Shelley glanced up, fearful, tensing her body for a last hopeless dash for freedom. But the big man was smiling; the most beautiful smile she had ever seen on a man – except perhaps her father when she was very small and she had just given him a flower. ‘But he wasn’t my father after all, any more than this man,’ she thought, and she tried desperately not to add to her misery and shame by bursting into tears.
The stranger’s grey-blue eyes twinkled, but they were also remote, somehow, as if they saw things normal eyes do not. She realised he was not looking quite at her, but at something or someone above and behind her. It was disconcerting, and Shelley was about to look over her shoulder. Then he spoke, but in a foreign language, and all Shelley understood was the questioning tone. There was a silence. Shelley began to feel awkward and self-conscious.
Then he gave a long sigh and his shoulders shook beneath his rough brown robe as he let out a low chuckle, and for a whole half-minute she was gazing into the eyes of a man at once stern, infinitely hard, and swept with great waves of emotion. She had never seen such sadness and joy combined. It was very disconcerting.
He composed himself and said, in English, ‘Forgive me, child. I laugh for joy. It has been a very long wait… and… I expected a boy.’
‘Not another chauvinist,’ she thought, but she felt relieved all the same. And he spoke English, of a kind. In fact, he had a pleasant accent and manner of speech, archaic, Shelley thought, and romantic – which was something she approved of almost as much as logical thinking and justice.
‘I have something of yours,’ he said, and handed Shelley the strange leaf from the back garden which had reminded her of her dream. Now that itself seemed like a dream…
The man went down on one knee, and his big face was level with hers as he laid at her feet his tree-staff of silvery polished wood, tipped with the clear three-pointed crystal that had made it flash in the sunlight on the hill. She noticed he wore a curiously carved silver ring on his left hand, set with a large transparent gem, glowing golden in the sunlight like amber or topaz. But apart from that, he looked like a mendicant monk, gaunt and dusty. Looking into her eyes he spoke in a deep, rumbling voice, the words of a long-prepared vow:
‘I am Korman the Outcast,
Son of Entanifer and Tarasura
Of the Red World, Kor-Tinnama
Keeper of the Portal of the Plains
By the will of the Lady
Ainenia of the Nine Lives.
‘By Her, and by the Order of the Red Dragon
And by the Order of the Makers,
I swear:
Apith shak-ëaya,
Pambath lak-ëaya
Ëa qua tin ëalav,
V’qua pabath ëalav
En edka irkabya elavya
That is, By my life or by my death
I will protect you
And bring you to the fulfilment of your Task.’
Shelley stood dumbfounded, blushing, still holding the leaf.
‘Um… thank you… But what task?’ she finally managed to ask. She noticed that his right arm was very thin, almost withered compared to his strong left arm. ‘Is he a left-hander too?’ she wondered. She realised she was staring at his arm, and to her embarrassment, she blushed.
Korman rose swiftly, sweeping up the staff. He held her shoulder with his skinny right hand, and she shrank away from his touch. He noticed, and said wryly, ‘Some also call me Korman of the Withered Arm. It was not always like this.’ Shelley thought he looked very sad for a split second. Then he said, ‘Child, I will tell you of the Task later. Right now you are in great danger. The Kiraglim will be coming. But I am your guide. Be brave, and follow me!’
With that he strode off at a great pace towards a blurry line of broken hills which stood a good few miles away from the road – south, if Shelley had known it, in the opposite direction to the little hills where he had found her. This new route looked positively dangerous, and Shelley hesitated. She said, a little petulantly, ‘But I was thinking of going home.’ Korman swung around. He looked surprised, even shocked.
‘Do you always question those sent to you? Where is your home now?’
Shelley looked around helplessly, as if looking for a doorway back into her world, and finally admitted, ‘I don’t know. But I’ve been taught not to talk to strangers… and I don’t like the look of those hills, and I’m thirsty and tired, and I can’t see anything clearly.’ She hoped her voice didn’t sound wobbly, but she felt close to tears, lonely and frightened.
Korman’s mood seemed to soften, and he looked sympathetic under his bushy eyebrows.
‘I know how you feel. I too came from another world, long ago. And now I must leave my cave without a goodbye, leave my books, my animals and my crystals, and flee with you into the wilderness. So, we must be kind to one another. Here, drink this!’ He held out a leather flask. She hesitated, then put it to her dry lips. She felt refreshed immediately, and showed her surprise.
