When the wooden spoon was brought back to his lips James opened his mouth, accepting another mouthful of the strange broth.

With dismay, he had awoken moments before to the room of carved walls. His first sight upon forcing his heavy lids to open had been the nurse, who now sat beside his small pallet bed dressed as before in the curious bathrobe of white silk. A tremulous fear still flickered behind her dark eyes, but in the intervening hours since he’d last been awake she appeared to have mastered herself; her delicate hand passing between his mouth and the steaming bowl with quiet deliberation.

James’ panic of the previous night had abated somewhat to the realisation that it was now day. The absolute darkness of night had retreated to a warm, golden glow issuing from a round window set within the carved wall at his side. The light had a curious solidity, as though the filaments of golden light passing through the mottled glass were made of spun cotton.

As he ate, he tried valiantly to resist the painful evidence of his eyes, focusing instead upon the slow, methodical mechanics of chewing. Even so, his eyes could not help but repeatedly return to the carved walls which compelled the eye like a forest blaze. The rich tapestry of shapes and patterns plunged in and out of the wood as though they were swirls of oil riding a succession of waves. The illusion of movement created by the flickering candle was no less potent in the light of day; the skill of the artisan who had worked the wood into these fantastic forms could not have been anything less than a genius.

James’ mouth closed upon another spoonful of broth. The flavour was unfamiliar, and yet it was undoubtedly the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. It was thick and velvety in texture, with lumps of what felt like soft potato against his palate. But these textures were where the familiarity ended, for it was like tasting food for the first time; his tongue felt inadequate to the task of processing the myriad signals clambering from his mouth and into his aching brain.

As the spoon passed once more between his cracked lips, he looked up suddenly into the nurse’s eyes as though seeing her for the first time. Frowning, he attempted to pin down her features and reconcile them with the carved walls filling the room with their ceaseless movement. Somehow, the girl’s simple features seemed to compliment her elaborate surroundings, as though the two forms had been carved from the same tree. Her dark eyes were like depthless pits plunging into dark oak, the pointed blade of her nose and the long fall of her obsidian hair, hinting at mysterious purpose and unfathomable meaning.

James’ eyes refocused as he noticed an involuntary shudder pass through the girl’s body.

‘Why are you so scared of me?’ he asked.

At that moment, the sound of wood sliding on wood intruded upon the silence. The nurse responded with a sharp intake of breath, sending the wooden spoon clattering to the floor. To James’ amazement, she stumbled to her feet and bowed her head in supplication, her pale hands clasped tightly behind her.

With great effort, he managed to lift his heavy head from the pillow and looked past the startled countenance of the nurse, to where a section of the carved wall had slid aside. In the shadow-filled space that had opened, a tall man regarded him intently.

A wild thought came unbidden to James’ pained mind as he regarded the newcomer through squinted eyes. For just a moment, he thought he saw the face of his anaesthetist scowling back at him from the shadows. However, when the man eventually spoke, any lingering hopes that he remained in hospital were quickly and irrevocably banished.

‘Will the barbarian live?’ he asked coldly.

‘Yes, he grows stronger by the moment,’ the nurse replied meekly, conducting her conversation towards the floor as though it had asked the question of her. ‘His fever has broken and he now takes food.’

The man appeared to nod minutely in the shadows, before turning abruptly to leave. But the space he had occupied was promptly filled by two other men who quickly entered the small room like dark fragments of some hideous nightmare. The men wore suits of dark armour with gleaming swords hanging from their waists. Their faces were pale, their eyes dark almonds glinting in the golden sunlight.

James’ mind seemed to tear at the sight of the intruders sweeping across the room towards him. His legs kicked feebly at the heavy blankets of his cot, his arms flailing uselessly at his sides.

‘Help!’ he cried out in desperation. ‘Nurse, help me!’

His eyes sought the white beacon of his carer but she was now hidden behind the approaching wall of black. Hands like steel talons clamped upon his arms hoisting his naked body from the bed. Searing pain exploded from his shoulder and his vision blackened as a wave of nausea flooded his body. He stole one final glance at the nurse, before he was roughly pulled from the light and carried into darkness.

