Circles of Stone

by Ian Johnstone

  “Why aren’t they scared?” he murmured, shaking his head in disbelief.

  Simia followed his eyes and shrugged. “Nature wants to help us,” she said matter-of-factly. “Remember what Merimaat told me that time? When I was trying to cross the river on stepping stones?”

  Sylas remembered well Simia’s story of Merimaat – the great, lost leader of the Suhl – her strange words sticking clearly in his mind: “They aren’t trying to trip you,” she had said of the stepping stones, “they’re trying to help you.”

  “That’s what the Suhl are brought up to believe,” Simia continued, “that Nature is part of us and we are part of Nature. She’s on our side.”

  Sylas looked back up into the treetops in time to see an entire family walking almost directly overhead, laughing and joking, the children racing each other to the next trunk.

  “Well they believe it, that’s for sure,” he said, under his breath.

  They walked on, and as the sky grew darker they began to see a galaxy of orange lamplights dotted throughout the trees, casting a beautiful, magical light across the forest floor.

  Soon they had reached the steep incline to one side of the Valley of Outs. They pressed on, hoping to climb high enough to look down on Sylva. At first they made good progress through the tangle of bushes and branches, but then, quite abruptly, the ground levelled off.

  Sylas stopped. “This can’t be the top,” he said, glancing about. “We’ve only just started.”

  Simia pushed past and parted some branches. The ground ahead fell away. They shared a look.

  “Odd,” said Simia.

  She pushed through the undergrowth and strode down the slope. “Come on, it must go up again in a bit.”

  They set out once more but had only walked a few steps when they came to a halt.

  There, beyond a few branches of trees, was the valley they had just left behind. Lamplights blinked in the treetops, the occasional dark figure wandered through the canopy and just ahead was the stream they had crossed only minutes before.

  Simia turned on her heel and marched past Sylas with a look of fierce determination.

  “We must have circled back somehow. Come on!”

  Sylas opened his mouth to say something, but then just turned to follow. They had only walked a dozen paces through the thicket before the ground again seemed to be levelling out. Again they reached a clearing, and again they saw the ground falling away, and as soon as they started down the slope they stopped in astonishment – for there, through the bushes and wood smoke, were the same lamplights, the treetops and the familiar stream, babbling in the half-dark, seeming almost to mock them. They were back where they had started.

  “I think I know what’s happening here,” said Simia, smiling suddenly. “You know why they call this the Valley of Outs?”

  Sylas shook his head, perplexed.

  “Because no one but the Suhl can find their way in. They always find themselves walking out again!”

  “Right …” said Sylas, trying to get his head round it.

  “Well, isn’t this just the opposite? I mean, we’re inside the valley, and perhaps the same magic that keeps other people out—”

  “… is keeping us in!” exclaimed Sylas, a smile spreading across his tired features. “So however many times we try to climb this hill, and whatever point we try from, we’ll always find ourselves walking back into the Valley of Outs!”

  Simia put her hands on her hips and grinned. “Exactly.”

  Since they had gone as far as they could go, they sat down on a bed of dry leaves and gazed through the branches and bushes to the valley below, framed by the dark silhouettes of the two vast hills. The moon and stars lent everything a trace of silver: the distant hilltops, the curls of smoke rising from hundreds of fires, and somewhere below, only just visible through the fingers of the forest, the glistening surface of the lake.

  For the first time they felt the true power of this place: the ancient and unfathomable magic that bound it together, from root, to trunk, to treetop – the magic that now held them close and would keep them safe.

  “It’s like a dream,” murmured Simia under her breath.

  Sylas nodded and almost without thinking he raised a hand towards the overhanging branches and opened his fingers wide. In the same instant, the twigs and leaves swept aside like the curtains of a stage, revealing the valley, the lake and the twinkling skies in all their majesty.

  Simia’s grin flashed in the half-dark. “Show off!”

  Sylas laughed and started to close his fingers, but she reached out.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Leave it.”

  And so Sylas left the branches as they were, framing the most beautiful view either of them had ever seen.

