by Kate Forsyth
Lewen straightened his aching back, pushing the hair out of his eyes with a filthy, sweaty hand, and looked with some satisfaction on the large plot of rich dark earth before him. Although digging over the vegetable patch in preparation for the spring sowing was always hard work, he enjoyed working muscles stiff after the enforced inactivity of the winter, and he loved the smell of the sun-warmed earth.
He looked with keen pleasure across the lawns, through the grey filigree of branches just beginning to swell with flower buds, past pale stars of narcissus to the glimmering water of the loch. The forest lay beyond, green and deep and secret, with the grey, cloud-capped mountains brooding darkly beyond.
The knowledge that he would soon be leaving his parents’ farm to travel back to the city only sharpened his acute sense of kinship with the wild, lovely landscape around him. Although he was looking forward to returning to his studies at the Tower of Two Moons, he knew he would miss his family and his home, this little glade of serenity surrounded on all sides by a dark snarl of wilderness.
I’ll go out tramping this afternoon, he thought. Take my dinner and walk up to the waterfall. Mam will understand.
His mother looked up and smiled. She was a slender woman with eyes as green as the new leaves unfurling on the beech tree and a great mass of twiggy brown hair that was also just beginning to bud with leaves. Her bare feet were broad, brown and gnarled like tree roots.
‘Sure, o’ course ye can,’ Lilanthe said. ‘I’ll keep Merry from following ye and teasing ye. I ken it’s some peace ye be wanting.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Soil smells good.’ Gracefully she lifted her brown homespun skirt and stepped into the dirt, her toes spreading and digging in. ‘Mmm, tastes good too.’
Lewen grinned. ‘Merry can sow her seeds now, if she wants.’
‘Meriel!’ Lilanthe called. ‘Merry! Where are you?’
The branches of an apple tree at the far end of the garden shook violently and a girl dropped down, landing on hands and knees. She was only eleven years old, nine years younger than Lewen, for their mother had trouble carrying children to term. Three had died in her womb between Lewen and Meriel, and one had lived only a scant few hours before failing to take another breath. Their deaths had grieved Lilanthe deeply, and so she treasured this last child of hers all the more, keeping her close to home and teaching Meriel’s lessons herself. The little girl was a bright, winsome child, as much at home in the forest as a squirrel, and with a deep connection to all growing things. Like her mother, she was small and slight, with long, twiggy brown hair and green eyes. Around her head darted a tiny nisse, her iridescent wings whirring so fast they were merely a blur of light.
‘Here I am, Mam,’ Meriel sang out.
‘Lewen has finished digging over the vegetable patch if you want to start planting,’ Lilanthe said. ‘Come and taste the soil, it’s delicious!’
Meriel came bounding across the lawn, the nisse swooping ahead of her. When she came to the edge of the dug-over garden bed, she leapt in joyfully, squelching the damp earth between her bare toes. ‘Yum, it is good,’ she said. ‘I’ll go get my bags of seeds. Will ye help me, Lewen?’
‘No’ a chance,’ he said. ‘I’ve done my work for the day. I’m going to have a swim to get all this muck off me, then I’m going up the waterfall one last time.’
‘I want to go too!’ Meriel cried.
‘Nay, it’ll be late afore ye finish planting out those seeds, Merry,’ Lilanthe said firmly. ‘Ye can go into the forest anytime, but ye ken Nina will be here tomorrow and so this may be Lewen’s last chance to go wandering in the forest afore he leaves for Lucescere.’
‘No, I want to go,’ Meriel wheedled. ‘Oh, Lewen, must ye be going without me? Canna ye wait for me? I won’t be long, I promise.’
‘Aye, ye will, young lady. That’s our vegetables for the summer ye’ve got rattling in that box o’ yours, and I willna have ye spoil our harvest by being hasty in the planting. Leave Lewen be. He’s worked hard this morning while ye were playing about and climbing trees and he deserves a few hours off.’
‘Oh but Mam …’
‘No buts about it, missy. Remember, I’m trusting ye to sow the seeds by yourself. Plant too deep or too shallow or too close together, and ye’ve lost your seed.’
‘Aye, I ken that, Mam. It’s just that it’s our last afternoon alone with Lewen. Nina will have a whole caravan o’ people with her and then he’ll be going away with them and we willna see him again for ages …’
‘No need to be reminding me, dear heart, I ken.’ Lilanthe smiled at her and ruffled her wild brown locks. ‘He’ll be home for supper, though, and when ye’ve finished planting out the seeds ye can come and help me bake something special for him, if ye like.’
