by Maggie Furey
It was a tremendous leap from the changeless tranquillity of the Timeless Lake. Here she could feel the beat of the passing seasons in her blood; the world turning beneath her feet. Here, time flowed like a golden river against her skin. The contrasts of this mundane world were unsettling: day and night, sun and moon, the warmth of her tower room and the chill of the snow outside. She had to get used to an overload of information from her senses: the colours of the sky and the landscape, the joyous sounds of birdsong and the sigh of the wind in the trees, the icy little kisses of snow against her skin and the taste and texture of food. Now that she had come into the world, she must perforce share all the sensations that the beings who dwelt here must suffer and enjoy. She needed to eat and drink; she needed clothing and sleep. Though she used magical means to provide herself with these everyday necessities, it still galled her, on occasion, that she could not do without them.
Her powers, the fundamental, creative force of Gramarye, the High Magic, furnished the Cailleach with most of her requirements, but sleep was more difficult to come by. She was accustomed to being in control of her own awareness, and the idea of falling into unconsciousness for a number of hours filled her with a strange, nameless fear. At night she would keep herself awake, only to find herself drowsing unexpectedly through the day, and losing large chunks of time thereby. Nevertheless, she still paced the high chamber of her tower in the hours of darkness, or sat before her fire as she was doing tonight, trying to think of ways in which she could prevent the world of her creation, that she loved so dearly, from being destroyed through the folly of its inhabitants.
Right now, she could do nothing but wait for the three women of her vision to appear. Her Seeings in this earthly dimension were vague, uncertain and undependable, yet the Cailleach was convinced that these unknown females who would hold the key to the future of the world were not far away, and must surely reveal themselves soon. Or so she hoped. Every day she spent enjoying the sensual wonders of this rich and beautiful world would make it all the more difficult for her ever to return to her own unchanging realm.
The Lady of the Mists walked across to the window of her high tower and looked out. Beyond the dim reflection of her face, with its long white hair and pale moonstone eyes, dawn was breaking over the wintry landscape, and she looked out with pleasure at the valley, the lake and the trees. Here, at least, she could feel as much at home as it was possible for her to be in the mundane world that had been spun out of her dreaming, and the dreams of the other Guardians.
This world had been her own conception for the most part, which was why she had remained responsible for watching over its fate. While it was being created, she had devised a special, magical valley that reminded her of her own Timeless Lake. In this world it took the form of a steep-sided bowl in the midst of the great forest. In the centre was a tranquil lake with an island of dark stone that almost seemed to float upon the surface of the water. And on the island was a tower that took the form of a gigantic tree, the twin of the Cailleach’s home in the Timeless Lake.
This secret vale was sacred and steeped in magic. It was the living heart of the world she had created with her brothers and sisters. It would never change significantly down all the long ages because, no matter what should befall it, this place would always find a way to return to the original pattern: the tree-lined bowl, the lake, the isle, the tower. In this era, the Cailleach had given the tower the form of her own beloved Tree at the Heart of the World, but she knew from her Seeings that in the future, it was destined to rise and fall; to be destroyed and rebuilt a number of times and in a variety of designs - and yet, in its fundamental essence, it would always remain the Tower.
The Cailleach was snatched out of her reflections by a warning tingle that passed right through her body. Someone had entered the Vale. Furthermore, she was certain to the very core of her being that it was someone who would play a significant part in the crisis the world was facing. Was it one of the three unknown women? Had fate brought her to the Lady’s very doorstep?
On the table stood a silver bowl of crystal-clear water from the lake, and the Cailleach stooped over it eagerly, willing an image of the intruder to form. To her disappointment she could see very little detail: rocks, a few sparse and broken trees, and a still, dark figure lying on its face beside a large boulder. Alive? Dead? It was impossible to tell. Stifling a curse, she threw her thick cloak of black feathers, cowled and fringed with white, around her shoulders and stepped out onto the high platform at the top of the external staircase that curled around the trunk of the tower’s treelike walls. Taking a deep breath, she lifted her arms - and the shape of a woman shimmered into the form of a great eagle. She soared upwards from the ledge, revelling in the uplift as she spurned the ground; enjoying the rush of wintry air through her feathers. With her raptor’s keen vision she scanned the landscape, circling the vale until she had found the place she sought. The area was easy to recognise. A landslide had wiped the trees from a section of the valley wall, leaving a long scar of rough and stony ground in its place.
Close to the bottom of the slide, the accumulation of tumbled boulders was piled together with the splintered remnants of the trees that had been lost in the disaster. At the foot of the snowy mound, the Cailleach saw the dark blot that she sought. Landing quickly, she shimmered back into her human shape and ran towards the still form that lay sprawled in the lee of the boulder. She turned the body over carefully, and her spirits fell in disappointment. This was not one of the women she had been seeking. It was a young man, and one of the wretched slave race of humans, at that. He appeared to be on the very brink of death. How could he affect anything in the future? And yet the urgent feeling that the poor wretch would be important to her plans would not go away. Though she had no idea why, it was vital that she save his life. Casting her cloak about him, she took him up in her arms and apported him back to her tower.
