Bride of the Stone: Circle of Nine Trilogy 2

by Josephine Pennicott

  ‘Hail, tree man! What business do you and your yelping meerwog have in our city?’

  ‘Hail. I am Gwyndion and this is my meerwog, Samma. We have been sent to New Baffin from Mary, High Priestess of Faia, to study under the Tremite Scribes.’

  ‘The Scribes no longer see anyone.’ An old man with flowing blue hair spoke up from the crowd. He had eyes that matched his hair. ‘They stopped taking students many winters ago and prefer to concentrate on the Book of Life.’

  ‘What would you know, Red?’ the hermaphrodite said rudely. ‘Stop your gums flapping, and let the tree man speak!’

  Gwyndion felt confused. ‘We were told to stay at the house of Kaliegraves.’

  ‘Old Kali?’ the hermaphrodite said. ‘I know of her, I can take you there.’ He bowed low before them, flourishing his cap in the air. ‘Simeon, at your service.’

  Gwyndion felt relief. He was exhausted from the constant walking and had not been looking forward to orientating himself in this unfamiliar, exotic city.

  Simeon darted swiftly through the labyrinth of backstreets. There appeared to be hundreds of cobbled arteries and veins leading to the great sea. Gwyndion had no choice but to trust him. Samma was content to be carried in Gwyndion’s arms, her head turning constantly as she admired some new wonder. Soft voices called perpetually from doorways, and Gwyndion puzzled over how any prostitute ever made a living from her trade in a city where the competition was so intense.

  It came as a shock when Simeon explained that most of the women in New Baffin were prostitutes: even happily married women would wait for months at the Temple of the Tomb Goddess, in the hope of attracting her favour by sleeping with a stranger. This was a revelation to the Webx. Although he had been a willing participant in the erotic games of the Imomm Faery people, his race, the Webx, were monogamous. One of Mary’s controversial moves in Faia had been to banish the prostitutes to the Borderlands. It had earned her the displeasure of Aphrodite.

  Do not judge these people, Gwyndion reminded himself This city is the domain of the love goddess, and you are a mere visitor here.

  The smell of the ocean became stronger, the air seeming to slice through his lungs with its pure breath of brine. Fresh, rejuvenating, holy. Gwyndion realised with a twist of his heart that they were nearing the sea. His suspicions were confirmed when they rounded the next corner. There it was in front of them, shimmering and silver, soft blue. Samma mewed her excitement, and before Gwyndion could prevent her, she had leapt from his arms and run down the worn black steps that led to the sand. Another meerwog playing near the waves mewed a welcome, and in no time the two were engaged in a boisterous game.

  Gwyndion looked longingly out at the glistening ocean, which seemed to welcome him with light that danced among the waves. It seemed a very long time since he had spied the sea, and his entire being tingled with a vibration that was almost sexual. Simeon noticed his need and indicated the water.

  ‘Go on,’ he encouraged. ‘I’ll wait for you.’ Savouring the moment, Gwyndion stepped onto the sandy beach. The fishermen who were mending nets looked on in wonderment as the Webx advanced slowly towards them. They had seen many marvels as they had travelled the worlds, but a Webx was a rare sight to anyone’s eyes. Gwyndion felt his branches extend outwards and his leaves rustled in the sea air. He held his arms out in greetings to the ocean. Behind him he was aware Simeon had crouched in the sand to observe him closely. Then his roots appeared and he planted himself fully in the sandy soil. He made an impressive sight as he stood, giving benediction to the waves. The fishermen lit pipes and applauded. Samma, not to be outdone, began to perform somersaults, throwing herself off the ground. Gwyndion stood for blissful minutes, his feet encased in New Baffin sand. The sea breeze felt as if it were gently massaging away the stress he had endured from his imprisonment in the Hollow Hills.

  ‘Oh, elementals of the ocean,’ he prayed. ‘Help me in my quest to recover the Eom and my beloved Hostlings from the Azephim people. Give me strength to endure what lies ahead, and let me walk lightly upon this land.’