***

The men passed silently through the shadows of the corridor, their brisk pace and iron grip unrelenting. The air was cool and heavy with the scent of freshly broken soil. James gritted his teeth and forced his head up from where his feet whispered along the floor. As the walls of the corridor slid past his eyes, he was not surprised to notice that they too bore carved designs; intricate patterns that shifted in and out of focus as the darkness occluded their forms.

Light flooded into the space as they rounded a corner, a huge oval window streaming gossamer sunlight into the corridor. As he was dragged past, he stabbed his eyes at the scene beyond the opening, seeking to gain some point of reference to this place of torment. His glimpse was fleeting, but what he saw was enough to make him recoil. He screamed, causing the soldier’s grip to tighten as he was carried on into the gloom.

Despite his pain and fear, it was the sight he had beheld from the window that continued to haunt him. Framed between impossibly tall trees there had risen a range of mountains, soaring into the sky like the blackened jaws of a colossal beast. The only mountains he knew of in England were diminutive slopes compared to these; hell, even the Himalayas would struggle to emulate their form! But as impossible as this sight had seemed, it paled into insignificance next to that other impossibility that had hung above the alien landscape. Descending from the sky like some malignant growth of light had been a sun, bloated and huge; its vastness warping and distending as it bent towards the distant mountains as though to obliterate them in its fiery inferno.

After resisting the painful evidence of his eyes since first coming awake, he had to finally admit the truth that had been hiding in plain sight all along. The operation to remove his tumours had obviously gone disastrously wrong. As Doctor Smithson had warned, his brain had been damaged, and now he was completely and irrecoverably lost within a delusion of his own making!

No sooner had this grim revelation flared into his consciousness did the movement around him grind to an abrupt halt. A door closed somewhere behind them with a quiet whisper, and then there was only silence.

James groaned as he forced his head to climb up from his sagging shoulders and attempted to focus on the room beyond his tear-soaked eyes.

They were standing in a large hall ablaze with the golden light of the setting sun. Like everywhere else in this strange building the walls were carved from wood, but the motifs of leaves, flowers and trees were replaced by geometric patterns; like the shapes conjured by a kaleidoscope or the swirls adorning an oriental carpet.

Three men, dressed in the same dark armour as his bearers, stood facing him; the swords at their hips gilt by slanting beams of sunlight. Squinting past the men, James looked towards a huge circular window at the far end of the hall; an elaborate construction of concentric circles that culminated in a central “eye” that framed the molten orb of the setting sun.

As he blinked tears from his eyes, he noticed another figure silhouetted against the window. His body was tall and slim, and seemed to bend and flicker around the outpouring of light as though he were being immolated by the formidable sunset beyond.

The silence in the hall stretched out, filled only by James’ ragged breathing and the furtive movements he made between the two men. Finally, he let out an anguished groan and let his naked body sag to the floor.

As though hearing this utterance from across the vastness of the hall, the shadowy figure suddenly turned and walked forward. Unlike the soldiers assembled around him, the man who now approached wore no armour and carried no weapon. Instead, he was wrapped in a robe of green, like a monk’s habit, dyed the colour of winter holly leaves. His hair was long and as white as sun-bleached bone, but the face that parted the curtains of white might have belonged to a man of only thirty years. His movement was strangely effortless as though his graceful gait had been honed upon a deep ocean floor.

He came to a halt several paces away and regarded James intently.

‘Your name?’ he asked, his voice as effortless and graceful as his movement had been across the floor.

James stood awkwardly, torn between the ache within his shoulder and the now familiar gnawing pain inside his head.

‘James,’ he heard himself mumble.

‘Jame-sss.’

The man’s lips seemed to ponder the word as though it were unfamiliar, an object of curiosity that could not be contained within a single breath.

‘And from where do you hail, Jame?’ he continued, omitting the final consonant of his name as though it were already forgotten.

