Issa choked. ‘I don’t know the slightest thing about magic.’
‘Well, we all have to start somewhere, dearie,’ Maeve said, and patted Issa’s knee.
Issa couldn’t help but chuckle and was secretly flattered. What if she could learn magic? Especially if there was someone here to teach her.
She managed to finish the whole tray, before collapsing back in the chair. But as soon as her hunger was satisfied, her mind returned to thoughts of Asaph and Coronos.
‘I must speak with Freydel. I must find my friends.’ Issa said, more abruptly than she meant to.
Maeve held up her hands for calm. ‘Freydel is up and about. We only have to find him, missy,’ she said and frowned as if it were no easy task to find the wizard.
Issa followed Maeve across immaculate lawns spread between bushes cleverly manicured into the shapes of animals. They came to a large, ornate greenhouse, and stepped into its hot and humid atmosphere through a small glass door. In one corner Freydel was busy taking plant cuttings.
‘Oh good,’ he said without turning around. ‘I knocked on your door earlier, but you were not there.’ He put the cuttings down and looked at them over half-moon glasses. ‘I trust you are feeling a little better?’
Issa nodded. ‘Thank you for all you have done for me, but I must leave immediately to find my companions.’
‘Yes, I understand your worries. Come with me for a walk so we can talk about everything,’ he said, coming over and taking her hand in his own. ‘We can walk through the marvellous grounds. I know all the names of the flowers and butterflies, both their Frayon names and their Celenian ones too,’ Freydel said proudly as they left the greenhouse.
Chapter 22
The Prophecies Of Zanufey
FREYDEL and Issa walked in silence down a neatly trimmed path leading away from the castle. This place had a strange feel to it but in a good way. She could sense it in the air around her and the ground beneath her feet, a power or energy that seeped through everything including herself. Everything felt filled with life, just as she too felt more alive than she could ever remember.
They came to a brook that bubbled and flowed between ash, oak and willow trees growing along its banks. Bright magenta dragonflies hummed back and forth just above the surface.
‘It truly is a sacred place,’ she breathed.
Freydel smiled. ‘Indeed. I always feel relaxed here and my body reinvigorated.’
‘Maeve is right,’ she said, looking back at the pale red brick castle. ‘It is less like a fort and more like a stately house.’
The grand house was large, but only two storeys high except for a tall round tower at one end. Dotted within the pale red bricks were decorative pale blue bricks, cleverly placed to create swirls along the walls. The roof was made of slate that glinted in the light as if flecked with quartz.
‘Yes,’ Freydel said, ‘it was built with much love by the Lady Eleny and her husband, and that love seems to emanate from its very walls.’
They walked along the brook until they came to a gap between an ash and willow tree. Freydel turned to her and spoke, a warm smile on his face.
‘Your companions are safe, I scryed for them. Two men of your description on a coast far from here. They are on Frayon, on the mainland, I am most certain.’
Issa breathed a sigh of relief and her legs went weak. Then she frowned.
‘But Frayon is a long way from here. How did we come so far apart? Are they all right? Hurt? Wounded?’ she blurted.
‘Well, they are a lot better off than you were,’ he said with a wink. ‘I thought I recognised one of them as an old friend, but it was hazy and I couldn’t be sure. Never mind. It would help me greatly if you could tell me a little about yourself though. We are quite safe here and you can trust me.’
Looking up at him Issa shielded her eyes against the low morning sun. She didn’t know this man, but nothing about him suggested he was untrustworthy.
‘My home is on Little Kammy within the Isles of Kammy. Well, it was until the Dromoorai came. But then the raven came and it led me… I followed it into a… a Fairy Pocket if you like, though it wasn’t a Fairy Pocket. It’s difficult to explain,’ she shook her head and frowned, but Freydel’s nod urged her on.
‘Well, when I returned everything was destroyed, burned to the ground, and all the people were… dead,’ she blinked back the tears that filled her eyes.
‘So many people, so many places, have suffered the Immortal Lord’s destruction,’ Freydel said sadly.
