Circle of Nine: Circle of Nine Trilogy 1

by Josephine Pennicott

  I refused to look at the gleam of triumph in the old cow’s eye as we mounted our ilkamas. She was virtually crowing to herself. I watched as Rosedark helped her to mount, holding her booted foot and hoisting her up. The sly witch could probably jog into the Wastelands, I thought. She could probably snap an entire army of Solumbi with her bare hands, and then return home to her knitting.

  Once Rosedark had broken down into tears about Khartyn setting off by herself and had begged the Crone to let her come, I had decided I had no choice but to join the party. There was no way I was going to stay in the cottage by myself with that creepy Sati lurking around. It was intolerable being alone when I was afraid every thought and word that I spoke might materialise in front of me.

  Air elementals giggled mischievously around us as we set forth on our journey. The ilkamas’ enthusiasm for the adventure lifted my spirits. The triple moons bathed the countryside in a soft orange glow and I gradually began to lose my reservations about the Wastelands and the panic I had felt at the prospect of encountering more Solumbi. After all, I thought, as Jabi gaily trotted after Khartyn’s steed Byxon, I had Artemis’ magical garter, didn’t I? It was secured around my thigh for protection. Surely all the connections that Khartyn had with the goddesses would prove more than a match for a bunch of mere fallen angels. At least I allowed myself to think this was so.

  There were so many new sights and colours to marvel at in the surreal landscape that I lost track of time. Then we stopped to rest in the shade of a large willow tree. The whole time we had spotted only a single Islae who waved shyly as we passed her. Khartyn produced a large flask of esteo from her black bag and some black rye bread spread with a savoury nut paste that Rosedark and I had made together.

  As we shared the simple meal a large solitary eagle glided lazily past. Rosedark failed to notice it but I observed a slight tensing in the Crone as she watched through slitted eyes its graceful glide across the peach sky. With her tiny, withered hands Khartyn unscrolled a parchment map of Eronth to show us the route our journey would take.

  ‘We are to leave Moon Valley and proceed to Faia Village where I need to consult with the High Priestess Mary. She is learned in the ways of the Azephim. Besides, they will be celebrating the Belthane rites at Faia, and they will expect us to make an appearance.’

  She paused, and again shot that same glance to Rosedark which had unsettled me back at the cottage. My impression was cloudy and ill-formed, but I felt sure they were guarding a secret.

  ‘Before we arrive in Faia,’ Khartyn continued, ‘we will pass through the Glade of the Almost Were. Due to the karmic connection that we share with the Blue Planet, Emma, the Dreamers have permitted the Glade to form on Eronth. The materialisations that have filled the Glade over many millennia do not give birth to Solumbi — they’re not negative enough — but you will experience feelings of overwhelming sadness and regret as we pass through the Glade. Put simply, this is the hell of the failed dreamer.’ She paused, glaring at us both for dramatic effect. ‘Be on your guard at all times as we pass through the heart of the Almost Were for Willo’wicks. On no account touch anything! No matter how beautiful or innocent or in need of help it might appear. There are obscure Faery tribes in the Glade who have used enchantment throughout the forest. Fair-I’s are also plentiful on the roads we will be travelling upon.

  ‘I should also warn you both that Sati is already aware of our journey and is monitoring our progress. Last night’s ceremony would have alerted her, and you must never underestimate the powers of the Dark Beautiful Ones.’

  Khartyn must have noticed the fearful concern passing over my face as she chided, ‘And you must also remember that there is nothing to fear but the fear itself. A hackneyed phrase on Earth, but literally true when applied to the Glade of the Almost Were!’

  I patted Jabi’s neck nervously.

  ‘Well, as long as I don’t end up with a Solumbi sucking my brains out of my head!’ I retorted tartly.

  ‘You will if the Dreamers will it . . .’ Khartyn returned enigmatically.

