by A. Evermore
‘What is this?’ Issa gasped.
A horse formed beneath her, but its skin flickered and moved like black flames and though it was solid it seemed insubstantial. Ahead flew the raven. Issa’s heart pounded in her chest and she trembled.
A voice echoed around her, the same calm voice that had drawn her to the mound, and she knew it came from the figure cloaked in stars. Though she could not see the woman she could feel her presence, it was filled with wisdom and compassion. Issa felt then that the stars and the galaxies and the space between them was the Great Goddess, the source of all life, and she was a tiny star within her mantle, a smaller part of the Great Goddess Herself.
‘The darkness is coming, Maion'artheria; my sacred daughter,’ the voice moved around her like a great ocean and its tone whispered of the most ancient wisdom and resonated with the purest love. ‘The task which you accepted and were chosen for draws near. Take heart little one, I will be with you.’
Issa could barely contain herself in the awesome presence and she pulled away a little, overwhelmed by the words. As if in response to her desires the swirling galaxies disappeared and her body returned. Issa breathed heavily, sweat beading her forehead as she looked up once more at the woman before the golden silver doorway.
‘I don’t understand,’ she gasped, ‘I am not who you think I am.’
‘The darkness draws close,’ the figure said, the words low but gentle, ‘fear not, Maion'artheria.’
Issa shook her head and staggered backwards and then she was falling through blackness, tumbling over and over but the ground never came and she thought she would fall forever.
When she came to, Issa found herself lying on the hard ground amongst the gnarly oaks, a thick root poked painfully into her back. She winced and sat up rubbing her aching back, her limbs creaking with stiffness. Her trousers were ripped and muddy and leaves and twigs stuck tangled in her hair. Ma will kill me; I must look like a scarecrow!
‘Not my mother’, she sighed, remembering. Had anything really changed whether or not Fraya was her Ma? Nothing had changed, and yet everything had, but it was no use trying to deny it; Ma, Fraya, whether her mother or no, could not look after herself whilst she was sick and she was right, Issa didn’t love her any less, not really, even if she wasn’t her mother. It just added a whole knew take on her life, not least of which who was her real mother.
After pulling most of the forest out of her hair she stood up, brushed herself down and looked around her.
‘Hey, it’s Mayflower Wood,’ she laughed, recognising her childhood playground. She used to come here after school with Tar and her old friend Dara, until Dara went to Bigger Kammy when her parents moved there for work. She stroked the thick heavy oak branch that bent down almost to the ground and then arched steeply up to create a bizarre U-shape. It was the first leg up in climbing the tree and if you got it right you could climb through the branches of five more trees without touching the ground.
That was a long time ago now and she had grown out of coming here, but the wood was not far from home at all. But it is not the place I was in moments ago, she thought. The trees were mainly birch and only a few medium sized oaks. There were no ancient trees and no stones either.
She rubbed her head as everything came back to her; the stones, the mound, the strange liquid mirror doorway and the figure in the endless desert. She looked up at the tree branches but the raven was gone and she wondered if, like the ancient wood, it had ever been there. But it had been too real to be a dream and if it was a Fairy Pocket how then did she return so easily? She looked up, the sun was well past midday and Laron would be truly worried and Ma too. She started back along the path at a pace and as she jogged she realised she missed the raven’s company, feeling somewhat alone without her feathery companion in front.
Issa followed the rough path that would eventually lead into the village scanning for the left turn that would take her home. She spotted the familiar stunted birch tree next to the left turn and took it, pushing back the green ferns overgrowing the path as she did so. It was not far now and her jog dropped to a walk as her thoughts turned from the raven to woman hidden in the cloak of stars. Had she been a Fairy Queen? No, she can’t have been, no Fairy had such an awesome presence, even if a Queen. Perhaps it was just a dream, she had hit her head on the fall and it sent her funny, but that didn’t feel right either. She should tell Ma, but what if she worried?