‘It is well water from deep inside my cave. I came upon the spring this year when I was digging a new room. I took it as an omen from the Lady. It is good water, full of subtle virtues.’ Shelley managed a smile, and gave him back the flask.
‘Anyway, my name is Shelley.’ He seemed to ponder the word, repeating it under his breath.
‘Well met, Shelley of Kor-Edartha! Others have come through the Portal before you, but there was no sign, and I let the Boy Raiders adopt them. You, Shelley, are different. The face of the Lady was on the leaf you bore from Edartha. Now, you must trust me. We must leave this place. The Kiraglim are coming!’
At that moment she saw the white unicorn, on the very spot where she had come into that world, standing on the hillside. Although she couldn’t see it clearly, somehow she knew it was looking at her. She felt a sudden irresistible pang of longing for home and safety. Ignoring Korman’s words, she began to run towards it.
‘Not that way! It is a mind-trap. It has begun – they are closing in,’ said Korman sharply. Something in his tone chilled her. She stopped. The sky was growing darker. The unicorn looked so beckoning there on the hill, a clear white beacon calling her to safety…
A gust of wind swept dust into her eyes as she stood undecided in the middle of the road. There was a chill in the air, and thunder echoed in the hills. Under the swiftly darkened sky, three alarming objects, like huge tumbleweeds or runaway flywheels from some nightmarish factory, were racing down the road towards her, growing larger by the second. The unicorn had vanished.
‘Quick! Off the road!’ ordered Korman, his deep voice just audible above the hissing of the wind that swept the giant tumbleweeds along the road towards them. Shelley turned and ran, stumbling over the rough ground at the side of the road, where the builders long ago had thrown up a low dike. Korman hauled her over, and pressed her to the ground beside him, so that they were hidden from view but could see between the rocks and long grass at the top.
The wind blew ever more strongly, and with it grew a sound like sweeping yard brooms. Then the wind died, and the sweeping noise stopped. Peering through the gaps in the rocks Shelley saw to her horror that the three giant thorny tumbleweeds, taller than Korman, had stopped right opposite their hiding place. She began to wonder if the tumbleweeds were actually harmless (unless they happened to roll over you). But Korman stayed motionless, and she saw that slowly they were all beginning to open outwards like the thorny petals of some giant thistle. In the midst of each tumbleweed stood one of the Thornmen. Each was slightly different in form. The tallest was signalling the others to stay, as it emerged with birdlike steps onto the road. The creature peered around suspiciously, close enough for Shelley to hear its wheezing breath and see the glint in its dark reptilian eyes. She felt a sudden urge to come out and give herself up, then for a confused moment she thought she was seeing the boys who had rescued her, not the Thornmen at all. The unicorn was there too, and she saw her mother and father, waving to her to come.
Then the mirage
swirled away and she saw the creature slowly step back into the tumbleweed, and the eerie storm-wind sprang up again, and all three balls began picking up speed and rolling on up the road in the direction the boys had gone.
Korman breathed a sigh of relief. ‘That was Hithrax, chief Kiraglim of the Aghmaath. He is taller than all the rest, vicious and deadly. If he had released the hornets, we would have been found. My mindweb deflected their thoughts – just. We were lucky.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Shelley, in a small voice, shaking in every limb – and shaking inside at how easily she had been deceived. ‘I will follow you now. Though I don’t know what a Killergrim is, or a hagmouth.’
‘The Kiraglim are the expert trackers of the race of the Aghmaath, who come from the Darkened World, Phangkor. For now, it is enough to know that they are hunting you. They will be back, maybe with Dagraath Nazglím – wardogs – if I know Hithrax.’
‘“Wardogs”? You’re a great comfort, you are,’ Shelley managed to smile. He looked at her curiously from under his bushy brows, but said nothing. Then he gave her another drink of well water from the leather flask, and she felt better and her limbs stopped shaking.
‘Why did those crazy boys light that big fire just to burn the bodies? That’s what brought the… the Kiraglim, I bet!’ Shelley complained as they hurried off across the exposed plains towards the dubious refuge of the jagged hills.
