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Flying South Chapter 9
Here is chapter 9 of my novel Flying South beyond the cut!
It's finally getting too hot to work in the garden around midday in Western Australia! This morning put up shade cloth over my lettuce and the new thyme plants I got yesterday. I brought in a bucketload of potatoes a couple of days ago and now the first tomato is beginning to turn red on one of the plants! I lead such a thrilling life these days. If only the climbing beans would move along a bit faster.
I have been talked into swelling the numbers of a friend's bellydance/Latin dance troupe in the Christmas Pageant this year. After suspiciously making sure I would not have to do anything resembling dance, I said I'd do it. First it's the bearded nuns and now Latin dancers.
FLYING SOUTH
Chapter 9
I had no chance to exchange any word with Catri from that moment until nightfall. While I brought in a load of wood, she was running between pantry and kitchen with supplies while Isa called at her to hurry. Then I scoured last night’s pots while she worked the butter churn.
By noon I envied the unknown drudges for whom our arrival had meant a holiday. By mid-afternoon, I ached all over, worse than I had when I’d first fallen to the ground on Boorlo. At least, it felt like that now. Catri was busy chopping vegetables, a set expression on her face which made me wonder whose severed heads she saw in her mind.
I was helping Isa get a joint of meat on to the spit to begin the night’s roast when Mariel looked in. “One of you, run up and fetch my shawl from the room,” she said curtly and Isa nodded to me.
“Take that with you,” she said and pointed at a plate of bread and cheese which she had set on the long table. I grabbed it and hastened up the stairs.
“It’s Lily,” I said outside the door so as not to panic Erlina and Kieran, then opened it. A covered bucket stood not far away. I managed not to kick it as I passed, setting the plate down on the window seat. Erlina sat there, looking half-asleep with boredom, and Kieran was on his feet near the beds. I glanced out, but the window was fortunately too high for anyone to look in. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“Sister Mariel was right about dull,” Kieran said honestly.
“Ailsa,” I cautioned him. “She’s called Ailsa here. I know it doesn’t seem like it matters when you’re not talking to anyone, but just in case.”
I was curious about young Kieran. Erlina had had no choice, perhaps, though we’d yet to investigate that. Kieran, though, he had no magic and hadn’t been in any danger, so why had he come trailing along after his sister? Perhaps he was fond of her, I thought, though my brother and I had never been close, so it was hard for me to get my mind around the idea that loyalty had brought this young boy after his sister. I went back to the bucket and picked it up. “See you later this evening.”
Kieran followed me to the door. I turned so that I could open it and hold the bucket clear and found the boy so close that we were eye to eye. He was nearly my height at just eleven. “I know it’s dull,” I said weakly. “At least you’re not working in the kitchen.”
“I wanted to ask you . . .” he said and hesitated.
“It’s all right. Ask me what you like.”
“Why did you become a sorceress if it’s so dangerous?”
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” I said, skirting the subject of his mother the Queen being ever so slightly off her rocker. “I ran away because my parents wanted me to marry . . .” I trailed off lamely. Tom Arrowsmith, my onetime betrothed, probably wasn’t a fit subject for a child either.
Kieran waited for me to finish speaking with an eerie adult politeness. "They burned a woman a month ago," he said. It sounded worse, said by a child. His eyes flicked to Erlina, sitting crosslegged on the window seat. She hadn’t begun to eat, as though she was waiting for her young brother. "Right in front of the palace,” Kieran said softly. “She was one of the kitchen maids and someone saw her light a cooking fire with her finger - pointing at it. They dragged her out and tied her to a post." Kieran's face trembled a bit. Erlina didn't move. "We weren't supposed to see but we got away from Gerany - she's our governess. Then they lit the fire and the maid screamed. Some guards took us away then, but we could smell her burning." Again he looked at his sister and I knew what he had to be thinking.
"I'm sorry," I said, my throat dry with nerves. "The Inquisition
. . . weren't like that before." Not so obvious, anyhow.
"It wasn't the Inquisition," Kieran said. "It was just people. Some of the other servants and people who were outside tied her and lit the fire."
