Hrype gave an impatient tut, turning away.
‘It is all but impossible to determine where the imagination ends and true sight begins,’ Gurdyman said quietly. ‘Indeed, it is a matter hotly debated among the wise, for there are no easy answers.’ He paused. ‘Was there anything else, Lassair?’
I shook my head. ‘No, nothing. I’m sorry, Gurdyman.’
He smiled, but I sensed it took some effort. I could feel his disappointment. ‘Well, never mind. It was but your first attempt, after all.’
‘Will I get better at it?’ I hated to let him down.
‘Of course you will!’ he said robustly. ‘And I shall help you.’ Now the smile was unforced, and I sensed the affection behind it. ‘I promised to do so, did I not?’
Indeed he had. I remembered vividly exactly what he’d said: I will teach you all that I know, and we shall hope that would be enough.
I’d found it distinctly alarming even then, all those months back. Now, when learning how to use the shining stone was no longer a distant prospect but right before me in the here and now, I was downright terrified.
But I wasn’t going to admit it. Gurdyman, by my side, appeared to be waiting for some response. I said – and I could hear the shake in my voice – ‘I’ll do my best.’
Hrype left, and I went back to my bed. I was exhausted, as if I had been on a long, wearisome journey, or had been beset with worries and problems that it was up to me to resolve.
But, once I was snug up in my little attic room, warm beneath the bedclothes, scenes from the day kept playing before my closed eyes. I saw Hrype, throwing back his hood to stare at me. I saw Gurdyman, his face creased with concern as he asked if I had the piece of lapis lazuli. Then Gurdyman again, his face reflecting his acute disappointment as I confessed I’d seen no more than a blur of smoke and a few nondescript figures.
The scenes played again, and then again. At last, however, fatigue overcame me, and I felt my body and mind relax towards sleep.
On the point of a dream, two things leapt up to the forefront of my mind, hurling me back to wakefulness. The first was an image of those two black birds, flying out of the stone straight for me. Without a doubt – and I had no idea where the awareness came from – I knew they were ravens.
I could not for the life of me think how, when Gurdyman asked if I’d seen anything else, I’d forgotten about them …
The second thing was to do with my piece of lapis, and its use other than as a pigment with which to make blue paint. As every apprentice wizard could have explained, lapis lazuli is used to heighten psychic ability. To hold a piece in the left hand is to invite the spirits to emerge from the shadow world and into our own.
Gurdyman hadn’t given me the lapis for protection. He’d given it purely and solely to heighten the chance that my first attempt to see inside the secrets of the shining stone would be successful.
And I hadn’t told him how well it had worked.
THREE
The next day, Gurdyman tactfully refrained from mentioning the shining stone. Since I much preferred to put the whole worrying incident to the back of my mind, I tried to forget all about it. But I kept seeing those two ravens, flying like arrows towards me. Two ravens … now what did that make me think of? I don’t want to know! I told myself.
It was easy to keep busy. Gurdyman takes his role as my teacher and mentor very seriously, and I do not have much time to retreat inside my own thoughts. He was currently instructing me in the art of mixing certain ingredients in precisely the right proportions to enhance their ultimate potency. I was already familiar with the concept, having been well taught by my healer aunt, Edild, when I first became her apprentice. Gurdyman, however, was not only a healer but a magician too, and, under his tutelage, I was beginning to learn the more arcane aspects of the art, such as the exact time that a plant must be picked and, perhaps most mystical and strange of all, the correct way to address the herbs before they are added to the mix.
We were preparing the Nine Herbs Charm: plantain, mugwort, lamb’s cress, betony, chamomile, nettle, chervil, fennel and crab apple. Edild had taught me about many of those herbs: mugwort’s sweet flowers are tied in bunches as an insect repellent, and it is also used to flavour beer; plantain heals cuts and sores, and you make a thick, syrupy infusion sweetened with honey to ease coughs, especially in children; fennel is used for stomach ailments and indigestion; crab apples ease constipation, and old lore maintains that the bitter, unripe apples drive out worms.
I knew of betony, since Edild occasionally uses it to treat diarrhoea and cystitis; she does not regularly keep it in her store room because she says it’s overrated. I have since learned – from Gurdyman, of course – that it is a magical plant; this, I suspect, is why my aunt is wary of it. Edild tries not to rely on magic, and treats the superstitious fears of the Aelf Fen villagers with courteous but ruthless disdain.
Beside me at the workbench, Gurdyman was grinding ingredients with a pestle and mortar, muttering under his breath. He had taught me how to make a paste of ashes and water, which we would then boil up with fennel. We worked steadily, and I tried to copy the neat, economical movements of his hands.
Suddenly he turned to me and said, ‘We have insufficient crab apples. Hurry and fetch more – a dozen will serve.’
I nodded, wiped my hands on my apron and leapt up the stone steps leading out of the crypt. I ran along to the kitchen to fetch a bag, then left the house and emerged on to the narrow lane outside. I knew where to go for crab apples: there is a tree on one of the tracks leading down to the river, and its fruits were already ripening, falling on to the path beneath its spreading branches. I was not entirely certain whose tree it was. It stood on common ground, but land rights are fiendishly complicated, and it probably belonged to somebody. I did not think he – or she – would miss twelve crab apples, particularly when much of the crop was being trodden underfoot and going to waste.
In the event, there was nobody about to witness as swiftly I bent down and thrust a dozen small red apples into my bag, checking them carefully for blemishes and the marks of insect infestation. Gurdyman is very strict about such things. Ingredients must be untainted, and his crypt – as I well know – must at all times be spotlessly clean. I often reflect, at the end of a long day, how many hours of my apprenticeship with Gurdyman I spend with my hands in a bucket of soapy water, washing down utensils, surfaces and floors.
I was on my way back – crossing the corner of the market square – when somebody called out to me. Turning quickly, impatient to take the crab apples to Gurdyman, I saw that it was Mattie.
‘Oh, Lassair, I’m that glad to see you!’ she panted as she hurried up to me. ‘I’d have sought you out, only I don’t know where you dwell.’
No, she didn’t. I had made sure of it. Gurdyman is virtually a recluse, and, for reasons of his own safety, prefers not to broadcast the whereabouts of his twisty-turny house, hidden away in its maze of narrow alleyways. I understand his reasoning. Some of the things he gets up to down in his crypt would make his fellow townspeople’s hair stand on end if they knew, and it’s amazing how swift men can be to turn on the outsider, the one who is different, the person perceived as a threat. I always do my best to protect Gurdyman’s privacy, although at times it makes my own life difficult. When, for example, a friendly soul like Mattie asked where I lived because she wanted to show me her baby – newly recovered, thanks to medicine I had prepared, from a nasty cough – and give me a basket of apples as a thank-you.
I looked into Mattie’s plump, anxious face. ‘What can I do for you?’ I asked. I wasn’t going to explain why I had to be so secretive about the whereabouts of my lodgings.
‘It’s that woman, the one with the veil,’ she said, a note of indignation entering her voice.