‘The boys may be wild and unruly, but they are not crazy: they know that if a body of the Aghmaath is left, two things will happen,’ said Korman ominously.
‘What?’ Shelley asked, not sure if she wanted to hear what the two things were.
‘First the body will burst open, ejecting a seedpod containing an homunculus…’
‘A what?’
‘A small copy of the original Aghmaath, retaining its memories, which will, after hatching from the pod, grow up into a new version of that Aghmaath, bent on one thing: revenge.’
‘And what’s the other thing that happens?’
‘If the soil is good under the body, or if the body is buried, it will grow roots, and come to the surface as a Mother Thorn. As the Boy Raider rhyme says:
A dead Thornman we left unburned
Later sprouted roots, we learned
And as a stabber-thorn returned.
That is their word for a Mother Thorn.’
‘What is a Mother Thorn?’
‘The great rambling thorn-vine of the Travellers, in which they shelter, and which feeds them and protects them and provides them with thornwood spears and thornpod armour. Also the thorndagger – hithrax in their tongue – our Tracker is named for his frequent use of these. They are barbed, shaped like an awl, and pump poisoned sap into the wound. The branches of the thorn can move, and lash out with tendrils like hooked whips. Any unwary creatures that touch it are held fast for the Thornmen to capture – or for the Mother Thorn to slowly digest.’
‘Oh yuk!’ said Shelley in horror, looking around wildly as if a clawing tendril might appear out of the ground.
‘It is best you should know,’ said Korman soberly.
‘So the explosions were the other thing, the homuncu… thingies.’
‘Yes. The homunculi from the chests of the two dead Aghmaath.’
Shelley stumbled on. She tried not to think about it, but a hollow nagging voice inside her kept talking: ‘So, it wasn’t just a nightmare you had in the wagon. That’s what really happened to the beautiful lady, and all those other poor people. It’ll happen to you next.’ She tried not to think of the lashing, grabbing thorns – or the little Thornmen, the homunculi, bent on revenge.
The afternoon was wearing on as they hurried over the wide plain, and the shadows cast by the rocks strewn over it like knucklebones began to lengthen. Any other time Shelley would have been fascinated by those rocks. She was a keen rock hound and fossicker, given half a chance, and these rocks were varied and beautiful. Some were volcanic, she was sure; others appeared to be pieces of coral, or fossilised shells. Squinting, she thought she could make out the spiral lines of a giant ammonite in one boulder. But Korman was setting a punishing pace, and they had passed it by before she could be sure. The shock of the tumblewheel-riding Thornmen and the fear that they might come back was giving way to a numb exhaustion, and her legs felt rubbery under her.
They passed several skeletons of unknown animals. One was perhaps a horse, Shelley thought. ‘Or maybe it was a unicorn,’ she thought foggily. The dazzling ground began to blur more and more beneath her stumbling feet as they went on and on over rocks and sandy spaces and fields of white stones littered like seashells, crunching underfoot in the heat of the afternoon. The plain was far bigger than it had looked from the road. Every now and then Korman would turn and check that she was keeping up, and scan the horizon, his skinny, gnarled right hand shading his keen eyes. Shelley was getting desperate for a break, but he didn’t seem to notice her distress.
‘Why couldn’t you have a horse like those boys?’ she asked, and she stopped and flopped down, rubbing her aching legs.
‘Korman the Outcast is called by the Lady to walk hidden paths where a horse cannot go,’ replied Korman, not stopping or turning around.
‘So am I called by her too?’ yelled Shelley after him.
‘Of course,’ he replied, turning back just long enough to fix her with his steady eyes. He slowed down and held out a hand.
‘Great,’ Shelley groaned. But she felt strangely energised by Korman’s certainty, and got up again and followed in his footsteps as they went on and on into the unknown land.
Just when she felt she would fall down in a heap and not get up again, Thornmen or no Thornmen, they reached the first outcrops of the jagged hills. There was some long grass under the outcrops, but it was dry and rustled sadly as they passed. The whole land was oppressively dry and dreary, she now felt, as if parched by years of drought.
They stopped in the shade of one tall outcrop like a giant frozen wave of limestone, and Korman gave her a little more water.
‘I am sorry I did not rescue you from the Deathwagon,’ he said. ‘I was going to wait until dark. And I was still unsure if you were The One…’
‘What “One”?’ Shelley felt a fluttering in her stomach.
