by Frewin Jones
The water rose to Tania’s calves. She had expected it to be colder. The larger waves lifted the sea to her knees then let it fall again—but with every step she was offering more of herself to the foaming tide.
“You don’t have to come with me,” she said. “Neither of you.”
“I come with you?” said Rathina. “Nay, sister, I thought you were coming with me.”
“Connor? Go back. This has nothing to do with you.”
“What? And miss all the fun. Not likely.”
Suddenly they were holding hands and the moving water was up to their waists.
Step by slow step.
The sand was firm under Tania’s feet. The water swirled around her ribs. Beneath the surface her fingers gripped the hands of her companions.
It was not cold. Why was it not cold?
“Know what’s strange?” said Connor. “The water should be lifting us off our feet by now—but it isn’t. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
He was right. Tania hadn’t even thought about it, but they were almost shoulder deep in the sea now, and still she was able to plant her feet as firmly as ever on the seabed and walk forward without any difficulty.
“Now it’s getting scary,” muttered Connor. She felt his grip tighten on her hand. The seawater was up to their necks. A big wave was coming.
The surface of the sea rose and there was saltiness in Tania’s mouth and water in her eyes. But still the sea didn’t lift them off their feet. It was as if there was no buoyancy to it. It was as if they were walking down a gently sloping hillside into a valley filled with cool, opaque fog.
Connor coughed out some seawater. “Tania? I’ve had a nasty thought. What if the faith part of the Road of Faith only works if you have faith in it working? See what I mean?”
“You think too much,” Tania said. “Does this feel like a normal sea to you?”
“Anything but.”
Rathina’s whistling stopped abruptly. She was a fraction shorter than Tania. The water was up to her mouth.
Well, I don’t know who you are, but you sent me the dream and you brought me here, so I hope you have a really good plan for what happens next.
“Have no fear, sweetheart. All is well.”
A gentle voice whispering in her ear. A female voice—but not Rathina. Not a voice she recognized at all. But a comforting one, all the same, a trustworthy one.
The seabed took a sudden dip; she just had time to fill her lungs before a big wave rolled the sea in over her head.
Patterns of green and gray and silver wove in front of her eyes. The seabed fell away under her feet, sloping sharply downward—and yet still she was able to walk quite normally. She looked to her left and right. Connor and Rathina were still walking with her; their hands were still in hers, their grips tight.
For a few seconds the colors danced confusingly in her eyes, then it was as if a veil had been drawn away and she could see quite clearly. The seabed plunged into a deep trough, the standing stones that marked the sides of the road descending with it. And now Tania saw that the stones were no longer tide-smoothed nubs; they were tall and graceful stone pillars carved into the shapes of men and women, all of them facing inward, all of them with their hands pressed together at their chests as though in prayer—all of them winged.
Tania’s chest began to ache. She squeezed tightly the hands of her companions, and they squeezed just as tightly back. How long could this go on? How long before their lungs would need oxygen?
“Where’s the faith, Tania?”
Faith in what? Faith in whom?
Her chest was hurting badly now. She needed to breathe. Soon.
Connor ripped his hand out of hers, lifting his arms and bringing them down, jumping a little, as though trying to swim for the surface. Tania saw panic in his eyes. His cheeks bulged out. A feathery spray of bubbles escaped his nostrils.
But the sea would not lift him. He fell onto his knees, his face contorted by terror and pain.
“Connor!” Her voice was clear and lucid in her ears. She sucked in a startled breath, and the pain faded beneath her rib cage. She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh!”
Connor was sprawled on the sloping ground, panting, his eyes round in his astonished face. He looked up at her. “How is this working?” he said, gasping.
“Faith,” said Rathina. “What else?”
Tania helped him to his feet.
“We’re under water,” Connor said. “And we’re breathing and we’re not floating away. This is not possible.” He looked from Tania to Rathina. “I just want it clearly understood by everyone that this is not possible.” He stared down the road into the murky depths, then turned to Tania, his eyes alight with amazement. “We’re breathing underwater! Don’t you get it? We’re actually standing here breathing under water!” He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “If I could have taken back home just a tiny fraction of the stuff that makes this place tick, I’d have been world-famous!”
“Do you see shapes in the depths, sister?” Rathina was staring into the dusky valley into which the road plunged.
Tania followed the line of her eyes. “Maybe,” she said. “I think so.” Vague, lumpen darknesses that could have been boulders or clumps of seaweed. Or the ruins of a drowned Caer, lost since before time was. “But look at these statues, Rathina,” she said, gesturing toward the rows of stately men and women who lined the road. “They’re all adult men and women—and they have wings! Don’t you see? They all have wings!”
They followed the road down the hillside and out onto a flat, gloomy valley floor.
The light down there was strange and a little eerie: a kind of heavy, metallic blue-gray light that tinted everything with its dull luster.
It’s the same kind of light as in my dream.
Tania looked up. Far above them, she could see the surface of the sea rippling slowly, like a vast sheet of blue-gray silk moving in a gentle night breeze.
“It is as you say, Tania. All are winged,” said Rathina, gazing around herself at the elegant statues that lined the road. “How curious.”
