Blindsighted Wanderer

  First edition copyright © 2012

  E. C. Hibbs

  Originally published by Staccato Publishing

  Edited by Karen Reckard

  First edition cover design by ParaGraphic Designs

  Map of the Elitland by E. C. Hibbs

  Second edition released 2016

  Second edition cover design by Elphame Arts

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Books by E. C. Hibbs

  Blindsighted Wanderer

  Tragic Silence

  The Libelle Papers

  Sepia and Silver

  Night Journeys: Anthology

  Blood and Scales: An Anthology

  Dare to Shine: Anthology

  BlindsightedWanderer

  E. C. Hibbs

  Dedicated to the memory of my grandparents

  Edna Baker and Eric Hibbs.

  Thank you for making life wonderful.

  PROLOGUE

  The Peasant and his Princess

  When on thee I gaze never so little,

  Bereft am I of all power of utterance,

  My tongue is useless.

  There rushes at once through my flesh tingling fire,

  My eyes are deprived of all power of vision,

  My ears hear nothing by sounds of winds roaring,

  And all is blackness...

  A dread trembling o’erwhelms me... and in my madness

  Dead I seem almost.

  - Sappho of Lesbos, translated by E. M. Cox

  Septymbre, 1013

  T he night sky was open and endless, spangled with stars. Half-moon light shone down onto the Lake, highlighting the crests of ripples and waves in liquid silver. Adrian saw the shimmers even before he emerged from the forest. The cool air swept at his hair as he guided his white mare down onto the shore, her hooves sinking into the pebbles underfoot. He rode over to a collection of boats in the nearby reed bed, then dismounted, and left the horse without a second glance back. With mastered silence, he slipped into the furthest vessel, took up the oar resting across its prow, and pushed off.

  The waters were smooth and welcoming, letting the boat slide effortlessly into their embrace. Kneeling down in the centre, as he had done so many times before, Adrian plunged the oar into the inky darkness, taking turns to row right and left so that he remained on course. Like always, his face was calm and collected – but tonight, his palms sweated as they clutched the wooden paddle. The muted light wasn’t strong enough to illuminate the interior of the boat, and cast its eye onto the bundle that Adrian had hidden in there the week before – but he couldn’t have been more aware of it had he had been moving in broad daylight. He just prayed it wouldn’t show, when the time came.

  Eventually, he reached a tussock, half a mile from the bank, and gently brought the boat to a halt. The night was still, but Adrian knew that in the forest, countless night creatures were going about their business. His eyes strayed to a pair of white swans, gliding across the water close by. Their sleek necks were bent and magnificent wings folded perfectly against their backs. They were side by side: together for life.

  Adrian looked down, and his attention flickered back to the shadows of the boat, but then moved to the water itself as a soft light began to shine from the depths. It was faint at first, but then grew as it neared the Surface, and eventually, a head appeared beside him, peering through from the underneath. He gazed down; watching as a shimmering girl emerged, stepping up as though the water was as solid as the earth.

  Her skin was a lustrous blue-green, with dark emerald hair finely studded with a headdress of shining light. A long white gown waved about her slender frame as though still caught in an underwater current. She looked to be roughly fifteen years old – three years younger than Adrian – but he knew that her appearance was deceptive. She had lived for long enough to have seen the past millennium.

  “Merrin,” Adrian smiled, laying the oar down and using the movement to quickly wipe his palms on his tunic.

  “Good night, my darling,” she said, kneeling down on the water beside him. Beneath her shins, the Surface shone. She outstretched a hand – the long fingers delicately webbed with a fine translucent membrane – and gently cupped his cheek. “I have missed you.”

  Adrian couldn’t suppress a scoff. “I will never understand how a week passes the same for thee.”

  “Time passes no longer for me than for any other creature,” Merrin replied softly. “And I abhor being away from you for even the slightest moment.”

  “Although I am mere human,” he said; his voice heavy with remorse.

  “I do not care about that,” said Merrin. “I love you. You know this.” Her eyes – huge and purple – searched his face. “I wish to introduce you to my father.”

  Adrian started. “But what will he think of me?”

  “He thinks fondly of you already.”

  “You’ve mentioned me to him?”

  “Of course. To Dylana and Penro, too. They are alone in my confidence, however – the rest of Zandor knows nothing, I should hope.” Merrin smiled. “And I wish for you to attend the Rise.”

  “Why are you telling me all of this now?” asked Adrian. “I thought the Rise will not happen for another six years?”

  “That is correct, but I still wished to tell you. I want you to witness it: the aging of the Asræ. Oh, my darling, you shall love it: all of us upon the Surface, dancing and singing, and then the stars fall down and fill the whole of Zandor with light. It is worth waiting a century for – six years shall fly, with you at my side.”

  “And it is the only one I should ever witness,” Adrian said. “I shall be long dead and buried before the next.”

  “Do not speak of such things,” Merrin insisted, although the matter had often passed through her mind as well. It was a necessary evil, which would occasionally rear its ugly head and remind the two of them that it could never be vanquished. For as strong as love could be, to bring together one of Land and Lake, that final knowledge was always there. Death waited for no-one, whether they had ten years to live, or ten centuries.

