by R. K. Hart
When the clothes were all unpacked, she pulled out her other belongings. A wide-toothed comb of silver that Marnie had given her; it had belonged to Marnie’s mother, and Marnie only had sons. A tiny bag of red velvet that held Siva’s necklace, a silver chain with a single drop pearl, which Lida immediately stuffed under her pillow. The Eilin Histories and Tales from Across the Kelti Sea went on the bedside table. An oval locket of rose gold she had been given for her tenth birthday; she’d begged Maya and Cathan for locks of hair and they lay plaited together with one of Lida’s own curls inside. With difficulty, she fastened the chain around her neck instead of putting it safely away, pressing the locket to her lips.
There was something else: a green woven pouch. It took her a few moments to realise what it was.
‘Oh, Maya,’ she breathed, opening it with trembling fingers to pull out the vial. She carefully unscrewed the lid, and scent filled the room; Maya had known, then, how much her sister loved it.
When Ava came, bearing a tray heaped high with food and a mug of tea with willowbark, she found Lida curled into a ball on the forest-green rug, sobbing and heartsick. She carefully placed the tray on the bedside table and sat, pulling Lida into her arms and stroking her hair. They stayed that way for a long time, Ava murmuring all the while in Setiian, until Lida finally stopped crying and began hiccupping.
Ava gently disentangled herself, disappearing for a minute to return with a handful of crisp white parchment, a quill, and a small pot of ink. It was exactly what Lida hadn’t known she needed, and so she sat on the floor with a tear-stained face and aching chest to write her father and sister their overdue letter, pausing occasionally to breathe in the scent of roses and summertime and home.
Chapter Seven: The White and the Gold
‘It’s the room with the windows. You can’t miss it,’ Lida said under her breath, mimicking Mikal’s soft rolling accent. She looked around her and all but hissed in frustration.
The third storey of the Illarum was all carved redwood, warm and stately and very formal; it made Lida feel small. To her left was the beautiful bannister separating her from a three-storey drop to the hard floor of the lightwell. Above her stretched the frantic web of metal and glass, almost overwhelmingly large now that it was so close, framing an overcast sky; Eilan was finally starting to realise that summer had ended, and the weather was responding appropriately. To her right was a row of closed doors, all identical.
She summoned her courage and walked to the first one, knocking. Receiving no response, she pushed it open.
It was a library. Filtered light shone from curtained windows, gently illuminating haphazardly placed desks and shelves overflowing with books and parchment. It was empty of people, though Lida caught the scent of coffee through the must of old paper and thought she might have just missed someone.
She stepped back outside, closing the door softly and moving to the next.
It opened into a bathroom, with several tubs sunk into the floor. This room was far more sumptuous than the one Lida had used in the infirmary, tiled in white marble and walled with mosaics of colourful repeating patterns. Lida wondered who used it; it was very grand.
The third door was locked; she moved straight onto the fourth, knocking loudly before she entered. It was a guest suite, clearly meant for someone important: its bedcover was cloth-of-gold, the walls set with matching candelabras and hung with tapestries showing scenes of rural Eilan, all rolling green hills and woodland woven in greens and silvers. Lida didn’t like it much; she preferred comfort to finery, and for all its lavish decoration, the room was unwelcoming.
She had luck with the fifth and last door. As she opened it, light flooded out and she blinked rapidly as her eyes adjusted. The floor was covered in thick green carpet, and at first Lida thought that the room was missing a wall and was open to the sky outside; as she stepped in, she realised that instead of external walls and a roof, this room simply had huge windows. It made her feel as if she could walk out and fall into the sea; the waves glinted all the way to the horizon.
‘Alida.’
Lorcan sat cross-legged on the floor, a book open in his lap. She hadn’t seen him since the testing, and he looked much less wild than he had that day, nestled comfortably on the thick carpet with a cup of coffee next to one knee, his hair neatly braided back and tied with black twine.
‘I’m in the right place, then,’ she said, half-jokingly.
