Rembrien Chapter 2.

 

Chapter 2.

 

The House on the Hill.

         

Sophrayni sat with her hands in her lap, watching the steam curl from the kettle. The unicorn horn lay on the desk between them, still and silent, but in her senses, it hummed faintly, like a distant bell.

She turned to Lord Rufus. “Who is your charmer?”

Rufus blinked. “We don’t have one.”

“No charmer?” Sophrayni’s voice stayed calm, but her brow furrowed. “No one to tend fevers or ease births?”

Martha, seated nearby, shook her head. “We haven’t needed one. Not since the horn came.”

Sophrayni looked again at the spiralled object. “It’s a cure-all?”

“More or less,” Rufus nodded. “It keeps the people well. No plague, no sickness, no rot in the grain.”

“And you just… found it?”

“No,” said Martha. “It was given to us by the man. He lives in a house at the end of the valley. It has a wall all the way around it and no gates.

Sophrayni’s gaze sharpened. “By whom?”

They exchanged glances. It was Rufus who answered. “We call him the man. We’ve never known his name, or even if he has one. He lives in a house at the end of the valley. Large place, old stone, high windows. No one goes there unless invited. There’s a wall all the way around it, and as far as we can tell, no gates.”

“Have you been?”

“Once,” said Rufus. “Years ago. He doesn’t age. Doesn’t eat, as far as I saw. He speaks little, but when he does, you listen.”

“He gave you the horn?”

“He said it would keep the valley safe. And it has. He gave it to us in exchange for our promise never to visit him.”

Sophrayni leaned back. “And you never questioned it?”

Rufus met her eyes. “We’re not fools. We know gifts like this come with shadows. But the valley thrives. And we sleep well.”

Sophrayni looked out the window toward the hills. “I think I’ll pay him a visit.”

“We promised him peace and no disturbances,” protested Lord Rufus.

Sophrayni shrugged. “I am not from this town, and I am the Witch of the Dark Forest. No one, not even a strange man with a unicorn horn to spare, tells me what I can and cannot do.”

She collected Shade from the Inn and rode off along the valley. There was indeed a house on a low hill. She rode all the way round it. As Lord Rufus had said there did not appear to be any entrances.

She got off Shade. “There is plenty of grass for you here,” she told him. “Don’t wander to far.”

Shade nodded and lowered his head to eat.

Sophrayni walked up to the wall, thought for a few moments then made a hole in the wall, just wide enough for her to walk through. She found herself in a garden so alive it seemed to breathe.

It was not orderly, but it was intentional. Paths curved like thoughts, not roads, some paved in moss-soft stone, others swallowed by creeping thyme. Tall hollyhocks leaned over low hedges of box, and roses tangled with fennel in a riot of scent and colour. The air was rich with bees and the chirping of countless birds.

Here, plants grew not in rows but in blocks. A stand of delphiniums towered over a patch of sage. Ferns curled beneath espaliered fruit trees, and ancient yews stood like sentinels at the corners of the space.

The borders were deep and layered: spires of foxglove behind drifts of lavender, with sudden bursts of orange crocosmia like a lantern in the dark. A small rill ran through the centre, its water clear and slow, bordered by iris and forget-me-not. Somewhere, a dove cooed.

There were no signs of neglect, but also no signs of haste. Everything here had grown with time, not command. Sophrayni walked slowly, her boots brushing against chamomile and creeping mint.

At the far end, beyond a stand of silver birch, the house rose, old stone, high windows, ivy climbing like memory. But it was the garden that held her attention. She was used to the garden around her cottage, full of herbs rather than colourful, fragrant blooms.

A man stood beneath the arching boughs of an elder tree, his wide-brimmed hat casting a soft shadow over his ever-shifting face. His shirt, loose and sun-bleached, hung from his frame like a sail caught in a still wind, fastened not with buttons but with knotted cords that seemed to tighten and loosen of their own accord. His trousers, baggy and cropped at the calf, revealed bare ankles and feet dusted with soil. He looked like someone who had dressed before clothing had rules, before fashion had names.

She had expected grandeur, perhaps menace. What she found was something far stranger.

“I am Rembrien,” he said, bowing with a grace that belonged to another age. “A leftover, as you might say. A relic of the world’s first breath.”

His voice was like wind through parchment. But it was his face that held her still: it shimmered and changed with each breath. One moment, the soft roundness of a newborn’s cheeks; the next, the deep furrows and translucent skin of a man older than memory. His eyes, however, remained constant, grey as ash, and impossibly kind.

“You were expected,” he said. “Or perhaps you have been here before. I don’t know which. You must forgive me, I have difficulty knowing when I am.”

 “You are the first witch to find this place. Not even Alphaz the first witch came here,” he smiled.

“I am Sophrayni, the Witch of the Dark Forest.”

He nodded. “May I offer you some refreshments?”

Now, beneath the dappled shade of a flowering tree, a table stood, white linen, mismatched porcelain, a teapot steaming gently beside a plate of scones. Sophrayni blinked. She allowed him to seat her, as gentlemen once did for ladies. She hung her hat on the back of the chair.

Rembrien lowered himself into a wicker chair with the grace of someone who might be young, or might be ancient. His face flickered: the soft roundness of infancy, then the hollowed cheekbones of age, then something in between.

“Milk?” he asked, lifting the jug with a hand that looked briefly like a child’s.

Sophrayni nodded, watching the tea swirl. “Did you summon this?”

Rembrien smiled. “Summon? No, no. It simply remembered it was needed.”

She sipped. It was perfect. Of course. She waved her cup toward the surrounding garden. “Did you do all this by magic?”

He tilted his head, considering. “I don’t do magic, dear girl. I am what’s left of it. The tea leaves in the bottom of the world’s first cup.”

