Circles of Stone

by Ian Johnstone

  “I know you wouldn’t approve, Paiscion,” he muttered, “but in this godforsaken place, who really cares?”

  With that he closed his eyes and began.

  Naeo skidded to a halt by the Scrying Rock. She felt the earth shake under the charge of creatures somewhere out in the darkness. She yearned to turn and see how close they were, but she could not look, not now – she knew she had to trust Ash. She had to focus.

  Her eyes ran over the vast structure of jagged stones, edged in the silver of moonlight. It was beautiful and majestic, but at that moment it just filled her with dread and helplessness. Somehow she had to make it open itself to her, bow to her will. She had to ask it to do something that she could hardly even conceive of. It had to take her to another world.

  When she thought back to the Passing Bell, she realised how different that had been. Espen had been with her, guiding her, helping her to feel her way to the bell. And then the whole thing had been much easier to understand. It couldn’t have been more personal. It had been intimate and familiar, like reaching into herself.

  There was nothing familiar about this. She thought she would have so much more time to think this through, to work out what the stones needed from her.

  She felt the thunder in the earth as the Ghor drew ever closer. Her heart pounded, her mouth was dry, and she felt panic rising in her chest. She pressed herself back into the cold, hard stone of the Scrying Rock and closed her eyes.

  “Calm down, Nay-no,” she said quietly – the way her father had said it. “Calm down!”

  There was something about that silly name that took her back to him, that helped her to steady her breathing and gather her thoughts. She cast her mind back to the Passing Bell, to the web of fire that she and Sylas had mastered in the Dirgheon, to the power between them in the Garden of Havens: if she could do those things, surely she could do this. She just had to do something new, something different. Something … bigger.

  Much bigger.

  Her gaze travelled from the stones up to the silver disc of the moon, still half shrouded by a wisp of grey. She knew that the stone circle had been built to harness the power of the sun and the moon … the moon must have something to do with it. In fact, perhaps it was as simple as that!

  With a surge of new confidence, she took a step forward and raised her eyes to the moon.

  “Right then,” she murmured, feeling a tremor of excitement. “Let’s see about this other world.”

  She lifted her arms above her head, her hands gathering around the moon, and then she did the things that came so naturally to her. She closed her eyes, slowed her breathing and freed her imagination. She let it take her up on a silvery ray of moonlight, gliding into the night sky above the Scrying Rock and the wasted Barrens. She saw the perfect stone circle laid out below her, the Ghorhund bounding towards it and a single chariot bearing a slight lone figure, wielding a whip to drive the charge. All this disappeared below her into a dim grey mist before she turned her eyes upward, to the beautiful face of the moon.

  It glowed ever more brightly now, blazing in her wide eyes, bathing her in silver light. And as she felt its delicate power flowing over her body, she drew her hands aside, peeling away the trails of cloud, the murk and mist, the fingers of dust and grime that reached up from the Barrens. She cast them away as lightly as the air and opened the way to the moon.

  And then she opened her eyes.

  The last traces of cloud curled away from the moon, leaving it bold in a pitch-black sky. It sent down a cascade of pale light upon the Circle of Salsimaine, gilding the rough-hewn stones with a new grandeur, giving them an unworldly quality. And in that moment, with the great stone circle dancing in an outlandish silvery moonlight, another world seemed close and possible.

  Naeo held her breath, waiting for the stones to shift or the earth to open or some unutterable magic to bring her world crashing down.

  But there was nothing. The giant rocks stood tall and still and immovable, as though mocking her childish tricks.

  She felt another surge of panic.

  As her hands fell slowly to her sides, she heard a sound that made her blood run cold. It was a low, feral howl that started with a single voice and was soon joined by many, each adding volume and pitch until the Barrens echoed with the haunting lament. It was the cry of the Ghor, and with it something new: a screeching wail falling away to a carnivorous growl.