“Is it significant?” asked Connor.
“Only the children of Faerie are winged, Master Connor,” said Rathina.
“And the Lios Foltaigg,” added Tania. “But Rathina is right: We lose our wings when we hit ten or twelve.”
Connor tilted his head. “We?”
“We. They. Don’t confuse the issue,” Tania said. “The point is that adults don’t have wings—except that apparently here they do. Did, rather.” She wrinkled her forehead, trying to make sense of it. “Caer Fior fell into the sea about the time of the Great Awakening, right?”
“It seems likely,” agreed Connor.
“So maybe before the Great Awakening, all the people of Faerie had wings.”
“Or maybe only the people who lived here had wings,” said Connor.
“But if that was the case, then why would all Faerie children still have wings. No, there has to be more to it than that.”
“Sister, our quest is to find a cure for the plague,” Rathina reminded her. “All else is devoid of purpose.”
“Yes, I know!” Tania said in exasperation. “But what if the two things are linked somehow?”
“How so?” asked Rathina.
“I don’t know.” She stared ahead into the swirling, metallic gloom. “Perhaps we’ll find out when we reach Caer Fior.”
“If there’s anything left to find,” said Connor.
As they walked on, they began to see shapes lifting all around them. Cracked walls. Broken buildings. Ruined towers. Rubble. Fish glided in and out among the wreck and debris, and seaweed grew between the stones, lifting green fronds and ribbons and filigree fingers to the fading light that filtered down from above.
Crabs scuttled away and half-seen shapes flicked out of sight as they moved through the ruins, their steps sending up clouds of fine dust so that soon the water was misty with floating motes and scraps.
Rathina picked her way off to one side. Tania saw what had drawn her: two pillars with a high curved lintel stood intact among all the decay. Rathina stood staring up at the lintel, her arms hanging at her sides, her hair falling like a black banner down her back.
Tania and Connor made their way to where she was standing.
There were words on the arch of the lintel. Tania could make nothing of the script, but it seemed similar to the writing on the map.
“Can you read it?” she asked Rathina.
“I can, but it has no meaning,” she replied. “Or none that I can understand.”
“So what does it say?” asked Connor.
“Sorai…cordai…balai…” Rathina intoned. “Endless…sleep…village…” She looked at them. “But here the words run together, as though to make a single word. I cannot comprehend what such a thing may mean. The village of endless sleep?”
Tania walked under the arch. She came into a wide flat area of mud and silt, out of which lifted rows and rows of flat stone slabs, each of them more or less waist-height and maybe a couple of feet across. She narrowed her eyes, trying to think what this reminded her of.
Something. Something so very familiar…
Connor stood at her side. “It’s a cemetery,” he said. “Those are gravestones.”
“Cemetery? Gravestones?” said Rathina. “I know these words not.”
Tania shivered, a bleak coldness rising up through her veins.
Someone is walking on my grave….
“It’s where dead people are put,” she said. “It’s what we do in the Mortal World, Rathina. We have special places where people are laid to rest when they die. We dig a hole and put the body of the dead person in it.”
“And we mark the place with a gravestone,” said Connor, moving in among the close-packed stones, running his fingers over the rough, time-eaten surfaces.
“I do not understand,” said Rathina.
“Don’t you?” Tania sighed. “I think I do.” She turned to her sister. “The people of Faerie used to be Mortal,” she said. “This is where they were buried when they died.”
“No!” Rathina cried. “Such a thing is not possible.”
“Take a look at this.” Connor had moved some way into the landscape of gravestones and was crouching by a particular stone. “Most of the writing on these stones has eroded away, but this one has something readable on it.” He looked over to where they were standing. “Rathina? Come and read it for us.”
“No!” Rathina’s eyes blazed. “This is some trick—some illusion conjured to fuddle our wits. We were ever Immortal. Ever! I will not believe otherwise.” She turned, as if meaning to run from the desolate place.
Tania caught hold of her wrist. “You have to read it!” she declared. “You must!”
Rathina narrowed her eyes in angry defiance, but she did not try to fight back as Tania drew her through the stones to where Connor was crouching.
Rathina turned her head away, refusing to look at the stone.
“Rathina!” Tania said sharply. “Read it! Tell us what it says.”
Slowly, reluctantly, Rathina lowered her gaze and focused her eyes on the stone. She licked her lips, her whole body trembling. “No! No!” she murmured, covering her eyes. “Never! Never! Never…”
Tania stepped in front of her, pulling her hands away from her face. Rathina looked as pale as death.
“Read it out loud, Rathina,” Tania said. “We need to know.”
Rathina gathered herself, her voice faltering and cracked, as though every word came into her throat like a shard of broken glass.
“‘Here lie the Mortal remains of Androvar Ernial, son of Faerie,’” she read. “‘Beloved husband and father, one of many brought to death before their allotted time by the Dark Plague of Nargostrond, cursed be his name. May our loved one’s wings take his dear, sweet soul to timeless sleep in the blessed land of Avalon.’” Rathina dropped to her knees, her face in her hands again, weeping helplessly.
Tania and Connor stared at each other.
