© 1991 Linda Moore

Cold early light was seeping into her room as she climbed from her bed and gazed out of the window. There, over to the north, stretched the wild hills, dark and mottled green and brown ridges cutting starkly into the pale luminescence which, even now, seemed to be bringing the voices, singing and calling, to her ears. Quickly she pulled on her clothes and set out, almost running, for the ancient wall which ran along the ridge above the rubble and desolation which had once been part of another land.

The voices beckoned to and guided her: she let her eyes close and saw shadows of all colours which stretched out their arms and showed her the way. Soon, she found herself in the dark copse on the brow of the hill, pushing further and further into its dark interior, knowing exactly where she would end up. She reached the standing stone, carved with the interlocking forms of an ancient race and, as she put out her hands to touch it, the voices stopped.

Silence. A silence so thick that it seemed as it the entire world had left her way behind, as if every bird and fox and human had gone to a different place.

She did not have much time to reflect on this sensation, odd as it was; the old twisted stone was no stranger to her, she had spent many hours here wondering, and now she felt the power she had always suspected lay within it. The feeling was warm and gentle, a tingling which spread through her whole body and brought an expression of rapture to her face. She had never felt this way before; it was as though she had become one with the sweet earth beneath her, and it felt beautiful.

All of a sudden, the sensation had gone. Rhiannon half turned as if attempting to recapture the power but it was as though it had never been there, leaving behind a silent void. Then, the voices returned afresh, stronger and clearer, until she could discern individual lilting words in a language she had never before heard. Nor had it been heard in this world for a very long time. This she knew, the realization brought unbidden to her mind, and it did not surprise her.

There was a pit lying at her feet with grey steps leading down, cut into cold rock. Guided once more by the voices, she descended into a chamber whose walls were carved with the same symbols as were on the standing stone above. She wondered how this place had remained undiscovered for it had surely been excavated, but then she remembered the silence and knew that, now, she was not in the world into which she had been born.

A black passage led away from the chamber. Rhiannon stepped into it; black enshrouded her in the clasp of icy silk but she closed her eyes and saw the shadows, red and green and blue, their eyes shining at her. When she opened her eyes again, everything was bathed in a soft grey glow. The walls of the passage were held up by an interlocking tapestry of roots which pulsed with life as she progressed.

The tunnel was long and it was shining; its light filled her with a strange exultation. And all the while the voices sang in tune with her inner self, pulling her along.

But something had gone wrong. The light was too bright. It had become harsh and white and she could no more see through it than through the blackest cavern. She shielded her eyes but it was no use. Blind, she staggered a few steps but then tripped and fell heavily. Her eyes closed and she saw the shadows melt into a confused mass, heard their voices scream in terror and pain. This pain rebounded upon her and as she called out in terror, she understood what was being said to her.

"Not ready yet... not ready... our Queen is not ready..."

The dark claimed her. She was found lying beside the standing stone later that cold December day: the walkers took her to the hospital where she was treated for a dislocated shoulder and a severe bout of flu. When she was a little better, her worried parents spoke to a consultant. They were told that it was worry about her exams which had caused their daughter to sleepwalk.

The events of Rhiannon's sixteenth midwinter were soon forgotten and filed away as a shock without serious repercussions. She herself believed otherwise - at first. She often sneaked away to visit the standing stone but never again experienced the welling up of its power. Sometimes, she thought she heard the voices whisper - but when she stopped to listen, all she could hear was the wind. As time went on she turned to reading the history and the legends of the area and often shed tears as a wave of inexplicable longing overcame her. More midwinters passed and the voices remained silent.

The second time that Rhiannon heard the voices was on her twenty-first midwinter. It was a cold day, the mists swirling in the valley like some great obscure sea, the air making her skin prickle as she took the walk that had almost become a ritual. She had been to the stone so many times since that dream-like day of five years ago, she had read so many strange books and tried out so many experiments, yet never had she felt anything as strong as that which she still half-believed had happened when she was sixteen.

The fog thickened again as she climbed, a cloak of fine grey cold closing in upon her. Not a sound could she hear but she knew the way without a single doubt and let her feet guide her through the heavy silence into trees like guardians silhouetted in the grey.

Then, she heard the voices. She stopped dead in her tracks. They came from ahead of her, distant, muffled, but there.

And suddenly she knew that she had passed once again into a different realm. A smile lingered on her lips for a brief second and melted away into solemn astonishment as the mists seemed to sweep aside like the opening of a curtain. She saw the stone and those who were calling to her.

