by Peter Harris
That night the white Ürxura returned, and lay at the cave mouth until dawn, when they awoke to see him patiently waiting there, a beautiful but ominous sign of their destiny moving forward again into peril.
After a quick breakfast they took a final look at the lake. Mists hung over its silvery sky-mirror, the mountains and the sacred island wavered in its depths as the white swans glided on its surface.
Then they climbed on the Ürxura’s broad back and galloped away to a narrow pass in the north which Shelley had not seen before. Following the winding valley beyond, they came out again into the wide world, or rather the uplands under the brooding southern arms of the Tor Enyása. Looking back they saw that a mist seemed to cover the entrance to their secret valley, and it was lost to sight as if it had never been.
Shelley’s thoughts turned to the road ahead. ‘I could get killed and never return back there, ever,’ she murmured, and her stomach did a flip at the thought. She felt very young to be thinking about facing death, but also very adventurous. It was hard not to feel brave, sitting up high on a galloping Ürxura, riding in the realm of Faery.
They sped as if on a magic carpet over the hills, fording lakes and streams in the highlands of the enchanted land of the Ürxura, skirting the patches of thick fern and berry-laden bushes, but heading always uphill and west. Bright-plumed birds – parakeets, Shelley thought – like green and yellow jewels flew up as they passed, then circled round squawking and landed in the bushes again.
As they rode, Korman told Shelley all he knew of the country that flowed by. The Ürxura was taking them deep into Faery, and the whole land was pure and fresh as if newly sprung from the Womb of Worlds through the magic of the Makers.
They stopped in the golden afternoon on one of the grassy ridges which rose ever steeper to the great arm of the Makers. They found a little spring-fed pool under a mossy limestone ledge, and they washed and filled their waterbottles from its magically refreshing waters. The Ürxura drank deep, then grazed the rich clovers and flowering meadow grasses about the pool while Shelley and Korman ate some of their remaining supplies from Sanmara, then picked some apples and peaches in a deserted orchard by the stream that flowed down from the spring.
They sat and ate the fruit, making the most of what remained of their last day in friendly territory. The gloomy ridges of the Southwest Arm marked the boundary. Beyond were the thorns and the strongholds of the enemy.
‘It is a pity we must pass over the southern regions of Aeden in such haste,’ said Korman, digging another peach stone into the soil where they sat. ‘It had been in my mind that the journey we have been making around the Starfish Isle is for a purpose – part of your training. I had thought to teach you many things through the different creatures and forms of life and their wisdoms, coming from the nine different worlds that made up the ancient Order of the Makers. There are descendants of many peoples who crossed over from other worlds and found a home in the southern lands under the protection of the Ürxura. You would have liked the Silk Folk, who dwell in the west. The patient silkworms could teach you many things, as could the patient weavers of fine fabrics fit for the Lady herself. But we are riding like the wind to some great destiny, and I cannot hold it back or turn it aside. Perhaps,’ he said with a smile Shelley did not see, sitting behind Korman, but felt, knowing him as she did now, ‘perhaps the long years of waiting and musing in my hermit’s cave have made me a little too patient, too pedantic.’
‘Oh, you don’t really think so, do you Korman, you wise old Guardian?’ laughed Shelley.
‘No, as usual you see right through me, O Kortana. But you could learn a little more of the patience of age.’
The unicorn had finished grazing, and was looking at them. He seemed in no hurry – in fact Shelley felt he was willing them to enjoy themselves a little longer. ‘He knows what is ahead of us,’ thought Korman, but he carried on talking with Shelley. She was asking him all about the silk weavers and the clothes they made. He knew she was stalling for time.
Finally, when all the fruit they had gathered was eaten, and the seeds planted (‘For those who may come after,’ said Korman) they set off again. They were sad to leave the beautiful place, and dreaded the end of their journey. After an hour or two of climbing by winding paths the sun was hidden behind the great spur of the Southwest Arm.
They reached the top, and the Ürxura stopped, snorting from the climb. The humans sat on its broad back a little longer, and breathed in the cool, tingling air. Korman pointed out the mountain of the Travellers in the distance. Shelley was shocked to see it so soon. When they set out only that morning she had imagined they would have at least two days or so of pleasant travelling. A mist and darkness seemed to hang about it, and they could see only the higher peaks of its central Enyása, which was, like all the seaward ends of the great mountain spurs of Namaglimmë, a mirror or microcosm of the Tor Enyása in the centre of the island. Both Enyásas were covered in the thorn forests, and evil looked out from them, but it could not pierce the golden mist that was about Shelley and Korman because they were with the Ürxura.