“So there was another plague,” said Connor. “Thousands of years ago, before Oberon was made King.”
Tania felt as though everything she knew, everything she understood about Faerie, was crumbling away beneath her feet.
“They were Mortal,” she said. “And they all had wings. So what happened? How did everything change? And why does no one know about this?”
“Because it is forbidden,” said a soft, gentle voice.
Tania glanced down at her sister. Rathina was still crouched on the ground, but her face was turned upward now, her eyes silvery and vacant, her arms hanging loose.
“Rathina?”
It wasn’t Rathina’s voice, but it was coming from Rathina’s moving lips. “It was agreed in the Ancient Covenant,” said the voice as Rathina’s lips moved. “That none should ever know, that none should ever remember the time before time.”
“Who are you?” Tania asked.
“Do you not know me? Ahh, then mayhap it is better so,” said the voice. “Call me Dream Weaver. I have guided your footsteps to this place—and I will guide you farther, if you have the heart. I will guide you all the long miles to journey’s end. Will you be led by me?”
“You sent the dream?”
“I sent the dream.”
“Is that your sister or not?” hissed Connor.
Tania shook her head. “I need to understand what’s going on,” she said to the presence that had taken over Rathina’s body. “Can you explain it to me?”
“Winged we were, before time was,” said the Dream Weaver. “Winged throughout our merry Mortal lives. But a great enemy came to these shores from the uttermost north. Nargostrond was his name, and a terrible plague he brought with him, breathing out evil all across this fair land. Many are those who died, from the lowliest to the most high, and not even the family Royal was spared. The King and Queen died, and also died all their children save two—save their youngest son, Cornelius, and his older brother Oberon Aurealis.
“And Cornelius was sick and like to die, and in his grief Oberon prayed to the great spirits to show him the way to save his brother and his land. And he was told to take ship and to travel into the west, over Alba, over Erin, over Hy Brasseil, and even to Tirnanog. And there he would find the Divine Harper, and there would he learn how Faerie might be saved.
“But the Divine Harper gives not lest he receive something in return. This was the Covenant struck: that all sickness would be banished forever from the land of Faerie and that the people would become Immortal so that nevermore could Nargostrond do them harm. But the price of this Covenant was that the power of flight should be taken from them. And so it was.”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” said Tania. “They gave up wings for Immortality. But the plague has come back. What went wrong?”
“Two conditions did the Divine Harper attach to the Covenant,” said the Dream Weaver. “That the people of Faerie should remember nothing of their old world, their old lives, and that the Covenant would hold true only so long as Oberon ruled in Faerie. Were his rule ever broken, then the Covenant would fail and the ancient enemy would be free to return once more.”
“I don’t understand,” said Tania. “Oberon is still King.”
“His rule was broken,” said the Dream Weaver. “For thirteen days did the Sorcerer King of Lyonesse hold him close prisoner. For thirteen days did the Sorcerer King sit upon the throne of Faerie. The Rule of Oberon was sundered for that time, and thus did the Covenant fail.”
“So what can we do—what can I do to put things right?”
“Travel the road that Oberon Aurealis once traveled,” said
the Dream Weaver. “Go into the west and seek out the Divine Harper. Renew the Covenant.”
“Can I really do that?”
“I do not foretell,” said the Dream Weaver. “I speak only of what is needed. I cannot say whether you will succeed or fail in the quest. But beware, Tania, the Divine Harper will ask a price for his help. He will ask a heavy price. Are you prepared to pay that price?” Her voice became ominous. “Even if it means losing that which is dearest to your heart?”
“Yes, of course.” She looked into Rathina’s vacant face. “But why didn’t you tell me all this before? Why wait till now?”
“Because it was forbidden to speak of it within the Realm of Faerie,” said the Dream Weaver. “Caer Fior lies no longer in Faerie, and so here am I able to tell you the truth.” Rathina’s mouth smiled. “What would you do with this truth, Tania?”
“Whatever I must. But you have to help me. You have to tell me what to do next.”
“Find you a ship and sail across the Western Ocean—and fare you well, Tania, fare you well.” The voice faded and suddenly Rathina jerked and blinked and gave a gasp and was herself again.
She scrambled to her feet, grasping hold of Tania’s arms. She gasped. “What creature was that? I was turned to stone! I could hear her voice in my head, but I could do nothing to fight her. Her power came not from the Mystic Arts, of that I would swear.”
“I don’t care who she is,” Tania said. “She’s given us the information we needed.” She turned to Connor, who was staring at her with round eyes.
“I have to go,” she said.
“Yes. I heard,” he said. “Across the Western Ocean. I want to come with you.”
“And I,” said Rathina. “You cannot go on this quest alone, Tania; indeed you cannot!”
Tania let out a gasp of relief. “Thank you,” she said, looking from one to the other. “I don’t think I could have done it on my own.” She turned, looking back the way they had come. “We have to get back to land,” she said. “We have to find a ship that will take us to Tirnanog. All of Faerie is depending on us!”
“Then let us not keep Faerie waiting,” said Rathina, linking arms with Tania and with Connor. “Let us be gone.”