An Extract from The Hollow Behind the Hearthstone, a novel by Mark Devlin, forthcoming from The Hollow Press, 2021
Taril stood, setting his wine-cup carefully down, and went to the corner where he had leaned his staff. Istorius called Arnauld back, and directed him in moving piles of books and pushing the chairs into place; no longer centred on the fireplace, they now were set at the cardinal points of the Circle. Taril gestured to Aradia, and she began extinguishing the candles with a brass snuffer. The room became gradually more dark, shadows leaping up around the walls. Istorius directed the girl to the edges of the room, from where she brought four great creamy candles, each with a complex glyph painted on it, in iron stands that put their height at head level. These she set one behind each chair, at the four points of the Circle. Rogrim felt he was in the way, and stepped aside, next to the fire. Its embers were burning low.
“What is happening here?” he asked. “Do I not have my word to say in this? What meddling in my mind are you going to do?”
“Never fear. The Master will be gentle with you, your first time. It is disorienting to begin with, but you’ll soon understand,” Aradia murmured to him as she set up a brazier beside him. The other men ignored his questions.
“Here,” said the Doctor, “I have what you need.”
He shuffled off to another room, and soon came back with a pot which he set upon the table and opened. From within, he took a handful of dried herbs, which he set to smoulder on the brazier, which was by now charged with a shovel of embers from the fire. Taril directed Rogrim to sit in one of the chairs, which he unwillingly did.
“You sit in the North, for you are a Northman, seat of the Earth, and all your natural, material world. The Doctor takes the West, for he is Harronan; he sits in the sign of Water, of flowing and shifting things, of melancholy. Aradia, you are the South, for you come from the
Islands, and you represent the Fire, passion, and inspiration. And I am the East, for I am of Khoros. I stand here for intellect, insight, the element of Air.” Each person took their seat as named. A thick, pungent smoke was trickling from the herbs on the brazier, curling and tumbling in the air. The smell that came to Rogrim was acrid, sharp green, tingling.
“Aradia. Light the candles.” She took a taper from the mantel, and lit it in the fire, then went to each great candle, starting with Taril’s in the East, then moving slowly and reverently to the South, to the West, and finally to the candle over Rogrim’s head in the North; as she did so, she hummed a faint song, a chant, and Taril and Istorius took up the refrain. Its melody resonated in the space below the ribcage, where one feels one’s soul to be. Taril followed her, reinscribing the sigils with the point of his staff, and gesturing over them with his hand. Rogrim shivered deliciously all over, and took a deep breath that shuddered, and caught in his lungs as the smoke went into him. A feeling of languorous abandon overtook him, and Taril’s voice came from afar.
“The herbs will help you let down your defences. The chant is the invocation. Keep your eyes on the flame of the candle opposite you. And merely do as I say, and all will be well.”
The thick candle burned with a tall, pure, unwavering flame. He stared at it, then into it, and all around blurred into shadow. Aradia’s chant lulled him, and the sweet and bitter smoke soothed and eased his mind, even as it made his body feel receptive to a thousand tiny sensations. He was conscious of his entire skin, if he turned his mind to it; if he did not, he was dissipating into the atmosphere of the room. He focused on the flame, and on the voice. Taril’s and the Doctor’s added strange harmonics to the chant. Aradia’s voice … so thrilling and melodic, not pure and otherworldly, but warm and rich. His eyes slipped down to her face as he thought of her. Her face was rapt, transported by the ritual. Her eyes were black and
shining. He focused on her face, and all around faded. Taril spoke again.
“There are things of the body, and things of the spirit. Let your body relax, taken by the smoke; ease each muscle in turn, unlock the knots, from your feet to your head; focus your eyes on the flame of the candle, still and bright; let there be nothing else; picture your mind, your spirit, as the flame; see it. Feel the flame within you; become one with it.” Rogrim ignored this last, and let his gaze remain on Aradia’s face, glowing in the candle-light. Her lips moved, her eyes shone. Taril’s voice returned: “Let go of your body; be only the pure light. Let your mind empty of all thoughts, let your eyes slowly close. See the flame in your mind, a hard, gem-like flame. It is yourself. Behold the spirit. Behold the soul. Now enter it. Let it envelope you. Submerge yourself in light.”
