Solem Page 5

  “Oh, don’t start that again.”

  “What?”

  Sharman only sighed as he picked up the box of phials and returned it to its drawer. Then he stared unseeingly at the cutlery still on the floor.

  “And how’s he know her name, anyway?” Craith now said from beneath the table.

  “Only Solem knows. I can’t remember her having spoken a word ‘til now, and I didn’t think they came with anything to identify them by, unless it’s hidden on them somewhere…or in them.”

  “Here you are,” and Craith’s arm appeared out from under the table, offering a handful of wooden spoons. Sharman absently took them and slid them into the drawer. “Move over,” the lad then said, and Sharman looked down at the lad’s tap on his leg and saw he was standing on a tea strainer.

  “I think that’s it,” Craith said, now standing before Sharman, his arms laden with bits and bats. “Think I’ve got everything; if not, it can rot where it lies.” He narrowed his eyes at Sharman—an unusually thoughtful look for the lad.

  It prompted Sharman to say, more to himself than Craith, “I know what the dwelgefas do is an arcane art, and all that—not that I’ve ever wanted to know much about it—but there’s a lot here that smells off to me. I mean, they’re always so damned confident for one thing—”

  “Stuck up their own arses, you mean.”

  “Precisely, but Fulmer seems…well, a bit at sea, really.”

  Sharman heard footsteps crossing the passage outside the door and the man himself groped his way into the room’s light. Had he heard?

  “I think you’d best join us,” he told them in a measured voice. “There’s something I need to… Well, if you’d just come through,” and he slipped back out of the room.

  The two looked at each other for a moment before Craith dropped his armful of finds into the drawer, picked up the lamp and held it aloft. “Well, you never know; maybe we’re about to find out,” and he grinned before nodding towards the door. “After you.”

  11 The Rousing of a Problem

  Janeen heard footsteps approach the dull space she sensed about her, searing pain surging once more through her eyes. From a little way off, the voice she’d now learnt to call Dwelgefa Fulmer—not “Uncle Derek”—softly called, “Janeen, I have with me the two people I told you about: Sharman and Craith.”

  His voice now became quieter, more laced with echoes when he said, “Put the lamp down over there, lad, in that corner,” and the pain in her eyes slowly subsided. The nearness of his voice then startled her. “They’re the ones who brought you here today, Janeen,” and it sounded like he’d squatted down before her.

  The pain in her eyes having once more dulled, she now sank back and let the warm, calming waters of her previously tranquil world lap about her, slipping its embrace between her skin and any real knowing. Even when she felt something on her hands, forgotten where she’d lain them across her stomach, the knowledge it was someone else’s only fluttered feebly against her mind.

  “Janeen?” she distantly heard Fulmer’s voice say. “Janeen? Try to listen to what I’m saying. Don’t drift away.”

  She managed a nod—or thought she did.

  “This is Sharman,” he said, and a pause wrapped itself around her like swaddling.

  “Oh, sorry, Dwelgefa,” a gruffer, more perfunctory voice now said. “Er, well, pleased to meet you.”

  “And this is Craith,” Fulmer went on to say.

  “Hiya, Janeen,” a plainly young voice lightly tripped through the leaden air.

  “Janeen Toynbow of the village of Delph,” Fulmer announced, “would like to know why you have brought her here,” and the familiar names drew her a little from the lapping waves in which she’d so serenely floated.

  “Eh?” said the young man’s voice.

  “Craith,” she told herself, the word strangely echoing in the warm, damp air above her bobbing body.

  “That’s right,” the young voice replied, and Janeen now realised she must have said it aloud.

  The other one, though—Sharman, that was it—sounded confused. “Well…I’m not quite sure what to say to—“

  “Do you know,” Fulmer said, “I’ve never been asked that one before—never. Nor, I’m pretty certain in saying, has any other dwelgefa, not in the whole history of dwelgefas; and that,” he seemed to say with a smile, “is a very long time indeed.”

