The Girl and the Guardian
The morning was already bright and clear when Korman finally managed to rouse both the children. He had been up since dawn, sniffing the fresh air of Aeden and looking out from the heights for any sign of the Thornmen. But far higher, looming above the Badlands, was the path they were to take, over the top of the Northeastern Spur. He was anxious to get them safely to the other side before the Trackers picked up their trail.
‘Did you see me in a dream last night?’ Rilke asked Shelley. She nodded, and rolled her eyes.
‘You told me to get out of it, you cheeky boy,’ she scolded. She looked at Korman, who was smiling at them. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Well done,’ he replied. She had no doubt that he had, in the Dreamweb, seen her turn herself into a Mindscout and slip out of their clutches.
They ate a quick breakfast, feeding the little wurrier the same; bread and dried fruit mostly. It ate ravenously, holding the food in its tiny hands, looking up at them with nervous worried looks. Korman fed the anklebiter separately, as it was growling and baring its teeth at Worriette and the children. Before the children had stopped yawning they broke camp and began the long trek up the slope to the foot of the Spur, which now towered above them, its smooth furrowed marble cliffs and outcroppings still in shadow. The sun was rising on the other side, but it had a way to go before it would appear over the top.
Korman led them through winding ways to keep them hidden as much as possible, especially from the high peaks of the Tor Enyása far away to their right, which looked like clusters of watchtowers, or warning fingers raised to the sky. The spur they were to climb now came out from the nearest of those peaks.
‘How can we get up that?’ asked Shelley. ‘It looks like a blank wall of rock to me.’
‘Maybe we can find a pass in it, like my secret pass,’ said Rilke.
‘Let us go right to the base of the spur, and look for tracks of the mountain goats,’ said Korman. ‘They are rare in these parts, and shy of people nowadays, after being hunted by some of the Traders for their horns. But hopefully there will be some still here, and they will have left some signs to follow.’
‘But could we follow? We’re not mountain goats,’ said Shelley.
‘We will see,’ said Korman.
As he had hoped, there was a narrow grassy pathway, invisible before, angling up a fissure in the rock. This led onto a narrow ledge, then around a curve in the rock face. There they saw other ledges tracking steeply up across the rock.
‘Keep pressed against the wall, and keep looking up, not down,’ said Korman. The grassy line at the foot of the cliffs looked very small to Shelley when she looked down, in spite of Korman’s warning. She felt a sudden giddiness, and looked up again. She felt Worriette clinging tightly to her clothing, her little head turning this way and that, peering out over the neckline of her woollen vest. ‘Keep still, Worriette, you little wriggler!’ she scolded. But Worriette just shivered and kept on wriggling.
They went forward, shuffling carefully up the narrow ledge. Korman, who was in the lead, disappeared around a bend. Rilke followed close behind. Shelley, in the rear, tried not to hurry to catch up, in case she slipped. She wondered what would happen if any Thornmen saw them.
But soon she was round the corner herself, and saw to her relief that there was a wider crevice ahead, with a floor of fallen rock and dark sandy soil with thick-leafed plants growing in it. It had been hidden from below, but now they saw it was a way right over the spur. The sun was now slanting in, illuminating what looked like a fairly easy climb to the top. The rock walls on either side overlapped so that side-on it would have been very hard to see the pass at all.
‘The high pass to Baz Apédnapath, the Bottomless Canyon!’ said Korman. ‘I knew it would be here somewhere. Traders go this way to the Canyon. But is it guarded?’
They walked together, looking up at the clifftops ahead and behind, but there was no sound or sign of life, except that high above on the sheer rockface, white in the morning sun, a small herd of shaggy mountain goats walked the ledges, nibbling at the plants that grew out of cracks, and looking down at them curiously.
‘Look at them! They can walk on cliffs!’ said Shelley. ‘I wonder if they ever fall?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Korman. He pointed to a bleached, horned skull half-embedded in the soil.
‘Can I get the horns? I could make knife handles out of them,’ said Rilke.
‘Better leave them this time,’ said Korman. ‘We must hurry. When there is peace, you can come back and claim them.’ Rilke groaned loudly, but Shelley silenced him with a look – of such vehemence and effectiveness that Korman had come to think of it as ‘The Look’.
