The Dark Is Rising (18 page)

“Will,” said the rector, staring at him, “I am not sure whether you should be exorcised or ordained. You and I must have some long talks, very soon.”

“Yes, we must,” Will said equably. He buckled on his belt, heavy with its precious burden. He was thinking hard and quickly as he did so, and the chief image before his mind was not Mr Beaumont's disturbed theological assumptions, but Paul's face. He had seen his brother looking at him with a kind of fearful remoteness that bit into him with the pain of a whiplash. It was more than he could
stand. His two worlds must not meet so closely. He raised his head, gathering all his powers, spread straight the fingers of both his hands and pointed one hand at each of them.

“You will forget,” he said softly in the Old Speech. “Forget. Forget.”

“— in a church in Edinburgh once, marvellous,” the rector said to Paul, reaching to do up the top button of his overcoat. “The Sarabande in the fifth suite literally had me in tears. He's the greatest cellist in the world, without a doubt.”

“Oh yes,” said Paul. “Oh yes, he is.” He hunched his shoulders inside his own coat. “Has Mum gone ahead, Will? Hey, Mr Dawson, hallo, happy Christmas!” And he beamed and nodded at the rest, as they all turned towards the church porch and the scattered flakes of drifting snow.

“Happy Christmas, Paul, Mr Beaumont,” said Farmer Dawson gravely. “A nice service, sir, very nice.”

“Ah, seasonal warmth, Frank,” said the rector. “A wonderful season too. Nothing can interfere with our Christmas services, not even all this snow.”

Laughing and chatting, they went out into the white world, where the snow lay mounded over the invisible tombstones and the white fields stretched down to the freezing Thames. There was no sound anywhere, no disturbance, only the occasional murmur of a car passing on the distant Bath Road. The rector turned aside to find his motorbike. The rest of them went on, in a cheerful straggle, to take their respective paths home.

Two black rooks were perched on the lych-gate as Will and Paul drew close; they rose into the air slowly, half-hopping, dark incongruous shapes against the white snow. One of them passed close to Will's feet and dropped something there, giving a deprecatory croak as he passed. Will picked it up; it was a glossy horse-chestnut from the rooks' wood, as fresh as if it had ripened only yesterday. He and James always collected such nuts from the wood in early autumn for their school games of conkers, but he had never seen one as large and round as this.

“There, now,” said Paul, amused. “You have a friend. Bringing you an extra Christmas present.”

“A peace offering, perhaps,” said Frank Dawson behind them,
with no trace of expression in his deep Buckinghamshire voice. “And then again, perhaps not. Happy Christmas, lads. Enjoy your dinner.” And the Old Ones were gone, up the road.

Will picked up the conker. “Well I never,” he said.

They closed the church gate, knocking a shower of snow from its flat iron bars. Round the corner came the coughing roars of a motorcycle as the rector tried to kick his steed into life. Then, a few feet ahead of them on tile trampled snow, the rook flew down again. It walked backwards and forwards irresolutely and looked at Will.

“Caark,” it said, very gently, for a rook. “Caaark, caark, caark.” Then it walked a few paces forward to the churchyard fence, jumped down again into the churchyard, and walked back a few paces as before. The invitation could hardly have been more obvious. “Caark,” said the rook again, louder.

The ears of an Old One know that birds do not speak with the precision of words; instead they communicate emotion. There are many kinds and degrees of emotion, and there are many kinds of expression even in the language of a bird. But although Will could tell that the rook was obviously asking him to come and look at something, he could not tell whether or not the bird was being used by the Dark.

He paused, thinking of what the rooks had done; then he fingered the shiny brown chestnut in his hand. “All right, bird,” he said. “One quick look.”

He went back through the gate, and the rook, croaking like an old swinging door, walked clumsily ahead of him up the church path and round the corner. Paul watched, grinning. Then he saw Will suddenly stiffen as he reached the corner; vanish for a moment, and then reappear.

