Rainbow's End - Wizard (3 page)

Without turning, h
e asked Lawrence, ‘Which is the nearest town?’

Lawrence gave
a relieved sigh, and answered, ‘Firham. It’s about five kilometres on.’ He reached for the vehicle’s dangling keys. ‘I’ll take you there.’

‘No.’
Orson, still staring into the darkened forest, shook his head, then turned to Lawrence. ‘Is there an Inn in Firham?’ he asked. The young man nodded, and Orson sat quietly thinking for another minute. Then he reached over, and for the second time in less than an hour, pressed a finger-tip between Lawrence’s eyes.

He felt
- more than saw - him relax, and said, ‘You took a distinguished looking, middle-aged man to Firham. He was tall and handsome, and you dropped him in front of the Inn. That is all you will remember. Do you understand, Lawrence?’

The
dazed young man nodded; Orson grunted, and then said, ‘Now help me with my staff.’

They both got out o
f the vehicle, and Lawrence walked around to Orson’s side. He pulled the long staff out of the half-open back window and handed it to the old man, then opened the door and allowed the Labrador to jump out. When he wound up the window, Orson saw, in the dim roof light, the worry on his young face. He put a hand on his shoulder and softly said, ‘It will be all right Lawrence.’ He reached deep into one coat pocket then, and produced a small leather-bag.

‘Here,’ he said, ‘t
his is for you and Julie.’ He gave the bag to Lawrence, and the young man was surprised at its weight. ‘From the tall and handsome gentleman,’ Orson said, and his smile had him look not so ugly of a sudden.

‘How…?’ Lawrence
frowned, and his voice tailed off.

‘
...do I know about Julie?’ Orson finished his question for him and Lawrence nodded.

Another
smile and Orson said softly. ‘Oh, I know lots of things, Lawrence. Sometimes more than I want to.’ He started turning away, then stopped, and almost as an afterthought asked, ‘You smoke, don’t you?’

An e
mbarrassed Lawrence nodded, and Orson turned back to him.

Another fingertip between the eyes and Orson said, ‘Not any more
, you don’t. You can’t stand the smell…or taste. Now go. Go visit your sweet.’

*

……Which Lawrence did, and had a hard time explaining something he couldn’t remember much of himself. But he had the leather bag, and when he and Julie, his fiancée, upended it on a coffee-table and saw its contents, and Lawrence told her what it was for, she gasped and screamed and jumped into her young man’s arms, kissing his bemused face and smearing it with happy tears.

There were ten coins
, and Doctor Durne - Lawrence’s father - identified them as Golden Sovereigns (just thicker and about twice their normal size). He guessed their value at around three thousand pounds. Each…

Lawrence never smoked again…
…

3

There were no stars
, and the night black as pitch
. They had just emerged from the forest, and Orson was fed up; and cranky; and tired. He was also muttering and cursing non-stop. He’d lost count of the number of gopher holes and field mice nests he’d stepped into, and only his sturdy hiking boots and the support of the wooden staff had saved him from falling and perhaps seriously injuring himself. He’d also heard the tearing sound of his fur coat’s silk lining on several of the occasions he had to jerk its trailing end free from snagging roots and the broken-off stubs of lower branches. It had sent him into semi hysterics, of which the rising pitch and originality astounded even Tessie, whom for years had been subjected to (and sometimes subject of) his black moods and acidic tongue.

They were making their way along the edge of Broken Hill, and even with the help of the strong flashlight, their progress through the rock-strewn field was tortuously slow. The temperature had dropped even further, and despite several
sets of thermal underwear, two polo necked jerseys, a thick woollen cap and his coat, Orson was cold. His feet were frozen and he couldn’t feel his toes. A minute later, an icy feather touched his cheek and when he turned his face to the black overhead, another settled on his nose. It was snowing again. Shivering, he drew the thick woollen cap further down his ears and looked at the dog. ‘If we don’t find him soon Tessie,’ he said, in a voice fraught with worry, ‘we might not find him at all…’

The Labrador gave a soft whine and continued on her sniffing, searching way
- already working as fast as she could. Then, just a few metres further on, she gave an exited yelp and turned almost at right angles. She had found the scent she was looking for and they now had Thomas’ trail, made during daylight, to follow; their pace was immediately almost doubled. Tessie had her nose glued to the ground and Orson, stubbing the toe of one expensive hiking boot on a smaller rock, began swearing again and hobbling off in her wake.

Ten minutes
later, it was gone. The snow had been increasing in intensity - every couple of minutes a bit heavier, and now, suddenly, the dog was running to the left and the right, and forwards and back, sniffling and snuffling and searching, but in vain. The scent was gone. The rocks around them were wet with sleet and snow; they reflected shiny grey and brown in the beam of the flashlight. All traces of Thomas had been washed away.

A smallish rock, knee-high and the size of a chair loomed on the perimeter of the flashlight
’s beam, and for once not caring about his precious coat, Orson slowly sat down on its shiny wet surface; tired and despondent and very worried about the life of the young boy somewhere out there in the dark surrounding them. The Labrador, after a few long minutes of staring into the night, came back and joined the old man, lying down in the white at his feet; her head resting on her paws and her big brown eyes forlorn…

*

Orson played the beam down her sleek, golden-haired body. Her pelt was soaked and shiny-wet and he said, ‘You’re wet right through Tessa,’ before turning the light on himself. His coat was shedding tiny streams of water and looked exactly like what it was - Otter-skin:
wet
Otter-skin. The water would soon start seeping through, and then, well… Cold and wet and without shelter…

He
lamented then, his voice bitter and filled with “I told you so”, “It’s going to be cold, Ariana”, I said, but nooo. He stretched the negative and then changed to a high falsetto, supposedly mimicking Ariana’s voice. “You have plenty of warm clothes, Orson.”

