Heartwood (46 page)

However, to her surprise, Bearrach just nodded. “I know.”

“How…?”

“The stone in Salentaire. It had no name. I guessed what had occurred.”

“Oh.” She felt confused. He had known all this time and had not accused her?

He looked across at the girl. “Are you sure this is your daughter?”

“She looks like me.”

“That does not make her your daughter.”

“I know…” She did not know what to say. “She knows things about me, Bearrach; she can read my mind. She knew what I had done; she called me a murderer…” More tears fell down her cheeks.

Bearrach clenched his fists but could not move. “Do you really think your own child would say such a thing?”

“It is a just accusation,” she said, trying to wipe her face clear and failing, “for I did indeed cause her death.”

“You were very young. You must have been about to be nominated for the High Council?”

“That does not excuse what I did,” she said softly.

He smiled at her. “Is it your daughter who cannot forgive you, or you who cannot forgive yourself?”

The Portal flickered. Bearrach vanished like a rainbow.

Fionnghuala stared after him. His words rang in her head.
Can you not forgive yourself…?
“It is true,” she whispered. She turned back to face the little girl. “I must be able to forgive myself before I ask forgiveness from others.”

The girl nodded. All resentment and anger had gone from her face, and suddenly, she looked much older and wiser than her seven years. “Come here,” she said, and Fionnghuala knelt on the floor, and the girl put her arms around her. “Guilt comes with the milk,” said the girl. “All mothers have it, even those who bear their children happy and healthy.”

Fionnghuala looked up at the girl's face. “You are not her, are you?”

She shook her head. “But I have seen her. She forgives you, and now maybe you can learn to forgive yourself.”

Fionnghuala's lips trembled. “Then who are you?”

“I am all mothers, and all daughters. I am present when you are giving birth, and I dig the grave when you die. I am birth, and death, and the life that comes in between.” She put her hand on Fionnghuala's head. “Be at peace. Be open.”

There was a huge crack of thunder above them. Fionnghuala gasped. The Portal trembled, the earth carrying the movement beneath her knees. In her mind's eye, she saw a picture – herself giving birth, holding a child in her arms, watching the girl grow up, seeing her daughter marry and have children of her own. The baby she had lost or one yet to come? She could not fathom; time span like a web, and there was no beginning and no end. “Bearrach,” she gasped.

And then, suddenly, all was quiet. She was alone on one side of the hillside, and through the Portal were her companions, their faces filled with fear and awe at what they had witnessed. The Node was open, and instinctively, she knew she would hear the baby cry no more.

 

IV

On the hill where the Henge stood proudly overlooking its landscape, it was cool and quiet, the dull gloom of the day fading to the grey fog of twilight covering the world like a blanket, muffling all sound.

Gravis sat in the centre of the Henge under a small canopy which just about kept off the rain, as long as the wind didn't blow too hard. He sat still and quiet, although inside his heart pounded, and he had to take deep breaths to calm himself. Around him reared the tall towers of the megaliths that made up the Henge, and at their bases sat the Guardians, who like him were silent in contemplation.

The rest of his party were also there, sitting in between the Guardians, completing the ring around him. He half-wished they had stayed down in the houses. He had not grown close to any of them on the journey, save maybe Aranea initially, but she had not said two words to him since the incident in the Temple, and the others had maintained a respectful but clear distance. Even Fortis, who had wanted to stay with him to protect him, seemed withdrawn and distant.

He was beginning to feel somehow separate from the world, as if he inhabited another dimension. Sometimes he wondered if he were invisible, a shadow that people saw out of the corner of their eye. It was almost as if someone was rubbing him out, he thought, as if he were slowly fading, like a rainbow after the mist.

Gravis looked around the Henge, feeling claustrophobic with the tall stones towering over him. His eyesight was beginning to blur. The drugs the Guardians had given him had started to work.

He had spent some time talking to Thancred, the leader of the Guardians, about his life and the Quest, and the problems he had experienced on the journey. To his relief, Thancred had believed every word he said, listening seriously and nodding intently as Gravis tried to describe the deep misery he felt, although he could not truly give an answer as to why.

“I am so lucky, I do realise,” the knight had told the Guardian. “I was chosen in the Allectus, which many are not, and I have had the privilege to serve the Arbor all my life. I know I have led an honourable and worthwhile life. And yet still I cannot shake off this feeling of… being less than whole.”

Thancred had nodded, his face solemn. “There is something unseen at work here,” he said. “And the only way to find out what is to loosen the bounds of consciousness.”

Which was why Gravis was starting to see the stones move, having drunk a full tankard of the herb concoction the Guardians had brewed to instigate visions.

It was the first time he had ever been under the influence of a mind-altering substance, and for a while he sat in wonder as the world around him danced. The stones seemed to sway rhythmically, their tall forms filled with light. Gradually, the background faded into darkness, the forms of the Guardians and his Quest companions vanishing, but the stones remained bright as full moons, until they were all that existed, shining like beacons in the night.

Gravis closed his eyes. Very faintly, he could hear a low, throbbing hum. It pulsed like a heartbeat. No, he was more than hearing it; he was feeling it, through the ground, vibrating up through his bones, echoing in the cavity of his chest.

It was the stones.

Gravis's heart thudded, but he kept his eyes closed. And in his mind's eye, he began to see a picture.

It was a room in a small cottage, lit by candles and a fire dancing in the tiny grate. A woman lay on the large bed that took up most of the room. She was in the process of giving birth. Two women stood by her side, one holding her hand and stroking her brow while the other busied herself preparing for the imminent arrival.