The Cailleach was moved to a depth of feeling unusual for her at the sight of the pale, thin form that lay so still on the comfortable bed she had created with a careless wave of her hand. As a rule she remained aloof from the individual creatures who inhabited the world she had created, for what would be the point of involving herself with lives that sparked so briefly down the long ages? She had never bothered to study the slave race before - there had been no need - but now she decided it was time she started. When the coming upheavals took place, it looked as though the influence of the humans on the world’s future could be far greater than any of the Guardians could possibly have expected.
Furthermore, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that this particular human would be important. What she had not counted on, however, were the emotions he engendered. In the changeless Otherworld of the Timeless Lake, she had little need of such feelings, which interfered with the stillness of her meditations, so the strong sense of sympathy and concern that came over her at the sight of this pitiful, injured, helpless creature took her by surprise. So preoccupied was she with the slave, it failed to occur to her that her sojourn in this world was affecting her emotions, making them increase in strength.
Having rescued the human from the brink of death and brought him home with her to her tower, it was but a short step to convince herself that healing the pathetic creature did not really count as interfering in the events of the mundane world. If she didn’t intervene, he would perish from his injuries, and having gone to all the trouble of rescuing him, she decided that it would be ridiculous to let him die.
When it came to taking care of this new responsibility, the Cailleach, with her powers of Gramarye, had considerable advantages over a worldly rescuer, whatever their race. While he remained unconscious, she used her powers to cleanse his filthy, lice-ridden body, thinking, as she did so, that her recently acquired sense of smell was not necessarily a good thing in this case. It took her quite some time and effort to heal all his injuries: the broken bones, wrenched muscles and the skin covered in bruises and abrasions, but finally,
with a sense of tremendous satisfaction, she could declare herself content with her work, and clothe her patient in a clean, white robe.
Only when these basic needs had been attended to did she start to wonder how she would manage when he awoke. No one must ever learn that a Guardian had crossed the invisible boundary into this reality, as her presence could interfere with all sorts of imponderable factors connected with the fate, self-determinism and philosophies of the indigenous races - not to mention bringing down the wrath of the other Guardians on her head. For everyone’s sake, she must persuade this young man whose life she had saved that she belonged to his world.
The Cailleach decided to present herself as a Wizard, for that would give her the widest opportunities to use her powers. To maintain the disguise, however, she would have to make some very sweeping alterations. Her tower, like her home in her Tree at the Heart of the World, consisted of one spacious, circular chamber set high above the ground. She had needed no lamps or fire, for warmth and light emanated from the very walls, and there were no furnishings save a table, a chair and a bed. So far, she had obtained all her worldly needs such as food and clothing through magic. The tower was singularly uncluttered, for whatever she needed she could simply materialise out of thin air. That would have to change.
Leaving her wanderer to the long, profound sleep of healing, the Cailleach bent all her energies to the task before her. Standing in the midst of the great, circular chamber, she pictured in her mind the changes she wished to make. There could be two sleeping chambers up here, with a general living area and a study in which she could work and meditate on the floor below. Finally, she would divide the ground floor into a large, cosy kitchen and a smaller store room for foodstuffs and other supplies, which she would have to apport in by magic before her stray awoke. The stairs should be inside, rather than around the exterior of the tower, and she would need an additional entrance at ground level. On the snowy island outside her tower, she created a garden which, though dormant at present beneath its cold, white covering, would one day have fruit trees and beehives, rows of thriving vegetables and curving beds filled with many-hued flowers. Oh, and the shape of the tower itself should change. She envisioned a tapering, elegant form, instead of the tree shape to which she was accustomed . . .
To her surprise, the Cailleach found herself smiling. Maybe it would be a good thing to escape for a while from the unvarying existence of a Guardian. There had been very little change in her life down the long aeons since she and her siblings had created this world. She had forgotten how invigorating it could be.
Dael woke up to utter confusion. With a shudder, he remembered that dreadful fall; remembered his arm snapping like a twig beneath him; remembered the agony that knifed through his chest as he hit a rock and his ribs broke; recalled the rough stones tearing at his skin as he plunged wildly downhill.
So where was the pain? Gingerly he moved his arms and his legs, poked at his ribs and felt his skin for scrapes and tender bruising. There was nothing. He was ravenously hungry and he felt a little weak and shaky, but otherwise he was absolutely fine. He simply couldn’t understand it. By rights, he shouldn’t even be alive.
Abandoning the puzzle, Dael turned his attention to his surroundings. In his early life in the Wizardly fishing settlement on the western coast, before his father had led the group of slaves to escape, he’d had a bed of sorts, a simple, narrow affair with a thin mattress supported by rope netting on a wooden framework, and a ragged blanket to cover him. In his life of so-called freedom in the forest he had slept on the ground. Now he found himself in a bed that was warm and comfortable beyond his wildest dreams, with clean, white linen, soft pillows and a quilt stuffed thickly with feathers.
