Spellbreakers (7 page)

Leal examined the small fern fruit with some suspicion.
It was hard to tell its color in the semi-darkness.
Perhaps a
very pale grey, but almost blue in the moonlight.
It felt fuzzy but
hard, like a green apricot. She gingerly bit into it. Much to her surprise it
was neither bitter nor sour, but of a tart, spicy sweetness. The seed—only one—was
perfectly smooth on her tongue and slipped out of the bitten pulp cleanly. She
chewed the pulp carefully and then swallowed the whole. Nothing much changed.

She unbuckled her leather jerkin and her belt, took
off her boots, and laid everything, jerkin, belt, pouch, knife and boots in a
neat heap at the head of the jetty. Then with a significant cough she started
undoing the laces of her suede bodice. Dee turned around, staring very
pointedly at the gorge’s entrance. Leal undressed completely; she did not like
the idea of riding back in wet clothes. Her breeches were wet enough already.
And if these
Faded
beings were so pure and so detached
they would not stand on ceremony, right?

She walked out on the stepping stones, the last of
which was partly awash. The water was cold, even in July. At the very last
moment, before she dove in the dark water, she felt a moment of dizziness. She
almost cried out in alarm, but before the cry passed her lips, she was in the
water, and the lake closed over her head.

Chapter Four

She sank down and down, in a black, endless forever.

There was nothing but peace in the call of the deep
black waters. No fear, no pain, nothing but a blessed silence.

A way out, out of the hassle and strife of the world.
Indeed.

Oh, but wait. I am not tired of the strife.

I am not giving
up!

 
Leal finally
felt the urge to breathe. She kicked upwards, towards the light.

She broke the surface of the water and sucked in a
long gulping breath. She scanned the lake to make sure of the direction and
gasped in alarm. A shimmering mist floated over the lapping waves. She could
still see the island, far off in front of her, but the lake-shore was shrouded
in the white haze, wholly invisible. She blinked. How could such a misty
weather have come up in the seconds (surely it was seconds, right?) that she
had been underwater?
I hope this is all part of the magic,
she thought,
and
not something sinister.
She set out for the island, swimming in long even
strokes.

It seemed a long swim, much longer than she had
anticipated. The water of the lake changed from deep black to phosphorescent
green as she advanced. The bottom of the lake was full of bright light.

She was growing very tired and very cold by the time
she reached the island. Her feet touched a loose bottom of sand and pebbles,
then water weeds, and then she was standing and wading towards a beach shadowed
by overhanging fronds. When she turned she could see no trace of the opposite
shore. It was all shimmering white mist over the pale fire of the luminous
lake. The forest in front of her was no less strange. Ferns carpeted the ground
and hung from the trunks and branches of the trees, and every leaf and every
frond was edged with a lacy fringe of blue, green, or lilac flame. The trees
themselves were fountains of aquamarine light, which climbed up the trunks in
solid columns and sprayed out at the top, dripping out in pale green, still
fireworks. The very soil was alight with a violet glow.

I might have sworn that it was an ordinary island when
I looked at it from the shore. Is this all an illusion? Am I going crazy? I am
feeling ... very ... very stra-ange.

The last word trailed to darkness in her head as she
closed her eyes and pitched forward, falling on her face on the mossy, gleaming
ground.

The darkness behind her eyes swallowed her. It was
like being under the waters of the lake, except that there was no cold, only an
endless suspended fall. Perhaps it was a minute. Perhaps it was a hundred
years.

There was laughter.
Voices and a lot
of laughter again, but no movement.
Good natured, merry laughter, not
mocking.
A pleasant sound.
It called to her, from the
darkness.

She opened her eyes. Her lids fluttered. She sighed,
awakening slowly from an almost terminally deep sleep.

Was I ill?
she
wondered.

There was a flowing, ever-changing light all around
her. When she finally focused her eyes she realized that it was not just a
moving light, but living shapes made of light that were fussing about her,
among the swaying, radiant trees and glowing ferns. She remembered where she
was and
why,
and abruptly tried to sit up. The
dizziness came over her again, and she fell flat back.

“Whoa, easy there, easy.
It was quite the knock-out trip across you had, young
lady. You might want to take it easy for a minute or so. You’ll feel better
quite soon. The fern juice can take you that way if you are not used to it.”

“Ow,” said Leal, sitting up again quite slowly.

The person who had talked to her was approximately
sitting crossed-legged on the ground beside her.
Approximately,
because he was actually floating in a sitting position just above the floor.
As if the laws of gravity did not really apply to him, but out of good manners
he was sitting down anyway.

“Hello,” said Leal, watching him in fascination. The
man, she was almost certain that it was a man, appeared to be made of pure
light, pale blue-green and sparkly luminous, brighter around his face, arms and
hands. Minuscule sparks of light traveled on his form all the time and glimmered
when he moved. Where he was less luminous, Leal could distinguish the shapes of
trees and bushes behind him, as if he had no substance other than light.

“Hello and welcome,” he said cheerfully.
“Head feeling better?
You took a nasty pitch back there, but
luckily the place has been abandoned for so long that the moss has grown quite
thick. It is a terribly long time since we had any visitors in this place. We
are all
agog
to know what brought you here!”

Leal looked around, and more light-shapes took form, sitting
or standing all around her. It was not that they arrived from somewhere. It was
rather as if they had always been there, but dim and invisible, and then they
had become brighter and noticeable. There were men and women and creatures she
had only seen painted in Dee’s books, elves with shimmering wings, goblins with
large staring eyes, pixies with thin legs and long ears, and many others she
did not know the names of.

“Are you the
Faded
people?”
she asked.