“I
t’s going to rain Ariana”, I said.

A
nd the falsetto: “Wear your coat, Orson.”

“
I’ll get lost, Ariana.”

Falsetto
: “Tessie will see you don’t, Orson.”

The dog cocked one floppy ear at him and
then Orson was shouting at her - ‘And now what, dog?! Look at the… the…
crap
you and Madame Ariana have dropped us in! “Find the boy?!”’ He spluttered, ‘We can’t even find ourselves!’ An icy sliver of water rolled into the layered jersey’s high neck, and with a shiver he deflated; was suddenly, morosely quiet.

For a long time they stayed like that
: one thoroughly soaked and the other getting there; both staring gloomily off into the darkness. The snow became heavier still, and it became colder still...

*****

Far, far away… Kraylle’s Castle; Desolation

Barren
... And bleak... Flat and empty and starkly grey. Unforgiving... Heart-breaking... Desolate. Call it what you will. It was a rock. Just a rock; floating in its own little part of space. Aeons of exposure had swept its surface clean, and now, whenever the terrible winds and storms of rain and sleet and snow howled and crashed in from its black, black sea, and screamed across its granite-hard plains, they found not as much as a single grain of sand to take with them.

Its light
came from its three moons. It had no sun. No day and no heat. Only dark, and only cold: Bone-breaking, marrow-freezing, unspeakable cold…

His house was made of stone. It stood in the centre of the plain and many centuries of screaming, scourging winds, had tempered it to the consistency of steel. It was huge: it had no doors or windows, except one large cavernous hole, and the ball of one of its ever-present, low-hanging moons, bathed its ghostly dark walls a surreal, ghostly grey.

He named it
Kraylle’s Castle, and the rock, Desolation…

He was over seven feet tall with massive arms and shoulders, and immensely strong. His head was totally bald, his face handsome and thin and very white; a hawkish nose and thin bloodless lips, and black eyes as infinitely cold as the ice around him. His heavy white robes were for comfort: the cold did not bother him. It never had, in all of his centuries. His name was Kraylle…

*

The throne was made of ice. He was leaning forward in it, his large hands and long fingers like talons around its freezing white armrests.

‘What do you mean “can’t”, Rudi?’ Kraylle’s
voice was soft, but - like the hiss of a deadly snake, it warned of menace and malice and fury, and terrible, terrible danger.

There were ten young men -
some of them just boys - standing in front of the throne. They were all dressed in black, they were pale from lack of sunshine, they were cold and they were all scared. One stood half a step in front of the others. Older and taller than the rest, he was in his mid-teens and very obviously the leader of the pack. The thick silver chain hanging around his neck set him further apart, as did the crystal attached to it. It was multi-faceted: some deep and darkly black, others streaked with seams in a hundred shades of grey. The boy took another step forward and hated the frightened tremble of his own voice.

‘There’s no moon Kraylle. No moon over Northern England and Scotland.’

‘Say what?’ The sitting figure leaned further forward, his voice softer still - more ominous.

The
boy swallowed hard, and keeping his eyes fixed on Kraylle’s fur lined seal-skin boots, repeated what he knew the menacing figure had heard the first time.

Kraylle exploded
then: erupted from his icy chair and reared up like the polar bear whose skin he wore. Two bright spots of red coloured his high, pale cheekbones and he roared, ‘Then go wait for it! Travel and wait for the moon, you imbeciles!’ He took a step down and the boys retreated before him; then he swept one arm in a huge arc - in an away-motion; and screamed again, ‘Out! All of you - out! Get! Out!!’

Like a single body, the boys turned and fled, pushing and shoving at each other
; one or two falling in their frenzied attempt to flee the room and its deranged occupant.

There are
no doors in Kraylle’s castle, and after fighting and pushing through the room’s high arch, the boys fled down one after the other long dark passage; their only light an occasional smoky oil lamp, the feeble glow turned everything a sickly, gloomy grey. The passages - the very walls, seemed to echo and reverberate with Kraylle’s screams: ‘And don’t come back without him!’

There are no doors in Kraylle’s castle
; the boys spilled straight out of its cavernous mouth and onto the barren plain outside. Into the half-dark and dreadful cold and desolation of Desolation….

4

They were both
shivering cold and wet
. The flashlight beam was playing up and down Tessie’s golden-haired body and Orson had just finished telling her that she was going grey and ugly when her ears pricked, and her head lifted, and she peered intently off into the darkness to their left. Tense seconds later, her ears twitched again and with a muted bark she scrambled to her feet, her body taut and her head tilted to one side - tuned into the night, listening for another sound.

After watching her for a few undecided seconds, Orson got to his feet
as well, albeit slower and not without a little trepidation. Lifting his eyes, he gave the dark overhead a long, careful look before returning his attention to the dog.

‘What is it girl? What do you see…or smell? Mmm…’ He put his hand on her neck, but felt no t
rembling, no fear. She wuffed again, and pointing the flashlight, the old man slowly started walking towards where she was looking. A few metres on, he started swinging the light in wide half-circles - from left to right and back again, and almost immediately saw something flash. He stopped, and then - not believing what he had just seen, very slowly reversed the strong white beam.