“But what if the power is evil, a danger to our kind?”
“I do not think that the place of light is either good or evil. We entered therein, the creatures of this world hunting us entered it. Took no part in our battle, either for one side or the other. We were apart from it, left to our own concerns. Tell me, how did you drive the hound masters forth-that I did not understand-“
“By my anger-I think,” I made answer, but I was considering what he had said. That force of anger, so strong, carrying all before it-never before in my life had I been so possessed. Had that emotion been fired, fuel fed, by some power within the enclosure? Could Herrel be right in his guess that what abode there could be tapped to aid us?
I had said there was no change from day to night in this haunted world. But around us now it grew darker. Either the storm was reaching out from the mountains, or else there was a night coming I had not seen before. We made our way dimly back up the slope to the higher land where stood the enclosure.
Within the light still swirled and around the gate lay small white heaps. Herrel stirred one with the point of his dusky sword, cleaned bones collapsed and rolled, remains of the hounds. But of that which had feasted on the losers, or of its nature, we had no clue.
We had come here, but what must we do now? I turned to Herrel with that question, and it seemed to me that his shadow self was even thinner. “What do we?”
“It becomes a matter of walking an unknown road, trailing across never charted mountains, my lady witch. In my mind it is that we two still lie in the Grey Towers,. that we dream there-so stand within these walls. Unless we can wake, we are lost for ever. For the deeper the dream, the less able will our bodies be to escape it. As for how to wake-well, we must try different ways-“
“What ways?” His confidence seemed overly bright to me who had no trace of plan moving within my mind. “What brought you to that other Gillan, then led you to me?” He counter-questioned. “What led you to summon me from what was death in this world?”
“I thought, I centred my will-on Gillan-on you-“
Herrel looked into the light. “If we do have bodies left in our own world and time, then they anchor us in part there. Perhaps if we strive to be reunited with those bodies, we shall find them. I see no other path for us.”
“But-I have no clear picture to fasten upon-“ And I did not-that glimpse of Herrel lying in the room which might have been in the Grey Towers-that was too fleeting a thing to serve me.
“I have!” He seemed possessed now by a rising belief in himself, as if, instead of being daunted by our plight, he was stimulated to greater efforts.
“Now listen-“ He laid his hand on my arm, and I felt his touch only as I might the passing of a feather across my flesh. “This is as I saw it last-before I came here-“
He told me in detail of that tower room, of the divan on which we had lain side by side, of small things which had been imprinted in his memory in such vivid pictures that he must have rested there with greatly heightened senses before he had gone forth on this strange journey. And such was his telling that he made me see it, too, bit by bit, piece by piece, as if before my very eyes he was setting up figures and furnishings.
“Do you see, Gillan?” For the first time a note of anxiety crept into his whispers.
“You have made me see.”
“If I have only done so aright!”
“And now?”
“And now we do what you have done before, we fasten our wills on this-“ he paused. “I am counted by half-man among them, since my power does not always serve me as I will. So, mayhap I put now to the test a flawed blade. But that I can not know until I use it. Let us go!”
I closed my eyes upon the light, upon Herrel. For this time him, too, I must shut away. He had his battle and I had mine, to the same end, yet we must fight it singly. I brought to mind that room Herrel had pictured for me-there were the windows-two-one looking north, one south, between them walls covered with tapestries so old their patterns had long since been lost, save for a hint of face here, a trace of a beast’s gleaming eyes there. Braziers and from them smoke, aromatic smoke. And in the centre of that chamber the divan. On it lay Gillan, Gillan whose face had shown a hundred times, a thousand times from mirrors when I looked therein, Gillan who bore the scars of wounds which had pained me. That was Gillan, the Gillan I must seek and find.
And I centred upon that Gillan, not only the body which slept, but the nature of that which wandered afar from it in dreams. Who is Gillan? No, rather what is Gillan? She is this and this, and she is also that. Some parts of her could I welcome, others I would shun if I could. For this was a measuring and an inner seeing of Gillan such as I had never known and it made me writhe for a nakedness beyond all stripping I have believed could exist. Almost did I wish to forego the awakening of that Gillan who had such small meannesses, such ill within her.
Who is Gillan? I am Gillan, in this way was I fashioned, by nature, by the will of others, by my own desires. And with this Gillan am I united for good or ill, therefore I must pick up the burden of being Gillan and-awake!
But did I wake? I was afraid to open my eyes, lest I see again the light of the alien world. Until at last I had to force myself-
I looked up at grey stone, very old, I turned my head and saw tapestries also faded by the years. I was awake!
Herrel! Swiftly I turned my head in the other direction to see him who must share this couch with me.
Empty!
I sat up, reached forth my hand to that emptiness, to prove to myself that my eyes were the deceivers, not that he was gone. And then I saw the hand I put forth and I was stricken motionless.
The people of Arvon in that village-they had been shimmers of light in my eyes, so now was this hand of mine. Swiftly I pressed it down upon the fabric covering of the divan-fingers-palm-my full weight-But there was no impression!
From my hand I looked to my body. No body-merely a mist through which I could see the surface whereon I rested. Then Herrel had been wrong-we had not had bodies to focus upon left here-to draw us back to our right world!
There was a shimmer-No, I had not moved-it formed beyond me, at the other side of the divan-
Herrel?
I tried to call his name. There was no answer from my throat and lips. Why should there by-I no longer possessed throat or lips! I was not Gillan for all my willing.
That shimmer which lay in Herrel’s place moved. He must be sitting up.
Herrel?-I tried to reach him by the other way as we had sometimes spoken together in the spectre world.-What has happened?-The bar of light stood upright by the divan.
I think-I think-Slowly, painfully words came to me (and what was me?)-that they believed us dead. Our bodies have been moved elsewhere.-
Had I had then the power I would have shrieked aloud. If he spoke the truth what would now become of us?
Come!-
Where?-
He had already moved the door, that light which was now Herrel and no man.
To find what we seek.-
We were back in the familiar world where there was night and day and, suitable to our state as wraiths, it was now night. These Grey Towers must be very old, old and steeped in a life afar from the Dales. It was in all I looked upon-that age and difference.
Along a short hall, and then down a stair which wound and wound about the skin of the Tower, Herrel led and I followed. I heard no sound, saw no one move. Slumber must have claimed those who abode here. And for a fleeting moment I thought of Kildas, of Solfinna, and that company among whom I had once ridden. Did they look upon these ancient walls as now I did, as a shell which held nothing of warmth or welcome? Or would they abide ever under the spells their Were mates wove, seeing only that which would make them happy and content?