‘But a Dromoorai came back because I—’ she glanced sideways at Freydel. If anyone would understand a wizard surely would. ‘I was so overcome with grief, some kind of magic flared from my hands. It was awful, terrible destructive magic.’
Freydel’s eyes went wide, but then he guarded them and she wished she hadn’t said anything.
‘Well, it never happened again,’ she clasped her hands behind her back as if to keep them safe. ‘But the Dromoorai sensed the magic.’
She told him everything that had happened since she’d escaped the Dromoorai, found Edarna the witch, and arrived on Celene.
‘We managed to escape the Shadowlands, but Keteth followed and destroyed our boat. I don’t remember any more than that. I know you think I’m mad, but it’s the truth.’
Freydel was looking at her intently and nodded often as she spoke as if everything she said somehow confirmed what he was thinking, though for some reason she wished that it had not.
‘No, I don’t think you’re mad, I think you are blessed to survive so much,’ Freydel smiled. She could see no mockery in his eyes.
‘I feel that Keteth hunts for me still, even here, but there is something else that also searches for me, something powerful and terrifying…’ At the mere thought of it, she felt that destructive force moving out there somewhere, just as she had in the Shadowlands. In her mind, she saw burning red eyes and a three-pronged helmet. She shivered and turned to look at the brook as if doing so would hide what she saw from Freydel.
‘I don’t know how to begin this so I shall simply speak,’ Freydel said, his amber eyes unblinking. ‘I’ll try my best not to overwhelm you, you have suffered much already, but there are some things you must know.
‘Over several years I have been researching and collecting prophecies, religious writings, historical events and suchlike from all corners of known Maioria. I have become somewhat of an expert in prophetical scriptures, with particular interest in works relating to the Night Goddess, the Goddess of the Waters, the Goddess of the Dead - all collectively known as Zanufey. If you are interested I can show you these things.’
Issa gave a half nod, unsure if she did or not, but Freydel did not wait for her to speak.
‘I have for years studied the muttered ramblings of wise - some might say insane - men and women, and listened to the tales of hermits and witches, the greatest wizards and the lowliest serfs. Every cloudless night I have studied the Dark Rift and the constellations of our stars and closest planets, linking them back to those mentioned in the most ancient of scriptures.
‘Most people today dismiss the old prophecies as rubbish - and I too was sceptical. No one likes to consider the End of Days, especially when you have so many prophets all clamouring doom through millennia, and then each giving conflicting stories and dates for the apocalypse. When one date comes and goes and the prophecy fails to materialise, people no longer believe them, until the next charismatic prophet comes along.
‘It’s a feeling of mine that perhaps all the prophecies are true, even though they conflict because they speak of a probability of events occurring, a future timeline so to speak. And, as we all know, there are many possible future timelines to which we can align ourselves.’
She glanced sideways at him with a raised eyebrow. She had never thought those things or even considered the idea of different possible futures.
Freydel coughed. ‘Well, some of us wizards do. And seers. But probably not witches. Anyw
ay, without going too deep into probabilities and simultaneous timelines…’
She nodded vigorously. He carried on, though he seemed less jubilant than before.
‘As I said, I was sceptical, until a year ago when one of the prophecies, an alignment of stars and planets, came to pass right before my eyes.’ His voice quickened with excitement again. She was sceptical, but without finding any good reason to be, she listened with mild interest, wondering why he was telling her all this.
‘At first, I tried to find some alternative explanation, some reason for it, but there was none, and seeing it for myself, the events that slowly unfolded left me with no doubt. Since that day I noticed other prophecies and signs being fulfilled, smaller ones albeit, but they were there nonetheless. It left me wondering how many other signs have gone unnoticed, unrecorded.’ He spoke fast but dropped into hushed tones as if afraid of being overheard.
‘There was a child in one of the forest villages of Frayon. She can only have been seven years old, but the people were afraid of her because she would fall into these disturbing trances. They were simple people you see, afraid of magic, or what lies beyond the empirical world. So great was their fear that they refused to call her by her name, lest they invoke bad luck, or worse, the wrath of some demon. They called her “the Nameless One” instead,’ he sighed, clearly sorry for the child.
