Authors: Kate Thompson
No one ever spends time in the were-forest unless they have to. The black leaves of the druze bushes lower the spirits as well as being highly poisonous. It’s considered a dangerous weed, partly because the plants store a huge amount of water in their roots and leaves, and if they become too plentiful in an area they can take water from the ground that would otherwise trickle down to the levels where we grow our food. If it were allowed to, it would spread down the mountainside towards the plain, but one of the main duties of a forester is to cut back any druze that shows up among the trees. The rhododendron seems to be a good match for it and provides a natural barrier, but occasionally a strong out-growth will break through and begin to spread. If that happens a party from the village goes up to clear it out, but there’s no point in trying to plant anything else in its place because the soil where it grows is poisoned for years after it has been cut. So the area has to be checked out on a regular basis unless the druze grows back and re-establishes itself.
I back-tracked for a few minutes, but in the dusk I must have been travelling among a mixture of druze and rhododendron for some time without realising it and there was no sign of an end to it as I descended. Darkness was catching up with me, and in desperation I made for a heavy thicket of rhododendron which I hoped would be untainted by druze. It isn’t that contact with it will harm you, not in the short term anyway. But it’s difficult to describe the effect that those black leaves have upon the mind. Not only do they lack colour themselves, but they seem to draw all other colours out of their environment so the world appears to consist of nothing except black and grey. I didn’t want to wake up to that.
It wasn’t until I stopped walking that I realised how cold it had become. I was only a mile or two below the permanent snow-line now, and the air smelled of ice already and held its crisp breath. I unpacked the food from my shawl before I cooled down too much and wrapped it around me to keep the heat in. My supplies tumbled around my feet and I laid out a mat of rhododendron leaves and heaped everything on to it, picking out the yellow-pips and eating them as I went along. I knew that snatchers didn’t come as high as this, but I wasn’t sure about pig-rats. There was no way to be sure they wouldn’t rob me. The best I could do was to curl myself up around my pile of food and hope for the best.
By now it was fully dark, but although I was physically tired I was far from sleep. I lay and listened to the last birds settling themselves in for the night and tried to ignore the depth of the silence that lay behind their rustlings. I was comfortable where I lay, and the shawl was surprisingly warm, but I feared the vast, empty silence of the mountain above. I longed for the comforting sound of the nightangel’s song, but I knew there was no chance of hearing it up there in the druze. So I tried to remember it instead, and at last I began to drift towards sleep.
T
HE SOUND, WHEN IT
came again, cut through me like an ice-cold dagger. All the warmth that I had preserved inside my shawl seemed to depart in that instant. This time there was no mistaking that it was real and that it came from somewhere out there in the night and not from inside my mind. The sound was anguished, agonized, ripping through the night like desperate claws, grasping at my soul.
I stayed dead still, clutching at the edge of the yellow shawl the way a baby grips her mother’s collar, grasping for comfort. My heart was hammering wildly in my chest, urging me to run; to put the source of such fear as far behind me as possible.
But I couldn’t run. Some sense of pride, or of purpose, or both, was holding me firm against my fear. And there was another thing as well; less clear to me but no less powerful. The beguiler’s cry sent shock and terror lancing through my heart, but those weren’t the only feelings it evoked. As though it were barbed, the sound had planted hooks in me and my desire was divided between advancing and retreating.
For a while longer I was held in a stalemate, paralysed by indecision. Then, almost before I knew it, I found myself getting to my feet.
The beguiler was silent now, but its whereabouts was clear to me as I made my way through the druze. I walked uphill and to my left, angling away from the porters’ trail and towards the unsealed peak of the Great Mother. There was still no light, but there were varying shades of darkness as I moved through the night. The druze bushes crouched like malevolent beasts and seemed to bar every route I tried to take. I had to back-track constantly and make winding detours, but the long-gone sound of the beguiler had etched its point of origin clearly on to my mind, and I never lost my sense of direction. I was in a black maze in the black night, and so intent upon finding my way through it that I lost all sense of why I was there or what I would do if and when I found my way out.
