‘By myself?’ My tone matched the trembling of the torch. ‘Very well.’
‘Give me the brand.’ He held out an elegant, long-fingered hand on which dark rings gleamed, and I passed him the flaming stick. For a few moments his eyes met mine, and I saw in them the same dancing colours as before, crimson and sable flickering almost faster than I could follow. Shadows moved across his high-boned features. He lifted his brows. ‘Don’t wait too long,’ he said, ‘or you may lose the will to go on. Tread with care. Don’t slip.’
‘Wait a moment.’ Perhaps I was a fool to challenge him. In this form he not only puzzled me, he scared me. Before such power I was nothing. Why was he playing with me like this? But then, maybe I was nothing, but Shadowfell was something. Alban’s freedom was something. And if I could get this right, maybe I could play my part in winning that freedom. In my mind I heard Flint’s voice, soft as a breath, strong as stone. If I see you defeated, then I think I will see Alban defeated, and if that happens none of us can go on. To guard you is to guard the heart of this land of ours. ‘Didn’t you say you would hold my hand?’ I asked.
‘There’s holding and holding,’ the flame-eyed man said. ‘We’ll watch from up here.’
Nothing for it, then, but to make my way down those steps. They were awkwardly spaced, and their surfaces were not only wet but grown over with some kind of creeping subterranean moss on which my shoes slipped and skidded. There was nothing to hold on to; the tunnel walls looked close enough to touch, but when I stretched out my arms the rock seemed to shrink away so it was just out of reach.
‘Make haste!’ the man called, and the dog gave a curt bark, like a warning.
Step by step I went down. Canny Eyes. Strength of Stillness. Open Heart. Steadfast Purpose. Flame of Courage. Giving Hand. And here I was on the lip of a round pool. In its depths was an eerie gleam, as if somewhere beneath the water a flame flickered and moved. An old, old place; a place of the Good Folk. It was alive with magic.
There was barely enough space here for my two feet. No ledge; no handy stone edging such as might be placed around a well to stop an incautious child or animal from falling in. Only this tiny level spot and the water, with sheer rock rising all around. I held myself still as the light moved and changed in the depths. Was it a scrying pool that offered visions of the future? A place of ancient ritual? What was I expected to do?
A sharp bark from the dog, and the rock walls to every side were suddenly alive with light and shadow. Shapes leapt and pranced and dived: here a flying owl; here a mounted warrior, axe raised; here a capering girl with hair like long strands of weed. It was as if a great fire burned behind me, throwing their images onto the stone. I looked over my shoulder, up the steps. The man had one arm outstretched, fingers pointing ahead. In the other hand he held the modest brand I had snatched from my little fire. A mage, then; or something more.
‘Keep your gaze straight ahead,’ he said. It was a command, and I obeyed. On the rocks before me a shadow man fought a desperate, one-sided battle. He was on foot, armed only with something that looked like a stick or crude staff. Against him were three mounted warriors. He turned and ducked and leapt; he swung his weapon high and low; he used trick after trick. I found myself willing him to survive; it looked so real.
The voice came from the top of the steps, calm and cool. ‘Jump!’
I jumped. The water took me, cold as a winter night, its sudden embrace jolting me to the heart. Down I sank, down and down, until I should have been near drowning, yet oddly I felt no need for air. As I descended, images formed and dissolved around me. Was I in water or fire? Light and shadow flickered, teasing me as I passed. There were faces in the flame, faces dear and familiar, yet never quite captured, for they altered from one moment to the next, until smoke veiled them, or maybe ripples, and they were gone . . . Gone before I could touch, before I could speak . . . Stay! I cried, but my voice was a string of bubbles, vanishing upward. Oh, stay!
For I saw my mother, appearing, disappearing, her image fleeting as a dream, beloved, lost. Now I was struggling, thrashing about with my arms and legs, fighting the water that held me close. Stay! I need to – I want to –
No. It was a test. Against every instinct, I stopped fighting and surrendered to the water. No stir. No breath. Just like that night, hiding in my grandmother’s wall. Still as stone. Still as death. The water drew me down, down into the depths of Odd’s Hole.
