by Peter Harris
As Shelley struggled against the growing darkness before her eyes and the roaring in her ears, she cried out to the Lady. She awoke from her faint. She was lying on the forest floor. Looking up she saw the circle of dead trees, Korman slumped against the log in despair. There was a rusting as Bootnip emerged groggily from his pack, threw up the last bits of the blue fungus, nosed around dolefully in the dead leaves and disappeared into the pack again.
Shelley felt a sense of approaching danger, but also of a growing magic which was deflecting it. She lay still, waiting. For a long time nothing changed. Then slowly the great boles of the dead trees began to shimmer with a light which spread life and colour until the dead circle became a fair glade in a forest, with birds singing in the green canopy and a carpet of golden leaves underfoot. The fallen tree trunk became green with moss. An exquisite golden butterfly sunned itself on it then took off to swirl in ascending flight with many others, blue and gold, bright gems of life in a cathedral of nature.
Shelley scrambled to her feet, and pulled Korman up. They looked about them in wonder. Then they both saw her: the Lady, dressed in translucent blue, wearing a garland of hopeflowers, walking joyfully into the glade, and the smell of summer flowers was in the air.
‘Lady! I have failed you again!’ cried Korman, kneeling in mingled grief and joy.
Shelley called out, ‘Lady, please, help us!’
‘All will be well, Shelley, for Korman will guide you – and you will guide him,’ she whispered into their minds. Korman was overwhelmed by her love and faith in him that, beyond hope, he now saw in her eyes. He bowed his head to receive her blessing. Shelley looked at her, and they smiled at each other. She felt her heart would burst for joy. Then the Lady was gone.
Shelley knew now that together Korman and she would find, or be given, a way through. She knew she was chosen, and did not need ever again to look at the surface of things, which exists only in the mind, but could always see through to where Faery, like a shining sea of magical possibility, lay all about and within her. And the golden haze of the Lady confused the minds of the Thornmen as they converged on Shelley and Korman, and Phagrapag’s mindwebs of despair which had almost ensnared them dissolved like mist and cobwebs in the sun.
‘Now I will call this place blessed, which a moment ago was accursed,’ said Korman as they rose to go. He seemed to be in a happy daze, but Shelley had a mounting sense of urgency – and a message of hope. ‘I think there’s a gap somewhere under the hedge. Come on, let’s see,’ she urged. Korman looked doubtful, but he followed her.
She walked in faith to the huge thorn hedge looming above them, overhanging, blocking out the sun; and after a few long moments of desperate searching she saw the small gap she had been hoping for.
‘Look!’ She pointed, almost touching the thorns in her excitement and relief.
‘Do not touch the branches! They will hold you fast and paralyse you until the Thornmen come!’ warned Korman.
‘I know, you’ve warned me enough times! Come on, hurry!’
She looked up and down the hedge, expecting to see the Aghmaath coming any second. She was getting a sense of their movements, she was sure of it. She dived into the gap and disappeared. Korman, being bigger, hesitated. Then, just as the Aghmaath patrol rounded a bend in the thorn hedge, he threw his pack into the dark opening. Bootnip grunted in protest, but stayed hidden. Then Korman lay on the ground and wormed into the gap between two gnarled branches with suckers going down into the earth like twisted iron bars, only just far enough apart for him to squeeze through. He found himself looking into the inside of the hedge, dark and close. His cape was caught by the thorn points which protruded in cruel spirals around the thick interlaced branches. He felt one jab into his thigh, and grimaced, but said nothing. He would have to dig it out later… He pulled, ripping his cloak. Then he, too, was inside the thorn hedge. He heard Shelley ahead of him, suppressing a scream as giant cockroaches scuttled away into the litter on either side of the tunnel.
There was a tramping sound behind. He turned painfully and saw a glimpse of the long scaly feet of Aghmaath warriors stalking along the hedge. They stopped, and Korman held his breath. Then they carried on, and he sighed with relief.
