The Three Lights - chapter 4

 Chapter the fourth in my serialised meander into the world of YA fantasy. I'm amusing myself if nobody else, so will write a little more before the q=burdens of the quotidian world get in the way,

CHAPTER 4

 

 “The Fourth House?” Dylan mouthed the words as if he were saying something obscene that he did not want overheard. “Who on earth told you about that?”

Catriona recounted the scene she had witnessed in the bookshop. Her books were currently teetering on the dresser. She had opted to skip the hurley shop and acquired a sackful of herbs and a pocket-sized sickle at Demulcent’s Herbarium. The herbs were filling her room with a heady aroma. At Morwenna’s insistence she had gone into Stang and Treen’s stavewright shop to acquire a staff. A polished length of oak has caught her eye, engraved with a stag design. She felt rather silly carrying it home (catching herself already thinking of her dormitory room as home), but as all the others had staffs of their own she did at least blend in. It was currently propped next to the bedstead. Dylan had returned from his expedition with a hazel staff and a small crystal sphere from Dwimmermongers esoteric shop, which he was currently cradling like it were a baby. Catriona had been fascinated by their window display of cauldrons, tarot cards, crystals, skulls, and all manner of other items. However, the price tags had made her blanche, so she had opted to play it safe by steering clear of them.

“The Amadan family are all a bit weird,” he commented, referring to the boy who had so upset Mr Buckram in the bookshop. Catriona privately thought it a bit hypocritical for Dylan to label anyone else as weird, but then such things were always relative. “We’re not really supposed to talk about any of this. People worry that it will just pour fuel on the embers. I’ll tell you, but you have to keep it to yourself. Back in the 1930s there was this student who went a bit nuts in the Swordsmithing class. Oh, you probably won’t know about that will you? The final year students in the House of the Land get the option to study sword making. Usually one of the mountain dwarves comes over and teaches it. These days it’s Master Coteler, but I don’t know who was teaching it back then. As well as all the practical stuff about how to make swords and daggers, they also learn how to sing the metal awake so that the blade will be alive. Sapient, you know? It’s really hard to do properly, have to get really good grades to get into that class.

“Anyhow, this student – Donald Pilear his name was – kept saying they should modernise and use the same techniques to make guns. Well, the teacher and the Principal both hit the roof and refused to let him. Turns out he and a few friends tried in secret, but it blew up in their faces.”

“Were they expelled?”

“No, they were dead! Like I said, the whole thing blew up. Killed them and a couple of bystanders in the next room. The whole thing was forbidden, but you know what it’s like trying to stop an idea once it’s started! Some of the professors else tried it during the 1940s and even got government money to do it, part of the war effort apparently. None of them survived, though the university have sealed all the records as to how they died for fear that others might be daft enough to try it again. I think it all went pretty quiet until ten years back when another student got into that whole scene. Her name was Corryn, rather than enchanting guns and bombs she was obsessed with linking computers to magic.”

“But they don’t work here, you told me that!” Catriona interjected.

“Not now, no. The Principal put an end to that so as to avoid a repetition. Corryn didn’t just want to do a bit of private experimentation, she declared that all the previous attempts by Pilear and the others went wrong because they were done in isolation. She asked to found a whole new House – the Tŷ'r Peiriant.”

“House of the…?”

“Machine,” Kai spoke, making her jump. He had padded silently into the room. “Can you imagine the arrogance it takes for a third-year student to think she can change the way a two-thousand-year-old system has worked? My aunt was enrolled here at the same time as this Corryn, said she was a nasty piece of work from the start. She says Carryn told everyone the three Houses were a spent force and would get swept away by the new world of artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and all that stuff. That’s why she tried to ally with the Fomorians, they seem to prefer artificial things to the natural world. She wanted to officially found a Fourth House, though allegedly she then wanted to get shot of the other three and basically become the only House. Had a manifesto and everything. We’re not allowed to read it, so this is all gossip and rumour.”