Rhiannon counted twelve of them. They wore cloaks of grey, the colour of the fog, men and women alike, but underneath could be glimpsed robes of all the brightest hues. They were not tall, their features angular and less than human: to the young woman who observed in awe, they were beautiful but alien. Moving closer, she observed that their eyes were large and their azure depths regarded her with a mixture of relief and triumph. Pale, they were, slender and graceful as willows, and their hair of silver or gold was bound back by circlets of finely wrought metal.

A man who bore a simple staff of polished wood stepped forward. He held out his hand to Rhiannon and she took it, feeling the bones, his startling thin-ness. A little shocked, she looked into his eyes and realized that they were the only part of his face that was truly alive. He was gaunt, the skin barely stretched over his skull; this man was weak, white, dying.

Then he spoke, using words in a language which seemed to sing and which she somehow could understand. His voice was rich and stood in stark contrast to his emaciated appearance.

"Welcome to us, our Queen. For many years have we tried to call thee, yet at first thou camest along the wrong path to our world and then thou couldst hear us no more. Now it seemeth that thou art well versed in the Art and able to reach us. I am Carillanos of the Phelari."

Rhiannon hesitated, then in some confusion replied.

"I am Rhiannon and greet you, Carillanos. Yet you call me your Queen and I am not of your race, let alone your world. How can this be?"

A sigh seemed to sweep through the twelve. Each bowed in an elaborate and graceful fashion, welcoming her.

"Indeed, there is much to be explained," continued Carillanos. "Yet let us give thee refreshment and our hospitality for thou hast travelled far, Queen Rhiannon, and thou must hear our tale."

Without waiting for her reply, he turned about and they moved down into the passage below the stone. They led her along it to a place where an immense cave sparkled with crystals of all colours, capturing the light from thousands of torches. There was a city of coloured stone here, with architecture that was gracefully alien to Rhiannon's eyes. Many of the buildings were decorated with crystal and paintings showing stylized but vivid scenes of the Phelari's everyday life. Rhiannon noticed every arc, every fountain and tower, with delight and awe. Her own world seemed far away and she felt an odd affinity with this place.

Soon, they came to a magnificent palace surrounded by underground trees with pale silver leaves. In a great comfortable chamber she was given a robe of silver-blue silk and a simple circlet in the centre of which glowed a single sapphire. She was plied with fruits the like of which she had never seen and was given wine from a goblet of gold. Despite their apparent riches, though, Rhiannon could not help but notice that those who served her were thin, that some wore expressions that bordered on despair.

At last, Carillanos sat beside her and began to speak. A bard began to strum at a harp, providing an almost hypnotic background to the tale which the Phelari was spinning.

"We were here at the Dawn and our life was given to us by the Goddess. She who is blood and life and death gave us a jewel and in it would be our life, our magic and our truth. Daerala she made to be our first Queen, thousands of years ago; it was Daerala who taught us how to read and write so that the tale should never be forgotten.

"Now there was a Binding and this is how it was: Daerala bound her life into the jewel and ensured that we could not die out. Our fate became bound into this one blue stone. For many years we prospered and the stone became strong, stronger still as each passing Queen revered and bound her own fate into it.

"But we have an enemy, one who is a demon, and always has he striven against us. Gahelionn is his name and much misery has he brought us. Now, twenty years ago our last Queen died, poisoned by Gahelionn, and he did worse unto us than this: her single heir, a mere babe, he spirited away to an unknown land and the jewel he cursed to slowly die. And because we are so bound to it, we too fade away, for only one of the royal female line can revitalize it."

Rhiannon wet her lips nervously, then asked what this had to do with her. Carillanos looked straight at her and she saw, to her surprise, tears shining in her eyes.

"The jewel dims and we weaken. The signs must be evident to thee. After many prayers and spellweavings we discovered the world to which our princess had been sent. It was thy world and she had already grown old: time in your land flows at a different rate to ours, and worse still, the relationship between our times is not constant. Sometimes many of our years pass for mere days in yours, while sometimes the reverse is true. There is no way of judging such tides.

"The princess had married one of your kind, unaware of her origins. She could not hear us when we called.

"Then we called to her daughter and her daughter and her daughter, searching through your time, yet with each generation the Phelari magic became weaker and we realized that, in thy world, magic was neither important nor common. We had begun to lose hope - and then, after many years, we contacted thee and made thee aware of us. Thou art of our royal line, though in our twenty years hundreds of thine have passed."

"I prepared myself," whispered Rhiannon in wonderment. "I read all sorts of books and... I wanted, all along, to come back. I was beginning to think that what happened was not real."

