Heritage Of The Xandim

6

KINDNESS OF A STRANGER

Tiolani and Corisand were not the only ones who were finding that their circumstances had been radically altered on the night of the ambush. When the Phaerie cut him free of their net, Dael plummeted like a stone into the forest below. His life would have been over had he not fallen into the thick canopy of a huge old chestnut tree. He crashed through the slender upper branches and the sturdier boughs below, and eventually thudded to a halt in a fork between two of the tree’s great limbs, battered, bruised and breathless, in a shower of twigs and bark. Winded, he lay still as a number of prickly green seed cases that had been stubbornly clinging to the tree throughout the winter came bouncing down around him. Everything settled at last and he realised, with a great deal of astonishment, that he was still alive.

It was still a long way to the ground, however. Moving carefully on his precarious perch, he took stock of the damage. His clothes, already in tatters before he’d been captured, were in a worse state than ever, with the bitter wind finding its way through every hole and rent. Violent pain stabbed through his chest when he breathed in - he had at least one broken rib. Blood was running down his face from a deep cut that was perilously close to his eye, and seeping into his pants from a gash in his left thigh. The left sleeve of his shirt had been practically torn off to expose a badly abraded shoulder and an arm bent at an odd angle. When he tried to move it, he felt the grate of broken bone, and was so overwhelmed by pain that it made him nauseous and faint. There was a tender lump on the side of his aching head and, judging by all the other lesser aches and pains, his body must be a mass of bruises and smaller cuts.

He couldn’t believe he had survived.

From the way his captors had been reacting, he knew that the attack on the Forest Lord must have taken place, but what had happened then? And after it was all over, would the Phaerie come back with their terrifying hounds to look for him? Or would they simply assume that the fall had killed him? He had no way of knowing, and he supposed that there was no point in worrying about something he couldn’t affect. He would just have to hope for the best, and get on with the business of trying to survive. Right now, the Phaerie were the least of his problems.

First, then, the arm. Working clumsily, one-handed, he untied the frayed old piece of rope he used as a belt and bound the injured limb to his aching side. It was the best he could do to keep it immobilised. Using strips from his torn shirtsleeve, he bandaged the cut in his leg as tightly as he could manage. As for the rest of his hurts - well, they would just have to take care of themselves. Until he could find some water, there was little more he could do for them.

The first difficulty lay in actually getting down from the tree in one piece. He knew he’d do better to wait until the sky grew lighter, but he was afraid that if he tried to stay up there for the rest of the night he would drift off to sleep and fall to the ground. It felt like an awfully long way to climb down, especially with only one arm and an injured leg. He was only able to take shallow breaths, due to the pain that knifed through his ribs with every inhalation. Shaking all over, partly with fear and partly from the reaction to his fall, he began to descend, selecting his route with care. He got stuck a couple of times, in places where there was nothing he could do but scramble and slither and eventually let himself drop, trying to protect his broken arm as best he could and praying that the boughs below would be strong enough to catch him. Somehow, his luck held. He finally made it down. As his feet touched the ground he felt his knees give way, and he slumped, exhausted, against the tree’s massive bole.

When Dael awakened he was aching, chilled to the bone and furious with himself for falling asleep in the open. What if a wild animal had come along? Or worse still, one of the accursed Phaerie? Might-have-beens, however, were the last of his worries. So far, he had been fortunate indeed, but he had a suspicion that his luck had finally run out. His injuries alone were probably enough to condemn him to a lingering, painful death, especially if the cuts and lacerations should fester. Alone in the forest in winter, he was hopelessly ill-equipped to survive. He had no means of making a fire, he didn’t have a cloak or blanket, and his clothing was hopelessly inadequate for the freezing weather. His only way of keeping warm at night would be to heap dead leaves around him. With no tools or weapons apart from his useless knife, he couldn’t hunt animals for food, and there was nothing growing in the forest to eat at this time of year: it was a long way from the nesting season for birds, and there were no mushrooms, nuts or berries.

