The Dark Is Rising (25 page)

Hawkin's face twisted as he stared venomously at him; then he looked towards the dark, empty Common and called: “Master!” Then again, an angry shriek this time: “
Master
!”

Will stood, tranquil, waiting. On the edge of the island he saw the white mare of the Light, almost invisible against the snow, raise her head and sniff the air, snorting softly. She looked once towards Will as if in communication; then wheeled round in the direction from which they had come, and galloped away.

Within seconds, something came. There was no sound, still, but the rushing river and the grumbling, looming storm. The thing that came was utterly silent. It was huge, a column of black mist like a tornado, whirling at enormous speed upright between the land and the sky. At either end it seemed broad and solid, but the centre wavered, grew slender and then thicker again; it wove to and fro as it came, in a kind of macabre dance. It was a hole in the world, this whirling black spectre; a piece of the eternal emptiness of the Dark made visible. As it came closer and closer to the island, bending and weaving, Will could not help backing away; every part of him shouted silently in alarm.

The black pillar swayed before him, covering the whole island. Its whirling, silent mist did not change, but parted, and standing within it was the Black Rider. He stood with the mist wreathing round his
hands and head, and smiled at Will: a cold, mirthless smile, with the heavy bars of eyebrows furrowed and ominous above. He was all in black again, but the clothes were unexpectedly modern; he wore a heavy black donkey-jacket and rough, dark denim trousers.

Without a flicker in the chill smile he moved aside a little, and out of the snaking black mist of the column came his horse, the great black beast with fiery eyes, and on its back sat Mary.

“Hallo, Will,” Mary said cheerfully.

Will looked at her. “Hallo.”

“I suppose you were looking for me,” Mary said. “I hope nobody got worried. I only went for a little ride, just for a minute or two. I mean, when I went looking for Max, and then I met Mr Mitothin and found Dad had sent him to look for me, well, obviously it was all right. I had a lovely ride. It's a super horse . . . and such a lovely day now. . . .”

The thunder rumbled, behind the massing grey-black cloud. Will shifted unhappily. The Rider, watching him, said loudly, “Here's some sugar for the horse, Mary. I think he deserves it, don't you?” And he held out his hand, empty.

“Oh, thank you,” Mary said eagerly. She leaned forward over the horse's neck and took the imaginary sugar from the Rider's hand. Then she reached down beside the stallion's mouth, and the animal licked briefly at her palm. Mary beamed. “There,” she said. “Is that good'?”

The Black Rider still gazed at Will, his smile widening a little. He opened his palm in mockery of Mary, and lying in it Will saw a small white box, made of an icy translucent glass, with lines of runic symbols engraved on the lid.

“Here I have her, Old One,” said the Rider, his nasal, accented voice softly triumphant. “Caught by the marks of the Old Spell of Lir, that was written long ago on a certain ring and then lost. You should have looked more closely at your mother's ring, you and that simple craftsman your father, and Lyon your careless master. Careless. . . . Under that spell I have your sister bound by totem magic, and yourself bound too, powerless to rescue her. See!”

He flicked the little box open, and Will saw lying in it a round, delicately-carved piece of wood, wound about with a fragile gold thread. With dismay he remembered the only ornament that had been
missing from the Christmas collection carved by Farmer Dawson for the Stanton family, and the golden hair that Mr Mitothin, his father's visitor, had with casual courtesy flicked away from Mary's sleeve.

“A birth-sign and a hair of the head are excellent totems,” the Rider said. “In the old days when we were all less sophisticated, you could, of course, work the magic even through the ground a man's foot had trod.”

“Or where his shadow had passed,” Will said.

“But the Dark casts no shadow,” the Rider said softly.

“And an Old One has no birth-sign,” said Will.

He saw uncertainty flicker over the intent white face. The Rider shut the white box and slipped it into his pocket. “Nonsense,” he said curtly.

