by Greg James
If I can just get out ...
A needle arrowed into the carotid artery in her neck. Her hand flew up to swat it away, but it was too late. Her vision fogged over. The world fell out from under her feet. As she lay on the ground, Willow saw Dr Frampton standing over her with a look of deep satisfaction on her face.
*
Willow came to. There was light flooding into her eyes from overhead.
“Where am I?”
She couldn’t move. Heavy leather straps were biting into her arms and legs. The light overhead resolved into a single bare bulb that hung down from a water-damaged ceiling.
“You are where you are meant to be, Miss Grey.” said the disembodied voice of Dr Frampton.
There was a horrid rising smell in the room and Willow was sure that she could hear the sound of things – mice? cockroaches? rats? – scuttling about on the floor. She was on the gurney. There was a shadow looming over her head but she could not turn her head enough to see what was there exactly.
“What is that thing?”
“That is your new friend. I call him Tumninae. He is going to take all of the strange ideas and crazy dreams out of your head.”
“What’s going to be left after that?”
“Nothing. Hence his name, it is an old word for emptiness.”
Willow began to shout and struggle.
Dr Frampton stared impassively down at her. “Calm down now. It will be over soon.”
Willow knew she was thinking something more along the lines of – once your brains are fried and you’re dribbling into a papercup, you’ll be no more trouble to me at all.
There was more though. Something strange and familiar in Dr Frampton’s manner, and the orderlies, and the filthy room with its obsolete equipment.
“You’re the Lamia,” Willow said, “aren’t you?”
Dr Frampton smiled coldly, or was it a trick of the light?
The orderlies placed what felt like a set of headphones over Willow’s head. The electrodes pressed unpleasantly against her skin. Willow heard switches being operated and fingers pressing buttons. There was a hum in the air. A fine sensation of building power. Then the lightning came. It reached deep inside her, bringing tears to her eyes. She screamed as it found something buried there; an ember from Tirlane. The remains of an old flame. A memory of the thule and the raw power it could wield. The memory ignited and began to burn. Willow opened her eyes and then her mouth, “I don’t want this. I don’t want to go back home if this is what happens. I’ve changed my mind!”
Everything went silent and dark.
Then Willow was overcome by the violence of fever, of infinity churning like white water rapids. The world was torn away from her before she even knew what was happening. She tried to scream but here she had no mouth with which to do so. She felt sickness flowing through every inch of her being. She wanted to swallow it and vomit it all out at the same time. It lashed at her. It took great bites out of the stuff that made up her soul.
She tried to master it, to ride the rapids – but it became more chaotic and vicious the more she tried to tame it. It swirled around her, becoming a vortex that dragged her down.
Willow fell back into reality.
She fell hard.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Light came back first then dim shapes and colours swam into focus. Sensations came next; her skin was cold. She rolled over onto her side and ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth and over her teeth. All she could taste was dead air and something bitter. She was in a place which smelled like a dungeon.
Willow sat up and winced as a wave of tingling pain ran through her body. Her stomach turned, and she dug her fingers into the stone to avoid losing her balance entirely. There was a paved pathway leading away from her. There were also other paved pathways that ascended, descended and crossed her line of sight at diagonal angles. Stairwells spiralled away into the quiet, unmoving dark like carved corkscrews. Stairways rose and fell, terminating in empty platforms and balconies. There was no ground or sky, only a veil of shadow hanging behind the insane architecture that seemed to extend in all directions without end, yet a light came from somewhere she couldn’t see.
“What in the hell ...”
“This place is the Wynd, friend Willow, and here lie the pathways to all of the other worlds.”
Henu was beside her.
“How did you get here?”
“I have been here since you rang the bell in Silfrenheart.”
“I dreamed I was back home, or maybe I was home.”
“And you did not want to stay?”
Willow shivered at the dream, or memory, of Brightcoast, “Not if that’s my future there.”
“It may be a better future than the one we have here, friend Willow. The Wynd is no longer open. It is closed. The paths are lost. The ways are shut. I fear this was the Lamia’s trap for you all along. She did not want you to return to your world, for you might again be called back to Tirlane, so she showed a future – one she knew you would refuse – and thus cast yourself into the Wynd, from which there is no escape.”
Willow looked out over the uneasy silence of the Wynd, “No escape? Really?”
“My knowledge of this realm is gleaned only from old scrolls,” Henu went on, “there have been some who tried to map the Wynd and understand its nature, for it is not known if it was created or simply grew as all the worlds grew into being, but their studies of it were never completed.”
“Because they never came back from their last journey through it?” Willow asked.
“That is correct.”
“Great.”
There was a sound up ahead; distinct and clear.
It was a cry, and it was answered by another.
“If the Wynd is closed, Henu, what was that?”
“I do not know. This realm should be empty.”
The Wynd reminded her too much of bad dreams with its strange structure and the feeling of utter emptiness pervading it. There should be no life, let alone sound, in a place like this.
“Do you feel that?” Henu asked.
The slightest whisper of a wind disturbed the air.
