The Shining City

by Kate Forsyth

  Olwynne walked on. She came through a door into the palace banquet-hall. Couples danced, minstrels played their instruments, candles shone among flowers. Olwynne’s father sat at the high table beside her mother, his black head bent over her curly red one. They shone with happiness.

  Donncan was dancing with Bronwen, who wore a wreath of flowers on her head. Her dress belled out around her as she spun, shimmering like moonlight. People jostled everywhere, drinking, eating, gossiping, all dressed in gorgeous silks and satins and glittering jewels. Everywhere Olwynne looked she saw laughing faces. She grew frantic, seeing nothing to help her.

  ‘Walk on,’ Ghislaine whispered.

  So Olwynne moved forward into the crowd. Through the twirling mass of people she saw someone in the shadows, a woman. Where all else was bright and gay, she was grey and still, watching. Olwynne walked slowly towards her, dread rising up in her throat like vomit. She realised mist was swirling up from the floor, dragging at her feet. She and Ghislaine struggled on, the mist now breast-high and smelling like an open grave.

  At last they came up close to the woman, who stood in shadow. The candle-lit banquet-hall seemed very far away, and the sounds came distorted, as if through water. With a jerk of her heart Olwynne saw two faces, two spirits, one inside the other like water inside a glass jug. With eyes inside eyes, mouth inside mouth, hand inside hand, intent inside intent, it was hard to see who she was. Just as Olwynne felt she almost knew her, the other face pressed out and took over, and the insight was lost.

  She saw the hand lift to the mouth, saw something dark and fierce fly out, straight across the dance floor, and into Lachlan’s throat. He jerked and slapped at his skin, as if at a stinging fly. His face grew livid. He stood and swayed and tried to cry out. Then he fell. The floor beneath him dissolved into darkness, and he fell away into it, his wings folding up about his face. Away he fell, into the abyss, and all that was left was one small black feather, floating in an eddy of air.

  Olwynne felt tears on her face, or rain. The scene slipped away from her, as if she stood on a boat on a slowly moving river. Mist surrounded her. Her whole body was numb with cold. The arm which Ghislaine hung on to ached fiercely. She would have liked to slip her hand free, to be released from that heavy weight, but she was too tired, too miserable. She began to long to wake up, to leave this dreadful nightmare behind her.

  ‘No’ yet,’ Ghislaine said. ‘We may walk each dream-road only once. We must walk on.’

  Olwynne shook her head. Her arms and legs were stiff and heavy as logs.

  ‘Walk on,’ Ghislaine urged.

  Olwynne tried, but her body would not obey her. She wanted to lie down in the boat and let it take her down the river into sleep.

  ‘Ye must no’ fall asleep in your dreams,’ Ghislaine commanded. ‘Olwynne! Rouse yourself! Walk on.’

  Olwynne tried. After a moment her foot moved, just a fraction of an inch. Her next step was a little larger. She felt excruciatingly painful pins and needles creeping up her muscles, and froze still, pressing her feet hard against the ground.

  ‘Walk on!’ Ghislaine cried, and Olwynne did. She was stumbling through icy mud and water, matted with reeds, obscured with mist, but she was walking.

  ‘Good lass,’ Ghislaine said, heartfelt relief in her voice. ‘Just keep on walking.’

  ‘Where to?’ Olwynne asked, hearing the despair in her voice.

  Ghislaine hesitated. ‘I dinna ken,’ she answered at last, very low. ‘This is a dark road ye walk, lass. I canna see my way.’

  ‘Which way am I meant to go?’ Olwynne cried out loud. ‘Help me! Which way?’

  ‘What do ye wish to see?’ Ghislaine asked. Her voice sounded strange, as if she spoke in a windy ravine. Her hand was icy-cold. ‘Or, more importantly, what are ye afraid to see?’

  At once there was another door before them. It was the colour of blood and had a knocker in the shape of a skull, with eyes that glowed. Olwynne dared not raise her hand to push it open. Her limbs were trembling. She looked at Ghislaine, wanting reassurance. To her horror she did not hold hands with the sorceress anymore, but with a small skeleton dressed in a long white nightgown. The skeleton turned hollow eye sockets to her, saying in that thin, echoing voice, ‘So cold. So cold.’

  Olwynne screamed and tried desperately to wrench her hand away. The skeleton clung on with unnatural strength. Olwynne felt as if it was crushing all the bones of her hand. ‘Help me,’ it whispered. ‘Help me.’