  Merrin moved her hand up to smooth back Adrian’s hair. His long locks stood out strikingly in the calm blues and greens of the Lake, and tousled red strands clung to her wet flesh. The only other warm colour in the whole of Zandor was from the small red amarant blossoms, cloaking the forest floor in a soft and royal carpet.

  Adrian laid his fingers over hers. She was cold to the touch, but he pushed that from his mind as the boat drifted closer. It was almost as though the Lake itself knew what was coming, and pushed the vessel of its own accord; so that Adrian could reach out and rest his other hand on Merrin’s neck. He was careful not to touch the fanlike gills running up the side – even though she had no use for them above the water, he remembered when he had accidentally brushed them shortly after they had met, and she had immediately dived again to subdue a stab of pain.

  He went to move his stronger right hand – the one over Merrin’s – to his side, inside the boat, but she gently guided him to her hip instead. Quickly forcing his frustration away, he moved in nearer as her eyes closed. He kissed her – tasting the Lake on her lips – and almost allowed the moment to take him, remembering the innocence and ecstasy with which the two of them had first embraced. It threatened to whisk him from the boat and down into the depths, as Merrin had once allowed: holding him in her arms, she had swum with him just below the Surface, moving at speeds no human could ever achieve.

  Back then, in what seemed like a different life, he had prayed in every waking moment that he could somehow join her. Down on the Lakebed, safe from the sun, he ha
d longed to traverse her twilight Kingdom, where shoals of chaff and minnow glided past the windows as the swallows did in the air. One day, the regal Bands around her father’s wrists would be woven onto her own, and he had wished to see her at the height of her magnificence: no longer the frolicsome young Heir before him now, but a mighty and beautiful Queen.

  Inside, his mind raced with anger. He knew he shouldn’t be thinking about that. Merrin had made it clear from the very beginning, exactly who she was. To her, the fact that he hadn’t run away had confirmed that he had meant what he had said, that he loved her. Even he had believed it at first, but then it had occurred to him just what such trust could bring him. It was why he had always returned, week after week, to visit her in the shadowy realm and hold her in his arms. It was why he had sneaked into the west under cover of darkness, with the bundle clasped in his arms, and hidden it inside the boat, ready for this moment.

  Merrin drew away slowly, opening her eyes and smiling deeply. She rested her forehead against his, and there was a shivering sound as the long fin along her back waved gently. Small droplets of water flew from the spines, and hit the Surface in a rain of glowing ripples. Adrian caressed her face with his hand – then slipped it to his side, fingers closing around the fibres of the bundle.

  “What is wrong?” Merrin asked, barely above a whisper. “You are tense.”

  “It’s nothing,” Adrian assured smoothly. “Merrin, my darling. Merrin, be mine.”

  He seized the bundle, moved back, and whipped it up. It opened out, revealing itself as a tightly-woven net, and fell down heavily over her, smacking the water with a deafening splash. The two swans started and flapped away; a flock of ravens woke in the trees and sent a harsh chorus of cries into the night. The stone weights sunk quickly, sealing the trap, and Merrin let out a bloodcurdling scream as Adrian roughly grabbed her and hauled her into the boat.

  It rocked furiously with the sudden weight, and Adrian tied the landline around the bottom of the net to secure it before grabbing the oar. Merrin thrashed wildly, kicking out and clawing at the cords. Her shrieks were saturated with a mixture of horror and fear, growing desperate as she felt the boat moving away towards the shore.

  “Traitor!” she bellowed. “Traitor! Return me to the Lake this instant!”

  Adrian paid her no heed, wishing that there was somehow a way to shut out the noise. Merrin thrust her legs out powerfully and caught him in the stomach. He gasped as all of the breath left his lungs, and doubled over, dropping the oar into the water. A current seized it and pulled it out of reach.

  “Damn it!” Adrian shouted, making a grab for it. “Now look what you’ve done!”

  “How dare you!” Merrin shouted. “Traitor!”

  “Shut up!”

  “Traitor! Let me go!”

  Adrian looked around frantically for something else that could serve as an oar, but there was nothing – not even a nearby branch that might have fallen into the Lake. He glared at Merrin, not bothering to mask his fury. It didn’t matter anymore. She was an Asræ – a Princess – a being of that mysterious place unchartered by man. She was beautiful and strange, and could live for thousands of years. She would bring him and his wife riches and fame beyond imagining: treasures for his descendants to inherit forever.

  Merrin’s brows lowered as she met his eyes, holding him with a venomous stare. Her hands shone a blinding white, and her long fin flickered maliciously. The sound was like a rattlesnake, ready to strike.

  “Traitor,” she snarled through her teeth. “How could you?”

  Adrian moved a little closer. “You’ll see soon enough.”

  Merrin leapt towards him, pushing her arms through the net. She seized his hands in hers, locking her fingers around them in a death grip. Adrian exclaimed and tried to shake her off, but then his eyes widened and an agonised scream tore the air. The white light spat from Merrin and into him; he threw his head back and yelled to the sky, desperately wrenching in a vain attempt to break free. Merrin kept her eyes on him, unflinching.