  After travelling for a further forty-five minutes, I realised the sky was no longer orange in shade. The foliage along the lane we had been travelling on was growing thicker and thicker. An eerie twilight cloud had begun to hover over our path. Melancholy began to settle over me, like an unwelcome angel’s wing. I began to reflect moodily on the mediocre paintings I had been producing in the last five years. I was so talentless compared to Johanna! I was now in my mid-thirties and had not achieved a single one of my dreams. Jabi’s hooves pounded a rhythmic counterpoint to the song of regret filling my head. I was a failure! A failure! The depression inside me sprouted and flowered ugly shoots. I felt unclean, unattractive, unloved. Even my own mother was more attractive than I was, and had no trouble finding men. She didn’t spend all her time with her head stuck in a book, retreating from the world, wasting precious hours, precious days, precious years that were now gone, all gone.

  Tears began to stream from my eyes. It’s all useless, I moaned inwardly, I am lost, I may as well be dead, I may as well kill myself, it’s the only thing ever worth doing . . .

  I looked across at my travelling companions with a kind of forlorn indifference. The same tormented reflections were mirrored on their faces, too. Rosedark had begun to sob and the Crone looked drawn and defeated. Even the ilkamas were affected and moved at a slower pace, their heads lowered, their breath mere shallow wheezing.

  Although I knew it was the energy of the Almost Were that was creating the depressing atmosphere, I was nevertheless powerless to prevent my inner agony. Finally, when my emotions became so heavy and black that I thought I must surely die of sadness and regret, Khartyn reined her ilkama to a halt. With shaking hands the Crone produced from her bag a silver vial that she told us contained a mixture of St John’s wort and blackthorn. She shook the fluid over us and our ilkamas as we stood miserably bunched together in the middle of the track. With her athame she made the banishing pentacle sign over us. Instantly I felt a black solid mass slip from my shoulders like a cloak falling to the ground. My neck suddenly felt looser and I realised I had been held tightly by what felt like long, thin, dark hands.

  The Crone and Rosedark similarly seemed lighter in their energy fields. Although I no longer felt suicidal, a faint feeling of sadness and remorse still hovered about me. I longed to leave this melancholy, twilight world of the Almost Were.

  At frequent intervals along the border of the path glinted the deadly Fair-I’s. They sparkled with luxuriant beauty but I ignored their tempting loveliness, recalling the Crone’s earlier warnings that to pick up the beautiful stones and flowers meant instant blindness. Many an unwary traveller was doomed to wander sightless for eternity in the Almost Were.

  At intervals along the track materialisations would unexpectedly appear, causing the ilkamas to start. A peroxide movie starlet lounged against a tree in an eternal cheesecake pose. At another point a chain gang of convicts drifted drearily along the path before vanishing suddenly. Oversized red toadstools added bright decoration to the borders of the path emitting a foul, pungent stench. I had to hold my breath from the poisonous odours whenever Jabi passed too close to the fungi. The trees of the Almost Were were unlike any trees I had seen in my life, tall and spiky with branches resembling arms. Khartyn informed me that they were of the Oldeld species and if you went too near, the branch-like arms would suddenly swing into fierce action and decapitate you. A few skulls could be glimpsed dangling from the branches where unknowing Crossas had encountered the trees’ deadly wrath. Large tarantulas crawled along the branches of the trees, their brilliant markings merging at times with the bark of the Oldelds. I found myself praying to Artemis for protection from the prospect of one of them dropping onto me. Just as it seemed so bad in the Glade that it couldn’t possibly get any worse I heard a noise that sounded like countless millions of mosquitoes coming toward us.

  ‘Willo’wicks!’ Rosedark called.

  E
ven the ilkamas now snorted in terror. The creatures approached swiftly in a dark mass.

  They were incredibly incongruous, with tiny winged insect-like bodies and minute human heads. On sight it was hard to believe they were greatly feared in Eronth, but I knew their burning sting injected thousands of microscopic eggs into their victims’ flesh. Then the larvae hatched into deadly flesh-eating maggots which could eat a human-sized host alive in a matter of seconds.

  ‘Quickly!’ Khartyn called. She gathered us into a huddled, panicked circle and mentally traced a dome-shaped sphere around us, similar to the circle that we had enacted at the ritual of the Cone of Power. The swarm of Willo’wicks buzzed angrily against the protective thought pattern that the Crone had hastily erected; they could not penetrate her magic. I buried my face in Jabi’s golden mane, terrified that the swarm would break through. Their incessant droning intensified as their rage mounted. They threw their minute bodies frantically against the sphere. After what seemed an eternity, I gradually found the courage to reopen my eyes. The murderous buzzing was beginning to fade in intensity.