Dael rubbed his hand across his face. He had tried to keep going, but the odds had been stacked so high against him it was hardly surprising that nothing ever went right. He closed his eyes, sunk in dark despair, too weary and desolate even to weep. What was the point? There was no chance of him living through this mess. Why put himself through any more misery and pain? He had his knife. He might not be able to kill an animal with it, but he could easily open one of his own veins.

The handle of the knife, usually so familiar in shape and texture that he never gave it a moment’s thought, felt different today. The smooth, carved bone seemed alien and heavy in his trembling hand, and the blade gleamed with cold menace in the grey morning light. He tried to find the right place on the wrist of the broken arm - awkwardly, since it was still bound to his side - once again feeling that shock of agony as bone scraped against bone. Pressing the keen edge of the knife against his flesh, he braced himself to slash deeply. How long did it take to bleed to death? Hopefully, it would be over quickly, and then . . .

And then what? Some slaves believed that they would go to some kind of ease-filled paradise - well, Dael would believe that when he saw it. Some were sure that they would be reborn into a better life. But how could such a thing be possible? They would still be humans, wouldn’t they? Still be slaves. Dael had always suspected that such notions could be nothing more than wishful thinking - and that being the case, did he really want to throw away the only life he had? Though it was unlikely that he would find another group of ferals or escapees to help him this close to the Phaerie city, it wasn’t absolutely impossible, was it? His life was all he had. The only thing they had not been able to take from him. How could he throw it away as if it were worthless? The Mages and the Phaerie might think mortals were little more than animals, counting for nothing, but Dael would never let himself sink so low as to believe that. When the Phaerie had cast him so carelessly from the skies, they had believed he would die. Why go out of his way to prove them right? If he ended his life now, they would have won. And he had been through so much already and survived. Why not wait a little longer? After all, he thought bleakly, what was the hurry? He could kill himself any time.

Survival in the forest proved to be even more of an ordeal than Dael had expected: an unending struggle against pain, cold and hunger. Try as he might, dragging himself over the uneven ground with the aid of a staff he had made, he could find nothing to eat. Even animals were few and far between in this cold weather - not that he’d have been able to kill them, even if he had managed to find them. After a fruitless day’s searching, he curled up in the hollow core of a dead tree, taking his roughly made staff, a stout fallen branch, with him as his only means of defence, and shivered through the hours of darkness.

On the second miserable day he was lucky enough to come across a squirrel’s winter cache of nuts, which he smashed open with a rock, devouring the fragments greedily. On the third day, however, he found nothing but the rigid body of a crow lying beneath a tree. It had been dead for so long that even a single mouthful of the raw and stinking flesh made him too sick even to attempt any more.

That was the day it started to snow. When he’d awakened that morning, he had felt colder than ever, and there had been a thin sprinkling of white over his leaf-pile. Later, as the day drew on towards evening, the snow began to fall in earnest, filling the air with fat, swirling white flakes as he staggered onward, growing colder and weaker with every hour that passed.

As dusk was deepening the shadows, he stumbled across the settlement. He emerged into a clearing to see a cluster of rough shelters: vague shapes in the swirling snow, much like the one from which he had been banished. Dael’s heart leapt. Another colony of humans. These folk didn’t know he had been cast out. Surely they would help him. With a cry of joy he lurched forward across the rough, hummocky ground of the clearing. As if in answer to his cry, lights appeared as people bearing torches emerged from the doorways of the dwellings, and a group of men, women and children stepped out to greet him.

All at once, Dael knew that something was very wrong. Surely he should be able to smell the smoke from the settlement’s fires? And why were these people approaching in such eerie silence? Surely they should be calling to him, asking him who he was, speaking to one another, making some sound?

Just as the moon rose above the trees, a swirl of snowflakes blew across the clearing and obliterated the figures. Dael’s feet caught on one of the hummocks and he went down hard, screaming with agony as he jarred his broken arm. Measuring his length in the snow, he came face to face with a little girl. She lay sprawled on the frozen ground with her skewed limbs half-buried, her ice-encrusted skin the same colour as the drifting snow. She seemed to be looking up into the sky - save that one eye had been picked out by the crows, and the other was obliterated completely, for the entire left side of her face had been sheared away by what looked like one enormous bite.

The bite of a fellhound.

