Alys Clare: Blood of the South

I took a breath, trying to steady my fast-beating heart.

‘Have you your piece of lapis lazuli?’ Gurdyman asked softly.

I started. ‘Yes.’ I took it from the pouch on my belt.

‘Hold it in your left hand,’ he said. ‘It will help.’

There was utter silence in the crypt. Then, his voice soft, hypnotic but also irresistible, Hrype said, ‘Lassair, look into the shining stone.’

Clutching the lapis tightly, I bent over the stone. Again, the flash of gold, and the deep green ribbon, moving as if it was water … a great river, perhaps. My eyes narrowed, and it seemed as if a film of smoke was swirling inside the stone. I thought I could make out faint images in the smoke: dark figures, moving in a wide empty landscape; a long line of hunched men, engaged on some arduous task; water again, as a river became a sea, white-capped waves breaking on a far shore. Then, across those vague, everyday images, suddenly something else: something heard, or perhaps sensed, rather than seen, for it sounded like the heavy hoof-falls of a fast-pressed horse … no, two horses. I leaned closer to the shining stone, trying to make out the horses and their riders, but now the smoke was swirling faster, and the images I had seen – imagined – were gone. Then I saw a pair of birds, jet-black against the pearly grey smoke, and instinctively I drew back. In that swift instant before they disappeared, it had looked as if they were flying right at me.

I took a deep breath, then looked into the stone again.

There was nothing. It was black once more; dense, impenetrable black.

My left hand eased out of its tight fist – I hadn’t been aware of how hard I’d been clenching the piece of lapis, but now I realized it had dug painfully into the flesh of my palm. I opened and closed my fingers a few times to ease the discomfort, rolling my shoulders to get the tension out of my muscles.

As if he couldn’t bear to wait another moment, Hrype said sharply, ‘Well?’

I turned to him. ‘Well what?’

‘What did you see?’ he hissed.

What had I seen? ‘Smoke,’ I said. ‘Figures, moving about. Water.’ I shook my head. ‘It was very vague, and I’m pretty sure I was just imagining it.’

Hrype gave an impatient tut , turning away.

‘It is all but impossible to determine where the imagination ends and true sight begins,’ Gurdyman said quietly. ‘Indeed, it is a matter hotly debated among the wise, for there are no easy answers.’ He paused. ‘Was there anything else, Lassair?’

I shook my head. ‘No, nothing. I’m sorry, Gurdyman.’

He smiled, but I sensed it took some effort. I could feel his disappointment. ‘Well, never mind. It was but your first attempt, after all.’

‘Will I get better at it?’ I hated to let him down.

‘Of course you will!’ he said robustly. ‘And I shall help you.’ Now the smile was unforced, and I sensed the affection behind it. ‘I promised to do so, did I not?’

Indeed he had. I remembered vividly exactly what he’d said: I will teach you all that I know, and we shall hope that would be enough.

I’d found it distinctly alarming even then, all those months back. Now, when learning how to use the shining stone was no longer a distant prospect but right before me in the here and now, I was downright terrified.

But I wasn’t going to admit it. Gurdyman, by my side, appeared to be waiting for some response. I said – and I could hear the shake in my voice – ‘I’ll do my best.’

Hrype left, and I went back to my bed. I was exhausted, as if I had been on a long, wearisome journey, or had been beset with worries and problems that it was up to me to resolve.

But, once I was snug up in my little attic room, warm beneath the bedclothes, scenes from the day kept playing before my closed eyes. I saw Hrype, throwing back his hood to stare at me. I saw Gurdyman, his face creased with concern as he asked if I had the piece of lapis lazuli. Then Gurdyman again, his face reflecting his acute disappointment as I confessed I’d seen no more than a blur of smoke and a few nondescript figures.

The scenes played again, and then again. At last, however, fatigue overcame me, and I felt my body and mind relax towards sleep.

On the point of a dream, two things leapt up to the forefront of my mind, hurling me back to wakefulness. The first was an image of those two black birds, flying out of the stone straight for me. Without a doubt – and I had no idea where the awareness came from – I knew they were ravens.

I could not for the life of me think how, when Gurdyman asked if I’d seen anything else, I’d forgotten about them …

The second thing was to do with my piece of lapis, and its use other than as a pigment with which to make blue paint. As every apprentice wizard could have explained, lapis lazuli is used to heighten psychic ability. To hold a piece in the left hand is to invite the spirits to emerge from the shadow world and into our own.

Gurdyman hadn’t given me the lapis for protection. He’d given it purely and solely to heighten the chance that my first attempt to see inside the secrets of the shining stone would be successful.

And I hadn’t told him how well it had worked.

The next day, Gurdyman tactfully refrained from mentioning the shining stone. Since I much preferred to put the whole worrying incident to the back of my mind, I tried to forget all about it. But I kept seeing those two ravens, flying like arrows towards me. Two ravens … now what did that make me think of? I don’t want to know! I told myself.

It was easy to keep busy. Gurdyman takes his role as my teacher and mentor very seriously, and I do not have much time to retreat inside my own thoughts. He was currently instructing me in the art of mixing certain ingredients in precisely the right proportions to enhance their ultimate potency. I was already familiar with the concept, having been well taught by my healer aunt, Edild, when I first became her apprentice. Gurdyman, however, was not only a healer but a magician too, and, under his tutelage, I was beginning to learn the more arcane aspects of the art, such as the exact time that a plant must be picked and, perhaps most mystical and strange of all, the correct way to address the herbs before they are added to the mix.

We were preparing the Nine Herbs Charm: plantain, mugwort, lamb’s cress, betony, chamomile, nettle, chervil, fennel and crab apple. Edild had taught me about many of those herbs: mugwort’s sweet flowers are tied in bunches as an insect repellent, and it is also used to flavour beer; plantain heals cuts and sores, and you make a thick, syrupy infusion sweetened with honey to ease coughs, especially in children; fennel is used for stomach ailments and indigestion; crab apples ease constipation, and old lore maintains that the bitter, unripe apples drive out worms.

I knew of betony, since Edild occasionally uses it to treat diarrhoea and cystitis; she does not regularly keep it in her store room because she says it’s overrated. I have since learned – from Gurdyman, of course – that it is a magical plant; this, I suspect, is why my aunt is wary of it. Edild tries not to rely on magic, and treats the superstitious fears of the Aelf Fen villagers with courteous but ruthless disdain.

Beside me at the workbench, Gurdyman was grinding ingredients with a pestle and mortar, muttering under his breath. He had taught me how to make a paste of ashes and water, which we would then boil up with fennel. We worked steadily, and I tried to copy the neat, economical movements of his hands.

Suddenly he turned to me and said, ‘We have insufficient crab apples. Hurry and fetch more – a dozen will serve.’