Jango (38 page)

"Yes. I can see that."

"Excellent. That's cleared that up, then. Where were we? Oh, yes. The last two savanters. You must find them, you know. It is your mission."

"It was. But now the Nom is gone. The Garden is gone. The All and Only is gone."

"Your Nom is gone," said Jango. "What makes you think it's the only one?"

"There's more than one Nom?"

"Of course. It would be a poor sort of a god that could be sent packing so easily."

As he spoke, there came a soft creaking sound from behind him. The door in the wall had opened a few inches.

"Well, well!" murmured Jango, and he smiled his sweet smile. "The door seems to have been left open."

Seeker paid full attention to the door for the first time. It was made of wood and had once been painted white, but
the paint had long since peeled away. All that was left of the pigment was a thin line in the cracks between the boards. The door had a curving top that fit into a stone arch built in the wall. The threshold too was stone, worn by the tread of many feet over many years into a smooth hollow.

Through the gap now opened up between frame and door, Seeker expected to see a plain white room, a table, a blue flower. Instead he saw the branches of trees. He began to feel a very strange feeling.

"Am I to go through?"

"If you want to," said Jango.

So Seeker pushed the door open wider and stepped across the threshold.

He found himself in a large wood of tall leafless trees. A path ran in a straight line between the trees towards a dense stand of evergreens ahead. Seeker followed the path, feeling with every step a mounting excitement that he could not explain.

Where the evergreens began, the path passed through a gap in the thicket of yew and holly that was just wide enough for a man. Seeker went through the gap. Beyond, the evergreens fell back to create a circular clearing that was walled and roofed with dark foliage. Very little light penetrated the canopy, but where it did, it fell in narrow beams that laid stripes and speckles on the woodland floor.

Seeker stood still, in silence, hardly daring to breathe.

Could it really be so?

He turned to look back. There at the end of the path between the trees, he could see the wall and the open door and the old man standing silhouetted in the doorway.

He looked round him, his heart beating fast. He had been in a space much like this before. It had been called the Night Court.

He looked back once more. Jango raised his stick and held it horizontal over his head, echoing the stance of Noman long ago.

"Go on, Seeker," he said, his voice sounding close though he was far away. "Your life is an experiment in search of the truth."

Seeker pressed on. Beyond the dark vaulted clearing was a grove of aspens. Their smooth silver trunks stretched out before him in the winter light, like pillars of alabaster. He had come into the Cloister Court. There was no path now. Every way between the trees was the right way.

Now he knew what he would find. He felt it before he saw it, in the awakening joy of his heart. A glimpse of brightness between pale trees. A dazzle of green. He trod quietly forward, and little by little he made out a high tangle of bramble and vine, a natural screen that rose up beyond the aspens, guarding and concealing the space within. Between the knotted tendrils there were little gaps and crannies, like the pierced stars and diamonds in the silver screen, and through these apertures he could make out green grass and the bright ripple of water and the scarlet and gold of flowers.

He closed his eyes. Even without seeing it, he knew it. The sensation of sweet tranquillity was so powerful that he could feel it in every part of his body, in the unknotting of his muscles, in the softening of his skin.

He had come back to the Garden. The Wise Father was watching over him still.

He opened his eyes and saw through the web of brambles that there was a person in the garden; just as he had seen before. The light was behind him, as it had been before, and was bright, so that he could make out no details of the person's face. The figure was seated and did not move.

The light was growing brighter. Seeker wanted more than anything to see that face, but he felt his eyes burning, and could look no more.

He dropped to his knees and prayed.

"Wise Father, forgive me for doubting you. Now I know that you are Here and Now, Always and Everywhere. My All, my Only. My one true god."

A soft voice then spoke to him out of the Garden.

"Save me."

William Nicholson
is the author of the heralded
Seeker
, the first book in the Noble Warriors sequence, as well as the acclaimed Wind on Fire trilogy and the screenplays for
Gladiator
and
Shadowlands
, both of which were nominated for Academy Awards. He lives with his wife and their three children in Sussex, England.

www.williamnicholson.co.uk