  ‘Thank the Goddess!’ Khartyn exclaimed in relief. ‘Come! We must hurry now if we are to leave this accursed place by nightfall.’

  I began to shallow-breathe at the thought of having to sleep in the ominous and treacherous arms of the Glade, but after another two hours of travelling along the path it became obvious that the ilkamas could barely see as the blue-grey twilight of the forest began to be replaced by a malevolent nightfall. All the while the Fair-I’s were glinting and winking at us, providing our only meagre illumination in the gathering darkness. Rosedark and Khartyn exchanged concerned glances.

  ‘It seems that we will have to bed here for the night,’ the Crone announced. ‘Hypnos and Morpheus are calling this old weary bag of bones, and we have pressed our poor animals hard enough!’

  Khartyn slid wearily from her ilkama and Rosedark and I reluctantly followed suit. The Crone set to work, watering our steeds and rewarding them with nutcakes from her black bag.

  ‘I’m so tired!’ Rosedark exclaimed, throwing herself onto the forest’s carpet of leaves and decaying vines. ‘I just want to sleep!’

  She lay sprawled in exhaustion, her luxuriant hair covering her like a sheet. She was a perfect model for Sleeping Beauty. I sat beside her in mute agreement. I didn’t care about food or drink; I was worn out from the emotional stresses of the day and all I wanted was oblivion in sleep.

  The Crone, however, resisted the temptation to fall beside us. I could feel her concern that the local enchantments were so powerful that we would never awaken from the accursed bowels of the Glade of the Almost Were. I felt her frail body fighting her weariness as she called on the Four Quarters for protection before I tumbled into the arms of Hypnos, who stood waiting to claim me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  So strange, unexplained,

  Like the birth of the first breath

  Your beauty rarely seen by mankind.

  You are the Great Powerful One,

  The wild cry in the desert to the moon.

  You are truly free

  Unlike we Eronthians,

  Caught like flies in the cobwebs of dreams.

  White fire,

  You are white fire

  Burning into my mind — I imagine you at night

  Glowing with the dreams of angels, the memory of forgotten songs.

  My father marvelled at you, and before him, his father,

  Now my eyes burn to view you

  Before I die.

  Stag Man, grant me this vision,

  Bring me the moon in your eyes.

  — Traditional Faian Male Death Prayer

  In my sleep I tossed and turned uneasily. My conscious mind was oblivious to my surroundings, yet my unconscious mind was fully aware of all that lay around me. Outsized beetles passed nearby on the cold, damp ground, hunting for their supper. An ancient tribe of fairy folk held a meeting in the forest’s deepest interior, aware of our intrusion into their sanctuary, but recognising and respecting the Crone’s protective sphere. A gigantic bear with the face of Artemis sniffed hungrily around the sphere and raked its dagger-sharp claws across the Oldeld trees whose sinuous vines snaked sensuously over the sphere’s surface. The trees sensed the fresh blood and flesh within and spent the night in silent industry, trying to break through our protective shell. Numerous wraith-like beings floated past, billowing dark-grey shapes of ectoplasm about them. Finally, illuminated against the murky shadows was a figure of light, the Great White Stag Man that I had witnessed in other dreams, and other visions.

  ‘Emma!’ he called with unmistakable urgency. ‘Come to me! Come to me!’

  I tried, but in the dream my legs had grown roots into the earth and I was held there firmly. Or was it hands from underground that held me so that I could not move from the protective sphere? Tears of frustration came to my eyes as I battled time and time again to move my frozen limbs. Then Morpheus breathed again into my lips, his breath was blue, his breath was sweet, and his opaque breath brought gifts of new night visions.

  ‘Emma!’ The frantic cry continued faintly throughout the night until the first Ejoli sang farewell blessings to the moons and the first fingers of grey twilight day began to light upon the mysterious Almost Were.