It was the silence again that broke her thoughts as she walked. There was no sound of birds singing or gulls crying, everything was deathly quiet. There was a faint smell of wood smoke on the air, which was strange for it was far too warm for any hearth. The sky was darkening but the clouds were dark and muddy and not like rain clouds at all. Maybe farmer Ged had made a bonfire, but bonfire season was months away. A feeling of dread crept into her stomach and she lurched into a loping run, ignoring her complaining scratched and bruised legs.
The rough path became a dirt track and then pebbled ground as she broke through the trees onto her homeland. Her feet faltered as her eyes rested on the cause of those thick muddy clouds and the source of the burning smell. Thick smoke billowed from amongst the trees where her home stood.
‘Ma!’ she gasped, and staggered into a run.
CHAPTER FOUR
The End Of The World
Issa burst through the gates into the yard of her home but came to a dead stop. A horrified gasp escaped her mouth at the destruction before her. All that remained of her home with its brand new red slate roof and freshly painted red windowsills was a charred, blackened, smoking ruin. The house was gone, save for the lower third of two walls, held up only by their heavy iron oven that still stood defiantly in the corner.
Her legs trembled as she stumbled forwards. Some fallen beams still smouldered and glowed red but mostly the fire had burnt itself out. She stepped carefully through the hot blackened ground. Apart from a few indestructible metal objects sticking up out of the black; a horses bit here, there a fire poker. Everything was burnt to cinders.
A glint caught her eye. She bent to pick up the spoon and dropped it with a yelp as the burning hot metal seared her fingers. She stared at it for the handle had mostly melted into thick blob of metal. Hot enough to melt metal!
Everything was gone, the beds, tables and chairs, the shelves and bookcase. Gone. Her eyes fell upon a few broken shards of orange and yellow crockery strewn like flowers in black soil. She picked up a piece and brushed the soot from its hot surface.
‘Ma’s cup,’ she whispered, tracing the yellow sunflower on it. The paint flaked under her touch and fell away as dust. Ma would not have stayed in the burning house, she was always so careful and always a light sleeper, even in sickness. The smoke would have awakened her but how had this happened? She had not left the stove on, it was too warm for a hearth and no forest fire had spread here, she looked at the green trees beyond the blackened ones that circled her house.
Farmer Ged would have come; he would have seen the smoke easily from his fields. She suddenly felt her feet burning. Her shoes had started to smoke and she leapt back a pace to the cooler blackened grass.
To her right their orchard was completely destroyed, nothing but blackened stumps stood where once some fifty apple trees fully laden with fruit had been. Beyond the house towards the paddock their cart was overturned and beyond it she glimpsed the smoking remains of Haybear, her legs stuck out stiffly from her sides and one was missing.
‘No!’ her cry was loud in the silence and her stomach heaved. She turned away as bile forced its way up her throat and she vomited. A terrible fire, like nothing she had ever seen, had incinerated her home leaving nothing in its wake.
‘Ma!’ she choked, trying to stop the retching.
How long had it been burning? I have been gone but an hour or so but this looks to have been burning for a whole day!
‘Ma, where are you?’ she called hopelessly, her voice echoing in the silence. She dropped the broken cup; it hit th
e sooty ground with a dull thud. No birds sang and there was no breeze. Beyond the wispy black clouds of destruction there was clear blue, it would have been a perfect summer day.
Then, a couple of paces in front of her, all the shadows of the world drew together, the shade of the trees, the dark clouds above, the blackened ashes that had been her house, all circling together into a big ball of impenetrable darkness. Issa turned to run but her feet were rooted to the ground and her eyes were locked onto the shadow shape. Quickly the shadows formed into the massive figure of a man beast that towered above her. The fear formed in her brain and trickled down her spine like ice. She began to shake, the only movement she could make as the terror froze her.
A three pronged helmet spiked upwards from his head, a long cloak billowed behind it, leathery wings like that of a Demon stretched wide then folded upon its back. Slits of red light appeared where its eyes should be and slowly opened to form two flaming red triangles that bore into her eyes. Her soul shrivelled and shrank but there was no place to hide under that awful gaze.