‘As soon as I entered the village, she came running up to me as if she knew my mission. She was nothing more than a slip of a girl with bedraggled curls like varnished mahogany, and a muddy dress. She fell into a trance and her eyes glazed, her legs gave way, and she trembled all over as she spoke. I couldn’t hear what she was saying at first, but she repeated herself louder and louder. I was shocked to the core when I recognised the language - she spoke in the Old Tongue of the Ancients.
‘She talked about a third moon rising in addition to our own two moons, Doon and Woetala. This new moon was not bright, but dark and shone with an awesome indigo light. It was not a new moon at all, but an ancient one, older even than Maioria herself. This dark moon was the moon of Zanufey the Night Goddess.
‘A few ancient scriptures recorded the existence of this strange moon eons ago, during a time when many magical beasts walked the earth, and all men and women were as powerful as gods. When it appeared, great changes happened.’ Freydel took a brief pause and a big breath.
‘The child said Zanufey had chosen her disciple, and she would soon walk upon Maioria. Her messenger would be a raven, the harbinger of change, and she would be the Queen of Ravens. Via her chosen one, Zanufey would lead us through the coming darkness…’ he shivered and his face paled though it was hot.
‘It is this Raven Queen who will lead us through the darkness. The child said we “must prepare and be ready,” we must watch the skies after a storm for black wings over a “sacred place surrounded by water.”
‘Her last words were, “If we lose all is lost, into his shades of the Dark Rift we will go. Our bodies will live on in the dead light, but our souls will be as if they never existed.” Those exact words I later found written in an obscure section of the Prophecies of Kartola Antasa, yet of this book there is only one copy, which I own and no peasant child can ever have seen it. Well, a storm did come to our sacred Isle of Celene, and with it the black wings of a raven.’
Issa was lost in thought, wondering what to make of Freydel’s story. She looked at the ring on her finger. A shadow passed across it and she stared up to see the raven land on a tree branch above her. Freydel turned to stare up at the bird.
‘Is it the same one I followed or another?’ he said and glanced at Issa. ‘A raven led me to you after the storm, and I doubt you would have survived another hour had it not.’
‘It’s a he,’ she said. ‘I don’t really know why he came, but he has been my protector of sorts, warning me when danger is near and guiding me to safety. But anyway, I’ve always had a connection to animals, though never to a raven.’
She felt overwhelmed. Everything was too much to take in, too much to understand. Her life was a tumultuous mess of events. She didn’t want to think about or reason through what everything might mean. Instead, she tried to let Freydel’s words wash over her as he pressed on.
‘This Queen of Ravens is an interesting character. I began to research her, and one day in spring of this year, my searching’s led me to a terrible place. Under the cover of magic I travelled deep into the enemy lands of Venosia, and it was a foolish thing to do,’ he added, seeing her look of shock.
‘I will never translocate there again. But anyway, quite by chance I stumbled upon an ancient dwarven ruin. Though it looked nothing to the naked eye, I could feel the twisted magic emanating from it, it reeked of Baelthrom’s unnatural power. So cursed was it I was forced to use my orb to protect me, for it was a foul place of necromancers. I was a fool to venture so far into Maphraxie land, but so great was my need for understanding, I had to.
‘In I went, against my railing spirit, and descended down dank steps until the air became stale and the cold touched even my soul. It was dark beyond any night, a moving darkness that sought to feed off the life force within me,’ he shuddered.
‘Many doors barred the way, and it took all my skill as a Master Wizard to get through them. Yet even then the last door was bound in such a way that it took me many hours to work through its unyielding mesh. Someone had taken great pains to hide this place away forever.