‘I was going to come and find you if you did not make it.’ He snapped the book shut and set it to the side, taking up his coffee.
Lida moved to look out at the ocean. There was a tiny ship out riding the waves, its white sails stark against the dark blue of the sea.
‘Hullo, Lida,’ Marlyn said from the doorway. Lida turned to smile as Marlyn tucked her hair behind her ears, then gestured to the slight Eilin boy following her into the room. ‘This is Tomas.’
Tomas was a few years younger than Lida, and wore a serious expression under a shock of thick, light-brown hair. He gave Lida a nod and studied her face for a long moment, but did not speak.
Tiernan arrived close behind. He looked less formidable than he had in the Star Hall, framed against the grey sky. ‘Welcome, Alida,’ he said, inclining his head. ‘We are happy to have you.’
He gestured to the floor and Lida flushed with nervousness, taking her place near Lorcan, bending her knees and pulling her feet primly to one side.
Tiernan spoke briefly to Marlyn and Tomas, instructing them on their work for the morning. Lida listened, but understood very little, and when Tiernan was done and Marlyn and Tomas had moved to the far end of the room, he turned and sat straight-backed before Lida and Lorcan.
‘You have already completed the first lesson we teach,’ he said to her. ‘You do not need to learn how to shield, but we do need to teach you to lower it. Everything is going to be backwards for us, so you must be patient, yes?’
Lida nodded, frowning. Her heart thrummed.
‘Close your eyes.’
She did as he said, feeling uncomfortable until he started to speak slowly and softly, leading a series of breathing exercises that Lida knew well. Cathan called it meditation and had taught both Lida and Maya as children. He said he’d learned it in the north, and found it helpful when he needed to be calm, which, given his quick temper, was quite often. It was so familiar that Lida sank easily into a trance-like state, feeling comfortably light-headed, her fingertips tingling.
‘Good,’ Tiernan said softly. ‘Now, in your mind’s eye, look up. What do you see?’
Lida imagined looking upwards, but she could see only darkness. ‘Nothing.’
‘All right,’ Tiernan murmured. ‘Look below you. There is a flight of stairs. Can you see it?’
She looked down, and after a handful of moments they were there, materialising from nothing as she concentrated. ‘Yes?’
‘Tell me about them.’
‘They’re sandstone,’ she said. ‘Sandstone edged with grass. I can see wildflowers in the green. There’s ten steps.’
‘What is at the end?’
Lida felt herself frown. ‘I can’t see.’
‘Walk down and find out.’
She did as she was asked. As she walked down, each step became more solid; she could see every blade of grass alongside them, see every crack and variance in the stone, every petal on the wildflowers. She could feel the gently rasping hardness under her bare feet, and her tunic brushed against her thighs as she moved.
‘What do you see, Alida?’
‘A plateau. Then three more steps, then mist.’
‘Mist?’
‘It looks like mist. It’s golden and moving around in tendrils. It’s beautiful.’
There was a short silence. ‘All right,’ Tiernan said again, slowly. ‘Can you look up? Look up, and tell me what you see.’
Lida looked up. There was a glow there, too, but it was solid, an unbroken barrier stretching as far as she could see.
‘M
ore gold. It’s not mist; it’s like a wall. I can’t see through it.’
‘That is your mindshield. Can you reach up and touch it?’
She found that she could, though a few moments before it had seemed very far away. She trailed her hand over it, realising that it was not, in fact, solid; rather, it was like chain armour, made of thousands and thousands of tiny links of gold, all falling together to create a barricade.
‘I can touch it.’
‘Can you tell me about it?’
She told him. Somebody took a sharp breath in.
‘Can you see a way through?’
She pushed her hand against the links. They swallowed it up to the wrist, reforming around her arm, pushing firmly against her fingers. No matter how hard she shoved, she could not get through. Somewhere far away, her temples began to pound. ‘No.’
‘You are still standing on the plateau, are you not?’
She looked down at her bare feet on the sandstone. ‘Yes.’
‘Beni. I want you to walk back up now.’