  They sat quietly, listening to the birds settling to roost and the animals of the night calling to the rising moon. To their surprise, these sounds suddenly faded, as though making way for something else. A moment later, they heard the sorrowful sound of a pipe. The music came from deep in the forest, and was quickly taken up by hundreds of instruments scattered throughout the treetops of Sylva: pipes, violins, guitars, horns, all playing as one.

  Then the Suhl began to sing. Their words seemed to seep from the trees themselves, filling the valley with a mournful chorus:

  In far lands of dark and high lands and low,

  I hear songs of a place where none ever go;

  Locked in the hills, ’midst green velvet folds,

  A treasure more precious than gem-furnished gold,

  For there dwell the Suhl, the last broken band,

  There dwell the lost and there dwell the damned …

  The thing throbbed and quivered, its glistening flanks oozing a sickening slime. It was a formless shape, a mess of organic sludge that barely cohered into a single thing. The tiny chamber in which it lived dripped the same oily filth and pulsed to the same quickening rhythm, as though it and the thing were one and the same: one sustaining the other. The air was thick and hot and wet. Trails of vapour rose and formed swirling, putrid clouds beneath the cave-like ceiling.

  Suddenly there was silence.

  The half-formed heart halted. The vapours ceased their constant movement.

  The thing trembled. And then …

  THUMP … THUMP …

  THUMP-THUMP … THUMP-THUMP … THUMP-THUMP …

  The thing swelled and receded. Something inside tensed and then a bulge moved beneath the glutinous surface. Then another: this time distinct and pointed.

  The pulse accelerated, gaining volume, building and building, faster and faster until soon it was no longer a heartbeat but a rush of sound, a deafening percussion of panic.

  Suddenly the thing erupted in frantic motion, twisting and stretching, turning and bulging. As the jelly was breached, more black mucous flowed down its sides and new vapours palled in the chamber.

  And then, with a sudden surge, something forced itself upwards, striking the ceiling with a thud. It slewed to one side and then collapsed, slapping down into the ooze.

  The heartbeat steadied and began to return to a measured pace. The walls ceased their throbbing altogether, for their work was done.

  Something had been born.

  It was partly submerged in the oily mire, so that it could almost not be seen. But in some strange contortion there was an arm and a hand – a human hand – and that hand rested against a human cheek. A woman’s cheek. It twitched, the little finger tapping against the fine dark skin.

  And then, slowly, the hand began to clench. The fingers curled, and as they did so there was movement at their tips, beneath the fingernails. Slow and slick, the points of rapier talons emerged into the gloom. They grew and grew, until they were almost half the length of the fingers. Until they scratched the woman’s cheek.

  The figure arched in a spasm of pain. She shrieked, her eyes wide and staring, the pupils drawn into narrow slits.

  It was not a woman’s shriek. It was the screeching wail of an anim
al.

  “If sorcery itself has form, it is the Black. The Black is all we cannot know; it is enchantment and it is despair.”

  IT STARTED BEFORE THE first warming rays, in the darkness: a playful chirrup from a nearby branch, followed by an answering call. Then another, even nearer at hand, and another, building on the first, clamouring to be heard. Soon a mounting chorus filled the forest. Thousands of sparrows and swifts, finches and wrens, kites and kestrels, all raising their heads towards the crowning sun to welcome the new day.

  And yet to Naeo, it was a strange, unwelcome sound – even now, even days after her escape. It was too clear and loud and shrill. In her slumber, she pushed at her heels and pressed herself even further back between the two rounded rocks, retreating into the shadows. And as the rays crept down the steps into her cave she coiled into a ball, wrapping her arms around her head, yearning for silence and darkness.

  Silence and darkness were what she knew. They were her friends. They kept her safe.

  She pulled her knees up a little further, murmuring as she turned her face into the cold stone.

  “Naeo?”

  It was a gentle, soothing voice.

  “Naeo? I’m afraid I must wake you.”

  She groaned and twisted between the rocks, grazing her cheek. Her eyelids fluttered and she drew in a lungful of fragrant air.