Then it was Shelley’s turn to be distracted: higher up in the rock wall she saw a coloured gleam like a diamond or dewdrop catching the sun, or a crystal like the one that hung in her bedroom window on Earth so far away. The gleam appeared to be coming from a fallen rock on a ledge. She turned aside from the narrow path at the bottom of the ravine and began to climb up to the ledge.
‘Hang on a minute,’ she said, ‘I’m just looking at something.’
‘Be quick,’ said Korman, ‘And careful.’ Shelley got to the top of the ledge – here it widened out into a little balcony with mosses and more of the glossy-leafed plants. She looked at the fallen rock. There was a little outcrop of brilliant clear crystals on it. But as she bent down to look at them, a blaze of reflected light from above caught her eye. There in the rock wall was a glittering cave entrance, triangular, maybe five feet high at the apex. She climbed up and peered in. The cave was covered in clear crystals, some tiny, some as big as the crystal on Korman’s staff: almost as big as her fist. She tried to pull one off. It was golden-yellow and she wanted it passionately. The cold smooth facets hurt her fingers as she tried to prise it off.
The others were carrying on up the gully, their footsteps receding. She was getting left behind. It was very still in the cave. She gave up trying to loosen the crystal on the wall with her bare fingers, but as she looked around for a stick she noticed a little loose crystal on the sandy floor, and picked it up.
‘How beautiful! My very own Crystal Cave,’ she murmured. Just then there was a loud hiss in the dark, further in. Worriette gave a piercing squeal and hid her face in Shelley’s vest. The hissing turned into a yowl like a tomcat’s. Shelley backed out quickly and scrambled and slithered painfully back down the ledge. She ran to catch up with the others, her heart pounding. Looking back, she saw a sleepy-looking cat-like creature peering down from the ledge.
‘Why didn’t you warn me what could be in that cave? What if it had been one of those Rog-dragon thingies?’ she asked Korman between gasps when she caught up.
‘I told you to be careful,’ he replied. ‘That should be enough! So, if it was not a Rog-tanax, what did you find there?’
‘A big cat thing,’ said Shelley.
‘Mountain cat. Mostly they are harmless,’ replied Korman.
‘Sometimes they eat you,’ said Rilke. An unearthly yowl came up the rift behind them. Worriette shivered under Shelley’s vest.
‘You’re joking, right?’ replied Shelley. Rilke laughed hysterically, his wiry little frame shaking with mirth.
‘Quiet!’ said Korman. ‘This is not a village picnic outing.’
They walked on in silence. They were coming to the top of the pass, and apart from the occasional bleat of a mountain goat high above, there was no sign of any other living creature. The sun was shining. ‘I want a mountain goat,’ Rilke announced suddenly, and stopping, he flung himself down on a clump of tussock and began scanning the cliffs for signs of the elusive goats. ‘Not this time,’ said Korman. ‘Later, when happier times have come.’
‘And we don’t have the Aghmaath army on our tails!’ added Shelley. She gave him The Look, and he got up with infinite weariness and staggered on after the others.
Reaching the highest point of the pass, they paused to catch their breath and look out over t
he lands ahead. A wide expanse sloped down, with many undulations, to the distant blue haze and sparkle of the eastern sea. To their right another spur like the one they were crossing angled in a majestic line on the horizon down to a solitary mountain topped with finger-like peaks.
‘That is the Southeast Arm, leading down to the Enyása of the Crystal World,’ said Korman. ‘And almost straight ahead is Baldrock, our destination.’ Shelley looked at the lands ahead, between where they stood and Baldrock. Its dark peak towered sheer and craggy above all the other hills. And, starting almost at their feet and stretching all the way to the single peak of Baldrock, was a long, zigzagging rift.
‘It looks as if the earth was ripped apart down there,’ said Shelley.