The Hunt had been there before him.

He hurled himself backwards, gagging and retching, his empty stomach trying to empty itself still further. His out-thrust hand landed on a hard, icy form with familiar contours . . . Looking around, he saw another face, that of a man this time, whose head had been shorn away from his body. With a shriek, Dael leapt to his feet. All those hummocks scattered across the clearing must be corpses! The snow had obliterated the blood and stench, but here and there he could see that what he had taken, in the shadowy dusk, to be a branch with a cluster of twigs at the end was actually an arm. A thicker bough could only be a leg, though it was not attached to a body. Now that he understood what he was seeing, some of the shadows on the ground resolved themselves into faces that were mauled like that of the child, or twisted with fear and torment.

Snatching up his fallen staff, Dael scrambled to his feet, heart hammering. He looked across at the shelters, but found nothing there but blackened, burned-out wreckage. For an instant he thought he could still see the tenebrous forms of the ghosts - then they too had vanished into the snow and the night.

Before he had time to assimilate what had just happened, Dael heard the sound of snarling behind him. Now that night had fallen, the forest’s predators were coming to feast upon the bodies of the dead. Wolves loped through the trees, running low to the ground, and he caught the moon-like reflection from the jewelled eyes of a lynx. All around him, animals were holding their grisly feast, gnawing, and ravening as they quarrelled over the lumps of frozen meat that they tore loose from the scattered bodies. So far, with so much easy food available, they had ignored the human interloper in their midst - but how long would that last? What if a bear should come? It was doubtful that he’d be able to defend himself against a smaller creature like a wolf or a lynx, but against one of the gigantic forest bears, he would certainly stand no chance. Impelled by terror, Dael scrambled out of the clearing and fled the dreadful scene of carnage as fast as his weak and weary body would take him.

On he went, staggering blindly through the dark woods and the snow. Only his stubborn will kept him going: a flat refusal to surrender his life. He had survived his father’s brutality, his compatriots hadn’t succeeded in killing him when they’d exiled him, and the Phaerie hadn’t accomplished his death, even though they had dropped him out of the skies from their net. He had even survived his own sense of hopelessness. After coming through all that, he was damned if he was just going to lie down and die because he was cold and hungry and snow was falling on him. Somehow, come what may, he would get through this, if only to spite his former captors.

At last the ground began to slope upwards, becoming increasingly steep, and he hesitated for a moment, wondering if it was worth the effort it would cost him to keep going in this direction. Yet maybe, if he could climb above the general level of the forest, he might be able to spot another settlement of feral humans like the one he had already found. At the very least, he might be able to see somewhere to shelter.

Dael did his best to keep moving throughout that night, knowing that if he lay down he would have neither the strength nor the will to get up again. Dawn would soon be breaking, he kept telling himself. With the daylight would come fresh hope. Scarcely aware of his surroundings, he wandered aimlessly beneath the trees in a darkening dream - until abruptly he was shocked back into awareness as his stumbling foot encountered nothing but empty space. He lost his balance and fell forward, rolling and tumbling down a steep, stony slope, bounding and sliding and turning head over heels, faster and faster - until a large boulder came looming out of the night. Helpless to avoid it, he collided with the huge stone, crashing into it and hitting it hard. There was a bright flash of pain, then Dael’s world went dark.

The Cailleach was sitting by the fireside, enjoying the random flickering of the golden flames, the comfort of the warmth washing over her skin, the spicy tang of mulled wine. It was strange to be back in the world again. Strange, but very good. Too good, if truth were told. Sometimes, she wondered if she had been wise to come here. But her vision had shown her the risks of destruction for so many of the wonders she had helped to create, and somehow she just couldn’t sit back as a dispassionate spectator and watch all her hard work pulled down. Such direct intervention was against the Laws of the Cosmos, and if the other Guardians ever found out, the retribution would be grave indeed: she would certainly be banished from this world she loved so much, and her brethren might even take her powers from her. Even so, having located the pivotal time when events might be steered in one direction or another, she had come anyway. Not to interfere, she kept assuring herself. Certainly not. Just to be on hand in case she should be needed. However, though she had been willing to risk the penalties for defying Cosmic Law, she had never for one moment considered the other, more insidious dangers to an Immortal who had long dwelt on a higher, more ethereal plane.