My journey ended abruptly. One minute I was fighting my way through the druze and the next I was clear of it, standing on the edge of a wide clearing and looking up at a sandstone cliff which reared up above me until it vanished into the darkness.
Through a gap in the clouds I glimpsed a half moon, lying on her back as though she had fallen. Her dim light shone upon the cliff face and suddenly I knew where I was. The whole face of the crag was pocked by holes and laced with hand-carved paths. I had arrived at the lepers’ caves.
There were no longer any lepers there, I knew. There hadn’t been for several generations. As I looked up at the cliff I remembered hearing that the strange formation had been made by water forcing its way through the stone, and although the melting snows had now found another route to bring them down the mountainside, there were times during the year when the caves were practically uninhabitable because of the damp. I had learnt that because it was a story regularly told to the children in the village; how the lepers had come down from their caves looking for shelter one year and the elders had been thrown into a quandary about them. It would go against the principles of the village to refuse hospitality, yet it would endanger the population to have the lepers living among the people. In the end they had brought the outcasts to the buzz-bat cave, a huge cavern which lies about a mile below the village. A strong stream runs through the middle of it, but it never bursts its banks and the lepers were dry and happy there until the weather changed and their own homes dried out. After that they came every wet season and set up camp there, sharing quite happily with the buzz-bats, until Bodwa the World-Widener, the best of all the Law-Givers, had condemned their enforced exile and built them a city of their own on the plains. She had been the one who allowed men to enter the priesthood, and opened the trading paths between the divided mountain fiefdoms, and permitted inter-marriage between the closed clans. She had been dead for more than a hundred years, but her likeness hung above every hearth in every village in the land and she would never be forgotten.
I took a step forward into the clearing and at the same moment I saw the beguiler. It darted out of one of the caves, about mid-way up the cliff and hung in the air, high above my head. From that distance it appeared tiny to me, but even so I found that I could clearly see the golden eyes, which met my gaze full on, and held it. I was fleetingly aware of that sense of recognition, as though I had always known the being that hovered there before me. But before I could follow my thoughts, the sensation was gone. The expression in the beguiler’s eyes revealed a ferocious, jealous love, and it produced the same emotion in my heart. Then it disappeared, back into the dark interior.
It had only been outside the cave for an instant, but its effect on me in that brief space of time had been profound. I was like a fish on a line, but a willing one, all too ready to be reeled in by the beguiler’s possessive power. Every emotion that I had ever experienced seemed to ignite in me at once. I burned with joy and sorrow and envy; with longing and fear and revulsion. For a moment I tried to resist what was happening to me, but the connection stretched my heart too hard and I found myself moving forwards, drawn by some will that was no longer my own.
I crossed the clearing, vaguely aware of leaving darkness behind me and heading towards some new and glorious light. I kept my gaze fixed upon the point where I had seen the beguiler, and before I knew it I was at the foot of the cliff, craning my neck to keep the mouth of the cave within my view.
I ought to have realised the truth of the situation as soon as I became aware of the rope guide-rail. It ran up the cliff, zigzagging along the interwoven paths, leading from where I stood right up to the cave from which the beguiler had emerged. But it was a sign of how mesmerised I was that it seemed entirely appropriate to me that I should be given any assistance I needed, whether natural or supernatural, to enable me to reach my shining goal.
With one hand I held my shawl around me, and with the other I gripped the rope. It was pegged into the sandstone at regular intervals with stout wooden wedges, and although it had been worn smooth by use, it was firmly fixed and had no slack anywhere along its length.
I was glad of it. The paths were narrow and were so badly worn in places that it would have been impossible to pass along them without the hand-rail. Going up towards the cave was easy, but now and then the rope angled away, causing me to turn my back on the cave and the beguiler inside. Every time that happened I became acutely distressed and had to drag myself along those short stretches, breaking out into anxious, clammy sweats.
