When They See Beyond the Sky
Tonight I gazed into the fire to shut out the darkness around me. The flames danced in shapes and whispered words. I, the Poet-Prophet, have seen the future. I have seen the signs of his coming again.
No one cares! I wander this world and speak of him softly in their ears, but they do not wish to hear. Not to this generation will he return. Already they forget what it was to have him in the world. Already the people of this earth turn to stone, and forget the heart that once beat in their breasts. Cold-hearted creatures of darkness! Without leadership men squabble and fight. They take refuge in tribes and turn against their neighbours, fighting over bits of land and food like starving animals. And even the animals are not what they once were.
The men of this generation care not what the future holds. Yet I have seen it! I write these words in hope that one day the ice-hearts of men will begin to melt. Then they will read the words of the Prophet, and my words will be to them fuel to begin a raging fire. In those days the fulfillment of this prophecy will come. The Gifted Ones whom I have seen will walk the earth and awaken it to the King.
Hear, then, what I have heard:
When they see beyond the sky,
When they know beyond the mind,
When they hear the song of the Burning Light;
Take these Gifts of My Outstretched Hand,
Weave them together.
I shall come.
* * *
The fire crackled and warmed Maggie’s face and hands. A brisk breeze had nearly dried out her clothes, although her coat still hung over a tree branch next to Nicolas’s shirt and vest. Beyond the glow of the fire Maggie could just make out the form of her friend, pacing back and forth on top of an old log, now and then jumping and dancing as though he was caught up in a musical sword fight. He was odd, this Nicolas Fisher; but somehow his presence stole all the menace out of the dark shadows of the woods and took all the danger out of their aloneness in an unknown land. He had led Maggie away from the sea and up into the forests as confidently as if he was taking her through his own house. He seemed to belong to the woods, and Maggie was his guest.
A deep snuffling sound came from somewhere in the trees and made Maggie jump. It was Bear. She could not imagine how the creature had found his way here, but he had, and she relaxed again. His great black form offered protection against the night.
Maggie looked into the fire until the heat and brightness had burned into her eyes. The stillness of the forest worked itself into her. She raised her head to listen when a bird cried somewhere in the dark vastness around. She sighed and stretched out on the ground next to the fire, gazing up through the treetops to the brilliance of the stars. She had been in Cryneth when last she had seen such stars. In Londren, the ever-present chimney haze kept all but the brightest of the distant fires from sending their light to the world below.
Nicolas appeared in the firelight and collapsed into a cross-legged heap. The firelight glinted on the gold in his ear and traced strange shadows on his face.
Maggie rolled over and lifted herself onto her elbows so she could look across the fire at her half-wild friend.
“Why did you come back?” she asked.
“You were in danger,” Nicolas said.
“How did you know?” Maggie pressed. “You said you were going to the forest. You should have been halfway across the city by the time the hound reached the inn. What brought you back?”
Nicolas sighed, as though he was going to regret opening his mouth. “I heard someone talking… I heard the hound coming after you.”
“What do you mean you heard it?” Maggie asked.
Nicolas shrugged, a strange little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I heard voices, and I knew you were in danger. So I went back.”
“I don’t know anything about voices,” Maggie said, questioningly. “All I saw was the hound. But you couldn’t have… I mean, it’s not possible to…”
“My ears often hear things that no one else can,” Nicolas said. “It’s a gift.”
Curiosity rose up in Maggie. The guardedness had gone out of Nicolas’s voice, as though he had let out his secret and didn’t care now how much she knew.
“What else do you hear?” Maggie asked. “Besides dangerous voices in the dark.”
“I hear the grass grow,” Nicolas said slowly, “and I hear the stars singing.”
“They sing?” Maggie asked.
Nicolas nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I hear other things, too… sometimes I can hear what Bear is saying.”
Maggie looked up at the hulking form just beyond the glow of the campfire. “Bear talks,” she said flatly.