It was a tremendous leap from the changeless tranquillity of the Timeless Lake. Here she could feel the beat of the passing seasons in her blood; the world turning beneath her feet. Here, time flowed like a golden river against her skin. The contrasts of this mundane world were unsettling: day and night, sun and moon, the warmth of her tower room and the chill of the snow outside. She had to get used to an overload of information from her senses: the colours of the sky and the landscape, the joyous sounds of birdsong and the sigh of the wind in the trees, the icy little kisses of snow against her skin and the taste and texture of food. Now that she had come into the world, she must perforce share all the sensations that the beings who dwelt here must suffer and enjoy. She needed to eat and drink; she needed clothing and sleep. Though she used magical means to provide herself with these everyday necessities, it still galled her, on occasion, that she could not do without them.

Her powers, the fundamental, creative force of Gramarye, the High Magic, furnished the Cailleach with most of her requirements, but sleep was more difficult to come by. She was accustomed to being in control of her own awareness, and the idea of falling into unconsciousness for a number of hours filled her with a strange, nameless fear. At night she would keep herself awake, only to find herself drowsing unexpectedly through the day, and losing large chunks of time thereby. Nevertheless, she still paced the high chamber of her tower in the hours of darkness, or sat before her fire as she was doing tonight, trying to think of ways in which she could prevent the world of her creation, that she loved so dearly, from being destroyed through the folly of its inhabitants.

Right now, she could do nothing but wait for the three women of her vision to appear. Her Seeings in this earthly dimension were vague, uncertain and undependable, yet the Cailleach was convinced that these unknown females who would hold the key to the future of the world were not far away, and must surely reveal themselves soon. Or so she hoped. Every day she spent enjoying the sensual wonders of this rich and beautiful world would make it all the more difficult for her ever to return to her own unchanging realm.

The Lady of the Mists walked across to the window of her high tower and looked out. Beyond the dim reflection of her face, with its long white hair and pale moonstone eyes, dawn was breaking over the wintry landscape, and she looked out with pleasure at the valley, the lake and the trees. Here, at least, she could feel as much at home as it was possible for her to be in the mundane world that had been spun out of her dreaming, and the dreams of the other Guardians.

This world had been her own conception for the most part, which was why she had remained responsible for watching over its fate. While it was being created, she had devised a special, magical valley that reminded her of her own Timeless Lake. In this world it took the form of a steep-sided bowl in the midst of the great forest. In the centre was a tranquil lake with an island of dark stone that almost seemed to float upon the surface of the water. And on the island was a tower that took the form of a gigantic tree, the twin of the Cailleach’s home in the Timeless Lake.

This secret vale was sacred and steeped in magic. It was the living heart of the world she had created with her brothers and sisters. It would never change significantly down all the long ages because, no matter what should befall it, this place would always find a way to return to the original pattern: the tree-lined bowl, the lake, the isle, the tower. In this era, the Cailleach had given the tower the form of her own beloved Tree at the Heart of the World, but she knew from her Seeings that in the future, it was destined to rise and fall; to be destroyed and rebuilt a number of times and in a variety of designs - and yet, in its fundamental essence, it would always remain the Tower.

The Cailleach was snatched out of her reflections by a warning tingle that passed right through her body. Someone had entered the Vale. Furthermore, she was certain to the very core of her being that it was someone who would play a significant part in the crisis the world was facing. Was it one of the three unknown women? Had fate brought her to the Lady’s very doorstep?

On the table stood a silver bowl of crystal-clear water from the lake, and the Cailleach stooped over it eagerly, willing an image of the intruder to form. To her disappointment she could see very little detail: rocks, a few sparse and broken trees, and a still, dark figure lying on its face beside a large boulder. Alive? Dead? It was impossible to tell. Stifling a curse, she threw her thick cloak of black feathers, cowled and fringed with white, around her shoulders and stepped out onto the high platform at the top of the external staircase that curled around the trunk of the tower’s treelike walls. Taking a deep breath, she lifted her arms - and the shape of a woman shimmered into the form of a great eagle. She soared upwards from the ledge, revelling in the uplift as she spurned the ground; enjoying the rush of wintry air through her feathers. With her raptor’s keen vision she scanned the landscape, circling the vale until she had found the place she sought. The area was easy to recognise. A landslide had wiped the trees from a section of the valley wall, leaving a long scar of rough and stony ground in its place.