  Suddenly her eyes flew open. She sat up and pressed her narrow shoulders further back into the crevice. She glanced about the room, squinting into the shaft of sunlight, searching for the owner of the voice. But the light was everywhere, zigzagging between a dozen mirrors mounted on the walls, lighting the whole chamber. She covered her face with her hands.

  “You’re with friends, Naeo!” came the voice again, calm and warm. “Remember? You’re in the Valley of Outs.”

  The beams shifted, turning away from the rear of the cave where Naeo lay, leaving her in shadows. She blinked as her eyes adjusted and then she saw Filimaya, kneeling only a few paces away, her aged face creased with concern.

  “Have you slept here all night?” she asked, looking at the made-up bed in the corner of the cave.

  Naeo shrugged. “I prefer the floor,” she said. “I’m used to it.” She pushed herself up, rubbing her eyes.

  “Was it like that in the Dirgheon?”

  “I suppose …” said Naeo, indifferently.

  “Of course it was,” said Filimaya. “I should have—”

  “What’s going on? Has the Say-So started?”

  Filimaya frowned. She wanted to ask more, but thought better of it. “No, but it will be almost under way by the time we get there. We should go.”

  “Fine. I’ll just change,” said Naeo. She turned and walked to a driftwood shelf, pulling down the fresh clothes that had been laid there.

  Filimaya was about to step outside, but as Naeo pulled off her top she froze.

  She raised her hands to her mouth. The girl’s back was terribly disfigured by a single scar, which ran all the way down her spine and across her shoulders. It was shapeless and mottled in the manner of burns, but marked out in greys and an inky black. In places the lifeless pigments seemed only to have stained her flesh, while in others they had pinched and raised the skin in a manner that could only have caused extreme pain.

  “For the love of Isia!” breathed Filimaya. “What happened to you?”

  “It’s nothing,” said Naeo, pulling down her tunic and turning abruptly. “Are we going?”

  “Naeo, tell me what—”

  “It’s nothing,” said Naeo, emphatically, walking to the steps. She reached down and picked up two short twigs, which she brushed off and then pushed into her hair in a cross, holding her long locks high above her shoulders. She looked back. “Really, I’m fine.”

  Filimaya watched her climb out of the cave before setting out after her. When she reached the top step she found Naeo waiting outside.

  “Those are the marks of Thoth, aren’t they?” she pressed.

  Naeo sighed and nodded.

  Filimaya shook her head. “He used the Black, didn’t he?”

  Naeo paused. “Yes,” she said. “But it’s fine. I’m fine. It’s nowhere near as bad as what he did—”

  She stopped, the words catching in her throat.

  “As what, Naeo?”

  “As the things he did to my dad.”

  Filimaya was aghast. “Oh, Naeo,” she murmured. She reached out, but Naeo stepped away.

  “Like I told you, I’m fine.”

  “Are your wounds painful? Is there anyth—”

  “They’re painful when I’m made to think about them!” For a moment Naeo glared at Filimaya, but then her features twisted with self-reproach. She turned away. “Look, shouldn’t we be going?”

  Filimaya looked at her calmly for a moment. “Yes, of course,” she said.

  She patted Naeo’s arm and led her out into the dew-drenched forest. They walked over a stream, through a copse of saplings and between a gap in a thick tangle of bushes.

  Soon they reached a clearing bisected by the mildewed remains of a fallen tree. Ash was sitting on it, kicking at the crumbling bark with his heels while chatting to Kayla, who had rested her considerable weight on a protruding branch.

  “About time!” cried Ash. “It’s freezing!” He breathed a cloud of vapour into the chilly air to emphasise his point.

  Filimaya smiled. “The sun’s up, so the valley will warm quickly. A perfect day for a Say-So.” She squinted into the sun’s rays. “Come, we must make haste!”

  She led them across a field of drooping flowers, skirted a gully and then began to descend towards the lake. Pockets of mist gathered in the hollows and ditches, roots and dells, and the nearer they came to the water the more these wispy trails started to criss-cross their path, swirling about their ankles. When they finally reached the edge of the forest and gazed over the great lake, they saw nothing but a vast milky blanket, floating eerily over the surface as far as the eye could see. The morning sun had painted a pathway of luminous pink leading down the length of the valley to the gorge at its far end. There, the waterfall fizzed and smoked in front of the rising disc of gold.