He stared at me and I had no idea what to say. I didn’t know how to talk to children, of whatever social class. Being one hadn’t provided much training, it seemed. Sometimes I felt as though I was still a child myself because I kept facing strange things for which I had no answers, but this child was looking at me as though I was an adult. In the end I did the only thing I could think of, though I wasn’t any good at it; I reached out and put my free arm around him and hugged him. I managed to put down the slops bucket before anything awful happened and took Kieran over to the window seat where I sat down with him and his sister. Erlina felt stiff and wooden when I hugged her, but then she relaxed a little. Kieran cried but she didn’t. I sat there with them until I knew Mariel was about to come looking.
“I have to go back to work,” I told them. “Eat your lunch. It’s not that long before we finish and then we’ll come back.”
I lied. It was well after nightfall, not until the last of the inn’s customers had been pushed out the door to stagger homeward, when Isa told us to go to bed, we’d start afresh in the kitchen in the morning. She had taken the children some supper, in the busiest time of the evening when no one was likely to know who was where. On the way upstairs, I told Mariel and Catri what had happened earlier with the children. I spoke as quietly as I could but Mariel still hushed me.
When we entered the room, it was dark; the children had been forbidden to light candles just in case anyone was curious. “We’re here,” Erlina said.
Mariel set a ball of golden-red spellfire burning. It chased the shadows into the corners and we saw Erlina and Kieran, very still, huddled on the window seat.
“I’m going up to the attic, one flight of stairs further,” Mariel told me and Catri. “I’m going to try again to contact Harp Island for any news. I want one of you girls to stay awake while the children sleep. Shield the room, just in case. You two surely need the practice.”
Catri and I grimaced at each other once she was safely gone. “We aren’t sleepy,” Erlina said.
“Well, you shouldn’t have slept during the day,” I said. “Have a wash if you need one and get to bed.” A bit short, maybe, but I was so tired I didn’t want to think any more.
Kieran wasn't any trouble; he stared wonderingly at the spellfire, then curled up in the blankets like a pup and was soon asleep, but Erlina sat on the end of the other bed and gazed at the spellfire set above our heads. "I could do that, you know," she said. “I can feel that I could, but I don’t know how to start it.”
“Someone has to show you,” I told her.
"Will you teach me to do it properly?"
"I can't, I'm not a full sorceress. It’s probably better if you don’t learn anything else. So far they only know you can light fires.”
“My mother hates witches,” Erlina said. “She hates me. Why shouldn’t I learn everything now?”
"Princess?" She looked at me and I willed the sphere of spellfire gone, dropping shadows over us in a nice dramatic move, if I say so myself. "Go to sleep."
Catri was noticeably drooping where she sat, so I told her to get some sleep. “I can stay awake for awhile. When I think I’m about to drop off, I’ll shake you.”
“You might have to shake hard,” she said and promptly lay down. Moments later I heard her even breathing . I stayed on my feet, fearing that I’d doze if I sat down in the window, and paced as quietly as I could between window and far wall. This soon got boring, so I risked sitting down. I’d sit for a few minutes then get up again.
Kieran’s shriek woke me and I jumped up in panic, looking around for Mariel. She wasn’t there. I didn’t know how she could, but Catri was still asleep. Erlina hadn’t woken either, she was lying next to her little brother, who was sitting up in the dark, staring at the wall. I got off the window seat and walked the few steps to him, saying, “Kieran, it’s all right. You had a bad dream, that’s all, you’re safe here.”
“He’s there,” Kieran said in a shaking voice, and he pointed at the wall. I followed his gesture, seeing only wood panelling, dimly visible in the narrow spill of moonlight finding its way through the window shutters.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Right there!”
I concentrated, realising that there was one change in the room; it was colder. The warmth from the inn below had at least partially warmed the room and over where I had been snoozing on the window seat, the temperature had been bearable, but over here on the bed, close to the wall, the air felt icy: the possible sign of a ghost.
Someone spirit-travelling was the same as a ghost, except that she would have a body to return to – or in this case he, though this was still difficult to accept. I closed my eyes and began the breathing exercises and preparations to put myself into trance. Hopefully this could be done fast enough that Kieran wouldn’t panic, thinking I had simply gone to sleep and left him with a nightmare. Hopefully I could do it at all. I wasn’t very good at calming myself to the degree necessary to leave my body, I tended to worry too much about the reality around me. I couldn’t . . . and I was there.
