by Simon Kewin
Except, she knew, that was no more than a comforting lie. The time was coming. Strange how, despite the long years of planning, she felt so unprepared.
From outside came the clatter of running footsteps, voices calling, as the others headed for the shore. She sighed and touched the star-shaped lamp that hung by a silver chain from the oak beam above her bed. She worked the simple magic to bring it to life. The gentle tug, a pinch within her stomach, was welcome, almost enjoyable. The familiarity, reassuring. The flame bobbed, wavered, then settled down, tinting the darkness yellow.
The tolling of the bell ceased. She reached into the night to borrow the eyes and ears of those already at the lake's edge. There was nothing on the dark waters, but she could make out a splashing sound, distant but clear. Oars dipping into the water, no rhythm to them. Someone unaccustomed to rowing, or someone hurt, was crossing the Silverwater to the island.
Hellen opened her own eyes. Attracted by the light, a moth the size of her hand had blundered through an open window. It was a Death's Head, the white and black markings on its back a little picture of a skull. Its tiny, rapid mind flitted around the room, the sound of its wings like paper being ruffled. It skipped across the books lying open upon her desk, touching the paper as if frantically seeking the answer to some puzzle. Then it gave up and flew out of another window, its mind fading into the night.
Hellen rose, groaning at her aching joints. She pulled a black ankle-length robe over her head and sheaved her hair into some sort of order with a scrap of purple cloth. She hauled on her boots and holding a shawl around her shoulders, went out into the darkness, too.
Twenty or thirty witches stood at the quay. Familiar faces cast worried glances toward her. She picked her way to the front and stood next to Ariane. The two old friends said nothing as they peered out over the water, their breath billowing in a faint mist. The torches set along the water's edge hissed and crackled, filling the air with scents of honey and beeswax. Hellen glanced at her friend. Wrinkles lined her chestnut-brown face. Ariane, too, had dressed hurriedly. Her feet were bare.
“So, who comes to this dreadful place at the dead of night?” asked Hellen.
“According to the shore bell, a man bringing a witch,” said Ariane.
“Alive?”
“Perhaps.”
Down a shifting pathway of gold light a figure rowed toward them. His exhaustion was clear. He stopped every few strokes, glancing over his shoulder to see how far remained. Then he dropped the blades of his oars back into the water and, with a great effort, hauled on them to nudge himself a little nearer.
When he was close enough a rope was thrown, vanishing into the night before reappearing with a heavy splash beside the boat. The man shipped his oars, grasped the rope, made it fast, then slumped forward, shoulders heaving.
As they drew him alongside, Hellen saw that a woman lay inside the small boat, furs covering her body. She looked young. Her hair was dark, black or deep brown, but her face, even in the yellow light of the torches, seemed pale. She wore knotted silver jewellery through her earlobes and eyebrows. One hand was visible, clutching the edge of the fur. For a moment, with the shadows playing about her knuckles, Hellen saw the moth there, before she blinked and it was the girl's hand again.
They pulled the man ashore. He was maybe forty-years old, round in the belly, hair thinning. Lines of fatigue marked his face. He panted, unused to such exertions. Certainly he was no warrior. He wore a fine cloak of brown wool with delicate whorls of embroidery decorating the cuffs and collar. A merchant, she guessed. She could feel the fear consuming him, coming off him like heat.
“Welcome to Islagray, friend,” she said. “We are grateful to you.”
The man bowed nervously, clearly unsure how to act.
Meanwhile, two witches lifted the girl from the boat. Ariane kneeled down and put her ear to the girl's mouth, touching her with two fingers on her forehead, neck, and breast. She took each of the girl's hands and examined them before gently releasing them. Then she looked up at those around her.
“Her name is Fer. A hedge witch. She is uninjured. She worked some terrible magic and the pain threw her into this stupor. In time she will recover.”
Hellen turned to the man. She read relief and weariness on his face. He still had not spoken.
“Will you tell us what happened?” she asked.