Close to the bottom of the slide, the accumulation of tumbled boulders was piled together with the splintered remnants of the trees that had been lost in the disaster. At the foot of the snowy mound, the Cailleach saw the dark blot that she sought. Landing quickly, she shimmered back into her human shape and ran towards the still form that lay sprawled in the lee of the boulder. She turned the body over carefully, and her spirits fell in disappointment. This was not one of the women she had been seeking. It was a young man, and one of the wretched slave race of humans, at that. He appeared to be on the very brink of death. How could he affect anything in the future? And yet the urgent feeling that the poor wretch would be important to her plans would not go away. Though she had no idea why, it was vital that she save his life. Casting her cloak about him, she took him up in her arms and apported him back to her tower.

The Cailleach was moved to a depth of feeling unusual for her at the sight of the pale, thin form that lay so still on the comfortable bed she had created with a careless wave of her hand. As a rule she remained aloof from the individual creatures who inhabited the world she had created, for what would be the point of involving herself with lives that sparked so briefly down the long ages? She had never bothered to study the slave race before - there had been no need - but now she decided it was time she started. When the coming upheavals took place, it looked as though the influence of the humans on the world’s future could be far greater than any of the Guardians could possibly have expected.

Furthermore, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that this particular human would be important. What she had not counted on, however, were the emotions he engendered. In the changeless Otherworld of the Timeless Lake, she had little need of such feelings, which interfered with the stillness of her meditations, so the strong sense of sympathy and concern that came over her at the sight of this pitiful, injured, helpless creature took her by surprise. So preoccupied was she with the slave, it failed to occur to her that her sojourn in this world was affecting her emotions, making them increase in strength.

Having rescued the human from the brink of death and brought him home with her to her tower, it was but a short step to convince herself that healing the pathetic creature did not really count as interfering in the events of the mundane world. If she didn’t intervene, he would perish from his injuries, and having gone to all the trouble of rescuing him, she decided that it would be ridiculous to let him die.

When it came to taking care of this new responsibility, the Cailleach, with her powers of Gramarye, had considerable advantages over a worldly rescuer, whatever their race. While he remained unconscious, she used her powers to cleanse his filthy, lice-ridden body, thinking, as she did so, that her recently acquired sense of smell was not necessarily a good thing in this case. It took her quite some time and effort to heal all his injuries: the broken bones, wrenched muscles and the skin covered in bruises and abrasions, but finally, with a sense of tremendous satisfaction, she could declare herself content with her work, and clothe her patient in a clean, white robe.

Only when these basic needs had been attended to did she start to wonder how she would manage when he awoke. No one must ever learn that a Guardian had crossed the invisible boundary into this reality, as her presence could interfere with all sorts of imponderable factors connected with the fate, self-determinism and philosophies of the indigenous races - not to mention bringing down the wrath of the other Guardians on her head. For everyone’s sake, she must persuade this young man whose life she had saved that she belonged to his world.

The Cailleach decided to present herself as a Wizard, for that would give her the widest opportunities to use her powers. To maintain the disguise, however, she would have to make some very sweeping alterations. Her tower, like her home in her Tree at the Heart of the World, consisted of one spacious, circular chamber set high above the ground. She had needed no lamps or fire, for warmth and light emanated from the very walls, and there were no furnishings save a table, a chair and a bed. So far, she had obtained all her worldly needs such as food and clothing through magic. The tower was singularly uncluttered, for whatever she needed she could simply materialise out of thin air. That would have to change.