It had happened with the ease of waking up.
I was in a hot, reddish landscape with large boulders behind me and on the skyline. I wore an animal skin in the style Skyfire had worn it and my hair seemed longer. A man was standing in front of me, incongruously dressed in black velvet and satin; the now-familiar handsome bearded face of Warwick Asherley. His expression was cheerful and almost glowing, though with what I knew now, it seemed sinister to me. It was the glow of borrowed blood.
“You are learning,” he said, “though this isn’t quite the setting I expected you to choose.”
“I don’t know why I came back here,” I retorted, refusing to respond to the smile or the charm. “Why don’t you tell me; you seem to know everything that’s going on. What little girl did you kill this time for the privilege of talking to me?” I said nothing about frightening Kieran, hoping that he might not have identified the boy.
“The next time we meet it will be in flesh,” Asherley said, ignoring this. “You are closer to me and you have grown in power, which makes you easier to track because you still have no idea how to disguise that power. You left the dragonlands too early. Stupid girl, to be afraid of a few tribesfolk and their plans for you. You could have learned their power over several months and then left at your whim; your dream of old age on their beach is simply a might-be, the wish of their magician. It is a pity that you are not of noble blood; you might have better understood your responsibility to your people, which extends far beyond their petty understanding of power. I mean to return those of power to their true position, Amber. Sorceresses will stand high in royal council and favour. Remember this, when we meet.” He hesitated just long enough to give me hope, then smiled, crushing that hope as he said, “Now, I will speak with the royal children whom you hide!”
Kieran appeared in his royal clothes, panicked and confused. Asherley looked at him carefully, then shrugged and the boy’s dream-image was gone. Then Erlina appeared, just as frightened but not panicking. To her this was a dream, I remembered, and she was no stranger to unpleasant dreams. Perhaps not even to this man, for she showed no surprise at seeing him, though her eyes widened when she saw me.
“Do you remember me?” Asherley asked, confirming my guess. Erlina swallowed and nodded. “Erlina, Maiden of Albion,” Asherley said caressingly. “You are on the edge of disaster, my child, you are following evil women and risk the destruction of your family and their crown. If you return home, your demonic powers can be cleansed from you.”
“By you?” I blurted, hating the way my voice slipped and squeaked. “You’re the one who uses demonic powers – the way you get them is demonic! You killed children!”
Asherley shook his head at me: a schoolmaster disappointed with a pupil of whom he expects better.
“To win great powers, my child, great sacrifices must be made.”
My mind seemed frozen. As though he was an Inquisitor, I seemed unable to reach my magic and remove Erlina and myself back to the waking, the “real” world. When I tried to think of the words to pray to the Goddess, they wouldn’t come. I had no magic; I was simply a silly town girl daring to affront a noble lord. I was . . . sprawled on the floor on my face, with people shrieking above me and Mariel’s voice asking sharply, “What is going on here?”
I was frozen, but sweat lay on my skin, legacy of my dream-journey to the red land of the dragons. I got slowly to my feet and held out my hands to Mariel, trying to find the words to tell her. She gripped my hands, felt their cold, then touched the side of my face, noting the heat still lingering in my flesh. “Are you fevered?”
“No – a journey,” I blurted. “Asherley was here. Shadowform, but almost real, almost solid. Kieran could see him but I couldn’t – I went into trance . . .”
I expected Mariel to say something about my weak babbling, but she only glanced at Catri, belatedly awake, and said, “Take care of the boy,” like the captain of the guard. “Amber, help me. We must strengthen the wards, we need a proper circle of protection.”
We raised it, with me using most of my remaining energy, while Erlina continued to sleep. Kieran dropped off too and Catri folded blankets over both children. Only then did Erlina wake, with a little frightened yelp until she realised she really was awake. “I dreamed . . .” she said.
Mariel nodded at me. “It wasn’t a dream,” I said. “Or rather, it was, but the Wizard Lord chose it, he forced you into his dream. Tell Mariel what he said to you,” I prompted and she did. When she was done, she looked about the room, seeming more relaxed.
