The Girl and the Guardian

Chapter Seven

  The Narrator’s Dream

  That night (after certain adventures which I will touch on later) I dreamed that I was compelled by some impulse to use the Ouvron one more time, though I was very afraid of it, as it had opened a door to a dark place I dreaded to ever enter again.

  In my dream I held the magical medallion tight as it pulled me through a whirling starry void. Then I was gliding over a vast, barren landscape, bathed in a reddish light – was it Mars, I wondered? A city loomed ahead whose buildings were hewn out of tall cliffs, like ruined Petra. Soaring over huge columned facades carved into the red rock formations, I entered one of the dark winding valleys in the mountains beyond. A hidden doorway opened in the side of one great rocky spur shaped like a giant reclining head, and I floated in like a drifting thistledown. It was dark, but my eyes grew accustomed to the faint bluish illumination which seemed to be coming from the motionless forms of sleeping knights – a whole army of them, row upon row in an endless pillared cavern. As I glided weightless over them, I heard myself say as if in a trance, ‘The Frozen Army! Those who remained true!’ – while desperately trying to recall how on earth I knew this.

  With an effort of will I landed beside one of the frozen figures. He was lying at full stretch on his marble plinth. In his great hands (which were folded on his mail-clad chest) he held a red rose, exquisitely carved and painted. ‘What a wonderful sculpture!’ I thought, and went to touch the rose. Then I saw his chest rising slightly, and I tried to scream. But a beautiful pearly light coming from the cavern mouth lit up the warriors, and I heard soft footsteps and a young woman’s voice saying ‘They will awaken when She comes.’ I wanted to go towards the voice in the light, but I was also mortally afraid. All my instincts told me that I was unworthy to be there, and that I was not ready for a meeting with the owner of the voice, yet still I was being called.

  Now all the knights stirred, sat bolt upright on their cold beds, looking at me accusingly. As one man they reached for their weapons, great swords gleaming as if made of fire and ice, and got up from their beds and began walking towards me, their armour clanking, their heavy footfalls echoing up and down the vast room. In terror, I ran for the cavern entrance and the unbearable light, tripped and hit the floor. Then I woke up, tangled in my blankets.

  I disentangled myself, excited and shaking. It was no use trying to go back to sleep, so I made an early start to my day with a strong cup of tea, hoping the unaccustomed early rising would not set off a headache. Something big was beginning to unfold in my head, as if long-buried memories were beginning to surface. I hoped I was not going mad, but my heart said otherwise. I still felt a lingering sense of guilt and accusation from the knights whom I had – prematurely? – awakened, but my heart was also full of a perfectly sane elation, and a passionate desire to return to that place, and to speak with the owner of that voice. Somehow I felt sure she would know the answers to all my questions…

  I must now break off my own narrative, and begin the Story proper – mine being a mere tributary running into the river of these great events. Suffice to say that the forest to which I had been transported was on Earth, but far away in the Southern Hemisphere, in a place called Silverwood; and that very near to that place, someone else was having a very similar dream…

 

  Book Two

  Kor-Aedenya