The Shifting Pools

by The Shifting Pools (epub)

  “It’s surely worth a try,” said Silas. “But you are not bloody linking with him this time!” He jerked his head angrily towards Raul.

  Raul shot him a look that spoke of his frustration. But it was decided. Tomorrow, we would find a Shifting Pool, and I would enter it alone. Unlinked this time. Perhaps it would be a key I would bring back, perhaps a map – but it had to be something.

  ***

  As we neared a Pool the next morning, I shivered with portent.

  “Do I have to go in?” I whispered to Raul. I wanted him to decide for me, to tell me what to do. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want the responsibility of it.

  “No,” he said – as I knew he would.

  I stopped just before the pool.

  “How do I know that I won’t go back to London?” I asked.

  “The water will take you where you choose to go. It is up to you. It always has been. It has always been you driving where you need to go.”

  I didn’t want to correct him now, not here, just before this and in front of everyone. I didn’t want an argument. I still knew he was wrong about it; how I had been spat out into Enanti without ever choosing to be, without any chance to control it.

  He laughed: “Yes, even that! Something within you did choose to come here, Eve. Something in you needed to come, and you came.”

  The fact that he could read me so completely was a comfort to me now, I realised. I had never sought that out with anyone, had actively taken steps to prevent it. Yet here I was, utterly transparent to him, completely seen – and I liked the sensations it brought. Security and safety unfurled a little within me, as if they were waking from sleep, and blinking their eyes.

  “They’ve always been there,” I think I heard him mutter, but I couldn’t be sure, as I focused on the pool before me, shining in the moonlight. My feet were bare: I preferred the feel of that these days - it helped to carry messages to me, helped the flow. The dampness of the grass made me feel clean, and rooted. The mud oozed between my toes as I curled them downwards, relishing the feel. I rested my hand on the tree to my right, feeling the bark, silvered by the moon. I was trying to absorb it all, take all the strength I could in with me, fortifying myself with this woodland glade.

  I walked towards the pool, and, crouching, let the water run through my fingers. The inky surface, studded with reflected light, rocked from my entrance, stirred into motion. The impact we have, I thought to myself, from such tiny choices. Raul’s gaze was piercing at my back; I didn’t need to turn to know he was watching me intently. I breathed in deeply, before regaining my feet. I turned to face them all, smiling a silent farewell, then turned back to the pool to face myself. The water closed over my head as I dived in, claiming me, feeling me, knowing me. I was sucked down, into the cool depths, currents rushing past me as I crossed worlds.

  When I became conscious, my eyes opened on a familiar world. I froze; paralysed with fear. My breathing shallow, I allowed my eyes to sweep around, confirming my suspicions. I knew this place. I was standing thigh deep in cool water, stark white walls zig-zagging away from me endlessly, hip-high. The white heat of the sun beat down on my shoulders. Blinding light. No shadows anywhere. My fingernails digging into my palms, my mind forcing my lungs to increase the depth of their intake.

  The flooded maze. So seemingly serene and bright, yet possessing such a chilling desolation. Such a masterstroke of punishment. An emptiness; a permanent isolation from life. I knew I would see nothing else alive in here. Of course I wouldn’t – why would anyone else even be here? It was my own personal hell.

  As I calmed, I allowed myself to visit my well inside. I closed my eyes, standing at the edge of the dark, glossy surface. I dived in, submerging myself in the cool darkness there. I knew that what I needed was in here, so I kicked down. Then I let myself hang, suspended, without gravity in the dark. I didn’t have to hold my breath: breathing in this element was as natural to me as sleeping.

  The answer was there. I felt it soak inside my conscious mind, seep through my vaults of memory, flow down each of my limbs. An electric current of awareness. Like a sponge, I absorbed it back from where I had kept it safely. I kicked for the surface.

