’ Issa cried.
The blue moon was as awesome as it was beautiful, and she reached out with longing for its purity and cleansing power. It did not deny her, and its magic spilled into her like cool water, soothing the burning fire of the sword that consumed her. It filled her until she was both fire and water in equal measure.
‘A balance is struck, as in all things,’ she said. The silver ring on her finger flashed blue, and she turned her attention to the sword. ‘I know your master, for he is the fire, the light and the life, even as I am the water and the darkness. Through me will your master find you, and so I can hold you, if only for a little while.’
Night Goddess (The Goddess Prophecies Book 1) Page 27