Rogrim’s eyes gradually shut, but instead of a candleflame, he saw before his mind’s eye Aradia’s bright face. He saw his spirit as a flame then, and her face as a flame, and he felt his being drawn into hers. Behind his eyes was nothing but shushing velvet, and in the centre of all things, two flames united, and burned together. The voice came once more from far away.
“Enter the centre of the flame. Enter the darkness at the centre. Sink into it. Plunge into the depths of yourself. Fall endlessly into the abyss of your soul, your past. Fall … fall … fall. You are the spark that hurtles through the boundless deep of darkness. All that is unseen and unknown in you. You are at the heart of darkness. You are the spark.”
He plunged down, and it was as if, small beneath the sky at night, he fell up into the infinities of the stars, and yet he was only one spark, one star, in an eternity of darkness. There was nothing left of his senses but a single pin-prick of awareness, in the midst of the black void.
“Now … open your eyes again, and awaken to memory!”
The spark of consciousness flickered, and then blossomed, swirling into being, and suddenly had eyes to open, which opened, to darkness. There was a sense of surging, and surfacing, and then he opened his eyes again.
Before him stood Aradia.
She was dressed in a white shift, against which her hair fell down like a raven’s wing. Her arms were bare, and bore gold bracelets against her honey skin; her feet also were bare. Her face still shone, but now with an inner light. Her eyes were brilliant and flashing.
“Well met, Rogrim of the Shadowblade,” she said, and her voice seemed to come from everywhere. He looked down at himself; he wore a simple robe of some black stuff, and his feet were bare. Around them, mists swirled. They stood upon wet rock. Around them there was nothing but darkness visible, full of eddies and flows, obscuring everything.
“Where are we?” his voice sounded strange to him, as it too came from everywhere.
“I believe we are in your mind, in a sort of dream. And you have brought me with you. Those were not your instructions!” She smiled, and her eyes danced.
He reached out a hand, unsure of how far from him she stood, and suddenly they were close as breath, their fingers entwined, his lips brushing her forehead, their bodies almost, but not quite, touching, toe to toe.
“My, you are forward, in your dreams,” she spoke softly, into his chest. She relaxed into him, and leaned against him, and his arms enfolded her.
“I am afraid,” he said. “I suppose I did not want to come here alone.”
“You must have a little talent. It is quite something to bring another with you. I’m glad you did.” She returned his embrace for a moment, and then gently pushed him back a step from her, and looked around.
“So this is your memory then. We must see if we can find our way.”
She took his hand, and, seeming to make a determination of some kind, led him away through the mist. Their footsteps made no sound on the wet rock, but soon they could hear something, far off, a surging, booming sound. She looked back at him.
“The waves,” he said. “The sea.”
The ground slanted down, and gave way to a steep beach of wet sand, cut with jagged edges of rock slanting through, with glimmering pools between them. The mist smelled of salt and surf, and the rush, and boom, and crash of the waves rolling in, and the hiss as they receded, filled their minds. In a few moments, they reached the water, and the dark surge washed over their bare feet. She paused there, and looked hard into the fog. It swirled and churned, but there was no break in it.
“This way,” he said, and he went to the left, but did not relinquish her hand. She followed. They walked along the waterline for a time, letting the wash of the waves guide their feet, staying always within the slip of water, in and out, chilling their toes, wetting the hems of their garments. He gripped her hand firmly, and she gripped back, as the only really solid thing in this dream-world. All was cold and clammy, the fog seeping into their clothes, into their lungs. They could see where the waves crashed, and back up the beach a little, but beyond there was nothing, a roiling bank of nothing. At last, they came upon something solid, the dragon-prow of a black ship pulled up onto the beach. It reared up above them. He put his hand on the timbers of the hull.
