The Girl and the Guardian

Chapter Eighteen

  The Mindstone

  The chamber of the Mindstone was round, with a small round table in the middle. The table was bare except for a dark oval stone, about six inches long. There was no light when Barachthad had shut the door, except for the faint glow of a small crystal which was set in the ceiling directly above the table. They sat down opposite each other on the comfortable bench seat which curved around the table.

  Korman told Shelley to place her hands on the stone, and he did the same, holding the ends while she rested her hands on the top of it. He said, ‘You will begin to see things in your mind, and hear words, which will get faster. Do not fear. You may also see glimpses of my memories; take no notice. I will try to show you only my knowledge of the principal language of Aeden, and you will find it will become yours.’

  They sat quietly in the half-light for a long time.

  ‘There’s nothing happening,’ said Shelley. She had begun to feel silly. ‘Have I been sucked into their superstition and it’s really all in their heads, and I’ll have to sit here, holding this stone, and pretend to be seeing something?’ she wondered.

  ‘It may take a while for our minds to establish contact,’ replied Korman. ‘Shut your eyes again, clear your mind of doubts, and wait.’ His eyes glinted in the light of the crystal above, which, now their eyes were accustomed to the dimness, lit the whole room in a kind of faint multicoloured moonlight.

  Shelley shut her eyes. The stone under her hands seemed to tingle, and the darkness filled with images, like in a vivid dream – too vivid. The intensity of it shocked her, as scene after scene flashed past, faster and faster. She pulled her hands away.

  ‘Keep your hands on the mindstone!’ said Korman. ‘Have no fear!’

  She put her trembling hands back onto the smooth surface of the stone, now sparkling like black opal, electric to her touch.

  She saw deserts and cliffs and terrible scenes of battle with Thornmen and dragons and grim men like Korman, but dressed all in silver armour, terrible and glorious. Then she was inside a cave. She saw a big man in dented and bloodied armour lying on the cave floor, and a beautiful woman weeping over his body. Somehow she knew it was Korman’s mother and father. Then the cave scene vanished and there was a Tree shining with a light that came from the top of its trunk where the branches began. It was radiant gold. Then a boy came up to it. He looked familiar somehow. There was darkness and confusion and a roaring noise, and everything went black. Then there was the desert again. She heard words of expulsion and judgement, and she thought she could understand them. Korman was being cast out of the Order of the Red Dragon. There was nothing for a while but bleak desert, and a lone tree under which she saw Korman slumped, head bowed.

  Then a woman, wearing a beautiful white gown with buttons of silver-petalled apple blossom, with white flowers like little stars in her hair, came and spoke to Korman. Shelley was sure it was the Lady she had seen before in the dream. A spring began to bubble up under the tree, and the desert became a valley of delight with green grass, trees and flowers and animals playing. The Lady took his hand, and they walked together through the grass.

  Then the beautiful scene vanished and a confusion of harsh voices was all around them. Over the clamour of battle Korman was shouting the battle-cry of the Guardians:

  Hethür, Krithür, Shaktha!

  She understood the words perfectly: ‘The One, the Concept, the Soul of the World!’ His great sword flashed out, but the Lady was taken by the trackers of the enemy and thrown into the thorns.

  Now Korman spoke the words of a solemn vow. If translated into modern English – a poor vehicle for such things – it would read something like this:

  ‘I, Korman the Outcast, the Ill-starred,

  Will never again draw Arcratíne,

  Heartstone-defender,

  Until I have found again

  The hidden way of the Lady,

  And walk in the realm of Faery.

  Then if she bids me,

  I will surely draw my sword,

  And strike down her enemies.’

  There followed a torrent of words and poems and songs, along with swirling images, on and on until Shelley almost feared for her sanity. Aeden was unfolding before her mind like a huge tapestry of interwoven threads from all the Nine Worlds.

  Eventually the tumble of images and words slowed down. The last vision she saw was her own cellphone with the message that had appeared just before the Deathwagon had come. It said

  KORMAN ESTAMON EAYA

  EIM AROVORA

  AXPAGLAB OKA KOR

  URPAMA PAGYOKA EAM

  AINENIA

  Now she could read it with ease:

  Korman, my Moonbird

  We are one

  Break out from this world

  To be with me where I am

 

  -Ainenia

  ‘It’s beautiful! She loves him! I’ll have to tell him.’ But something made her hesitate. ‘Maybe later,’ she thought.

  She was roused from her trance-like state by Korman’s voice. He was speaking to her in Aedenese, and she understood it perfectly.

  ‘Welcome to the world of Aeden, Hub of the Old Order, the last and greatest handiwork of the Makers.’