‘The one who is foretold to come from Kor-Edartha – Earth – to accomplish the task I told you of.’
‘You mean, didn’t tell me of.’ Now she was getting really worried…
‘That is right. So, I did not dare to leave my post. But when the Boy Raiders turned up, hunting the Deathwagon, I asked their leader Émragir – that is “Winged dagger”, or better, Quickblade, in your language – to bring you back to me. It seems he changed his mind. I had to speak sternly to him.’
‘And bribe him!’
‘You could take that as a compliment. He seemed quite… how do you say… taken with you.’
Shelley blushed. To change the subject, she asked, ‘Where is this world of yours, anyway? And where are you taking me?’
‘This is the island realm of Namaglimmë, on Kor-Aedenya, Aeden for short. It is one of the Nine Worlds. It was formerly the sacred hub of Ürpax Pharoï, the Order of the Makers, who are gone. Your world, Edartha, was once part of that Order.’
‘What?’ said Shelley, open-mouthed. She felt her head starting to spin. ‘OK, OK, don’t tell me any more about that just now, I don’t think I can handle it. Just tell me where we go from here.’
‘We go now into the old country of the Stone People, the Padmaddim, who were a learned people. They are gone; now this place is called the Badlands. But there is a village of ordinary folk in a valley one day’s march from here. We must find it, for I could not risk going back to my cave above the portal through which you arrived, and we need food and water and things for the journey. Tonight will be cold.’
‘Where are we going after that?’ asked Shelley nervously.
‘To the Faery refuge of Ürak Tara, the secret hill of the Lost Labyrinth, w
here you must be trained and – how do you say – initiated.
‘What is that? Does it hurt?’ asked Shelley, trying to make light of it, but imagining some tribal ritual.
‘It is not that kind of thing. It takes effort and courage, but you will not be hurt in body, or mind - unless you do it to yourself, of course!’
‘That’s reassuring!’ said Shelley.
Korman continued, to her annoyance seeming to miss the irony. ‘Then, if you are… who I think you are…, you will pass the Test. But meanwhile, you are still in danger. Your mind is exposed to the deceptions of the Dreamcasters. Beware – appearances may deceive you. The mindwebs of the Aghmaath are everywhere.’
‘Yes, well, I guess I’ve already seen some very weird things… And then what?’
‘Then you must be given your task.’
‘And what might that be, and who said so?’ Shelley had never liked being told what to do, let alone being ‘trained’ and ‘initiated’ by persons unknown…
‘It is your part in the Great Dance, the Unfolding, and the poets have foreseen it. The task I cannot speak of yet. Your mind is still open to the enemy. He may learn too much. Also, we do not yet know you fully. I have been betrayed before by trusting too soon. You have not yet passed the Test.’
‘What is this “test”?’
‘That too is a secret, until we reach the secret hill.’
‘There are lots of secrets in this country, aren’t there?’
‘Yes, more than you know. That is the effect of the dark way. Many wonderful things which once every child knew are now forgotten.’
‘Anyway,’ said Shelley, thoughtfully, ‘I don’t think I believe in prophecies. Hardly anyone does now, where I come from.’
‘Your world is indeed darkened, then.’
‘So is yours.’
Korman shrugged a little at this, a smile flickered on his rugged face, and he stood up.
‘The sun is low. We must go on. We must climb far into the hills before dark, and hide in a cave. I will spread an illusion over the mouth of the cave and we may be safe – for a while.’
‘What the heck does he mean?’ Shelley wondered. ‘Does he go in for wishful thinking, or some “think positive” mumbo-jumbo?’ But she was by now much too tired to question him. As she wearily followed in his footsteps, beginning to trail further behind, he turned back.
‘Little one, you are tired. I will carry you now.’
‘But what about you? Don’t you ever get tired?’
‘Yes; but there are ways to bear with any pain, and still go on. You will learn of this.’
‘Very comforting, once again!’
‘Yes, it is good to know these things.’ Once again, he didn’t seem to notice her irony – or did he? She sensed a knowingness in his measured responses, as if he was an expert fencer, choosing at his leisure every move, never taken by surprise. ‘Well,’ she thought, ‘I’ll try and catch him out some time. Just not now, I’m too tired.’ She would have protested at the idea of being carried if she was not totally exhausted.
