The Girl and the Guardian
There was nothing for it, she thought bitterly. She had to accept the ghastly reality of what had happened, take her life in her own hands, and leave the safety of the sacred island. The three days were up, and they had brought disaster for Korman. Now it was all up to her.
But the thought of crossing the lake, with that black thing lurking in the water, was more than she could face. She decided to wait another night and see what the morning might bring. A part of her still hoped, child-like, that Korman would just turn up again and everything would be back to normal.
In the swiftly failing light of midsummer’s day she settled in for another night in her tree. The tree was beginning to feel like an old friend, or like her bedroom back on Earth, at the top of the steep green stairway above the kitchen. Its knobbly branches were like an old man’s arms with tennis elbow, and the growing tips of its broad glossy leaves were velvety like deer-antlers.
Somehow she managed to get to sleep quite quickly, in spite of the doleful sound of the endarkened ones chanting endless hymns to the Void, coming faint but clear over the still water. There was nothing more to be done or hoped for, and she had given up looking ahead – it was all black.
But in the deep of the night, she had a dream about Korman, which made her feel that this disaster was somehow a wonderful mystery, part of a sublime plan.
She saw Korman enthorned in the alcove next to the Lady in the Blue Moon’s light, with the shimmering light she had seen that night in the crater, coming from his sword, only now it was coming through him out of the night sky, down into the thorns and the earth, and at the same time the mysterious power of the Zagonamara was shifting from the Bottomless Canyon and Baldrock, now in the power of the enemy, and flowing up from the earth under Lake Deadwater, through the Lady and back up into the sky, making a great circuit from sky to Korman, to earth to the Lady, and back into the sky, and this mysterious flowing energy was turning the thorns into crimson-blooming roses which rippled out from Korman and the Lady and filled all the valley with their sensuous perfume.
She woke up, feeling a great joy. It was Midsummer’s Night, and the Blue Moon had just risen. The chanting of hymns to the Void had stopped. All was silent. She remembered Quickblade’s words to her: ‘Think of me at the next Blue Moon! I will take out this flower and gaze on it, and as it opens in the moonlight, I will see you.’ Tears came into her eyes as she imagined him doing it that very moment, and she thought, ‘We’ll probably never meet again, now.’ But looking out over the mirror of the lake, stars reflected in its surface like hopeflowers in full bloom, she imagined the Zagonamara now flowing beneath it, and the thorns as they were in her dream, a beautiful sea of roses, and she heard the moonbirds singing songs to break the heart for joy, swooping and hovering like skylarks over the alcove where Korman and the Lady were enthorned.
Then, from across the lake the sound of Fairies singing wafted on fragrant breezes; high-pitched, haunting tunes, played with tiny flutes and violins that passed through notes too high for human ears, interweaving with each other and the moonbirds in a sad symphony. And the song was taken up by other Fairies in the trees all around her on the sacred island. Shelley imagined them, tiny hidden orchestras among the leaves, beyond the reach of the endarkened ones below. She smiled, full of mingled joy and sorrow. At that moment, life seemed mysteriously perfect.
It was then that, if she had been watching, she would have seen a little head bobbing across the lake towards the northern shore. Bootnip had given up waiting on the island and was looking for his master.
When Shelley awoke again, she looked blearily at the sad morning light. It was now the fourth day since Korman had left her on the island. She wondered how she could possibly have felt that all was well, when the two she loved most, besides Quickblade, and had had the most faith in, were now prisoners in the hated thorns. Yet her courage had returned in spite of her gloomy thoughts, and a happy lightness stayed with her as she pondered the road ahead, thinking over everything she could remember that Korman had told her.
‘So let’s see, I have to go up towards the Tor Enyása and then veer off to the north, and look for Ürak Tara in the Mountains of the Silver World. That’s Earth,’ she thought, and it felt strange that she would soon, if all went well, be on the mountains named after her own home world. But Aeden now felt much more real to her than Earth – or at least, she felt herself to be somehow more real, more alive there.
When evening came she gathered her things, along with everything that she could take of Korman’s – it felt sad and strange to touch his things – picked up the staff she had cut from her tree, put on the necklace of Job’s tears which she had made during the long wait, and the medallion of the Boy Raiders that Quickblade had given her. Then she said a last goodbye to the courtyard, the tree, and the sacred well. She felt a shiver of fear as she looked down at the dark water, dead leaves on its surface turning slowly with upwellings from the bottom. But apart from the lingering sense that she was being watched, all seemed peaceful, and she wondered if she had only imagined the black snake. She wished she could have had more swims in the well. Then she remembered the golden goblets (she had recovered them from Bootnip, to his indignation). She ran back to get them from the little round table where Korman and she had shared their last meal together, and hid them in the dead leaves under the grapevine.