  Her skin prickled. Despite herself, she had to turn and look.

  She recoiled in astonishment. Out in the darkness of the Barrens, taller than the standing stones, was the beautiful figure of Merimaat. The new light of the moon played across her serene features, her shimmering gown, her long flowing hair. She gazed out towards the circle, implacable, wise and invincible, surveying her creation with a gentle but protective eye.

  Hope surged into Naeo like electricity. A bewildered smile formed on her lips.

  But as quickly as it came, it fell away. She saw how Merimaat held her head, a little to one side; she saw how her arms were outstretched with open palms, one withered and one fine but strong, holding a feather; she saw the too-perfect shape, the too-true form. And then she knew what it was. It was the statue – the one they had seen broken and defaced in the ruins of Grail – now restored to all its splendour. But this was not made of stone. Its features rippled and shifted in the breeze.

  As she realised what it was, the howl of the Ghor and the Ghorhund swelled to a feverish battle cry. They charged at Merimaat and leapt into the air, gnashing at her flanks, tearing at her limbs. And at the moment of impact, as their jaws snapped closed, her giant form lost its shape, broke into swirls and trails of vapour and disappeared into the darkness.

  Suddenly Naeo heard heavy footsteps to her side and she threw herself back against the Scrying Rock.

  Ash came tearing towards her, his expression somewhere between fear and jubilation.

  “I don’t think she’d mind, do you?” he panted. “Ready to go?”

  Naeo opened her mouth but nothing came.

  The triumph drained from Ash’s face. “Not… ready?”

  She shook her head.

  Together they turned and gazed hopelessly at the Circle of Salsimaine, and realised it would be the last thing they ever saw.

  “The difficulty with Glimmers is one of faith. Once you accept that they are real, everything about them starts to make a ghoulish kind of sense.”

  SYLAS HAD TO READ it again to grasp the meaning of it.

  “… what happens when one part dies an unnatural death – suddenly, violently – and yet the other remains alive? The answer, I believe, is the Kraven.”

  He shook his head, but he knew it had to be true. His skin crawled at the certainty of it.

  “We are intended to live and die in union with our Glimmer, but that bond can be broken. I believe that under some circumstances one half of us may be destroyed – killed in battle or some other violent act – leaving the other alive. In such cases, the two parts of our soul are not free to act together, and so they are torn apart: the one, to live on; the other, to become one of the Kraven, until such time as their Glimmer is ready to follow.”

  Sylas gazed into the fire. Those poor souls, cast adrift on the Barrens, waiting to be set free. No wonder they sought out the living; no wonder they yearned to take the life of another.

  He shuddered and closed his eyes. It was too cruel, too awful.

  Lying back, he propped his head on the box containing the quill. He needed to sleep, and that meant thinking about something else. He picked up the Samarok again, looking for lighter topics he might explore. He rested his eyes on the word ‘Glimmer’ and cleared his mind of all thoughts of ghosts and Kraven and death. Instead he thought of Naeo: her familiarity, her otherness. He thought of her face, so similar but so different; her character, so obvious but so surprising.

  The Ravel Runes sprang into life once again, turning and shifting, opening themselves to new words, new meanings. A moment later a fr
esh entry had formed. He began to read:

  “What we must also come to understand is how these Glimmers are connected to us and how they are separate. We must understand how their fortunes affect ours. When our Glimmer is blithe, are we sad? When we are hopeful, are they despairing? And what of knowledge? Do we find that we know the same things as our Glimmer? Or is their experience entirely their own?”

  Sylas glanced over at Triste’s sleeping form, remembering his questions by the river. “Aren’t you intrigued?” he had asked. Why had that question been such a surprise? Why had he not known how to answer?

  He yawned and rubbed his eyes, but he had to read a little more.