“A breeze ... yes, I felt it,” Willow said, “I think.”
“It should not be here anymore than we should,” he said.
“It could be our imaginations, I guess,” Willow said, not convincing herself.
“Yes, it could be. Sometimes, we can wish for something so hard that we feel it keenly, even though we know it is not there. It may be the first sign we are going mad. I am sorry, Willow, for leading you into this. I should have told you all of the prophecy and I did not. It was cowardly but I did not want you to run away, back to your world. The moment I saw you, I felt so much hope. Now, I wonder if I lied to myself, if I lied to you, and that we are here in the Wynd because of the daydreams of an old man who should have known better.”
“No, Henu. We’re here because I wanted to go home so badly I couldn’t see what was waiting for me. I should have known the Lamia would trick me and couldn’t be trusted. This is my fault.”
Henu shrugged, “Perhaps the fault belongs to both of us.”
“Okay, you win.” She managed to smile and laugh.
Henu’s sombre mask cracked and he did the same.
Laughter sounded strange in the unfeeling infinity of the Wynd.
They ate the last of Henu’s amethi and sipped dregs of stardraught from his flask. They slept in turns, not trusting the Wynd and its noisome depths; their eyes never quite closing when they did try to take some rest. What could have been mere hours or entire days passed as they ventured through the endless kaleidoscopic structure. Nothing changed the pace of things except the tiredness of their feet.
Their eyes ached as well from groping at the darkness between the paths trying to discern something from nothing; meaning from absence. This place was chaos eternal and the void – somewhere forever between one place and the next.
*
&nbs
p; Willow saw the pale figure at a crossroads of worn pathways and felt hope surge up in her breast. “Henu, look, someone else is here. Perhaps the Wynd isn’t closed after all.” The figure began moving towards them. “Look, he’s seen us. Perhaps he’s coming over to help.”
It was then that Willow saw how the figure hung in the air and its feet did not touch the ground.
Henu’s face blanched, “He is dressed in the robes of Wardenhood.”
“You’re right, he’s just like Eren.” Willow gasped.
“This must be the void to which the Uncanted Spell banished the inhabitants of Covenheart. There is no life and death here, just as there is no time or distance. Their natural spans have long since ended yet they have not truly died. An awful fate, to wander forever and never know rest. I fear if we do not find a door to another world, we may become like them.”
As the figure came closer to them, yet more seemed to arise out of the shadows of the Wynd. They wore the shapes of men, women, and children – long-haired, light-skinned, and regal as Eren had been – but their downcast faces betrayed the Wynd-born emptiness inside. Their insubstantial hands reached out for the two companions; grasping for the living creatures who had invaded their domain, reminding them of what they no longer were.
Willow and Henu ran for their lives along cracked pathways, up vertiginous stairs which went to nowhere, and through archways which appeared only to return them time and again to the desolate spectres.
Their lungs became scorched pockets, barely able to hold more than a mouthful of air while the revenants continued to come forth from the shadows of the void. Though the Wynd appeared to be a place of pure chaos, there was a pattern to it and the dead of Covenheart knew it like no living soul ever could.
Looking back, Willow saw them coming closer, saw them reaching out once more – then one of them touched her.
Its hand passed into her shoulder and not out of it. She could feel it, stuck in there, and cried out from the sudden, biting cold of its touch. The dead Warden opened its mouth and began to speak but she couldn’t hear the words. The ache from her shoulder was spreading through her body.
“What do they want from us, Henu?” she cried, “can’t you do something?”
“No,” he said, “I have no power here. My magickal strength is gone and my stardraught is as water.”
Willow frantically pulled away from the one which had touched her but it followed as its hand was still lodged in her shoulder. Its mouth moved again, shaping soundless words. “I think it’s trying to say something to me.”
“What ever could it be?”
The terrible cold of that first touch seemed to be inside her, moving around as if it were searching for something.
“It’s saying ‘make us free’. How, Henu? How can I do that?”
Before she could say another word, the one which had buried its hand in her shoulder lunged forwards. It merged with her. Willow screamed and pulled away from the feeling of it inside her but, just as suddenly as it came, the feeling passed away – and it was gone. She was unharmed and there was a light, cool dew settling on her skin.
“Friend Willow, are you well?”
“He stepped into me and then ... he was gone.”
“You set him free,” Henu whispered, in awe.
“How? How could I do that?”
“I do not know as I have not seen such a thing before. You possess a power unknown, Greychild.”
Willow retreated from the others. She could see the suffering in their faces and how they were begging for her to end it for them, “Why won’t they leave me alone?”
“Because this task is for you, Greychild,” Henu said, “there is nothing more I can do, only you can give these lost souls their rest.”
Willow turned to face them, trembling, “Henu, please help me. Don’t let them touch me again. It hurt.”
Henu handed her the thule, “Take this. Your power seems to have a relationship with the blade. Perhaps it can help you now.”