  ‘Ghislaine!’ Olwynne screamed.

  At once the sorceress was beside her, looking at her with startled eyes. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Dead … ye were dead,’ Olwynne panted.

  ‘It is only a dream,’ Ghislaine said. ‘Do no’ fear. I am alive, I guard ye still.’

  ‘Ye were dead!’

  ‘Walk on, lass,’ the sorceress said. ‘Trust me. Walk on.’

  So once again Olwynne stepped forward, through the red door, the muscles of her legs screaming in protest. They came out of the mist onto the white chalky road again. The raven circled in the leaden sky above them, calling, calling. Olwynne raised her eyes to it. The bringer of truth, she thought. A harbinger of death. What truth does it seek to bring me?

  She followed it down the road. They came to a crossroad. Ahead the road rolled on through grey moors, as far as the eye could see. To the left the road led to a dark wood, and to the right it wound into a valley where water ran. The raven came down to rest in the fork of a tree.

  ‘Which way?’ Ghislaine asked.

  Olwynne hesitated. She remembered the maze in the palace garden that led to the Pool of Two Moons. To find one’s way through the maze, one must always turn left. It was her instinct to turn that way now, but the wood looked forbidding indeed, thick with thorns and hanging with long veils of grey moss. Ghislaine waited patiently, and Olwynne took a deep breath and turned towards the wood. The raven spread its wings and flew ahead of them.

  A few steps, and they were within the wood. Moss brushed their faces, thorns tore their clothes and skin, tree roots caught their feet, mist swirled up about their waists. Olwynne began to feel afraid. The mist took on human shapes, flowing around them, whispering in their ears. ‘Open the door for us,’ they pleaded. ‘Set us free.’

  ‘What do ye do here?’ Ghislaine said sternly. ‘Ye must go on. The world o’ the living is no’ for ye anymore.’

  The ghosts began to weep. ‘The door has been opened for some, why no’ for us? Why no’ for us?’

  ‘The door must be closed,’ Ghislaine said resolutely. ‘It is time for ye to go on. Let go o’ this world, go on in your journey. Go!’

  A wind rose and swept away the mist, and the ghosts with it. They saw before them, hunched in the gloom of the moss-hung trees, a small cottage. The path led through a gate into a garden where many dark and deadly plants grew – yew and black elder and deadly nightshade and mandrake and stinging nettles and angel’s trumpet and mistletoe and wormwood. They pushed open the gate and a bell tolled, making Olwynne flinch. Reluctantly they walked up the path, their feet crushing plants underneath and releasing a foul odour. Olwynne lifted her free hand to cover her nose and mouth. The raven was perched on the porch-roof, watching them derisively. They passed under its gaze and came to a small door hanging open on its hinges. They ducked their heads and walked inside, Olwynne dragging back on Ghislaine’s hand.

  Inside the cottage all was dark. After a moment their eyes adjusted to the gloom. They saw a small room, with many sorts of strange things hanging from the rafters – dead bats, shrivelled lizards, mummified salamanders, bunches of dead flowers and leaves, great hanks of wool. Cobwebs drooped everywhere. The ground was thick with dust and dry leaves.

  In the centre of the room was a round hearth where a fitful fire glowed. Smoke from the fire found its way through a hole in the round, peaked roof. Hunched beside the fire was an old hag, a spinning wheel before her. Whizz, whizz, went the spinning wheel, as it spun roun
d and round, impossibly fast. From it flowed a long, smooth thread of crimson wool.

  Squinting her eyes against the smoke and the gloom, Olwynne could just make out another old hag working a loom on the other side of the fire. Clack, clack, went the loom, impossibly fast. A scene grew on the warp and weft of thread, a moving picture. Olwynne could see dancing figures, minstrels playing, servants carrying laden platters of food and brimming jugs of wine. She saw a girl in a silver dress, spinning. Her breath caught.

  ‘Time to cut the thread?’ a wheezy old voice asked. ‘Now, at last, is it time to cut the thread?’

  Another old and ugly woman shuffled out of the shadows, dressed all in black, an enormous pair of silver shears in her hands. Whizz, whizz, went the spinning wheel. Clack, clack, went the loom. Click, click, went the shears.

  ‘No!’ Olwynne cried. But the thread had been cut. It unspooled across the floor, red and liquid as blood.

  The old woman turned towards her. She grew taller and taller, stretching up until her face was lost in shadows. Or maybe Olwynne was shrinking, she could not tell. The whole house seemed to be growing, the death-hung rafters as high as the night sky, the spinning wheel as huge as a mill-wheel.