‘It was, thousands of years ago,’ replied Korman. ‘It is written in the lost Ennead of Aeden, the Great Ennead of Limrath the Third, that at the end of the Third Age, the Limnakorites captured the Tor Enyása. And:
There came a great shower of flaming iron stones from the heavens, and the craters of the land of the Ürxura were formed, which filling with water formed the lakes Marelrapath and Marevalya. Also in that battle the powers of the earth were unleashed by Kortin, Tidak of the Heartstone. For when he saw that the usurpers had won and his consort Ainenia the Sixth lay dead, he called upon the Power of the Void, and smote the earth with the firesword Arcratíne, cursing the Limnakorites. Then it was that the Great Rift opened in the depths, and Lake Avalon and Baz Apédnapath were formed, and also Baldrock and the Fire Rock Peninsula.
‘That’s the name of your sword, Korman! Could yours do that, open up a rift in the earth?’ asked Rilke.
‘It is the same sword,’ replied Korman.
The children were silent for a moment, taking this in.
‘Why hasn’t the Canyon filled with water?’ asked Rilke.
‘Good question!’ said Korman. ‘Because it is honeycombed with caves which, they say, go all the way to the sea, or issue in springs far away. But there is a lake at the bottom of the Canyon, and the inhabitants there live by its bounty, and boat upon its calm waters.’
‘Inhabitants?’ said Shelley in surprise, and Worriette popped her head out as if to look for them.
‘Yes. I have never come this way or met them, but Traders cross this pass and exchange dried apples (a scarce resource these days) and other fruits for the wares of the Canyon folk.’
‘What are their wares?’
‘Books, diamonds and Icons, mostly.’
‘Icons! You mean pictures of saints and things? Is it a monastery or something?’
‘Not exactly. There are many factions in the Canyon, all seeking truth, each following a different path to it. There are many mystic traditions there, some based on Kor-Zuratimaddi, the Crystal World, some on Kor-Marrépag, Kor-Achmadditi, or Kor-Ovotannama: the Water, Fire, or Air worlds. Some follow the tradition of the Makers’ world; not so many follow that of the Aghmaath, Kor-Zürglim as it was. A few follow the Guardian World tradition, and paint icons of things from my home world. I have bought one of those paintings, a small one, and not by one of the Masters, but it brought me good cheer in my cave of vigil.’
‘Are there any icons of Earth, I mean, Kor-Edartha?’
‘Yes. They paint the Lady of Avalon, and her maidens and symbols of her wisdom: the Grail and the Sword in the Stone which was forged by Calibur the Edarthan, whose sons came to Aeden long ago and set up as smiths in Baz Apédnapath...
‘My sword was made by them!’ said Rilke, and drew it to show the mark of the sons of Calibur.
‘Indeed it was!’ said Korman, looking at the icon of a sword in an anvil-stone stamped on the hilt. ‘Look after it, for the forge where it was made has been cold for a thousand years. The sons of Calibur became icon-painters and some wandered off seeking to return to Edartha or crossed to Tímathia. And some went to the Fire World, they say.’
‘But back to the present: others of the icon-makers paint the cross which came to Aeden by my ancestors – it is a sign for them that the Balance will one day be restored – though with suffering. Vertical for the transcendent sky and the idealistic masculine, horizontal for the outstretched arms of earthly love and the all-forgiving feminine. Also they paint images of the Kortana, which they say are from visions they have seen. And they firmly believe that this Jewel-Caller will be a girl. I have heard that there is still a great hope in some of their traditions that the Lady will restore Aeden, through great sufferings, with the help of her Chosen One, the Kortana. Alas, the painters of those icons will be among the first to be taken away for endarkenment if and when the Travellers finally conquer the Canyon.’
‘I saw a little painting of the Lady on the wall at your place,’ said Shelley to Rilke.
‘I like that icon!’ replied Rilke. ‘It had real gold leaf for her robe. And jewels for her eyes, and real amber varnish that made it glow.’
‘That would have been painted in the Canyon,’ said Korman. ‘Alas, it will bring down the wrath of the missionaries, if they see it, and it would be taken, trampled and ritually burned.’
They were descending now, treading carefully to avoid slipping on loose rocks. There was a breeze in their faces, and Shelley thought she could smell salt air and seaweed. ‘The Oceans of another world!’ thought Shelley. To their right, the Spur rose toward the Tor Enyása. They followed a ledge that angled down, then a flight of steps cut into the rock sloping down the other way, then another ledge, and finally they came to a grassy slope between two huge outcrops of rock like giant worn-down teeth.