‘Come on,’ called Shelley in a strained whisper. They crawled painfully on their stomachs through musty dry twigs and thorns until they were deep in the twilight beneath Zaghrabinrakah, the third Mother Thorn, and she began to be dimly aware of them, and the air began to feel hostile, stifling, filled with a desire for the eradication of all other life. The only sound was an occasional crackle of thorn branches as they grew, sucking the life from the earth and strengthening the binding, piercing sinews of Zaghrabinrakah, whose centre lay almost a mile away, towering over the thorn fields of slavery that were divided up by cruel hedges like the one under which they now painfully crawled. Shelley was starting to feel claustrophobic and breathe too fast, as if there was not enough oxygen, and Korman was beginning to wonder who had made the tunnel, and whether it was just a trap set by the Aghmaath, when they turned a corner to avoid a massive twisted root, and saw a greenish light ahead.
Shelley turned to say ‘About time!’ when something moved in her hair. She reached up and touched what felt like a large prickly thorn twig, until it started to move, pulling strongly away from her fingers. She jerked her hand away.
‘Korman! Get it off me!’ she whispered as calmly as she could, but it was starting to crawl down her neck, and she clenched her fists so as not to scream.
‘It is harmless, just a stick insect,’ said Korman, soothingly, and he picked it up carefully and placed it on a branch behind him.
‘Ugh, horrible thing! It’s got sharp prickles!’ said Shelley.
‘It has to, to blend in.’
‘And what about those giant cockroaches? I suppose they have to be here too?’
‘Yes, if the thorn is to have well-digested leaf-mould on which to feed – and dead cockroaches, and not rely solely on the animals it snares.’
‘I hate these thorns!’ whispered Shelley. A shiver passed through the hedge all around them, and the spikes of the thorn seemed to bristle even more than before.
‘Do not send out thoughts like that!’ warned Korman. ‘Remember, make your mind a mirror as I have taught you. We must blend in!’
‘All right, all right! I’m doing it. Now can we just get out of here?’
‘I have been thinking. The Mother Thorn has passageways for the Aghmaath to pass unseen along the branches, these thorn hedges. We must be prepared to cross such a passageway. I will go first.’
‘OK, but let’s not stop until we’re out! I’m suffocating in here.’
They crawled on for a few more feet, then Korman froze. Shelley followed his example, trying not to listen and look for insects among the dry branches lining the tunnel. Then she heard it: the tramp of feet getting nearer. Now it was over their very heads, and the roof sagged slightly with every footfall. There was a passageway directly over their heads, and a patrol of Thornmen was passing along it. It was just like her dream the night after the ambush at Thorngate, only this time it was real. She hardly breathed as she made her mind as calm and mirror-like as she knew how. Then it was past, and the tramp of heavy clawed feet faded into the distance. Korman motioned to her, and they hurried on towards the beckoning greenish light, which grew until it was dazzling. They had finally reached the other side of the hedge.
Crawling out carefully under the threatening branches, they found themselves in a very different space, very ‘inside’ feeling, a field, circular or perhaps (Shelley thought) roughly hexagonal, bounded by high thorn hedges. Their hearts sank as they looked around. They had a sense of trespass, as if they had blundered into someone’s living room. It was quiet and green, a sleepy sort of place, and reminded Shelley of a walled garden or an orchard with high windbreaks. It looked peaceful and orderly after the wilderness outside. But a smoke-blackened earthbrick structure in the centre, like a tall
thin beehive or garden incinerator, gave it a vaguely sinister feel.
A group of people who had been quietly hoeing the earth a little way off looked up and saw the two intruders. They put down their hoes and walked soundlessly over to Shelley and Korman, who had not noticed the gardeners until it was too late.
‘Be on your guard! Do not look directly into their eyes. Follow my lead,’ whispered Korman. But Shelley was reassured by the smiles on their faces as they drew near. They seemed very peaceful, all dressed alike in loose smocks so that it was hard to tell if they were men or women. They were strangely uncurious.
‘Greetings in the name of the Void,’ said one, smiling, extending a suntanned hand.
‘The Void! Did he say the Void?’ thought Shelley, a nasty shock passing through her as Korman calmly shook the hand. She looked up at Korman, horrified. It felt like a nightmare where the most innocuous things turn sinister. Korman was conversing normally with the person as if he hadn’t heard what he just said.
