Storm at the Edge of Time

by Pamela F. Service

  No one was going to tell her where to walk! For crying out loud, half the island was covered with heather. Jamie teetered forward, wanting desperately to walk to the center of the circle. Another force just as desperately wanted her to pull back, to leave the center to its heather—to leave the whole circle alone. It urged her to run out the gate and down the road, not stopping until she had closed herself behind walls and doors.

  In the back of her mind, Jamie knew that what scared her most was that she should care so violently either way. The Orkney police wouldn’t arrest her if she stepped on the stupid heather. On the other hand, she could just as easily be like other tourists and see the circle from the “perimeter path.” What was the big deal?

  She didn’t know. But suddenly she knew it wad big, and she didn’t want any part of it.

  But it wanted her. She felt as if dry invisible hands were clutching her, dragging her into the center of the circled stones.

  Chapter Five

  Stubbornly, violently Jamie jerked back. She staggered and almost lost her footing. A couple of tourists stared at her oddly and walked on. She couldn’t even flash them a sheepish grin. All she could do was turn and run.

  She ran out to the road and jogged eastward along its verge. The land narrowed to a slim causeway between the lochs, then spread out again. Averting her eyes, she jogged past the remains of a smaller stone circle on her left. Finally she slowed to a walk, but pointedly ignored the standing stone across from their house. Going directly to her room, she closed the curtain, threw herself on the bed, and started reading a book she’d read four times before.

  As the afternoon passed and her mind thawed out, Jamie began to feel really foolish. How could she have been so silly? Why had she felt so strongly about a really unimportant thing? What difference did it make if she walked on the stupid heather or not?

  Anyway, it was a dumb rule and a dumb sign, and the rule makers and sign posters ought to have people walking on their heather all the time just to tell them so.

  When her parents came home, they were full of talk about the afternoon’s birds, so Jamie didn’t have to mention the stone circle. It wasn’t really important anyway. In fact, now she could hardly remember what her problem had been with it. Just anger, she guessed, anger at those fussy Orkney tourist people and their stupid prissy rules. Rules like that were meant to be broken. Like Wet Cement and Keep Off the Grass signs, they were outright invitations.

  She played with that thought all the way through dinner, and it cheered her up a lot. By bedtime, it was a warm bubbly idea, and she didn’t have to wait long to put it into practice.

  She opened her curtain. The moon was fuller than before, and the sky was free of even the faintest cloud. The standing stone across the road stretched its long shadow toward her. But stones were nothing. What she was after was heather.

  Once again, Jamie waited until her parents were asleep. Lying on her bed fully clothed, she refused to listen to any conflicting mental voices. This was her idea, a good one, and she would cany it out. When snores began to fill the house, she crept down the stairs and out the front door.

  No sooner was she outside than a great white owl called from its perch on the standing stone. Jamie tried to calm her jolting heart. So the big, blue-eyed owl was on the stone again. All that meant was that lots of mice ran around this field at night. Resolutely, Jamie marched along the road, keeping her mind focused on the heather and the pleasure of defying that petty busybody rule.

  And anyway, it was a beautiful night for a walk. Windy, of course, but she was warmly dressed, and this far from city lights the stars were wonderfully bright. A half moon silvered the waves, spread a sheen over the grass, and cast sharp-edged shadows from fence posts and the first circle of standing stones. She strode by it and the next single standing stone.

  Where the road narrowed, she looked down at both shores and saw the white forms of sleeping swans. One swan raised its head and watched her pass, but sounded no alarm.

  Jamie neared the big stone circle and slowed. Her conviction that this was a great idea was beginning to fade. Maybe it was kind of silly. But, hey, here she was, and she might as well go through with it. If there was one thing she hated more than looking silly, it was starting something and then giving up. She turned off the road, passed the information placards, and crossed the ditch by the earth causeway.

  Again, she slowed. There was the heather before her, a pure untrampled field of it. On both sides curved the stones, towering over her like dark misshapen guards. And again came the odd, cold conviction that the center of the circle was exactly where something wanted her to be.