He spoke in a rush, a speech prepared and rehearsed for some time. “Lady, we travelled north together up the coast road toward Forness. Very glad of her company I was, too; the wilds round there are terrible. We were talking away when she stopped suddenly and looked toward the river, all alarmed. Stay here she says, and marches into the trees that line the road there. I stood for a while, the light fading, not knowing what to do. Then I heard two screams. One hers. Terrible it was. Another from something else. I … I didn't know what to do.”
“You considered running away,” prompted Hellen. “Who would not?”
The man looked uncomfortable. “My mother's sister was a witch. A good woman. I had to help. I made my way through the trees and found Fer unconscious in a small clearing next to the water, her feet actually in the An. The other creature was sprawled next to her, dead. Don't know what she did to it. Don't want to know. Only bones and tattered flesh were left of it. I tried to rouse her but couldn't. So I dragged her to the road, threw the goods off my cart, put her on and turned back south. I came as fast as I could. Oakleaf, my horse, is half-dead from the effort. And Fer has barely stirred all the way here. Lady, my name is Merdoc. I am a simple trader in spices.”
Hellen smiled, placed a hand on his arm. “You have done all you could, Merdoc. Rest here as long as you wish.”
“She is trying to speak,” said Ariane, still bending over the young witch.
Hellen kneeled as well. The girl's chalky face was more animated now, exertion lining her features. Her lips opened and closed as if she was trying to utter words too big for her mouth. Finally she managed a whisper.
“Undain.”
A memory of a dream flashed into Hellen's mind. She flew over Andar. The rolling patchwork of greens and yellows, forests and fields, stretched beneath her like a rumpled blanket. But the great river An ran red instead of blue. A thick, sluggish red. Shapeless objects floated in its current like clots. Not clumps of Floatweed and Swimming Jacaranda; even from this distance she knew these were bodies. A flood of bodies.
She met Ariane's eyes. A look of shock, as if she had been struck, pinched her friend's face.
“Merdoc,” said Hellen, standing up, first to one leg and then, after a pause, the other. “The place where you found her. Has it a name?”
“We were passing through the Crow Woods, a place called Gorse Point or Goose Point by those living nearby.”
“Very well. Come inside and rest now.”
Four of them carried the girl on a makeshift litter toward the stone buildings of Islagray Wycka. Hellen walked between Ariane and Merdoc. For a while, no one spoke. Worry glowed in Merdoc's mind as he fretted over what might happen to him.
“Tell me, Merdoc,” said Hellen. “What spices do you trade?”
“I carry chalce, bittersweet, lemane, red fireseed, black fireseed, lovespice, snakeroot – all manner of precious delicacies, borne thousands of miles up the Spice Route along the An. Through war and desert, over mountain and plain. From Azandia, Endest and even the distant lands of the Pirate Kings.” He sounded more sure of himself as he slipped into his merchant's patter.
“A cart load of such spices must have been a great loss to you,” said Hellen.
“They were my goods for the whole year. I trade them in the midwinter markets along the An. The farther north, the better the price. They say there will be an Ice Fair at Guilden this year. It would have been a good year for spice.”
“You were heading for Guilden?” asked Hellen.
“Every winter for twelve years now.”
“Tell me, is your quality good?”
; “The best.”
“What of your prices?”
“My customers always come back to me.”
“Very well, Merdoc. We will repay you as best we can. And if you come east to Islagray each year we will happily trade. We have need for spice. We can pay well, in gold and in other ways.”
Merdoc smiled, looking relieved. “I am honoured, Lady.”
“And no doubt it will make a good line at the markets, yes? Merdoc, supplier of spices to the Witches' Isle?”
His grin widened and he nodded.
“Very well,” said Hellen. “And we will do what we can for the brave Oakleaf.”
If her worst fears came true, they might not be here in a year's time. But for now, life marched on. This simple act of gratitude was the right thing to do.
A young witch whose name she couldn't recall took Merdoc to a bed. When he was gone, she and Ariane moved on slowly, letting the other witches outpace them.