‘We are strangers here,’ he was saying. ‘Tell me, who is your leader? We come in peace and wish for safe passage over your fields.’
‘None may travel here except the Travellers, and those whom they take when the time for their final rest is come. You must know that.’ The man, if he was a man – he was smooth-faced and his voice was soft like a woman’s – looked about thirty, the oldest of the group, and their spokesman.
‘Where are your homes, good people?’
‘In the shelter of the Mother, of course, in the bowers she provides.’
The man pointed to the perimeter hedge. Shelley could see the hollows where the thorns parted to form little alcoves lined with dry grasses and feathers, like nests.
‘How long have you lived here like… this?’ Shelley blurted out, horrified.
‘All our lives, that is, our real lives, which only began when we were enlightened,’ said the spokesman, turning to Shelley. He was still smiling, in a fixed sort of way. The others all nodded approvingly and smiled at the speaker.
‘Well, we want to be going now, don’t we Korman?’ she said, alarmed at their bland, blank looks and vacant eyes, and Korman’s apparent friendliness with them.
Korman was about to answer her, but one of the group exclaimed, ‘Want? Have you not yet tasted the fruit of enlightenment and found rest from all wants?’ The smiles were gone now, and they looked suspicious. Another of the gardeners said, ‘Korman? We have been told to look out for one by that name, a rebel, and a girl, his dupe!’ He ran to the gong that hung in the centre of the field by the black oven, and struck it three times. The spokesman said,
‘You must wait here. The Masters are coming.’
They formed a circle around the strangers and linked hands. There were perhaps twenty of them. Korman cried ‘Go!’ and he and Shelley rushed the circle. There was a moment of horrible grappling. The circle gave, but did not break. The people were calm but surprisingly strong.
‘We do not want to hurt you,’ said Korman.
But they replied, ‘You cannot hurt us. We belong to the Void. Pain and death are our friends.’
They stood impassive, smiling. They began to chant a hymn whose words, as far as Shelley could tell, were all about peace and rest and embracing pain and death. She felt her legs go weak. ‘This is a nightmare,’ she thought. ‘The Aghmaath will be coming any second while we’re just standing here listening to hymns!’ Aloud she said, ‘Korman, do something!’ But he seemed mesmerized, his head bowed. ‘It’s his old training coming back, from when he was captured when he was a boy!’ she thought, sick with fear.
Then Korman raised his head and looked at her, smiling, but his eyes were intense, urgent. ‘The way is not to attack, but to love! Remember the Lady! Walk in Faery!’ he whispered. The chanting droned on, the women calling on the Void, then the men calling the names of the Mother Thorns of the Valley:
The Void!
-Zaghrabnah!
-The Void!
-Zaghrabindrah!
-The Void!
-Zaghrabindrakah!
-The Void!
Shelley felt she was going mad, but she shut her eyes, trying to see the path of Faery. But all she could see was the gaping Void as she had seen it when the hermits attacked, only now it was closer, at her very feet. All she had to do was take one step and it would all be over. Peace, rest… The chanting filled her head. She began to hum along with it, still trying, weakly now, to remember what it was she didn’t like about this. It felt so good, so easy. The people were one with her, welcoming her to the fellowship of the Void… Perhaps Korman had got it all wrong, and they were not the enemy after all, but friends, come to show them the way… They were so nice… She felt her being merging with the group and the chanting.
Then through the growing, peaceful haze in her mind she heard Korman whispering urgently, ‘Shelley! Remember Faery! Remember the Lady! We have to walk in Faery!’ She felt intensely irritated at him for a second, but knew he was right. With an effort she remembered a time before they entered the field of the Mother Thorn, so long ago it seemed, when Korman was her trusted friend, and she was Shelley, and she was free. With an effort she remembered the glade and the butterflies. She heard the beautiful voice of the Lady singing to her, then a vision of her flooded back into her mind, and a silver-golden light, free and bracing, flooded her being with a joy that was quite different from the warm, sickly, resigned happiness of the group. The chanting faded. She opened her eyes, and sighed with relief and joy: they were now in a green open field full of wild flowers and apple groves leading down to a beautiful blue lake. She took Korman’s arm and together they walked calmly through the still-chanting group, through the ghostly thorn hedges and down towards the Faery lakeside.