“She wasn’t alone here” Dylan continued, “She had a clique of followers who were all mad about technology too. Called themselves the World Weavers, which gives you an idea of how big their egos were! The Gorsedd won’t say exactly what happened, but several people died before she did a midnight flit along with a few of her mates. Nobody knows what happened to her – there’s a bounty on her head.”

Catriona half-smiled, unsure if this was a joke or not. Kai assured her that Dylan was giving the actual truth. Crimes against the Arcanum or anyone under its protection were dealt with by the Brehons, a body of judges who deployed the Fian to capture anyone who tried to flee justice. The Fian were not exactly the police, sounding a bit more like Mafia heavies to Catriona, but they did enforce the laws of the druid world. When not chasing after criminals they hunted down the Fomorians.

“I heard that old Buckram had a fit about the Fourth House,” Kai sprawled on her bed and waved a box of homemade chocolates at them with the warning that they were dog chocolates as he was unable to eat the real thing. The others passed. “My uncle is in the Fian, works as a sniffer dog. He told me that they think Corryn and her cronies are still trying to build up the Fourth House. Apparently, there’s been quite a few dodgy incidents over the last few years, murders and whatnot. Stuff that doesn’t get reported much in the Intelligencer. I bet Jason Amadan’s on a watchlist already because he asked that stupid question.”

 

That afternoon Catriona spotted Dylan sitting under a large oak tree reading a copy of the Intelligencer, the magazine that most people in the Arcanum seemed to read. Kai, now back in dog form, was sprawled across the other boy’s feet, half-asleep but wagging his tail at her approach. Rhiannon was with them, staring at a cloth spread on the grass and covered in short wooden sticks. Catriona glanced at them as she sat next to the girl and saw that the sticks were actually ogham staves, each with one of the twenty letters of the ancient Irish alphabet pyrographed on them. In the past she had tried fortune telling with them, but with only limited success. Rhiannon, noticing her gaze, announced that she was looking forward to the module on Celtic Languages and asked what Catriona had put herself down for.

Dragging out a copy of the prospectus which she had found in the welcome pack on the day of her arrival. She had circled the choices on the list of options, along with the mandatory ones that all new-bloods had to take – such as Celtic Languages, First Principles of Magic, and Hidden History. She assumed that most of the students from the old families were probably familiarised with these issues from the cradle onwards.

Along with the obligatory modules, Catriona had opted to take Mythography, Healing Arts, and Tree Lore. Dylan was down for the first two and Kai for all three. Rhiannon seemed to change her mind in accord with those around her, leading Catriona to suspect she was keener to make friends than to shape her future academic path. Loud cawing startled Catriona out of her reverie, she looked up to see a large crow stood on the pile of books that Dylan had heaped up. It eyed them and croaked again, crooking its head from side to side. Catriona became aware that a dozen students had stopped chatting and pivoted round to watch the bird in silence, serious expressions on their faces.

She made to hold out a hand, but Dylan gently restrained her arm and almost imperceptibly shook his head. After a few more abrasive calls the bird took to the wing, watched by all and sundry.

“It went right,” Dylan murmured. “Right is for the future in ornithomancy. Crows mean death is coming in the future.”

Rhiannon was about to dismiss it as just a bird but, newcomer though she was to this world, she had read enough to know that studying bird flight was regarded as an important skill in divining the spirit world. Like Catriona, she could see readily enough that everyone around them had taken it very seriously. The two young women exchanged looks, acknowledging how out of their depth both felt in this parallel society.

Kai woofed and burbled in the way that only malamutes and huskies seemed to quite manage.

“Yes… I, well I think,,, you’re right?” Dylan uncomfortable. Astonished, Catriona asked if he could understand the dog noises, which prompted Kai to bark loudly and Dylan to blush. “Some of it, yes. There’s a cynanthrope in my family, so I’ve picked up some of it. It’s a proper language, you know!”