To their right and lower down, in a little valley sloping towards the Canyon was a cluster of dark cave openings in a reddish cliff-face. Outside the openings were several people in rough brown clothes standing and gesturing in front of something familiar to Shelley, but completely unexpected: a large artist’s easel. Then she noticed, in folds of the hillside, several other lone artists – if that was what they were – standing or sitting in front of smaller easels. All were oblivious to the travellers. Shelley saw the paintbrushes in their hands: they were definitely painting.
‘Stay close, but I think they’re harmless,’ said Korman, smiling slightly. ‘They look like defectors from the community of the Canyon.’
He led them down to meet the defectors. Soon the group by the large easel was talking enthusiastically with Korman, exchanging news and views. As he suspected, in recent years there had been a break-away group among the icon-painters, and they had founded a little village of artists, musicians and poets in this valley overlooking the Canyon. There they painted views of nature, as well as visionary paintings and mystical diagrams, and composed poems about the unification of all the traditions into a brave new culture.
They were very interested in Shelley, and wanted to paint her. She was flattered, but shy. Korman told her, ‘Let them. They wish to honour you.’ In the end she agreed. Korman stood watch and Rilke played with Worriette while she sat on a weathered rock, looking east over the Canyon and past Baldrock to the faint sea horizon, while they fussed around her and argued with each other as they painted. Some worked together on a single canvas, and others worked singly, bent over small polished wooden slabs, or sketching on sheets of coarse paper made from flattened reeds like papyrus.
When they were finished (at least their sketches and preliminary brushwork), the artists asked her to judge their works. Some were almost unrecognisable as portraits of Shelley; very abstract and surrounded by odd-looking symbols. The rest were ravishingly beautiful, totally idealised likenesses, one looking eerily like the painting of the Lady at Rilke’s house. Shelley was moved by all of them, but could not believe she looked anything like the Goddess figures they had painted.
Before they left for the Bottomless Canyon, they were invited up the valley into the largest of the caves, the Cave of Meeting, for a communal meal. There were many ornate alcoves in the cave, filled with icons and little sculptures, and the walls were decorated with murals in red ochre and charcoal and cobalt
blue. The artists talked and laughed a lot during the meal, sitting around long tables made from single slabs of wood. They sang songs they had composed themselves, and old songs of Aeden, and drank a whisky made from the local grain, a kind of wild wheat, which grew along with wildflowers and herbs in terraced gardens below the caves.
The artist across the table from the visitors, a small, dark-haired, earnest man who made nervous movements with his hands and blinked a lot, told them about many things, mostly matters of craft and the creation of beautiful paintings. He had renamed himself Azure when he left his sect in the Canyon, ‘After my favourite colour,’ he confessed, ‘and also symbolizing the Sky of Unlimited Imagination.’
‘Do you make everything yourselves?’ asked Shelley, fascinated by their independence and free, creative way of life.
‘Good heavens, no!’ Azure laughed. We are much too busy painting or composing to make everything. We trade. For example, these cups and plates are of porcelain made in the valley of the Milkwater stream by the villagers of Potterville. I love the dark blues and azures, don’t you?’
‘I’ve heard of Potterville!’ put in Rilke. ‘Father was going to take me there one day. You go down the Pebblebrook ‘til you get to Milkwater, then you go upstream ‘til you get to Potterville. Father says they have life-sized statues made of shiny blue and white porcelain, and the stream runs white like milk from the clay. It’s a long, long way to get there.’
‘Ah!’ said Azure, smiling. ‘You’re from the Pebblebrook valley. They say further up that valley in the Badlands is the way to the lost caves of the Padmaddim.’
‘Yes!’ said Shelley, ‘Korman and I have been there. It’s wonderful. But the entrance is hidden by magic.’
‘So some people did survive after the book-burnings and the exile of the knowledge-lovers! Do they still keep the ancient secrets?’ asked Azure eagerly, twitching his fingers and blinking fast.
‘Some of them are in the caves we visited,’ replied Korman. ‘Others may be with the Delvers, who moved on and now are lost to us.’