“It’s warmer,” she said in a small voice. “I feel like I’m somewhere he can’t find me.”
“You are,” Mariel said, so kindly it stunned me. “I’m sorry. We should have had a protective circle around you all day. I thought the lesser wards on the room would have been enough. You’re safe. He could not have harmed you, only frightened you.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I said nothing. When I clenched my hands, I felt sweat on my palms. It trickled down behind my ears and my heart seemed to thump faster than normal. “He’s stronger,” I said and my own voice sounded strange in my ears. “This is his land.”
“He doesn’t know where we are,” Mariel said, and tried to explain that someone who could speak in her dreams couldn’t necessarily locate us in waking life. Erlina didn’t look convinced either. I wasn’t sure whether or not Mariel believed what she was saying, but I didn’t think we had much of a hope if we ran without any idea of a destination in mind. Below in the inn’s cobbled courtyard came the sudden clatter of horses’ hooves and all of us jumped. It was very late for guests to arrive. Mariel patted Erlina’s shoulder and walked to the window to look. “I can’t see,” she said, “but I’d better go down. If it is guests, Isa will want help and I can shield what I am better than you two. Stay here and stay quiet, no matter what you hear. Even if I come to the door and say we need your help, do not reply. If I truly need you, I’ll come inside. Bolt the door.”
Freeing a bolt would be simple work for a full sorceress. I didn’t bother explaining for Erlina. Mariel looked incredibly tired and that was more frightening than an open threat. We listened to her footfalls on the wooden stairs. I sat down next to Erlina and Catri beside Kieran. “We can talk very softly,” Catri said, “but don’t move around.”
“Who do you think it is?” Erlina whispered.
“Maybe only late guests. It happens, when people are delayed on the road by bad weather, a damaged wheel or injured horse.” Catri spoke quite calmly but her face was tense. I let her try to soothe them. My thoughts had gone to something else; back to the dream Asherley had shared with us and further back, to the first stories which my fellow novices had told me in the Order House at Skarrel. Queen Catherine, the mother of present Queen Varimonde, had been sent evil dreams by the Wizard Lords, who wanted to take over the royal house. Queen Catherine had dreamed of her children dying in horrible accidents or illnesses. Varimonde had been one of those children. Had her mother talked to her of those things, of her fears, or had Asherley appeared to her and literally terrified her senseless? Something told me I was on the money.
“I’m going to take a look,” I said to Catri and walked to the window.
“Now?” she asked. “Isn’t what just happened enough?”
“He’s gone,” I said.
“You can’t be sure of that,” Catri argued. “And remember, you shouldn’t shapechange.”
“That’s without someone to call me back. You can do that, can’t you? Anyway, I’ll not be a bird, that wouldn’t work. I’ll be an ordinary barnyard rat and go down the side of the building, get a look at these guests from the outside of the inn and scuttle back inside. Mariel didn’t tell us not to.”
“She said stay here and stay quiet,” Catri objected.
“I’ll only take a few moments. She’s not going to get back here that fast.”
“Then I have to come with you.”
“You can’t leave these two alone!”
“Whisper,” Catri hissed, a noise worse than a shout. “Look, if I’m to summon you back, I have to know where you are. I can’t call you as though you really were a rat, not unless you lose your mind, which I admit is possible. I’m not that good. Two rats is better than one. Erlina, are you all right here with your brother for two minutes? We’ll go down to the courtyard, see what we can see, and come right back up.”
Erlina gave us a scared, abandoned look that almost but not quite made me change my mind. “You have to,” she said.
“That sounds like a plan,” I agreed.
It's finally getting too hot to work in the garden around midday in Western Australia! This morning put up shade cloth over my lettuce and the new thyme plants I got yesterday. I brought in a bucketload of potatoes a couple of days ago and now the first tomato is beginning to turn red on one of the plants! I lead such a thrilling life these days. If only the climbing beans would move along a bit faster.
I have been talked into swelling the numbers of a friend's bellydance/Latin dance troupe in the Christmas Pageant this year. After suspiciously making sure I would not have to do anything resembling dance, I said I'd do it. First it's the bearded nuns and now Latin dancers.