  “Why’ve you never been asked it before, Dwelgefa?” Craith said. “It would seem like the first thing you’d want to know.”

  “Because, my surprisingly prescient young man, no demon has ever come here with any memory of their previous life, hence they’ve no idea they’re anywhere different—until today.” Those last two words came louder to Janeen’s ears.

  “I’m…I’m not…not a demon,” Janeen was sure she’d said.

  “No, no you’re not, Janeen; that’s true. It’s just a…a name we use for convenience. It’s of no matter for now, though. No, now I need to lay a bit of a problem before Sharman and Craith, something you should try to follow yourself, as best you can, in the hope that together we may prove wiser than I now know I alone could ever be.”

  Janeen heard Fulmer send Craith for more beer for themselves and a watered-down one for her. She listened to his footsteps fade away, the pain in her eyes seeming to go with him. It wasn’t long, though, before she heard the clunk of earthenware and Craith’s quieter and slower footsteps approaching, along with the return of the dull ache in her eyes.

  An arm came about her, or so she thought, then she seemed to lift and float backwards a short way, her head coming against something soft, fingers sweeping her hair from her face. Sharman warned of a beaker’s approach, then its thick edge came against her lower lip, a thin, flat, hoppy smell tingling up through her nose.

  Her first tentative sip soon became a thirsty gulp, the beaker quickly tipping against the bridge of her nose as it emptied. Where she’d felt herself to have been happily floating like a dandelion seed on a warm summer’s day, it now seemed a gale had blown in around her, rustling the leaves of her mind like blood rushing back to a constricted limb. With it came aches and pains, an assortment of dull bruises, sharp cuts and stinging grazes, but also an immediacy, a connection with the here and now.

  How she missed her recently comforting numbness.

  “How are you feeling?” Fulmer’s beery breath of a voice now said.

  “Awful,” was all she could manage, her words cracked but at least clear at last in her own ears.

  “The thin beer will do you good, Janeen. Trust me. I’m sure it will,” but he didn’t sound convinced.

  Throats again chorused a gulping song, their beer, she assumed, finding good homes at last. Then, stark in her mind, she saw her own home, her father, their life together, and a tear sprang to her eye, teetered then fell. As it coursed towards her chin, Fulmer sighed and smacked his lips together.

  “If only everything were so simple,” he said, to which Sharman cleared his throat and spoke.

  “So, what’s this problem you have for us, Dwelgefa?”

  “Ah. Yes. The…problem.”

  This time she readily recognised it as a hand when one came to rest on her own, although its touch still felt somewhat distant and dull.

  “First thing, though…” and the hand gently squeezed hers as a pause stretched out into silence.

  Eventually, Fulmer quietly said, clearly to them all, “Before I can seek your help, something I’m dearly in need of, I must have your sworn agreement not to tell a soul of what I’m about to say; not a soul. Is that understood?”

  Both men grunted their agreements, but Fulmer’s voice dropped to a menacing tone. “I need it to be sworn properly, mind, and by all three of you together, something I doubt this poor mite’s yet sound of mind to do.” Janeen again felt her hand being squeezed, the reference to herself only slowly sinking in.

  Fulmer decided another room would be more suitable, and the young lad was given directions
and sent ahead. Fulmer and Sharman then somewhat clumsily lifted her between them, so she seemed to sit across their arms. For some reason they kept bumping into things, cursing beneath their breaths, until, her eyes once more hurting, they settled her on what felt and sounded like a leather sofa.

  “This should be comfortable enough for you to sit more upright, Janeen,” Fulmer said. “If not, there’s an arm to your right to lean on and a small table beside it for the food and drink Craith’ll get for you.”

  At first the lad only marvelled, “By ‘eck, but this is plush,” before being chivvied to his task, a fresh thin beer soon placed in her hand. The half beaker she quickly downed did no end of further wonders, although it gave her hiccups. She fumbled for the table with her free hand and quickly put the beaker down.

  Once her hiccups had subsided, she asked “Why can’t I see? And why do my eyes hurt so much?”

