Free Beguilers by Kate Thompson Page B

below the village. A strong stream runs through the middle of it, but it never bursts its banks and the lepers were dry and happy there until the weather changed and their own homes dried out. After that they came every wet season and set up camp there, sharing quite happily with the buzz-bats, until Bodwa the World-Widener, the best of all the Law-Givers, had condemned their enforced exile and built them a city of their own on the plains. She had been the one who allowed men to enter the priesthood, and opened the trading paths between the divided mountain fiefdoms, and permitted inter-marriage between the closed clans. She had been dead for more than a hundred years, but her likeness hung above every hearth in every village in the land and she would never be forgotten.
    I took a step forward into the clearing and at the same moment I saw the beguiler. It darted out of one of the caves, about mid-way up the cliff and hung in the air, high above my head. From that distance it appeared tiny to me, but even so I found that I could clearly see the golden eyes, which met my gaze full on, and held it. I was fleetingly aware of that sense of recognition, as though I had always known the being that hovered there before me. But before I could follow my thoughts, the sensation was gone. The expression in the beguiler’s eyes revealed a ferocious, jealous love, and it produced the same emotion in my heart. Then it disappeared, back into the dark interior.
    It had only been outside the cave for an instant, but its effect on me in that brief space of time had been profound. I was like a fish on a line, but a willing one, all too ready to be reeled in by the beguiler’s possessive power. Every emotion that I had ever experienced seemed to ignite in me at once. I burned with joy and sorrow and envy; with longing and fear and revulsion. For a moment I tried to resist what was happening to me, but the connection stretched my heart too hard and I found myself moving forwards, drawn by some will that was no longer my own.
    I crossed the clearing, vaguely aware of leaving darkness behind me and heading towards some new and glorious light. I kept my gaze fixed upon the point where I had seen the beguiler, and before I knew it I was at the foot of the cliff, craning my neck to keep the mouth of the cave within my view.
    I ought to have realised the truth of the situation as soon as I became aware of the rope guide-rail. It ran up the cliff, zigzagging along the interwoven paths, leading from where I stood right up to the cave from which the beguiler had emerged. But it was a sign of how mesmerised I was that it seemed entirely appropriate to me that I should be given any assistance I needed, whether natural or supernatural, to enable me to reach my shining goal.
    With one hand I held my shawl around me, and with the other I gripped the rope. It was pegged into the sandstone at regular intervals with stout wooden wedges, and although it had been worn smooth by use, it was firmly fixed and had no slack anywhere along its length.
    I was glad of it. The paths were narrow and were so badly worn in places that it would have been impossible to pass along them without the hand-rail. Going up towards the cave was easy, but now and then the rope angled away, causing me to turn my back on the cave and the beguiler inside. Every time that happened I became acutely distressed and had to drag myself along those short stretches, breaking out into anxious, clammy sweats.
    Not even the smallest part of my mind was free from the beguiler’s influence. I had no awareness, none whatsoever, of the danger I was walking myself into. As I climbed the last stretch of the path, the only thought in my mind was of the shining reward that awaited me. I stepped on to the broad ledge outside the cave mouth and didn’t even pause before bending my head and ducking through the low entrance.
    I saw the beguiler, hovering in the deep darkness, some distance away. Then there was