The group looked about in alarm. The strangers were gone. And one of the group looked at the grass where they had walked, and there were star-shaped flowers where none had been before. He vaguely remembered an old poem. It said something, he thought, about a Jewel-Caller, and flowers that bloomed in her footsteps. He felt a piercing pang of longing. Then the haze closed over his mind again, and he joined the others in searching for the two fugitives who had so mysteriously disappeared.
Gradually, insidiously, as Shelley and Korman walked further into the depths of the Valley of Thorns, the mindwebs thickened. Ghostly cobwebs brushed against their faces and evil voices sounded about them, as if trying to break into their happy dream. ‘This nice place is just a dream, it’s not real,’ thought Shelley. And as she thought it, so it was. The vision and the freedom vanished, leaving them standing exposed and desolate in boggy ground. Fortunately they were just outside the perimeter of the Mother Thorn, surrounded only by lesser thorns and rustling reeds. Gongs were sounding in the thornfields, where the whip-like tendrils in the hedges waved, as if feeling for the intruders. It began to be stifling hot. The same sun that fed the creaking thorns was making them faint with thirst.
In front of them was a long lake like the one they saw in Faery, but now it was murky and drear, with oily ripples lapping its muddy shores. To their left, at the head of the lake, was a sight Shelley remembered from her vision in the Deathwagon: a rocky hill with a gaping skull-shaped opening in its side. And up its slopes sprawled, spiny arch after spiny arch, the branches of the huge Mother Thorn which sprang from its base.
‘Lake Deadwater!’ said Korman in disgust, and the words came out of his parched mouth like a curse as they stumbled to a halt. Evil-smelling water, mocking their thirst, seeped into Korman’s boots, spilling over the top of Shelley’s. They shielded their eyes from the sweltering sun, now nearly overhead, and squinted across the lake. Something was moving along the thorn-shaded road that ran along the far shore. ‘The Deathwagon!’ said Shelley in a whisper. It jolted and swayed slowly towards the Hill of the Skull, drawn by two skinny black horses. They watched, mesmerized, as it slowed to a halt. Korman fumbled in his pack and got out the spyglass. Reluctantly he raised it to his eye.
&nbs
p; The driver jumped down and opened sliding doors in the sides, revealing thick iron bars like a lion-cage. They heard the rumble of iron on iron. Shelley had the horrible feeling he was opening the doors to show something to the huddled captives inside, something she had already seen in her vision: the Lady impaled in the thorns.
Korman had no need to guess; through the spyglass he saw only too well. Another Traveller, who had been sitting next to the driver, got down and gestured with his whip at the small shape of the Lady in the thorns. He seemed to be lecturing the caged prisoners. Shelley felt sick. The swamp gases were turning her stomach as the sight was turning her mind. She retched, throwing up the puffballs she had eaten. Korman, looking pale and haggard, as if he had seen a ghost, hastily pocketed the spyglass and caught her as she fell to her knees. He had no words of comfort for her now. The sun was dark in his eyes, and the dismal landscape spun around his head. He forced himself to focus his crumbling will, and helped Shelley into the shade of a dead thorn-thicket.
‘Rest here for a while. Then we must find somewhere to hide you until I visit – the Lady,’ he said with an effort. To himself he said, ‘The mindwebs of Rakmad, and Phagrapag his servant, emanate from that hill. We are at the very gates of darkness. I feel it tugging at me, dragging my very soul to the brink of despair of all life, and if I would resign the will-to-life all this suffering would fade into a drugged peace and the Void would open up and give us blessed oblivion. How can we resist? I should not have brought her here.’
He looked down at her, still retching, spitting, holding her stomach, eyes downcast. Pity filled his heart, and he yearned to take her up and carry her off to a place of safety, and let her forget the horror of this hopeless quest, and be a child again.