Not even the smallest part of my mind was free from the beguiler’s influence. I had no awareness, none whatsoever, of the danger I was walking myself into. As I climbed the last stretch of the path, the only thought in my mind was of the shining reward that awaited me. I stepped on to the broad ledge outside the cave mouth and didn’t even pause before bending my head and ducking through the low entrance.
I saw the beguiler, hovering in the deep darkness, some distance away. Then there was a flurry of violent movement beside me and, before I had a chance to react, everything went black.
F
OR SEVERAL, TERRIFYING MOMENTS
I had absolutely no idea what was happening. Something was covering my head, I was falling to the floor, and there was laboured breathing in the air around me. I was trying to strike out at my unseen assailant, but my arms weren’t responding to my instructions.
Then everything became clear to me. Someone had thrown a heavy blanket over my head, knocked me to the ground and wrapped a tight rope around me, pinning my arms to my sides. In the same moment, I knew who it was and I understood, too late, all the warning signs that I ought to have heeded. I even knew why Shirsha had caught me and trussed me up like this. The beguiler I had seen was hers, and she was protecting it. The shock had broken the powerful link between it and me and brought me back to my senses.
‘I’m sorry,’ I babbled to the unseen Shirsha. ‘I’ll go away, I won’t bother you again if you let me go.’
Shirsha didn’t answer, but I could hear her panting after her exertions. She was close to me; very close. Leaning over me, perhaps. I envisioned a weapon in her hands; a heavy club, already raised and about to descend upon my skull.
‘Please don’t hurt me,’ I pleaded. ‘Please let me go.’
Her breathing began to return to normal and I heard her moving away from me. Not far, but out of reach. My shoulder was jammed against one of the walls and I slowly wriggled my way into a sitting position. The rope around me was too tight. It pinched my arms and I could already feel my hands beginning to go tingly from lack of circulation. I tried to shift them a bit, slowly and carefully so it wouldn’t look as if I was trying to escape.
‘Why did you come here?’
Shirsha’s voice was not at all as I had expected. I had thought she would be older; frail as Hemmy, and that her madness would be apparent when she spoke. But this voice was as firm and as strong as the arms that had so easily subdued me, and my preconceived image of its owner was changing rapidly. I was no less afraid, though. Her tone was prickly and defensive. I was not out of danger yet.
I didn’t know how to answer. I wanted to reassure her; I couldn’t possibly tell her that I had been drawn here by her precious beguiler. But she knew.
‘It brung you here, didn’t it?’
‘I didn’t know it was yours,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have come if I did.’
She paused, unsure what to make of my answer, and then she said, ‘What were you doing on my mountain?’
I searched for a suitable lie but my wits seemed to have deserted me. There was nothing for it but to come clean.
‘I was looking for you, Shirsha.’
‘For me? Why? No one comes near me. What do you want with me?’
She sounded threatened and I prayed that I hadn’t said the wrong thing.
‘I wanted to learn from you,’ I said.
‘Learn what?’ she snapped.
‘What you know. About the beguilers. I …’
In the pause that followed I could hear her breath hissing in and out between her teeth, as though she was cold, or afraid, or both. I was a bit cold myself. During the struggle my shawl had slipped from my shoulders and was now scrumpled up around my waist.
‘I didn’t mean to follow your beguiler,’ I said at last. ‘I didn’t know it was yours.’
Shirsha still said nothing and I babbled on because her silence scared me. ‘I made a Great Intention. To catch …’
‘You’re one of them,’ she said. ‘I knew one of them would come snooping around some time. But you’re not having it, you hear me?’
‘I don’t want it,’ I said, and I could hear my own muffled desperation inside the blanket. The air was stale in there, and smelled of damp and mould. ‘Just let me go and I’ll leave you alone. I’ll never come back, I promise.’
Shirsha gave no sign that she had heard me. ‘It called you, didn’t it? It came looking for you?’
‘It … It mightn’t have been looking for me. I just saw it.’
‘It doesn’t want me no more,’ said Shirsha. ‘It knows it can’t win, see?’