A Solitary Journey (17 page)

Wombat had sparked memories with his tales as they trekked through the mountains.
I am Meg Farmer,
she considered in the darkness, listening to the gentle drip of the rain through the thatching.
I was married to Button Tailor—and I was a mother. I had a mother. Her name was—was
—She clenched her fist in annoyance.
I am also called Red. They called me that at the battle of the Whispering Forest. I killed a knight in blue armour—a famous knight.
‘How could I kill a knight?’ she whispered. She tried to imagine what had happened, but her memories wouldn’t shift.
Wombat and the others call me Lady Amber. I went to the Queen.
‘Impossible,’ she whispered again. ‘Lady Amber is dead. I’m not dead. I was—I am Meg Farmer—or Meg Tailor—of Summerbrook. Wombat knows that.’
Why do I dream strange things?
she pondered.
What’s a
glyph? What is a portal? Who is pinned to the statue of the dragon?
‘Dragon,’ she whispered. ‘Dragon.’ She shifted into a comfortable sitting position in the hay, trying to ignore the dampness in her trousers and tunic and coat.
How can I heal? Make light? Do the strange things I can do? Am I really Lady Amber?
‘What do I do now?’ she asked the darkness. ‘What do I do?’

I
thought you weren’t coming back. This is a dream. It isn’t happening. I know. Make the portal again. Come to Se’Treya. I need you. Without you I’ll die. Who are you?

Make a portal. Come to me. Who are you?

I’m your hope. Make the portal. How?

You know how. Make it.

She jerked upright, blinking at the yellow lantern light in the doorway, and shielded her eyes with her arm. A man was speaking. She knew the voice. The sound changed as she concentrated, from incomprehensible language to phrases she understood. ‘The boy is sleeping,’ the man explained as he placed a bundle on the straw, ‘and this is food and dry clothing for you. I’ve put a water pail and a ladle by the door.’ He pointed and held up his lantern to see if she understood. Meg blinked, but she looked at the water pail to show that she knew what he meant. ‘Good,’ he said to himself since he assumed she didn’t know his language.
He mimed eating and sleeping. Smiling, he withdrew, closed the door and plunged her into darkness again. She heard the lock click.

She’d glimpsed the outside world over his shoulder. It was evening. The rain was heavier. She shuffled to the door to listen. When she was certain that he’d left, she summoned a tiny light sphere and used it to examine his offerings. He provided a rough woollen smock for a change of clothing. The food in the crude pottery bowl was cold gruel. It didn’t matter. Shivering, she stripped off her damp clothes and slipped on the thick woollen smock, grateful for its prickly dryness and warmth. Ravenous, she ate the gruel.

Bowl licked clean, she searched the confines of her space again, but didn’t find anything of interest, except a black spider in a thick white web in the crevice of a wall post. The leaking roof reminded her that she was desperate to piss and when she accepted she had nowhere else to go she cleared the straw in a corner to uncover the dirt, squatted and relieved herself. She retreated to the opposite corner where she gathered the dry straw into a nest to make a bed and sat, leaning against the wall.

Thunder rumbled. The rain beat harder against the thatch and wood, and even in the dry smock she shivered.
I need to be warmer,
she thought and focussed on feeling warmer, and a moment later she felt more comfortable. She let her tiny light fade until she was wrapped in the darkness contemplating her dreams. The voice told her he expected her to return. She needed to make a portal.
I must know what one is,
she decided, and clenched her teeth and fists as she tried to force through the barrier barring her memories.
I am Meg Farmer and Meg Tailor. I married Button Tailor. I was Lady Amber. I lived in Summerbrook and I was the mother of
—The memory would not form, but she
knew she’d had it earlier. Why wouldn’t it come back now?
My mother’s name was—it was Dawn. My father Jon was killed in the war. My brothers are Mykel, Daryn and Peter. My name is Meg Kushel.
She opened her eyes in the emptiness, hearing the rain lashing against her shelter. ‘My name is Meg Kushel,’ she whispered.
Where did that come from
? She shuffled in the straw and reclined. A strand of straw stuck in her ear, so she flattened it and relaxed again.
How do I make a portal
? she wondered. The rain rustled on the thatch.

Seagulls wheeled overhead and she was staring at the white-capped waves rolling across the azure water before dissolving onto the sand. In her hands she held a familiar object. Rectangular and heavy, made of vellum and leather and covered with writing—it was a book. She was suddenly aware of other books strewn around her on the sand, some open and the pages flapping like seagull wings in the breeze. She looked down at the page before her and the writing was moving like a conversation, the page blurring into other pages and the words speaking in her head. She was reading about portals—how to make them. She understood and felt immeasurable happiness in knowing, but she looked up and the joy evaporated like the sunlight. Grey clouds blanketed the sky, the ocean was churning grey water, and a ship stood in the bay, sails as grey as the sky. The storm was coming. Around her the books leapt into flame and even the one she held was burning, its secrets and its knowledge consumed. And she was filled with indescribable sorrow as she woke.