But as she walked staff in hand down the darkened track to the lake’s edge, Phagrapag, inquisitor of the Dark Labyrinth, appeared out of nowhere to claim her. He towered up in the darkness, holding a silver medallion (Shelley had no idea what it was, as Korman had kept it hidden). It was glowing with a golden radiance like a ship’s compass, and the air around it seemed to crackle, not with light but with darkness as if the very fabric of space had been cracked like an egg, and the Void was showing through, a threat and a horror even greater than the apparition of Phagrapag himself. Putting the Vapáglim away carefully into a deep pocket in his black robe, Phagrapag held out his withered arms.
‘Come, child. We have been waiting for you for a long time.’ In his huge dark forehead, his third eye flicked open, a hard, pitiless eye. The mindbolt that came from it flashed towards her before she could move, and she screamed as it hit. Then all she could think of was surrender, giving up, falling into the peaceful Void, joining all the others, Korman and the Lady and Hillgard, Rilke, Quickblade, Pipes. They were all there before her in the darkness of the Void, darker than night. They were beckoning to her. ‘Jump in, Shelley, the water’s fine,’ called Pipes, and she felt him pulling her in. Then another mindbolt hit, and fresh visions poured into her head, along with feelings of desire for the Void almost too strong to bear, as if in it were all possible objects of desire rolled into one. All she had to do was reach out and step in…
‘No, this isn’t real! Go away!’ she yelled. With a terrible wrench, she pulled herself away from the mindtrap and faced Phagrapag, who was so surprised to see such resistance in one so young, that he did not immediately grab her with his long birdlike arms. Never in all his long years of mastery of the Void had he failed to subdue a young subject with the first mindbolt. Shelley backed away from him. He stood open-mouthed for a second, gathering himself to spring. Shelley took her chance and, hoping it would really work on a live Aghmaath, she braced herself to hit him when he sprang, as she knew he would. The bristles on his neck stood out, and his eyes fixed on her forehead. She felt giddy and sick, but stood her ground.
Suddenly he launched into the air as if his feet had been coiled springs, and came down on her like a fighting-cock, arms and legs outstretched to slash her. She jabbed her staff into his side, dodging the flailing spurs and claws, and watched him spin in mid-air, just as Korman had said. She raised the staff again and swung it as hard as she could, cracking down on the vulnerable back. She heard the hiss of escaping breath as he thudded to the ground. She dropped the staff, pulled out her knife and jumped onto his knobbly body. He was wearing thornpod armour, under the black cloak. But
quick as thought she found the vulnerable point in the neck, and held the knife to it. Phagrapag tensed as if to fight, then went suddenly limp, gasping for breath. But he sniggered grimly.
‘Kill me, and my brethren will bury me, and then I will rise again as a Mother Thorn, more powerful than ever, and one day you will hang in torment in my branches!’ he wheezed. ‘There is no escape for you this way! You, the so-called Chosen One, are only marked out for suffering, until you at last come to know, in the bitterness of utter defeat, the futility of life and the false hopes you were fed. Yield to your true destiny, give in to the Void now and show your people the way!’
Shelley growled at him, anger swelling in place of fear. He continued talking, head turned to one side, body facing down, polluting the sacred ground of the island. He was eloquent and almost triumphant in the face of his own death:
‘But, kill me or not, I do not care! Either way, your destiny will find you, O “Chosen One,” and then you will surely yield to the Void!’
In her fierce rage, Shelley was not susceptible to his mindtraps, and now, overcome with loathing, she felt her arm tighten to slice the blade into the hated neck. She gritted her teeth, and began to move the knife. But something, deeper than her hatred, stopped her. She jumped up and stood over him. ‘My destiny is not what you think,’ she panted. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of “Live and let live?” I won’t kill you, even though you deserve it.’
