by Alys Clare
Although nobody spoke of anything but the usual everyday matters in and around the settlement, nevertheless there was a very strong sense of anticipation.
I decided to watch and wait.
I had grown very fond of the people who lived in this hidden valley on the north of the coastal mountain range, and the girls and young women with whom I shared the lodging house were becoming friends. The people’s life was one of two contrasts, for although we were now in a warm, moist and temperate spring, the winter months, as I had seen for myself during the last of them, were hard. In the harsh times there was a great deal of snow, and the valley became even more isolated as the few passes and tracks down to the lowlands and the coastal plain were blocked.
With the thaw, everyone in the valley, from the oldest great-grandfather to the youngest child capable of independent movement, went outside to the fields. They used every available piece of land, cultivating narrow strips carved out of steep hillsides, ploughing and manuring so as to get the optimum yield, and they grew a wide variety of crops: wheat, root vegetables, cabbages and, on the more sheltered of the south and south-west facing slopes up against that great tongue of mountain, oranges, lemons, vines and peaches. They had livestock: goats, a few enclaves of pigs and even some cows, although grazing land was in short supply. It was an isolated community. Everyone knew everyone else and, perhaps as a consequence, they all seemed to live in harmony.
To a man, woman and child they were in awe of Luliwa. That had been clear from the start. They were also wary of Itzal, who was so close to her. He was her bodyguard, her lieutenant, her confidant. Taking the chance to watch them closely whenever they were together – which wasn’t very often as Itzal’s visits were short and infrequent – I was almost sure he was her son, or, at any rate, a close relation. He had her same skin tone, there was a similarity in their features – especially the mouth and the strong, straight nose – and, like her, he had those golden brilliants in his brown eyes, although his were not so noticeable and you had to catch him in the right light to see them.
When it had first struck me that they were probably mother and son, I wondered why I wasn’t more surprised. And I answered myself: You already knew.
It seemed I had noticed, had absorbed the fact, had quietly stored it away until I was ready to think about it.
I was finding out rather a lot about myself and my thought processes.
So, as the warm spring days passed, I kept my eyes open and my senses vigilant.
On the evening when I knew for certain that whatever we were waiting for was now imminent, I had spent a long day underground and was emerging from the darkness weary and with a slight headache. I didn’t mind, for it was a relief to be emerging at all. At the start, when Luliwa’s instruction had been so intense and I had frequently been on my knees in a mixture of awe, wonder, disbelief and exhaustion, we had quite often stayed beneath the mountain for days – even on one occasion more than two weeks – at a time. But that phase had passed; she never explained why we’d had to drive ourselves so hard, but in my own mind I believed it was because the huge impact of what was being revealed to me was received more readily if it was not diluted with everyday life.
Even now after all this time, coming out of the dark world into the light was difficult; especially on evenings like this one, when I was so tired.
Luliwa had gone on ahead of me, murmuring something about a task she must do, or perhaps some place she needed to be; I hadn’t really taken it in. She had left me in the cave with the horse images – the place where I felt whatever came to join me there from out of the darkness with the greatest clarity – and I had been sitting cross-legged on the rocky floor, the cloak that Jack had given me folded up beneath me (I don’t believe anybody can sit on a cold rock floor for very long without something to act as a cushion, not if they’re trying to dwell on anything but their own discomfort) and letting my mind turn into a silent, still, receptive blank.
Luliwa had been instructing me in ways to assist in the acquisition of this highly desirable state, one of which was the striking of one of the stalactites suspended from the cave roof so as to make sounds that ranged from a deep, reverberating, long-lasting boom to a sharp, sudden plink; I had recognized that variation the moment I first heard it, for it had rung through the summertime drone that had been inside my head for so long. Today I had been experimenting with these sounds. I’d discovered that, as I tuned my hearing to pick up the moment when the sound at last faded away to nothing (which took a surprisingly long time), my mind slipped very easily into the dream-like trance state.
I was looking forward to telling Luliwa of my success.
I took care, as always, on the steep path leading down from the concealed entrance, for it was perilous, there was an alarming drop to the left, and I was often far from my practical, daylight self as I emerged out of the darkness. Presently the going became easier and I came to the point from which the little settlement could first be seen. Smoke was rising up from several of the dwellings, and it appeared quite a lot of cooking was going on. My empty stomach growled and rumbled in anticipation of a good meal.
The visibility was good and the westering sun was illuminating the valley with golden light. I could see a long way, and as I came out onto a stretch of the path that was relatively flat and didn’t require my full attention, I let my eyes follow the line of the river that wound its way from the place where it emerged, as an icy-cold flow of white water straight from the mountain’s heart, to the increasingly wide series of loops and bends that took it down to meet the sea.
There was a track that ran beside the water. A figure was on it, walking briskly away from the village. As I looked further on, I saw a second figure, coming up from the coast. The two had seen each other and were hastening towards each other.