And there she was, on the shore, singing. I was in her arms, resting against the warm softness of her body. ‘Open Heart and Steadfast Purpose,’ she sang, and I felt the gentle movement of her hand against my hair, stroking. ‘Flame of Courage, Giving Hand.’ She bent her head to kiss my brow. ‘My girl,’ she whispered. ‘My precious girl.’
I found words, and spoke them not as the child she held close, the memory-child, but as the woman I was now. ‘I love you, Mother. You left me early and I’ve grieved for that. What you gave me was precious beyond all gifts. Maybe you knew, even then, what the future would hold for me.’ In my mind I made a new picture. The woman in it was very like my mother, but not exactly like, for though she was younger there was something hard in her, as if she had been weathered by long journeying and touched by experience too terrible to put in words. On her knee, another child nestled. I felt how warm and soft she was in my arms, how fragile and yet how strong. ‘My girl,’ I whispered. Then the fire flared up, and the veil of smoke moved across, and they were gone: mother, daughter, granddaughter alike.
The water again; how deep could I sink before there would be no going back? My body tensed, craving deliverance. Out! screamed the voice of my fear. Let me out!
Flame of Courage, I murmured, or perhaps I only thought it. Face this test to the end, or you make a lie of all those who believed in you.
Eyes closed, limp as a frond of weed, I let myself fall. I fell into the light of a summer’s day. It bathed the chalk-white face of my brother, and touched the line of bright blood running from his mouth. He fought for one more breath and spoke the words I had already heard: Neryn, I’m sorry.
Neryn-that-was had wept, cursed, pleaded with Farral to stay, begged him not to leave her alone. The last sound he’d heard, as he died, was his sister’s anguished wail. Now I knelt, cradling him, and whispered in his ear. ‘You gave your life for truth and honour. You showed me how to be brave. Pass the flame to me, Brother. I will carry it now.’ I saw the change in his eyes, then, the light leaving them as he drifted away, up, up into the blue sky that stretched wide and perfect over Alban’s hills. ‘Goodbye, Farral,’ I whispered.
I was in the sky too, turned and turned by the four winds, floating. Faces in the clouds. Here a warrior, here a child, here a proud stallion, here a scurrying beetle, here a little dog, a strange old man, a girl watching as her father wagered her for three silver pieces. Fire caught him, making of him a pillar of screaming flame, his mouth stretched wide, his eyes staring, his pain searing through me until I would have cried out, but the wind snatched my voice and blew it far away.
Oh, this was cruel. Grief weighed me down, stifling the words I should have found. My father’s suffering tore at me. I longed to curl up in a ball, hands over my face, and pretend he was not there. But I must face this test with open eyes, with open arms, with an open heart, a heart without bitterness, regret or blame. I must stand witness, and I must make peace with my lost ones. ‘Father,’ I said, choking on the word, ‘your burden was heavy indeed, and you carried it long. You did your best for me. Walk on in peace now. I love you. I forgive you.’
Daughter . . . The word was a whisper, a breath, a sigh, drifting away. He was gone.
Not done yet. Not finished. I sank again through water deeper than memory, down and down. This time, I thought, I would not be able to do it. This time I must close my eyes and ears to it; this time I would surely fail, for some things could never be made right, some things simply could not be borne. Please, begged the child inside me, please don’t make me do this.
But there was no choice. No flight, no refuge, nothing but moving straight ahead to face the darkest thing, the cruellest hurt, the wound there was surely no healing. Steadfast Purpose. She’d always had that, right to the end. It had been in her voice when she bade me hide, when she warned me, not a twitch, not a squeak, however long it took, no matter what they did to her, no matter what I saw. It had been in her eyes when they drugged her; it had been there until the moment when she fell unconscious in their grip.
‘Grandmother,’ I said, and the bubble of her name floated up to the light. ‘Where are you?’
She came twofold. Here was the hobbling, weeping crone of the last days. Bafflement and fear had etched deep marks on her parchment skin; she plucked at her face with restless hands, as if it were a troublesome mask. The stink of incontinence hung about her, along with a musty smell of stale food. However hard I had tried, I had never been able to keep her clean enough. ‘Neryn,’ she whispered, eyes darting from side to side. ‘Neryn, is that you?’ I put my arms around her and held on, blinded by tears. ‘I’m here,’ I said. ‘I’m right here.’