Meriel agreed begrudgingly. Lewen smiled at her, feeling rather guilty. It was not that he did not enjoy his little sister’s company, it was just that she was so full of vitality. He felt a strong desire for quietness and reflection on his last afternoon in the forest.
After he had cleaned his tools and put them away in the barn, he went back through the garden towards the house. It was a very pretty little house, with rose briars climbing over the back porch and a stone shield over the arched front door with a design of a weeping greenberry tree carved upon it. It had been built of the local rough grey stone, but so carefully that all the stones fitted together harmoniously, making sure no draughts could sneak in through gaps and cracks. Its lichen-green roof was very steep, so that the heavy snows of winter would slide off easily, and the windows were all large and paned with glass, so that the rooms were filled with sunshine in the warm growing months. Long shutters with little heart shapes cut out in rows were now fastened securely back against the walls, but in winter they would be drawn across the windows, protecting the precious glass from hail and sleet, and keeping the warmth of the fire within. The doors and shutters and gables were all painted a soft green and the house was surrounded on all sides by a lovingly tended garden so it looked as if it had grown up from the earth rather than being assembled upon it.
Lewen came through the kitchen garden with its hedges of evergreen rosemary, grinning at Meriel as she knelt in the freshly dug garden beds, carefully planting out her seeds. His mother came out onto the porch, with a satchel of food in her hands and a bundle of clean clothes.
‘Here ye are then, laddie. Do no’ be late home now, do ye hear? Merry and I will be making ye a special supper for your last night at home. Will ye be home afore dark?’
‘I’m just going up to the waterfall, Mam. I’m no’ intending to climb auld Hoarfrost.’
‘Aye, I ken. And I do no’ fear ye doing something foolish. It’s just … och, it’s probably naught. Happen it’s because I ken ye are leaving soon and I wish to keep ye close. I’m sorry. Ye enjoy your tramp and I’ll see ye at supper.’
‘Aye, sure, Mam. I’ll be good, I promise.’ He smiled at her cheekily, waved a quick goodbye and set off through the garden, rummaging in the satchel to see what she had packed for him. There was fresh baked bread and hard cheese and pickles, a fat wedge of fruitcake and, much to his satisfaction, a corked jar of cold ale.
On the grassy slope by the lake, he stripped off his damp, grimy clothes and plunged into the water, which was icy cold but invigorating. He swam vigorously across the lake to the island, parting the willow fronds to slide into the cool green cavern beneath, as he had done since he was just a boy. He floated there for a moment, but it was far too cold out of the sunshine and so he swam back towards the shore. Greatly refreshed, he towelled himself dry and dressed again, buckling his witch’s dagger in its accustomed place at his belt and polishing his moonstone ring till it shone. He then followed a narrow green path into the woods, the nisse Kalea soaring swiftly ahead of him, her wings flashing.
It was an ancient forest, and very dark and tangled. Many of the trees had been growing since long before humans came to Eileanan. They ascended into the sky like massive columns, their trunks green an
d velvety with moss, their branches trailing shawls of fine grey lace. The path climbed past one old giant whose girth was so vast that a dozen men standing on its roots would not have been able to touch fingers, no matter how outstretched their arms.
It was quiet in the cool gloom, the only sound the occasional call of a bird or the subtle rustle of some creature in the undergrowth. Lewen walked swiftly, for the sun was already beginning to slant sideways through the tree trunks and it was a hike of an hour or more to the waterfall.
Kalea came down to perch on his shoulder, taking hold of his ear and raising herself on tiptoe so she could speak into it. ‘Lewen tramp-stamp the green way, the forest way, Lewen sad-sorrowful?’
Lewen smiled ruefully. The nisse knew him well. He put up his hand and lifted her off his shoulder, holding her before his face so he could speak directly to her. Her eyes were the colour of the green heart of a flame, shining in the gloom like a cat’s, and her face was triangular, with sharp-pointed ears poking through a mass of wild dark hair.
‘I do feel rather sad,’ he admitted. ‘I’m going back to school, ye ken, and although I love the Theurgia and love being the Rìgh’s squire, I still miss ye, and my kin, and the forest.’