  “Here’s some pieces of pork,” Sharman quietly said, pushing a wooden platter into her hands. She felt for the meat, soon stuffing the few pieces she found into her mouth, realising now how hungry she was.

  “She looks a lot better,” Sharman said from just beyond the table, the scrape of wood against stone heralding the creak of a chair from where his voice had come.

  She tried to answer but choked on the dry meat, her hand frantically grabbing her beaker back from the table. Soon emptied, the beaker’s sharp contents slapped at her stomach and unexpectedly lifted her spirits.

  “Oi,” Sharman said. “That was my beer.”

  “I feel—” but she fell into a fit of coughing when the undiluted beer sneaked down her windpipe.

  A helping hand slapped at her back until she could get her breath, then Fulmer said, “You do look a lot brighter, I must say. So, perhaps I now ought to ask if you reckon you’d be up to swearing that oath?”

  “Will it—” but coughing again took her over for a short while. “Will it…will it answer all my questions?”

  Silence hung between them for a long while, not a breath to be heard, but Fulmer eventually told her, “I can’t promise that, Janeen, but what I will promise is to tell you all I know.”

  Despite the pain in her eyes, Janeen could at last think clearly enough to know she’d no other choice. She took a deep breath, steadied herself and remembered an oath she and Lyvinia had often forced upon one another.

  “All right,” and slowly she intoned: “I do swear, in the light of Solem, that I will say nothing…nothing of what you are about to tell me, nothing to anyone not present here today,” but then added, “wherever here might be.”

  “Well done, and very well said,” Fulmer enthused, sounding surprised, his hand gently patting her own. He then demanded the same promise of the others, duly and solemnly spoken by each in their turn.

  “Good,” he at last quietly said, sounding relieved. “In which case, I can now tell you all something I myself have sworn never to tell; may Solem forgive me this breaking of my own most binding oath.”

  12 The Dusting Off of a Rule

  Silence filled the room for some time, long enough for Janeen to feel the pull of her lately dreamlike state. She may have succumbed had Sharman not cleared his throat.

  “Well, Dwelgefa? What was it you needed to tell us?”

  Janeen was sure it was Fulmer who then growled quietly to himself, who let out a long breath, as though coming to a decision.

  “Very well,” he said, and he too cleared his throat. “All those who dwell within The Espousal know that children are—”

  “But the girl won’t know where that is, Dwelgefa,” Sharman said.

  “What? Oh, no, I suppose not, and there was I, thinking I’d got it all worked out in my mind.”

  “Esp… Esp-what?” Janeen managed.

  “The Espousal of Gryff,” Fulmer rather pompously declared, but his voice soon softened, “It’s the land between the rivers. The land—”

  “I only know of the one my father…” but the memory of her first, last and only visit to the bank of the mighty river leapt before her, her heart likewise jumping to her throat.

  “‘Rivers’ I said; between the rivers. Sharman brought you across one, but there’s another noon-high of us. They guard this land of ours, this Espousal of Gryff, within the embrace of their mighty arms; encompassing us here as they do from their common source. Now, where was I? Ah, yes.”

  “So we’re in Espousal of Gryff?”

  “The Espousal, Janeen, but yes.”

  “And that’s over the river from where father took me fishing?”

  “If you say so. The thing is: you were sent here for a reason.”

  “Because of my demon…I remember that now.”

  “You remember?” and Fulmer’s voice sounded much nearer now. “But you shouldn’t have known, although you’re clearly coming of an age you’d otherwise soon be told.”

  “Father explained before giving me the necklace…ah, and where is it?” and she felt at her chest.

  “You remember a necklace?”

  “What are you two talking about?” Sharman said, sounding a little exasperated.

  “I’m trying to explain why Janeen is here, Sharman.”

  “But that’s simple,” and Sharman too leant nearer Janeen. “Once every so often—well, more like once a blue moon in recent times—a child is born in The Green that has—”

  “The green?”

  “Everywhere outside The Espousal,” Fulmer rather smugly informed her.