Lida turned. The mist shifted, tantalising. Her fingers itched to touch it.
‘Alida, walk back up now.’
She folded her arms across her chest and walked back up the sandstone stairs.
She came back to her body slowly, guided up by Tiernan. As she rose back to full consciousness, she realised that she could still feel the shield: it was almost as if a thick blanket had wrapped itself around her mind.
She blinked wordlessly at Tiernan until she found her tongue again. ‘What’s in the mist?’
He didn’t answer. ‘I think that is enough for today.’
Lida looked past him, searching for the sun. ‘But it’s only mid-morning!’
‘Yes,’ he said steadily, his grey eyes expressionless. ‘And I need to speak with Ava and Rikard. You may go, Alida.’
‘But Tiernan -’
‘You may go, Alida.’
She stared at him for a long, tense moment, then pushed herself up with her good hand and left the room, her cheeks burning at the abrupt dismissal, feeling four pairs of eyes hot on her back.
She fumed as she walked down the stairs. She didn’t see that she had done anything bad enough to warrant Tiernan’s sudden dismissal; she had followed his instructions, including ignoring her own compulsion to step down towards the shifting golden mist.
‘Perhaps it was wrong,’ she whispered crossly to herself. ‘Perhaps I’m wrong.’
She wasn’t too old to half-slam her bedroom door behind her in a tempest of shame and anger, feeling awfully like a small child being sent from a room in disgrace.
She skipped lunch that day, spending her time in the stables instead. She brushed Sacred for over an hour, as best she could with one arm. When the mare’s chestnut coat shone, Lida carefully combed her mane and tail. When there was nothing left to brush, she went to the orchard and helped Alys, a pretty Brinnican girl Lida’s own age, fill buckets with ripe apples. Alys was sunny and quick and kind; her white-blonde hair was braided in a series of intricate plaits and tied with an ice-blue ribbon that matched her eyes. Lida perched unsteadily in the lower boughs of the trees and tried to forget the embarrassment simmering in the pit of her stomach as Alys chatted easily, requiring only the occasional interjection from an unusually taciturn Lida.
At dinner, Lorcan caught her eye from across the dining hall and pushed out a chair, indicating that she should join him. She stared at him for a moment, considering what to do as her cheeks burned; he had not said anything when Tiernan dismissed her, just watched, his dark eyes wary. In the end, she waited too long and the decision was made for her as a pretty Erbidan woman slipped into the empty chair and touched his arm. Lida pushed her hair over her shoulder and turned away, sitting instead with Jed and the Setiian man, Kieran, whom she’d seen lose to Ava in the training ring.
Kieran, it turned out, was rather handsome close up, with caramel hair and wide hazel eyes set in a strong, angular face. Unfortunately, Lida thought Marlyn might have been right, as he was very quiet and spoke only of training, but Jed was easy-going and warm. Lida took a spiteful enjoyment in laughing and smiling slightly more often than was necessary as she picked at her dinner, studiously refusing to look back towards Lorcan, who carefully placed his hands under the table as his face settled into an impassive mask.
When she arrived at Tiernan’s teaching room the next morning, Lorcan greeted her politely enough, but did not bother to close the book on his lap, returning to his reading as if she wasn’t there. She reciprocated in kind, standing at the glass wall to look out over the sea. It was overcast again, and there were a handful of gulls riding the breeze over the cliffs. The sea tugged at something deep in her chest, and she thought wistfully of how nice it might be to live somewhere with a view like this, to look out each day and see the blue stretching before her.
‘Lida?’
She turned to see Ava standing in the doorway, dressed in her healer’s tunic and white pants, raising her eyebrows questioningly.
‘What are you doing here?’ Lida asked by way of greeting, smiling.
Ava glanced at Lorcan, whose eyes were still on his book. ‘Tiernan asked me to work with you today. Did Lor not tell you?’
Lida blinked. ‘He must have forgotten,’ she said sweetly.
‘Forgotten,’ Ava echoed, narrowing her eyes. She shook her head and gestured for Lida to sit. ‘Let’s start, then. Lor can talk you down, and then, with your permission, I’ll try to join you.’