‘Hail?’ James replied, screwing up his face in disgust. ‘Where the hell is this? Who the hell are you?’ he shouted.

The tallest of the three soldiers standing beside the green-robed man suddenly moved forward, his hand resting upon the hilt of his sword.

‘Answer or be slain where you stand, demon,’ the man bellowed.

James recoiled at the violence of the man and silently beseeched the more generous countenance at his side. The robed man shook his head minutely and placed a hand upon the soldier’s arm, causing him to reluctantly step back into line. With his hand returned to the folds of his robes, the white-haired man returned his gaze upon him. After a measured pause, he spoke into the heavy silence that had settled between them.

‘My name is Galen, Lord of the Western prefectures of Ren and brother to the Custodian of the last Forest Citadel. You are standing in my home, the garden manor of Galendar.’

The man’s dark eyes seemed to focus on a point behind James’ head, as though his true self were standing one step behind him. With a slight gesture of his hand, the two guards relaxed their grip upon his bruised arms and he sagged to the floor like a broken scarecrow.

‘Please forgive the rudeness of my questions and the coarseness of your delivery to this audience. Were it not for current events within our land, and the nature of your arrival within it, you would have been welcomed warmly as a guest.’

He offered the merest suggestion of a smile, as though his flesh were unfamiliar with its presence upon his pale face. Pausing, he glanced across at the other men before proceeding.

‘Tell me, how can it be that a man born of the plains speaks the language of the Gelding?’ he asked, a deep frown quickly banishing the tenuous threads of his smile like smoke blown from a smouldering candle.

‘I speak your language?’ James smirked, grimacing at the throbbing pain in his head. ‘You’re speaking English now because it’s the only language I know! Gelding is my bloody name for Christ’s sake!’

The robed lord smiled generously, the previous flicker of warmth now laid bare like a gift across his mouth.

‘Is it more likely that the seventeen prefectures of the Gelding speak your language, or that you, in fact, speak ours?’

The faces of the other men remained impassive but a wide smile now decorated the lord’s thin lips.

Sneering at the perversity of his predicament, James tore his arm from the guard’s loosened grip and swung his fist into his wounded shoulder. Crushing pain met the contact, snatching the breath from his lungs. His body trembled and shook, but whilst his eyes flooded with tears and he bent almost double between the soldiers, the elaborate delusion rolled remorselessly on. A dark red stain blossomed out of the white bandage and soon there was only the quiet patter of his blood upon the floor.

‘I hail from the real world!’ James suddenly gasped. ‘I’m dying on a hospital bed, and you’ve been sent by my damaged brain to torment me!’

James paused to swallow the bile steadily creeping up into his mouth, but he glared up at the started lord with none of his anger diminished.

‘And, swords! Why the hell do you all have bloody swords?’

He took another hurried breath and winced as pain bristled inside his head.

‘I,’ he shouted, stabbing his chest with his hand, ‘am real! You are not! This is all fake! You’re all bloody fakes! Do you hear me?’

The fury of James’ tirade reverberated around the large room, and seemed to move the serious men standing before him, as a gust of wind might stir the heavy boughs of an obstinate tree. As the silence stretched on, James finally felt compelled to drag his head back from where it rested. The fathomless dark eyes of the lord were upon him, his expression thoughtful as though what he had said had laid bare a dark secret. The lord stole a glance at the tall soldier beside him, and after a considered pause spoke into the silence a single word.

‘Leander…’

A whisper of wood heralded the opening of another door, and soon, a tall, slender woman was walking gracefully into the carved hall. She wore a simple close-fitting black tunic and leggings, with waist-length hair braided into an elaborate ponytail that cascaded down her back. A quiver of arrows bristled at her hip and a long, black bow was clasped tightly in one hand. Her movement echoed the effortless stride of the robed man, like a sleek cat stalking its prey.

When the young woman had come to a halt beside the lord, she turned her cold, hard gaze upon James.

