by Maggie Furey
Suddenly the serious face in the mirror broke into a smile, and the happy sparkle returned to those thoughtful dark grey eyes. She had wanted this, worked for this, dreamed of this for so long. These megrims at parting from her home and parents were only natural, for she would be leaving her childhood behind in every sense, but it was time to put them away and look to the brilliant future that she hoped would await her.
At that moment Mora, the family’s human servant, entered the room carrying a cup of steaming taillin. ‘What, up already?’
‘I was too excited to sleep,’ Brynne confessed.
‘Well, my lovely,’ she said, in the lilting local dialect of the north-western coast, ‘’tis hardly surprising. This is your big day at last. How time does gallop by. Why, it seems no time since . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I’ll miss my precious girl, I will. I’ll miss you very much.’
Brynne opened her mouth to snap at the old woman, then shut it again with a sigh. Time seemed to have stopped for Mora when she, Brynne, was about three years old, she thought ruefully. But there was no point in causing strife and upsets on today of all days. It wouldn’t change anything, anyway. Instead she hugged the servant, nearly sending the tea flying. ‘I’ll miss you too, Mora.’
When Mora had left, Brynne drank her taillin as quickly as she could manage without scalding her tongue, and turned to get dressed. She had chosen her clothes with care - she had a whole new wardrobe for the trip - and had laid them out ready the night before, so it didn’t take long. Then, with one last look around the room, she ran downstairs.
The spattering sizzle and mouth-watering smell of frying bacon greeted her as she entered the kitchen. Her mother Larann, her brown hair escaping in straggles, as usual, from its knot and her normally pale complexion flushed pink from the heat of the stove, turned to her with a smile. ‘There you are, punctual as always. I’ve done you two eggs this morning, Brynne - a good breakfast will set you up for your long journey.’
Brynne knew her mother was hiding a tumultuous mixture of emotions behind a mask of briskness. She glanced down at her waistline with a sigh. That was the thing about Larann: she firmly believed that good food was a panacea for everything from a broken leg to a broken heart. And because they were farmers, there was always plenty of good food around.
Well, maybe it would be different when she got to Tyrineld. Surely no one there would be telling her what she should and shouldn’t be eating, and continually cajoling her to have more. In the meantime, she meant to enjoy her last delicious farm breakfast. While she was eating, her father Shelgan came in, chafing his hands against the early morning chill. ‘Well, that’s it, my Lady.’ His florid bow to Brynne made her smile. ‘We’ve harnessed the horses and the men have loaded all your gear into the cart. As soon as you’ve finished eating, we’ll be ready to go.’ His plump face (she definitely got her stocky figure from her father’s side of the family) was glowing with exertion and beaming with pride at his daughter who was on her way to the Academy.
‘Let the girl eat her breakfast in peace,’ Larann protested. ‘What about some more bacon, Brynne? Shall I toast you another slice of bread? Would you like another cup of taillin? What about you, Shel? Shall I pour you a cup?’
Father and daughter exchanged a wry and sympathetic glance. They both knew very well that Larann was putting off the moment of departure with every ruse at her disposal. Decisively, Brynne pushed her plate away and got to her feet. ‘Thank you, but I couldn’t eat another thing. You’re right, Dad. It’s time we were going.’
She didn’t cry when she said goodbye to Mora or the farm workers. She didn’t cry when she said goodbye to her mother. But when it came to saying goodbye to the two dogs, Bracken and Bramble, and Moon the silver-grey cat, Brynne could not stem her tears. They would not understand why she had to go - they would only know that she was gone and miss her. And Bramble was so old now. Would he still be there the next time she returned?
Once she and her father were on their way, however, and the farm had vanished behind them over the brow of the hill, Brynne’s excitement came to the fore once again. Tucking away her handkerchief, she turned to Shelgan with a grin. ‘You’ve always said you would teach me to drive the cart when I was older. What better time than now?’
Shelgan grinned back at her and put the reins into her hands. ‘What better time indeed?’
