Joran nodded in silence and squinted up at the sky.
Devin watched his expression. “You miss it, don’t you?”
Joran smiled, seeming almost embarrassed by the question. “I do. It’s the only home I’ve ever really known. I mean, I know that this was where I was born but I can barely remember any of that.” He shrugged. “Despite the fae, the Touch, despite all of it, it feels like home to me. I don’t know how to act in this place. I don’t know what to do.” He looked down, avoiding Devin’s eyes. “Ylsriss wanted to escape the fae to try and find Effan, her son. In the end though, it was me that pulled her through to this world. Not that we had much choice, you understand. The satyr were all around us. It was flee or die. The thing is, now that we’re here, I realise how little I know this place. Ylsriss has people out there. They’re probably looking for her. No matter how far away they are they’re still out there. I was taken so long ago I don’t even remember who my family is.”
Devin looked at him long enough for Joran to glance up and meet his eyes. “I’m more or less alone too. I can’t pretend to understand what it’s like having been taken but I know what it’s like to lose family. To lose a feeling of belonging somewhere.”
The conversation fell silent for a minute and Devin stood to pull his line out of the water to check the hook before flicking it back in. “What are they really like?” he asked, looking over at Joran.
“Who?”
“The fae.” He lowered himself down to the bank again, leaning his back against the smooth bark of a willow tree. “I just know them as something to fear, as the enemy. You lived with them for years. What are they actually like?”
Joran thought for a moment. “Different,” he said. “Different to what you’d think.” He smiled as Devin started to laugh.
“They are though,” he began again. “And it’s a mistake to think of them as all the same. A deer is a deer is a deer, right? They all look roughly the same and they’ll all act more or less the same. The fae are more like us. They have their own personalities, their own wants. They’re not like mindless animals hating us for hate’s sake. They each have their own thoughts and feelings.”
“You make them sound almost human.”
“They are,” Joran admitted. “And then at the same time they’re not. They look at us like animals, probably because compared to them we’re so small and weak. No human could ever hope to be as fast or strong as a fae. They live longer than us too. I’ve never seen one grow older. For all I know they might live forever. And then, of course, there is the Lady’s Grace.”
Devin blinked. “The what?”
“Their magic, I suppose is the best way to describe it.” Joran forgot about fishing and set the pole down next to him in the grass. “They take power from the moonlight. They call that the Lady’s Gift. Then they can use it to move faster, create glamours, visions of lights. I don’t have the words to describe it.”
“Illusions I think you mean,” Devin said, then motioned for him to go on.
Joran gave a nod of thanks. “They all use it differently. Satyr use it to give them more strength and speed, though Aervern told me they use illusion to seduce as well.”
“Aervern?”
“A…uh, fae that I met,” he said, looking embarrassed.
Devin raised an eyebrow and gave him a sidelong glance. “It sounds like there’s a story there.”
Joran coughed and looked down to his hands, twisting inside each other. “Another time, maybe.”
Devin got the hint. It was hard to miss after all. “Tell me more about the magic.”
“There’s not much more to tell,” Joran said with a shrug. “They take the moonlight and use it to work their magic. Fae can do more with it than Satyr while Fae’reeth barely seem to use it at all. Then there’s Aelthen, he can do things that I’ve never seen any of the others do.”
“Aelthen?”
“Their leader. Well the leader of those at Tir Rhu’thin anyway.” He shrugged. “I don’t really know what he is. He doesn’t really look like any of the others. He’s a little like a satyr, I suppose, though he has antlers not small horns, and he has the body of a stag.”
Devin nodded. “I’ve seen him,” he said. “Twice now.”
Joran went on, missing the grating tone in Devin’s voice and the way he’d clenched his fists tight around the fishing pole. “Then of course there are the glyphs.”
Devin’s hands unclenched as he asked with genuine curiosity. “That’s what Ylsriss and Obair are doing now?”
Joran nodded. “It’s like a kind of writing, I suppose. That’s the easiest way to describe it. A fae can sort of push their power into the inscriptions, and then anyone can use them. They were used for lamps and cooking with in the camps, but then in the city we found there were things there I’ve never seen anywhere else.”
“Like the way you got home?” Devin put in.
“Yes.” Joran nodded, eyes far away. “And those things didn’t need the fae to power them at all. Ylsriss seems to think the people who made them had found a way to work glyphs completely independent of the fae. Even hundreds of years later most of them still worked perfectly, they just needed power.”
“Hold on a minute,” Devin said, eyes widening as he stopped in the middle of a nod and reached out for Joran’s arm. “I thought you told me the city was ancient and abandoned?”
“It was,” Joran said gently easing his arm from Devin’s grip.
“Well then,” Devin shook his head. “I mean, where did all the people go? Where did they come from in the first place?”
“I suppose the fae could have taken them from here. The fae didn’t talk to us slaves much but they made it clear that we’d served them before,” Joran said. “But then Aervern also sort of told me that we humans had come from somewhere else. This place,” he waved an arm around vaguely, “was discovered by man and fae working together.”
“Slow down a minute, this is too much.” Devin pulled his knees up and turned to face Joran, shaking his head. “You’re telling me that we, mankind, we don’t even belong here?”