Leaving her wanderer to the long, profound sleep of healing, the Cailleach bent all her energies to the task before her. Standing in the midst of the great, circular chamber, she pictured in her mind the changes she wished to make. There could be two sleeping chambers up here, with a general living area and a study in which she could work and meditate on the floor below. Finally, she would divide the ground floor into a large, cosy kitchen and a smaller store room for foodstuffs and other supplies, which she would have to apport in by magic before her stray awoke. The stairs should be inside, rather than around the exterior of the tower, and she would need an additional entrance at ground level. On the snowy island outside her tower, she created a garden which, though dormant at present beneath its cold, white covering, would one day have fruit trees and beehives, rows of thriving vegetables and curving beds filled with many-hued flowers. Oh, and the shape of the tower itself should change. She envisioned a tapering, elegant form, instead of the tree shape to which she was accustomed . . .

To her surprise, the Cailleach found herself smiling. Maybe it would be a good thing to escape for a while from the unvarying existence of a Guardian. There had been very little change in her life down the long aeons since she and her siblings had created this world. She had forgotten how invigorating it could be.

Dael woke up to utter confusion. With a shudder, he remembered that dreadful fall; remembered his arm snapping like a twig beneath him; remembered the agony that knifed through his chest as he hit a rock and his ribs broke; recalled the rough stones tearing at his skin as he plunged wildly downhill.

So where was the pain? Gingerly he moved his arms and his legs, poked at his ribs and felt his skin for scrapes and tender bruising. There was nothing. He was ravenously hungry and he felt a little weak and shaky, but otherwise he was absolutely fine. He simply couldn’t understand it. By rights, he shouldn’t even be alive.

Abandoning the puzzle, Dael turned his attention to his surroundings. In his early life in the Wizardly fishing settlement on the western coast, before his father had led the group of slaves to escape, he’d had a bed of sorts, a simple, narrow affair with a thin mattress supported by rope netting on a wooden framework, and a ragged blanket to cover him. In his life of so-called freedom in the forest he had slept on the ground. Now he found himself in a bed that was warm and comfortable beyond his wildest dreams, with clean, white linen, soft pillows and a quilt stuffed thickly with feathers.

The bed was the main feature of a chamber that was clearly a section of some bigger, circular structure, for it had one long straight wall and another that curved round in a sweeping arc to form a semicircle. The walls of this unusual room were made of a strange amber-coloured stone that Dael had never seen before, which was so translucent that the light from outside actually shone through the curving wall in a warm, golden glow. At one end of the straight wall was the door, whilst the bed was against the other. On the curving wall a fireplace had been built on the side of the curve nearest the bed, with a generous fire that was just burning down from a blaze to a great bank of glowing embers. On the side closer to the door was a window, with a table and two chairs set beside it. The floor was covered with woven rush matting of a pale straw colour, and the other furnishings of the room consisted of a large wooden chest covered in intricate carvings and, beside the fire, a wooden rocking chair with cheerful crimson cushions.

When he had first awakened, Dael was feeling dreamy and comfortable, but now, as he became more alert, he began to feel increasingly afraid. Where was he? How had his hurts miraculously vanished? Who owned this place, and why had they rescued him? Who would bother to give such comforts to a lowly slave?

Dael stiffened in his bed at the sound of footsteps outside the room. The door glided soundlessly open. Quickly he feigned sleep, squinting out through lowered eyelashes at the dark-robed figure who was approaching the bed - until his gasp of surprise gave the game away.

He had never seen anyone like her. She was neither tall nor tiny, but her presence was overwhelming. She certainly wasn’t human, but was she Phaerie or Wizard? Somehow, she didn’t quite look as if she belonged to either race, though he thought he could detect faint traces of both. Her hair was long and a shimmering silver-white in colour, giving the initial perception that she was an old woman - an impression belied by her face, which was neither old nor young, but changed subtly each time he blinked, so that he could never register a definite image. Yet overall, his impression was one of a luminous, transcendent beauty that filled him with awe. Her pale, silvery eyes, glowing like moonstones, held him in thrall for some unguessable period of time, so that when she spoke, her low, melodious voice seemed to come from a land far away.

