Excerpt of Perian's Journey by Alistair McGechie, Sue Bridgwater

One morning, a few months after his birthday, Perian woke up and realised that there was a chill in the air. He shivered, and snuggled more closely under his blankets. But he could not get back to sleep, so instead sat up resolutely, and flinched at the sharp stiffness in his shoulders. He looked around the familiar room. The walls were the same as usual, mellow golden stone just beginning to draw some richness from the waxing light of morning. The same trees were visible through the window. As Perian watched, a leaf detached itself and floated slowly down beyond his sight. He shivered again, pulled back his covers and lowered his feet to the floor. His knees hurt. His feet were cold. He noticed the thinness and pallor of his legs.

"I am old," he said aloud. "I am old."

He dressed, not calling his servants but hastily getting into whatever clothes came to hand, slipped cautiously through the still-quiet passages of the palace, saddled his own horse and rode out past the astonished, drowsy sentry towards the North Gate of the city. Here too the watchman was startled to see his king, but Perian gave him only a brief nod before heading away north as fast as Mela's morning eagerness could carry him.

Before the sun was well risen, before the air was truly warm, he was approaching the outskirts of the forest. He slowed down and began to look about him. It was becoming yet another of the smiling days they had come to expect that summer. There was peace in everything, in the heraldic blue of the sky, the soft lush green of the grassland, the deeper green of Skalwood ahead of him. Yet as Perian watched, the trees were tossed by a freak gust of wind sweeping in from the sea away to the east, and as they tossed they shed each a small flurry of yellow-gold leaves. He looked up at the strengthening sun, sighed, and rode, more slowly now, towards the forest.

Under the trees all was still, with hardly a sign of life. Perian followed a broad ride he had often travelled before, but after a while turned aside into the wildness of the trees. He crossed a stream. He sat for a while on a grey rock while his horse cropped the grass and a squirrel watched him covertly. He mounted again and rode ever deeper into the forest, where there were trees of great age and immense size, that blotted out more and more of the light and the sky.

Gradually Perian began to be aware of something between the trees away to his right. It was whiteness, or some light- source, and he saw it with the corner of his eye for several minutes before curiosity compelled him to turn his head and look straight at it. Finding that he still could not make out what it was, he turned his horse towards it.

The trees here were enormous, of great girth, many hollow and rotting below but still leafy far above. The ground underfoot was knotty with roots and made bad going, so that when he was drawing near the brightness between the trees, Perian was forced to dismount and lead his horse slowly, picking a way. This kept his attention focused on the ground, and he was startled when Mela suddenly stiffened his legs and neck and refused to take another step forward. Perian concentrated for some minutes on trying to coax the beast, forgetting entirely about the thing he was trying to examine. It was only exasperation with Mela's stubbornness that made him finally turn around and look at what the creature was worriedly regarding over his master's shoulder. And then he too was still.

Between and around the trees there swirled a thickness of grey-white mist or vapour, impenetrable to sight as a heavy velvet curtain. Perian stretched out a hand and tried to touch it, but the tendrils pulled away from him and left him grasping.

"What is this wonder?" he said. "Is anyone here? Show yourself!"

There was no reply, only a low, unhappy noise from Mela. Perian turned to him, soothed him, then led him a little way back into the trees before tethering him securely to a branch. That done, he came back to the edge of the mist and stood looking into it. After a few moments he stepped forward; but he had only taken one or two steps when the mist, solidifying as it moved, poured itself towards him and pressed against him, preventing his further advance. Perian halted, and watched in astonishment as the motion and fluidity of a moment before hardened into a flat, gleaming surface like glass or ice; and as the word 'mirror" came into his head, the rippling ceased and he saw himself reflected in a broad and crystal-clear expanse of adamantine hardness. His fingers made no impression on it at all. His face looked back at him, and he saw to his annoyance that he looked awe-struck and overwhelmed. He drew himself up and spoke again.

"Whose is this enchantment? Speak! Reveal yourself and your purpose!"

As if triggered by his voice, the surface of the mirror rippled again, and Perian cried out wordlessly as it showed him a scene he had not beheld with his own eyes for more than twenty years. There was the mountain, and the tree, and his mother's house; and running towards the house a small boy, perhaps seven or eight years old; and Perian saw that it was himself. Tears filled his eyes as he saw in the mirror his mother standing outside the old house, bending to embrace him. "Mother!" But she could not hear him, and as he struggled with his tears, the picture dissolved and changed.

Now Perian saw the night-dark tangle of a thorn bush on the mountain-side, and himself, aged fourteen, kneeling rapt before it, gazing into its darkness at the flower that shone there. He leaned against a tree, trembling.

The picture, shimmering, changed to show him an icy mountain waste, through which his younger self staggered in an agony of effort, and he saw again where the crystal spring leapt joyous in the wasteland and felt the ecstasy of that triumph. He watched his own return to the place of the flower, where the wizard waited to greet him.

Faster and faster the images rolled by him, darkness in the desert and his wife's face laughing on their wedding day; the return of Prince Athellon with the dragon's head.

Perian cried out, "Stop, oh please, stop, leave me alone!" Obediently the mirror clouded over, dissolving back into a tumbling mist among the trees, before vanishing completely from Perian's sight. Mela let out a glad snort of relief; and Perian, looking up, found himself kneeling at the feet of the wizard.

The arms that raised and embraced him were still strong, the shoulders still broad, and the wizard's hair showed only a slight sprinkling of grey; Perian's was white as snow. The king leaned heavily against his friend and wept. When he grew calmer, the wizard encouraged him to sit down on a fallen tree, and sat beside him.

"Perian, my friend. It is good to see you again."

"I am glad to see you; that is, as far as I can be glad on this hideous day of fears and enchantments. Did you make that magic mirror? Did you mean to torment me? Who could be so cruel to me?"

"Not I. This is an ancient magic of these woods, neutral in itself but woken by whatever mood is in the one who seeks to enter the mist. You have brought forth the images of your own regret, Perian. I came to you, across many hundreds of miles, because I heard you cry out in your despair and sought to help you."

Perian gripped his friend's hand. "Then I thank you for your care of me. But what help is there for old age, loss, failure? For the running-out of time and the fear of death? All come to this moment, I suppose, and cry out against the time they have wasted, the journeys they have not taken, the love they have not given. But it is too late. Too late for me. Is it not?"

The wizard smiled. "It is never too late, they say. What would you do if you were free, Perian?"

"But I am not free. There is the kingdom to think of."

"Perian, you may set yourself free, by the custom of Lavrum. Abdicate, and let Magenta be queen. Athellon will be at her side."

Perian looked at him in silence. Then he said: "I never thought of that."

"Well then; where would you journey, and what would you seek?"

"Perhaps I should climb the mountain again and look upon the flower."

"That was a vision of your youth, Perian. You are too old to climb that mountain now."

Perian reflected. "Then I will go east." he said. "I shall journey to the sea, before it is too late, and look upon its wonders, and find out its secrets. Maybe I shall come to the springs of the morning, where light is born."

The wizard smiled again. "Maybe you will," he said.