Now they looked reluctantly down over the terrible thickets and thorn hedges of the Valley of Thorns. The golden sun of Aeden was going down in a rack of crimson and purple clouds behind the Aghmaath city and port of Phagra. Ahead and far below, at the bottom of the Valley of Thorns, they saw the line of Lake Deadwater. ‘There lies the Avenue of Despair, on the far side of the accursed lake,’ said Korman in a low voice. ‘And to the left, at the head of the lake, beneath a great Mother Thorn, is the Hill of the Skull, beneath which is the Dark Labyrinth.’
Shelley shivered and hid her face behind Korman’s broad back, as if to use him as a human shield from the inhuman minds which searched for her. But the Ürxura swished its tail and stamped and whinnied, telling them that the time had come. He was about to go back. This, they knew, was as far as he could take them. They slipped off his huge white back onto the rocky ground.
‘Thank you, in the name of the Lady and all the free peoples of Aeden,’ said Korman, bowing low. Shelley tried to bow too, but her legs were stiff and wobbly from the ride and her pack was heavy, nearly tipping her onto her face. She reached up and stroked the long nose of the Ürxura. It nuzzled her hand, then, reading her mind, lowered its horn until she could reach out and stroke it, as she had longed to do. It was pearly white with hints of pink and sea-green; two tapering ropes of ivory spiralling about each other and ending in a polished point, sharp as a needle. The thoughts that came from the Ürxura’s mind into hers seemed to be concentrated in the horn, and Shelley guessed that this could be a terrible mind-weapon, not just a skewer for unwary hermits or Trackers. She was awed by the majesty and strength of the creature which had just taken them so far with no signs of flagging. She realised what a privilege it was to have ridden on such a creature, and wished they could ride all the way to Ürak Tara in the safety and comfort of his back.
‘How would you learn what you must then, little one?’ she heard, and knew that he was hearing her every thought. She hoped she wouldn’t make a fool of herself, then realised he would have heard that too. Then she just smiled at him and accepted it.
She found herself asking, ‘Why can’t you defeat the Aghmaath and stop the thorns from growing over Aeden?’
She heard in her mind the Ürxura’s reply, ‘We can guard the borders of our own land, for now, but only the Kortana and her friends can go into the heart of their empire of despair and destroy it.’
Shelley wished with all her heart that it did not have to be so, but the Ürxura said, ‘The greater the task, the greater the power that will be found within.’
Then, after telling them of a nearby cave – or rather, impressing on their minds an image of it – and wishing them blessings from the Lady, the Ürxura stood for a moment and they felt its love and a joy (mingled with sadness) flooding over them. They felt it was rejoicing at the thought of all the good things that were about to happen, and a
sking them to do the same. Shelley found herself feeling, and almost believing, that the road ahead was the most wonderful adventure she could possibly have. Then the Ürxura turned and vanished into the gathering gloom and the radiant joy of his presence faded into a memory.
They blinked and looked around as if awakening from a beautiful dream. In the half-light of dusk, little bats were flitting through the insect-laden air all around them as they went looking for the cave. It was further than Shelley had hoped it would be, and they saw it just as she felt herself getting dizzy with tiredness, doubting the Ürxura’s guidance, and feeling as if she would faint. Korman, seeing her exhaustion, carried her the rest of the way, then set her down gently on the sandy floor of the cave. He prepared to make camp for the night, but lit no fire. They were on the very borders of the enemy’s realm now.
Shelley was nodding off before he had prepared their supper. It was now only a few hours before they would have to face the most dangerous part of the journey. Korman stood at the cave mouth and looked out over the darkened valley, where the dull red fires of sacrifice burned in a radiating pattern, almost like city streetlights on Earth, in long lines from the three great Mother Thorns of the valley. He saw the dim lights of Phagra to the west, and thought of all the children labouring on into the night in the dark factories. Then he turned south and saw the Enyása of the Makers in the distance, and hope stirred in him as he remembered a tale of the Golden Age of the Order. In that tale the Makers themselves set in motion the vast processes which had formed this whole land, raising it from the primeval seas of Aeden.