“The Shadow,” he said. “My ship.”
“You remember something then!”
“Only that. But I know not what shore this is.”
“We are on the shores of Night,” she whispered. “And we are in your memory. And all is clouded. But look there!” She pointed, at where, a little up the beach, there were two sets of
footprints in the wet sand, leading away from the sea.
They followed the prints, and wended their way up the beach, until the wet sand gave way to coarser dry sand and rocks between dunes, and the path narrowed. They found themselves at the foot of a tower, that loomed up into blackness and mist above them. The grip of their hands tightened, and they needed no words, and so they penetrated in beneath the lintel and through the empty doorway, and to his left hand he summoned a dark light that shone upon what they could not see. The room was half buried in the sand, and there was nothing but an empty fireplace, and a stairway that led up. Up they went, and turned widdershins around the tower, and passed dark circular rooms, all empty, their windows open on the blank fog, and on they went.
Up and up forever they seemed to climb, the pale diffuse light through the mist entering at the arrow-slits they passed, their bare feet soundless on the damp stone, the steep stair. It was a dream, of endlessly mounting a tower, of passing by empty, dank, circular rooms where water dripped. He held onto her hand, as she climbed behind him, and his left hand he held before him, palm out, sending a faint dark light ahead of them.
“The tower never ends,” someone said.
“The end is in sight,” a voice answered.
He could not tell if he or she had spoken, or who had answered, or if the tower itself had let its voice be heard. The stairs spiralled endlessly upwards.
Then suddenly, they came out upon a flat, circular, battlemented roof. Above them was infinite darkness, a sky full of hard, brilliant stars. Over all, a full moon cast her witching pall. Far below, the rolling clouds of mist. They were alone above the world, the silent world. In the centre of the roof of the tower was a raised platform of stone, like an altar. In its centre was a silver chalice.
“This is one of the first dreams,” Aradia said. “The dream of the Tower of Guard. I have had this dream. It is a station on the Path on which the initiate travels, the Station of the Moon. How comes it that you have this dream?”
“Perhaps we are in your dream, Lady,” Rogrim answered. “Perhaps I have no dreams at all. What must we do?”
“Come with me.” She led him, still holding his hand, to the altar. “Do you wish to take this Path?”
“It seems that I must.”
She took the chalice from the altar, and saw that it contained a dark liquid. She offered it to him. “Shall you drink of this cup, and enter the Mysteries of the Unseen World?”
“These cannot be my memories …”
She held up the cup with both hands, and whispered an incantation. “The dream leads us where it will.”
“From your hands, I will take this cup,” he said, and took it from her, and raised it to his lips, and drank. The draught chilled him. It was like drinking quicksilver. He knelt before her, and offered her the cup. She gently took it, and drank also, closing her eyes as the liquid made her shiver. She sank to her knees before him, and the cup fell from her hand, the liquid spilling ink-black upon the flagstones. They both felt it now, the chill spreading through them, radiating from within. They held on to each other’s shoulders, their heads together.
“It is done,” she whispered. They sank into each other, and into the dark.
A voice called his name, at twilight, over the valley. He must hurry home. He was a boy of twelve. He turned to look once more at the lovely woman with the dark skin and warm eyes in the white dress, and then ran off pell-mell along the forest path.
She was there again, the same woman, the night he stole into his father’s forge, and saw there, leaning upon the anvil, a sword of midnight. The woman in the white dress beckoned to him, and pointed to the sword. He reached out to touch the blade. The cold steel felt like frost.
A woman wept and lamented, at a high window. Below, in darkness, he did not call out, for fear of being caught. In the pale moonlight, the woman in white held his horse for him. In her other hand, point down, she held the sword.