‘So, when will the people of Aeden come back together to defeat the Aghmaath? We all follow our own light here, and I am one of the Unifiers, who paint mandalas of the integration of all the strands of wisdom, from all the Nine Worlds. But we only guess. How amazing it would be to have some of the old books!’
‘There is a whole library in the caves of the Padmaddim,’ said Korman.
‘Alas, we are now separated by the Aghmaath as well as by the divisions of our own beliefs. We know that missionaries of the Aghmaath have been going down from the High Pass which you have just crossed, and into Milkwater valley. We have not seen Traders from that valley for months now. We think Potterville has been converted to the Aghmaath.’
‘You are probably right; we know that Millbrook has fallen. How is it that your people here have not succumbed, living so close to the Pass? The missionaries must surely have visited you.’
‘Yes, several times. But we love life and freedom too much to fall for their theology. We here all came from the strict systems of the Canyon communities, looking for a brave new world, and fresh air and sunshine and big views from high mountains. It may be that they are right, and the Void will swallow all life in the end, but we want to live in hope, to touch true Life before we die, not give up hope and become slaves worshipping a negation. And we have all sworn to follow the Rule of Beauty, Truth, Freedom and Love. They may have Truth on their side – we hope not – but they certainly do not have Beauty, Freedom and Love. And what is Truth without those?’ He blinked hard, as if to shut out the very idea.
‘Well said. Perhaps you do not know it, but the Lady also will be protecting your thoughts from their webs of deceit.’
‘Some of our number think so too. They say they have seen a vision of Her, and ever after they try to capture in paint the beauty of that vision. Also they look for a Chosen One sent by her to unify Aeden… and restore… the Jewel of Life.’ He stammered, looking at Shelley and drumming his fingertips together nervously. Her heart leapt at the mention of the Chosen One, but she just smiled and said nothing.
‘Let us hope they will not be disappointed. Perhaps she is closer than they know,’ said Korman, not looking at Shelley, but she blushed.
‘Let it be!’ said Azure, ‘Let it be!’
After the meal there was a meeting of the whole community. Korman spoke of the threat of the Aghmaath, and they discussed ways to resist them. Some laughed when Korman said that he wanted to go down into the Bottomless Canyon, because he needed to disappear for a while.
‘You’ll never get out! They’ll all demand that you study their teachings for a year and a day,’ they predicted. But they became more serious when he mentioned the Thorn hedge and told them of their narrow escape.
‘Times are getting grim, if Applegate has fallen,’ said one. ‘Was that not part of her special domain? Where is the Lady in all this? Has she forgotten Aeden?’
‘No,’ said Korman, ‘She has not forgotten. She suffers for this land, and if it were not for her magic, woven in the very shadow of the thorns, they would already have overrun this place and all of Aeden.’
‘Where are you going with these two children?’ asked the oldest of the artists, a poet named Metaphor. ‘If you know the ways of the Lady, we would welcome you to stay here with us and help us resist the Aghmaath. Is that not a sword at your side, and are you not one of the Guardians?’
‘I am. But I am an outcast from that Order, and my sword arm is withered. And now I am on a sacred mission from the Lady, to bring Shelley safely to the lost Faery refuge of Ürak Tara, or die in the attempt.’
‘A pity. You could have helped us. Ürak Tara, you say! Does it even exist? But Korman, reconsider your idea of going to the Bottomless Canyon. Easily in, perhaps, but not easily out. Some of us believe we have seen the young girl here before, in a dream. Could she be the Kortana? If so, the factions in the Canyon will want to keep her there. They may even fight over her. With the best of intentions, of course. They will all want to initiate her into their way of thinking, so that the promised reunification will be according to their beliefs.’
‘We must take that risk. The Trackers hunt for us even as we speak, and we must go where they cannot easily follow.’
‘Perhaps, then, there may be a way of initiation to be found in the Canyon, perhaps a combination of the teachings, so that the long and dangerous journey to Ürak Tara would be unnecessary?’
‘No! Nothing less than a return to the full wisdom of the Old Order will suffice. This was the message I received in my vision:
Seek for the lost faery hill
Where the Masters of Wisdom dwell
Where the Makers’ Labyrinth still
Unweaves the mindweb’s spell.’