“No, not that.” He waved his hands as if warding off the words. “Well, okay, maybe that is what I meant. It’s just that we didn’t start here. It might have all be lies for all I know, you can’t tell with the fae, but that’s what I’ve been told.”
“You don’t believe that though,” Devin said, giving the man a serious look. “That it’s lies, I mean.”
Joran shook his head slowly. “No, you’re right. I suppose I don’t. The fae call this world The Land of Our Lady. Probably something to do with the way the moon stays in the sky for longer. The way Aervern spoke about it she made this place sound like the fae’s heaven. They don’t have gods or religion or anything like that but that’s the best way I can think to describe it. Their promised land. As for where the people from that city went? Well, I think they came here.”
Devin welcomed the silence that fell. It was too much to take in all at once. “And you’ve told Obair all this already?” He said eventually, looking back in the direction of the cottage.
“Yes, days ago. Why?” he replied, looking up as Devin scrambled to his feet.
“I just feel like I’m always playing catch up.” Devin muttered as Joran pulled himself up. “I’m tired of being treated like a child, being the last to know things. He looks at me like a puzzle, something he can’t understand. But there are things he’s not telling me either. I can see it in his eyes.” He sighed and glanced back towards the cottage again. “Let’s go and see how they’re getting along. We’re not catching anything here anyway.”
“I’m not that surprised. I wouldn’t want to eat drowned worms either,” Joran said quietly to the surface of the lake as he pulled his line in and set off after Devin.
***
There was something soothing about the sound of the pen scratching. It wasn’t an intrusive noise, nothing so annoying as a branch brushing against a window pane or shutters banging
in the wind. It was something she could just let wash over her and Ylsriss took comfort from it. She took the next page in the sequence. Obair had drawn the ritual out over several sheets of paper, laying them flat on the floor so the steps lined up.
“You see here,” she said pointing the spiralling markings. “It’s the first stages of an activation sequence. It couldn’t be clearer.” She waved the paper at Obair and moved closer. “This third glyph series is an odd choice. It seems to be drawing on energy that there is no conduit for but…” she stopped. “You can’t understand a word I’m saying can you?”
Obair looked up from the paper with a blank look and smiled.
She sighed. It was intensely frustrating to be dependent on the one person she’d rather claw her own eyeballs out than talk to. She lowered her eyes to the paper again. It was strangely compelling. The ritual that Obair was sketching out wasn’t immediately clear as glyphs. Obair dragged the pen in an almost constant flow of ink to trace the steps of his ritual. The glyphs, however, were distinct characters and it took time for her to puzzle out where each glyph started and the next began. Not for the first time she wished she still had access to the silvery books left behind in the Realm of Twilight. Transcribing the glyphs was one thing, understanding them would be far more difficult.
Already the complexity of the ritual astounded her. There were glyph series and partnerings that she’d never seen before. Some that seemed to completely contradict what she thought she knew.
“Get it written out first, Ylsriss,” she muttered to herself. “Bang your head against it later.” She picked up her own pen and dipped it into the ink to note down the next glyph in the sequence.
The voices stopped her hand with a sigh. It was so quiet in the cottage, and in the local area for that matter, that the sound of speech carried easily. Joran and Devin were returning from the lake. The spatter of ink drew her eyes to the paper and the spray she’d made as her hand clenched to a fist around the quill pen, snapping the cut tip against the paper.
She swore and reached for something to blot the ink away.
“Good, you’re back,” she said in flat, businesslike tones as the door opened and Joran and Devin came in. “I need you to translate.”
Joran stopped with his hand still on the door he was closing, taken aback for a moment. “How have you been getting on?” he asked finally.
“Well enough, but now I need you to translate,” she replied, allowing a touch of frustration to enter into her voice as Devin and Obair spoke quietly in their odd tongue.
“Fine,” Joran sighed and looked to the old man. “Ylsriss wants me to translate for her. She has some more questions, I suppose.”
“Good, good!” the old druid nodded and pushed his chair back from the desk. “Let’s sit at the table. It’s a bit cramped with us all pushed into this corner. Devin, do you suppose you could put the kettle on to boil? I’m suddenly very dry.”
Ylsriss followed the others to the table, setting down her paper in front of her. “I’m working through the pattern and the individual glyphs are easy enough to find, well, most of the time,” she told Obair. “What I can’t understand is how the sequence draws power. If there were capture plates or something it would make more sense. As it is…” She shrugged as she shook her head. “You say this ritual of yours powered the Wyrde, or whatever you called it? Somehow kept the fae from coming into this world? I can’t see how. The glyphs I might be able to puzzle out but without a fae to give their Gift, or capture plates to imbue this, I’m at a loss.”
Obair nodded as Joran finished relaying the question and looked over Ylsriss as he spoke. “I was never told of any power source, as you call it. The ritual requires precise steps and concentration as it weaves around the stones but nothing like you’ve described when you told us of the way these glyphs function.” He waited for a moment for Joran, before continuing. “That said, the more we’re here the less I feel I know for sure. Lillith hints at things in her diary that I don’t like to think about.” He spoke the last words softly, dropping his gaze to the table.