‘Look up, child.’
I looked, and though her frail form still trembled in my hold, at the same time she stood before me, straight-backed, clear-eyed, far-seeing. Her face held all the warmth of a spirit wise and easy, a heart full of love and life. ‘So here you are,’ she said, and smiled.
I could not find a single word. But that was no matter. She took one step toward me and her arms came around me even as I held the form of her shrunken second self within the circle of my own embrace.
‘Dear one,’ she said. ‘Dear brave little one.’
Now, words tumbled out of me. ‘I should have spoken out, I should have stood up to them, that’s what Farral would have done! How could I have stayed there and not helped you, how could I let them –’
‘Hush, Neryn, hush. You were a child and you could not help. It was as it was, and now it is past, and you cannot change the way of it. If you had rushed to my aid that night, who would have passed these tests and made this journey? Rise up to the light, dear one. Rise up and go on your way.’
Then, evanescent as dew on morning grass, she was gone. Gone in a heartbeat. There was too much in me to be put in words. But perhaps that did not matter, since she had always understood.
I rose. Slow as thistledown on the breeze, turning and turning, through shifting shadows I rose toward the surface. As I passed, images came to me, more fleeting than the others but no less vivid for that. Myself at the mouth of a sea cave, looking out to the west. A pair of hands, weathered, wrinkled hands, fastening around mine. An old woman’s whisper. Be fluid as water.
I rose again and a new image formed. I was in a hall of snow and ice, glittering and pale, mysterious and grand. A fur cloak, perhaps a wolfskin, around my shoulders. Someone standing behind me, though I could not see who it was. A warrior, I thought, with spear in hand; but not Flint, for this figure was slighter. A voice again, a different voice, deep and strong. Endure as earth endures.
The water rippled around me, turning to green, gold, silver, white, chasing away the wintry vision. And there I was again, in a gown of blue with my hair flowing loose across my shoulders. A circlet of flowers crowned my head. See with the clarity of air, the voice said, and now it was a woman’s, powerful but sweet like the note of a distant horn.
Up, up again. The light danced around me, filling the water with its changeable magic. I waited, now, for a fourth image, for the old man had spoken of four ways and of maps. What had those visions been but glimpses of the Guardians? Hag of the Isles. Lord of the North. White Lady. Must I search for each in turn? Were they the key to learning a Caller’s art?
My head broke free of the surface and I was in the cavern, with light flickering on the walls, and the steps in front of me going straight up. I flailed with my arms, desperate to stay afloat until I could reach the edge and clamber up, for to drown now, at the end, would be a sorry thing indeed. I kicked out. My foot touched the bottom. I stumbled, then stood straight. The water was only chest deep. At the top of the steps stood man and dog. The small bright flame of the makeshift torch turned the man’s strong features into a mask with black holes for eyes.
‘Climb up,’ he ordered.
I climbed, leaving a wet trail behind me. My clothing was saturated; my hair lay dripping across my shoulders; my shoes squelched as I worked my way up the steps, one hand holding up my skirt, the other clutching for whatever purchase it could find. When I reached the top, the man slipped off one of his own garments – they were indeterminate in both colour and shape – and laid it around my shoulders. Warmth spread through my chilled body; steam rose from my clothing. Sheer relief at finding myself alive almost blotted out my ability to think clearly, but not quite. I was out. I was alive. Had I passed a further test? Demonstrated the seventh and final virtue? The images I had seen as I rose could be interpreted as a map for the journey forward. But this map had shown me three Guardians, not four. Had I missed something? Or was the test not yet over?
‘You’re close to the end,’ the man said. ‘Very close. We’ll walk back now.’
I walked, following in his steps, and neither of us said a word all the way back to the cavern. By the time we got there my hair and my clothing were completely dry.