FLYING SOUTH
Chapter 9
I had no chance to exchange any word with Catri from that moment until nightfall. While I brought in a load of wood, she was running between pantry and kitchen with supplies while Isa called at her to hurry. Then I scoured last night’s pots while she worked the butter churn.
By noon I envied the unknown drudges for whom our arrival had meant a holiday. By mid-afternoon, I ached all over, worse than I had when I’d first fallen to the ground on Boorlo. At least, it felt like that now. Catri was busy chopping vegetables, a set expression on her face which made me wonder whose severed heads she saw in her mind.
I was helping Isa get a joint of meat on to the spit to begin the night’s roast when Mariel looked in. “One of you, run up and fetch my shawl from the room,” she said curtly and Isa nodded to me.
“Take that with you,” she said and pointed at a plate of bread and cheese which she had set on the long table. I grabbed it and hastened up the stairs.
“It’s Lily,” I said outside the door so as not to panic Erlina and Kieran, then opened it. A covered bucket stood not far away. I managed not to kick it as I passed, setting the plate down on the window seat. Erlina sat there, looking half-asleep with boredom, and Kieran was on his feet near the beds. I glanced out, but the window was fortunately too high for anyone to look in. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“Sister Mariel was right about dull,” Kieran said honestly.
“Ailsa,” I cautioned him. “She’s called Ailsa here. I know it doesn’t seem like it matters when you’re not talking to anyone, but just in case.”
I was curious about young Kieran. Erlina had had no choice, perhaps, though we’d yet to investigate that. Kieran, though, he had no magic and hadn’t been in any danger, so why had he come trailing along after his sister? Perhaps he was fond of her, I thought, though my brother and I had never been close, so it was hard for me to get my mind around the idea that loyalty had brought this young boy after his sister. I went back to the bucket and picked it up. “See you later this evening.”
Kieran followed me to the door. I turned so that I could open it and hold the bucket clear and found the boy so close that we were eye to eye. He was nearly my height at just eleven. “I know it’s dull,” I said weakly. “At least you’re not working in the kitchen.”
“I wanted to ask you . . .” he said and hesitated.
“It’s all right. Ask me what you like.”
“Why did you become a sorceress if it’s so dangerous?”
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” I said, skirting the subject of his mother the Queen being ever so slightly off her rocker. “I ran away because my parents wanted me to marry . . .” I trailed off lamely. Tom Arrowsmith, my onetime betrothed, probably wasn’t a fit subject for a child either.
Kieran waited for me to finish speaking with an eerie adult politeness. "They burned a woman a month ago," he said. It sounded worse, said by a child. His eyes flicked to Erlina, sitting crosslegged on the window seat. She hadn’t begun to eat, as though she was waiting for her young brother. "Right in front of the palace,” Kieran said softly. “She was one of the kitchen maids and someone saw her light a cooking fire with her finger - pointing at it. They dragged her out and tied her to a post." Kieran's face trembled a bit. Erlina didn't move. "We weren't supposed to see but we got away from Gerany - she's our governess. Then they lit the fire and the maid screamed. Some guards took us away then, but we could smell her burning." Again he looked at his sister and I knew what he had to be thinking.
"I'm sorry," I said, my throat dry with nerves. "The Inquisition
. . . weren't like that before." Not so obvious, anyhow.
"It wasn't the Inquisition," Kieran said. "It was just people. Some of the other servants and people who were outside tied her and lit the fire."
He stared at me and I had no idea what to say. I didn’t know how to talk to children, of whatever social class. Being one hadn’t provided much training, it seemed. Sometimes I felt as though I was still a child myself because I kept facing strange things for which I had no answers, but this child was looking at me as though I was an adult. In the end I did the only thing I could think of, though I wasn’t any good at it; I reached out and put my free arm around him and hugged him. I managed to put down the slops bucket before anything awful happened and took Kieran over to the window seat where I sat down with him and his sister. Erlina felt stiff and wooden when I hugged her, but then she relaxed a little. Kieran cried but she didn’t. I sat there with them until I knew Mariel was about to come looking.
“I have to go back to work,” I told them. “Eat your lunch. It’s not that long before we finish and then we’ll come back.”