They travelled steadily southwards, not hurrying, camping as they went. Brynne enjoyed those last few precious days with her father: sleeping in the cart at night, well wrapped in cloak and blanket; cooking some truly horrible meals over a campfire; talking over all sorts of inconsequentialities. The morning of the fourth day, however, would be the last of their journey, and as soon as she awakened, Brynne’s mind turned firmly towards the future.
What would it be like to live in the great city of the Wizardfolk, after coming from the tiny, self-contained world of a remote and isolated farm? Though she had been to Tyrineld once before, in the early part of the year, to complete the tests and assessments for her entry to the Academy, the nervousness and strain of that visit, one that would determine her entire future, had turned her recollections of the city into a bewildering blur of buildings, faces and magic. She was looking forward to seeing it again; now, when she would have the time and inclination to appreciate its beauty, and learn its ways and secrets.
Her one clear memory was reaching Tyrineld on a crisp, clear, brilliantly sunny winter’s morning, and coming over the crest of the hill to see the magnificent city embracing the crystalline blue ocean, its intricate buildings gleaming white in the sunlight, and its glittering towers reaching, like her own dreams and ambitions, for the sky.
Always, in her imagination, Brynne had pictured herself returning to see that same vista. Looking down on the beautiful city where anything was possible, and knowing that it would be her home. That final morning, however, she awoke to disappointment. The clouds were down, looming low over the countryside, creeping across the high moors at ground level to form a mantle of dank, impenetrable mist, and filling the air with a light precipitation that prickled on her skin.
Brynne emerged, tousled and sleepy, from her nest of blankets in the cart, and muttered a word that made her father raise his eyebrows. ‘Well, just look at this demons’ brew,’ she said crossly, in mitigation. ‘I was so looking forward to climbing that last hilltop and seeing the city all spread out before me like a promise. Now we’ll be lucky to find the blasted track. And instead of making a good impression, I’m going to arrive looking like a draggled refugee.’
‘All right, all right now.’ Shelgan put his arm around her shoulders. In the thickening of her voice he heard the sound of tears, suppressed but threatening to break loose, and he realised that Brynne, his bold, bright child who normally had the courage of ten Warriors, was far more nervous than she had admitted, even to herself. He lifted her chin with a finger. ‘There now, my love, don’t fret yourself. We’ll stop before we reach the city. I’ll use a drying spell on your hair, and you can change your clothes and spruce up a bit. And who knows, maybe this weather will have lifted by the time we get there, and you’ll see your city after all.’
Brynne directed a scathing glance towards the soggy, dark-grey shroud that smothered their surroundings. ‘And I’ll sprout wings like one of the Skyfolk, and fly to Tyrineld,’ she retorted pithily, but by making her realise just what a jittering mess her nerves were in, he had put the stiffening back into her spine. Suddenly she felt much better, and gave him a hug and a grin. ‘Come on, Dad, it’s your turn to make breakfast this morning.’
After a few days of practice, their campfire cooking was beginning to improve, and this time the bacon was only slightly burned. They were just rounding off their meal with a cup of taillin, smoke-flavoured from the fire but very welcome on this chill, damp day, when the sudden sound of hoofbeats came drumming out of the mist. A horse burst through the roiling curtain of grey and bolted right between them, reins and stirrups flappin
g. It swerved to avoid the campfire and found itself boxed in between the cart, the stream beside which they had camped and Shelgan’s patient, tethered horses. Rolling its eyes, it skidded to a halt, ploughing up great clods of turf, but the presence of the other beasts seemed to calm it, and Brynne’s father had little trouble catching hold of the broken, trailing rein.
‘Well, well.’ He stroked the sweat-damp neck and ran an expert hand down the heaving flanks and trembling legs. ‘And where did you come from, my beauty? Grey as the weather itself, and a fine beast to boot with those pretty dapples. It doesn’t seem to be hurt,’ he added, speaking to his daughter now.