“Paul! Come quick! There's a man in the snow!”

Paul called the rector, who had just begun pushing his cycle up the road to start it there, and together they came running. Will was bending over a hunched figure, lying in the angle between the church wall and the tower; there was no movement, and the snow had already covered the man's clothes half an inch thick with its cold, feathery flakes. Mr Beaumont moved Will gently aside and knelt, turning the man's head and feeling for a pulse.

“He's alive, thank God, but very cold. The pulse isn't very good.
He must have been here long enough for most men to die of exposure — look at the snow! Let's get him inside.”

“In the church?”

“Well, of course.”

“Let's take him to our house,” Paul said impulsively. “It's only just round the corner, after all. It's warm, and a lot better, at any rate until an ambulance or something can come.”

“A wonderful idea,” said Mr Beaumont warmly. “Your good mother is a Samaritan, I know. Just until Dr Armstrong can be called . . . we certainly can't leave the poor fellow here. I don't think there's a broken bone. Heart trouble, probably.” He tucked his heavy cycle gloves under the man's head to keep it from the snow, and Will saw the face for the first time.

He said in alarm, “It's the Walker!”

They turned to him. “Who?”

“An old tramp who hangs around. . . . Paul, we can't take him home. Can't we get him to Dr Armstrong's surgery?”

“In this?” Paul waved a hand at the darkening sky; the snow was whirling round them, thicker again, and the wind was higher.

“But we can't take him with us! Not the Walker! He'll bring back the —” He stopped suddenly, halfway through a yelp. “Oh,” he said helplessly. “Of course, you can't remember, can you?”

“Don't worry, Will, your mother won't mind — a poor man
in extremis
—” Mr Beaumont was bustling now. He and Paul carried the Walker to the gate, like a muffled heap of ancient clothes. He managed finally to start the motorcycle, and they propped the inert shape on it somehow; then half riding, half pushing, the strange little group made its way to the Stantons' house.

Will glanced behind him once or twice, but the rook was nowhere to be seen.

*  *  *

“Well, well,” said Max fastidiously, as he came down into the dining room. “Now I've
really
met a dirty old man.”

“He smelled,” Barbara said.

“You're telling me. Dad and I gave him a bath. My Lord, you should have seen him. Well, no, you shouldn't. Put you off your Christmas dinner. Anyway, he's as clean as a newborn babe now.
Dad even washed his hair and his beard. And Mum's burning his horrible old clothes, when she's made sure there's nothing valuable in them.”

“Not much danger of that, I should think,” said Gwen, on her way in from the kitchen. “Here, move your arm, this dish is hot.”

“We should lock up all the silver,” said James.

“What silver?” said Mary witheringly.

“Well, Mum's jewellery then. And the Christmas presents. Tramps always steal things.”

“This one won't be stealing much for a time,” said Mr Stanton, coming to his place at the head of the table with a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. “He's ill. And fast asleep now, snoring like a camel.”

“Have you ever heard a camel snore?” said Mary.

“Yes,” said her father. “And ridden one. So there. When's the doctor coming, Max? Pity to interrupt his dinner, poor man.”

“We didn't,” said Max. “He's out delivering a baby, and they don't know when he'll be back. The woman was expecting twins.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“Well, the old boy must be all right if he's asleep. Just needs rest, I expect. Though I must say he seemed a bit delirious, all that weird talk coming out.”

Gwen and Barbara brought in more dishes of vegetables. In the kitchen their mother was making impressive clattering noises with the oven. “What weird talk?” said Will.

“Goodness knows,” said Robin. “It was when we first took him up. Sounded like a language unknown to human ear. Maybe he comes from Mars.”

“I only wish he did,” Will said. “Then we could send him back.”

But a shout of approval had greeted his mother, beaming over the glossy brown turkey, and nobody heard him.

*  *  *

They turned on the radio in the kitchen while they were doing the washing-up.

