Worlds Unseen

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  He stopped a moment, and began again.

  “It seems to me as though those days were spent in another time and another world. Sometimes Mary would sing and play her harp. Stories and legends with words like fire, that caught all of our hearts aflame. Her songs were alive, and somehow ancient, and she never claimed to write them—she told me once that she sang what she heard. I can’t quite describe the way they sounded.”

  “I know,” Maggie interjected quietly. “She sang to me, too. Sometimes I think her songs are in me, somewhere—if only I could hear them.”

  Huss looked at Maggie strangely for a moment before continuing. “And then one day, Evelyn came. She was a young, beautiful woman. The laird had met her while he was in Cranburgh on business. He was fascinated with her, all the more because she seemed to have knowledge of the other world. She spoke sometimes of visions and strange powers, and claimed that miracles had been done at her hands.” He grimaced as he said the word “miracles”; Maggie could see the distaste he felt for it. “It was the laird’s dream come true—that we might find some way to bring the Otherworld into our own.

  “Lord Robert wanted her to join the council, but there was something in her that the rest of us could not trust. Mary, especially, was opposed to Evelyn. At first she was quiet about it. She managed to discover where Evelyn came from, and then she left us for a few days. When she came back, she stood up in the council and denounced Evelyn as a witch. Mary claimed that she had gone to Evelyn’s hometown, and found that the people of the village were deathly afraid of her. Rumour said—and Mary believed every word of it—that Evelyn had grown angry with two young men in the village and publicly cursed them. Later that same day, both young men came down with strange and horrible diseases. They were dead in less than three days.”

  A vision of Old Dan dying in Mrs. Cook’s guest room assailed Maggie, and she shivered.

  “That meeting was the undoing of the council,” Huss continued. “Lord Robert took Evelyn’s part—blind fool that he was. The rest of us were divided. Accusations began to fly between us all, until at last it was hopeless to think of working together anymore. In less than three days the council was no more. Evelyn, in that meeting, swore to kill Mary someday. Even then, Lord Robert could not see what she was.

  “And that is all there is to tell of the Council for Worlds Unseen. I came back to Pravik, nearly crippled by the shattering of a dream that had become more to me than I knew. But just as you recovered after the death of your foster parents, so I recovered after the death of my vision. I became a teacher, carrying on the work here in Pravik, keeping true history alive and out of the clutches of the Empire. I teach ancient languages, and legends, and dreams, but I teach only those who are worthy to learn.”

  He drew himself up as he spoke till he looked taller and somehow older than before.

  “I keep the memory of freedom alive in men’s hearts,” he said. “It is an extremely important work, and I am the only one left to do it. The old masters are dead, and I alone have taken up their mantle. To most of the world I am an eccentric old teacher of history, but to a few, like Jerome and Libuse, I am the single Professor of the Underground University of Pravik.”

  For a moment he stood, carried off by his own thoughts, and then he seemed to snap. His shoulders stooped back into their normal posture, and he smiled a little.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “So caught up in my own importance I’ve forgotten what I meant to say.”

  Very little order had appeared to Maggie in what Jarin Huss had said, and the pieces of her questions remained unconnected. But she said, “Tell me about the scroll. What does it have to do with everything?”

  “Yes, the scroll,” Huss muttered. He sat back down at the table abruptly. “The scroll is the sort of artifact that our council would have been very glad to get our hands on in the old days in Angslie. It dates back to the first year of the Empire, and contains the signature, written, I think, in blood, of Lucius Morel himself.”

  Maggie sat back in her chair. She caught her breath to think that she had carried something so old. She shook her head in disbelief as she remembered all the scroll had come through, amazed that the thing hadn’t crumbled to dust in her hands.

  “You can read it,” Maggie said. “What does it say?”

  Huss’s face became clouded, and his voice low. “It is a covenant,” he said. “A promise of power to the Morel family in return for an empire.”

  Maggie did not understand. “A covenant with who?” she asked, her own voice unconsciously lowering.

  “With a creature whose name will not be familiar to you,” Huss answered. “According to the scroll, his power must be passed to the Morels through a mediator—or rather, through a body of mediators. Mediators who have found what Lord Robert always sought—a way to bring the Otherworld into connection with our own.”

  He stood to his feet again, pacing. “I have known of this body for some time but did not completely understand their relationship to the Morels until you brought me the scroll. You have shed light on a most unpleasant secret, Maggie Sheffield. Even so, it is better to see it in the light than to fear it in the darkness. They are known as the Order of the Spider. I believe Evelyn is one of them.”

  Maggie felt a creeping sensation on the back of her neck. Huss had stopped pacing, but he did not seem about to say anything more. There was a long and uncomfortable silence.

  Maggie mustered up enough courage to say, “I don’t think I understand.”

  Huss looked at her as though he had forgotten she was there.

  “Do you believe in legends?” he asked, and smiled at Maggie’s puzzled expression. He sat down and leaned forward so that their heads were close together.

  “Once upon a time,” he said, “there was a king who ruled over all the world, a good king, and a just one. Under his reign the earth flourished, and its people were at peace and happy.