Will looked at him thoughtfully. He said, “The masters of the Light do nothing without a reason, Rider. Even though the reason may not be known for years and years. Eleven years ago Farmer Dawson of the Light carved a certain sign for me at my birth — and if he had made the sign with the letter of my name, as the tradition was, then perhaps you could have used it to trap me into your power. But he made it in the sign of the Light, a circle cut by a cross. And as you know well, the Dark can use nothing of that shape for its own purpose. It is forbidden.”

He looked up at the Rider. He said, “I think you are trying to bluff me again, Mr Mitothin. Mr Mitothin, Black Rider of the black horse.”

The Rider scowled. “Yet still you are powerless,” he said. “For I have your sister. And you cannot save her except by giving me the Signs.” Malignance glittered again in his eyes. “Your great and noble Book may have told you that I cannot harm those who are of the same blood as an Old One — but look at her. She will do anything that I suggest she should do. Even jump into this swollen Thames. There are parts of the craft that you people neglect, you know. It is so simple to persuade folk into situations where they bring accidents upon themselves. Like your mother, for instance, so clumsy.”

He smiled again at Will. Will stared back, hating him; then he looked at Mary's happy sleeping-waking face and ached that she should be in such a place. He thought: and all because she's my sister. All because of me.

But a silent voice said into his mind: “Not because of you. Because of the Light. Because of all that must always happen, to keep the Dark from rising.” And with a surge of joy Will knew that he was no longer alone; that because the Rider was abroad, Merriman was near by again too, free to give help if need be.

The Rider put out his hand. “This is the time for your bargain, Will Stanton. Give me the Signs.”

Will took the deepest breath of his life, and let it out slowly. He said, “No.”

Astonishment was an emotion that the Black Rider had forgotten long ago. The piercing blue eyes stared at Will in total disbelief. “But you know what I shall do?”

“Yes,” Will said. “I know. But I will not give you the Signs.”

For a long moment the Rider looked at him, out of the vast black pillar of swirling mist in which he stood; in his face incredulity and rage were mingled with a kind of evil respect. Then he swung round to the black horse and to Mary and called aloud some words in a language that Will guessed, from the chill they put into his bones, must be the spell-speech of the Dark, seldom used aloud. The great horse tossed his head, white teeth flashing, and bounded forward, with happy witless Mary clutching his mane and gurgling with laughter. He came to the overhanging snowbank that bordered the river, and paused.

Will clenched the Signs on his belt, agonised by the risk he was taking, and with all his might summoned the power of the Light to come to his aid.

The black horse gave a shrill, shrieking whinny and leapt high into the air over the Thames. Halfway through his leap he twisted strangely, bucking in the air, and Mary screamed in terror, grabbing wildly at his neck. But her balance was gone, and she fell. Will thought he would faint as she turned through the air, his risk bursting into disaster; but instead of splashing into the river, she fell into the soft wet snow at its brink. The Black Rider cursed savagely, lunging forward. He never reached her. Before he was in mid-stride, a great arrow of lightning came from the storm amassed now almost overhead, and a gigantic crack of thunder, and out of the flash and the roar a blazing white streak rushed over the island towards Mary, catching her up so that in an instant she was gone, seized away, safe.
Will hardly managed to get a glimpse of Merriman's lean form, cloaked and hooded, on the white mare of the Light, with Mary's blonde hair flying where he held her. Then the storm broke, and the whole world whirled flaming round his head.

The earth rocked. He saw for an instant Windsor Castle outlined black against a white sky. Lightning seared his eyes, thunder beat at his head. Then through the singing in his dazed ears he heard a strange creaking and crackling close by. He swung round. Behind him, the great beech tree was cleft down the middle, blazing with great flames, and he realised with amazement that the eager current of the island's four streams was growing less and less, dwindling down to nothing. He looked up fearfully for the black column of the Dark, but it was nowhere to be seen in the raging storm, and the strangeness of all else that was happening drove the thought of it out of Will's head.

