by Lynn Kurland
Perhaps there was a good reason why.
The structure before her was so large, she wondered how human hands could possibly have constructed it. She looked up but couldn’t see the spot where the roof terminated. She supposed even the doors were three times her height. She considered the heavy golden doorhandles, each perhaps two feet long, attached vertically but somehow looking as if they simply floated in front of the glass that was not cloudy but rather infused with something that was impossible to see through.
Magic, she supposed.
She looked for Rùnach and realized he was standing on the step below her, his hands clasped behind his back, simply watching her. What she wanted to do was turn, fling herself into his arms, and whisper in his ear that away would be a good direction to take at present. He lifted his eyebrows briefly as if he understood exactly what she was thinking. Then, damn him, he stepped backward onto a lower step. She shot him a warning look because she didn’t dare tell him aloud not to go any farther.
He only inclined his head as elegantly as he would have to his grandmother the queen of the elves. Then he simply looked at her, beautiful elven prince that he was, and waited.
She wondered if he would catch her and hold her once more if she soon found herself breathing her last.
She turned back to the doors because there was no time like the present, she supposed, to find out if your life was going to end or not. She reached out to touch the golden doorhandles, wishing her entire arm wasn’t trembling so badly, but before she could touch anything, the great doors swung inward all on their own.
Something rushed through her she couldn’t identify: terror, dread, or perhaps even relief. Doors opening was a good thing. Then again, perhaps even wells of evil extended their welcoming embraces to those they wished to smother. She dropped her arm to her side and forced herself not to clench her fists. She knew she should have been looking up, as Weger had shouted at her so often to do, but she thought that might be slightly beyond her courage. It was one thing to step across a threshold; it was another thing entirely to look up as one did so while fearing that death might be lying in wait there.
She kept her eyes on her boots as she stepped forward, then continued to look down as she ventured another pair of paces. Then she stopped, but it wasn’t from feeling her life being taken from her.
It was because of where she stood.
She supposed that she might look back on that moment at some point and be able to relive it without having so much invested in not finding herself slain or offending whomever might have been there watching her walk into a hall that wasn’t hers. At the moment, though, all she could do was look at the floor.
It wasn’t glass, but it was like no polished stone she had ever seen. It was very dark, giving the impression of being solid while at the same time reflecting the depths from whence the stone had been hewn. There was also somehow a faint layer of something that seemed to contain each footprint that had passed over it, particular to the souls making those footprints. She was part of history, yet standing to the side observing it.
Then she blinked, and it was simply a floor. It was, however, a floor she suspected Uachdaran of Léige would have salivated over.
Bruadair was a strange place.
She realized there was a pathway there, a part of the floor that was a less blackish blue than the rest of the floor, as if it knew she had come and wanted her to reach the other end of the grand hall without undue trouble. Or anyone blocking her path, apparently.
She looked up and realized that such might be more of an issue than she would have expected.
The hall was full of people, people who were all looking at her. She who had done her best over the course of her life to simply disappear and escape scrutiny was apparently the focus of their attention.
She flinched a little, then stepped backward, though fortunately not over the threshold. She glanced over her shoulder to find Rùnach standing where she’d left him, outside the hall, his hands still clasped behind his back, an expression of utter seriousness on his face. She was tempted to go hide behind him, which she supposed he knew. He simply watched her, silent and grave, as if he wanted to give her the support of his presence but leave the rest to her.
Which she knew was his intention, damn him anyway.
She took a deep breath, nodded just the slightest bit, then turned back to the path. She put one foot to it and it began to glow above and beyond what it had done before. She was tempted to look around herself and see who else the floor might be welcoming, but she didn’t have to. Everyone in the hall was looking only at her.
She took a deep breath, then walked a dozen steps forward. She counted, because that seemed to help. There was a dais at the end of the path, so she supposed that was as good a place to make for as any. There were people standing on that raised bit of the hall as well, but she didn’t dare look at them too closely lest they think poorly of her. She would know soon enough who they were.
She looked over her shoulder one more time to find that Rùnach and her father were standing at the doorway, obviously following her. Well, if things totally unraveled, she supposed they might at least offer her sympathy on her way out of the world.
She could bring to mind any number of other ridiculously long passageways she’d traversed over the course of her life, mostly ones finding themselves in the Guild. She had slunk down them, keeping to one side, shrinking as far as possible into herself that she didn’t garner the notice of anyone in authority. She had perfected the art.
Only now, that art was useless to her.
She knew, based on too many evidences to deny, that the souls in that glorious hall were looking at her. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run to, nowhere to go but forward. She also knew, with the same sort of resonance in her soul, that the choice was hers to either accept a birthright she hadn’t asked for or to walk away from it. The world would continue to turn, no doubt, and the Nine Kingdoms along with all the other undiscovered places that didn’t crave a seat on the Council of Kings would continue to march doggedly along as they had for millennia before she’d been born and would no doubt for millennia after she was dead.