  Then the woman bent low to look Olwynne in the face. She was no longer a hideous, wizened old hag, gap-toothed and crook-nosed, but cold and beautiful and terrible. She wore a hood white as bone.

  ‘All threads must be cut,’ she said softly. ‘In the end, all threads must be cut, even yours. There is naught to be afraid of in that.’

  Olwynne huddled against the floor.

  The woman smiled. ‘Do not fear. Your time is not yet.’

  ‘My father,’ Olwynne croaked.

  ‘It is not his time yet either,’ she answered. ‘Not yet. Not yet.’

  ‘But soon,’ Olwynne said.

  The Cutter of Thread nodded. ‘Yes. Soon. Though I have slid his thread through my scissors many times before and yet not cut.’

  ‘So he may be saved?’ Olwynne asked desperately.

  The woman turned back to her, lifting one eyebrow. ‘Perhaps. Though if I do not snip one thread, I must snip another. My blades must have blood.’

  ‘How? How can I save him?’

  ‘You ask me?’ she said, and laughed as she moved back into the shadows.

  Olwynne stretched out her hand to the Spinner. She was a hag no longer but a beautiful young woman, with pale hair fine as dandelion seeds. ‘Please,’ Olwynne begged. ‘Tell me how I can save my father.’

  ‘Forewarned is forearmed,’ the Spinner said, not looking up from her wheel.

  ‘Please, can ye no’ help me?’

  The Spinner looked up. ‘I already have,’ she answered. ‘Walk on.’

  Without volition, Olwynne’s feet dragged her forward. Cottage and garden were lost at once. She found herself following a billowing rope of red silk, hurrying along through smoke and mist. Ghislaine hurried beside her, their hands still glued together.

  ‘Where now?’ Olwynne cried. ‘Is it time to wake? Can I wake now?’

  ‘Walk on,’ Ghislaine panted. ‘We will never walk this road again. Walk on as long as ye can.’

  ‘I canna, I canna,’ Olwynne cried.

  ‘The Spinner said to walk on,’ Ghislaine said. ‘Ye must do as she said.’

  So Olwynne stumbled on. The silk rope led them through great barriers of thorn and thistle and strangling snakes of vines and veils of moss. They heard the raven cry, and saw the black of its wings as it soared ahead of them. The fog grew so thick they could not see their own hands. The silk unravelled and disappeared. Hand in hand, they fell to their knees in the mud.

  ‘Where now?’ Ghislaine muttered. Her hair was snarled and tousled, and filled with burrs. Her face was scratched and bleeding. ‘There is no road. We’re lost.’

  Olwynne peered through her damp tangles of hair. Against the formless grey of the mist, with trunks and branches and vines all looming through, she could see only one moving thing. ‘The raven,’ she whispered. Then she repeated what Ghislaine had said to her earlier. ‘What do ye wish to see? Or, more importantly, what are ye afraid to see?’

  ‘The raven,’ Ghislaine said, lifting her face.

  Olwynne struggled to her feet, helping the weary sorceress stand. Fixing their eyes on the black bird, they followed it helter-skelter through the forest. It led them out into a vast clearing. An avenue of yew trees led to a dark hulking building, surrounded by tall evergreen trees. A long pool of water stretched out before it, lined by yews and ghostly white statues. Involuntarily Olwynne and Ghislaine’s footsteps slowed. Horror and dread weighed down their limbs. They crept forward, following the raven. It hopped up the wide steps, cocking its head to look back at them. Then it disappeared inside a yawning black door. Slowly, clinging together, they followed it.

  Inside was a mausoleum. Tombs lined the walls on either side, each topped with a stone figure, lying with arms crossed on their breast. Iron gates barred the way into vaults on either side. Carved atop every pillar were stone ravens, only the white of their marble distinguishing them from the living raven perched on the breast of a sepulchre lying on a raised platform at the far end of the mausoleum. Together Olwynne and Ghislaine walked up the long shadowy hall and paused at the foot of the steps.

  The raven suddenly took flight in an explosion of black wings. Olwynne cried out, all her nerves jumping.

  A man leant out from the shadows. He had a strong, ruthless face, and his dark hair and beard were streaked with grey. He leant on a tall staff, and his fingers were laden with rings. Then he came slowly down the stairs, and they saw with shrinking hearts that he was clad in a trailing white shroud. They could see the stone steps behind him, as if seen through dark glass, and a dank, horrible smell swept over them.