  “Curse you!” she cried. “I curse you forever, Atégo! Traitor! You shall rue this night for all time!”

  Adrian’s jaw strained as the scream consumed him. Merrin flung him away, sending him heavily into the end of the boat. He held his hands up before his face, staring and gasping in horror. In a hysterical attempt to soothe them, he plunged them both under the Surface, and Merrin quickly slammed into him, upending the vessel. The water roared past them; Adrian was writhing so much that for a moment he forgot to breathe. Through the haze of pain and silver bubbles, he watched Merrin – now in her element – tear her way free of the net. She shot him a glare of intense hatred before vanishing into the darkness, the shredded ropes drifting down after her like a ghost.

  Adrian struggled towards the Surface, and didn’t wait a second before beginning to swim for the bank. Despite having come to the Lake many times throughout his life and being an able fisherman, his usually-powerful strokes were clumsy with pain and fright. When he eventually staggered onto dry land, with the forest looming over him like sharp claws, he barely had strength to clamber onto his mare’s back. He dug his heels into her sides, and the horse immediately galloped back towards the east, eyes wide and rolling.

  Merrin’s shrieks still hung heavy in the air like a gas, stabbing at his mind. The sting in his hands was almost unbearable: her eyes like a brand embedded into every knot of wood and periphery shadow. The night was alive with activity, no longer trying to be silent for the two lovers. Every living creature beat at him with unvoiced disgust, for daring to chance her.

  When Adrian finally returned home, the sun rose, and he let out a scream that wracked the whole village. The sound seemed to worm its way into every house, reeking of desolation and terror, and the endless torment to come.

  PART ONE

  The lakes are something which you are unprepared for;

  they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, -

  so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores,

  even now civil and refined,

  and fair as they can ever be.

  - Henry David Thoreau

  CHAPTER I

  Fayreground Days

  Jyune, 1219

  S ummer in the Elitland was never anything short of beautiful. The Valley was a pocket: a lush island in a bleak and unforgiving stone sea, crested for miles with the summits of high mountains. Over the lip of the Eastern Ridge, the rising sun bathed the land in a symphony of light: tinting the sky with a perfect fusion of baby blues and sugary pinks. The air was warm without being humid, and a chorus of birdsong rolled with the wind.

  It was on a typical and common day such as this when fifteen-year old Silas Atégo made his way to the Fayre, for the first time in two years. The harsh rattle of the cartwheels filled his ears, but he was tolerant enough of it to hear robins chattering overhead. The breeze gently lifted his hair back from his face, and he closed his eyes and smelled the sweet scent of wildflowers lining the way.

  His boot hit a large stone and he yelped in surprise, quickly stumbling upright before he could crash onto his stomach. The elderly grey donkey beside him started with alarm, and Silas stoked her neck to calm her down. There was an amused chuckle from the seat of the cart, and he groaned with embarrassment.

  “Watch where you’re going, you clumsy fool!”

  Despite himself, Silas couldn’t hold back a smile of his own. He glanced back at Raphael, who was clutching the ends of the donkey’s reins in his hands. His brother’s merry brown eyes shone in the morning light.

  “Oh, aye?” Silas replied. “What say you that I take a turn sitting up there?”

  Raphael sneered at him playfully in answer, and Silas turned back to the path, tickling the donkey under her chin. To their right, the river ran like a gre
at blue serpent, flanked with patches of forest and fields. In the distance lay Ullswick: the largest of the three Valley villages. Usually, its streets were quiet as the residents set to work, but every summer, a frenzy descended, from countless families flocking to the Fayre. Even before Ullswick had come into sight, Silas had been able to hear music echoing across the fields. Many people were laden with clothes, baskets, meats, and tools to trade. The sound of joyous – and in some cases, drunken – laughter echoed from the square, sending the occasional disturbed swallow darting from the thatch on the cottage roofs.

  Any tiredness that Silas might have felt from the journey was immediately pushed down as he struggled to manoeuvre the donkey through the throng. On the cart seat, Raphael’s near-permanent smile had compressed into a thin line of concentration. The Fayre was the only one of its kind, and held close to the Midsummer Holy Day. So because it was open for only a few days each year, in all the instances that Silas could ever remember going, it had always been busy. However, it seemed even more hectic this year, because for the first in a long time, there were Travellers in the Elitland.

  Silas had seen them from afar the week before, moving past his own village, up in the north. They had come with all manner of bounty to be traded, and although there might be some takers for their leather goods and embroidery, most of the people around them were focused on the foreign spices. Stocking up with sacks of it would be essential in pickling the meat for winter. Silas and Raphael were among those clamouring for spices, and their cart was laden with whatever they could afford to trade in. There was a spare hoe, a loaf of rye bread, and a basket of strawberries that their sister Mekina had fetched from the woodland behind the house.

  Raphael left Silas with the cart whilst he took their goods into the array of stalls. Silas led the donkey to the outskirts of the crowd and climbed up into the seat to avoid being trampled. He saw his brother’s distinctive red hair disappearing into the sea of villagers, then viewed the scene with interest.