Only they would do it without dreams.
Unbidden, she caught the faintest glimpse of just exactly what she could do if she continued forward.
She looked up at the vault of the ceiling above her and felt herself sway slightly as the realization struck her. She had spent the whole of her life locked in the Guild, trapped in a large chamber with an unwholesome number of looms and weavers, but never in her life had she imagined that the world could be any bigger. Her life had been in that room, her task the very small one of continuing to weave endless reams of ugly cloth, her future nothing but more of the same. It hadn’t occurred to her that her life could be made up of something else.
Something like the place she was standing in.
She continued forward, then hazarded a glance at the people flanking the path she was traversing. They all looked different, true, but there was something about them that was hauntingly the same. It took her a moment or two to realize what it was, but when she did, she found herself less surprised than she would have thought.
They all had the same look in their eyes, as if they saw things that perhaps just weren’t visible to others.
She continued on her way to the dais, comforted by knowing that the choice to continue on was hers. She could have stopped, turned, and then walked back down that beautiful, faintly sparkling path, out the door, and back to an ordinary life. It would have been safe, perhaps. It also would have even been comfortable, if she looked at it in the right way.
But it would have been small.
Now that she had stepped out beyond the Guild, stepped into the dreamspinner’s great hall, she knew that taking a step backward was simply unthinkable, no matter where her steps forward led.
She thought about that until she was a score of paces away from the dais, then she looked to her right at the sou
ls lining that side of the path. She blinked in surprise, for she recognized more of them than she would have thought possible.
Ceana was there, the king of Neroche’s spinner. The woman whose chambers she’d used in Cothromaiche, leaving her a spinning wheel made of sunlight in payment, stood there as well though Aisling didn’t know her name. She recognized a dwarvish man who had loaned her a wheel in Durial, and she wasn’t entirely sure she didn’t also see an elven maid she had almost run into bodily in Tòrr Dòrainn.
She looked to her left. She didn’t recognize any of the men and women standing there, but she suspected they all had one thing in common.
They spun.
She looked up at the dais. There were several people there, six, seven perhaps. She didn’t know any of them, yet they seemed familiar, as if she had seen them lingering at the edge of her dreams for years. They were watching her gravely, then a thin, white-haired woman stepped from behind one of them.
Muinear.
Aisling almost wept.
Muinear walked down the pair of steps and drew Aisling into an embrace. She said nothing, she simply held her so tightly, it was almost painful.
“You came,” she said, finally.
Aisling nodded, because speech was simply beyond her. She closed her eyes and tried not to weep. She had loved the weaving mistress first because Muinear had been kind to her when no one else had been and later because she’d taught her everything worth knowing about negotiating not only the Guild, but also life. But now to know she was clinging to her great-grandmother . . .
She found it very hard to let go.
Muinear seemed to have an endless amount of patience. Aisling supposed she might have stood there all day if it hadn’t occurred to her at one point that there was a hall full of people watching her and perhaps even something left for her to do. She pulled away from her mother’s grandmother and looked into blue eyes that were quite a bit less watery and vague than they had been in times past.
“Thank you,” Aisling whispered. “For staying with me at the Guild.”
Muinear kissed her on both cheeks. “I’ll respond to that properly, my love, when we have privacy. For now, there is choice laid before you. Bruadair has held its breath for this moment for many years, but it won’t make any decisions for you. Neither will I. If you choose to step forward, it must be because you’ve chosen to do so.”
Aisling felt a little winded. “I’m not even sure what I’m committing to.”
“Aren’t you?” Muinear said with a gentle smile. “Still?”
Aisling took a deep breath to answer, then realized there was no need. Perhaps she didn’t know what the particulars were of the path that lay before her, but she knew that if she continued forward, she was going to be accepting her birthright.
As a dreamspinner.
Muinear stepped aside and off the path that was still glowing faintly on the floor. Aisling took a deep breath, then looked at the souls standing there on the dais.
There were, she could now say, six people standing there watching her. There was nothing unusual about their clothing; it was nothing she couldn’t have found in the shops of Beul. They ran the gamut in looks, some very ordinary, one not particularly handsome at all, and the others almost too difficult to look at. But that wasn’t the most remarkable thing about them. The most remarkable thing was they had her eyes.
She couldn’t say she had spent all that much time looking at herself, but she knew what her eyes looked like.
She continued forward, then paused at the edge of the platform. She looked, one by one, at the six souls standing there. They didn’t look displeased to see her; they were simply there waiting. And then they eased apart, three to one side and three to the other.
A spinning wheel sat there behind them.
Aisling put her foot on the dais and stepped up. All the people standing there, the six closest to her and the others who had apparently come to watch the spectacle, made absolutely no sound. She didn’t dare look behind her to see if Rùnach was still there in the building, because she knew he was.
She walked forward until she was standing in front of the wheel.