‘Join me?’
Ava shot Lorcan a glare. ‘I’ll try to find my way through your mindshield.’ She folded gracefully to the floor and pointedly looked at Lorcan’s hands. ‘We can go elsewhere if we’re disturbing you, Dar-Oidre.’
He calmly closed the book and gave them his full attention, his face unreadable. ‘Sit down and close your eyes,’ he said to Lida.
She twisted her lips but did so, listening as he guided her through the breathing exercises. She was quite sure she would have managed without his help, but he did it well, his smooth voice measured and quiet, and she sank quickly into a trance.
‘Ava is going to take your hand,’ he said, and Ava’s fingers curled around hers; the touch felt very far away. ‘Find your staircase and wait for her there.’
Lida looked down and the first sandstone step appeared before her, solid and comforting, flanked by lush green grass scattered with wildflowers. She waited, tilting her head back to study the golden expanse of her mindshield.
‘Just a few moments longer,’ Lorcan said. ‘She is on her way.’
Lida waited, and started to count the petals on the wildflowers. There were six petals on the white flowers and five on the blue; the flowers were different shapes, too, the white with pointed petals, the blue with petals that were rounded and soft.
She took a step down to count the flowers themselves. They expanded in number as she concentrated, so she could never reach a total. Seventy-five wildflowers. She took three quick steps down, counting as she went. One hundred and forty-one wildflowers.
‘She is coming,’ Lorcan whispered. ‘Wait for her.’
Lida waited, and counted. Three hundred wildflowers.
She found herself at the bottom of the staircase, up to five hundred and sixty-three wildflowers and still counting. There were more flanking the three steps before the mist, so she stepped onto the sandstone plateau.
The mist shifted, almost close enough to touch.
Lida looked back up the steps. There was no sign of Ava. A thrill shivered through her as she took a step down, and then another.
The mist pulled back, inviting her in.
With one quick glance behind her, she took the last step, wildflowers forgotten, and was enveloped in gold.
She stood still for a moment, then pushed forward. Everything around her shimmered like morning dew.
She jumped as she saw a shape to her right, but she felt no danger, just surprise. Curious, she pushed closer.
&nbs
p; The mist reached out and suddenly Mikal was beside her, naming the different herbs in the garden as he’d done only two days earlier, his arm linked comfortably through hers. She could smell dirt and the sea and a light breeze rustled through her hair.
Lida frowned and shook her head to clear it. When she looked back up, Mikal and the garden were gone. All was gold. She paused, then took another step.
Delia’s hands glowed as she placed them either side of the young woman’s face. The blood running from the girl’s skull was very red against the dark blue of the curtain behind her. Maya and Jula stood to one side, hovering as Delia started to work.
‘Get away,’ the young woman moaned. ‘Get away! Filthy sluah!’
Lida blinked quickly, and took another step.
Marnie’s son Marius pushed her hard against the stable wall, his mouth hot on hers. As she had just a month ago, she tilted her head back to let him kiss along her jaw and down her neck, her breath coming quick as his hand slipped up her shirt, calloused fingers rough on the aching skin of her breast. Footsteps crunched on the stable block floor and they sprang apart, the afternoon sun shining on his caramel hair.
Lida put a hand to her temple as more memories came to her, delivered in the tendrils of mist.
Maya moaning in pain, bedridden with measles, and Cathan’s brow creased in worry as he sat beside her, a masked Jula coaxing a tonic between her dry lips. Sweat and sickness were heavy in the air.
‘Get out, little one,’ Cathan ordered tersely, and Lida wrapped her arms around her stomach and left, sliding down the wall to sit just outside the door, waiting.
Her fingers searching through matted fur to pick the fleas from a mangy cat that had followed Cathan home from a farm one day. Lida listened to her piteous meows over and over as the sound slowly broke her heart. Her fur was coarse and thick in Lida’s fingers, and when she finished her work, the cat turned to lick her thumb with a raspy tongue.