“Well, not exactly talks,” Nicolas said. “He feels things, and thinks things, and sometimes I hear what he means.”
“Does he speak the language of the Empire?” Maggie asked, feeling ridiculous but unable to stop herself from asking.
“No, of course not,” Nicolas said. “He just feels things, and sometimes I understand them.” Nicolas laughed a little nervously. “That doesn’t make much sense to you, does it?”
Maggie ignored the question and asked another of her own. “Have you always been able to understand him?”
“No,” he told her. “When I was a child I would listen to rabbits and squirrels and birds, and it was hard to understand them, too. But I kept listening, and trying to understand, and one day I did. I still don’t understand everything.”
Maggie felt herself drawn to the strange young man across from her. It was fascinating, what he was saying, perhaps absurd. Yet she believed him.
“What else can you hear?” she asked, leaning forward with her chin resting in her hand.
Nicolas’s eyes met hers. How many people had he ever spoken to like this? Who, in all his life, would ever have believed him? Even the Gypsies thought he was mad when he spoke of hearing, although they were not so quick to dismiss it the way others did. They wondered sometimes, if madness was not a gift.
“When babies cry,” Nicolas said, “I know what they want before their own mothers do. Sometimes I can hear a baby talking while it’s still in its mother’s womb.”
“What do they say?” Maggie asked, a smile of wonder beginning to tug at her own face.
“It’s hard to understand them,” Nicolas said. “But not so hard as with the animals. Mostly they dream about the world out here. And they wonder why so many of the voices they hear are angry and worried. They dream, and they wonder, and then they go back to sleep. And when they wake up they wonder all the same things over again.”
Maggie laughed. Nicolas chuckled, but his laugh ended in the creases of a frown. “Sometimes I wish I could tell them to stay in there. If they come out here they’ll just join the voices of anger, and worry… and fear.
“And once in a while,” Nicolas continued, “I hear voices talking, from all over the place. I don’t know who they belong to, I can’t always tell where they’re from. But I can hear them.”
His voice trailed off and he looked away. “I haven’t told anyone about my hearing for years. Not since I was a child.”
Maggie wished he would continue, but she sensed he had already said a great deal more than he’d meant to.
“Where were you going?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly. “Before the hound came, I mean.”
“To Pravik,” Maggie said. Her expression changed suddenly, and she jumped to her feet. Nicolas was up in an instant, alert as a cat. But only the faint sounds of the night reached his ears as Maggie rushed to the tree where her coat was drying. She reached inside and pulled out a piece of parchment, unrolling it frantically. Nicolas watched curiously. The paper was amazingly strong—the scroll was unharmed, and Maggie breathed a sigh of relief. She realized suddenly that Nicolas was watching her, and that she had cut off their conversation rather rudely. She held up the scroll in explanation.
“I was going to deliver this to someone,” she said. “It belonged to an old friend. He would have taken it himself, but he died before he could.” Her face clouded over.
Nicolas nodded. He cleared his throat. “I just want to say that I’d be happy to accompany you back to Bryllan… as far as the boat, I mean. So you won’t have to go alone.”
Maggie played with the paper in her hands, and she didn’t meet Nicolas’s eyes.
“I’m not going back to Bryllan,” she said. “Not until I take this where it belongs.”
“Maggie,” Nicolas began, his voice quiet, “I told you I heard voices before the hound was let loose. Someone sent it after you. They might try again. It can’t be safe for you here.”
Maggie bowed her head and walked back to the fire. Just as she reached the rim of light, she turned and faced her friend again.
“I have to take this to Pravik,” she said. “I’m sorry. I can’t explain everything, but I can’t turn back now. Especially not now.”
She sat down and he joined her. When she looked up at him, her face was apologetic. “Anyway,” she said, “suppose I did go back to Londren, and they came after me there. I wouldn’t be any safer.”
“You know your way around Londren,” Nicolas protested, miserably. “You could hide there.”