The bed was the main feature of a chamber that was clearly a section of some bigger, circular structure, for it had one long straight wall and another that curved round in a sweeping arc to form a semicircle. The walls of this unusual room were made of a strange amber-coloured stone that Dael had never seen before, which was so translucent that the light from outside actually shone through the curving wall in a warm, golden glow. At one end of the straight wall was the door, whilst the bed was against the other. On the curving wall a fireplace had been built on the side of the curve nearest the bed, with a generous fire that was just burning down from a blaze to a great bank of glowing embers. On the side closer to the door was a window, with a table and two chairs set beside it. The floor was covered with woven rush matting of a pale straw colour, and the other furnishings of the room consisted of a large wooden chest covered in intricate carvings and, beside the fire, a wooden rocking chair with cheerful crimson cushions.
When he had first awakened, Dael was feeling dreamy and comfortable, but now, as he became more alert, he began to feel increasingly afraid. Where was he? How had his hurts miraculously vanished? Who owned this place, and why had they rescued him? Who would bother to give such comforts to a lowly slave?
Dael stiffened in his bed at the sound of footsteps outside the room. The door glided soundlessly open. Quickly he feigned sleep, squinting out through lowered eyelashes at the dark-robed figure who was approaching the bed - until his gasp of surprise gave the game away.
He had never seen anyone like her. She was neither tall nor tiny, but her presence was overwhelming. She certainly wasn’t human, but was she Phaerie or Wizard? Somehow, she didn’t quite look as if she belonged to either race, though he thought he could detect faint traces of both. Her hair was long and a shimmering silver-white in colour, giving the initial perception that she was an old woman - an impression belied by her face, which was neither old nor young, but changed subtly each time he blinked, so that he could never register a definite image. Yet overall, his impression was one of a luminous, transcendent beauty that filled him with awe. Her pale, silvery eyes, glowing like moonstones, held him in thrall for some unguessable period of time, so that when she spoke, her low, melodious voice seemed to come from a land far away.
‘You’re awake at last, I see.’ Her smile took his breath away. No one had ever looked on him so kindly before. ‘Now, before we go any further, there are three things you need to know,’ she said briskly. ‘One: you’re safe. Two: you’re quite well. You only need to rest for a day or two to complete the healing. Three: you’re not a prisoner. If you are stupid enough to want to go back to starving in the forest, then you’ve no business here.’ She smiled again. ‘I might add that you’re a very fortunate young man indeed, but I expect you know that already.’
‘Who - who are you?’ Dael whispered.
‘You can call me Athina,’ the mysterious woman answered, ‘and you are in my tower in the very heart of the wildwood. Wherever you came from, you almost blundered right onto my doorstep.’
‘I never heard that anyone lived all the way out here,’ Dael said in surprise.
For a moment, her smile vanished, and her face darkened. A shiver of fear went through him. It was as though someone had switched off the sun. ‘And of course, you would know,’ she snapped.
‘I’m sorry, my Lady,’ he said humbly.
The smile returned. ‘Of course you are.’ From somewhere out of his sight she produced another pillow and propped him into a sitting position. ‘Here, drink. You’ll be fiendishly thirsty, I expect. You’ve been asleep for a very long time.’
Obediently he drank the water, which was cool and tingling, and the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. When he had finished it all, he lay back with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘If you feel hungry, there’s food on the table beside your bed,’ she said. ‘I will leave you in peace to eat. Then you should sleep a little longer. When you wake again, we’ll talk properly. I have a great many questions for you, and I expect you also have a few to ask me.’
He didn’t see her leave, yet suddenly, Dael found himself alone once more. And as soon as his mysterious benefactress had gone, the feelings of fear that had been removed by her presence came rush
ing back, followed by - just as she had predicted - a whole cartload of questions. Who was she? What did she want with him? Why was she going to all this trouble for an insignificant human slave?
All such thoughts were driven from his head by a wonderful, savoury aroma. Dael’s stomach began to growl. Food. The woman had mentioned food and sure enough, when he turned, there was a little table at the side of his bed with a tray containing a bowl of steaming soup, and a plate of bread and cheese. He fell on them ravenously, though his stomach was so shrunken from starvation that he found he could eat far less than he’d expected: only half of the thick bean soup and a single piece of bread. With a sigh he returned the food to the table and lay back on the pillows - and it was only then, when his immediate needs had been satisfied, that he realised something strange was going on. Thirsty after his meal, he had absent-mindedly reached for the goblet, remembering, too late, that he had emptied it earlier. But to his surprise, it felt heavy in his hand, and when he looked, it was full again, and though the room was warm, the water was as cool and fresh as if it had just been drawn from a well.
Dael blinked in confusion. How had that happened? He knew very well that the strange woman had not refilled the goblet before she’d left the room. Come to think of it, he’d never seen her bring the goblet in anyway, nor the food. And now that he cast his mind back, on his first, cautious survey of the room, he was positive there had been no table beside the bed, with or without the food. So where in all Creation had it come from? And why, though the soup had been standing there for at least half an hour, was it still piping hot when he ate it? Despite the warmth of the room, Dael felt a shiver of fear run through him. His head was awhirl with questions, none of which he could even begin to answer; the most pressing of these being: what did this mysterious and very powerful woman plan to do with him?