The Dark Is Rising (5 page)

“Enough,” Merriman said hastily, but he sounded pleased. “You do well. Now it is your turn. Give me a picture, Will. Just choose some ordinary scene, anything, and think of the way it looks, as if you were standing looking at it.”

Will thought of the first image that came into his head. It was one which he realised now had been worrying away at the back of his thoughts all this while: the picture of the two great doors, isolated on the snowy hillside, with all their intricate carving, and the strange blur at their edges.

Merriman said at once: “Not the doors. Nothing so close. Somewhere from your life before this winter came.”

For a second Will stared at him, disconcerted; then he swallowed hard, closed his eyes and thought of the jeweller's shop his father ran in the little town of Eton.

Merriman said, slowly, “The door-handle is of the lever kind, like a round bar, to be pushed downward perhaps ten degrees on opening. A small hanging bell rings as the door moves. You step down a few inches to reach the floor, and the jolt of the drop is startling without being dangerous. There are glass showcases all round the walls, and beneath the glass counter — of course, this must be your father's shop. With some beautiful things inside it. A grandfather clock, very old, in the back corner, with a painted face and a deep, slow tick. A turquoise necklet in the central showcase with a setting of silver serpents: Zuni work, I think, a very long way from home. An emerald pendant like a great green tear. A small enchanting model of a Crusader castle, in gold — perhaps a saltcellar — that you have loved, I think, since you were a small boy. And that man behind the counter, short and content and gentle, must be your father, Roger Stanton. Interesting to see him clearly at last, free of the mist. . . . He has a jeweller's glass in his eye, and he is looking at a ring: an old gold ring with nine tiny stones set in three rows, three diamond chips in the centre and three rubies at either side, and some curious runic
lines edging those that I think I must look at more closely one day soon —”

“You even got the ring!” Will said, fascinated. “That's mother's ring, Dad was looking at it last time I was in the shop. She thought one of the stones was loose, but he said it was an optical illusion. . . . However do you do it?”

“Do what?” There was an ominous softness in the deep voice.

“Well — that. Put a picture in my head. And then see the one I had there myself. Telepathy, isn't it called? It's tremendous.” But an uneasiness was beginning in his mind.

“Very well,” Merriman said patiently. “I will show you in another way. There is a circle of candle flames beside you there on the table, Will Stanton. Now — do you know of any possible way of putting out one of those flames, other than blowing it out or quenching it with water or snuffer or hand?”

“No.”

“No. There is none. But now, I tell you that you, because you are who you are, can do that simply by wishing it. For the gift that you have, this is a very small task indeed. If in your mind you choose one of those flames and think of it without even looking, think of it and tell it to go out,
then that flame will go out
. And is that a possible thing for any normal boy to do?”

“No,” Will said unhappily.

“Do it,” Merriman said. “Now.”

There was a sudden thick silence in the room, like velvet. Will could feel them both watching him. He thought desperately: I'll get out of it, I'll think of a flame, but it won't be one of those; it'll be something much bigger, something that couldn't be put out except by some tremendous impossible magic even Merriman doesn't know. . . . He looked across the room at the light and shadow dancing side by side across the rich tapestries on the stone walls, and he thought hard, in furious concentration, of the image of the blazing log fire in the huge fireplace behind him. He felt the warmth of it on the back of his neck, and thought of the glowing orange heart of the big pile of logs and the leaping yellow tongues of flame.
Go out, fire
, he said to it in his mind, feeling suddenly safe and free from the dangers of power, because of course no fire as big as that could possibly go out without a real reason.
Stop burning, fire. Go out
.

And the fire went out.

All at once the room was chill — and darker. The ring of candle flames on the table burned on, in a small cold pool of their own light only. Will spun round, staring in consternation at the hearth; there was no hint of smoke, or water, or of any way in which the fire could possibly have died. But dead it was, cold and black, without a spark. He moved towards it slowly. Merriman and the old lady said no word, and did not stir. Will bent and touched the blackened logs in the hearth, and they were cold as stone — yet furred with a layer of new ash that fell away under his fingers into a white dust. He stood up, rubbing his hand slowly up and down his trouser-leg, and looked helplessly at Merriman. The man's deep eyes burned like black candle flames, but there was compassion in them, and as Will glanced nervously across at the old lady, he saw a kind of tenderness in her face too. She said gently: “It's a little cold, Will.”

For a timeless interval that was no more than the flicker of a nerve, Will felt a screaming flash of panic, a memory of the fear he had felt in the dark nightmare of the snowstorm; then it was gone, and in the peace of its vanishing he felt somehow stronger, taller, more relaxed. He knew that in some way he had accepted the power, whatever it was, that he had been resisting, and he knew what he must do. Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders and stood straight and firm there in the great hall. He smiled at the old lady; then looked past her, at nothing, and concentrated on the image of the fire.
Come back, fire
, he said in his mind.
Burn again
. And the light was dancing over the tapestried walls once more, and the warmth of the flames was back on his neck, and the fire burned.

“Thank you,” the old lady said.

“Well done,” said Merriman softly, and Will knew that he was not speaking merely of the extinguishing and relighting of a fire.

“It is a burden,” Merriman said. “Make no mistake about that. Any great gift or power or talent is a burden, and this more than any, and you will often long to be free of it. But there is nothing to be done. If you were born with the gift, then you must serve it, and nothing in this world or out of it may stand in the way of that service, because that is why you were born and that is the Law. And it is just as well, young Will, that you have only a glimmering of an idea of the gift that is in you, for until the first ordeals of learning are
over, you will be in great danger. And the less you know of the meaning of your power, the better able it will be to protect you as it has done for the last ten years.”