  Nonsense! Nobody cared about the center of this circle except the people who put up those prissy Keep to the Perimeter Path signs. No way would they cow her! The only place to see a circle was from the center. With a defiant yell, Jamie stepped off the path and onto the heather.

  Another step and another. She walked, then ran forward. Underfoot, the heather was dry and springy, a crunchy pleasure. Jamie reached the center, threw wide her arms, and slowly spun around.

  This really did seem the center of things. Beyond the circling stones, water and land stretched out in all directions until they met sky. Throwing back her head, Jamie gazed upward. As she turned, the stars seemed to turn around her. Arms outstretched, eyes on the stars, she turned faster and faster. The stars spun in a dizzying swirl. Faster, and faster yet, until they blended into a blinding curtain of light.

  Then an explosion of blackness.

  Time, Jamie knew, had passed. Time spent in silence and utter darkness. Slowly she pushed herself up from the ground, from the crackly, springy heather. Fighting dizziness, she looked up and had to jam her eyes shut. The stars burned like ice, far harder and brighter than before. It was as if the atmosphere had burned off, leaving nothing but the cold infinite universe.

  Keeping her eyes low, she opened them again. The stones still stood around her, but they were different, too. There were more of them, forming an unbroken circle. And for the first time since coming to these islands, she could not hear the wind. There was utter silence.

  In rising terror, Jamie scrambled to her feet, then immediately crouched again. A dark shape loomed above her. It seemed to have arms, a head, a voice.

  “Taken your time, haven’t you?” the man said impatiently. “And taken mine as well. That first boy knew the power and wanted it, and the second didn’t even know what it was. But you knew just enough to be afraid and fight it every step of the way. What abother!”

  Then came a dry cold laugh. “But no matter, you’re all here now. So come, you three, stop cowering in the heather. I’ll light a fire and we can talk.”

  Surprised, Jamie noticed two other figures huddled on the ground nearby. Slowly both stood up, and the taller one spoke.

  “Sir, I have no intention of sitting and talking with an obviously hostile native. I demand that you shut off this effect and let me return to my ship and complete my Nri Irll.”

  The man only grunted. He walked to a bare spot in the heather and clapped his hands; a lively campfire suddenly appeared on the ground. For a moment, its crackling was the only sound in the total stillness.

  “Fire!” the smaller figure said, running toward it. “You can make fire by magic?”

  “Of course. It’s one of the basics.”

  In the firelight, Jamie could now see those two clearly. The man was short and dark, his curly black hair and beard shot with gray. He was wearing leather trousers and a long cloak of slick dark fur. The boy was young. The hood of his woven yellow cape had fallen back to show a mop of red hair.

  The other figure strode toward them, and Jamie stared. His skin was dark, but not in the way she was used to. It was more the color of old avocados, a greenish brown. His hair was not just black. It was a glossy blue-black, and it bristled in a crest over his head to trail down his back like a mane. He was wearing boots and a coppery-colored jumpsuit.

  “You have no rig
ht to hold me here,” he said angrily, “and I am not interested in your petty holographic illusions. I demand that you let down the force field you have around this place and let me go.”

  “No time for argument, boy. Sit down, we need to talk.”

  “You can not order me around. I am Kreeth. I have permission to be on this island and—”

  “No,” the man interrupted, “you are not Kreeth. You are part Human—my part. And here, Tyaak, all the rights are on my side.” Abruptly he turned and addressed the other boy. “And you—your name is Arni.”

  “Arni Arnorson,” the younger boy said eagerly. “My father is Arnor, skald to Earl Thorfinn.”

  The man nodded, then looked up. “And you, Jamie, come join us. I’ve had enough trouble with you already.”

  Confused, angry, and terribly afraid, Jamie walked toward the fire. She decided to hide everything but the anger. “Mister, I have no idea who you are, how you know my name, or what is going on here, but—”

  “Then sit down, and I’ll tell you.”

  “But—”

  “Sit!”

  Jamie found herself sitting on the heather. The two called Tyaak and Arni were sitting as well, with surprised looks on their faces. The man stared down at them with cold blue eyes; then he, too, sat.