They fell silent. Bear nudged up behind them, hanging his massive head over Nicolas’s shoulder.
“Will you help me find the road to Pravik?” Maggie asked after a long silence.
“I’ll go with you,” Nicolas said.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No,” he said, looking intensely at her, “I mean I’ll go with you. To Pravik.”
“But—” she protested, “you can’t just…”
“Do you think I have a life here in Galce to hold me back?” he asked. “Bear’s my only family; these forests and the Gypsy caravans are my only home. It’s time we see more of the world anyway. We’ll come with you.”
Her eyes filled with unexpected tears. “I don’t know what to say,” she started.
He reached out a hand and touched her shoulder lightly. “Go to sleep,” he said. “I’ll be here in the morning.”
* * *
Lord Robert Sinclair, the Laird of Angslie, could not sleep. He had retired to his room on the pretense of a headache. A maid had drawn the bedroom curtains and lit a warm fire, and now he lay stretched out on his bed in his stocking feet. The bed was an unusually long one, to accommodate all six feet, seven inches of the laird’s stature. His sixty years had depleted little of his strength of presence. His muscles were still strong, thanks to long days of wandering in the mountains. His mind was as strong as his body: it was quick, and sharp, and it burned with ideas, and old passions, and longings.
Yet, for all of that, the laird was a man on whom life dragged wearingly. The things he longed for were beyond his reach, and he had only memories to keep him alive. Memories, and the strange help of a girl who lived on a mountainside nearby.
It had been nearly a week since he had last seen Virginia Ramsey, and he would go to her soon. He had just spent six days in Cranburgh with people he could hardly tolerate, smiling and simpering until he thought hypocrisy would cause him to explode; vowing every night in his room that he would never go back there, business or no business. He arrived home tense and ready to snap, and then his housekeeper had made her deplorable announcement, looking insufferably proud of herself all the while.
“You wouldn’t have liked to see him, sir,” she had said with a sniff of disapproval. “He wasn’t one of your station. He was bent so you couldn’t know his height, and dirty so you couldn’t know his age. He was very insistent that he wanted to see you. Said he had something for you. But I put him in his place, I can assure you. I have no use for such peddlers.”
“Did he give his name?” Lord Robert had asked.
“Aye, I think he did. Let’s see… Daniel Seaton, it was.”
The terrible words spoken, the laird’s anger had drained out of him and he had gone to bed, where he could lay in the old familiarity of his room and let the musty magic of his house calm and console him. He forgot even about going to see Virginia. All he knew was that the longed-for past had come to call, and he had not been home.
In hindsight, it often seemed to him that the only time in his life worth living had been the days of the council. For three short months Angslie had been home to seven self-styled scholars, Daniel Seaton among them, in pursuit of a glorious dream. In the forty years since the abandonment of that dream, those memories had taunted him with what would never be again. Fate was a cruel thing, Lord Robert felt, that it could send Dan Seaton to his very door while he was away enduring the company of men and women who didn’t have soul enough to feel the lure of the mysteries that had drawn the council.
Lord Robert abruptly left his bed and began pacing the halls of Angslie. Up stairs and down corridors he stalked, passing long rows of windows that looked out on a brown, mountainous highland wilderness, until at last he had reached the double doors of a long-closed room. It was a room that made the servants whisper when they passed it; a forbidden domain with many a wild story shut behind its doors.
Impulsively, Lord Robert reached out and touched the brass door handle. It turned easily under his hand, and the doors swung open.
The room had not been dusted in forty years. Lord Robert strode to the end of the room and dashed the curtains open. Sunlight poured in as it would pour into an opened tomb, illuminating the clouds of dust that danced in the stale air. He turned from the tall, wide window with its view of the hills to face the room where his dreams had once taken flight over the mountains and far into the past; where the obsession of his life had been birthed.