“What did he say then?” Catriona wondered if she would ever get used to this strange world that Dylan took in his stride. There were so many questions – how many kinds of shapeshifters were there; if weredogs existed did vampires, ghouls, and ghosts also exist; what were the limits of magic?

“That we should tell… someone. I couldn’t quite understand the last part of what Kai said.” The dog rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically, a deep creaking noise emanated from the branches above their heads. They all glanced up.

“Hill…dern…has…al…read...eee…been…told,” the words could just about be distinguished amidst the rumbles and groans as the oak tree opened deep set hollows that might have been eyes and spoke. Rhiannon squealed and keeled over, Catriona struggled hard not to follow suit though her voice shook as she asked what was happening.

“This is Master Lesovik, my dear,” the speaker was Lady Lamorna Hatton-Jones, her tweedy cloak causing her to almost blend in with the foliage of the tree which uttered a long, deep groan as a branch slowly reached out and rested its twigs on the elderly woman’s shoulder. “Though students should call him Uncle Lesovik, as a matter of politeness. He will be teaching you dear things Tree Lore. Don’t worry, Miss… erm, Adair… by next week his speech will have speeded up. The Master has been dreaming all summer, communicating with the great forests. Takes him a while to return to the kinds of communications we can understand. Is that girl quite alright? I suppose all these new revelations about the world do become a tad, well overwhelming one might say?”

Catriona and Rhiannon, once she regained consciousness, nodded meekly at they stared at the being whom they now realised was somewhere between a tree and a giant man. Even Dylan and the other students looked impressed. Kai, embarrassingly, snuffled around the creature’s roots.

“Thank you, Uncle, for the message. The wren arrived in my office,” Hatton-Jones wrested a gnarled hand on the tree’s trunk. “Professor Hildern has fallen asleep in the Library again but I shall inform him when he awakes. I hope we shan’t see a repetition of last year’s nastiness. Those poor Dioscuri girls. Their mother is in the Lazaret now, I hear the doctors think she may never recover.”

 

Catriona sat on the bench in the garden area nestled between the Houses of the Land and Sky. He eyes rested on the statues of two identical young women stood back-to-back, their long braids and skirts merging into each other. The arms of one and the head of the other showed traces of gold. Morwenna had explained that the memorial statues had been vandalised at the end of the previous academic year and repaired using the Japanese kintsugi technique. The plaque stated that the statue and accompanying garden had been donated by the girls’ father following their murder. A lecturer had also been murdered at the same time and was memorialised by the weeping willow that stood guard over the statues. Even the tree showed signs of damage – someone had clearly tried to set light to it.

Morwenna had known the twins and was clearly distressed recollecting the event. So much so that Catriona had not wanted to push the issue by asking too many questions. The three victims had been killed by some sort of magic as they left a shop on Sickle Crescent. Whoever had done it had made their escape before even an identification, let alone arrest, could be made. A mark, however, had been burnt into a paving slab by the corpses. Morwenna had picked up a stick and drawn an image in the soil by the rose bed, before quickly erasing it with her foot. It was a stylised spider, the calling card of the World Weavers.

Morwenna had no idea why they had been attacked. Nobody was sure if one had been the primary victim and the other two simply collateral damage, or if the murderer had just wanted to kill the first people they saw. It seemed to Catriona that this situation was little different from the kinds of terrorist incidents reported on TV on an almost weekly basis. It depressed her to think that this marvellous world that she had only just discovered should be as subject to feuding and violence as the world that she was, as she only just realised with a start, leaving behind. It was also shocking to think that whoever had vandalised the memorial was clearly an insider – a student or an employee of the Gorsedd, or maybe some trusted visiting guest who had wanted to wound the Dioscuri family and the friends of the dead students in this vindictive fashion. She wondered to what extent she could really trust the people around here. One of them, at least, was not what they seemed.