"It is real," countered Carillanos. "Thou art our kinswoman, descended from Queen Daerala and summoned from a different time and world to aid us."

"How will I aid you?" said Rhiannon, conscious of the fear which was coursing through her blood.

The Phelari explained as they took Rhiannon to the Jewel where she announced herself ready. It stood on its own in a small, surprisingly plain room, perched on a pedestal of marble. It was a great stone, dark blue and the size of a fist but, as Carillanos pointed out, it was much less bright than it had been and hairline cracks were marring it; these were worsening until the stone crumbled completely, bringing with it the end of his people.

A dull blue light flickered within the stone, cast a gentle luminescence about. This light had once brightened the whole chamber and would someday, too, fade into darkness.

"When must the Binding be done?" asked Rhiannon, feeling a sudden urge to touch the jewel but not yet daring.

"When I have spoken with thee shall it be done," said a voice within her head and for a second, the stone flared as bright as a flash of lightning. The Phelari took a step back, startled.

"The jewel has spoken to me," Rhiannon announced. "I need to speak with it, alone."

"So be it," whispered the twelve Phelari and filed out of the room in silence like grey-cloaked ghosts. Alone with the jewel, Rhiannon reached out her hands and clasped it firmly, knowing that this was now acceptable. She felt its energy mingling with hers, a warm, tingling sensation that reminded her of the power of the standing stone. It seemed to seep into her inner being, becoming a part of her, supporting her own powers with its magic.

"I am part of thee," said the jewel, its voice gentle. "Listen well, Queen. We shall do the Binding now if it be thy will. Against thy will shall I not act. I am the spirit of the Goddess and of all the Queens before you and I remind thee that thou art not fully of the race I originally set upon this world."

"I give my consent, whatever the risk," replied Rhiannon, knowing that she could not now do any other.

"We are in need of an heir. I shall begin again and recreate a Queen who is just and can resist the evil of Gahelionn. Thou shalt be the mother, in a fashion. There shall be no male father, for I am the one who will set the seed within thee. The Binding shall place my spirit into thy womb and thou shalt sleep through the time of the babe's growing. Not one touch of pain shalt thou feel."

Rhiannon paled, yet she knew that if she were able to help the Phelari, then she should do so. "I will do this."

"I thank thee, Queen Rhiannon. Thus shall my beloved be saved."

There was a surge of energy, a blinding flash of blue light. It was so sudden that Rhiannon had no time even to call out. The last thing she heard before the world of darkness claimed her were the soothing words of the spirit of the Goddess.

"I thank thee."

Rhiannon awoke in a dim room that smelled faintly of disinfectant. Her body felt terribly weak and immensely heavy. It was an effort to open her eyes but something told her that she must.

There was a woman in the room. She was blurred and white. The room slowly began to come into focus and she saw that the woman was too starchy to be an angel. A nurse, then. She wetted her lips which seemed very dry and croaked with a voice which was stiff with disuse.

The nurse started and turned around from whatever she'd been doing. She was thin and tall - nothing like the Phelari. Ah, those folk... were they a dream?

The woman came over to her and, staring, asked if Rhiannon could understand her.

"Yes," said her patient. "I'm Rhiannon. Why am I here?"

Home seemed strange. She'd had a nasty accident up on the hill, near that old standing stone. Nobody knew how she'd come to fall and knock herself out. She'd been unconscious all of three days.

Rhiannon wondered if she'd given the Phelari the daughter they needed but she could not remember anything after that final fiery explosion. Three days of time here had passed to mark nine months in the other world. The whole concept made her feel a little dizzy.

Her parents were glad she was back safely and had not suffered any permanent damage. She could go back to university and finish her degree after the Christmas break. She was just a little stressed about the finals.

Rhiannon wanted to go back somewhere else. Often, in secret, she wept.

For her birthday her sister gave her a book full of unusual legends and folklore. Rhiannon found it in her heart to smile; it was an old text, leather-bound, and she had none similar. She did not read it for several weeks but when she did, she loved the smell of old yellow paper and realized that she had again found something which could please her.

Halfway through she began to frown, barely believing what she saw.

This was the story of the Phelari, how their Princess was sent to another world and her descendant brought back to bear a child and save their world.

Her daughter was called Ilarinna.

Tears were flooding down her cheeks when she heard the voices for the final time.

We thank thee, Rhiannon. Thy daughter is a just and beautiful Queen and she shall be our saviour.

And the day on which they spoke was the day of midwinter.