The campfire was down to embers, and there was no sign of Flint. I laid on fresh wood, building it high. Very soon I was going to collapse into a shivering, exhausted heap. Quite likely I would want to weep, not tears of sorrow, but tears that recognised a day of momentous change, a day on which I had forgiven my dear ones for leaving me and released them to their rest.
But I must be strong a little longer. This was not finished. My companion had spoken of games, of tricks. He was holding something back, I was sure of it. A last challenge. A last puzzle. And an answer was coming to me as I watched the flames of the campfire leap and dance before us. Could it be . . . ? Could this really be . . . ?
I drank from my water skin, then filled the pot and set it to heat. ‘After all that,’ I said, forcing my voice calm, ‘the least I can do is offer you a fresh brew.’ Let him stay here long enough for me to work this out. Let him sit here with me while I thought it through. The trickster from the old stories, the one with little sense of right and wrong, the one who could change his form at will. He could hide; he could eavesdrop; he could travel fast and covertly, because of his nature. There was only one way to outwit him . . .
I cast a sideways glance at my companion, who had settled on a rock, a blind ancient once more. The firelight threw his shadow up on the wall behind him, the bent shoulders, the disordered hair, the old man’s profile. At his feet sat the little dog, licking a front paw. ‘What did you see down there?’ he asked.
‘My family –’ The words dried up in my mouth as the answer to my question revealed itself. I must do it now. Quickly, before he moved. But subtly. Divert his attention, then do it. Trick the trickster. ‘And I saw myself,’ I said. ‘On a journey. Would you like some more food? I’m sure the dog would welcome it.’ My pack was close to him, its ties open, the packet of herbs at the top. ‘There might be the remains of a rabbit, let me see . . .’
I squatted down, making show of looking in the bag. My right hand was concealed from him by the folds of my skirt; I snatched a stick charred black from the fire. I rose and took a step past my companion. ‘Where are those cups?’ I muttered, and with a speed I did not think I had in me, I brought the charcoal up and drew a line around the silhouette the fire had thrown onto the wall. An old man’s head, an old man’s shadow. I moved back. He bent forward to scratch the dog behind the ear. And there was his profile, plain on the rock wall: noble brow, strong nose, decisive chin. No old man this, nor even a man at all, but something altogether more powerful.
‘I don’t know exactly what you are,’ I said, keeping my voice respectful, for if I was right, this was a being akin to an ancient god. ‘But I could hazard a guess.�
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He turned his head to look at the picture I had drawn, and I wondered if he would be angry. But he seemed more amused. For a moment he was the boy again, with the boy’s disturbing smile, a smile that told me nothing at all about his feelings.
‘Oh, very sharp,’ he said, brows lifted. ‘A handsome profile, isn’t it? Someone’s raised you on old stories, I see. I suppose you know your quick wits have earned you a favour. Make sure you don’t waste it.’
‘I will save it until it’s needed.’
‘Wise as well as quick.’ He was mocking me now. ‘Let’s have that brew, and while we drink it, tell me what you learned from Odd’s Hole.’
‘You don’t know already?’
‘I may be full of tricks and turns, I may be more than usually agile, but I have not yet mastered the ability to be in two places at once. Besides, I did not ask what you saw, but what you learned. Tell me.’
‘You spoke of maps,’ I said, dropping a few pinches of dried herbs into the heating water. ‘I was given three maps. I’d say one was for the west, one for the north, and one for the east. Water, Earth, Air. I think I need to journey to each and find . . . a certain very powerful entity who may not especially want to be found. Someone who might be reluctant to get involved in a struggle that mostly concerns my kind, not theirs. I need to ask them for wisdom. Teaching.’
‘How cautiously you speak.’
‘When one wrong word can bring death, caution becomes a habit.’
‘And yet you jumped without hesitation. I did not think you would do it.’
‘I surprised myself.’ I still did not understand why I had obeyed a command that seemed an invitation to death by drowning. I had not stopped to weigh up the risk. I had simply acted. ‘Will you tell me the rest of the rhyme now? Down in Odd’s Hole I saw my family, each of them in turn. Spoke with them. Made peace with them. Was that my final test?’
‘I’ll give you the rhyme and you be the judge. The last part goes like this:
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