Cradled like a baby in his strong left arm, his skinny right arm gently steadying her, she felt herself relaxing, lulled into sleep. But she ventured another of the questions that nagged at her, though she was not sure she wanted to hear all the answers.
‘How do you know English, Korman?’
‘There have been other visitors.’
‘Really? Boys or girls?’
‘Both.’
‘Is that where the boys who saved me came from, Earth?’
‘Some of them. Others come from Aeden, and are orphans from the rebel villages that defied the Aghmaath. Sometimes they are called the Rebel Raiders, or the Boy Raiders.’
‘They’re so brave! I liked them. Can they save Aeden?’
‘Yes, and no. All who resist the darkness help to save Aeden, but no one can save it alone. There are helpers wiser than they, to whom they ought to listen.’
‘Do they trust you, then? They seemed suspicious.’
‘I am an old outcast. I no longer wear the sign of the Red Dragon. Nobody trusts me, entirely. They cannot love what they do not know. But the Boy Raiders trust no one completely – especially adults! Still, the days are dark, and there are many deceptions. Even I could have been a mindtrap.’
‘I don’t know if I believe in these mind things.’
‘Then what did you see when you were in the Deathwagon, or when the Dark Ones stopped on the road?’
‘I don’t know… it was just my imagination, I guess.’
‘That is what your mind says to you now? What do they teach you in your schools?’
‘I don’t know… stuff…’
‘Your world truly is darkened. Yet my ancestors came thence many years ago. They were Knights Templar. Do your histories not speak of them any longer?’
‘Maybe… did they wear big red crosses and fight in the Crusades?’
‘Yes, and many works of peace as well, before they were called to this world.’
‘Do they live here still?’
‘No, some were killed by the Aghmaath in my lifetime; most had already gone to dwell in the caves of Slumber in Kor-Tinnama, my old home, awaiting the time of the Awakening, the time of the Chosen One who will restore the Balance. The way there is now blocked. All the great paths between the worlds are blocked.’ Shelley remembered her dream of the sleeping knights in the cave, but she didn’t say anything. It was all getting too much…
‘How did I get here then?’ she asked.
‘The Lady sent the white Ürxura, and you trod a secret path that still lies open to some, children only, who are pure in heart. And usually… odd… in some way.’ She thought she detected a slight smile when he said ‘odd’.
‘So, I’m pure in heart?’ She chose to ignore the ‘odd’ comment, and tried to sound ironic.
‘That would follow logically. As would the “odd.” Do they not teach the truths of the Concept in your world any more? Are Plato and Aristotle forgotten?’
‘I think we have lots of that concepty stuff still, in books, but nobody much learns it. I guess most of us watch television and eat junk food instead.’
‘Your answers tell of great darkness on your planet. It gives me pain to hear them.’
‘Can’t you just “bear with it,” like you said?’ She was testing him, now.
‘Yes. I have borne with many griefs. This is just one more. Your world is my ancestral Mother too.’
Shelley could not seem to ruffle him with anything. She was reassured by the fact that he believed in logic. She felt secure, peaceful. She had one more question, one that had been nagging at her mind, and she had to know the answer. ‘Does being left-handed count as “odd” or do you think there’s… something else odd about me?’ Korman cleared his throat. She hoped it was not to hide a laugh.
‘Some say the left-handed are “sinister” – the Latin word for left-handed – and folk of ill-omen. And some of the oddest people I have met are left-handed. I am a left-hander by necessity, since the… accident… to my sword arm, and it has changed my view somewhat. Be that as it may, it seems mostly to be the odd children, the “misfits,” that come through the Portals. Left-handers, dreamers, the bullied, the orphans, the lame or injured in some way, in mind or body.’
Shelley felt happier now she knew what he meant. She knew if there was something else he had noticed he would be honest and tell her. ‘So,’ she thought, I’m “odd,” but not in an obvious way that people here will laugh at me for. I’m just a leftie, like Émragir… Quickblade….’ She drifted off to sleep thinking of the Boy Raiders as Korman trudged on silently, winding up narrow secret paths into the Badlands.
Chapter Sixteen
The Cave of the Padmaddim