I lied. It was well after nightfall, not until the last of the inn’s customers had been pushed out the door to stagger homeward, when Isa told us to go to bed, we’d start afresh in the kitchen in the morning. She had taken the children some supper, in the busiest time of the evening when no one was likely to know who was where. On the way upstairs, I told Mariel and Catri what had happened earlier with the children. I spoke as quietly as I could but Mariel still hushed me.
When we entered the room, it was dark; the children had been forbidden to light candles just in case anyone was curious. “We’re here,” Erlina said.
Mariel set a ball of golden-red spellfire burning. It chased the shadows into the corners and we saw Erlina and Kieran, very still, huddled on the window seat.
“I’m going up to the attic, one flight of stairs further,” Mariel told me and Catri. “I’m going to try again to contact Harp Island for any news. I want one of you girls to stay awake while the children sleep. Shield the room, just in case. You two surely need the practice.”
Catri and I grimaced at each other once she was safely gone. “We aren’t sleepy,” Erlina said.
“Well, you shouldn’t have slept during the day,” I said. “Have a wash if you need one and get to bed.” A bit short, maybe, but I was so tired I didn’t want to think any more.
Kieran wasn't any trouble; he stared wonderingly at the spellfire, then curled up in the blankets like a pup and was soon asleep, but Erlina sat on the end of the other bed and gazed at the spellfire set above our heads. "I could do that, you know," she said. “I can feel that I could, but I don’t know how to start it.”
“Someone has to show you,” I told her.
"Will you teach me to do it properly?"
"I can't, I'm not a full sorceress. It’s probably better if you don’t learn anything else. So far they only know you can light fires.”
“My mother hates witches,” Erlina said. “She hates me. Why shouldn’t I learn everything now?”
"Princess?" She looked at me and I willed the sphere of spellfire gone, dropping shadows over us in a nice dramatic move, if I say so myself. "Go to sleep."
Catri was noticeably drooping where she sat, so I told her to get some sleep. “I can stay awake for awhile. When I think I’m about to drop off, I’ll shake you.”
“You might have to shake hard,” she said and promptly lay down. Moments later I heard her even breathing . I stayed on my feet, fearing that I’d doze if I sat down in the window, and paced as quietly as I could between window and far wall. This soon got boring, so I risked sitting down. I’d sit for a few minutes then get up again.
Kieran’s shriek woke me and I jumped up in panic, looking around for Mariel. She wasn’t there. I didn’t know how she could, but Catri was still asleep. Erlina hadn’t woken either, she was lying next to her little brother, who was sitting up in the dark, staring at the wall. I got off the window seat and walked the few steps to him, saying, “Kieran, it’s all right. You had a bad dream, that’s all, you’re safe here.”
“He’s there,” Kieran said in a shaking voice, and he pointed at the wall. I followed his gesture, seeing only wood panelling, dimly visible in the narrow spill of moonlight finding its way through the window shutters.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Right there!”
I concentrated, realising that there was one change in the room; it was colder. The warmth from the inn below had at least partially warmed the room and over where I had been snoozing on the window seat, the temperature had been bearable, but over here on the bed, close to the wall, the air felt icy: the possible sign of a ghost.
Someone spirit-travelling was the same as a ghost, except that she would have a body to return to – or in this case he, though this was still difficult to accept. I closed my eyes and began the breathing exercises and preparations to put myself into trance. Hopefully this could be done fast enough that Kieran wouldn’t panic, thinking I had simply gone to sleep and left him with a nightmare. Hopefully I could do it at all. I wasn’t very good at calming myself to the degree necessary to leave my body, I tended to worry too much about the reality around me. I couldn’t . . . and I was there.
It had happened with the ease of waking up.
I was in a hot, reddish landscape with large boulders behind me and on the skyline. I wore an animal skin in the style Skyfire had worn it and my hair seemed longer. A man was standing in front of me, incongruously dressed in black velvet and satin; the now-familiar handsome bearded face of Warwick Asherley. His expression was cheerful and almost glowing, though with what I knew now, it seemed sinister to me. It was the glow of borrowed blood.
“You are learning,” he said, “though this isn’t quite the setting I expected you to choose.”