“That’s another thing,” Ylsriss said, leaning forward to point at the paper. “Why the ritual at all? The glyphs would work no matter where they were inscribed. Moonorbs had the glyphs in the wooden base, runeplates had them carved into the rock. The only reason glyphs are inscribed into something is so they last. Why rely on footsteps? They’re so tenuous they can barely be called a glyph at all.”
Obair bit at his knuckle for a minute. “Safety, I suppose,” he said finally. “The druids were hunted almost to extinction at one point. Having a huge carved stone inscription would make it hard to run. There’s another element to it as well though,” he explained to Joran. “The steps are only half of it. At the same time, as the ritual works around the stones, the steps must also be traced in the mind, forcing the sense of the moon along the path.”
“Hold on, that doesn’t make any sense at all,” Ylsriss objected. “The mental bit, okay fine, I don’t understand that, but why the stones? If the ritual was to replace written glyphs so you could flee then what about the stones? The stones have nothing to do with the glyphs. These series would work if they were written on a wall somewhere, provided you had the power source. Even if you didn’t you could trace these steps in a cellar somewhere and no one would be the wiser. Why complicate things by trying to work the steps of this thing around a collection of stones?”
Hissing prompted Devin to rise and pull the kettle from the fire. “Maybe they have another use?” he called as he set about fetching cups. “You two arrived here at the stone. The fae came through the stones near Widdengate. Are the stones themselves the gateway?”
“I can’t see that,” Joran said, speaking quickly after translating what Devin had said. “If the stones were needed to pass through the Worldtrails then why not just smash them? That would keep the fae away forever.”
“They’re not exactly small,” Devin said, handing steaming cups around. “The ones at Widdengate weren’t as large as these but the ones in the centre were still bigger than any of us. I take your point though.”
“There’s more to this than just the stones,” Obair said in a small voice. The quiet words cut through the conversation and left the tatters hanging as the others stopped to look at him. “Lillith mentioned another ritual, one I knew nothing about.”
Devin was the first to speak. “Another one? What for?”
Obair shook his head in silence and for the first time Ylsriss noticed how haggard the man looked. He wasn’t a young man by any means but it was more than just age that lined his face. It was a weariness etched deep, but overlaid with sorrow and what she fancied might be guilt. “Lillith left a diary, you’ve seen it. She talks about things. Things I could never have guessed at.” He fell silent and the guilt that showed on his face kept company with such bitterness and self-loathing that Ylsriss almost moved away from Joran’s whispered translation to put her arms around the man.
“She talks about a guardian,” Obair explained. “A man tasked to work a ritual apart from the one that maintained the Wyrde and kept mankind safe from the fae. This ritual was so vile that the guardian was always kept ignorant of its true purpose. No one could have been trusted to keep up this task if they knew the truth of its real purpose. Lillith knew though, the knowledge was passed down from master to student until it had reached her. She wrote about it in her diary, a kind of confession, if you will. This ritual held a soul. A captive soul, trapped for eternity within the snare of the Wyrde and, I presume, providing the power for these glyphs that you’ve been seeking, Ylsriss.”
“Lords of Blood, Sea, and Sky!” Ylsriss breathed as Joran fell silent.
Devin spoke slowly, looking slightly sick. “So Lillith was doing this? Keeping this soul trapped?”
“No, Devin,” Obair replied. His voice was barely more than a whisper. “She worked the ritual to maintain the Wyrde.”
“Well if not her…?” He looked confused for a mo
ment, and then blood drained from his face as realisation took hold.
Obair nodded simply. “My whole life has been a lie, Devin. From boyhood I’ve been working a ritual that I thought kept the fae at bay. Instead I’ve been working to keep a soul imprisoned in the worst kind of hell, trapped for all eternity. Every wriggle I felt against my mind’s grip on the Wyrde, every slight struggle I fought past, was a soul seeking release and I denied them all.” He opened his mouth to speak again but words had failed him. It didn’t matter. There were no words to match the horror in his eyes.
***
The stones were silent in the early morning light. Dew still beaded the grass and Devin's soft boots looked like they already soaked. A crunch of leaves turned his head towards the trail and Ylsriss and Joran as they approached.
“You’re up early,” he called in greeting.
“I could say the same of you,” Joran replied with a faint smile.
“Obair?”
“Still sleeping,” Joran replied as he drew close. “We thought we should leave, let him rest.”
“For all the good that will do.” Devin grunted. “What is she doing?”
Joran glanced at Ylsriss who was examining the hubstones closely.
“If you two must speak in that babble at least tell me what he’s saying.” Ylsriss said, without looking back at them.
Joran smiled briefly. “He asked about Obair, and now he’s wondering what you’re doing.”
“These stones, they’re different.” She pointed from the stone arch at the hub of the circle to the stones surrounding them. “Tell him?”
Devin frowned and looked closely at where she pointed. “I don’t see it,” he admitted.
“The rock of these central stones, look at the colour, the lines in the stone. It’s not the same type of stone as all these others,” Ylsriss explained.
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