  Then it happened. From the waves a mermaid rose. The sailors screamed in terror. They covered their ears and shielded their eyes from her beauty, lest she tempt them to a watery grave. But Gwyndion, overwhelmed by her swift response to his prayer, could only stare in wonder. The mermaid smiled. Her great tail was hidden below the waves, although a brilliant silver shining under the water betrayed its presence beneath her. She ran her hands lightly over her tanned breasts and flicked back her long blue-green hair. Then she threw a shell at Gwyndion, which he automatically caught. She laughed, and reached out her hands to the Webx to beseech him to play with her. Quickly Gwyndion averted his eyes, his body shuddering as he attempted to break her enchantment. Her cold, vacuous eyes could mesmerise him to his death.

  Samma was mewing furiously, half in the ocean, attempting to chase the mermaid away, while Gwyndion ran to grab her, in terror lest the sea creature drag the meerwog underwater. He knew the Merpeople delighted in carrying off small animals. The mermaid laughed again. Her tone was slightly mocking, slightly sad that she couldn’t entice the land dwellers. With a great heave of her glistening silver tail, she submerged back into the ocean from whence she had come.

  ‘By crikey! Great Aphrodite’s tits! I’ve never seen ’em in so close before!’

  The fishermen resumed mending their nets, although the relaxed ease they had shared a few moments before was gone. Now they cast fearful glances towards the ocean as they worked. Gwyndion could hear snatches of their conversation as he stood facing the water, attempting to quell his emotions.

  ‘That was a big ’un, fully developed.’ There was ribald laughter from the men, but Gwyndion could sense the fear beneath their words. ‘She looks like one of them that’s been spotted around the Northerly tips.’

  ‘Aye, methinks the Webx drew her in.’

  ‘Well, the sea has touched him, given him a gift.’

  ‘Aye, or a curse.’

  ‘It was close, wasn’t it? Shit, she looked straight at me. I swear her eyes as cold as a shark’s was on me!’

  ‘Oh aye, great El. She looked right at you all right and couldn’t figure out how a tadpole stood on land.’

  The sailors laughed, but their laughter was slightly hysterical. Gwyndion understood their fear. It would be all too easy to be lured to your death by the unearthly beauty and wild sexuality of the fish woman who had materialised before him. Any weakness, and she would overwhelm you instantly. The sailors had lost many friends to the soft lethal arms of the fish maidens. Gwyndion began to realise the importance of the prostitutes in the city.

  Aware that his presence was making the sailors increasingly uneasy, fearing another mermaid visit from the deep, he turned to Simeon, whose eyes were glowing in excitement from the vision he had just witnessed.

  ‘Can I touch it?’ he begged. ‘The shell that she touched?’ Amused, Gwyndion passed the smooth, pale-pink conch shell over to him, and watched as he held it in that age-old fashion against his ear in awe. Gwyndion could tell that he was imagining the being that held it and her companions who lived beneath the tides. The Webx shuddered at the thought that the lad had become even slightly entranced by the fish woman.

  ‘When you are older, Simeon, will you take to a life on the seas?’ he asked without thinking. Simeon flushed, and a shadow flickered across his face. ‘Not likely. The sailors consider it unlucky to carry us hermaphrodites, being half-women.’

  Gwyndion nodded. He understood how painful it was to feel an outsider, a freak. He realised his new acquaintance had drunk from the same cup of sorrow as he, and his heart went out to him.

  ‘Never mind, lad. The Dreamers must have a better fate in store for you.’

  Simeon nodded, his mouth a thin ribbon of resentment, and the two continued walking.

  A cobbled white road that faced the beach had impressive grand mansions along it. Each large white dwelling seemed to attempt to outdo the next with
ostentatious displays of dazzling Aphrodite statues. Lush gardens perfumed the air with heady floral smells. In the front yard of one of the mansions, brightly coloured children’s balloons bopped merrily, the leftover memory of a childhood celebration. As Gwyndion admired the beautiful homes, a disturbing vision came to him. The mansions lay in ruins, the broken statues of the Tomb Goddess in pieces underwater. Merpeople and sea demons swam among them, making their home in the broken remnants, while above the waters, another great civilisation thrived and prospered, oblivious to what lay so near beneath them. Time reduces us all, it snatches our dreams, steals our hearts and hopes. The sea will always claim what she considers to be hers.