‘Why go? Stay-stop.’
‘I canna,’ he answered.
Her eyes blazed with fury. ‘Canna? Why canna? Canna-willna.’
‘I suppose that’s true,’ he said. ‘I could stay, o’ course. But I want to go to school, and learn; and I’m proud to serve my Rìgh and hope I’ll be knighted after I graduate and happen even be appointed a Blue Guard like my da was, if I do well enough …’
Kalea reached out her tiny hand and seized his nose, tweaking it so hard tears sprang to his eyes. ‘Fool-school,’ she said scornfully. ‘More learning-lore here, tree-wise, sky-wise, stone-wise, water-wise. No learning-lore at fool-school.’
Lewen had dropped her the moment she tweaked his nose, crying out in surprise. Now, as he rubbed it furiously, she hovered before him, her diamond-bright wings whirring.
‘That hurt!’ he said crossly.
She trilled derisively, showing her fangs, and darted away as he tried to catch her again.
‘Canna catch me!’ she called and buzzed about his head as exasperatingly as any mosquito. Every now and again she ducked closer to slap or pinch him. ‘Canna catch me!’
‘Stop it, Kalea!’ Lewen cried. ‘What’s the matter with ye?’
‘No go,’ she suddenly cried, swooping down to clasp his finger with both arms. ‘Lewen no go?’
He cupped her gently. ‘I’ll miss ye too, Kalea, indeed I will. But I truly do have to go. I’ve missed enough school these last few months, and I do no’ want to fall behind. I’ll come back when I can, though …’
Without warning she sank her sharp fangs into his hand. He yelped and shook her off, lifting his hand to suck at the blood leaking from the little puncture wounds.
‘Kalea weep-wail, Kalea sob-snivel,’ she cried, scrubbing at her eyes with tiny fists. ‘Lewen go!’ And she turned and flew away into the forest, swift and noisy as a hornet. Lewen stared after her, feeling angry and exasperated and a little bit guilty all at the same time. Kalea was the great-great-granddaughter of the nisse Elala whom Lilanthe had once rescued from children in a village square. Lewen’s father Niall said that was when he first began to love Lilanthe, seeing her standing alone against a gang of bullies with the poor battered nisse cradled in her hands. Although the garden and forest around the house were infested with the great-great-grandchildren of Elala, Kalea was the youngest and the boldest. She was rarely far from Lewen, having developed an abiding affection for him ever since the time he had scooped her out of a particularly deep puddle one stormy day when she had been little more than a baby. Although nisses were by nature impish and quarrelsome, delighting in spiteful tricks and teasing games, Kalea had never tweaked his nose before, let alone bitten him. It upset him that she had done so now.
As he clambered over great, writhing roots, ducked under tangled vines, and slid down a slippery slope with the satchel bouncing on his back, Lewen’s thoughts returned to the journey ahead of him. He had spent the last four years studying at the Theurgia and he loved it, but he did find the noise and crowds burdensome, and his duties as one of the Rìgh’s squires took up a great deal of his spare time. He was so eager to be chosen as one of the Rìgh’s personal bodyguards that he took his court duties very seriously, and by the end of the last term he had been exhausted in both body and mind. The Keybearer of the Coven had noticed, even if the Rìgh had not. So she had sent him home for the winter holidays. He had not been home to Kingarth since his sixteenth birthday, when he had sat the Second Test of Powers and had been accepted into the Theurgia as an apprentice-witch. Four long years spent in the midst of two hundred other apprentices, all jostling for attention, all noisy and opinionated, all hungry to prove their powers. No wonder he had been exhausted.
In the morning, the journeywitch Nina the Nightingale would be coming by the farm, so that Lewen could join her caravan of new apprentices on its way to the Theurgia. Journeywitches were a specially chosen band of witches who spent their days travelling around Eileanan looking for children with magical powers, and persuading their parents to send them to the Theurgia to be properly trained. They also performed rites for any village they passed that did not have a witch of its own.
Lewen could have easily ridden down to Ravenscraig, the castle of the ruling MacBrann clan, to meet Nina and her cavalcade, but the journeywitch was an old and dear friend of Lilanthe’s and did not want to miss the chance to see her and Niall. So she and her band of apprentice-witches were all riding from Ravenscraig to Kingarth, even though the round trip would add a week to their journey.