There came a grating raucous sound that cut through her mind, slicing through the cords that bound her feet and froze her body, melting the ice in her spine and severing the link the shadow beast had upon her. The shadow screamed a high-pitched noise that pierced her mind. She screamed too, clasping her hands over her ears.
The image shuddered and dissipated, disappearing as if it had never been. Issa collapsed upon the grass and clasped her gasping throat. As the pounding in her ears lessened she realised there was still that noisy squawking. She looked at the raven a few feet in front of her. He snapped his beak shut and looked back at her.
‘You again,’ she gasped. At once relieved to have her companion back but also feeling that everything was somehow the raven’s fault. ‘If I hadn’t have followed you this would… this… I could have stopped this happening!’ she shouted at the bird. But her shoulders slumped and she felt bad. How could she blame him for the ruin of her home? Somehow it had stopped that dark shadow or vision or whatever it was.
The raven launched into the air and flew a little way left down the path that led to the east coast, where the main port and city lay, and landed on the dusty ground.
‘It may not be your fault but I’ll not follow you again,’ she said, and turned away.
The raven began squawking again until she could not ignore it. She stomped after him, ‘Shoo!’ she made a flapping motion with her arms, but he did not move until she was nearly upon him, and then jumped into the air and landed away from the path to the left of the hill and the remains of the orchard. She frowned as realisation dawned on her.
‘Ma!’ she cried and tore after the bird, ‘I’m coming!’
There was a small cave, of sorts, under the hill atop which Issa had sat upon earlier feeling her life fall apart. It was less a cave and more a crack in the rocks, but it was deep and could just about fit two people in with room to store a little food and curl up on short beds. Over time she and her mother had made a comfortable den out of it, sealed it with a door, and made it even more secret by growing thorny gorse and thick ivy at its entrance.
It was where they went when the High Winds blew in winter, when their house was at risk of being blown away, and they along with it. Most people on Little Kammy, and indeed all the Isles of Kammy, had a ‘Safe Place’ they went to when the winds got too high.
The Isles of Kammy were in the middle of the ocean far to the west of any major land mass and nothing but sea existed for hundreds of miles, and so they were the first to feel the brunt of the furious north-eastern winter winds, or the Beastly Easterlies, as they were affectionately known.
It was also where they kept their valuables, such as they were. A thin bronze torque that had been Fraya’s mother’s; a steel short sword, courtesy of Farmer Ged though Fraya refused to have weapons in the house and, most importantly, a mixture of Fraya’s savings and Issa’s earnings kept in a small leather pouch tucked behind a loose rock hidden just outside the door.
Last time she looked there were four gold coins, twenty-four silver and eighteen bronze. Not a bad amount but not enough to make them rich either. Habit made her quickly check the coins were still there. She found the loose rock, moved it aside and pulled the pouch free with a familiar jingle.
The raven landed on a jutting rock edge just above the cave entrance and as she looked up she saw the bloody handprint on the thick wooden door, dark red and dried. Issa’s heart began to pound like a drum in her head and her mouth went as dry as a desert. She stuffed the pouch into her pocket and pushed through the gorse, too desperate to care about their stabbing spikes, and hefted her weight against the stiff door. With a usual yank backwards it opened with a noisy creak.
‘Ma?’ she whispered, her voice trembling as she stared into dust-swirling darkness.
With equally trembling hands she reached for the lantern kept just inside the door. There was not much oil inside and it sloshed around noisily in her shaking hands. She twisted the handle a few times making a loud clicking sound and was relieved when, after a few weak sparks, it flared into life. Thin shadows danced like ghouls upon the walls as she peered into the gloom. She stepped forwards and let the door swing almost closed behind her.
‘Are you in here?’ she said, a little louder.
A croak came from the far wall, a voice that sounded barely human.
‘You came. I knew you would. Oh my beloved daughter you came.’ The croak descended into sobs and a small mound shook in the far corner. Issa scrambled over to it and then shrank back from the charred bloody figure that bore little resemblance to her mother.