For it was not only the tree that had been split and broken. The island itself was changing, breaking open, sinking towards the river. Will stared speechless, standing now on an edge of snow-mounded land left by the vanished streams, while around him snow and land slid and crumpled into the roaring Thames. Above him, he saw the strangest thing of all. Something was emerging out of the island, as the land and snow fell away. There came first, from what had been the taller end of the island, the roughly shaped head of a stag, antlers held high. It was golden, glinting even in that dim light. More came into sight; Will could see the whole stag now, a beautiful golden image, prancing. Then came a curious curved pedestal on which it stood, as if to leap away; then behind this a long, long horizontal shape, as long as the island, rising again at the other end to another high, gold-glinting point, tipped this time by a kind of scroll. And suddenly Will realised that he was looking at a ship. The pedestal was its high curving prow, and the stag its figurehead.

Astounded, he moved towards it, and imperceptibly the river moved after him, until there was nothing left of the island but the long ship on a last circle of land, with a last rearing snowdrift all around it. Will stood staring. He had never seen such a ship. The long timbers of which it was built overlapped one another like the boards of a fence, heavy and broad; they looked like oak. He could see no mast. Instead there were places for row upon row of oarsmen,
up and down the whole length of the vessel. In the centre was a kind of deckhouse that made the ship look almost like a Noah's Ark. It was not a closed structure; its sides seemed to have been cut away, leaving the corner beams and roof like a canopy. And inside, beneath the canopy, a king lay.

Will drew back a little at the sight of him. The mailed figure lay very still, with sword and shield at his side, and treasure piled round him in glittering mounds. He wore no crown. Instead a great engraved helmet covered the head and most of the face, crested by a heavy silver image of a long-snouted animal that Will thought must be a wild boar. But even without a crown this was clearly the body of a king. No lesser man could have merited the silver dishes and jewelled purses, the great shield of bronze and iron, the ornate scabbard, the gold-rimmed drinking-horns, and the heaps of ornaments. On an impulse Will knelt down in the snow and bowed his head in respect. As he looked up again, rising, he saw over the gunwale of the ship something he had not noticed before.

The king was holding something in his hands, where they lay tranquilly folded on his breast. It was another ornament, small and glittering. And as Will saw it more closely, he stood still as stone, gripping the high, oaken edge of the ship. The ornament in the quiet hands of the long-ship king was shaped as a circle, quartered by a cross. It was wrought of iridescent glass, engraved with serpents and eels and fishes, waves and clouds and things of the sea. It called silently to Will. It was without any question the Sign of Water: the last of the Six Great Signs.

Will scrambled over the side of the great ship and approached the king. He had to take care where his feet moved, or he would have crushed fine work of engraved leather and woven robes, and jewellery of enamels and cloisonné and filigree gold. He stood looking down for a moment at the white face half-hidden by the ornate helmet, and then he reached reverently across to take the Sign. But first he had to touch the hand of the dead king, and it was colder than any stone. Will flinched and drew back, hesitating.

Merriman's voice said softly, from close by, “Do not fear him.”

Will swallowed. “But — he's dead.”

“He has lain here in his burial-ground for fifteen hundred years, waiting. On any other night of the year he would not be here at all,
he would be dust. Yes, Will, this appearance of him is dead. The rest of him has gone out beyond Time, long since.”

“But it's wrong to take tribute away from the dead.”

“It is the Sign. If it had not been the Sign, and destined for you the Sign-Seeker, he would not be here to give it to you. Take it.”

So Will leaned across the bier and took the Sign of Water from the loose grip of the dead cold hands, and from somewhere far off a murmur of his music whispered in his ears and then was gone. He turned to the side of the ship. There beside it was Merriman, sitting on the white mare; he was cloaked in dark blue, with his wild white hair uncovered; the hollows of his bony face were dark with strain, but delight gleamed in his eyes.

“It was well done, Will,” he said.