“I don’t know why I came back here,” I retorted, refusing to respond to the smile or the charm. “Why don’t you tell me; you seem to know everything that’s going on. What little girl did you kill this time for the privilege of talking to me?” I said nothing about frightening Kieran, hoping that he might not have identified the boy.
“The next time we meet it will be in flesh,” Asherley said, ignoring this. “You are closer to me and you have grown in power, which makes you easier to track because you still have no idea how to disguise that power. You left the dragonlands too early. Stupid girl, to be afraid of a few tribesfolk and their plans for you. You could have learned their power over several months and then left at your whim; your dream of old age on their beach is simply a might-be, the wish of their magician. It is a pity that you are not of noble blood; you might have better understood your responsibility to your people, which extends far beyond their petty understanding of power. I mean to return those of power to their true position, Amber. Sorceresses will stand high in royal council and favour. Remember this, when we meet.” He hesitated just long enough to give me hope, then smiled, crushing that hope as he said, “Now, I will speak with the royal children whom you hide!”
Kieran appeared in his royal clothes, panicked and confused. Asherley looked at him carefully, then shrugged and the boy’s dream-image was gone. Then Erlina appeared, just as frightened but not panicking. To her this was a dream, I remembered, and she was no stranger to unpleasant dreams. Perhaps not even to this man, for she showed no surprise at seeing him, though her eyes widened when she saw me.
“Do you remember me?” Asherley asked, confirming my guess. Erlina swallowed and nodded. “Erlina, Maiden of Albion,” Asherley said caressingly. “You are on the edge of disaster, my child, you are following evil women and risk the destruction of your family and their crown. If you return home, your demonic powers can be cleansed from you.”
“By you?” I blurted, hating the way my voice slipped and squeaked. “You’re the one who uses demonic powers – the way you get them is demonic! You killed children!”
Asherley shook his head at me: a schoolmaster disappointed with a pupil of whom he expects better.
“To win great powers, my child, great sacrifices must be made.”
My mind seemed frozen. As though he was an Inquisitor, I seemed unable to reach my magic and remove Erlina and myself back to the waking, the “real” world. When I tried to think of the words to pray to the Goddess, they wouldn’t come. I had no magic; I was simply a silly town girl daring to affront a noble lord. I was . . . sprawled on the floor on my face, with people shrieking above me and Mariel’s voice asking sharply, “What is going on here?”
I was frozen, but sweat lay on my skin, legacy of my dream-journey to the red land of the dragons. I got slowly to my feet and held out my hands to Mariel, trying to find the words to tell her. She gripped my hands, felt their cold, then touched the side of my face, noting the heat still lingering in my flesh. “Are you fevered?”
“No – a journey,” I blurted. “Asherley was here. Shadowform, but almost real, almost solid. Kieran could see him but I couldn’t – I went into trance . . .”
I expected Mariel to say something about my weak babbling, but she only glanced at Catri, belatedly awake, and said, “Take care of the boy,” like the captain of the guard. “Amber, help me. We must strengthen the wards, we need a proper circle of protection.”
We raised it, with me using most of my remaining energy, while Erlina continued to sleep. Kieran dropped off too and Catri folded blankets over both children. Only then did Erlina wake, with a little frightened yelp until she realised she really was awake. “I dreamed . . .” she said.
Mariel nodded at me. “It wasn’t a dream,” I said. “Or rather, it was, but the Wizard Lord chose it, he forced you into his dream. Tell Mariel what he said to you,” I prompted and she did. When she was done, she looked about the room, seeming more relaxed.
“It’s warmer,” she said in a small voice. “I feel like I’m somewhere he can’t find me.”
“You are,” Mariel said, so kindly it stunned me. “I’m sorry. We should have had a protective circle around you all day. I thought the lesser wards on the room would have been enough. You’re safe. He could not have harmed you, only frightened you.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I said nothing. When I clenched my hands, I felt sweat on my palms. It trickled down behind my ears and my heart seemed to thump faster than normal. “He’s stronger,” I said and my own voice sounded strange in my ears. “This is his land.”