  Chilled at the vision, Gwyndion was relieved when Simeon turned out of the street of grand homes and into the next, which was obviously lower down the economic scale. Four doors along, he paused before an unostentatious pale blue dwelling. There were no statues of the Tomb Goddess in this garden. Only a row of carefully arranged cacti and a small dozing kitten signified that this was the home of a living being.

  ‘Well, here you be,’ Simeon said. ‘I won’t hang around. Old Kali doesn’t exactly approve of me.’

  Gwyndion wondered why this was so. He felt sad to be saying goodbye so soon to his new acquaintance, and felt in his pockets for one of the gold coins that Mary had presented him with to take to New Baffin.

  ‘Nay, your money won’t be necessary,’ Simeon said in his half-mocking, half-serious tone. ‘Enjoy your visit to our fair city.’ He bowed deeply before Gwyndion and Samma. ‘Merry Meet, Merry Part and Merry Meet!’

  Gwyndion watched him leave before advancing nervously towards the door to ring the large bell. A Crone who didn’t approve of his new acquaintance certainly didn’t sound like a person he thought he would be drawn to. With a sense of unease, he heard footsteps approaching the door. He tensed. What sort of place had Mary sent him to?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Old One waits patiently

  While shadows creep near.

  Her blood an offering;

  Her days already tattooed on the Snake King’s tongue.

  Pain shatters;

  Stone makes no sound.

  Silent, healing pain purifies the ancient snake,

  Rising, crying within the bones of a king long dead

  — Condensed from the Tremite Book of Life, Column MLVI NT

  Two hours later, Gwyndion and Samma were perched around Kaliegraves’s oval wooden table. Gwyndion drank from a large flask of esteo, while Samma lustily ate helpings of honeybread. All his apprehension about the Healer Crone had long vanished. He looked around him at the sunny, cosy kitchen. A large yellow sunbird kept bursting into noisy chatter. Kaliegraves’s collection of clocks on the wall showed the time in different worlds, and her wild assortment of photographs and postcards were pinned to a chaotic memo board. Gwyndion was fascinated to see a photograph of Mary among them, looking carefree and happy, her arms around Kaliegraves. There was also a framed diploma announcing that Kaliegraves had been awarded the Order of the City for her work with the homeless in New Baffin. Clearly Kaliegraves was a Crone well liked and respected and, after only a short time in her company, Gwyndion could understand why.

  She was a dumpy Crone with short white hair and a tanned glowing face that radiated joy and acceptance. She laughed easily and often and, despite her age, had a childlike innocence about her.

  ‘Come on, Gwyndion!’ she coaxed, passing the plate of honeybread to him. ‘You are far too thin for a Webx! You need more flesh on your trunk!’

  Gwyndion shook his head, explaining that as a Webx, he didn’t need food to sustain him. He did, however, long for some soil that he could plant his roots in and extract nutrients. He could not remember his last satisfying meal; the soil between Faia and New Baffin was not to his liking.

  Samma burped obligingly after her fourth bowl of esteo, and Kaliegraves instantly began cutting up honeybread for the meerwog, dipping it into the esteo for her. Gwyndion looked on with some concern. If Samma continued to eat like this, they might very well outstay their welcome.

  ‘Simeon?’ The Crone was frowning. ‘Nay, I don’t know any hermaphrodites called Simeon. I wander who the young rascal was? No doubt he was too nervous to meet me because someone has filled his young head with rubbish about witchcraft. Times are changing here and there be a lot of ignorant thinking in this city,’ she explained.

  Gwyndion could not conceal his surprise at this statement. He had always supposed New Baffin to be a great cultural centre, filled with academics and philosophers, artists and poets and, of course, the Tremite Scribes.

  ‘Maybe once,’ Kaliegraves said, reading his mind as Crones were wont to do. ‘When the Scribes were taking students, and before shipping became the major industry. Now we are mainly a city of whores and sailors.’ Gwyndion thought he detected an unspoken criticism of the goddess Aphrodite in Kaliegraves’s tone, but was too shy to speak. ‘So as you can see, it is indeed a great honour that the Scribes have agreed to interview you as regards further training.’

  ‘Have you lived in New Baffin all your life?’ Gwyndion asked, curious about the Crone who sat in front of him. There was no doubt in his mind as to her power — her aura was a radiant green light, filling the house. He could feel himself relaxing in her company, and stresses that were knotted into his body disappearing.

