The ginger and white cat lay rather heavily
on Kathleen’s stomach. She knew that it was only a dream cat, but nonetheless
it was still uncomfortable. She also knew that she wasn’t really in her own
bed, with the sun streaming through the windows and with the sound of the gulls
calling on the headland.
The cat crawled across her head and
looked down at her.
‘d’ya know who I am, batch witch?’ he
asked
Kathleen opened one dream eye and
grunted.
‘Of course I do…you’re Ionadon…’
Ionadon the cat looked unhappy.
‘I’m Jones!’ corrected the cat, ‘why won’t
all you over-schooled witches get it right?’
‘I know that many people call you
Jones’ said Kathleen, groggy, ‘of course I do’
‘Oh, you do, do you? Aye, well that’s
grand’
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked,
drowsily.
‘Waking you up’ he replied, ‘it’s
about time you stopped snoozing and started acting’
‘But I’m ill’ protested Kathleen, ‘I’ve had
something horrible…’
‘Very true, and I’m sorry for it –
but you’re all over it now, and you must force those eyes apart’
‘But why? It’s very cosy here’
‘Things are looking bad for your
group, they are…’
‘What do you mean?’
The cat jumped off the bed and on to
Kathleen’s dresser. He stared at her even more closely, though now he was slightly
more distant.
‘What I mean, quite simply, is that
you have the spell and they will need the spell, soon as sparks’
Kathleen remembered the spell and she
also remembered her very odd behaviour. She had thought to teach the spell to
Hardacre, but why?
‘So, does Mr Hardacre need the spell?
Does he need it to fight some Outer Void creatures?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t be knowing, only
being a dream, but that seems likely enough. There is only one spell, so you’ll
be needing to pass it on, I’m thinking’
‘Are they in great danger?’ she asked, finally
sitting up in bed.
‘Of course they are,’ grinned the
cat.
‘Oh no – how do you know that?’
‘Stands to reason – you form a coven,
you fight bad people and things, you mess about with magic and stuff – who
wouldn’t be in mortal danger, all the bloody time?’
‘I meant now!’
‘Oh now? No idea. Unless you do, of
course… I’m just in your head…’
Kathleen frowned, but continued to
get out of bed. The cat leapt on to the windowsill and looked back at her.
‘I’m going outside, I’m thinking to
try and get one of them seagulls – I know it sounds far-fetch-full, but who
knows what a batch can do in a dream? Eh?’
And then he was gone.
***
The dream continued, and although her eyes
seemed to be open, she was astonished at how dark it now was. Before, the early
sunlight had suffused everything, but here, she could only see a scatter of
light green stars above her. The constellations looked like nothing she had
ever seen before and she wondered under what possible sky she could be lying.
And the stars seemed to be moving, as if they were wriggling, oh so slowly,
across the sky. She almost thought that she could hear the stars singing, but she
knew that that must be impossible: stars only sang in ancient stories. The song
was very beautiful, if rather sad; it made her think of Tom, and of the pain
she had caused him in the past, and now, and in the future, stretching on
perhaps for ever. She lay, watching and listening. The stars stopped both
moving and singing, and then the constellations formed words.
The illusion was only there for a
moment and then her eyes focused quite unexpectedly on the ceiling. She was in
a cave and the stars were just some sort of glow worms: they no longer
signified anything. She dismissed it as part of the Ionadon dream – she had no
idea what it could possibly mean, anyway: it was so clearly the tail end of a
dream.
Where was she? She had a moment of
terror when she thought that she might be imprisoned, tied up, locked away
somewhere in the dark, with no hope of rescue. Then a torch light flickered
close by.
‘You
are awake’ said a gentle voice speaking Visneorian with a liltingly soft accent,
‘That is good’
There was a spindly humanoid female
standing in front of her dressed in a green robe. Although it was hard to see
in the thin light, Kathleen thought that she might be smiling. She had seen
someone like this before but she couldn’t remember where.
‘Where am I?’
‘You’re in a cave in the Mountains
above Monurbis – this is our refuge. I am Euphorbia, leader of the Orbiverdi’
Kathleen pushed the bedclothes from
her chest and sat up. She struggled out of the bed and stood. Euphorbia and she
were about the same height, five foot nothing, but Euphorbia, with her very
long arms, would never have the problems reaching up to high shelves that
Kathleen always had.
A memory finally stirred in her brain.
‘You’re the green eyed creatures from
the mountains! You’re the ones who saved Ortia!’
Euphorbia nodded slowly.
‘That is correct; we had our role to
play in the victory. And who are you, my
mysterious witch lady?’
‘I’m Kathleen Mannings; I’m from Fanemouth,
in Eth and I’m looking for a friend named Laurence Hardacre’
‘Yes, we heard that. We know him – he
is a very fine man – but we do not know where he is’
Kathleen was crestfallen. For a
moment the adrenaline of waking had overcome her tiredness, but now she began
to sag. The kelemeia was gone, but her energy levels were still at an all-time
low.