She realized she was surprised by the sight only after she had stared at the thing for what seemed like an eternity. Perhaps she’d allowed herself to speculate too much over the past pair of days about what the wheel of a dreamspinner might look like, but what she was seeing was not at all what she had expected.
It had been fashioned of sunshine and moonlight and deep rivers of cold water that ran beneath the earth, hardened into a substance that couldn’t possibly be wood but had the appearance of it. She took a deep breath, then realized that she knew exactly what she would be committing to if she reached out and touched that wheel. She knew what the First Dreamspinner’s responsibilities were because Bruadair had been teaching them to her slowly and patiently for weeks, first reaching out after her as she’d been standing in an old granny’s house on Melksham Island, daring to risk death by touching a simple wooden wheel.
A throat cleared itself softly from her right.
She looked up in surprise to find a man standing there. He was impossibly thin, rather tall, with a long, beaked nose and hands that fluttered like a pair of restless butterflies.
“My lady,” he said, inclining his head, “if I could make a suggestion.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Freasdail, my lady. Steward to the First.”
“Oh,” she said, unable to put any sound behind the word. “I see.”
“I think that perhaps it might be a handsome gesture to those who’ve come to watch the ceremony if we were to perhaps move behind the wheel where they can watch the events proceed.”
“Is that what we should do?” she asked faintly.
“I think it would be meaningful to them,” he said, inclining his head again.
She supposed that if anyone wanted to watch her be struck down for her cheek, they were welcome to it. She looked at Freasdail. “And what do I do once I’ve stepped behind the wheel?”
“Lady Muinear will instruct you.”
Aisling supposed she couldn’t go wrong there, so she walked around the wheel and placed herself where Freasdail indicated with a series of lifted eyebrows and slight nods. Muinear smiled at her, then stepped to her side and looked out over the company gathered there.
“You are all come to witness the beginning of a new First,” she said in a clear, unwavering voice. “My great-granddaughter, Aisling of Bruadair, whose right this is.”
Aisling saw Rùnach standing at the doors of the hall with her father. His hands were still clasped behind his back but tears were rolling down his cheeks. He still breathed, which she supposed was all she could ask for. She looked at her great-grandmother, who was still facing the crowd.
“The history of the wheel is long and illustrious,” Muinear said, “but not necessary for understanding the significance of the moment. Suffice it to say, the wheel stopped spinning as my daughter breathed her last and it has not spun since. Bruadair locked its revolutions partly in mourning for Cuilidh, partly as the final test for the lad or lass with magic enough to become the First.”
Aisling felt her mouth go dry. She looked at Muinear as she turned and smiled.
“Have others tried?” she whispered.
“Do you really want to know that right now?” Muinear murmured.
Aisling closed her eyes briefly, then looked for Rùnach again. He was only still watching her, steadily. She realized she had nothing to lose at the moment besides her life, so perhaps there was no reason not to plunge ahead and cast her fate to the wind.
She reached out and put her hand on the flywheel. She looked up quickly at the faint sound, then realized it had been Bruadair to sigh lightly. The wood was cold under her hand, but that seemed to be from nothing more than the chill in the hall. She closed her eyes briefly, then gave the flywheel a firm spin.
Bruadair paused.
And then the wo
rld burst into song.
She supposed she might not have noticed that if it hadn’t been so loud right next to her. The hall had erupted in applause and a few undignified cheers. But the world?
It sang a melody she was certain she’d heard before, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember where. She found her hand taken and subsequently shaken heartily by the tall man who had been standing several feet behind her—perhaps to catch her if she fell. Muinear embraced her.
“Ah, my darling,” she said, hugging Aisling. “A long road to this place, aye?”
“I thought you were dead!” Aisling said, before she thought better of blurting out the first thing that came to mind.
Muinear laughed. “Not yet, love.” She pulled away. “Let me release you to those who have come to greet you. And I think there might be a lad at the back of the hall who has an especial interest in your future.”
Aisling wasn’t sure where to begin, but fortunately Freasdail seemed to know the most appropriate way to greet the souls who had come to witness what she was very happy to find wasn’t her death.
She had the feeling it was going to be a very long morning.
• • •
She realized, several hours later, that long wasn’t exactly the right word for it. Endless was likely a better choice, but she had survived it well enough thanks mostly to Freasdail, who always seemed to know exactly when to hand her something to eat or drink, or find her a chair, or clear his throat politely if a well-wisher carried on too long. She wasn’t entirely sure that she hadn’t received the odd gift or two, but she had lost track of them. She was quite certain that Freasdail hadn’t.
A reception was announced outside in the garden and the flock of spinners deserted the hall with alacrity. Aisling found herself standing in the middle of the hall with her great-grandmother. It was then that she realized they weren’t exactly alone. Rùnach and her father had apparently been holding up the wall nearest the front doors.
“Ah, a creature from myth,” Muinear said, smiling in Rùnach’s direction.