  *

  Inside her bird-form, Sati cursed the Ejoli as it began its song. She had needed more time to observe Emma as she lay asleep. Already she was displeased to witness the power that had begun to emerge in the Bluite under the Crone’s influence. Sati’s black bird eyes glinted as she watched the Crone lying seemingly indifferent to the awakening day. It had been so different once between her and Khartyn . . . the memory caused her to tighten her gnarled claws on the slender branch that supported her weight. Yes, things were so very different before the Beautiful One came to Eronth.

  Many rotations of the Triple Moons ago, Sati had been Khartyn’s favoured apprentice. The Crone’s long-honoured custom was to select the Chosen One from Faia village when the Dreamers dictated it through dreams and the whisper of leaves. This custom had continued for centuries. In the days just before the Triple Moons swelled to their abundant roundness Khartyn would make the journey to Faia and select her apprentice, who could be of either sex and be descended from either the Imomn or Wezom tribes. The only requirement was total obedience to Khartyn for the entire duration of the apprenticeship spent under the Crone’s tutelage. The time varied greatly and was decided by the Dreamers. Some apprentices needed only a short space of time before the Dreamers demanded their relocation somewhere else in Eronth, while other apprentices would return to study with Khartyn for numerous seasons if the Dreamers demanded this be so.

  *

  Sati was a Bindisore, the result of a union between her mother (an outcast Faiaite) and an Azephim. Her blood had been contaminated by that of the Dark Angels, and her birth was horrific; she emerged from between the legs of her screaming parent, a large black egg filled with the child-seed that ripped the membranes of her mother beyond repair. Even the greatest sorceresses hastily employed by Ishran’s mother Seleza, the original Azephim, had been unable to prevent the Faiaite woman from falling into Hecate’s arms. Shunned by Seleza, the egg had been taken to the mother eagle Jazmon, who had hatched the child in a ceremony that no goddesses attended. Only the Crone, fetched by Seleza’s attendants, was there to bring the egg’s contents into Eronth living. Khartyn had never spoken of this birth.

  Under the ruling of the Dreamers, and despite Seleza’s desperate protests, the child had been taken to Faia to live under the guardianship of the Faia High Priestess Mary. Jazmon had been put to death to limit knowledge of the sacred birth to a select few.

  Artemis and Khartyn tried to intercede for the life of the eagle Jazmon, who had befriended many such eggs over the centuries — often the result of rapes and adulteries committed by the Azephim. But Seleza had killed the eagle with her own two hands. She also killed the father of her Bin
disore grandchild, who was an Azephim, and her own youngest offspring. In that case Khartyn did not even try to intervene. Throughout the centuries the Crone had witnessed a slow progression as more and more Azephim abandoned the Web-Kondoell to settle in Eronth. She mistrusted the Dark Beautiful Winged Ones. Their lust for power was transparent. Respect Seleza she might as a powerful and charismatic angel, but the sons she had bred carried too much blackness in their hearts for Khartyn to feel comfortable with the Azephim immigration to her homeland. She disliked their love of hunting and their greed for the consumption of flesh, a practice previously unheard of in Faia. Eventually they had been allocated the Wastelands, but Seleza had given this territory to her son Ishran and returned to the Web-Kondoell with her two daughters and remaining son. It was an occurrence that gave the Crone a feeling of deep foreboding every time she pondered its significance.

  On the day that Khartyn made her pilgrimage to Faia to select the Chosen One, Sati was a child of no more than seven summers who had been placed in the village pillory for hexing Faia children. At that stage in time there were approximately five Bindisore in Faia and they were forced by town law to wear the shapeless black bag on their bodies that denoted Bindisore — the outcast ones, the shamed ones. A black hessian bag also covered the Bindisores’ faces, revealing only their eyes and mouth.

  When the Crone first entered the village square, carrying her offerings to the High Priestess of Faia, she noticed the small shamed figure, bowed and defeated in the pillory, and her lips pursed in disapproval. She was opposed to this archaic form of punishment in Faia and had made representations to Mary of Faia to ban this practice. Mary was loath to discontinue it, however, for the fear of Faiaite and Azephim crossbreeding ran deep, and so, to the Crone’s eternal disgust, the pillory remained. The expectant crowd that had gathered since the early dawn to witness the selection of the Chosen One hushed as they watched the Crone make her way to the pillory.