  “My name is Urkar. I am your great-great-great-whatever—your ancestor, anyway. And that is why you are here. Ours is a family of power. It is strong in me, and it is strong in each one of you.”

  Arni’s face lit up. “You mean I do have the power, like Great-grandmother Eithne? I always knew it! I always knew I could work magic!”

  “Magic?” Tyaak objected. “What sort of superstitious babble is this? Backwater planet that it may be, I thought Earth was at least advanced enough to forget that foolishness.”

  “In your time, unfortunately, it had forgotten magic,” Urkar growled. “But forgetting something doesn’t make it not exist. Now, stop interrupting me.

  “Where was I? Yes, descendants. For millennia, every member of our line has inherited some degree of power. Many never used or even recognized it. Others channeled it into certain trades or skills. But all three of you are especially strong carriers of the power, and you also live in especially critical times—times when you are called upon to use it.”

  “I am sorry,” Tyaak said, standing up. “Not only are you ridiculous, you are wrong. I have no ‘magic powers.’ The only thing I am called upon to do is complete my Nri Irll and—”

  “Do shut up!” Urkar snapped, and abruptly Tyaak was sitting again. Strange-looking as the boy was, Jamie could recognize the anger and confusion in his face. His expression, she was sure, mirrored her own.

  She cleared her throat uncertainly. “I don’t know about these two, but I certainly don’t have any magic powers. I always thought I could sense the supernatural, but it turns out I can’t. I’ve been trying hard, and I haven’t seen one ghost yet.”

  “Ghosts!” Urkar sputtered. “Just what do you think the ‘supernatural’ is? It’s simply power that goes beyond the common laws of nature. Making use of this power is what you call magic. And seeing ghosts is only a tiny passive sideline of that.”

  Jamie sat silent for a moment, letting this settle through her mind, rearranging things.

  Arni spoke up again. “These two must come from some pretty strange places not to know about magic. But what do you mean, Urkar, about being called upon to use it?”

  The man combed a hand through his gray-streaked hair. “I’d better explain about power first. I imagine that even Tyaak understands about there being two kinds of it in the universe.”

  “Two kinds?” the boy said. “You mean like matter and antimatter?”

  “Something like I suppose. In the universe there are two forces, one that creates and one that destroys. Usually they are in balance, but occasionally one force grows and breaks over the other like a storm. If it is the creative force, then a rash of new mountains or worlds or galaxies can be created. If the storm is one of destruction, then mountains, planets, and galaxies can be destroyed.”

  Tyaak sneered. “Sounds like superstitious clothing over basic cosmic dynamics—energy rift theory gone wild. But what does this have to—”

  “Stop interrupting, and I’ll tell you. Throughout the universe, there are beings who can sense these forces and use them, gravitating either to the destructive or the creative. When a force storm looms up, those of the threatened side use their powers to resist.”

  Arni was frowning. “What sort of power does our family have?”

  “Creative.”

  “Good. I don’t think I’d much like doing evil magic.”

  “Evil magic!” Tyaak exploded. “I have had quite enough!”

  “No you haven’t!” Urkar stabbed him with his icy blue gaze. “‘Evil’ is one term for it. So is ‘destruction,’ or ‘chaos,’ or ‘death,’ or—what did you call it?—antimatter.

  “Now, I will continue. One of those storms of destruction was growing when I was a young man. On these islands, we had always tried to channel and strengthen our forces through constructs of power, the way pillars and roof posts are repaired or added when a great storm is brewing out at sea. But this storm was greater than any ever faced before. Those of us who wielded power determined that a new central pillar of creative force was needed to, so to speak, keep the roof on this part of the universe from collapsing.”

  Urkar stood, sweeping an arm around the perfect circle of stones. “I was chosen to bring this about. I channeled forces that terrified me with their enormous power. But the design was good; it could have held back the storm, perhaps, for eternity.”

  His voice broke, and he sat down. After a moment, Arni said, “Could have?”