  As I faced the stark landscape around me again, I knew what I needed to do. There was only one way out of here. Moving through the water would lead me endlessly through the maze. I needed to pull myself out, be above it. I needed to fly. I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to; there was no wind here, in this vacuum. I was more confident that I could do it with the uplift of the wind, but what about on my own?

  I strode forward a few paces through the water, trying to get my circulation moving. I unfurled my wings, and let them stretch and open out under the glaring sun. They beat the air. The noise was comforting in this sterile place. The only noise would be one I made. So I made some more, enjoying the ridiculousness of the situation. I shouted out my name, joyfully, and laughed. I noticed tiny, almost imperceptible changes going on around me. The water surface trembled and shook at the changing frequencies created by my shouting and my wings. I revelled in it, speeding up my wing beat. As my feather tips touched the water on occasion, curtains of droplets were rained back down on to the water and the white walls. The flash of feathers in the light was beautiful. The tiny droplets of water running down the white walls were beautiful. They moved; they had life.

  I suddenly saw how much I could bring to this place, this desert of life. When I had dreamed of this place I had always felt that it sucked life from me, but it wasn’t that. It was simply a blank page, and I had been looking at it all the wrong way. I hadn’t considered what I could bring to it; only focused on what it failed to give to me. My ability to use my senses had been so muted that I hadn’t seen the possibilities that existed. This was not where I had to live, not how I had to be. In an exultant rush of power, my wings lifted me clear off the ground, raising me higher and higher until my legs were free of the water. The wind may have been absent here, but I could feel the body of air collecting under my wings, giving me lift. I savoured it, felt it, and used it to rise higher.

  I climbed up and up, my wings caressing the air, working with it. When I was high enough, I extended my wings to their fullest extent, and let myself soar. It was magnificent – the freedom of it coursed through me. I had been wrong, my doubts had been wrong; I could do this. And up here, there was the lift I needed. With all that sun pouring down, the air up here was warmer and I took full advantage, wheeling and riding the thermals as I sobbed with pleasure.

  I hadn’t realised how high I had circled until I looked to the far horizon. There, right at the limit of my sight, I saw a line of green. The maze had an edge. I flew on, and the green line became a crowd of trees, and they became the start of an immense forest that stretched onwards to a new horizon. I skimmed lower.

  With the edge of the maze approaching, I left my joyful heights in order to gain more detailed information about what was ahead. My mind snapped back into focus, and I allowed the sounds and smells of the forest to reach me. There had been rain recently. The air was pregnant with messages. As I skimmed lower, I saw an immense wall, running as far as the eye could see, at least 100 metres high, which marked the very edge of the maze. Fully confident in my ability to fly now, I decided to land on the maze-side of this wall, curious as to its design. For such a high wall, I had never seen it from the distance when I was down on the ground of the maze.

  I stared in astonishment at the wall as I landed back in the water of the maze. It was made of glass, and it was silvered at the back so that it functioned as a mirror. The magnitude of this structure was extraordinary; there were no flaws in the surface, no lines where a new piece of glass connected. One, smooth, seemingly endless structure; the perfect illusion. It tricked the eye into thinking the maze continued forever; fooling a weary heart into believing that there was no point in continuing in this direction. What was ch
illing is that my reflection did not look back at me from the mirror. In order to maintain the deception, the mirror only reflected back the maze; not anything that was in it. Anything I did, down to splashing the water furiously with my hands, was unrepresented in the fabrication in front of me. As I continued to study the wall, I realised that all the forest sounds I had heard before my landing, all the smells and tastes on the air, were also absent on this side of the wall. It seemed to serve to keep out all other life, allowing only still air, water and light.

  “I would have been here forever,” I said out loud, horrified.

  I shook off the chill that crept up my spine, and primed my wings for flight. As I lifted off once more, I marvelled at how little I had to rise up to start to see the mirror wall for what it was: once the angles changed by being up here, looking down, the illusion was shattered. And as I rose higher still, I started to be able to see over to the teeming forest just beyond.