She was wrapped in a blanket but where it fell away her mother’s grey-blonde hair was gone; her scalp and face were smudged with black soot and burnt red raw and in the cracks blood oozed. A crooked blackened hand pulled the blanket closer.
‘Do not look, Issa. I have done what I could to ease the pain and now I move beyond it. I having been praying to see your face one last time, to know you are alive before I go. Now that blessing has been granted my time draws near. And bless it be that it happens before the pain returns.’
Issa collapsed down next to the trembling figure, forgetting her horror.
‘Ma, what happened? It will be all right, we can find a Wizard doctor from the Main Land,’ Issa said, her voice shaking for it was plain that her mother would not last the next hour. ‘I don’t care whether you are my blood mother or not. You are right, it changes nothing, if anything I love you more not less for all that you have done,’ hot tears slid down her face.
‘Beloved Issa, your words rest my soul and heal my heart. How hard it must be for you I can but imagine. I am sorry to have told you these things but worse it would be if I hadn’t. Just know that three parents and not just two loved you dearly. I kept you safe so they would never find you, at your mother’s request and it was all well organised. She was like you, Issa, long dark hair, the same flawless face, beautiful as any Elf’s…’ Fraya wheezed weakly, and swallowed in pain.
‘Don’t speak, Ma, rest,’ Issa pleaded.
‘No I cannot, you must know these things, what little there is to know,’ Fraya insisted and as she spoke her voice got a little stronger. ‘I did not know your mother well but always she was kind to me. Her name was also secret, to protect her and you. There was a toughness about her despite her slight form; she had an inner strength far beyond my own. She wore the blue robes of a Seer and I am sure she was a Healer as well. Hers was a soul with a purpose and a plan reaching higher than her own physical wants and wishes. How else could she have let go of her beautiful child? She truly was a Guardian of the Goddess.
‘Of your father I know even less, only that your mother said to tell you so you would know, that he was a good man gifted with Magic, a follower of the Old Ways before he died. He cared for animals much as you do now. A compassionate soul is a rare thing in this world. One thing you must know and never forget, dear Issa, is that she loved you very
much, enough to let you go so you would survive.’
Issa had so many questions but she did not ask them, fearing to interrupt her mother’s flow and never hear the last.
‘We cannot outrun the darkness that plagues the land. Out here on the Isles of Kammy we can forget the rest of the world, we can forget our mortal peril from the spreading dark. But it is a terrible lie, for what affects one affects all and long long ago, even at the time of the Ancients, the Seers knew Baelthrom could not be stopped and would not stop until all of Maioria was in his grasp.’
Issa frowned, were the Ancients really real? Who was Baelthrom? The name uncurled in her head like a slavering beast awakening from slumber, its form was all shadows except for its eyes that were long raging red slits. Issa shook her head.
‘Baelthrom the Immortal Lord,’ Fraya shuddered. ‘From the Dark Rift he came, out of the oblivion that scars the night sky.’ Issa considered the black hole far away amongst the stars that was sometimes visible on a moonless night sky. She breathed in sharply, the black hole on the woman’s robe into which all the stars were falling. Fraya continued without noticing. ‘Baelthrom and his undead soldiers scourge the lands to the east and his vile Dark Dwarven necromancers… the goddess knows what evil now walks upon our beloved Maioria…’ Fraya’s voice weakened and her breath came shallow.
‘They came, Issa, the Immortals finally came as I knew they one day would,’ Fraya closed her eyes; her body trembled under the blanket. ‘They came a day or so ago, you were gone for all that time. I thought they had taken you,’ her sob turned into a rattling cough that racked her whole body.
‘I am here, it is all right,’ Issa soothed, reaching to touch her then falling back for fear of hurting her mother more. ‘I was upset for a while and then a raven came. It sounds silly but I followed it and we got lost in the forest. I fell into a Fairy Pocket, Ma, somehow, only there weren’t any Fairies. It was so strange… I met a woman all tall and pale and robed in a cloak made of stars…’ she trailed off as her mother struggled to breathe.