  “It’s beautiful,” murmured Ash, entranced.

  “And more so every day,” said Filimaya, setting off down the bank and into the mist.

  Kayla grinned at Ash and Naeo. “OK, you two, time for a leap of faith,” she said, then set out after Filimaya.

  Ash and Naeo glanced at one another as the two women waded into the mist up to their waists, leaving twists of vapour in their wake.

  “OK then,” Ash shrugged. “I guess we’d better get our feet wet.”

  They wandered uncertainly down the slope into the impenetrable carpet of mist, all the while watching Filimaya and Kayla, expecting them at any moment to plunge into the lake. Naeo suddenly cocked her head on one side, then extended her hand out over the mists. The swirls ahead of them gathered, turned and rolled away, opening a path that revealed the mossy shore of the lake and led all the way to the women.

  “Well, that’s one way to do it,” grinned Ash, clearly impressed.

  Naeo gave a slight smile and a mock bow, then strode on.

  They quickly made up ground and soon they saw what Filimaya had been heading for: a boat, moored to a stump at the water’s edge. She drew to a halt and turned in time to see the remains of Naeo’s strange pathway. She blinked and frowned, then raised her eyebrows at Ash.

  “Ha! Don’t look at me!” he said, nodding towards his companion. “I’m not the only trickster around here, you know.”

  Filimaya looked at Naeo and then broke into a smile. “Deftly done, Naeo.” She waited a moment for Naeo to respond, but when there was only an awkward silence, she turned and pointed at the boat. “Well, come along. It’s hardly the Windrush, but our journey is short.”

  They all clambered into the rowing boat and had soon seated themselves on the bench that ran around its hull: all but Ash, who volunteered to take the oars.
The little boat glided over the glassy lake, mist rising at the bow and spiralling off into the air, catching the golden sunlight in a fiery trail. The passengers were just able to peep above the cloud, allowing them to watch the great valley drift past.

  Naeo gazed up at the steep sides of the hills and the luxuriant forest that clung to their slopes. She watched a trio of swans drift over the canopy, then drop slowly into the mists of the lake, before landing softly on the water. She watched the sun climbing in the sky, flecking the treetops with a shimmering gold. She saw all of this beauty, but it felt far away, as though she was looking through a sheet of glass.

  “You look sad,” said Filimaya, who had been watching her across the boat.

  Naeo gave no answer.

  “Is it your father?”

  Naeo turned and met her eyes. “He should be here. He should see this.”

  Filimaya smiled. “He did,” she said. “Years ago, before the Reckoning.”

  “You were here with him?”

  “I was. And he fell in love with this place. He found it as welcoming and healing as the rest of us.” She was quiet for a moment. “But it made him curse his Scryer’s eyes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Scryers see more clearly here than anywhere else. Bowe used to say that when anyone was near, their feelings got in the way of the view!” she said, chuckling affectionately as she remembered. “He would leave Sylva and walk for hours just to get away from us all.”

  Naeo’s face softened, but she said nothing.

  “He’ll come back one day,” said Kayla, placing a hand on Naeo’s arm.

  Naeo stiffened. “Maybe.”

  “Well I for one can’t wait to have a good look around,” said Ash, in a timely effort at good cheer. He looked at Naeo. “Are you up for that? After the Say-So?”

  Naeo shrugged.

  And then she turned away, looking up at the steep sides of the valley. She pulled a long, well-worn bootlace from her pocket and without looking at it, wove it deftly through her fingers, quickly forming the complex weave of a cat’s cradle between her hands. This simple twine was one of the things that had kept her sane in the long dark of the Dirgheon, taking her away from her thoughts, occupying her hands and her mind. And it showed, because without the slightest effort she threaded it into a web of stunning complexity, her fingers a blur as she gazed out at the valley, taking in its vastness and beauty. How different this place was to that, she thought; how light, compared with that despairing dark.