  I alighted in a small clearing on the other side of the wall. The back of the wall was as jet black as if it were carved from obsidian, arching up into the sky. As it swept off to the left, I saw that the forest here petered out into more open country, with the hills falling away and rolling down to the distant coast. I had done it; this was the way onwards.

  As I spun around in the other direction, I saw my friends, standing in a group under the trees a short distance from me. I smiled and waved as Lara looked straight in my direction. She simply turned back to the others and continued their discussion. I was puzzled; I didn’t understand how she could have missed me. I tried again. The same thing happened. I strode closer, calling out to them. Nothing. They couldn’t hear me. I realised that the forest we had all been in, that they were standing in now, had been subjected to the same reality-bending as the water maze. My sound would be blocked to them, and I was pretty sure that what they could see if they looked in my direction was simply a reflection of the forest around them. I needed to reach them in a different way. I concentrated all my energy into focusing on Raul. Once I had him in my head, I closed my eyes and willed him to look at me, willed him to hear me, somewhere inside. I opened my eyes, and I saw him looking directly at me, puzzled. “Act on it, please act on it,” I muttered to myself. I kept my focus on him. I watched as he quietly shushed the others with his hand, and then started to walk slowly over to where I was. I put my hand up on to the invisible barrier. Raul was concentrating, I knew I was getting through to him. He reached in front of himself with his right hand, patting the air before him as the others looked on, intrigued. I could hear them.

  “What is it Raul?” Lara asked softly, not wishing to break his focus.

  “It’s Eve. She’s right here somehow. Somewhere close. I’m just not…”

  Raul broke off to continue touching the air in front of him with his hand. His hand inched closer to mine, and I held mine completely still. Suddenly, his hand brushed over the place mine was, and I saw him freeze, then look straight into my eyes. He smiled, and then suddenly his hand was gripping mine, had broken through whatever the barrier had been, and he stepped through to join me. The others all followed; it must have seemed as if they were stepping into a void, but they trusted the person in front and each chose to follow. Soon we were all standing in the same clearing together, and they were looking back at the invisible wall they had just come through.

  “Could you see us the whole time?” Raul asked.

  “Once I was out of the maze, yes.”

  “What maze?”

  I pointed at the immense wall of obsidian to our left. “I was in there.” And I explained.

  “I think the barrier in the forest uses the same trick - you can’t see what is behind it; it just reflects back to you. But I think the forest barrier has some way to warp our sense of direction, too – or it wouldn’t have fooled you so well. Whenever we got near it, it must have had some way to bend us off over into another direction, without us ever realising.”

  “We’d have been going in circles forever. You did well, Eve.” Silas didn’t give out praise often, but he never did it grudgingly – just sparingly. He was the first to say it when it was justified.

  Enanti: the present

  The Riven and the blade

  We all sensed them on the breeze and through the earth. The unmistakable throb of The Craven on the march.

  We grabbed our gear, dashed out into the central small fire clearing that we made at every camp, and listened to Raul. We were going to travel west, and then come in from the side. We would travel as one group, but with some of us in the air, scouting from above, relaying information directly to those travelling on foot below.

  “I need you up there, Eve. Can you do it?” Raul asked.

  I nodded. I could fly well now, and I felt a new confidence. My senses were sharp, and gaining volume, distance and depth every day. I felt alive.

  “Esker, Sorcha – you, too – up in the air,” Raul continued. Esker nodded, and smiled over at me. Raul, Koni, Silas and Lara were going to go on foot. Raul was confident that the majority of the army we had felt approaching were Craven. I felt some comfort in this, as I felt I knew what I could do, and how I could protect myself. But we were so few in number now, and we would be stretched to our limit. Our success would lie in using the cover of the forest to our advantage. But the trees made flight difficult, and we would need precision-flying to avoid damage and entanglement.