  “There are many questions, but there are certainties too. The knowledge of our Glimmer brings us hope. It makes us whole. It tells us that we are as full and true as all the great pairings of Nature: as life and death, man and woman, sun and moon. It unlocks within us something clear and bold and true. It lays the worlds before us and tells us ‘what you are not, the rest of you may be’.”

  Sylas was still breathing in the final words, when the ancient book fell and shut and he slipped off to sleep.

  “If you’re going to do something,” yelled Ash, “this would be a very good time!”

  They ran wildly, without hope, blindly following the narrow path of moonlight that led to the Circle of Salsimaine.

  The darkness on all sides was alive with movement, with black shapes running, prowling, jockeying for position. The Ghor and Ghorhund closed in behind and on both sides, their bodies thrown forward, their hungry mouths dripping drool into the dust. The other, slighter creatures prowled between them, filling the few remaining gaps. There were hundreds of them and they were everywhere.

  The only way was ahead now, into the stone circle.

  Still Thoth’s creatures did not attack. They were waiting for something, poised for a command. Perhaps for that reason, their snarls and growls had fallen away, leaving only the horrifying sound of claws swiping the dust, collars pulling at reins, teeth snapping.

  And then Naeo understood. The chariot came careering across the plain, driven by a hooded figure, pulled by a baying team of Ghorhund. Even in the silver moonlight she could see its ornamented gold and its vivid red trim, and it filled her with a new dread. It was Scarpia’s chariot, and it could only be her, risen from the dead in some new and abominable form. And then the chariot bounced and leapt and the hood fell away to reveal the Magruman’s dark and beautiful features – the same but somehow different – her unmatched eyes wide and her teeth bared.

  It would soon be over.

  Ash had seen her too and he reached out for Naeo’s arm.

  “It was an impossible dream, Naeo,” he said, more earnest than she had ever seen him. “It’s not your fault.”

  But Naeo did not turn or slow, she kept running.

  She looked at the Circle of Salsimaine, at the rays of the moon and the parting in the skies, and she knew that this was the moment. The moment upon which everything rested. The course of the two worlds, the passage of history, her life, Sylas’s life.

  And in that moment, as she thought of Sylas, it was clear to her that she had been wrong all along. She had thought that this was different from the Passing Bell, from the things she had done with Sylas; that this had nothing to do with her connection to him. But she realised then that it had everything to do with him. That in ways she could not understand, all the strength she had found to do the things she had done had flowed from Sylas. From her knowledge that he was there; from a sense she had that together nothing was beyond them. Somehow she had forgotten him just when he was most important, when she was trying to leave her own world and enter his.

  And then some new words entered her mind – unfamiliar words – but they came to her as her own: “What you are not, the rest of you may be.”

  She closed her eyes and forgot about the running and the Barrens and the horror of the attack. She did not see Scarpia tearing through her own troops, knocking them aside, her eyes wild with fury, or the strange, transparent being leaping from the chariot. Instead she returned to the moon, feeling its radiance, its stillness, its calm. She gathered its rays, turning them to her cause, sweeping them across the Barrens to the Circle of Salsimaine. If she had looked she would have seen those ancient rocks as they had been created to be seen: bright, beautiful and terrifying. But she did not look. She had turned her mind to something else.

  To the key to another world.

  To Sylas.

  As Scarpia screamed her command, as the massed horde closed in and Ash reached the first of the standing stones, Naeo filled her mind with her second self.

  In the same moment, something happened to the great stones of Salsimaine. The last remaining arches no longer bridged a void of darkness and dust. Instead they spanned a pool of moonlight. A shimmering, rippling surface of moonlight.

  Naeo reached out for Ash and took his hand.

  They ran towards the light.

  And then they were gone.

  THOTH STOOD ON THE white marble steps before the pure, rich elixir. Before the Black. Its glassy surface was clean and true, a perfect mirror, reflecting the only image that was worthy of it: the motif of his face, painted in oils on the ceiling, its gaping eyes glaring into the mystical pool below.