  ‘Thanks for nearly blowing my mind! I’m really hungry. What time is it?’ she replied, in perfect Aedenese. She put her hand to her mouth and gasped. Korman smiled and, opening the door, ushered her out into the cosy lounge, where Barachthad sat reading. He rubbed his eyes sleepily.

  ‘About time,’ he said, looking up at them. ‘How did it go?’ Shelley launched into excited speech, delighting in her fluency, calling up multitudes of memories she did not have an hour ago. She now felt much more like a native of Aeden, and Earth, though still important to her, no longer felt like the centre of the universe. It was an exhilarating feeling.

  They had something to eat - hours, in fact, had gone by while they were in the chamber of the Mindstone – and Korman said, ‘It was fortunate, coming here, and being able to use your Mindstone, Barachthad. The Lady had given me one long ago and I had planned to use it to teach the Kortana in my cave, when she arrived. But that was not to be.’

  ‘I hope the precious thing is well hidden, Korman,’ said Barachthad.

  ‘Yes, very well. With a mindweb, in a place one would never look.’

  After the meal Barachthad suggested, ‘Now you have the words of our world, come and see some of the books that have been written! Precious, dangerous possessions now – the Aghmaath would burn them and haul me off to the Dark Labyrinth if they found this library. Now, follow me!’

  He opened another secret door behind one of the bigger pictures on the wall, a picture of the Karst under the Blue Moon, with little people, the Fairies of Aeden, sitting around the pools and waterfalls and in the orchards, lit up with little amber lamps like fireflies, and dancing around a bonfire in the centre of a moonlit cornfield. Ladies and men in beautiful clothes sat at outdoor tables drinking and talking under the stars, while their children played hide and seek with the Fairies, and little monkey-like animals (called ‘wurriers,’ she later learned) scampered after them.

  Shelley was delighted with the library. She loved books (as long as they were not ‘Prescribed Reading’ at school), and had thought she might never see another one. There were fat tomes and thin, tall ones and short, but all were richly illuminated with interweaving motifs from Aedenese folklore. They were beautifully bound with covers of embossed leather or thin sheets of wood overlaid with embossed copper, silver or gold.

  There was one little book which caught her eye, very different from the rest, like a pile of autumn leaves bound together with threads of golden hair. The leaves were filled with curious markings which looked as if they were grown into the leaves.

  ‘What is this one?’ she asked.

  ‘That, my dear, is evidence.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘That what I was telling you about seeing Fairies whe
n I was a boy isn’t just an old man’s tale. This book was left behind long ago by one of the little people after a party up on the Karst. I found it and kept it hidden. I was only a boy then, but should still have known better. They do not share their secrets lightly with anyone, the Fairies, and would have been very cross. Some say they are descended from the Makers themselves. It is written in the Ennead that some of them chose not to leave with the others, but changed form and stayed on as the Little Folk of the woods, caring for the land in their own way, leaving the great battles to the rest of their race, choosing forgetfulness of much that they once knew. But in this very book, woven into the leaves of the Cicada Trees of the Green World (from which they say the Makers came, long, long ago), may be written in a secret code the old knowledge to which they can refer for help and guidance in times of great need.’

  ‘Shouldn’t it be returned, then?’ asked Shelley.

  ‘I suppose so… but it has been so very long, and you know how embarrassing it is to return something so late it’s been given up for lost – or stolen!’ Shelley looked at him dubiously. ‘Perhaps not. Yes, I’m afraid I have a few other books like that… skeletons in the alcove, as you might say. Anyway, I don’t know what has become of the Fairies. Sometimes at night by the full moon I go looking for them in the mountains, thinking perhaps to return their book, but I never have seen one – unless glimpses I sometimes saw in the shadows were more than just a wurrier shuffling off late to its bed in the trees, or a night bird hunting insects in the leaf mould.’

  ‘We will take the book, with your permission,’ said Korman. ‘I believe the Fairies still live in hiding about Avalon, the enchanted lake of the Lady, far to the north of here. And my heart tells me we must pass that way before we can reach the Faery refuge of Ürak Tara.’

  ‘That would be a long way round, and a dangerous one,’ said Barachthad. ‘But if you will take it to them, or any of their kin that you may meet on your travels, it would be a weight off my conscience. One less skeleton for an old man to have in his alcove!’

  Next they looked at a beautiful old hand-drawn map of the whole island realm of Aeden, or Namaglimmë, which means ‘Starfish-isle that causes flight-across-the-void,’ that is, the Hub that joins the Worlds. The sacred Island spread like a beautiful five-armed starfish in the deep blue sea. ‘It’s exactly like the star-pattern in the apples!’ said Shelley. She remembered her puzzlement at that first meal when Barachthad had pointed to the apple, then waved his arms and said ‘Aeden’. Now his meaning was crystal clear.