“He doesn’t know where we are,” Mariel said, and tried to explain that someone who could speak in her dreams couldn’t necessarily locate us in waking life. Erlina didn’t look convinced either. I wasn’t sure whether or not Mariel believed what she was saying, but I didn’t think we had much of a hope if we ran without any idea of a destination in mind. Below in the inn’s cobbled courtyard came the sudden clatter of horses’ hooves and all of us jumped. It was very late for guests to arrive. Mariel patted Erlina’s shoulder and walked to the window to look. “I can’t see,” she said, “but I’d better go down. If it is guests, Isa will want help and I can shield what I am better than you two. Stay here and stay quiet, no matter what you hear. Even if I come to the door and say we need your help, do not reply. If I truly need you, I’ll come inside. Bolt the door.”
Freeing a bolt would be simple work for a full sorceress. I didn’t bother explaining for Erlina. Mariel looked incredibly tired and that was more frightening than an open threat. We listened to her footfalls on the wooden stairs. I sat down next to Erlina and Catri beside Kieran. “We can talk very softly,” Catri said, “but don’t move around.”
“Who do you think it is?” Erlina whispered.
“Maybe only late guests. It happens, when people are delayed on the road by bad weather, a damaged wheel or injured horse.” Catri spoke quite calmly but her face was tense. I let her try to soothe them. My thoughts had gone to something else; back to the dream Asherley had shared with us and further back, to the first stories which my fellow novices had told me in the Order House at Skarrel. Queen Catherine, the mother of present Queen Varimonde, had been sent evil dreams by the Wizard Lords, who wanted to take over the royal house. Queen Catherine had dreamed of her children dying in horrible accidents or illnesses. Varimonde had been one of those children. Had her mother talked to her of those things, of her fears, or had Asherley appeared to her and literally terrified her senseless? Something told me I was on the money.
“I’m going to take a look,” I said to Catri and walked to the window.
“Now?” she asked. “Isn’t what just happened enough?”
“He’s gone,” I said.
“You can’t be sure of that,” Catri argued. “And remember, you shouldn’t shapechange.”
“That’s without someone to call me back. You can do that, can’t you? Anyway, I’ll not be a bird, that wouldn’t work. I’ll be an ordinary barnyard rat and go down the side of the building, get a look at these guests from the outside of the inn and scuttle back inside. Mariel didn’t tell us not to.”
“She said stay here and stay quiet,” Catri objected.
“I’ll only take a few moments. She’s not going to get back here that fast.”
“Then I have to come with you.”
“You can’t leave these two alone!”
“Whisper,” Catri hissed, a noise worse than a shout. “Look, if I’m to summon you back, I have to know where you are. I can’t call you as though you really were a rat, not unless you lose your mind, which I admit is possible. I’m not that good. Two rats is better than one. Erlina, are you all right here with your brother for two minutes? We’ll go down to the courtyard, see what we can see, and come right back up.”
Erlina gave us a scared, abandoned look that almost but not quite made me change my mind. “You have to,” she said.
“That sounds like a plan,” I agreed.
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Can all writers interested in having their work considered for The Year's Best Australian SF & Fantasy, Volume 2, edited by Bill Congreve and Michelle Marquardt, please dust off their stories? Eligibility: any story published by an Australian citizen resident anywhere in the world, or any by any permanent resident of Australia, during the calendar year of 2005. Please note, this is a reprint anthology, no originals please. We're purchasing non-exclusive world anthology reprint rights.
We're considering any speculative work in any genre up to around 20000 words. You can assume that we have seen the following:
Daikaiju
Aurealis
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine
Antipodean SF
NSW Writers Centre flash fiction contest
Mitch 4
Borderlands
Ticonderoga
Fables and Reflections
Shadowed Realms
Shadow Box
Infinitas Newsletter
sf-envision.com (the single issue print magazine)
scifi.com
Dark animus
Gastronomicon
We've also seen single author collections by Garth Nix, Rosaleen Love, Kaaron Warren, Steve Duffy, Chuck McKenzie and Derek Smith.
Anything else, we're very interested in. Please pass on this call for submissions to as many groups as possible. The more stories we see, the better the result.
Submissions by hardcopy to:
MirrorDanse Books
PO Box 3542
Parramatta NSW 2124
If convenient, please send photocopies of the publication. Please include an email address for us to get back to you, or include a business-sized SASE. Unfortunately we're not in a position to return manuscripts.