The Gatekeepers of Genthor–a Medieval Tale
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In The Gatekeepers of Genthor–a Medieval Tale, a dark legacy is born into the land.
On journeys into the forest of Aginmare, thirteen-year-old Gwendolen receives training in the art of the Esoteric, an ancient and secret path into Genthor’s alternate worlds. At home in the summer fields of Genthor, her sixteen-year-old brother Will trains in the longbow and seeks a life as a spiritual warrior. All seems ordinary and safe, until an intruder is discovered, a hidden force intent on revenge against their family, Genthor, and all the worlds it protects.
They must find a way to stop this enemy who long ago had been trapped and rendered powerless, or so it was believed.
Frightened and uncertain as they often feel, extraordinary help comes to them when they find themselves immersed in a dark journey into the mind of a killer. First there is Gideon, Will’s gerfalcon, who teaches him the power of silence in war. Then there is Ga Fael Fawr, the gatekeeper of the enchanted world of Aginmare, who gives Gwendolen a sword that is more than a weapon.
They must find the way soon, for it is clear the intruder has already crossed the barrier of the Esoteric, and broken the line between worlds.
EXCERPT from The Gatekeepers of Genthor–a Medieval Tale:
She sensed a change in the light and looked up at the sky. Gray clouds filled it and a wind had risen, bending the tops of the trees. She felt its increase in strength. To her right she saw a haze she knew meant approaching rain. She had nothing she could use for cover. There was only the forest, and it had grown forbidding in the darkening light. The current of the river was more turbulent.
Again she saw fleeting images of blue and green. How was she to capture them?
Not capture. Join.
The voice was inside her head and yet it seemed as well to echo all around her.
Allow us.
“Who are you?” she called out, but her words were drowned by the roar of the wind and river together. The first heavy drops of rain fell against her skin.
Choose to see.
It felt like a game, Gwendolen thought. She was reminded of one she and Will had often used to entertain themselves as children when the weather kept them indoors. Roana Nash had suggested it to them. It had required each of them to imagine a world and provide only its essential features. The other person had to discover what in that world was its most hidden and protected secret. Will had always won. His ability to know what secret she had chosen had irritated her no end, especially when she failed to understand his own maneuvering.
“You decide the simplest path,” he had told her, “because you get so impatient to finish. I can always see through you because of that. It is the easiest of arts,” he had teased her.
The rain had begun to come down in earnest and her clothes and hair were already soaked. Lightning broke apart the clouds and thunder rolled and cracked overhead.
What was the secret of this world, if there was one? She had the sudden intuition that there was. What or how was she supposed to choose?
She willed herself to be still and the sounds of the storm receded. Again she saw the depths of the dark mass expanding toward her and was afraid. A brilliant flash sliced through it and she knew what it was, impossible as it seemed, as a sword hovered in the air before her. It disappeared and she felt the dark mass reach her and envelop her and she screamed. It stopped and it too disappeared, and in its place she saw the scintillations of light from the edge of the sword that had shown itself first.
The next moment she was back on the edge of the bank. This time the river flowed in a gentle rush over rocks, the whitewater gone. Sunlight filled the air and a warm breeze rustled the leaves. She heard birds singing and saw them flitting from branch to branch in the forest.
“Well done, Gwenna, for your first journey into Aginmare.” Her mother stood beside her, smiling.
“You don’t know! There was the most amazing thing. Before that I thought I’d drown here, and I couldn’t find a way out of the forest.”
“The path out of Aginmare changes often. What did you see?”
“The river is so calm,” Gwendolen said in surprise, looking at the water.
“What have I told you about weather?” Roana Nash said.
“That it reflects the state of mind of anyone in it. So you mean the storm is something I invented?”
“Not exactly,” her mother answered. “More, it’s something you allowed. You chose to feel your fear and frustration and the subtle energies read your own energy accordingly. They produced what they assumed you had asked for.”
Gwendolen laughed. “That makes me sound like a seer or alchemist.”
“No, for such as they work with intention. Alchemy is an art as well as a profession. You had no intention, just reaction. Until, that is, you entered the stillness. You chose for the first time to allow the Esoteric on your own, Gwenna. Do you see? Now you can do this again, and learn how to use it with right purpose. This is enough for now.”
At her mother’s words the forest vanished and they were both in the courtyard of their home.
“You made this world,” Gwendolen said, disappointed. “It wasn’t real.”
Roana Nash smiled at her daughter. “I see we have quite a bit of learning left to do,” she said, “for I no more created Aginmare than you did, and yet we both have added to its shape.”
With that, her mother went into another room where she kept her dulcimer and began to play. Gwendolen understood that her mother’s words held meaning for her to interpret, but tiredness swept over her in waves. For now she would sleep.
“How much time did you spend in the forest, Gwenna?” her mother called out. Soft notes from the music filled the house.
“Hours and hours! It felt like days,” Gwendolen said.
“Moments only. Can you understand this?”
As her mother spoke Gwendolen heard the last ring of the bells of the monastery announcing Sext, the noon hour of prayer. When she had entered Aginmare the bells had just begun to ring in the selfsame hour.
“I don’t understand,” she said, standing at the threshold between the two rooms, watching her mother play. She felt as if she was always repeating those words. So much was an enigma to her.
“You will, in time,” Roana Nash said. “Now take that rest, for you do need it.”
This Gwendolen did gladly, lying down on her bed with a sigh. As her eyes closed she wondered for the first time that day what Will was doing and where he had gone.
~”Chapter 4, Aginmare,” in The Gatekeepers of Genthor–a Medieval Tale