  In the middle of the Island of Namaglimmë was the Tor Enyása where the Tree of Life grew, and five streams came from it, turning into the five rivers of Aeden. The five ridges of the five arms ran from the small mountains at their ends (Korman told her these were also called Enyásae, world mountains) up to the Tor Enyása, the high world-mountain. Each arm ended beneath the five tall peaks on the perimeter of the Tor Enyása. There were high cliffs around it, and winding paths between the five arms were the only access to it. These were marked in red ink.

  The roads on the map were marked in thick unbroken red lines in places, and in other places with thin broken lines, with signs marking swamps and forests through which they meandered. They were few and far between by modern standards, but as Barachthad commented, getting there was more than half the fun. It seemed that once you stepped through a portal from another world in the Old Order, you were not expected to go anywhere on Aeden in a great hurry. This was an old map, Barachthad pointed out, though made long after the departure of the Makers, so it showed none of the thorn forests or the encampments of the Thornmen.

  On the map several inns were marked, and Shelley was reminded again of the depth of history of the Aedenese civilisation, once so wise and happy and free, now almost lost in forgetfulness and betrayal. She began to wonder if each of the five arms of the island was associated with a particular world of the Old Order: for example, the Northeast Arm where she had appeared on Aeden was the Guardian Arm, and at the outer end was the Enyása of the Tímathians, or as they were often called, the Guardians, Korman’s ancestors. (This was the mountain she had seen looming over her when she first arrived.)

  But also near the Northeast Arm, in the tumbled hills of the southern Badlands, she saw marked Caves of the Padmaddim – the Seekers of Knowledge and of the wisdom of the Crystalline Entities. ‘So, they don’t live on the Southeast Arm, which ends in the Crystal World Enyása. Oh well… nice theory. Anyway we’re right there somewhere – I wonder if Barachthad’s cave is marked?’ she murmured.

  On the Northwest Arm was the Enyása of the Travellers’ world, looking out to the setting sun (depicted on the map in gold leaf), and just south of that arm was the Valley of the Rainbow, with a long lake at the bottom, and a small island on which was marked an apple-grove temple, and a Labyrinth of Teaching and Initiation under a hill at the western end of the lake.

  Korman pointed to it and said, ‘The Aghmaath, with the help of three very powerful Mother Thorns, sprung from the bodies of three of their greatest mind-sorcerers, overran that valley. It is now called the Valley of Thorns – a place of indoctrination and punishment. Running along the lakeshore is the Avenue of Despair. It leads to the Dark Labyrinth beneath the Hill of the Skull.’ Shelley shuddered, remembering her vision of that place, but she did not speak of it to Korman.

  In the south, between the Southwest Arm and the Southeast Arm, were marked several blue lakes, and on the plains surrounding them was written in long sweeping letters of silver, Here live the ürxra-narabadrim which literally translated means, ‘One-horned thunderers’ - the Ürxura, as they were usually known. Shelley was excited at the thought of meeting them, and the realisation that her unicorn had a homeland, and was not just an apparition. She hoped they would visit that land, if they were going to have to go a roundabout way to get to Ürak Tara.

  Korman pointed to the general area where he thought Ürak Tara was, quite close on the map to the Badlands and Barachthad’s cave.

  ‘Why can’t we go straight there?’ she asked, surprised. She was even more surprised when Korman admitted that he did not know exactly where Ürak Tara was, or how to find it.

  ‘We will just look, and follow the leads we are given. All roads lead where you wish to go, if the heart is pure,’ he replied.

  ‘But, Korman, how come Ürak Tara isn’t even marked on the map? Are you sure it even exists?’

  ‘There were two Labyrinth-containing colleges of the Makers on Aeden, the Exoteric and the Esoteric, the Open and the Hidden. The Open Labyrinth (where I was schooled and initiated) was taken by the Aghmaath and turned into a place of terror, of initiation into the Void. It is now called the Dark Labyrinth, and…’

  ‘Yes, you told me, under the Hill of the Skull, at the end of the Avenue of Despair. I’ve been shown it!’ said Shelley.

  ‘By whom?’ asked Korman sharply, looking at her with concern.

  ‘By the Aghmaath in the wagon. He showed me a vision of it!’

  ‘Ah, to begin the process of breaking your will. That was to be expected!’ said Korman with a sigh. ‘You should have told me before. Telling helps to dispel the darkness.