  Urkar’s reply was flat and strained. “Those who wielded the destructive power fought us. Before our pillar was ready, they drew the storm toward it. Our structure had been built and the forces were flowing, but the strength of any pillar is in its core, and that—they shattered.”

  “Did the storm break, then?” Arni asked in awe.

  “No; the pillar, this stone circle, endured. And even shattered as it was, the core still remained within it, adding slightly to its strength. But that has vanished now, because the core is gone. Once again a storm is building, sweeping this way, and now little remains to hold it back.”

  Jamie frowned as she tried to follow the story. This fellow, she tried to assure herself, was a madman—or, more likely, he and the rest of it were a nightmare. But neither lunatics nor nightmares let you go when you want out, so for the time being she might as well make what sense she could of this.

  “But if you have that much power,” she said, “you could repair the pillar thing, couldn’t you?”

  “No.” He stared at each one, his eyes the color of Arctic ice. “But you could.”

  Chapter Six

  Now Jamie knew this was a nightmare—or worse. Beside her, Arni was babbling about magic quests while Tyaak was going on about force fields and holographic projections.

  Raking a hand through his mane of hair, the older boy said, “Even if I accepted this magic scenario, which I do not, I am the wrong person for your little game. I am a Kreeth, training to be a galactic navigator. I am—”

  “Stubborn and blind!” Urkar cut in. “Have you never once seen something or done something which you could not explain with your crippled ‘science’? Come now, the truth.”

  “No, never! Stellar navigation is an exact science. I could not possibly …” Tyaak slowed, then lapsed into a frightened-seeming silence.

  Eyeing him curiously, Jamie spoke up. “Look, Mr. Urkar, you’re wrong about me. The only thing I’ve ever wanted to do with the supernatural is to see ghosts. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want scaiy powers like that, and I don’t have them! Whatever you need done, you’ll just have to do it yourself.”

  “I can’t!” he shouted. “Oh, all three of you are family, all right: as stubborn as they come. I’m no
t going to waste any more time with words. I’ll show’you!”

  Urkar jumped to his feet and clapped his hands. Abruptly the fire snuffed itself out, leaving nothing but a glowing cloud of smoke. The cloud thickened and spread like dense mist. Slowly at first, then faster, it began to spin around them. Jamie felt Arni move beside her and grab her hand. Even Tyaak came a step or two closer.

  Now the mist was spinning at such a dizzying rate, Jamie felt it draw the air from her lungs, the sight from her eyes, and even the thoughts from her mind. She wanted to scream but couldn’t draw breath.

  She had almost blacked out when the spinning suddenly stopped, throwing them all into a heap on the heathery ground.

  Jamie opened her eyes to see Urkar struggling to free himself from the folds of his sealskin cape. He staggered to his feet. “Sorry, I think I got a little overhasty. Didn’t gauge things right. But I haven’t looked back here … in a long while”

  “Where is …” Jamie started to say, but she fell silent. The utter stillness and the impossibly bright stars were gone. Overhead, a vast clear sky was tinged with approaching dawn. A steady sea breeze tangled her hair and carried with it the crying of gulls and a sound that might be distant song.

  She looked around. They were still standing in a complete stone circle, but rather than seeming ideal and eternal, the stones looked raw, as if newly hauled from the earth and not yet worn by wind and rain.

  Stretching off on all sides, the moorland seemed unbroken by roads or fields or even houses. On the lochs, not a single boat could be seen, only swans and white-fringed waves.

  The singing voices were louder now, and Jamie could see a procession of people, clad in browns and grays, wending their way toward the circle. She stepped back into the shadow of a stone, but Urkar shook his head.

  “No need. They can’t see or hear us. This is the day of the circle’s consecration. For an entire summer, the people of the island labored to build it. I selected the stones and determined their placement, and the others dragged them here and raised them while I fashioned the core. From the one grove of trees on the island, I chose three saplings. Then, with all the power I had, I fashioned them into three staffs embodying the forces of life—of air and earth and water. With spells and incantations, I wove the three into one, a single staff ending in three finials: a leaping fish, a soaring hawk, and the arched head of a horse. There, you can see it now.”