The one coming from the settlement was Luliwa. I recognized her long robe, but, even more, I recognized the way she walked: briskly, economically, her carriage straight and elegant.
The person hurrying towards her moved in the same way, and I said aloud, ‘It’s Itzal.’
But what was he doing, coming from that direction? As far as I knew, when he wasn’t in the village he was invariably off away in the south; in all likelihood, back in the City of Pearl. He often brought news of the doings of people there and sometimes even a message for me from Gurdyman, although Gurdyman’s words were always disappointingly mundane and bland. If he knew what was happening to me – and I couldn’t think that he didn’t – he was determined not to refer to it.
The distant figures of Luliwa and Itzal had joined up now, and they had their arms round each other in a hug. It was a rare show of emotion. Usually they were courteous but cool with each other, and it was possibly a symptom of my new insight that now I detected the profound love between them.
Whatever mission had taken Itzal off in this unexpected direction must have been a perilous one. Even from where I stood high above them, I could read anxiety in the way Luliwa was standing. She was leaning forward, her hand clutching his arm, looking into his face as if searching his features for the truth behind whatever account he had just given her, and I could clearly see her relief when he repeatedly nodded, as if to say, Yes, yes, all went well, all is just as it should be!
They were moving off now towards the village, and quite soon the path took them beneath an outcrop of the hillside and I could no longer see them.
Perhaps Itzal’s return from whatever tricky mission he had been on had prompted all that cooking? A celebratory feast … oh, it was a cheering thought.
I increased my pace and strode on down into the settlement.
The room where I slept was deserted, as was the long trough in the little yard behind it where we washed. I went outside, washing my face and hands as thoroughly as the very cold water allowed. The trough was in shade, and the water we pumped into it came in a channel straight from the flow emerging from the heart of the mountain. Then, summoning my courage, I plunged my he
ad under the water and gave my hair a wash. I’d brought some of the special liquid that Hanan had supplied, back at the City of Pearl, and had been using it from time to time. My vanity informed me that the pleasure of seeing my own bright, coppery hair was worth the intense brow-ache that ensued from the icy water.
Back inside, dry and clean, I put on a fresh undergown and laced myself back into my outer garments. I braided my still-damp hair, covered it with one of the white caps I always wear and arranged my shawl over the top. Then I went out to join the community and share the keen anticipation of a fine feast.
Many people greeted me as I entered the long room where we ate our meals. They knew me, they accepted me, they were polite and friendly, but I felt they kept their distance: no doubt because they all knew why I was here and with whom I spent the vast majority of my time.
Communities need their healers, and value those among them who are prepared to walk into the shadows and learn from the spirits. But they do not necessarily want them as their closest friends.
Fires glowed in the pits and iron pots were suspended over them, bubbling promisingly and giving off savoury aromas. On a board against the far wall, women were piling small loaves of bread into baskets. There were big jugs of ale, and a few smaller ones of wine.
I passed slowly through the assembly, exchanging a greeting with the young woman whose bed in the dormitory was beside mine, pausing to speak to a woman whose sickly child I’d treated, responding with a grin to the flirtatious remark of a very old man who, despite being almost blind, claimed he could detect a pretty woman by the way she moved. He was about the only villager who treated me like any other human being, his name was Basajaun – it meant, he had informed me, Old Man of the Woods – and I had grown very fond of him.
I had spotted Luliwa over in the far corner. Itzal stood beside her, his back to me. He had the high collar of his cloak turned up, and I could only see the top of his head and his white-streaked brown hair. Slowly, steadily, I worked my way over to them.
‘Lassair,’ Luliwa said as I reached their corner. ‘You look tired, child.’
‘I am,’ I admitted. ‘I spent longer than I had thought up in the cavern of the horses.’
Itzal turned. ‘It is often the way,’ he said. ‘Time is different, in the painted darkness.’
Now he was facing me, a faint smile on his face.
And I was utterly confused.
For it was Itzal; it had to be, although wasn’t he smaller than I remembered? Surely it was him, for the features were so similar, the hair worn long and centrally parted, the eyes the same gold-lit brown, bright and shining in the firelight.
Nobody could look so like Itzal and yet not be him.
Could they?
They could.
I knew, with that newly discovered inner eye that I was learning did not let me down, that this was not the man I knew. This man was indeed smaller: shorter, less broad in the shoulder, less … solid, was the word that sprang to mind. The facial features did not have the hard edge that Itzal’s had.
And, as if as a reward for my insight and my willingness to believe the unbelievable, suddenly Itzal was there too, standing on Luliwa’s other side, smiling – laughing – at my puzzlement.
‘Well done,’ Luliwa said quietly, her words only for the three of us who stood so close to her. ‘You believed what your inner self was telling you, not what your eyes were seeing. The pair of them are very alike, aren’t they?’ Then, with a hand to the newcomer’s back, she pushed the slender young man forward a pace or two and said, ‘Lassair, this is my other child. This is Errita.’