  ‘What do ye do here, dream-walkers? It is no’ in dreams that ye can rouse me. I must have blood – hot, living blood. Go back and come again in daylight.’

  There was such menace and power in his voice that both Ghislaine and Olwynne shrank back, their fingers clutching tightly at each other.

  ‘Begone! The dream world is o’ no use to me, no more use than the world o’ spirits. Come again in daylight, with a living soul and a knife, and then ye shall see me walk again. What? Have ye no’ read the spell aright? What ails ye, dream-walkers?’

  Ghislaine tried to speak, but her voice failed her.

  The ghost made an impatient gesture with his hand. ‘I say to ye, begone!’

  At once they were seized with a rushing wind. It whirled them away, hair and skirts and limbs spun round and round them like a corpse’s winding-sheet. They could only cling together desperately, choking on their own hair, buffeted by sleet-laden winds. They had no idea which way was up or down; they were lost once more in a storm, an abyss, a star-whirling darkness.

  ‘Help us!’ Olwynne called. ‘Please, please, help us.’

  Her reaching hand felt the brush of a sticky silken thread. She managed to seize it between her forefinger and thumb. Again they swung back and forth for a moment, joints screaming as gravity sought to rip them apart. Then, spinning more smoothly, they were brought up out of the pit. Silken threads spun them all around, a soothing cocoon that swiftly muffled their eyes, their ears, their mouths, their limbs. For a moment Olwynne was cradled like a child then, very gently, she was lowered to the ground.

  ‘Olwynne, wake up!’ a hoarse, insistent voice cried in her ear. ‘Olwynne, ye must wake. Ye must no’ sleep in your dreams.’

  She ached all over. Her eyes were sore and gritty. Tentatively Olwynne raised one hand to rub them. Pain lanced through her temples.

  ‘Olwynne, wake up!’ the voice commanded.

  Reluctantly she opened her eyes. She saw Ghislaine leaning over her. The sorceress’s hair and clothes were wildly tossed, but there was no sign of any scratches on her face and arms. She looked white and sick. It was dawn. The dim light hurt Olwynne’s eyes cruelly. She shut them again, but Ghislaine shook her and c
alled in her ear until she opened her sticky eyelids again, murmuring fretfully. Suddenly nausea overwhelmed her. She rolled over and retched into the grass.

  ‘Do no’ sleep again,’ Olwynne said. ‘The dream-road is still too close. Let it unravel, else ye may be drawn back into the dream and never escape. We came close to death this night, ye and me. I do no’ wish to tempt the Spinners by returning to their realm.’

  Olwynne wiped her mouth, feeling sick and dazed. Her head ached so fiercely she had to press both hands into her temples.

  ‘Come,’ Ghislaine said. ‘Can ye walk? We must go back and tell Isabeau what we saw. They were terrible visions indeed. And there were crossroads in your dream, roads we did no’ travel. This does no’ augur well at all. We shall have to travel together again, when we can, ye and I.’

  ‘I hope no’,’ Olwynne said. ‘Never again.’

  ‘That would be a shame,’ Ghislaine said. ‘Ye have talent indeed. I would like to take ye on as an apprentice, when ye are auld enough. Though I hope no’ all your dreams are so dangerous.’

  ‘Was it really all just a dream?’ Olwynne felt so dazed and disorientated she could barely look Ghislaine in the face. ‘It felt so real.’

  ‘Aye, a dream,’ Ghislaine answered. ‘And, like all dreams, unknowable.’ She sighed and shuddered. ‘Indeed, ye have been travelling a dark road,’ she said. ‘Come, can ye get up? We must try and pin the dream down while we can. It will fade all too soon. And ye will be sick enough to swoon, both o’ us will.’

  Olwynne rubbed her aching forehead. Just moments before, the dream had been all too vivid and real. Already it was dissolving like ink in water.

  ‘What does it all mean?’ she wondered aloud, pain needling her temples. ‘Eà’s bright eyes, what does it mean?’

  ‘Dark times ahead,’ Ghislaine said. ‘That much I can tell ye. Dark times ahead.’

  Lewen stepped forward and poured his Rìgh another cup of the dark, bitter brew called dancey which Lachlan liked to drink first thing in the morning. He said it sharpened the mind and gave a warm glow to the day, but Lewen had never been able to acquire a taste for it himself. Neither had the Banrìgh, Iseult of the Snows, who was drinking rosehip tea sweetened with honey.