“You heard what she said?” asked Ariane.
“I did,” said Hellen.
“Can it be true? Is such a thing possible?”
“You know what I believe. But perhaps her mind is lost in some nightmare and she was attacked by a pack of wolves.”
Ariane snorted. “I don't believe that and neither do you, old fool. Why would a wolf pack attack her? And if they did, they'd be no match. She nearly killed herself with the magic she worked.”
Hellen stopped walking. Away from the torches the stars shone cold and hard in the black sky. She shivered, the skin on her arms prickling with goose bumps. She tightened her shawl around her shoulders.
“Yes. There is something very wrong here,” she said. “Our brave trader said only bones were left of whatever the girl fought.” She peered upward, as if seeking for answers. “And I know of no magic that can strip a creature to its skeleton.”
“Something summoned or crafted,” said Ariane. “Some horror. The impossible has happened. This Fer simply spoke what she saw. An undain has come across the An and we are no longer safe.”
“We must be sure,” said Hellen. “I will go and see for myself. Once we know the truth we will meet, the whole coven.”
They resumed their plodding pace, neither speaking. They should send word to the other world, thought Hellen. Tell Jaiin. These events concerned her, too. She and the others there. But the aether had been so disrupted of late. Hellen hadn't been able to speak to them for months. Was Jaiin even still alive? Or had the undain of that confusing, cacophonous world found her after all this time?
More and more, Hellen regretted not telling the other witches everything she had done.
“Hedge witch, eh?” she said at last. “She's in for a surprise when she awakens.”
“I seem to recall another girl about her age,” said Ariane. “Muttering about covens and rules as though she wanted nothing to do with the place.”
“And she hasn't stopped muttering,” said Hellen. “Still plenty of time to give all this up. Take to the road and do some real good.”
They both smiled. It was an old conversation. A comfort.
“Something else in Merdoc's story troubles me,” said Hellen. “He said Forness can be terrible. It's nothing of the sort. This time of year the valleys are beautiful as the mists drift through them. The air is rich with autumn jasmine. Something strikes a wrong note there.”
“He is a man of towns and cities. He fears the wilds, fears the dark.”
“Perhaps.”
They made their way in silence after that. From beneath the Wycka, they began to hear the Song. To Hellen's ear, there were notes of sadness in it of late: lamentation, perhaps, for the fading beauty of summer. The sound swelled as they approached the main doors of the building. The singing was more subdued at night. But in the brittle darkness the discord to it was clear. The sound of something vast and unsettling approaching. It made her think of swarming bees or rumbles of distant thunder. She tried to follow the rhythm, but could not.
Back in her room she undressed. She washed with a bowl of water warmed on her smouldering fire, then found clothes for the journey. Stout boots, a thick serge cloak. She paused for a moment to think. She took a small leather pouch from a hook by her bed and tied it to her belt by its drawstrings. Then she made her bed, blew out the lamp and left.
Away in the east the sky lightened, the tops of the trees becoming visible against a purple backdrop. She turned away and stepped into the air, as if climbing an invisible staircase.
Hellen rose rapidly and floated over the buildings of Islagray, westward into the dark.
6. Undain
An unnatural emptiness shrouded the remains of the undain, fogging Hellen's mind. She had spent her whole life aware of the teem and rush of life. To stand here, in this muffled hush, unnerved her.
She could sense living creatures all around her, but they were pale ghosts of themselves. Only if she closed her eyes and reached with her whole mind could she feel the slow, sombre rhythm of the trees; the rapid, chattering life of woodland creatures; the panicky flight of birds. Some carnivore was there too, hiding and full of hunger, but she couldn't put her finger on where or what it was.
Far out in the unfathomable depths of the An she felt the ferocious, towering minds of the river serpents. She caught glimpses in her mind, creatures as large as a town, the bulk of their vast coils rolling in the water, a flash of a tooth longer than her own body. She gazed into the distance, as if she might see them.