  ‘But the other Labyrinth, the Hidden Labyrinth, Ürak Tara, was always hidden, at least since the departure of the Makers. It was, they say, a place of great learning and great secrecy, where a Master presided over an esoteric Community of Inquiry, which kept very much to itself. Foreseeing a time when Aeden would fall, the Lady, with the agreement of the Master, hid it even further from prying eyes. She took it into the realm of Faery, so that when the Kortana should come, in Aeden’s darkest hour, there would still be one place of initiation left. It would be one of his – or her – tests, to find it.

  ‘Over the generations since then, Ürak Tara came to be all but forgotten. There has not been a single proof of its existence for all my days, as far as I know.’

  ‘How do you know it’s not just a myth, then?’

  ‘Beca
use the Lady told me to take you there! That means that she believes that it still exists. And if the Lady believes it exists, it exists. Besides, look!’

  On the margin of the map was written, among other notes under the heading ‘Addenda’:

  ‘Ürak Tara, Faery Refuge and college of the Makers: Hidden.”

  ‘Well, that’s a lot of help!’ said Shelley.

  After looking over other parts of the map for any other clues, they went back to the viewing room and had drinks and gazed out at the view. The countryside below was grey and gloomy, with great areas blotted from sight by heavy rain, but Shelley could hardly recognise any of the features from the map. There were whole forests and patches of thorny wasteland in areas which were marked on the map as pasture or fertile fields.

  Shelley remembered a question she had meant to ask before, but felt a curious reluctance, as if the truth might be too uncomfortable. Now she decided to find out. ‘Korman, back in the library, you said something about the Kortana needing to go to Ürak Tara for initiation. That’s what you want me to do too. Who is this “Kortana”?’

  ‘The Kortana is the Chosen One, the one who will find the lost Heartstone, and save Aeden.

  ‘What does Kortana mean?’

  ‘Kor, as you now know, means many related things: world, or egg, or seed, or heart; but in this case Heartstone; and Tan is old Aedenese for mouth, or the act of speaking or calling. So, the Kortana is he, or she, who calls to, the Kor - the Heartstone. The one who can find it again. It is usual to assume that it will be a man – odd, seeing the form of the word is feminine.’

  ‘So,’ said Shelley, ‘You actually think I could be this… this Kortana.’

  ‘Definitely… perhaps.’

  ‘And you’re called Korman… What does that mean?’

  ‘I am the Man of the Heartstone, the Guardian of the central Kor, the star-seed within the Apple. But I failed. I cannot retrieve it now. Only the Kortana can do that. And my task is to guard her.’

  ‘You actually think I might be the one who is meant to save Aeden!’

  ‘Shall we say, the thought has crossed my mind.’ Shelley looked down over the wild lands of Aeden, and a cold thrill went up her spine. She could not think of anything else to say. She was afraid to hear any more.

  Seeing her unease, Korman changed the subject, telling her the latest news he had gleaned, just before her arrival on Aeden, from the old hermit outcast who lived in the foothills of the Northeast Mountain near Korman’s cave. ‘Moonwit spoke of new thorn dens, that is, the thorn-hedged villages of the Aghmaath, which have sprung up between the Badlands and the Tor Enyása. Perhaps the road to the Northern Arm is now blockaded. And Ürak Tara, we think, is somewhere on the Northern Arm.’

  ‘That sounds bad,’ she said.

  ‘If we can believe old Moonwit. He is not completely reliable, being given to visions and ecstasies and falling asleep for days on end in his cave. But he got the news on good authority, he says: from a Trader who has been bringing him supplies for many years. So, we must assume they are pressing their occupation northeast towards the plains of the Portal, trying to cut off the Kortana, the Jewel-Caller, if she should appear, and to hem in the Boy Raiders to the east. There will be Kiraglim with Dagraath – sniffer wardogs – in that whole area, and tracker hornets.’

  ‘What will we do, assuming I do go with you?’ asked Shelley.

  ‘We will just have to go and see for ourselves,’ said Korman. ‘If there is still a way through, we will go by that direct path. If not, we will have to go west, and find the pass, travel around the whole island, keeping well away from the Tor Enyása and the western desolations, until we reach the northern forests where Lake Avalon lies, and in the midst of that lake the Island of Avalon. And there we may meet the Fairies, and who knows, even the exiled Maidens of the Lady, if any survive. And they will help us to find Ürak Tara.’

  ‘You make it sound easy, Korman,’ said Barachthad, and shook his head.

  ‘And after Avalon, what?’ asked Shelley.

  ‘I will bring you to the Faery refuge and sacred school of Ürak Tara, of course.’

  ‘If it exists,’ said Barachthad, dubiously. Shelley stared at the grey curtains of rain sweeping over Aeden, and felt very small and insecure.