by Candy Rae
“What have you got,” an eager Aranel asked.
“Well,” said Kirsty, “apart from the first bit copied from what Father calls the ‘ancient archive’, I’ve got this.”
She proceeded to read out the list she had written.
‘T’Quel failing. The ‘circle’ must be put back together to restore the magic.
The blue ring, the red ring and the green ring.
The enemy has already got his hands on two of the second trio of rings.
The third must be fetched.
Clues in the book.
Once upon a place and a time.
Kirstvan. Me.
Claricvan. Older sister?
Groups of three, attuned to each other.
Four gates. (a)Eileach an Naoimh. (b)Seanar na Stainge – Innerhadden, Loch Rannoch. (c)Candida Casa- White House? (d)Ceann Mor de tur – Canmore’s Tower, Dunfermline.’
“I think that’s all the pertinent points,” she announced once she had come to the end of the list.
Aranel looked at Urieline but she saw she was unlikely to get any help from that quarter.
“Perhaps you would explain?” she asked with mock irony.
“The T’Quel is failing and must be put back together again. To do this, we need the three rings with the round stones in blue, red and green and another two groups of three, of which our enemy has two. The Tathar has already called in the red, which is me. That’s pretty obvious. We have to fetch the third. Are you with me so far?”
Aranel and Urieline both nodded.
“This is where it gets interesting. I think these other groups of three rings, and the clues as to where they are, well, they’re in the book. The book will tell us not only where the red one is of our three but also the other trios. We just have to interpret it right.”
“Can you interpret it?” asked Aranel.
“I believe I can,” answered Kirsty, “given time. Lord Arovan wrote that the book is the key to where these tarna, the jewels, are.”
“Start now,” urged Aranel. “We shouldn’t waste any time over this. I don’t think we’ve got any to spare. The third must be fetched. That’s clear enough. Only problem is, from where? Where is the first of the green jewels, the one that is a part of our three? I’m sure we have to look for that one first.”
“I think the hint is in the first sentence, ‘now and back’, and also in the last, ‘once upon a time’. We must hunt for its whereabouts in clues from the past,” answered Kirsty. “Our father is being very careful. He didn’t know in whose hands this message might end up. Perhaps the one who leads the evil he talks about.”
“The Morityaro?”
“Or their employer, which is even more scary. These last two names?”
“My stepsisters,” Aranel answered, “he told me I had to find them.”
“But it could mean something else entirely. If what Bob told me is the truth, and I have no reason to doubt him, I’m also your sister. The word ‘Kirsvten’ means me. My name’s Kirsty, least that’s what I’m known as but the name on my birth certificate is Kirstia. If we apply the same change of letters to ‘Claricvan’, we get Claricia, don’t you see?”
“I am afraid I do not. I never was much of a scholar.”
“Well, if we assume that he hid the ruby jewel, this ring that’s now on my finger, in my world why shouldn’t he have hidden the emerald one there too, only in the past? He would have known of my interest in history, that time he last visited. My mother would have told him that I always had my head in a history book and I used to do my homework on the dining room table downstairs. He couldn’t have helped but see it when he visited. He knew when he wrote the book that I would know what it meant and what to do. That’s why he left it in Bob’s care that last time, to give to me when the time came, if the time came. He would have known that he wasn’t the only one searching for the jewels.”
“So?”
“We go and get the emerald. Simple.”
“How?”
“I haven’t worked out that part yet, but I will. It must be possible; otherwise he wouldn’t have given us the information. One can only proceed a step at a time. Time, that’s the answer, I’m sure of it.”
“He could have told me, back in the cave.”
“Not if he didn’t trust all those who were there,” said Kirsty. A thought struck her. “If there was a spy in the camp so to speak, it’s likely he overheard your father telling you to go first to the lodge and then to Nosta. I think we’d better get out of here as soon as we can.”
“Where to?” asked Aranel, slightly bemused that it was Kirsty, new to Alfheimr and not even a full-blood elf, who was taking control of the situation.
“To this Tathar person. You said he’s gone to where the dragons live. Lord Arovan wanted to speak to him, to find him. I think we should do the same. He’s our first step and I don’t think we should waste any time. We can talk further about all this on the way. When will Urieline’s friend be arriving?”
“Tomorrow evening,” Urieline answered this for herself. “Her name is Ursulaine and she is my sister.”
* * * * *
Kirsty had always been a girl with confidence in her academic abilities. She had also believed that she was in control of her own destiny. Perhaps now she wasn’t as sure of the latter but she still believed in the former. She wasn’t brash or bigheaded but had a quiet confidence that, if she worked and studied hard, she would achieve her goals. This had always stood her in good stead, until now.
Had she but known it, she had achieved her coveted First Class Honours degree.
But now, here in Alfheimr, far away from all that she knew, she was feeling all her confidence, despite her words to Aranel and Urieline, draining away. She was uncertain, lost, scared, and anxious about what to do and how to act.
As the two girls prepared bedding for the night she kept flicking glances in her newly found sister’s direction.