‘Before me stretched a corridor, and along each wall were many ancient stone tablets. Each tablet was inscribed in dark dwarven runes, and to my disbelief they mentioned the Queen of Ravens. “Look to the eastern skies, when the Dark Moon covers the moons of Doonis and Woe…” These are our moons, Doon and Woetala, as they were called in antiquity. “From the ghosts will the chosen be drawn… the White Beast seeks her for he knows, he knows! Beware the dragon, bringer of dawn… The raven comes, she comes for us…” he sighed and mopped the sweat from his brow with a sleeve.
‘They know this “Queen of Ravens” is coming? Knew thousands of years ago?’ she said.
‘So it would seem,’ Freydel said.
‘It’s all fairly heavy stuff isn’t it, but why are you telling me? It has nothing to do with me. I came from… from far away, and know nothing of this Night Goddess,’ she frowned, feeling weary.
‘Most people fear the Night Goddess,’ Freydel explained. ‘She has come to symbolise death, and as such is a largely misunderstood aspect of the Great Goddess. It is she who leads the souls of the dead through the darkness to the eternal light so that we do not become lost in the darkness and trapped within time. Zanufey’s face is always hidden until our death when she reveals herself to us. Only in our final moments shall we see the face of Zanufey.’
Stillness settled around them. There was no breeze and the buzzing insects were nowhere to be seen. A shadow passed over the sun and a voice whispered to her again as if from another time and place and only she could hear it.
‘Maion'artheria.’
Issa looked straight through Freydel, her eyes seeing not him, but the sacred mound and the hooded figure in the desert, the great stone doorway behind her striking up into the night. The figure beckoned to her and disappeared.
The sunlight returned. She looked up and frowned, there was not a cloud in the sky to cast such a shadow. Was it Zanufey who beckoned to her in her visions? She almost laughed aloud at the thought. Why would she be so important as to have a goddess speak to her?
Freydel’s voice seemed to come from far away. ‘Despite the darkness and death that she has come to symbolise, she is perhaps the most important aspect of the Great Goddess, and ironically the most loving.’
A thought, a revelation of sorts, struck her, and the white, bloated form of Keteth came to mind.
‘Keteth has seen her, he must have,’ she spoke quietly, but her voice seemed loud in the stillness. Freydel’s eyes darted to hers.
‘Oh yes, it’s true,’ he whispered. ‘He has seen
her face. It was when he stole the orb. Look what stealing it did to him… Keteth brings upon himself his own misery, for he refuses to follow Zanufey, he refuses to go into the light…’ Freydel rubbed his arms as if he were cold.
‘Why do you think Keteth hunts you, Issa?’ he asked abruptly, the tone of his voice suggested he knew something.
‘I don’t know.’ Why did he think she would know?
‘I think you do,’ Freydel said. ‘He knows the Child of the Raven can lead him to Zanufey, and he hungers for release, but he’s afraid. He’s torn apart by madness. He loves and lusts after his prize, but despises and fears it ferociously. He will die before the Immortal Lord reaches the Child of the Raven.’
Everything became very still as Freydel spoke. The air turned thick as soup and she could barely breathe as she looked into the coal black eyes of the White Beast.
‘Issa?’ Freydel said, taking her by the shoulders, but she could barely hear him. She was once again suspended in the dark murky ocean that stretched above and below her forever. He was there, coming to her from the depths.
‘Issa.’
Her attention snapped back to the present. She stared up into Freydel’s worried face, the magic of his trance breaker shimmered blue in the air between them.
‘I… I was lost,’ she swallowed and wiped the sweat from her brow.
‘Keteth can reach you with his mind, even here,’ he said releasing her gently. ‘You must learn to protect yourself. I can help you with that. Nowhere is safe. He does not move amongst the world like a normal being, you must be careful not to draw him to you. I fear he knows where you are already.’
She put a hand to her throat and tried to calm herself.
‘Come,’ he said, noticing the goose pimples on her arms. ‘Let’s go to my study where we can talk some more over spiced tea.’
Issa nodded, still shaken, but the thought of tea sounded good. She let herself be led by Freydel towards the tall round tower at the back of Castle Elune.
Night Goddess (The Goddess Prophecies Book 1) Page 23