Kingarth was the last croft before the wild mountains known as the Broken Ring of Dubhslain, which curved in a perfect crescent around the highlands of Ravenshaw. There were only two known paths through the great grim peaks. One path led west, over the exposed, wind-scoured flank of Bald Ben, to the rolling plains of Tìreich where the horse-lairds lived. The other climbed high past Dubhglais, ‘the black lake’, and up the steep, bare ridge of Ben Eyrie, the third highest mountain in Eileanan. Dragons were said to fly over Ben Eyrie, and ogres dwelled in the caves hidden within its cliffs. Although this road was by far the swiftest route to the north, it was considered so perilous that it was only used in times of great danger and need. It was called the Razor’s Edge.
Under the shadow of Ben Eyrie was the loch known as Dubhglais, where the Findhorn River had its source. The river wound its way down to a tall waterfall called Hoarfrost’s Beard that fell into the valley where Kingarth was nestled. It then tumbled and fell in swift rapids down the length of the highlands till it came to another steep cliff where it once again fell in a roaring mass of white water called the Findhorn Falls. Ravenscraig was built above these falls, and so for centuries it had been the stronghold of the MacBrann clan, secure against attack. Originally it had been the prionnsa’s winter castle, but the family had taken up permanent residence there when their summer castle Rhyssmadill had proven too close to the dangerous and unpredictable sea.
Lewen had been to Ravenscraig many times, and in fact had only recently returned from a trip there with his family. The only thing it had in common with the great city of Lucescere in Rionnagan was that it was built above a waterfall too high for the Fairgean to leap. It was rather a small castle, damp and draughty and filled with dogs. Lucescere, on the other hand, was a vast warren of a place, filled with sorcerers, nobles, merchants, thieves and faeries. The Rìgh had his palace there, protected on either side by two deep, fast rivers. In the grounds of the palace was the Tower of Two Moons, where the Keybearer of the Coven of Witches had her headquarters, and where the Theurgia, the most famous school in the land, was based.
Although Lewen wanted desperately to be a Yeoman of the Guard, like his father had been, he had ambivalent feelings about Lucescere. He knew his mother had been unh
appy there, shunned and mocked because of her faery blood. It was in the gardens of Lucescere that she had been attacked with an axe while sleeping in her treeshape. Twenty years later she still walked with a limp, and the deep ugly scar still marred her smooth bark.
Although Lewen had not inherited the ability to shapechange into a tree, as his sister had done, he was certainly unhappy if he spent too much time away from the forest. If it had not been for the palace’s famous gardens, Lewen would have left the Theurgia as soon as he got there. Although the gardens were very old and very beautiful, they were tamed and controlled, quite unlike the wild woods of northern Ravenshaw.
When Lewen had first gone to the Theurgia, at the age of sixteen, he had braced himself for the same sort of mockery and disdain his mother had faced, but to his relief his tree-changer ancestry had never been a problem. Either things had changed since Lachlan the Winged had won the throne, or else, as his father had laughingly said, he was simply too big for any of the other students to dare challenge him. Certainly Lewen had inherited his father’s build, being a head above six foot tall, and broad across the shoulders. He had been taught to fight too, with fists and feet, dagger and claymore, and to shoot the longbow with uncanny accuracy. The longbowmen of Ravenshaw were famous, and Niall the Bear the most famous of them all. It was said only the Rìgh could bend a longer bow, or shoot as far or as truly, and Lachlan the Winged carried Owein’s Bow, an ancient and magical weapon.
The cool, delicate touch of spray across his face roused him from his abstraction. Lewen glanced up, surprised, to see a wide curtain of white water tumbling down a high cliff. It fell sheer and foaming as a curtain of white muslin, the stone behind it dark and glistening. Here and there sunlight struck through the encircling trees and lit the spray as bright as diamonds, but most of the cliff-face and the pool below were in shadow and so the effect was curiously smooth and silent.
Lewen grinned and stretched and swung his satchel off his back. He felt a pleasant euphoric tiredness after his long walk, his exasperation at Kalea’s antics having faded away. He pulled out the jar of ale first, uncorked it with his teeth, and took a long swig. After an hour in his rucksack it was not as cool as he would have liked and so he went down to the pool to set it in the icy water while he ate his bread and cheese. He knelt on the damp mossy stones and was just setting the jar securely between two rocks when he heard something that brought him swiftly to his feet.