The only confidence, apart from her brain, Kirsty had at the present time was her trust in Aranel.
She called me blood kin. She’ll make sure I don’t make too many mistakes.
For this reason and this reason only, Kirsty began to relax just a little.
* * * * *
“Claricia? Really, who, or what is a Claricia? It doesn’t sound like a name.” asked Aranel as the two of them were preparing to bed down and get some rest.
“Does Kirsty?” teased Kirsty.
“Not to me,” admitted Aranel, “but then if it is an out-world name, and you are from out-world then I suppose it’s all right.”
“I’ve heard of two women called Claricia, if that’s any help,” answered Kirsty. “They are historical figures from my world. If we assume that your father knew I would be here with you …”
“He’s your father too.”
Kirsty ignored that for the moment. She was still, and not surprisingly, finding it difficult to come to terms with the fact that she had elf blood in her veins and that her father was some sort of elf lord. Despite her thoughts when she had been preparing the bedding, the fact remained that she had a fully elven sister, which, rather than simplifying things, was, for some reason, making it even harder for Kirsty to get her head round the situation. Added to this was the shock that her father, who she had always believed had been killed in an accident, was very much alive. It was no wonder she felt unsettled.
“If we assume that, then perhaps we can glean a glimmer of sense from all of this,” she told Aranel. “There was a history book in my house, the author of which was writing about early mediaeval women. Mum always said the book came from my father.”
“So he wanted you to read it?”
“Precisely. He knew I would find my way here one day, to you if not to him and he was leaving me an ample amount of clues as to the location of the green jewel and the location of the others too.”
“So?” demanded an impatient Aranel. “Who is Claricia?”
“The first one I know about was a
thirteenth century illuminator, she wrote and decorated a psalter, a religious book. She was a nun. I believe she came from Augsburg in Germany.”
As might be expected, this was incomprehensible to Aranel who knew nothing about the history of Kirsty’s world – had never heard the word ‘nun’ before and had no idea where ‘Germany’ was. For all she knew, it could be a previously unheard of type of cheese.
“But I don’t think it’s her,” continued Kirsty. “It has to be the other one. Claricia of the royal House of Canmore, in Scotland.”
“The word Canmore is in the list you wrote.”
“Precisely. Now, let’s think logically. Claricia was the daughter of King David the First of Scotland. He had another daughter, Hodernia was her name, I remember them because the names are so unusual, but I think I read somewhere that she married a Scottish noble from Renfrewshire. Anyway, she’s not the important one. Claricia was born in the early twelfth century, the year one thousand, one hundred and fifteen or so I think, the date’s not certain, and was dead about twenty years later, that date’s not certain either. All that is really known is that she existed and that she died, probably unmarried and relatively young. There are so very few records remaining from that time. It was very long ago and Scotland has had, shall we say, a fairly turbulent history?”
“So what makes you think that this Claricia is our Claricia?”
“Dunfermline,” said Kirsty, to the absolute mystification of Aranel. “Bob mentioned Dunfermline. He said there was a gate there. He was very sure. Lord Arovan mentioned it too. Also, she disappeared from historical records. There’s no mention of her getting married or entering a nunnery. There are no extant records concerning her death either. What if the reason she disappeared was that she came here?”
“That doesn’t,” said a decided Aranel, ignoring the question, “prove anything.”
“Yes, but, Dunfermline was the old capital city of Scotland, the ‘seat of the kings’ and Claricia is supposed to have been born there. That, coupled with the fact that there is a gate there, means that we are on the right track. I think Father hid the third stone then and there.”
“But how to get to it,” mused Aranel, lifting her hand and looking at her ring. The sapphire wasn’t sparkling. It hadn’t done anything since bringing Kirsty through the T’Quel. “But why, if you came here using your ring, can’t this Claricia do the same?”
“I don’t think it’s as simple as that. I think the blue jewel, your tarna, is what might be called the home stone, the grounding one. Possession of it means that one can always get home, to here, to Alfheimr. My ring, it enables the possessor to travel through the T’Quel to my world and the green one, I presume it must be some sort of time-machine, allowing the possessor to travel back in time from the place where he is.”
“Through one of the gates.”
“Yes. Lord Arovan, Father, needed to hide the jewels. He used the red one to travel to present day Scotland and the green one to travel back in time to twelfth-century Scotland. And then he used the blue one to get back home to Alfheimr.”
“So he couldn’t go back once he had left the other one behind in this twelfth century of yours? So how are we going to be able to get there?”
“There must be a way so we can go back and find it. He must have left the ruby ring last time he visited Bob and Mother, that’s why he never returned. I don’t completely understand what brought me to Alfheimr. I don’t possess a blue stone. It must have been the fact that you were standing here, on the other side of the T’Quel, wearing your ring! The two recognised each other and did what they were supposed to, they did everything they could to rejoin. Perhaps this Tathar person had something to do with it too but that’s only a guess on my part.”
“You speak of them as if they are alive.”
“Aren’t they? Have you got another explanation?”
“I do believe the Tathar had something to do with it. Father wanted me to find him.”