As the Wealdsmen stepped away from Willow, Covenheart’s dead surged forward. She gasped as each one stepped through her, possessed her violently and then faded away into nothing. She thought there was a sound akin to a sigh each time and she felt her skin pebbling with the same cool, light dew. She came to think of the dew as tears which had finally been shed. As each one came and went, Willow’s grip on the thule became so fierce that the skin of her knuckles began to split and bleed. The gemstone set in the hilt glowed as brilliantly as a fallen star. The dead of Covenheart kept on coming for a very long time; a haunting march of apparitions and conscious vapours passing through the girl who should have died. Eventually, Willow’s body gave out and she collapsed to the ground; trembling and exhausted. She ached through and through and felt completely spent.
The thule clattered to the ground.
“No more,” she croaked, “no more. I can’t do it anymore.”
Henu helped her to stand. “I think there are no more. Can you not feel it, friend Willow? The air in the Wynd is no longer as dead as it was. They are gone. You have set them free,” he said in a voice touched with admiration.
“I don’t know how I did it.”
Henu shrugged, “I cannot tell myself. These are strange days and you are such a mystery, Greychild.”
“Well, the mystery could use a hand. My legs feel like they’re made of jello right now.”
Henu helped her up and then knelt to retrieve the thule. “Willow, do you see how you change things?” He was holding the weapon up for her inspection.
“Oh, wow,” she said. The gemstone set in the thule’s hilt was no longer blood-red. It had changed to a sapphire blue. “What does it mean?”
“It was a blade of sacrifice but I think now it has become something else.”
“So, what now?” Willow asked.
“I believe we take our leave of the Wynd,” Henu said, gesturing behind her, “the way has been opened for us.”
Willow turned around and saw one of the archways was gently glowing with the same sapphire blue as the thule’s gemstone. “They did it, didn’t they?”
“I think so. A gift from the lost of Covenheart.” Henu said.
“All of this began with a door and not knowing where it would take me. Oh well, here goes nothing.”
The two companions stepped through and found themselves standing on a flagstone pier and levee, to their back was Silfrenheart. Willow looked up at the castle and murmured, “There’s no going back that way.”
To go back was to embrace death, misery, failure, and loss.
The only way was onward.
Before the two companions, unbroken leagues of glistening sea stretched away to the horizon. It was morning. The sun had left the cradle of the sea and was climbing steadily into the sky, which was an unclouded blue. The sea seemed to go on and on forever, farther even than the years of the short life Willow had lived so far.
There was a ship docked by the pier; a galleon with high sails billowing in the breeze and a pale, blue bird circling the tip of its tallest mast. The ship was unmoored but sat still and at ease in the lapping waters of the bay.
“The Pale Ship,” Henu said, “an ancient wonder stands before me. I am almost afraid to go near it in case it disappears.”
“I don’t think it will,” Willow said, “I think it’s been waiting for us.”
Someone left it here for us, she thought, someone who loved me.
Henu said, “Do you see that which circles the highest point of the mast? It is called a cerulethe; a spirit-bird. The Pale Ship follows wherever it goes. There is some bond between them which cannot be broken.”
Willow and Henu stepped aboard. The boat was immaculate from port to stern. Every inch was pearl-white. They climbed up to the forecastle and saw there was no wheel to steer with.
“The Pale Ship goes where it pleases,” Henu said, “watch and you will see.”
There was a shrill cry from the bird above as it flew away to starboard
. Willow and Henu turned, watching it go. The Pale Ship followed. There was no lurch as it set off. It moved out into the waves smoothly, leaving Tirlane and the Lamia’s darkness behind, for now.
As the Pale Ship pulled out of the bay, tears began to well in Willow’s eyes.
“Why do you cry, friend Willow?”
“Because it’s all gone wrong, Henu. People have died. So much has been lost. The Lamia ... has she won?”
“No, I do not think she has.”
“Why?” she asked, looking back to the vanishing shores of Tirlane.
“Because as long as we are alive, there is hope.”
End of Book One
Map
Glossary
People
Willow Grey – a teenager.
Henu – the Wealdsman of Beam Weald.
No-men – servants of the Lamia.
Lamia – the Prime Evil of Tirlane.
Wisps – spirits of Tirlane.
Kindlings – scions of the Wisps.
Eren – the last Warden of Tirlane.
Scaethe – the Holtsman of Ravensholt.
Nualan – Stallion of a centaur drove.
Nithoe – Jenn of Nualan’s drove.
Rathane – a warrior of Nualan’s drove.
Starababa – mother of the nymphs and morgens.
Nymphs – children of Starababa.
The Giants – ancient Wardens of Tirlane.
The Stone Legion – ancient warriors of Tirlane.
Ghouls – inhabitants of Cheren Mokur and slaves of the Lamia.
The Voice – the malevolent genius loci of Cheren Mokur.
Revenants – ghosts of the Wynd.
Places
Watchtower Grove – where Willow first enters Tirlane.
Beam Weald – home of Henu.
Summerdowns – a burial ground.
Covenheart – a castle.
Ravensholt – home of Scaethe.
Fenriver Lodge – home of Starababa.
Barrowdwell – the mountain-city of the Giants.
Harrowclave – a sacred meeting place.