  “But among the King’s advisers was one who grew dissatisfied with his position in life. He envied his master, and he began to whisper in the ears of human beings, who were never inclined to be very strong, or very faithful. They listened, along with other beings who were not human—beings much like the discontented adviser himself.

  “There was a war. The adviser and his followers, human and otherwise, attempted to overthrow the King, and in the end, they succeeded. He went into exile, taking many of his followers with him.

  “The adviser, whose name was Morning Star, prepared to take the lordship of the Seventh World upon his own shoulders. But before he could, a Veil fell over the world—dividing that which was human and earthly from that which was not. Morning Star and his fellow creatures were cut off from humanity, and man was left to rebuild his world on his own—free from good and evil lords alike.

  “Thus began the Tribal Age, the beginning of history as we know it. Men divided into a thousand little factions and fought each other and starved, until Lucius Morel gathered an army and conquered them all. So now we have an Empire.”

  “The last part of your legend is history,” Maggie said, remembering her few lessons at the Orphan House, and their mention of the Tribal Age and the way that Lucius Morel had heroically united the world.

  “It is all history,” Professor Huss said, “though many would disagree with me, even call me a fool. It is history gathered from the ancient folk tales of the people of this world, stories long forgotten to most, but long remembered in the Underground University. But you are right: for centuries the teachers of our secret school treated the King as a legend only. His tale is nothing but a dream.”

  “But you don’t believe that,” Maggie said.

  “No,” Huss said, the smallest of smiles on his lips. “I do not. I believe that there was a king once, and I believe in the rebellion of Morning Star, and of the falling of the Veil. It was Lord Robert who first showed me that our university legends could be true.”

  Maggie cocked her head in question.

  “Lord Robert beli
eved in another side of reality—the other side of the Veil, Maggie, though he did not know the old stories. Beyond the Veil there are things too wonderful to imagine, but there is also a great Blackness.”

  “Morning Star,” Maggie said.

  “Yes,” Huss answered. He drew the scroll out from his robes and laid it on the table, pushing remnants of breakfast aside to make room for it.

  Huss’s long fingers tapped the parchment. “It is Morning Star’s name that is signed here along with Lucius Morel’s. Somehow the Order of the Spider is able to draw power from beyond the Veil, from Morning Star himself. That power has kept the Seventh World under the thumb of the Morel family for five hundred years.”

  Maggie’s throat had gone dry, and she licked her lips. “But you said that the power was in exchange for an Empire,” she said.

  “Yes.” Huss nodded. The smile had vanished from his face. “Morning Star intends to come back and claim the world he won in battle long ago.”

  “He can’t come through the Veil,” Maggie said.

  “The Veil is wearing thin,” Huss said. “Creatures have come through it. And there are other signs that the end is near.”

  Maggie shut her eyes as thoughts of the unearthly hound and the ravens washed over her. She wanted to deny that what Huss said was true; she wanted to make it only a legend and forget it. But she could not, for she had seen evidence of his words with her own eyes, roaming the forests and cities of the continent.

  “What can we do?” she asked at last.

  “Absolutely nothing,” Huss answered. Then a smile began to appear on his wizened old face once more, and he said, “But he can.”

  Maggie felt that Huss meant something very significant, but it was quite beyond her reach. He continued.

  “Lord Robert had one ancient piece of writing that held particular fascination for me,” he said. “It was a very old journal, and the language was nearly beyond even my abilities to decipher. The laird acquired it only a few short weeks before the council split up, in our third month together, so I had little time to translate from it. I did manage to render one poem into our modern language. I can still remember the words of it, though the journal is still in Angslie.”

  Jarin Huss closed his eyes and intoned,

  “When they see beyond the sky,

  When they know beyond the mind,

  When they hear the song of the Burning Light;

  Take these gifts of My Outstretched Hand,

  Weave them together,

  I shall come.”

  Maggie shook her head, frustrated at her own inability to understand, but Huss went on.

  “It is a prophecy,” he said. “There are other such hints in the folklore and legends of the world… ‘I shall come.’ The words of the King, unless I am greatly mistaken.”

  Strange words came to Maggie’s mind, and she spoke them without thinking. “He is the sun-king, and the moon-king, and all-the-stars king, and he shines like them all together.” In her mind she saw Marja in the vivid firelight, and the smoke from Peter the Pipe-Smoker’s pipe rising early in the frigid morning. She blushed at the realization that Huss was looking at her with a very odd expression on his face, and she hastened to explain, “I heard a Gypsy girl say it. She told a story about a man who went with the birds to meet the King, only… he didn’t come.”

  “The Gypsies remember a great deal that the rest of the world has forgotten,” Huss said. “In a way they are the last remnant of the Tribal Age. Yet, it is doubtful that your friend the Gypsy thinks of her story as anything more than a fairy tale.”

  “I suppose not,” Maggie said, and was glad to say no more. Huss began once again to talk.