Brynne fed the animal a crust of bread left over from breakfast and it nuzzled into her hungrily, looking for more. ‘Looks like it tossed its rider and bolted,’ she said. ‘I wonder how far it’s come?’
Shelgan sighed. ‘I suppose I’ll have to go and look for the rider. We can’t leave someone out there alone and maybe hurt, especially not in this weather.’ He laid a hand on Brynne’s shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze. ‘Don’t worry, love, hopefully this shouldn’t delay us too long. The way the beast was bolting, I doubt it’s come very far. It wouldn’t be able to sustain that sort of pace. You tether it to the cart and I’ll take one of our horses and backtrack along its trail - it left a line of prints in this wet ground that you could see a mile off. I’ll be back in no time, you’ll see.’
And before Brynne could object or offer to go with him, he had leapt bareback on one of the carthorses and vanished into the mist, leaving only an echo of thudding hoofbeats behind.
How could an entire city lose itself? Driven by her purpose, Chiannala had never once doubted that she would attain her goals, but now that sense of certainty had been leached away by her desolate, empty surroundings. For the first time, she began to wonder if she would ever reach Tyrineld. The journey had been far more difficult than she’d anticipated. An inexperienced traveller, she had not brought enough warm clothing, or anything to keep off the rain. She must have lost her gloves in the barn, and now her hands were white and numb, making her grip on the reins uncertain.
Chiannala’s stomach churned with hunger. She was chilled, wet through, weary, grubby, aching right down to her bones, and lost. On the first two nights of her journey she had been lucky: on the night she’d run away, there had been the comfortable barn where she’d changed horses, and on the second night, though the country was getting rougher and the area less populated, she had stumbled across a much smaller and less prosperous holding, where a root cellar had provided her with a temporary refuge, and some withered apples and carrots to eat.
Last night, however, she had not been so fortunate. Between Nexis and the outlying regions around Tyrineld was this wild, lonely stretch of hills where there was not even a tree to break the force of the unrelenting wind, and not a single building where she could seek refuge after sunset. She had tried to huddle at the edge of a thicket of whin that skirted the edge of the track, but when it had started to rain, she’d given up trying to rest. She might as well be cold, wet and moving, she decided, and mounted her reluctant horse once more. Getting the weary creature moving with an effort, she’d set off into the darkness.
Like an idiot, she must have been dozing when the horse wandered off the trail. When the sky reluctantly lightened to a sombre, clouded morning, Chiannala had found herself utterly lost, without any idea of the direction in which she should be headed. All day long she had been searching the lonely heights of the downs, but had never seen a trace of the road she was meant to be taking. To make matters worse, the terrain was growing increasingly rough and rocky, with spiny thickets of bramble and gorse that tore at her cloak to repeatedly thwart her progress, and more terrifyingly, stretches of glutinous bog covered with a green skin that made them look like innocent, solid ground - until an unwary horse took a step too far. The air was growing cooler against her face, and the thick, heavy cloud that darkened the sky seemed to be pressing ever lower upon her: a phenomenon that she initially ascribed to imagination, until she saw the far slopes of the hills fade and vanish into a misty haze.
Fog. The traveller’s foe. The horizon seemed to be shrinking around her as the walls of grey rolled in towards her: an inexorable tide that left her stranded on a tiny patch of thin turf, in the midst of a cold, white void. At first she tried to keep going, but strange shapes loomed at her out of the haze, and nothing was what it seemed. A boulder suddenly bounded away with a startled bleat; a stream was running in the opposite direction from all those she had previously encountered. Had she somehow been turned all the way around? Or had she crossed some kind of watershed? She had absolutely no idea. A seemingly solid stretch of ground began to ooze water as her horse’s hooves sank into it, and Chiannala backed hastily away from the bog, her heart beating fast with fright. This was no good. She would kill herself if she kept trying to move, and besides, what was the point when she had lost all sense of direction? It would be better to remain where she was.