The sunlight glinted off the gold and red bindings of the books that lined one wall and attempted to sparkle on the brass candlesticks that sat covered with dust and grey wax, arrested in its dripping. The candles sat in the center of the room on a long wooden table that had once served as a meeting place for the Council for Exploration Into Worlds Unseen.
He laid his hand on the table and brought it back covered with the greyness of the years. Had it been so long? The rug on the floor had once been brilliantly red and yellow and green, with its swirling patterns and uniquely woven designs. Now its colours were muted by time and silence. It lay drab and not at all like its memory.
Lord Robert walked slowly to the head of the table, where a wooden chair sat waiting for him as it had so long ago. He drew it out and sat down, his eyes struggling to see through the haze of the years to the ghosts of the past.
He felt as though they were there still there, just beyond the dust. He could hear them talking and laughing, debating and discussing. To his right, his memory could see the small, friendly face of Daniel Seaton, crinkled up in a laugh. Next to Dan sat Eva Brown, plump and pretty, clutching a book of sketches to her bosom as though it was a baby or a precious toy. She was laughing, too, probably at something Daniel had said.
Next to Eva sat John Davies, his craggy, serious young face a great contrast to Daniel. John was quiet, not much of a man for speaking. When he did speak, he usually bore listening to. His grey eyes would pierce through all distractions and make a man sit up and listen. On these days, Lord Robert remembered, John’s eyes rarely strayed from the face of the young woman across from him.
Mary Grant was Crynthian, like John. She was beautiful, the laird remembered in a startled way. He had forgotten how beautiful. Dark brown hair fell on small shoulders; wide blue eyes danced with the song that she was always singing. When Mary sang, the very stars above stopped to listen. She sang songs of the ancient days, songs full of glory and valour and prophecy—songs she seemed to hear floating to her from another world.
Lucas Barrington always sat beside Mary. He was handsome and tall, a gentleman of sorts, a young continental with a great deal of wealth and rakish manners. Across the table from Lord Robert sat the other real scholar of the group, talking to Lucas in a strong Eastern accent. Jarin Huss was a thin young man with a neatly trimmed beard and a way of speaking with authority to anyone who would listen.
And then there was Evelyn.
Her seat, when she was allowed into the council meetings, was at Lord Robert’s left hand. She, too, was beautiful. Her hair was black like the night, her eyes almost as dark. She moved like a panther, smooth and strong. Mystery hung about her like a mist; a fog that called to the laird to come further into its dangerous embrace. Even now, the memory of her was enough to make his heart ache.
They were all young in those days. In his memory, the laird heard their voices and saw each expression.
In a split second, the memory changed. He saw Mary stand to her feet, saw the chair knocked back behind her as she rose with passion glaring in her eyes. He saw the finger pointed at the woman next to him and heard the hissing hatred in Evelyn’s reply. He saw the hardness in the eyes of those who had been his friends. He heard himself responding, shouting, accusing. He saw his arms around the dark, mysterious woman at his side. He saw Jarin shaking his head; he saw the anger in John’s grey eyes. He heard Daniel crying. He saw Eva stop crying and grow hard, so hard he thought a hammer would never break her open again.
That day was the end of it all. In less than three days, the council was no more. They had gone away, to Midland, to Cryneth, to Sloczka. Only Lord Robert was left, with Evelyn to stay by his side forever and help him find all the answers he had wanted.
Only, she had gone, too. Less than a year later. And she had not said good-bye.
On that day, Lord Robert had walked into the council room and closed the curtains. He had shut the door and never come back.
Until now.
On the table in front of him was a book bound with red leather. A journal. His fingers brushed away the dust, streaking the dull red cover with brightness. Slowly, he opened it.
It opened to a page that had been dusty even before the end of the council, all those years ago. It was yellow and cracked with age, and on it was written short lines in a sort of rhythm. Poetry.
The words were unreadable, written in a language other than that of the Empire. Lord Robert sighed as he remembered the first time he had opened the book and looked at the handwriting of some unknown ancient, an author who might have lived before the rule of the Morel dynasty choked out life and freedom in the world.