“That’s why your face shifts,” she murmured. “You’re not set in time.”

“Time is a polite fiction,” he said, buttering a scone with a hand that now bore liver spots. “As I said, I have trouble remembering when I am. I forget, sometimes, whether I’ve met you or will meet you. Whether this tea is happening now or happened long ago. But it’s always pleasant.”

Sophrayni leaned back, letting the strangeness settle. “I do magic,” she said. “I shape it. Bend it. It obeys me, mostly.”

Rembrien chuckled. “And that is why you are powerful. And why I am… ornamental.”

She looked at him. “You’re not ornamental. You’re necessary.”

He blinked, and for a moment his eyes were those of a newborn. “That’s kind of you. I think I’ll remember that. Or forget it. Or remember forgetting it.”

The wind stirred the grass. The tea stayed warm. The world, for a moment, held its breath.

“The unicorn horn?” Sophrayni asked. “Did you…” She trailed off, not knowing how to ask about the unicorn itself.

He smiled gently. “No, I kill no beast. Like many of the things in my home, it came from another world which was once attached to this one.”

Sophrayni frowned. “Another world where unicorns existed? There is another world through the gate near my home, but I’m sure the guards who look after it would have mentioned them, if they existed.”

“The unicorn’s home was a place of rolling, grass covered place where they could roam freely without fear. I found the horn when I visited. Remember bringing something from one world to another changes it. In their own world their horns were just that. Here….well that is another story.”

“I knew that things going through the gate near my cottage changed things,” said Sophrayni. “I often wondered why that happened.”

“This world,” he said, “was not born like others. It was formed in the space between.”

“Between what?” Sophrayni asked.

“Between the worlds that came before. The ones that still exist, though you cannot reach them now. Ours was shaped from the leftover magic, what spilled out of them and left them without magic.”

“That’s why things which go through the gate lose their magic as they go,” said Sophrayni.

Rembrien nodded. “The gates linked us to the surrounding realms, some bright, some terrible, all older than memory. Through them came knowledge, creatures, artifacts, humans. The horn was brought through one such gate. Not stolen. Offered.”

“By a unicorn?”

He smiled faintly. “By a world that still remembers them.”

Sophrayni leaned forward. “And the gates are closed now?”

“There still some open. One in my garden. One near your cottage. These gates must remain open, or this world will begin to unravel. Not quickly. But steadily,” he said.

“What happened to the other gates?”

“Sealed. Some by choice, some by force. There were wars, once. Not here, but nearby. The echoes reached me.”

Sophrayni looked toward the garden wall. “And you guard your gate?”

“I tend it,” he said. “As one tends a wound that must not close.”

Rembrien refilled Sophrayni’s cup with a steady hand, then sat back, folding his own long fingers over the rim of his saucer.

“There is a third gate,” he said softly.

Sophrayni looked up. “Where?”

“No one knows. It was never marked. It was meant to remain hidden, anchoring the world from a place no one could disturb.”

She frowned. “If it’s hidden, how do you know it exists?”

“Because I was here at the beginning. Now the balance is shifting. There is a dark tide coming, one which could mean the end of this world.” He sighed.

“But what is this dark tide?” Sophrayni demanded.

Rembrien shook his head. “I only know that it is coming, not what it is, or even how to deal with it. I only know that you are the only one who can deal with it. And to do that, you must find the third gate.”

“But why me?” Sophrayni asked.

Rembrien studied her for a long moment, his face flickering through ages like candlelight through leaves.

“It must be you,” he said. “Because you carry eight shadows.”

Sophrayni glanced down. The sun was low, and the garden was quiet, but behind her, the shadows stretched and shimmered, eight distinct shapes cast from one body.

“Calizone gave me the power of seven witches when she died,” she said softly. “I didn’t ask for it.”

“No,” Rembrien agreed. “But the world did. And the eighth shadow is yours alone. That gives you the strength for resistance,” he said. “For memory. For the last stand against the dark tide.”

Sophrayni felt the weight of the garden pressing in, not heavy, but expectant.

“Others will help,” he said. “But only you can hold the gate. Only you can block what’s coming.”

She nodded slowly. “Then I’ll find it.”

Rembrien’s eyes, for a moment, were ancient and newborn all at once. “You already carry the knowledge. You just haven’t learned how to reach inside to find it. One thing I can tell you about the world on the other side of the third gate. When the gate is closed that world will cease to exist.” He sighed. “Now, I would take it as a favour if you would close that gap in my wall,” he said, looking toward the hole, she had made.

Sophrayni nodded and raised her hand to cast a mending spell. She flicked her fingers, expecting the stones to leap back into place, but nothing happened. She tried again, reaching for the spark of magic that usually lived in her chest. It felt cold and distant, like a candle flickering in a gale.

“Oh,” she whispered, her face reddening. “My magic... it isn't working.”

Rembrien smiled kindly. “Not here, dear girl. This garden is made of the first magic, the raw stuff of the world. The kind of magic you practise is like a shaped tool. A tool that doesn't work inside the forge where it was made. You’ll have to fix it the old-fashioned way when you leave.”

Sophrayni picked up her hat and walked back to the gap in the wall. As soon as she stepped through to the other side, she felt her magic rush back into her, warm and vibrant. She turned around and pointed her finger at the messy pile of rocks. With a soft whoosh, the stones lifted and knitted themselves back together until the wall was perfectly solid once more.

She mounted Shade, who was waiting patiently. “Well, Shade,” she whispered. “It seems we have more to do than just visiting Kingsmen.”

She rode back toward Stump, her mind racing. If the knowledge of the Third Gate was already inside her, it was likely hidden in the memories of the seven witches who had come before her, the ones whose power now lived in her shadows.