The scene itself was not particularly strange; after all, births happened most years in nearly every cottage in Anguis. But what was most odd was that Gravis felt he was not just seeing the physical side of things; each person had around their bodies a hazy glow that pulsed and blurred as they moved. He had never seen the likes of it before and wasn't sure what it was, but it was clearly something to do with the individuals' energies: all the women's auras interacted with one another, blending and mixing like wet paint as they touched or spoke to one another.

Gravis stood in the corner of the room in awe. He had recognised the place instantly. It was the cottage where he had lived for the first seven years of his life. The place where he had been born.

He looked at the woman straining on the bed, her dark brown hair damp and her face flushed. It was his mother. Was it possible…? Could it be he was witnessing his own birth? It could not be anything else; he and Gavius had been the last of a large family, and she would now be past childbearing age.

As a contraction took hold of her, his mother pushed, and Gravis watched as the midwife guided the head of the baby down the birth canal and out into the waiting world. His mother panted, her face creased with pain, as the midwife turned the child and eased first one shoulder and then the other out, and then the rest of the baby slid quickly into her waiting hands.

The other woman took the baby and cleaned it. Gravis watched, his throat tight with emotion. He did not know whether it was himself or Gavius – his mother had never told them who came first.

The baby was encased in a fine silvery light, as if carried in a web, which turned almost to gold at the crown. A thin trail of the light followed the baby's umbilical cord back into his mother.

Gravis watched as her contractions began again, and she began to push out the second baby. It was not long before the twin followed his brother into the world, wailing a little at being separated from his mother.

Gravis frowned and leaned forward to peer intently at the twins. A silvery trail also led from the second twin to his mother. However, as the midwife cut the cord and he was taken to the other side of the room to join his brother, something happened. The umbilical cord now ended at the babies' navels in a tied stump; however, the silvery trail, severed from its source, continued to hang like a piece of thread from their bodies. And as Gravis watched, and the second baby was laid next to his brother, the two threads suddenly linked around each other, joining to make one thread from the first twin to the second.

He gasped. At that moment, the babies were inextricably linked. Was it always the way with twins? Of course, he had no answer to that, but it was certainly clear from what he was being shown that he and Gavius shared a distinct connection.

The scene before him faded as if a heavy mist had come down, and then it cleared and he was looking at another view. This time it was a sloping field leading down to the river. He recognised it as being a meadow to the south of his village, where he and other children who lived around his house used to play when they were young, before he and Gavius went to Heartwood.

And indeed, here were the six year-old children now, barging through the gate at the bottom of the field, yelling as they ran across the buttercup-covered grass and down to the water. There were half a dozen children, and he could spot the twins instantly: tall, wiry and with the same shock of brown hair, they could have been a mirror image of one another. Once again, he could see the blurred colours of an aura around each child. The other children had greens and pinks and yellows merging like butter left too long in the sun. The twins' aura, however, was a bright gold, and they were clearly still joined by a thin trail that led from one twin's solar plexus to the other. For a moment, he thought their auras identical; however, as he looked more closely, he could see one brother's aura was brighter than the other's. Again, he was not sure which twin was which; they were completely identical, and even Gravis could not pick himself out between the two.

He followed them down to the river and watched as they stopped to drag down a flat piece of wood that appeared to have come off an old cart. They were obviously going to try and sail it to the other side. The boys began to discuss who should get on the raft and who should swim and push. One of the twins said to the other; “Go on. Why don't you go on the raft?” to his brother, in a spirit of generosity.

However, the other twin bristled. “Why? I can swim as good as you!”

“I know you can. I thought you would like to go on the raft.”

The brother shook his head. “You go. I shall push.”

The first twin shrugged and promptly climbed on the raft. But Gravis watched the second brother. His face showed resentment, jealousy and even a little hatred before it became carefully blank as he slid into the water.

Gravis's face flamed. Could the other Quest companions see these images? He hoped not. He was ashamed to watch the scene, which he remembered. Although, of course, they would not know he was the twin who refused to go on the raft.

Watching the brother before he slipped into the water, he saw the golden aura around him dim a little, Gavius's brightening almost imperceptibly. And at last he began to understand.

“So you are beginning to get it now?” The voice came from right in front of him, and Gravis blinked as the scene dissipated and he was back on the Henge hillside, the darkness hiding those seated around the stones, the only person visible the one standing directly before him. His twin, Gavius.

How could this be? Was this truly his brother, brought there by some incredible magic? Or was it just a shadow projected from his head, yet more fabrication conjured by his paranoid brain?

“I am beginning to understand,” he said hoarsely.

“So you thought it was I who stole things from you?” said Gavius mockingly. “You blamed your misfortune on me?”

Gravis said nothing. Already miserable, his shame only compounded his depression.

“It is always easier to blame someone else than to admit you were at fault,” said his twin.

Gravis nodded sadly. “It is true. I did think I was the worse student, the least popular knight, because of you. I did not consider it was my doing.”

“So many times you have wished me dead,” Gavius said bitterly. “And only now you realise you are to blame for your own misfortunes.”

“I never wished you dead!” gasped Gravis, but his twin just stared at him, and eventually he dropped his gaze. He put his head in his hands. “I never truly wanted to be rid of you. I love you, brother. My own failings were not your fault. I realise now.”

Sunk in the quagmire of despair, for a moment Gravis did not realise something around him had changed. Then, suddenly, he felt warmth surround him, and he looked up, his eyes widening. The figure of Gavius was still standing a short distance away, but suddenly right before him, Gravis saw his brother's face, and instantly he knew this truly was his brother, whereas the figure in the background was some sort of copy, like pretending to be in love in a play, and then experiencing the real thing.

The real Gavius looked into his eyes, and a sob build in Gravis's throat at the love that was buried deep within his brother's own orbs. “I am sorry,” said Gavius. “I am sorry for what has happened between us.”