Jarin Huss had been able to read this language. Huss, Lord Robert reflected, had known many dangerous things. His knowledge of the ancient languages would have been enough to have him arrested. It was a risk that Jarin, as a scholar with an insatiable appetite to know, was more than willing to take. The laird remembered the Eastern student’s description of the underground university, the clandestine teachings of the professors at the University of Pravik. They had taught ancient languages and legends, and history that did not fit the frame the Empire wished to give it.
The lines of poetry taunted from their resting place on the page. The handwriting swirled and danced across the paper in age-old ink, calling to the laird to understand.
Words tugged at the edge of his memory, and he struggled to recall them as he looked over the poems again and again. The words had been spoken in the Eastern accent of Jarin Huss, as he read the poetry aloud for the first and only time.
“When they see beyond the sky,
When they know beyond the mind,
When they hear the song of the Burning Light;
Take these Gifts of My Outstretched Hand,
Weave them together,
I shall come.”
Lord Robert was surprised at the clarity with which the words came back to him. He picked up the red-bound book and turned it over in his hands. There were more poems, more words written inside. If only he could read them.
“When they see beyond the sky…”
He crossed the room to the window and stood between its cobwebbed curtains, hands tucked behind him. His eyes wandered over the hills, along a small path that rounded the side of the mountain and disappeared. The eyes of his memory continued to follow the path, up the steep hillside, to the rocky outcrop where Virginia would be seated even now. He was seized with a sudden desire to visit her, perhaps to recite to her the words of the poem. She had been born on the land of the Sinclair family, had spent most of her life on the side of the mountain, but it had only been three months since the laird had really become aware of her existence. In an accidental way he had heard rumours of the blind girl who could see another side of reality. If her visions were fact and not madness, then the things she saw proved the validity of Lord Robert’s lifelong belief in another world alongside his own. She had given him back his old beliefs and reawakened his old longings. He went to see her often, and drank in her words as though they were life-giving water, though she gave it to him only in painfully sparing drops. One day he hoped to break through into the world of Virginia’s visions, but for now her words were all he had.
The path called to him. He picked up the red journal and left the room, shutting the doors tightly behind him.
* * *
Virginia Ramsey’s hair was a very dark brown. Most of it was on the verge of turning black, but enough of it was near to turning red to make her overall appearance very striking. Her eyes, which could not see, were green.
She spent most of her time sitting cross-legged on top of an outcrop on the side of the mountain, where she could smell the passing of the seasons and hear the birds fly by. The birds thought her a friend, and they would light on her shoulder and whisper to her. Her right hand usually rested on the head of her shaggy old deerhound, who was as deaf as she was blind.
On the side of the mountain, Virginia Ramsey heard all that she ever wished to hear. She heard wind, grass, and the songs of creation. And sometimes, on the side of the mountain, Virginia could see.
The things she saw were true things, though no one else, it seemed, could see them. She saw beautiful golden creatures and horrible, black shadow-things. She saw people, but not as others saw them. She could see into their souls, into the truth of what they were. She could see the childlike heart of her grandfather, the conniving soul of the village innkeeper, and the burning potential of the innkeeper’s son, little Roland MacTavish, that made him look to her like a lion cub: a kitten now, but with all the strength and power of the beast king just waiting to push its way out.
She saw other things, too. Sometimes she saw people in faraway places, and sometimes she saw things that had happened hundreds of years before.
One frequent vision had grown stronger and more urgent with the years: that of a great hunting hound, its muzzle dripping with blood and its eyes with hatred. It was tracking her down. This vision she saw most often at night, and then she would wake up coldly terrified, sure that the universe itself was hunting her.
The people in the village were afraid of her.
They didn’t know exactly what it was that Virginia Ramsey could do, but they had the feeling that she knew far more about them than they would like anyone to know. Everyone in the town was polite to her, while most of them would have done anything to keep her sightless green eyes away from them.