  ‘Aye,’ Kaliegraves replied. ‘Many times I longed to leave when I was a maid, to explore other worlds, but the Dreamers decreed otherwise.’ She paused as if unsure of whether to trust him with her confidence. ‘When I was a young maid,’ she began, ‘Old Baffin was a very different city. Aphrodite didn’t have as much power in the city’s affairs as she does now. Most Baffinites worshipped the older gods. In Old Baffin, both men and women were encouraged academically from an early age. Aye, education began in infancy!

  ‘Indeed, when I was just suckled from my mother’s tit, I was summoned to the great Temple of Mythalogorus, to receive tuition from the Tremite Scribes.’

  Kaliegraves sighed, and Gwyndion sensed the great pain sleeping softly inside her. ‘The Great Temple has long fallen. Where it used to be the Scribes took over and they renovated areas and retreated underground. No doubt you have heard how many of our people were lost in the Great Flood of Unah.’

  Gwyndion listened with interest. He had read of the Flood of Unah, but had never heard a personal account. ‘The Baffinites have many explanations for the Great Flood,’ Kaliegraves said, her face creased in lines of pain. ‘Some claim Aphrodite was displeased at the pollution of her oceans. Others whispered the Goddess was furious at giving birth to the first hermaphrodite, and the flood was the unleashing of her wrath onto Old Baffin. Whatever the cause of her frenzy, the Goddess’s vengeance was swift and merciless. Thousands of lives were lost that day, including my beloved birth parents and brothers. Hundreds of Turns of the Wheel have passed, and I have struggled to suppress the memory, but I struggle in vain, for it holds me tighter than a Maja web, and it remains as clear as a Crone’s seeing glass.

  ‘The day had been like any other in summer, except for the clouds that hung dark and heavy, as if a storm were brewing. Then as midday approached, a purple haze hung over Old Baffin and an eerie silence began to fill the city. I heard later that rats had fled in their millions, a huge blanket of them charging in terror towards Faia. All the birds ceased their song, and even the trees stood still in anticipation.

  ‘I had been engrossed in my studies for the Book of Life, and as the day progressed, I began to be filled with a sickening foreboding that a great disaster was about to be unleashed upon us. I was not alone in my fears. The entire class of students were soon unable to concentrate, glancing out the windows, concerned for their families and pets, until our tutor Jerimiah took mercy on us and dismissed us early.

  ‘I will never forget the scenes that greeted me as I ran through the old city to reach my family. My heart was pounding, my hands clammy with sweat. I was convinced
that the end of the world had come, and of course it had.’

  Kaliegraves paused in her tale and took another sip of esteo, composing herself before she continued. ‘The streets were nearly deserted as I ran, aside from a few who stood looking upwards to the sky with puzzled expressions on their faces. I could hear the town criers calling that the dragons were approaching, but even though I was still a naive young maid, I knew this to be untrue. As bad as an aerial attack from dragons would have been, I sensed, just as the city’s rats did, that what was about to occur was worse, far worse.

  ‘Old Baffin was not nearly as built up in those days, and my birth family lived near the sea, on the beach road. As I ran, I remembered I had seen the angoli Charmonzhla standing near the ocean. I can still visualise his dark, beautiful, twisted face, and his countenance, a picture of ecstasy, as he sang:

  Reveal your dark face, your curled teeth. Be merciless, great one! Hail, Hecate! Hail the great sow! Darkness creeps across the land, let it all rot, let it decay! All that brings suffering is mine, the blood of the innocent is mine. Om thymum, Om thymum. Halvo! Halvo! Thymum! All that you love you have lost. Take them all slowly, oh Merciless One.

  ‘With terrifying insight, I realised the event I had felt brewing inside my stomach all morning was going to come from the sea. I will never forget the expression on my birth mother’s face as I ran into the courtyard where my family had gathered. There was relief at sighting me, her only daughter, but also great fear. We only had a brief heartbeat to reunite as a family before the world ended.

  ‘There came a huge roaring. In terror we clung to each other as our horrified eyes perceived an immense wave of water coming at us from the ocean. It was a sight that I could never have imagined. We stood under it, paralysed with shock and fear, and for an eternity that lasted just a few breaths, we all knew we were about to die. The entire city was about to die.