“Heavy snow is falling again over the south and west of England,” said the impersonal voice. “The blizzard which has been raging for twelve hours in the North Sea is still immobilising all shipping on
the Southeast coasts. The London docks closed down this morning, due to power failures and transport difficulties caused by heavy snow and temperatures approaching zero. Snowdrifts blocking roads have isolated villages in many remote areas, and British Rail is fighting numerous electrical failures and minor derailments caused by the snow. A spokesman said this morning that the public is advised not to travel by rail except in cases of emergency.”

There was a sound of rustling paper. The voice went on: “The freak storms which have intermittently raged over the South of England for the last few days are not expected to diminish until after the Christmas holiday, the Meteorological Office said this morning. Fuel shortages have worsened in the Southeast, and householders have been asked not to use any form of electrical heating between the hours of nine a.m. and midday, or three and six p.m.”

“Poor old Max,” Gwen said. “No trains. Perhaps he can hitchhike.”

“Listen, listen!”

“A spokesman for the Automobile Association said today that road travel was at present extremely inadvisable on all roads except major motorways. He added that motorists stranded in heavy snowstorms should if possible remain with their vehicles until the snow stops. Unless a driver is quite certain of his location and knows he can reach help within ten minutes, the spokesman said, he should on no account leave his car.”

The voice went on, among exclamations and whistles, but Will turned away; he had heard enough. These storms could not be broken by the Old Ones without the power of the full circle of Signs — and by sending the storms, the Dark hoped to stop him from completing the circle. He was trapped; the Dark was spreading its shadow not only over his quest but over the ordinary world too. From the moment the Rider had invaded his cosy Christmas that morning, Will had watched the dangers grow; but he had not anticipated this wider threat. For days now, he had been too much caught up in his own perils to notice those of the outside world. But so many people were threatened now by the snow and cold: the very young, the very old, the weak, the ill. . . . The Walker won't have a doctor tonight, that's certain, he thought. It's a good job he isn't dying. . . .

The Walker. Why was he here? There had to be some meaning behind it. Perhaps he had simply been hovering for his own reasons, and been blasted by the attack of the Dark on the church. But if so, why had the rook, an agent of the Dark, brought Will to save him from freezing to death? Who was the Walker, anyway? Why could all the powers of Gramarye tell him nothing about the old man at all?

There were carols on the radio again. Will thought bitterly: Happy Christmas, world.

His father, passing, slapped him on the back. “Cheer up, Will. It's bound to stop tonight, you'll be tobogganning tomorrow. Come on, time to open the rest of the presents. If we keep Mary waiting any longer she'll explode.”

Will went to join his cheerful, noisy family. Back in the cosy, brilliant cave of the long room with the fire and the glowing tree, it was untouched Christmas for a while, just as it had always been. And his mother and father and Max had joined to give him a new bicycle, with racing handlebars and eleven gear-speeds.

*  *  *

Will was never quite sure whether what happened that night was a dream.

In the darkest part of the night, the small chill hours that are the first of the next day, he woke, and Merriman was there. He stood towering beside the bed in a faint light that seemed to come from within his own form; his face was shadowed, inscrutable.

“Wake up, Will. Wake up. There is a ceremony we must attend.”

In an instant Will was standing; he found that he was fully dressed, with the Signs on their belt round his waist. He went with Merriman to the window. It was mounded to half its height with snow, and still the flakes were quietly falling. He said, suddenly desolate, “Isn't there anything we can do to stop it? They're freezing half the country, Merriman, people will be dying.”

Merriman shook his white-maned head slowly, heavily. “The Dark has its strongest power of all rising between now and the Twelfth Day. This is their preparing. Theirs is a cold strength, the winter feeds it. They mean to break the Circle forever, before it is too late for them. We shall all face a hard test soon. But not all things go according to their will. Much magic still flows untapped,
along the Old Ones' Ways. And we may find more hope in a moment. Come.”