She reined-in the horse and dismounted, looping the reins through her arm. The grey horse put his head down, hoping to find some grass long enough to graze. The minutes stretched interminably, with nothing to see but blank greyness and no sound to break the silence but her breathing and that of the horse, and the occasional bleat of a sheep. Though Chiannala had been very much alone on her journey, she had been too focused on reaching Tyrineld and the Academy of the Wizards to be lonely. In the fog, however, she felt desperately lost and isolated, longing for a kind word or a friendly face. She found herself thinking of the comfort of her mother’s arms and the reassurance of her father’s smile, and for the first time since leaving home, she did not think of them with anger and resentment.
As she waited in that eerie, silent world, all her worries, frustrations and discomforts gradually gave way to trepidation. As time crawled by, she began to wonder whether this cold, damp blankness that surrounded her would be gone by nightfall - and for the first time, she was beset by the gnawing fear that she might not survive.
It had all seemed so easy the night she had run away, any doubts overridden by anger, resentment and determination. All she had to do, she’d imagined, was follow the road. She had simply assumed that there would be inns, settlements and farms all the way to Tyrineld. Because her parents had been there to look after her all her life, she had taken it for granted that there would always be someone else to fill the gap. She had fled on the spur of the moment, instead of waiting long enough to formulate some kind of strategy, instead of taking the proper clothing and sufficient provisions - and, most important of all, finding out before she left about the route and the conditions she would meet.
What a stupid, naïve, reckless fool she had been, letting her anger overrule her common sense. If I get out of this, she vowed, it’ll never happen again. I’ll be controlled and dispassionate . . .
If you survive.
The warning voice of fear cut across her thoughts. How could she even get through the next few hours, let alone make it to Tyrineld?
Even if by some miracle she did reach the city, she was beginning to harbour serious doubts that her plan would succeed. Why should they take her into the Academy merely on the strength of her own word? They would be sure to want to know about her family, and why, at her age, she was travelling all alone. She would be forced to lie to them, of course - and she had a feeling that the Archwizard, not to mention all the powerful Wizards who taught at the Academy, would be very difficult to dupe. Whatever tale she spun them, it would be easy enough for them to investigate her background, and once the truth came out, she was finished.
Chiannala buried her face in her hands. Why had she even bothered to try? It looked as though her desperate plan to better herself and be welcomed into the ranks of the Wizardfolk was doomed before it had truly begun. Thanks to her accursed parents, she would never have the life she craved, and by running away she had managed to make things a thousand times worse. After stealing from
her parents, how could she possibly go back there? Yet what was the alternative? It would be easiest for everyone if she were simply to die right here in this ghastly wilderness. No one would miss her. No one would mourn. What was the point of fighting her background and her fate any longer?
Suddenly, her horse gave a startled neigh. Half-rearing, snatching the reins away with a sickening wrench to her arm, the animal bolted, knocking her aside onto the muddy ground. A pang of horror wrenched at her guts. Without the horse, she had nothing. She would wander lost out here until she dropped from hunger, weariness and cold. For the first time in her young life, Chiannala faced the certain prospect of her death. In that instant she forgot she’d just decided her life was no longer worth living. Stricken, helpless, terrified, everything in her life gone to wrack and ruin, she lay in the mud and sobbed.
‘Ho there!’ The voice echoed through the fog. ‘Ho, is anybody out there?’
Chiannala was so stunned by thankfulness that, speechless, she lost those first few vital seconds.
‘Ho,’ the voice came again. This time it sounded further away.
Panic restored her voice. ‘Help,’ she yelled, as loud as she could. She scrambled to her feet. ‘Here - I’m over here.’
It took them a good while to find each other, in spite of all the shouting back and forth, but finally, a dim shape materialised through the fog, and Chiannala stumbled, weeping, into the arms of a tall, portly man with a weathered face and a kindly smile. ‘There now, there. No need for tears, little maid.’ He patted her shoulder. ‘You’re safe now.’