‘The Vapáglim ,’ he murmured, and his hand went to the deep pocket where it lay hidden. He imagined the places of safety and beauty to which it could transport them. ‘It is perilous to use!’ he heard his brother’s voice in his head. He looked through the dead thorns at the thorn-covered slopes of the valley, and clenched his jaw.
‘But what greater peril than to lie here in this accursed bog, exposed to the Mindprobers and the mindwebs of despair, ringed about with the thorn mazes of the Mother Thorns? They have grown so strong since I was here! I feel their power choking the very air from my lungs. They sense we are here – that she is here.’ In the distance he heard the baying of the Dagraath. They did not have much time. He looked back at Shelley.
The Vapáglim … He had read of them in old accounts of the ancient Order of the Makers. Though they were said to be perilous because they used the power of the Void, they were also said to open pathways between the bearer and things around him which had special beauty. That sounded good! Special beauty… His heart leaped in his breast as a wild hope occurred to him.
‘Would a path not open up between the Lady and me? I could go to her, save her, then return…’
Then it was as if his tormented mind split into two. He heard his other half reply, ‘But I am a Guardian, sworn to protect the girl, the Kortana.’
‘Yet am I not to also be a Guardian to the one I love? Perhaps we are destined to protect the Kortana together, to be as father and mother to her and guide her safely to her destiny? I could go to her now, cut her from the thorns, and return with her to Shelley before the Aghmaath find her.’
‘What if the Vapáglim does not work in reverse, and Shelley is left here to die?’
‘But the Kortana, surely she would draw the Vapáglim back to her?’
He silenced his inner argument, listening to the sad rustle of dry reeds about their hiding place as a sluggish, humid breeze stirred them. In the shimmering heat of midday, he thought he could almost hear the thorns all about the lake growing, crackling as yet more cruel tendrils unfolded from their protective sheaths and hardened in the sun to deadly points.
‘What is the peril Hillgard and the old writings spoke of?’ he wondered. ‘Do the mindwebs of the enemy make deceptive paths and divert the user of the Vapáglim into a trap? Or does the Void open up and swallow him?’ Finally he said to himself, ‘No, I cannot risk it.’
‘You want to go across to her, don’t you?’ he heard a gentle voice say, and he looked up with a start. It was Shelley; so good, so full of beauty, putting him to shame with her kindness, thinking of him even in the midst of this horror. He hesitated. ‘Yes…’
‘Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To see if we can rescue her? Or at least to comfort her and promise her that we’ll be back when we have the power to defeat the Aghmaath. When we’ve restored the Arcra-Nama.’
Her faith lifted his heart, and he looked at her with affection. ‘You read my mind, Shelley! But we must find a better hiding place until dark. The fear will grow as night falls, but at least by night the Aghmaath and their slaves cannot see, except with mindprobes, which we know how to deflect.’
‘I know! See that little island out there? It’s got thick trees growing on it still, and the smothering thorns will give us good cover anyway. And the water should put the wardogs off our scent.’
‘Why, yes! That island was once very fair, and had a small temple dedicated to the Lady and the Zagonamara. It may still be wholesome enough. But how could we get across without being seen?’
‘We could cut some of these reeds, and make breathing tubes, and swim underwater. I’ve seen it in movies.’
‘What are these “movies” you speak of?’
‘Never mind, let’s just do it!’
Korman was dubious, but the sound of the Dagraath’s baying was getting closer. Quickly he cut two large reeds, hollow apart from the joints. He picked the longest sections and cut them through again.
‘There, that will do,’ he said and they each took one and tried breathing through them. Shelley nearly gagged, but cleared her mind and breathed slowly as Korman had taught her to do.
She had a sudden worrying thought. ‘Korman, what if we swim off-course?
‘I will tie a piece of string from my waist to yours, and guide you as we swim.’
She wondered how he would keep a straight course, but she had learned to trust his abilities, and so she said nothing but ‘OK,’ as he rummaged in his pack and tied a thin string to his waist and gave her the other end to tie around her waist.
They knew their baggage would get soaked through, but there was no alternative. Then Korman exclaimed, ‘Baggage! Of course, Bootnip is in my pack. I will let him out. He will have to swim.’