The ship beached with a shuddering thud, and he was over the side with the others, into the surf. He led them at a mad dash up the beach towards the village, roaring a battle-cry, the black sword brandished above his head. Arrows whooshed into the sand at his feet. Fire bloomed in the sea fog from the thatch of one the nearest buildings. The howls of his men rang out above the sound of the waves. Steel clashed, and screams, running feet, whirling battle.
The sun broke the horizon of the endless sea, glorying the clouds. The ship moved beneath his feet.
The moonlight upon the desert.
A woman’s voice, nearby in the dark, a strange language: “Come back to bed.”
A narrow street on a quiet and hot afternoon, a strange stillness in the midst of a teeming city. A stray dog nosed among the rubbish in the gutter. He took a sip of wine, and sat back at the table under the awning. The woman in white sat across from him. She hadn’t changed, all these long years. She raised her cup to him.
Rogrim came to sprawled in the chair, the room in darkness but for the glow from the fire, where a little flicker of flame danced above a fresh log in the embers. His body felt heavy, so heavy, and he could feel unconsciousness tugging at him, ready to pull him back down.
“The others have retired. I said I would watch for you.” Aradia’s voice came out of the shadows.
“How long have I slept?” His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat.
“Hours.” He saw her shadow by the fire, as she lit a taper, and touched the flame to a candle. Light bloomed and showed the side of her face, the fall of her hair beside it.
“And were you … Were you with me, all this time?”
“I was. I feel I have spent years with you. But only confused glimpses. Certain moments. Do you remember the dark shore? And the tower?”
“I do.” He sat up, and reached for her hand. “Thank you for coming with me.”
“I should not have. I did not expect what happened. You took a step upon the Path of the Mysteries. I saw fragments of your life, as you saw. I remember them as if I had been there.”
“I cannot remember anything that makes much sense. Only images, moments. But in each, you were there. As if you had watched over me.”
“In a sense, I did. I tried to guide you. But there was no clear way.”
He stood, still holding her hand. “At least now I feel that there is something to discover. A life that I lived. I have scattered fragments of it. I would find more. Put them back together.”
“I will help you.” She turned and put the candle on the table, then stepped back towards him, and at once, they were in each other’s arms. He looked into her shining black eyes.
“Do you know what you say? Do you know how far we may have to go to find what will unlock these things for me?”
“Rogrim. We drank from the cup together. I know that much. I will come with you to the end of the Earth, no matter what my master says.”
He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, and tilted her face to his, and kissed her. Their bodies moved together, warm and alive. Eventually, she broke away.
“What will my master say?” she murmured, almost to herself.
“I am tired,” he said. He could not be sure he was not still in a dream, but for the lingering feeling of her body pressed against his. It felt real.
“Come,” she said, and led him from the room, holding up the candle before them. She lit the way down a short passage behind a hanging, and opened a door. A small room beyond, with a narrow bed among many bookshelves.
“This room is prepared for you.” She led the way in, and placed the candle in a nook above the bed. Then she turned and faced him, with a bold and helpless look.
He closed the door behind him. “Stay with me.”
“I will.”
He crossed the space between them, and they met in the centre of the room; their lips met, and their bodies met; she laid him slowly on the bed, and then, very gently, began to undress him. Her hands caressed his body, lingering on the scars as they were uncovered. She kissed his chest, and then his lips again. When he was naked, she reached down and pulled her dress up over her head and let it fall away, and took off her shift, and she was naked too. She slipped into the bed beside him, and pulled the eiderdown up over them. He felt her body next to his, against him, and felt the deep stirring of desire, but fighting with it was the warm dark of the bed, and the soft pillow. Their bodies moved against each other, but slowly and languorously, and his eyes closed even as he held her. Soon he stirred no more. She sat up for a moment, and looked down at his pale, lean body, with its warrior’s scars, and prisoner’s scars, and tattoos, at his black hair spread upon the pillow, at his face, now peaceful. “That will do, for now,” she said, and blew out the candle. She nestled into his side, and held him, and they both slipped into mercifully dreamless sleep.