I looked into the strange eyes, prepared to smile, to be friendly, to …
But the thought trailed away, for something – something coming out of this Errita? – stopped me dead.
It was as if his mind spoke directly to mine, and the words were no polite greeting. Even as his mouth formed and expressed that courtesy, his eyes said something else.
They were sending out a warning.
I knew, even in that first instant, that he was dangerous.
Very, very dangerous.
EIGHTEEN
The feast was an abundant celebration of everything the settlement had to offer. I realized quite soon that it wasn’t in honour of Errita’s return. He had indeed been absent for a long time – months rather than weeks, I gathered from the whispered comments – and he’d been far away. He had been expected earlier, but it seemed he had mistimed his departure. The last sailing of the autumn from wherever he’d been that would have brought him back to the north coast of Spain had gone without him. He had been forced to overwinter and wait until the voyaging times began again with the onset of spring.
You’d have thought his eventual return would be cause for relief and happiness. But I picked up quickly and quite strongly that nobody was very pleased to see him, and that he was tolerated in this company only because he was Luliwa’s son, and belonged to the place. It was his home, the general attitude seemed to be, and everyone, no matter how unpopular they were, had a right to live in their own home.
I slipped away from Luliwa and her sons and found a place on a bench in the middle of the room. The women on either side of me smiled politely, saw that I was provided with some of every dish on offer, then largely left me alone. It was my old friend Basajaun, seated opposite, who informed me that the feast was in honour of a saint’s day. He mentioned the saint’s name but it meant nothing to me, so I guessed it was a local one. The date coincided happily with the true arrival of spring, so that was cause enough to be cheerful and, apart from the corner where Errita sat with Itzal and Luliwa, cheerfulness certainly reigned. Most of us, myself included, went to bed merry with ale and wine, and I made sure before I slept that I had a good supply of the willow-bark preparation that is good for headaches, especially those brought about by an over-indulgence in alcohol.
As the next morning progressed, my sense of foreboding grew until it felt like a dark cloud over me.
Luliwa did not send for me. She was, I heard someone mutter, shut away in her own little dwelling on the upper edge of the settlement, tucked away underneath the mountain’s shoulder, and alone, they said, but for her sons. But then I remembered having seen Itzal slip away from the feast late last night, his travelling pack on his shoulder.
On a day when I could have done with the distraction of her company and the demands of a particularly tricky session of instruction, I was left alone.
In the end, I set out up the path into the mountain. I went to the ledge I’d sat on with Luliwa the morning after I had first arrived. I made myself comfortable and waited.
I knew I was waiting, and I was almost sure what I was waiting for.
They came from the mountain, as I knew they would. Itzal must have set off under the mountains last night on some pre-arranged mission, for now there he was, in the lead, half-turning on the steep path to help the old man making a careful descent behind him. The old man was being guided from the rear by a tall, dark-faced figure in dazzling white robes.
Itzal had seen me.
He left his charge to the man in white, then ran lightly down the path and came up to me. He said, ‘I have brought a friend to see you.’
I already knew.
I elbowed Itzal out of the way and leapt up the path towards the little group. The man in white robes stepped back and the old man stood there alone, gently smiling.
I was hesitant to throw myself against him, much as I wanted to, for I might unbalance him and the path was high and perilous.
But he beckoned me, his smile widening.
I ran forward and felt Gurdyman’s arms go around me.
‘You haven’t walked all the way from the City of Pearl?’ I exclaimed. The first rush of joy had subsided and I had managed to untangle myself from him. Now we were back on the ledge where I’d just been sitting.
‘Of course not, child. I rode in luxury in that little cart, and your friendly pony is now eating his f
ill in the stable on the south side of the mountain.’
‘But you can’t have come beneath the mountain!’ I vividly remembered how hard the passage had been, how tight the tunnels, how perilous and exhausting the ascents and the sudden, terrifying descents.
Gurdyman, smiling, shook his head. Itzal said, ‘There are other routes, Lassair. The one by which I brought you here is reserved for people like you.’
I stared at him. For people like me … who had to demonstrate that they could endure danger, fear, the claustrophobic terror of the darkness? I didn’t really want to think about that.
‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded, turning back to Gurdyman. We were sitting side by side on my rocky shelf, Salim on his other side, Itzal standing before us, and I think Gurdyman was glad of the rest.
He looked at me, his bright blue eyes intent on mine. ‘You have changed already, child,’ he murmured. He looked sad fleetingly. ‘The Lassair I knew is not there now.’
‘She is! I am!’ I cried. For some reason I wanted to weep.
He took my hand, trying to smile. ‘It is what happens,’ he said, but so softly that I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. Then, brightening, he went on, ‘You asked what I am doing here. I believe you can answer the question yourself.’
I went inside myself, as Luliwa had been teaching me, and, just as he had said, the answer was there.
‘You’re on your way home,’ I said.