‘You’re awake at last, I see.’ Her smile took his breath away. No one had ever looked on him so kindly before. ‘Now, before we go any further, there are three things you need to know,’ she said briskly. ‘One: you’re safe. Two: you’re quite well. You only need to rest for a day or two to complete the healing. Three: you’re not a prisoner. If you are stupid enough to want to go back to starving in the forest, then you’ve no business here.’ She smiled again. ‘I might add that you’re a very fortunate young man indeed, but I expect you know that already.’

‘Who - who are you?’ Dael whispered.

‘You can call me Athina,’ the mysterious woman answered, ‘and you are in my tower in the very heart of the wildwood. Wherever you came from, you almost blundered right onto my doorstep.’

‘I never heard that anyone lived all the way out here,’ Dael said in surprise.

For a moment, her smile vanished, and her face darkened. A shiver of fear went through him. It was as though someone had switched off the sun. ‘And of course, you would know,’ she snapped.

‘I’m sorry, my Lady,’ he said humbly.

The smile returned. ‘Of course you are.’ From somewhere out of his sight she produced another pillow and propped him into a sitting position. ‘Here, drink. You’ll be fiendishly thirsty, I expect. You’ve been asleep for a very long time.’

Obediently he drank the water, which was cool and tingling, and the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. When he had finished it all, he lay back with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘If you feel hungry, there’s food on the table beside your bed,’ she said. ‘I will leave you in peace to eat. Then you should sleep a little longer. When you wake again, we’ll talk properly. I have a great many questions for you, and I expect you also have a few to ask me.’

He didn’t see her leave, yet suddenly, Dael found himself alone once more. And as soon as his mysterious benefactress had gone, the feelings of fear that had been removed by her presence came rushing back, followed by - just as she had predicted - a whole cartload of questions. Who was she? What did she want with him? Why was she going to all this trouble for an insignificant human slave?

All such thoughts were driven from his head by a wonderful, savoury aroma. Dael’s stomach began to growl. Food. The woman had mentioned food and sure enough, when he turned, there was a little table at the side of his bed with a tray containing a bowl of steaming soup, and a plate of bread and cheese. He fell on them ravenously, though his stomach was so shrunken from starvation that he found he could eat far less than he’d expected: only half of the thick bean soup and a single piece of bread. With a sigh he returned the food to the table and lay back on the pillows - and it was only then, when his immediate needs had been satisfied, that he realised something strange was going on. Thirsty after his meal, he had absent-mindedly reached for the goblet, remembering, too late, that he had emptied it earlier. But to his surprise, it felt heavy in his hand, and when he looked, it was full again, and though the room was warm, the water was as cool and fresh as if it had just been drawn from a well.

Dael blinked in confusion. How had that happened? He knew very well that the strange woman had not refilled the goblet before she’d left the room. Come to think of it, he’d never seen her bring the goblet in anyway, nor the food. And now that he cast his mind back, on his first, cautious survey of the room, he was positive there had been no table beside the bed, with or without the food. So where in all Creation had it come from? And why, though the soup had been standing there for at least half an hour, was it still piping hot when he ate it? Despite the warmth of the room, Dael felt a shiver of fear run through him. His head was awhirl with questions, none of which he could even begin to answer; the most pressing of these being: what did this mysterious and very powerful woman plan to do with him?

Then, just as he felt panic beginning to overtake him, he had a clear memory of the woman standing before him in her dark robes, emphasising what she was saying by counting the points off on her fingers. He remembered her words:

‘One: you’re safe. Two: you’re quite well now. You only need to rest for a day or two to complete the healing. Three: you’re not a prisoner.’

Suddenly, Dael felt better. For the first time in his life, someone was taking care of him and treating him with kindness. Never before had he been given his own room with a fireplace - a fireplace - a soft, comfortable bed and plentiful food. And no one had ever smiled at him the way this mysterious Lady had done.

Even if she turns me into a frog or a monster later on, even if I have to work from dawn till dusk, it’ll have been worth it, just for this, he thought. Even if she kills me, it will have been worthwhile. But I don’t think she will. She said I’m safe, and that I’m not a prisoner.

He felt his eyelids beginning to close but, just as he was on the edge of sleep, he heard a small, warning voice in the back of his mind:

You’d better hope she was telling you the truth.

Dael ignored it, turned over, and went back to sleep.