  His thin, grey fingers grasped the silver vessel and held it out over the depths, pouring out a silvery trail of water. Then he grabbed the golden urn, tipping its contents in too: no more than a sprinkling of dust, falling lightly through the air. Both substances disappeared as soon as they touched the silky black surface, causing no splash, no disturbance. Finally he lifted the candle from the tray, stooped his aged shoulders over the pool and lowered the flame to the liquid, allowing the two to meet for the briefest moment.

  Instantly the flame spanned outwards in an arc of fire, igniting the surface. A sheet of blue-white flame bubbled above the Black, sending up bright fingers of clean white light. Then, slowly, he crouched down next to the pool, easing his hooded face down so that the dancing flames lit the recesses of his hood.

  “O darkness deep, O black despair, I give water, earth, fire and air!” he growled. Then he breathed out in a wheeze.

  Suddenly the fire roared and the flames leapt high into the air, illuminating the painting of his face. As the fire crackled and raged, the Black began to change. Its surface churned and as it did so, bubbles rose to its surface, sending up black vapour, which mixed with the flames like black tongues of fire.

  Thoth began to laugh: a dry laugh that filled the Apex Chamber and echoed out of the openings, out into the night. It was a laugh of triumph at all he had achieved and all he was about to achieve.

  In response the pool began to heave and dance, slapping against the white marble sides. The Black rose in peaks that first muddled with the flames and then surpassed them, reaching up and up towards the painting of their conjurer.

  “Rise, my friends!” bellowed Thoth. “Join me!”

  The peaks of oily fluid ceased their rise and fall and began to broaden, lifting and bulging until they took distinct shapes. Some grew a protrusion near their top, a jutting growth that came to look a little like a snout, and from that smaller bulges rose, climbing into points, like ears. A clutch of canine heads found their form, and below them giant shoulders, chests and torsos, arms and legs, glistened among the flames. Elsewhere other figures began to take shape, those with slighter builds and human features. Then came the details: cloaks and crowns, beards and necklaces, long flowing locks and the hard edges of armour. All were made of the thick, fluid darkness, drawn up from the fiery pool of Black.

  Then these monstrous figures came to life. Black lids blinked over black eyes, black tongues ran over black lips, black fingers smoothed the curls of black hair. These were no statues or effigies: this was a congregation of Ghor and human, man and woman, priest and warrior.

  With one motion, the figures bowed deeply, leaving trails of dripping blackness.

/>   Thoth raised his arms in greeting. “Welcome, faithful friends, Guardians of the Four Lands,” he boomed. “You will return to your duties before long, but you will find this time well spent. I bring you here through the Black to talk – to talk of high things, to talk the talk of gods!”

  The freakish gathering shifted at these words, some leaning forward, some making another slight bow. All were transfixed.

  “Our forefathers gave to us a broken world of Upper and Lower Kingdoms, of rival tribes and warring nations. They gave us lands bathed in blood. But this empire, my empire, has brought great change. Now, all these blessed lands are united under a single crown. My crown. The Sekhemti.”

  He gestured to the top of the marble steps where a beautiful crown rested on a jewelled table. Its tall white centrepiece was surrounded by a dramatic, deep red outer ring, which swept high at the rear, making it both grand and imposing. He waited for their black eyes to return to him.

  “But we all know that there is a division that runs deeper than the rest,” he continued, “a division that defies the dominion of the Sekhemti. It is a cleft in our world, a rift between lands of immeasurable size and power, lands that span from the rising to the setting sun. We know them simply as this, and the Other.”

  The gathering became agitated, their expressions betraying their excitement. One of the Ghor licked its black fangs with a long, black tongue as if scenting prey.

  “For centuries we have allowed this second land, this ‘Other’, to abide. We have allowed it to pen its own languages, indulge in its own cultures, devise its own rule and allegiance, its own kings and gods.” He turned with a flourish of his cloak. “This we have done in the name of peace.”