To her surprise, the Cailleach found herself smiling. Maybe it would be a good thing to escape for a while from the unvarying existence of a Guardian. There had been very little change in her life down the long aeons since she and her siblings had created this world. She had forgotten how invigorating it could be.
Dael woke up to utter confusion. With a shudder, he remembered that dreadful fall; remembered his arm snapping like a twig beneath him; remembered the agony that knifed through his chest as he hit a rock and his ribs broke; recalled the rough stones tearing at his skin as he plunged wildly downhill.
So where was the pain? Gingerly he moved his arms and his legs, poked at his ribs and felt his skin for scrapes and tender bruising. There was nothing. He was ravenously hungry and he felt a little weak and shaky, but otherwise he was absolutely fine. He simply couldn’t understand it. By rights, he shouldn’t even be alive.
Abandoning the puzzle, Dael turned his attention to his surroundings. In his early life in the Wizardly fishing settlement on the western coast, before his father had led the group of slaves to escape, he’d had a bed of sorts, a simple, narrow affair with a thin mattress supported by rope netting on a wooden framework, and a ragged blanket to cover him. In his life of so-called freedom in the forest he had slept on the ground. Now he found himself in a bed that was warm and comfortable beyond his wildest dreams, with clean, white linen, soft pillows and a quilt stuffed thickly with feathers.
The bed was the main feature of a chamber that was clearly a section of some bigger, circular structure, for it had one long straight wall and another that curved round in a sweeping arc to form a semicircle. The walls of this unusual room were made of a strange amber-coloured stone that Dael had never seen before, which was so translucent that the light from outside actually shone through the curving wall in a warm, golden glow. At one end of the straight wall was the door, whilst the bed was against the other. On the curving wall a fireplace had been built on the side of the curve nearest the bed, with a generous fire that was just burning down from a blaze to a great bank of glowing embers. On the side closer to the door was a window, with a table and two chairs set beside it. The floor was covered with woven rush matting of a pale straw colour, and the other furnishings of the room consisted of a large wooden chest covered in intricate carvings and, beside the fire, a wooden rocking chair with cheerful crimson cushions.
When he had first awakened, Dael was feeling dreamy and comfortable, but now, as he became more alert, he began to feel increasingly afraid. Where was he? How had his hurts miraculously vanished? Who owned this place, and why had they rescued him? Who would bother to give such comforts to a lowly slave?
Dael stiffened in his bed at the sound of footsteps outside the room. The door glided soundlessly open. Quickly he feigned sleep, squinting out through lowered eyelashes at the dark-robed figure who was approaching the bed - until his gasp of surprise gave the game away.
He had never seen anyone like her. She was neither tall nor tiny, but her presence was overwhelming. She certainly wasn’t human, but was she Phaerie or Wizard? Somehow, she didn’t quite look as if she belonged to either race, though he thought he could detect faint traces of both. Her hair was long and a shimmering silver-white in colour, giving the initial perception that she was an old woman - an impression belied by her face, which was neither old nor young, but changed subtly each time he blinked, so that he could never register a definite image. Yet overall, his impression was one of a luminous, transcendent beauty that filled him with awe. Her pale, silvery eyes, glowing like moonstones, held him in thrall for some unguessable period of time, so that when she spoke, her low, melodious voice seemed to come from a land far away.
‘You’re awake at last, I see.’ Her smile took his breath away. No one had ever looked on him so kindly before. ‘Now, before we go any further, there are three things you need to know,’ she said briskly. ‘One: you’re safe. Two: you’re quite well. You only need to rest for a day or two to complete the healing. Three: you’re not a prisoner. If you are stupid enough to want to go back to starving in the forest, then you’ve no business here.’ She smiled again. ‘I might add that you’re a very fortunate young man indeed, but I expect you know that already.’
‘Who - who are you?’ Dael whispered.
‘You can call me Athina,’ the mysterious woman answered, ‘and you are in my tower in the very heart of the wildwood. Wherever you came from, you almost blundered right onto my doorstep.’
‘I never heard that anyone lived all the way out here,’ Dael said in surprise.
For a moment, her smile vanished, and her face darkened. A shiver of fear went through him. It was as though someone had switched off the sun. ‘And of course, you would know,’ she snapped.
‘I’m sorry, my Lady,’ he said humbly.
The smile returned. ‘Of course you are.’ From somewhere out of his sight she produced another pillow and propped him into a sitting position. ‘Here, drink. You’ll be fiendishly thirsty, I expect. You’ve been asleep for a very long time.’
Obediently he drank the water, which was cool and tingling, and the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. When he had finished it all, he lay back with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘If you feel hungry, there’s food on the table beside your bed,’ she said. ‘I will leave you in peace to eat. Then you should sleep a little longer. When you wake again, we’ll talk properly. I have a great many questions for you, and I expect you also have a few to ask me.’
He didn’t see her leave, yet suddenly, Dael found himself alone once more. And as soon as his mysterious benefactress had gone, the feelings of fear that had been removed by her presence came rushing back, followed by - just as she had predicted - a whole cartload of questions. Who was she? What did she want with him? Why was she going to all this trouble for an insignificant human slave?
All such thoughts were driven from his head by a wonderful, savoury aroma. Dael’s stomach began to growl. Food. The woman had mentioned food and sure enough, when he turned, there was a little table at the side of his bed with a tray containing a bowl of steaming soup, and a plate of bread and cheese. He fell on them ravenously, though his stomach was so shrunken from starvation that he found he could eat far less than he’d expected: only half of the thick bean soup and a single piece of bread. With a sigh he returned the food to the table and lay back on the pillows - and it was only then, when his immediate needs had been satisfied, that he realised something strange was going on. Thirsty after his meal, he had absent-mindedly reached for the goblet, remembering, too late, that he had emptied it earlier. But to his surprise, it felt heavy in his hand, and when he looked, it was full again, and though the room was warm, the water was as cool and fresh as if it had just been drawn from a well.
Dael blinked in confusion. How had that happened? He knew very well that the strange woman had not refilled the goblet before she’d left the room. Come to think of it, he’d never seen her bring the goblet in anyway, nor the food. And now that he cast his mind back, on his first, cautious survey of the room, he was positive there had been no table beside the bed, with or without the food. So where in all Creation had it come from? And why, though the soup had been standing there for at least half an hour, was it still piping hot when he ate it? Despite the warmth of the room, Dael felt a shiver of fear run through him. His head was awhirl with questions, none of which he could even begin to answer; the most pressing of these being: what did this mysterious and very powerful woman plan to do with him?