“We shall ask him when we see him,” promised Kirsty. “I hate working with only half the information. So, while it is still light, I’m going to look through the book again.”
“For?”
“Confirmation that my theory is right.”
She found her confirmation. Not only were there two more separate entries, both in green ink, repeating the quote about Dunfermline but also something else. Kirsty believed that there was yet another entry confirming that the twelfth century was where Lord Arovan had hidden the third, green ring.
The entry consisted of three hymns, from, Kirsty believed, three different centuries, the eleventh, the twelfth and the thirteenth. The middle one was written using the green ink.
Green must mean, emerald, or gate. It simply must!
Kirsty was sure she was right, but she had to be sure. She wasn’t positive that travelling through time using the T’Quel was actually possible. The Tathar would know. They had to find the Tathar.
* * * * *
CHAPTER 14
‘Study the past if you would define the future.’
(Confucius BC 551-479))
JOURNEY TO THE BRIDGE
Waiting for Ursulaine, Aranel and Kirsty spent much of their waking time going over the messages left by their father again and again until they felt they knew the words off by heart. Interspersed with their conjectures about the meaning of every word they told each other about their lives. Aranel, who was fascinated by every facet of what life was like ‘on the other side’ as she insisted on calling it, asked endless questions. Most of Kirsty’s questions were more practical. Although she asked about Aranel’s formative years and about their father, she demanded detailed answers to her many questions about how to live here, in Alfheimr. She realised that she might never be able to return home to Kilmarnock, possession of the ring notwithstanding and was desperate to learn how to act and behave.
“I don’t want to stand out like a sore thumb,” she explained to her half-sister when Aranel demurred over answering yet another question. “I’m going to look different anyway because I’m only half-elf, I don’t want to act and sound different too.”
* * * * *
“What was it like growing up in your world?” Aranel asked, having decided that she had had enough of sitting watching Kirsty trying to decipher the book and talking about Alfheimr. She swallowed a mouthful of stale sandwich.
“Much like anywhere else,” Kirsty answered, also munching. Before this she would never have thought stale bread and curling gammon could taste so good. A wave of nostalgia for her previous life swept over her.
“Much like anywhere else to you,” Aranel countered. “Not to me. It all sounds so weird and impossibly strange.”
“So where do you want me to start?” asked Kirsty, accepting Aranel’s comment.
“At the beginning, like most elves.”
Kirsty swallowed her last mouthful, savouring its flavour. She wondered if she would ever eat gammon again. When Aranel had talked about the animals she would encounter she hadn’t mentioned pigs.
“I don’t remember much from when I was very little. Most people don’t, just an occasional flash of memory. I do remember when I first went to primary school. The classroom smelt funny and the girl sitting next to me stole the chocolate biscuit Mum had given me to eat at break time.”
“What’s a classroom?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t know, would you? Well, it is a room full of desks and chairs where the pupils sit. At one end there’s a bigger one for the teacher. My first teacher was nice, all round and cuddly, and she laughed a lot.”
“What did you do there?” Aranel inquired, trying to imagine the scene.
“We learnt our letters and we played. I seem to remember a lot of playing. As I got older and moved up classes, a class a year, there was far more learning involved and less playing.”
Aranel had never attended a school. As a noble’s daughter she had learnt her numbers and letters in a room set aside in her father’s castle. Ther
e had been about five of them she recalled; it changed from time to time, depending on those of a similar rank who were living at the castle. The elf that had taught her had been one of the few constants in her young life. He had stayed in her father’s service a long time and had once taught the children of King Huor. He was called Lenwas and although now retired, he lived in a cottage north of Tanquelameir where she visited him from time to time. She correctly reasoned that the place Kirsty was describing was the out-world equivalent of their ‘scholaring’, as it was called in Alfheimr.
“But what was it like at home?” she queried. This aspect of Kirsty’s life was the one she was most interested in. She wanted to know about day-to-day life.
“As long as you don’t interrupt,” Kirsty warned. “There’ll be some things you won’t understand. Here goes then. I live with my Mum in a house on a road in a town called Kilmarnock. It’s an oldish house, about a hundred and fifty years old and it’s what’s known as semi-detached. That means,” she added when she saw Aranel’s look of confusion, “that it is attached to another down one side but separate from the others in the road.”
“How big is it?” asked Aranel, who was accustomed to castles and fortified manor edifices with fifty-plus rooms. They were ill lit with small windows and an often inconveniently designed room layout.
“Four bedrooms upstairs and a bathroom and three rooms downstairs together with a little shower room, oh, and the kitchen of course.”
Aranel looked surprised, but forestalling the incipient comment, Kirsty ploughed on.
“It’s really too big for just the two of us.”
Aranel was completely mystified at that – how could seven rooms be too big?
“But Mum always said that she fell in love with it when she saw it and simply had to have it. We’ve got a large garden out the back but only a very tiny one at the front. The house is really comfortable and it’s more than a house. It’s a home. Mum’s a dab hand at making everything nice,” Her voice began to wobble at the thought of her mother and she made haste to change the subject.