Mists covered the An, as they did most days. A crisp chill floated off the water, like cold breath. North of her, up the coast, the spire of Caer L'dun peeked out, the sun's rays glinting off its high windows. From there the dragonriders waited and watched for attack from Angere. A watch they'd kept for nearly five hundred years. Although, if you listened to the muttering of tavern drunks, the dragonriders waited to welcome the undain, not fight them. But there. You could tell people the truth all you liked, but you couldn't always make them believe it.
Above the misty waters a transparent moon hung low, little more than tatters of lace with the bright blue sky visible through it. Everything was beautiful, peaceful. It was hard to believe that on that other shore, only a hundred miles or so, Angere actually existed. The Lost Land. The Lands of the Dead. It would be a surprise to many in Andar to learn the place was real and not some child's fairy story.
She'd seen it once, many years ago, as it stepped forward into the real world from the shadows of myth. One summer's evening some way north of here. She was young, barely a woman. She dangled her feet in the river, enjoying the cool water around her toes after trudging through the heat. She tossed stones out just to hear them splash. She thought about her mother, a hedge witch herself. Hellen planned to follow the same road. Islagray was a temptation but she'd decided she could do more good if she travelled around, helping where she could. With each woman she assisted in childbirth, each sheep or cow she healed, she would make the world a better place.
She'd looked out over the river, thinking about the An's eternal flow, from no known source to no known end. And suddenly they were there, distant but clear on the far shore, as if the two banks had crept closer together. Or as if the mists were a veil that had momentarily parted for her. Towers, domes and palaces, all sparkling in the evening light, stretching up and down the other shore as far as the eye could see. The white city of the undain. It was a moment of clarity for her in more ways than one. Her mind was suddenly made up. She would go to Islagray after all.
She kneeled, now, to examine the remains of the broken undain. The creature was, as Merdoc had said, little more than bone. A few tatters of flesh remained here and there. The undain was clearly sorcerous in nature, something that should never have lived. Bone and feather lashed together in roughly the right shape and only able to fly because of the death magic that filled it. Hellen retched from the rotting smell.
Worse than the stench was how the skeleton had been cut. Human bones sawn up and mixed with those of animals or so
me giant bird. She could not imagine what ritual had been involved in the creation of this flying creature. How long the ordeal must have lasted for the victims.
Something has begun. And yet this was no invasion. Was it a test flight? Were they being spied upon? She stayed on her knees for long moments, as if she could read meaning from the scattered bones.
She became aware of the attack a moment before it happened. The muffling fog that surrounded the undain burst and the familiar rush of life came roaring back. It was no mere carnivore that lurked in the trees. A vivid image of the five warriors flashed into her mind. For a moment she caught a glimpse of the scene through the eyes of the nearest one. The slender, silvery boughs of the trees like the limbs of a crowd of graceful giants. The serpentine blade he held in his hand. Autumn leaves, lemon yellow, blood red, whirling to the ground. The old woman, small and frail, kneeling by the river, seemingly oblivious.
For all her skill she was a weather-worker at heart. When pressed, it was to this art she turned. Magic flared within her, drawn in from her surroundings. It was easy here, the air thick with the rushing energy of the An. The pain would be bearable. Words of power burned the back of her throat, pleading to be spoken.
She paused, forcing herself to breathe as an older, wiser voice within her took control. No. This was no enemy. To harm him would be unspeakable.
She made no movement other than to lift her head toward her attacker, a warm smile on her face. “Ah, excellent. A young dragonrider to give me a hand up.”
The effect on him was immediate. He stopped as if struck, then sank to one knee and laid his sword at his feet, his head bowed.
“Forgive me, my Lady. I thought …”
“That I was undain, like this abomination. I may be old but there's still a little life left in me yet. And less of the Lady. My name is Hellen.”
He looked up at her, his eyes sharp. “I am Beltaine. And I know your name, Hellen Meggenwar. Forgive me. I know you are a friend.”