But Phagrapag’s hand was already at his dagger, and half-turning, he slashed at her ankle, seeking to hamstring her. She felt the slicing of the blade, but she jumped high and brought her heels down onto his back again, as hard as she could. He fell face-forward, gasping. She pelted down the path, stumbled and got up, and now she heard the harsh hissing breath of Phagrapag close behind. Her only thought now was to hide in the water. ‘Aghmaath hate the water, Aghmaath hate the water…’ the words she had heard Korman say long ago repeated in her mind as she prayed it was true. She was just wondering how on earth this old Aghmaath had appeared out of nowhere, when she burst out of the forest and fell headlong into the lake.
Shelley has always hated diving, and now she remembered why. The cold water shot up her nostrils, and she opened her mouth to breath, and choked in more water. She struggled to get her head above the surface, coughed out water and gasped for breath. Phagrapag was already standing at the shore, and his third eye flicked open again, glowing with a cold wrath in the middle of his bony forehead. More deadly mindbolts came spewing out at her. With a sickening effort of will she wrenched her gaze from the hypnotic eye and ducked under the water. The mindbolts bounced over the surface and vanished. She put her head up to breathe again, but as she turned to swim away, she gaped in dismay as a new horror reared up out of the lake, inches away from her face. She screamed.
A huge black snake-like face with a thick, curving neck that continued down into the water, was staring at her. As if mesmerised, she looked helplessly into the deep amber-bright eyes like the xanagath of Korman’s ring. They were somehow reassuring, even soulful, eyes, and they flicked from her face to her pursuer and back again. Without warning, the creature hissed – or was it a sigh? – and opened its scaly mouth, showing sharp teeth. She cowered back, but to her amazement, words came out, thin and hissing, but clear.
‘I’m Thornfoot, that wasss, in the lassst homunculusss. I’m accursssed, of courssse, but if you don’t mind my sssaying, according to him, ssso are you!’ It made a sound like an hysterical, hissing laugh. Gill flaps opened to either side of the big, glistening face, and long sharp spines stood out, but intuitively Shelley understood that this desperate, crazed creature was a friend. But now Phagrapag, cursing the taralak who had dared to come between him and his rightful subject, was sending out more mindbolts. She screamed, ‘Let me past! I’m being attacked!’
‘I know, yesss, yesss, aren’t we all, tonight?’ said the snake. Then came the hissing laugh again. Shelley now noticed that the mindbolts were bouncing off them. The snake, or Thornfoot, was indifferent to them. ‘Oh, those?’ he said casually, seeing her panic. ‘I used to do those tricksss onccce. In a passst incarnation, you sssseee,’ he said, smiling. ‘But enough, let’sss go. I’ve watched you, I have, and I like what I sssee. You’re like the lady they call the “accursssed witch”. That putsss you on the side of my angelssss.’
Again he laughed. Then he was suddenly serious again: ‘Now, little Goddessss, will you get on my back or not?’ He turned away from her, and a scaly back appeared in the water behind his head. Shelley took a deep breath, and before she had a chance to think twice, she was astride the creature and being towed out into the lake at a rate of knots.
‘Greetings to Rakmad, “brother” Phhhagrapag!’ called the snake behind him as they sped away, laughing hysterically.
But Phagrapag’s harsh cry, full of rage, came after them, ‘Worm, thrice-accursed taralak! How dare you help her? But she cannot escape. Look for my appearing on every dark night! Not even her world is safe from me now!’ Then he laughed too, a harsh cackle coming over the water from the fast-receding shadow of the sacred island.
Shelley felt herself slipping as she was pushed backwards by the water racing past, and she desperately grabbed the base of the two long flippers (or wings) that projected behind the neck of the monster, and let her legs trail behind. ‘That’sss better,’ came the voice from the front end of the alien creature she was now trusting with her life. And it sped up, lashing the water to foam as it went. She felt dizzy and exhilarated by the mad power of the creature’s motion as she was swung from side to side, and she felt all her worries recede behind the sheer thrill of the moment.
Soon they were recklessly approaching the northern shore, and Shelley realised she did not know where they were going. She had been so glad to escape the terrible Phagrapag, and so delighted with her new friend, that she hadn’t thought any further ahead. The Blue Moon was gone, and the darkness was relieved only by the stars of Aeden shining through the humid haze of the valley, glinting on the waves of their passage through the lake. Shelley felt the power in the sinuous creature. Somehow she could no longer think of it as a snake; it was more like a mutation of an Aghmaath, a reversion to some aquatic form. She remembered Korman’s words, that although he had not yet met one, there would be good Travellers. ‘But perhaps it’s just pretending to be good, and it’s really going to take me to the Avenue of Despair and throw me into the thorns,’ she thought. ‘Or maybe it’s not on anyone’s side, and just likes getting people to laugh at its jokes and trust it – before it eats them.’