Shelley was worried at the idea of an anklebiter wanted by the Aghmaath following them, but there was nothing for it. ‘Short of drowning him now,’ she thought, irritably. Bootnip complained and whined when Korman set him down in the mud, and growled resentfully at Shelley as if he had read her thoughts. They slipped down through the long reeds into the brackish water and felt the mud sucking at their boots. They took them off and put them in their packs.
Then they looked at each other, and Shelley said, ‘The Lady.’
‘The Lady,’ Korman replied, and they slid headlong into the slimy, algae-covered water. Although it was tepid, the feel of the water made Shelley gasp and she swallowed some. It was oily and tasted of decay.
They had agreed to carry on swimming until they touched land – which would hopefully be the island and not the other side, where they would be sure to be seen. The bottom went down surprisingly quickly, and they were soon floating blindly on their backs, kicking underwater, careful not to disturb the surface.
Just as their heads went under, a swarm of black hunter hornets hummed overhead and circled over the water. Finding nothing but an old anklebiter swimming across the lake (they swooped to sting it on the nose but it dived under), they flew back to the Kiraglim who had sent them. Hithrax had tracked the two fugitives in the Valley. Now he frowned; that is, his eyes hooded and the bristles about his tall, bony forehead stuck out menacingly.
‘The fools have come into the trap. No matter that they have slipped the noose this
time. Let them wander awhile here, and see for themselves the futility of their foolish dreams.’ He spat, and turned back to meditate before the black stone and wait for the next alert. It would not be long, he was sure. His Dagraath slunk behind him, ashamed at their failure.
Shelley now had the worst experience she had yet had on Aeden. She felt she would burst trying to suck in enough air through the thin reed, and her body felt horribly exposed to whatever creatures might be in that foul water; and she was nearly gagging at the feeling of the reed in her mouth, yet she could not surface because of the danger of being seen from the shore. There was no way of telling how far they had come; she just had to keep going until she hit land again. ‘Don’t let it be far, please don’t let us miss the island,’ she repeated over and over in her mind. Her eyes were shut against the sunlight that filtered through the muddy water over her head, and to stop them from stinging, but they were stinging anyway. She could not feel the string. She hoped Korman was still there. She tried not to imagine the monsters that could be swimming under her, about to bite and drag her down. ‘That’s what crocodiles do, they grab on and hold you under until you drown,’ she thought. ‘Then they take you into their underwater tunnels where they leave you to rot, and then they eat you.’ Her back and neck prickled and she twisted in fright every time a current of colder or warmer water touched her. She tried not to let her legs dangle too far down into the murky depths.
To her horror she felt something sweep past her left side, not touching her but creating a pressure wave on her skin, and at the same time the reddish light before her closed eyes turned dark as the light was cut off. She screamed under water, and swerved away. The string connecting her to Korman went tight for a second, then loose. ‘Just a branch or something,’ she told herself. ‘Pull yourself together!’ But the string was gone; her knot had slipped and she was adrift. For a moment she almost panicked, breathing in short gulps, hyperventilating, feeling for the string with her free hand while the other clutched the breathing-reed shakily. Her limbs began to feel tingly with the excess air. She noticed herself thinking, ‘So all along this was how my life was going to end…’ But she forced herself to keep going and focus hard on the goal: to reach the island. She tried to feel for it in her mind, her shaky legs kicking as if they had a life of their own. Now the top of her head felt tingly, as if it had antennae. An impression grew as if there was a cool peaceful light above it and she was ascending through the murk and would soon burst up into it and find herself in the shallows of the island.
The island had become in her mind a sanctuary of perfect peace. If she could only hang on, keep kicking, keep breathing, ignore the threat of things in the water, everything would be fine. All the past and the future, except for that one prospect, was blotted out.
She had just reached a state where she felt she could go on as long as she had to, when she felt her heels hitting a muddy slope, then her head. ‘Please let it be the island, please,’ she prayed inwardly as she struggled to turn onto her stomach and raise her head to look.
Chapter Forty-three
The Ruined Temple