  “The prophecy I quoted you was written before even the scroll,” he said. “I believe it foretells the coming of the King to this land. But it also gives a sign of his coming… the advent of the Gifted.”

  “The what?” Maggie asked.

  “The Gifted,” Huss repeated. “‘When they see beyond the sky; When they know beyond the mind; When they hear the song of the burning light…’ People with gifts of sight, of hearing, of healing, of knowing… of song.” He smiled tenderly. “Mary was Gifted, Maggie.”

  She looked at his piercing eyes, and could almost hear the songs that poured from Mary’s harp and soul… the songs that seemed to be within her still, just out of reach. Gifted. Yes.

  “In the council we were aware of Gifting,” Huss said, “although we did not know what it was, or how it was connected to the King. Lord Robert thought Evelyn was Gifted, and she may well have been. It only shows what blind fools we were that we never saw the Gift in Mary. John did, I think. And I know now, too late.”

  “The King is coming back,” Maggie said, just to feel the words on her tongue. It seemed as though they had to be spoken aloud; as though her voice had to say them. She shook her head suddenly. “How is that possible?” she asked. “He must have died centuries ago.”

  “You would be right, if he were human,” Huss said. “But he is no more human than Morning Star is… than a star is, or a sunrise, or the wind.” He reached down and touched the scroll. “Let us hope he returns before Morning Star does.”

  They fell silent for a while. Huss said, “What I have told you is not common knowledge even among my students. Jerome knows. He is my apprentice; he will be the leader of the university when I am gone, so it is necessary that he know. But I do not know if he believes. And Libuse knows a little, but her mind is very occupied with matters of the here and now.”

  “What are you going to do with the scroll?” Maggie asked. “I don’t know why the Order wants it back so badly, but they must… someone must, because I’ve been hunted by—by otherworldly creatures.”

  Huss held the scroll up in his hands. “I am not sure what to do with it, but I know that we cannot give it back to them. This, Maggie, is a weapon in our hands. It is the greatest weapon we could have been given. It is mightier than any sword could ever be.”

  “A piece of paper?” Maggie asked incredulously. “A tool of the enemy?”

  “The truth!” Huss said. “The truth that peels away five hundred years of deception. There is nothing the enemy fears more than that! That is why they destroyed the council at Angslie. Because we were treading on the borders of Truth, and that is a land they cannot risk our getting into. If we did we might shake free of them.”

  They were silent for a moment, but inside Maggie questions were shouting. Before she had a chance to ask them, the door burst open and Jerome stumbled in. His face was dark with anger.

  “Master Huss,” he said. “Forgive my interruption. The High Police have arrested Libuse.”

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  Salvation

  This day I stand most alone of all living things. This day I have seen Blackness, and there is no power of good beside me to fight it; this day I have seen treachery, and I have not the strength to speak out. My pen must do what my arm cannot; it must say what my tongue cannot. These words on paper must inspire men to return to the high things and turn away from the evil that drags and sucks and covers with filth.

  I, Aneryn the Prophet, have seen a great Spider in the Blackness beyond the Veil. I have seen a great treachery. In this moment I wish for the tongue of the Shearim, that I might sing out against evil; I wish for the strength of the Brethren of the Earth, that I might battle it; I wish for the companionship of men, that together we might form a fortress of hearts which the Blackness cannot penetrate. But none of these things is given me; I am alone; I am forsaken; and in darkness and sorrow I see…

  The Spider weaves a web and its strands pierce through the Veil, joined to the souls of men. Men themselves have called it to them. They have reached for the Blackness, and the Spider has answered them.

  On the strands of the web, power flows to the children of men. Even now they form an alliance one with another; Blackness calls to blackness in their souls. This night I have seen them light a fire, and it burn
s blue before my eyes. A brotherhood, they call themselves, to subject the world in darkness. This is their covenant with Morning Star.

  The tapestries of time flow before my eyes and I see the days to come. I know what this Order will do to the Seventh World. I see the bondage the Spider weaves.

  But I remember the King. I remember other visions. He will return, for he has spoken it in my soul, and I, the Poet, I, the Prophet, have heard. The Gifted Ones will challenge the Order of the Spider and they will conquer.

  I have seen it.

  * * *

  Virginia crawled forward on her hands and knees, feeling her way through the forest underbrush. The earth was cool and tangled with roots and leaves and moss. Insects ran over her hands as she moved. She felt it behind her: the power of darkness at her heels. Her wrists ached from the wounds inflicted by the shackles, her body from the jump from the train, and every pain grew sharper as the pursuer drew near.

  The ground sloped down. The sound of running water filled Virginia’s ears. She moved until her fingers found the cool brook, and she paused to bring the water up in her hands and drink.

  She stood and waded through the brook; then stayed still for a moment and strained her ears for the sound of footsteps through the rushing of the water.

  The darkness swirled around her for a split second and she saw a black-robed figure moving through the woods as silently as death.

  And then she smelled flowers, and heather-covered hills, and the coming of spring, though in reality the world was drawing close to winter. It was the smell of the King. His strength and love filled her with a fierce, quiet joy. She whispered, “I remember.”