“Why, who else would we be? My name is Jalal, and
these are Franc’il, Maran,
Coralyn
...” The names came
in a long string, and the shining people around her bowed one after the other.
She could not remember half the names, nor who was who, but she said all the
proper words, enchanted, at your service, a pleasure. “And I am Princess Leal
of Escarra.”

“Ooh-la-là!” said an elf merrily, “not a single visit
in more ‘n one hundred years, and then royalty, no less. Are you the queen
then? We sort of lost track of the affairs of your little kingdom, these days.”

Leal thought it was funny the way he said that. They
were in Escarra, to her sure knowledge, at least the lake and the island and
the whole valley were definitely in Escarra, but he talked about the kingdom as
if it was some small unimportant place a long way off.

“Oh, no, that is Amara, my mother. And King Guillem is
my father. I am the heir to the throne however, since both my elder sisters
died very recently. And I have come to ask for your help.”

“Oh, that goes without saying. Why else would you have
come?”

Leal felt that perhaps she had not been very tactful
or subtle, but the
Faded
people didn’t seem cross or
upset, just expectant and curious.

“Why do they call you the
Faded
people?” she asked before breaching the subject of her visit. “You are made of
pure light! And why is this place so changed? I saw the island from the shore,
and it was a plain dark, wooded island.”

“Ah yes,” said the tall woman who had been introduced
as Coralyn, “but that was before you ate the fruit of clear-sight. Now you see
the world for what it truly is. A living tapestry of ever mingling energy which
shines forth from every creature.It is never destroyed or created, but is
changing all the time. You see the very life of the trees and in the water, and
even in the air over the lake. This is how we see the world, always, the energy
rather than the matter, except that we can see clearer and farther, because we
are farther on the path of which you barely walked one step.”

“Coralyn is our resident scholar, as you might have guessed.
She is the one to go to for explanations of how things happen. Most of us just
let them happen in peace.” There was more laughter all around. Even Coralyn
smiled.

“And we are called the Faded in your un-poetical
tongue, because we have become invisible to human eyes, and indeed to almost
all your senses. Even with the fruit of the fern you might not be able to see
us in broad daylight. That is why humans must always come to see us by night.
We are apart from your world, now, and yet also still in it. We flow in the
life of all things. Distance means nothing to us. We preserve our identities to
a degree, but all that was our life is now alive in the whole. Those races that
have a better sense of the whole have a clearer perception of us than humans do.
Elves and elvers, who have a different way of seeing and perceiving things,
call us ‘the Shining Ones’.
But enough with the lessons.
Tell us why you came, Leal. You will not stay in our phase very long, I fear,
although your spirit is strong, and willing,” she said kindly.

Leal nodded gratefully at the opening she offered. “I
need your help because my kingdom will be enslaved to the ruthless rule of King
Admund of Hassia if we cannot win the archery Challenge next year. Do you know
what I am talking about?” She added the last bit uncertainly, given what they
had said about having lost track of the affairs of her little kingdom.

“Not a clue,” said Jalal cheerfully. “What archery
challenge?”

“Of course we do know,” said Coralyn, scoffing and
blazing brighter white. “The Red War of 1104 opposed the vast armies of Hassia
and the small contingent of Escarra for almost thirteen years,” she said,
turning to her companions and talking in a very teacherly tone. Leal thought
she could hear them sighing, resigned. “There was no way that such small forces
as the little mountain kingdom of Escarra sent to the battle field could win
the war or even a single one of its decisive battles, but the High Order of the
White Crescent, the oldest and most accomplished of the Escarran schools of
magic, performed unheard-of feats of sorcery, culminating in the five great war
spells for which it is famous to this day. Thanks to these devastating spells,
the war hung in balance until both kingdoms were so drained of blood that the
Hassian king, Laurenz, challenged his Escarran counterpart to single combat to
conclude the war. Domenech, the Escarran king, picked the long bow as his
weapon of choice, and the Challenge as it was then called, allowed Escarra to
retain its freedom.”

Leal nodded. “But only for fifty years,” she said.
“After that time Hassia challenged again, and Escarra had no choice but to
accept the challenge or go to war once more. And Escarra won again, but Hassia
never gave up. They dared not start another war, but eventually issued a new
challenge, which Escarra accepted because we dared not go to war either. So the
tradition was established, although in time each nation was allowed to pick a
champion. And now Hassia found the best archer of all the western kingdoms, and
we fear that our freedom has come to an end. We cannot oppose this champion.
His name is Hristo Straightaim. And if ... and when Hassia takes Escarra under
its protection, as they call it, I must marry their horrible king.”

The Faded people stirred, glimmering more brightly,
and talking among themselves heatedly. It seemed to Leal that the hateful
wedding upset them more than the political issues. Her heart warmed up to them.

“We see,” said Jalal eventually. “We are sorry to hear
your news, of course. We do not meddle in the politics of kingdoms, but we
regret your distress, child. It has been a long time since anyone came to see
us here. We thought humans had all but forgotten us. We would be happy to
assist you, but how?”

“Is there a Kjetil Alversen Hawkeneye among you? I was
told that he might have chosen your path. And that he might find a way to beat
Hristo Straightaim.”

“Kjetil Alversen Hawkeneye? Kjetil Alversen Hawkeneye?
No, doesn’t ring a bell. Do we have a Kjetil Alversen
Hawkeneye, here?
Anybody?
Over
there?
No?” asked Jalal, raising his voice theatrically. “Uhm, no, no
luck there, I’m afraid. Who’s this Kjetil Alversen Hawkeneye, child?”

Leal sighed sadly. “He was a famous elvren warrior. It
is said he was the greatest archer who had ever lived, in his time. But he
disappeared more than a hundred years ago.”