  We had to protect the mass of people retreating back to the interior lands of Enanti. We were their line of defence. As I rose up into the air, I held the image of Sula and the others from the camp strongly in my mind. And the image of another girl, Alette, also came to me. The vision morphed from Alette to Laila, and I shook my head to clear my mind. I needed to focus. This wasn’t the time for regrets. I had a role to play here, and I could make a difference. I had chosen to be here.

  Raul’s plan worked. By travelling far to the west before cutting in from the side, we were able to approach the Craven unseen. They were clearly on the march, alerted to the proximity of our tiny camp, and its easy pickings. With us so close to reaching the Hinterlands now, we knew that we would encounter increasing numbers of the Shadow Beast’s forces. They were travelling through the forest, using the first line of their number to cut a path as wide as six men. This allowed the ranks behind to follow without breaking step, their regimented steps at odds with the organic shapes of the woods around them. They were not on horseback, which would have hampered their progress through the trees, and this gave us an advantage.

  We fell on them from the right flank, Raul signalling silently to us in the air when the action would start. With one airborne scout always keeping an eye on the horizon, we took turns in swooping down and trying to rip the masks from the Cravens’ faces. They hadn’t been expecting us – that was clear – but they quickly regained their composure and held their lines. Arrows and spears were launched into the air, and we ducked and weaved as we flew through the chaos.

  I saw little snippets of Raul and the others down on the ground. His band was fighting in little snapshots, and then suddenly disappeared, reappearing many metres away, fighting a new foe. I tried to calm my mind and focus strongly on them just before they moved. With great concentration, I managed finally to see Raul move at hyper-speed over the ground towards another member of the Craven. It was a bit like looking at one of those optical illusion pictures – you just had to relax your gaze and allow yourself just to see what your eyes were telling you. The mind then opened, and more things became possible.

  I was flying low to the ground. I had just pulled a mask from a Craven who had sighed his last breath, collapsing into ash at my feet. As I was about to regain height, two things happened simultaneously. I heard Raul bellow out my name, just as I felt an immense power pluck me straight out of the air.

  I was thrown at least ten metres before I crashed to the ground, wings skidding and juddering
across the forest floor. I staggered to my feet, and spun round in time to see a creature I had never seen before moving swiftly towards me. He was horrifying. Over eight feet tall, with skin that flickered and moved with an unearthly torrent of darkness beneath it, like seeing a black river moving under the ice. His face was a mass of metal shards, his mouth a gaping hole with blades opening and closing mechanically. He made a whirring sound as he closed in on me, and I saw that his hands, too, were simply a mass of metallic weaponry, part of his own body. I looked wildly around for something to use as a weapon. One glance told me that the entire clearing was now overrun with these creatures, and each of my friends was tangled up in their own struggle with them. We were utterly overwhelmed.

  With the clarity of those near death, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and went to that dark place. I knew it would give me what I needed; I trusted that now. I walked to the edge of the well in my mind, and dived in. Kicking down through those dense waters, I felt my blood rise, my life-force surge within me. Whatever I needed now, I would find here.

  In the inky gloom, I saw the gleam of a blade. I kicked towards it, grasped its handle and then pushed for the surface. As I burst out of my well, I stood there in front of the creature, brandishing a long broadsword, unable to explain not only its appearance, but also my ability to wield it so effortlessly. I leaped forward, holding the blade expertly in my hands. Along its length I saw symbols carved in a language I didn’t know, glinting in the shafts of light. The creature saw them too. It stopped dead in its tracks, threw its mangled face skyward, and howled to the sky. It was a horrifying sound, anguished and tortured, and I wanted to block it out with my hands. The other creatures heard the cry, and each stopped where it fought. An extraordinary silence fell over us all as we waited. Slowly, inching backwards, the creatures retreated to the cloak of the trees. I looked towards Raul for understanding, but he looked as shocked as I was. After a few minutes, the entire clearing was emptied of those beasts, leaving only our bewildered band.