‘The darkness cannot overpower the light, for Hethür, the One, rules over all, and through the Concept, Krithür, draws all to it,’ he murmured, reciting words from the lovingly illuminated wisdom text of the lost Tan Krithür, inscribed in letters of gold on the great Emerald Table.
He thought of the Round Table, carved from a single crystal gem, made in the Fire World by the Makers, which stood on the Kor-Edartha plateau, long ago when that place was called by another name, and kings and queens ruled the Silver Planet in the name of the Order, before the rebellion, before Atlantis; before the Silver planet fell into darkness and the Portal was closed; before Korman’s ancestor, the Templar Knight, marched to Jerusalem with his brethren in search of certain lost treasures, and was directed to sail to Silverwood in the far south of his world.
Even as his mind pondered all these things, his grieving heart reached out over the gulf below to the place where the Lady had stood trapped in the thorns ever since that disastrous day when he was the cause of her capture by the Aghmaath. And he knew the quest was burning in him and would give him no rest and abide no turning aside until he stood before her once again, sword unsheathed, to free her from her living death in the Mother Thorn, which allowed her neither to live nor to die. He flexed his right arm, which had for so long been withered, and now it was strong, ready to strike down the enemy.
He polished Arcratíne carefully, then watched it far into the night vibrating in the earth at the cave mouth. He listened to the subtle impressions filtering through it. Most of all he strained to catch a glimpse or a sound of the voice he loved most in the world: that of Ainenia, Lady of the Nine Lives. But he heard nothing but the faint voices of memory. He wondered if this was indeed as the count of legends had it, her last life, and if they had come to the end of the Age, and the final downfall of the ancient Order.
Dawn finally came, like any other except for the dread in Shelley’s heart, and the calm and implacable purpose in Korman’s. A sickly light streaked the leaden thorn-lined horizon behind the Tor Enyása looming blackly above them, once a place of light and love, now a ghastly fortress, haunted by the Aghmaath, heartless crusaders from a world of despair. Their flag, the hexagon of scythe blades in ghostly white and blood-red whirling about a central tail-biting snake on a black ground, fluttered slowly in the dawn breeze over the five lower peaks and the five higher peaks where once the sacred groves shone with the light of the five world-crystals.
‘But still the inner peaks hold them at bay, though the Arcra-Nama is gone,’ muttered Korman as he gazed up through the spyglass, blinking in the early light as he waited for Shelley to finish her ablutions.
Shelley was washing in a rock pool fed by a little spring in the crags above the cave. The water was cold and pure – she was getting to like cold water, luckily, she thought grimly – and she cupped it in her hands and watched it trickle away over the lip of the pool and down a steep little gully towards the Valley.
The Valley. Her stomach churned as she imagined its horrors: the sharp, clinging thorns; the Aghmaath, Thornmen lying in wait at every turn of the thorn tunnels; the horrible lake where the Avenue of Despair was; and, almost more horrible than anything, the Lady impaled on the thorns of the Avenue, neither living nor dead… ‘I want to go back,’ she thought, suddenly resentful at what was being asked of her. ‘Back to the Ürxura country where it’s safe. Or back to Sanmara… or no, maybe right back home to mum and dad and the good old boring, safe city and being just a girl again.’ She had the feeling this was another of those thresholds Korman kept telling her to notice, after which life would never go back to what it was. That if she followed Korman down into that valley, anything could happen – good things beyond her imagining. She was not convinced. ‘I just want to go home,’ she thought.
‘You can never go home… any more…’ the familiar words came back to answer her, from the Moody Blues song on the old record which her father often used to play when he was depressed. She clenched her teeth and sighed.
‘Well, I guess good old Korman’s with me. I’ll have to trust he’ll get us through,’ she told herself. ‘And I did want to grow up, one day. Just not quite this fast!’ She imagined her old selves slipping away from her like ghosts, complaining, while she went on boldly without them.
She fell in behind Korman and checked that her silver helmet was well-fastened as they began the slow trek down the mountainside into the Valley of Thorns. Bootnip was buried in the bottom of Korman’s pack, and there he intended to remain – he felt the menace of the Valley and did not want to see anything. And far below from every direction they heard the doleful gongs and chanting of hymns to the Void.
Chapter Forty-one
The Dead Forest