  “A child,” Sharman persisted, “that has an active demon within that—”

  “That threatens to upset the balance,” Fulmer sagely stated.

  “I know what this demon is,” Janeen surprised them by saying. “Father told me. He said it lived within us all and was what ‘demands change for change’s sake, that sees good in novelty and evil in constancy’.”

  The room fell silent until Fulmer eventually said, “Yes, yes it is…and your father told you this?”

  “Can we stick to the point, please?” Sharman insisted. “You’ve been sent here because the demon in you is active, not vestigial like in the rest of us. Your village—”

  “Delph,” Fulmer supplied.

  “Your village has clearly recognised its presence in you and so, by the ancient laws they’re subject to, have cleansed themselves of the threat you pose.”

  “But,” Fulmer said, “the brief gift of the necklace—always removed once its job’s done—should have blotted out all your previous life. It should have brought you to me as a clean sheet of paper, upon which, with the aid of the phial’s powder, I could then write you a new history.”

  “An ‘Uncle Derek’ for ‘Susan’ here, eh?” Craith’s voice suggested, reminding her he was still in the room.

  “Er, yes,” Fulmer quietly allowed. “The next names on my register. Much younger minds are so suggestable even without the effects of the reviving powder, enough for a new identity to be well seeded before I send them on.”

  “Send them on where?” Janeen asked, the pain in her eyes now getting the better of her, making her feel so tired again.

  “To where such demons can be kept removed from the world at large, where they’re unable to upset the balance that has kept The Green such a bountiful place for all of the life that dwells within it.”

  “They’re sent on to Gryff,” Sharman less elaborately told her, “where you too will soon have to go.”

  “Except she can’t,” Fulmer coldly affirmed, “not with her own memories intact as they are. For Gryff’s own balance, it can only accept those in whom a new and innocuous past has been created by a dwelgefa.”

  “Then what’s to happen to Janeen?” Craith asked.

  “Yes,” Sharman said, “you must have rules that govern this sort of thing.”

  Fulmer hardly more than breathed, “I do, although you’re the only one who’s ever come to me like this, Janeen, the first one to cause me to dust off those rules.”

  “So…so what will you have to do with
her?” Sharman reticently asked.

  Janeen felt as if the air in the room hummed with expectancy, but her mind had already begun spiralling back towards that imagined dandelion seed, yearning to float once more upon the warm Summer air. Fulmer’s voice, when it came, seemed distant somehow, despite the meaning it carried.

  “Deliver her to the river, so it may find a home in the far off sea for such a homeless demon.”

  13 Confederates in Crime

  “That can’t be right,” Craith exploded.

  “It’s unthinkable,” Sharman insisted. “You can’t go killing people just because…”

  “Will you two please calm down?” Fulmer demanded. “Please; the both of you.”

  “I’ll not be a party to such a—”

  “Shut up and hear me out, for Solem’s sake,” and it stilled Sharman, but not so the young lad.

  “You can’t go throwing a lass like this in t’river, to drown like that, as though she’s just…”

  Abruptly, the sound of a couple of chairs being heavily sat upon now filled the room.

  “Do you seriously think,” Fulmer said, “I’d be telling you this with the girl herself in our midst?”

  The uproar had dragged Janeen from the arms of impending sleep, leaving her confused and, despite the fog still surrounding her mind, with a cold edge of fear clawing at her neck. The room, though, now seemed to have been silent for far too long, and she strained her ears, too frightened to speak.

  “I’m sorry for alarming you, my dear,” Fulmer eventually said. “In all my long life, I’ve never once harmed another, never mind… Well, I don’t intend starting now.”

  He drew in and expelled a short breath.

  “Why do you think I asked for your help in the first place, eh? Well, why?” but no one else spoke.

  “I am a dwelgefa, a giver of life, not a dweltaca. I could no more take a life than fly to the moon, whatever the rules might say.”

  “My apologies, Dwelgefa,” Sharman responded, “but what are you going to do with her?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the problem; why I asked for your help.”