The deerhound under her fingertips growled low, sending a rumbling shiver through his lean body.
“Hush,” Virginia said. “It’s only the laird, I think.”
She bowed her head as he approached, tired at the thought of talking to him. He asked such insistent questions, firing them like arrows one after another. What she saw lay deep inside of her soul; to reveal it to another was like tearing open a wound. She did not fault the laird, for he obviously did not understand. He thought that she could explain her sight as easily as he could describe a sunny day. She might have grown angry with him, except that in him was a strength and a spirit she did not possess. He was her protector. Her grandfather knew it, the town knew it, and she hoped that the hunting hound of her visions knew it. Someday she would need him. So she spoke with him when he came.
Besides, underneath all of his selfish questioning, she sensed a deep need in him. He had wounds of his own, and something in her wished to heal them. At the same time something in him drove her back. His wounds were festering, infected with a blackness that both frightened and drew her.
His voice broke through her thoughts. She heard and felt him sitting near to her, as the deerhound growled low and deep but did not move. And then she felt it: a strange sensation, one she had not known in the laird’s presence before. She felt drawn to him… no, not to him, but to something with him. Her skin prickled with its nearness.
“I read a poem today,” Lord Robert said. “I wondered if you might like to hear it.”
The prickling, tingling sensation had grown so strong that she could not quite understand what he had said. Her voice, answering him quickly, was urgent.
“You have something with you?”
There was a pause, as Lord Robert was taken aback by Virginia’s intensity.
“Yes,” he answered.
She took her hand from the plaid wrapped around her and stretched it out toward him. “May I have it?” she asked.
He made no audible reply, but in a moment she felt the rough, cool leather of an old book in her hand. She took it gently, drawing it close to her and letting it fall open. She ran her fingers over the open page, trying to feel the paths of ink on the rough old paper. Warmth emanated from the handwriting and then began to flow from the page into her hand, traveling up her arms like a shock. She gasped deeply as colours began to flash before her eyes, patterns and pictures whirling before her. The sounds and smells of the Highland hills sank into oblivion before the dizzying force of the vision. In a moment the colours had settled themselves into forms, and scenes began to move through her mind.
She saw a warrior of ancient days, his hair the colour of flax. He rode a spotted horse that moved with the slow, painful steps of exhaustion. Its coat and hooves were flecked with blood. Around and above him was the deep green of a forest; below him, roots tangled in black earth. Others rode all around him, similarly weary, and dressed in the blood-spattered, dirt-ravaged clothing of desperate men. On a white horse at the head of the party rode one whose features Virginia could not describe. Every time she thought she could, his face seemed to change. The only constants were the sense of power that rested on him and an accompanying sense of grief.
The scene dissolved in light. The light formed itself into a pulsing circle. The leader of the men stood before it. Virginia watched as he stepped back, into the circle, and the light enveloped him completely. She watched as the warriors followed him beyond the forest, through the circle. The scene shifted, and she saw the flaxen-haired man sitting alone beside the dying embers of a campfire, holding a red book in his hands. He was writing words that burned their way into the pages.
Suddenly everything changed. She no longer saw the forests. Instead, she saw three black-cloaked figures with eyes like deep pits. The foremost of them held a scroll, newly signed and rolled. One opened his mouth to speak, and from his mouth flowed pestilence.
The scene changed once more, now flashing images at her in rapid succession. She saw faces, and she felt that she was no longer seeing the ancient past, but the present. Through her mind’s eye she saw a woman sitting at a harp in a small cottage, singing a beautiful song that wove its way through the visions of others. She saw a boyish face with a thick head of curly black hair, his mouth laughing with delight. She saw a beautiful young woman with long, white-gold hair, tending roses and vines in a quiet garden. She saw two tall figures in black cloaks, stretching out their hands toward a circle of fire. She