‘How will I find him, then, my lady?’
‘I’m not sure that you will’ said
Euphorbia, frowning, ‘I think it may be best for you to recuperate here until
all the strife has passed…’
Euphorbia lifted her torch, and the
light finally illuminated them both completely. Kathleen could now see
Euphorbia’s eyes – they were the colour of new beech leaves in May. An
involuntary shiver went through her; not of fear but of sudden connection.
‘Your eyes are the colour of the
stars in my dream’ she blurted out. Euphorbia took a step backwards, confused.
‘Could you say that again, Miss Mannings? I am
not certain that I heard you correctly’
‘I had a dream – there were singing
green stars in the vault of the sky – and they were exactly that colour –
exactly the colour of your eyes…’
‘That was a dream of Quiena, perhaps,
a vision of our god’ explained Euphorbia, with rising excitement, ‘this is a
holy place… what else was in the dream?’
Kathleen’s voice began to waver, with
uncertainty. She felt very weary.
‘There wasn’t much to it - the stars moved, and they wrote out a sentence
– not even a sentence – more like a phrase, or a command…’
‘What was it?’ asked Euphorbia
‘I’m not sure’ said Kathleen, her
heart was sinking fast, could she even remember what was written in heavens
that she’d only ever seen in a dream?
‘Please try to remember’ said
Euphorbia, with a sudden sternness.
‘I might be able to write it down…’
They went in search of more light, a pencil
and paper and the proconsul.
They found Bellis out on a ledge that
emerged from one part of the complex. It looked straight down over a dense pine
forest, which stretched out over the lower part of the mountains. After the
briefest of introductions Euphorbia placed a piece of paper on a flat stone and
insisted that Kathleen should draw what she had seen in the dream.
The human hesitated and then began to
sketch, slowly and with many crossings out, what she remembered of the letters
in the sky. Eventually she was happy:
‘Oφθαλμοεὔχλοi ἀρήγσουσιν’
‘Is that Archaic Elven?’ asked Euphorbia
‘Yes, it is’ said Bellis and Kathleen
almost simultaneously.
‘Do you not speak it?’ asked Kathleen
of Euphorbia
‘Only a very little’ said Euphorbia
shamefaced, ‘only what the proconsul has taught us’
Bellis smiled and bowed his head
half-apologetically
‘My knowledge comes from my
schooldays, and that was an age ago using any race’s calendar…’
‘Can you read it, Miss Mannings?’
asked Euphorbia eagerly.
‘It says – Ophthaloeuchloi aregesousin’
‘Which
means, what exactly?’ asked Bellis, struggling to make sense of it.
‘I think it reads – the green eyes shall aid’
Euphorbia breathed in sharply.
‘It’s a message from Quiena’ she
exclaimed, ‘it must be’
Bellis looked unconvinced. He studied
Kathleen carefully for several seconds.
‘Do you know who Quiena is, Miss
Mannings?’ he asked, very carefully
Kathleen looked aggrieved.
‘Of course I know who Quiena is.
She’s the inventor of Dwarven Magic – she designed the Autelephas, the defensive
walls of Ortia, and Adrial’s Wall between east and west Visneoria…’
‘So, it’s not entirely impossible
that you might imagine a message from Quiena in a dream? Given where you are’
asked Bellis
Kathleen thought about this.
‘In archaic elven?’ she said, ‘why
would I dream in my fourth language?’
‘It’s not impossible though’
continued Bellis, ‘you are an educated, intelligent, woman. I’m also sure that
you have a good imagination…’
It was too late though; Euphorbia had
made up her mind.
‘It’s a message to us, it must be’
insisted Euphorbia, not taking any notice at all of what was being said, ‘it’s
clear we must help Miss Mannings…’
She paused for a second.
‘And Ortia…’ she affirmed.
‘What?’ said Bellis, astonished, ‘I
thought you were convinced that Marthian had ordered you to stay put. I thought
you were going to stay here until you were told to return to duty. I thought
you were sulking’
Euphorbia smiled and took Bellis’s
hand. She squeezed it with great affection.
‘That was before Quiena’s message!
Now all is clear’
Bellis was, of course, on one level,
extremely happy that Euphorbia was now spurred into action, but the logical
part of his brain could not help but rebel.
‘It wasn’t a message it was just two,
very ambiguous, words, half-remembered from a dream’
Euphorbia let go of his hand and
tut-tutted gently.
‘You still remain an unbeliever I
see. If you had faith then you would see’
Euphorbia gestured to Kathleen.
‘Come with me’ Euphorbia said, ‘with
Quiena’s help we will surely find your friend’
She swept back into the caverns and
Kathleen trailed along behind her, confused and bewildered but a little more
hopeful.
‘Don’t forget to give her breakfast,
my lady’ Bellis shouted after them. He laughed softly and shook his head. He
watched the two figures disappear from sight.
‘Well…’ he said to himself, in wonder,
‘…I still don’t understand religion at all’
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