‘You speak as a seer, Korman!’ cried Metaphor. ‘So be it. Find the ancient Labyrinth, if it still exists, before the Aghmaath devour this land, and freedom is no more! And may the Lady be with you! But if you will take my advice, do not go to Baz Apédnapath as Korman, last Tidak of the Tor Enyása.’
Korman thought for a moment, wondering if he could do that and yet not lie. For Guardians do not lie. Finally he said, ‘I will go as Nimmath, the Newborn, for in truth I am a new man as I at last accompany the Kortana in the path of Faery.’
The eating and singing and talking had taken all afternoon, and outside it was already getting dark. The artists pressed them to stay the night. Shelley was relieved when Korman accepted their invitation. Most of the artists then went to their own caves, while the visitors stayed in the Cave of Meeting. Metaphor and Azure, with some of the other more serious artists, showed Shelley and Korman many blueprints and a model of a city they wanted to build, like Petra on Earth, a city carved into the rock, not in a dim canyon like their former home, but catching the sun high in the Guardian Arm on either side of the High Pass. There would be towers of stone on the top of the Arm, capped with silver and topped with great crystals. Ther
e would be dance halls and swimming pools and long slides and tall swings and a sacred Labyrinth and a temple to Beauty, Truth, Love and Freedom, honouring all the Nine Worlds and their wisdoms, and a library and gallery for all the books that would be written and the paintings that would be painted, and the sculptures. Shelley saw the light in their eyes as they described the architecture of their Utopia. Then they unrolled the plans, detailed mandala-like diagrams which depicted the manner of life and the wisdoms and institutions that would ensure the happiness of all and give the greatest possible freedom to all.
‘But this can only come to pass if Aeden is unified and the Aghmaath killed or driven out of Aeden,’ said Metaphor wistfully, rolling up the blueprints of their Utopia and putting them away.
‘Or converted back to love of Life,’ added Korman.
Rilke was yawning and fidgeting. He had been fascinated with the blueprints, but now he was exhausted. Azure showed him and Shelley to their little bedrooms cut from the living rock, not smooth and shiny limestone like the caves of Barachthad, but rough, reddish sandstone, banded with honey-coloured lines, like the grain of cedarwood. The beds were cosy alcoves filled with heather, aromatic dried lavender and even the valuable downy hair of mountain goats, gathered from thornbushes in the hills. There were bowls of water for washing on rough stone pedestals, and plain but clean towels of linen.
Shelley washed, and got Rilke to wash also. His face was grubby from scrabbling in the soil on the High Pass, trying to dig up a goat skull while Shelley was looking at the cave. She tried giving Worriette a wash, but she grimaced and squirmed out of her arms, jumped to the floor, then went wild with relief at her narrow escape from water, scampering around the cave. Shelley flopped in a chair made from a hollowed-out stone lined with soft mountain-goat felt and watched Rilke play with Worriette, jumping in and out of his bed, seeking her where she was burrowing into the heather, scattering heather and goat-hair over the floor. But nobody minded. In the end Rilke jumped into bed and stayed there, curled up with the little wurrier, by turns feeding her a piece of apple and eating one himself. He sleepily called for Shelley to tell him a story from Earth. Shelley, yawning, told him the story of the Happy Prince. By the time the impoverished writer in the garret had received the jewel from the little swallow (and Shelley felt a lump in her throat and tears stinging her eyes), he was fast asleep, his arm round the sleeping Worriette. Shelley felt like a mother, full of tenderness as she tucked him in and blew out the candle.
She lay in her bed, smelling the lavender, gazing at the candlelight dancing on the rough ceiling, and fingering the crystal she had picked up in the cave in the High Pass. It gleamed in the warm yellow light as she tried her light-calling powers on it. To her delight, it began to glow faintly. She blew out her candle and fell asleep holding the glowing lightcrystal, wondering what other powers there might be in it, and whether she would ever get back to explore her crystal cave, and whether mountain cats could be tamed, and whether they ate wurriers or anklebiters.
Korman kept vigil at the cave mouth, thinking and meditating a long time before going to sleep with one eye on the darkness outside. Nothing moved there but the breeze coming down the valley and stirring the mists in the Bottomless Canyon below.