Now they had almost reached the northern shore and were slowing down. ‘Isss thisss where you want to go, my Goddessss of the well? To the thornsss where the other Goddessss is held?’ he asked, and she saw the forked tongue as he spoke.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Shelley, still staring at the creature’s tongue. But now she felt sick with a horror of the thorn alcove, and added, ‘But I can’t stay. I mustn’t get caught too, or I’ll let everyone down.’
‘Then we will look, and sssay goodbye, and then I will take you home. But where isss that, now? Not the Valley anywhere, isss it? Perhapsss you could live on the sssacred island, and eat applessss, and I could be your friend and protect you?’
‘No, I can’t go back there… I have to… to get to a place called Ürak Tara. It’s over there somewhere.’ She waved towards the northern slopes, to the left of the Tor Enyása which was just visible from water level, towering menacingly over the head of the valley.
‘Thornfoot is fassst. He will take you through and under and around all the thorn thicketsss.’
Shelley was shivering now that they had stopped, and the breeze was playing over her wet clothes. Her sodden pack felt like lead on her shoulders and they floated low in the water. But she had to know, before she went on, who or what this creature was.
‘First, um… what are you, I mean who are you, if you don’t mind me asking?’ she stammered.
The serp
ent blinked until she thought it was having a seizure, but then it said, ‘I am a creature, like you. I “inherited” thisss body that you sssee before you, and everybody huntsss me like a…like a… ’
‘Dog?’ ventured Shelley.
‘No, more like a sssnake, actually. There isss a great prejudice among the legged against the unlegged, you sssee.’ He laughed a bitter little laugh. ‘No really, it’sss my fault. I am older than I look, in a sssort of way. I’m a taralak, asss they call usss – one of the Travellers that passsed the age of the Final Gathering – after the second regeneration, you sssee – and didn’t want to be gathered, ssso I broke the Great Taboo, and grew myssself another homunculusss. But thisss isss what came out.’ He laughed until his body shook and made little waves in the water.
‘Some of usss were ssseriously crazy people, we third-lifersss. Rakmad the Thirteenth, for example… But we don’t usssually lassst long enough to do much damage to the ‘sssane’ ones… I lasssted longer than mossst, essscaped the hunting by going aquatic, and that’sss when I got to thinking. Or, ssshould I sssay, I went mad for a while. About ssseven yearsss, I think. Forgot nearly all my ssseriouss Traveller knowledge. Laughed a lot, I remember that. Nearly died, didn’t care, got wassshed up on the shore. When I woke up, like a new-born homunculusss, I wasss being looked after by the Lady, the one that’sss in the thornsss now. At leassst, I think it wasss her. Sshe fed me apples, and I got better – nearly sssane! But that wasss yearsss ago. Now, she’sss been hunted, and only I wasss left, alone in the lake. I hated them for that. I hunted sssome of them. But it didn’t feel any good. Ssso I usssed to go to the island a lot and hide from my brothersss that were, eat the applesss and look into the well, and weep or laugh by turnssss, and wonder about life.
‘Then one day I was fissshing, and I sssaw the Lady again, but it wasss you, ssswimming there, and I sssaid, ‘The Lady’ssss back!’ and I watched you.’
‘You did!’ said Shelley, blushing.
‘But I was ssshy. And then I sssaw you being hunted, and I sssaved you. Life is ssstrange, but sssometimes I like it, don’t you? Don’t want to go ssstraight to the Void, not yet, do we, not while there’s friendsss to talk to in lakessss?’
‘No, I’d rather not anyway,’ said Shelley, laughing. Now this half-mad creature was like a friend.
She brought herself back to the thing she feared but knew she had to do. She asked in a small shaky voice, ‘OK, now we understand each other – sort of – can you take me to the Lady?’
The serpent replied, ‘Yesss, I’ve been before, onccce, it’s not niccce, but if you come with me I will go there onccce more, jussst for you. Hold on!’ He flicked his tail – or whole body – and surged on towards the shore, and before she had time to change her mind they had slithered up the bank, crossed the Avenue of Despair, and glided to a halt in the alcove where the Lady still stood enthorned.