It was still dark outside, but the rain had stopped, leaving the world silent, motionless. She couldn’t gauge how long she’d been asleep and dreaming, but the dream remained clear. She generated light and used it to survey the room
until she decided upon two posts along the wall. Standing before them, she recalled the dream sequence and repeated the words she’d read in the book, willing a portal to form. To her amazement, as she focussed her concentration on her task, she felt the familiar tingling sensation and a blue light crackled between the posts, becoming a shimmering blue wall. She gasped and stared at her creation, wondering what she had done—and wondered where the magical doorway led.
It leads to Se’Treya,
she told herself.
That’s what the voice tells me.
‘Why Se’Treya?’ she whispered.
He’s there,
she remembered. ‘But who is he?’
Why does he only talk to me in dreams?
She studied the shimmering blue haze between the poles, tentatively edging closer, until in its light she could see the shadowy image of a landscape—flat and featureless, except for dead trees. Chain rattling—the lock. With a thought she dissolved the portal as the door creaked open and a lantern spilled yellow light into the room. The silhouette spoke, quietly asking her to come out, and a dark hand beckoned to reinforce the words.

Meg emerged, afraid that her captor had seen the blue portal light. The world was cloaked in night, but the sky glowed with pre-dawn imminence and an invisible bird warbled. The air was moist and chilly, and her breath formed brief clouds in the lantern light. The man led her silently around the side of his house, under the dark boughs of a huge tree and into a small room where the lantern revealed a rudimentary kitchen with cooking pots and a cold hearth. He hung the lantern and looked at her as he spoke, gesticulating to give sense to his words. She listened and watched, feigning ignorance even though she understood him. He was ordering her to start the fire and cook for him. He was telling her, believing she didn’t fully understand him, that she was to work as his house woman. He looked at her as he finished each clumsy explanation, awaiting her to acknowledge understanding,
so she nodded regularly. Satisfied that she had a sense of what he expected he folded his arms, saying, ‘I will treat you kindly. I will treat the boy like a son.’ His face smiled, but it told her that he didn’t expect her to understand his intentions and that he was a patient man. She didn’t consider him handsome in the lantern light, but his long thin face, aquiline nose, solid cheekbones and dark intelligent eyes shone with inner strength that made her momentarily admire him. Then he walked out of the room and closed the door in his wake.

There were logs piled in a wooden box in the corner, and flint and tinder by the hearth, so she arranged wood in the stone fireplace, made sure that she was alone and used her magical skill to kindle a fire. She checked the food stock, discovering grain and nuts and vegetables in stone jars and a small dead animal like a possum hanging from the rafters. She selected a cooking pot and set to organising a stew, starting with skinning and gutting the game.

It was a long time since she’d prepared a meal in a kitchen, and as the warmth spread and the cooking aromas permeated the room, she felt a peace she’d forgotten.
I used to cook for the family,
she recalled, and images of people seated at a table flashed into her mind: her mother—her brothers—her husband—her children. ‘Jon,’ she whispered, her knife pausing in the heart of a carrot. ‘Emma.’ Her hands trembled. Tears welled. ‘Treasure.’ She dropped the knife on the earthen floor.
I had three children. I remember again.
Grief exploded from within like the downpour overnight and she collapsed, sobbing and wailing, her heart crushed by the unexpected rush of memories.

Strong hands gripped her shoulders and arms carried her. Faces came and went as she stared at the grey sky and then at a dark ceiling. Voices babbled. There was
silence for a long time and she closed her eyes. When she opened them, a dark-faced woman was gazing down with wide, expectant eyes. Her face lit when she saw Meg was awake and she called to someone. Another woman’s face appeared, an older face with a wrinkled brow and greying hair tied back in a plait—and
his
face was there as well, concerned.

The women made her gently sit up and the older one said, ‘Easy, child,’ in Meg’s native tongue, though the accent was blurred.

‘You—speak like me?’ Meg whispered.

‘Yes,’ the woman replied, and a grin eased her face into deep lines. ‘Eat this soup.’ She moved aside to let the younger woman present a bowl of steaming broth and as the young woman scooped a spoonful and lifted it towards Meg’s lips her hunger leapt like a wild animal. Meg slurped the warm offering, savouring the familiar chicken flavour as she eagerly consumed the broth. The younger woman pulled the bowl back and the old woman cautioned Meg with, ‘Slowly, child, there’s plenty for you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, ‘I’m just so hungry.’