James flinched, his eyes widening in fear. The deep, curving scar, which ran across her eye and down her cheek, seemed to dance in the shimmering light like a cruel sneer. The beautiful, disfigured face staring back at him was that of his attacker!

The lord watched James’ reaction intently, before meditatively clasping his hands at his waist.

‘Jame, I want to introduce you to my daughter, Leander. It was she who brought you to my home, and she who very nearly ended your life.’

The lord turned to the young woman, whose face remained impassive despite the dramatic introduction.

‘Leander, please tell us what you saw on the night of the two moons, the night you encountered this… this man from another world.’

The young woman continued to stare at him, her expression as unyielding as the carved walls that surrounded them. But when she finally spoke, her voice was sweet despite the harshness of its delivery.

‘We were tracking a pack of weevil in the outer fringe, when the storm struck. Tavin and Fen were flanking the pack as I pushed them towards the boundary fences. There must have been more than a score of them, only three leagues from these very walls!’

The young woman’s eyes widened with pained disbelief, a flicker of emotion which touched upon her impassive face like a flame blossoming from cold kindling.

‘There was a thunderclap so loud that I feared I would be struck by sky fire, but when I looked up, I saw instead a blue star falling from the heavens.’

The girl’s eyes did not leave James’ for a moment, causing him to squirm uncomfortably.

‘But the star slowed and sailed down between the trees like a stone plunged into a lake. Neglecting the hunt, I pursued the star and found it floating above the ruined altar of Pellinor.’

The girl paused, raising an accusatory finger at James as though it were another arrow about to take flight.

‘It was this man!’

‘Impossible!’ James shouted, shaking his head in denial. He felt suddenly stifled and claustrophobic under the weight of the young woman’s words; words that seemed to be dragging him deeper and deeper into his delusion.

Galen held up his hand for quiet and motioned for his daughter to continue.

‘His body floated above the stone, bathed in blue flame. It looked like a kabavar come to spy upon our lands, for his hair was shorn like one of those fallen people. So when its eyes suddenly opened I notched an arrow and released it, fixing the demon to a leander tree.’

James took his eyes from the young woman and found the lord watching him intently, his mouth caught halfway between a grimace and a smile as though his face could not decide which was a more fitting accompaniment to his daughter’s story.

‘But, when I approached to end its life,’ the girl continued, ‘I realised my mistake. For the words it spoke were not those of a demon, but of a cowardly man borne of the sky.’

Turning at last from James, she faced her father, a deep frown furrowing her brow.

‘Did I do wrong bringing him here, father?’ she asked, for the first time betraying a hint of uncertainty.

The lord clasped his hands together within the thick folds of his robes and smiled tiredly down at his daughter.

‘Perhaps, had you killed the man, we would not now have learned his name,’ he replied. ‘Friend or foe, in death, such questions would have been irrelevant.’

The lord’s steady gaze was piercing as he turned his eyes back upon James.

‘Only once before has a man born of the plains spoken the language of the Gelding, for it is beyond the tongues and minds of men. And yet,’ he paused, a frown creasing his brow, ‘you speak it freely, as though it had always been your own.

‘I confess that I am greatly disturbed by the means of your deliverance to our land, and more so that the forest has marked you in such a way, for only enemies of the Gelding would be harmed by the flesh of our forest.’

The Lord’s focus seemed to shift and slowly his frown vanished.

‘However, it is beyond my knowledge and judgement to decide your fate this day. I must seek council with others more worthy of such questions. You will convalesce within my home and be treated as a guest until the day I find cause to treat you otherwise. May it be that I welcome you next as a friend of the land and not one that would see it all turn to ruin.’

The lord stood for a moment, lost in thought, before taking his daughter by the arm and leading her to the great round window at the end of the carved hall.

The giant sun was now a melting crescent of crimson fire, flooding the great hall with light as thick and livid as arterial blood. In the darkening chamber, the tall warrior nodded his head, and with one, swift movement, James was lifted into the air and carried back through the dark labyrinthine house like a helpless mouse borne by talons.