‘In my land I’m called Ah-tee-wana-see. In your language it means “Dawn’s-mist-rising”,’ the old woman explained.

‘How can you speak my language?’ Meg asked, sitting on the edge of the bed, the quilted brown-and-gold coverlet draped across her knees.

The old woman smiled. ‘In my place it is polite to share your name when someone offers their name.’

Meg blushed. ‘I’m sorry. My name is—Meg.’

The old woman raised an eyebrow. ‘Your name doesn’t belong to you. It is the name of an Old One.’

‘An Old One?’

‘The people from the east. Your name belongs to a Jaru.’

‘I don’t understand. I’m from the west, from Shess. What’s a Jaru?’

‘My ancestors,’ said the old woman. ‘The Old Ones who changed history and brought down an Empire.’

Meg wanted to ask what an Empire was, the word seeming to resonate at the edge of a lost memory, but she had so many questions to ask the old woman that she returned to her first one. ‘How can you speak my language? Can you do magic?’

The old woman stared at Meg as if the question startled her, but then she laughed and shook her head. ‘Forgive me, no, child. A long time ago I was in the mountains where I met a Shessian man one morning at a waterfall. His name was Whitedog Hunter in your tongue. We lived together on the western slopes and I learned your language slowly, enough to buy supplies when he took me to the towns. He already knew my tongue because he also hunted along the eastern slopes of Shesskar-sharel.’

‘This is The Valley of Kings, isn’t it?’ Meg asked.

The old woman nodded. ‘In your tongue, yes. To us it is Shesskar-sharel.’

‘Where is your husband?’ Meg asked.

‘Husband?’ Ah-tee-wana-see asked, and then she chuckled and shook her head. ‘Whitedog never married me, child. It wasn’t his way. He fell in one of his own pit traps. My people would say that was “sumo-nae”—you would call it something like irony, or Jarudha’s will perhaps. It was the natural justice making him suffer as he’d made other living things suffer.’

‘Sumo-nae,’ Meg repeated softly,

‘Good,’ the old woman coaxed. ‘You say it well.’

Meg blushed again, caught her breath and asked in a rush, ‘What is going to happen to me here? Where is Magpie? Where are the others? Where’s Wombat?’

‘Sh,’ said Ah-tee-wana-see, ‘too many questions, child. Too many questions.’

‘I want to know,’ Meg insisted.

‘Your son is well,’ the old woman reassured. ‘He is strong and stubborn, and that will be good for him in the long run. But it will be hard on him until he learns that he is not the most important one in the world.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Chi-hway has him working,’ the old woman said. ‘He is a good man, my grandson. He chose well when he chose to keep you and your son.’

‘Keep?’
Meg asked.

The old woman nodded. ‘You belong to Chi-hway. It is his right as the—your people would call him the headman of the wah—the village. We call him ahtim. It’s his title, his rank here. It was his right to choose you.’

‘You mean we’re prisoners,’ Meg accused.

The old woman shrugged. ‘That is a way of seeing it. This is not your land. You come uninvited. But we offer you shelter and food and life. In exchange you give us work.’

‘What if we don’t want to stay here?’

‘It’s forbidden for foreigners to wander Shesskar-sharel without permission. If you don’t wish to stay here, then you must go back over the mountains to your homes.’

‘If we go back the Kerwyn will kill us.’

The old woman sighed and gently placed her wrinkled brown hand on Meg’s arm. ‘We’ve heard of your war. These men who come from the north want your land and they have taken it. There is nothing you can do. Perhaps they will fall to sumo-nae one day—when the cycle turns—but for now it is you who has fallen. Be grateful you’ve fallen softly. Being kept by my grandson is a good fate in your circumstances.’

Meg realised there was no point protesting. The old woman’s expression was set, but it was absent of malice. ‘And the others?’ she asked.

‘The men have divided them. They will work as you will work. When they have learned to accept their new lives and be happy you will see them in the village. The wise accept quickly. The unwise bring unnecessary pain on themselves.’ She paused to study Meg’s face, before adding, ‘I think you will be wise.’

‘And Wombat?’

The old woman shook her head as if she was growing weary of the questions, but she replied, ‘The big man will work hard. Ka-sa-tem is his keeper.’

The soft crunch of a foot on the earth stopped Ah- tee-wana-see and the women turned to see Chi-hway’s tall frame enter the room. He spoke quietly to Ah-tee- wana-see, stealing a cautious glance at Meg.

The old woman replied to him, and looked back at Meg, saying, ‘Your pain has only just begun, child. When you are ready we will talk of what broke your heart this morning. Great grief moves slowly and it will hurt for a long time, but it will heal.’ She patted Meg’s thigh. ‘Go with my grandson. He will not push you harder than you can work for now. When your pain is healed, he will work you harder, but he will never be unkind.’