He gazed at the fire for a moment, frowning. “I will tell you only this: that you are one of the Old Ones, the first to have been born for five hundred years, and the last. And like all such, you are bound by nature to devote yourself to the long conflict between the Light and the Dark. Your birth, Will, completed a circle that has been growing for four thousand years in every oldest part of this land: the circle of the Old Ones. Now that you have come into your power, your task is to make that circle indestructible. It is your quest to find and to guard the six great Signs of the Light, made over the centuries by the Old Ones, to be joined in power only when the circle is complete. The first Sign hangs on your belt already, but to find the rest will not be easy. You are the Sign-Seeker, Will Stanton. That is your destiny, your first quest. If you can accomplish that, you will have brought to life one of the three great forces that the Old Ones must turn soon towards vanquishing the powers of the Dark, which are reaching out now steadily and stealthily over all this world.”

The rhythms of his voice, which had been rising and falling in an increasingly formal pattern, changed subtly into a kind of chanted battle cry; a call, Will thought suddenly, with a chill tightening his skin, to things beyond the great hall and beyond the time of the calling. “For the Dark, the Dark is rising. The Walker is abroad, the Rider is riding; they have woken, the Dark is rising. And the last of the Circle is come to claim his own, and the circles must now all be joined. The white horse must go to the Hunter, and the river take the valley; there must be fire on the mountain, fire under the stone, fire over the sea. Fire to burn away the Dark, for the Dark, the Dark is rising!”

He stood there tall as a tree in the shadowed room, his deep voice ringing out in an echo, and Will could not take his eyes from him.
The Dark is rising
. That was exactly what he had felt last night. That was what he was beginning to feel again now, a shadowy awareness of evil pricking at his fingertips and the top of his spine, but for the life of him he could not utter a word. Merriman said, in a singsong tone that came strangely from his awesome figure, as if he were a child reciting:

When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back,

Three from the circle, three from the track;

Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;

Five will return, and one go alone.

Then he swept forward out of the shadow, past the old lady, still and bright-eyed in her high-backed chair; with one hand he raised one of the thick white candles out of the burning ring, and with the other swung Will towards the towering side wall.

“Look well, for each moment, Will,” he said. “The Old Ones will show something of themselves, and remind the deepest part of you. For one moment, look at each.” And with Will beside him he strode long-legged round the hall, holding the candle aloft again and again beside each of the hanging tapestries on the walls. Each time, as if he had commanded it, one bright image shone for an instant out of each glowing embroidered square, as bright and deep as a sunlit picture seen through a window-frame. And Will saw.

He saw a may tree white with blossom, growing from the thatched roof of a house. He saw four great grey standing stones on a green headland over the sea. He saw the empty-eyed grinning white skull of a horse, with a single stubby broken horn in the bony forehead and red ribbons wreathing the long jaws. He saw lightning striking a huge beech tree and, out of the flash, a great fire burning on a bare hillside against a black sky.

He saw the face of a boy not much older than himself, staring curiously into his own: a dark face beneath light-streaked dark hair, with strange cat-like eyes, the pupils light-bordered but almost yellow within. He saw a broad river in flood and beside it a wizened old man perched on an enormous horse. As Merriman whirled him inexorably from one picture to the next, he saw suddenly with a flash of terror the brightest image of all: a masked man with a human face, the head of a stag, the eyes of an owl, the ears of a wolf, and the body of a horse. The figure leapt, tugging at some lost memory deep within his mind.

“Remember them,” Merriman said. “They will be a strength.”

Will nodded, then stiffened. All at once he heard noises growing outside the hall, and knew with a dreadful shock of certainty why it was that he had felt such uneasiness a short time before. While the
old lady sat motionless in her chair, and he and Merriman stood again beside the hearth, the great hall was filled suddenly with a hideous mixture of moaning and mumbling and strident wailing, like the caged voices of an evil zoo. It was a sound more purely nasty than any he had ever heard.

The hair prickled at the back of Will's neck, and then suddenly there was silence. A log fell, rustling, in the fire. Will heard the blood beating in his veins. And into the silence a new sound came from somewhere outside, beyond the far wall: the heart-broken, beseeching whine of a forsaken dog, calling in panic for help and friendliness. It sounded exactly as Raq and Ci, their own dogs, had sounded when they were puppies crying for comfort in the dark; Will felt himself dissolve into sympathy, and he turned instinctively towards the sound.

“Oh, where is it? Poor thing —”

As he looked at the blank stone of the far wall, he saw a door take shape in it. It was not a door like the huge vanished pair by which he had entered, but far smaller; an odd, pinched little door looking totally out of place. But he knew he could open it to help the imploring dog. The animal whined again in more acute misery than before; louder, more pleading, in a desperate half-howl. Will swung impulsively forward to run to the door; then was frozen in mid-step by Merriman's voice. It was soft, but cold as winter stone.

“Wait. If you saw the shape of the poor sad dog, you would be greatly surprised. And it would be the last thing you would ever see.”

Incredulous, Will stood and waited. The whining died away, in a last long howl. There was silence for a moment. Then all at once he heard his mother's voice from behind the door.

“Will? Wiii — iill. . . .Come and help me, Will!” It was unmistakably her voice, but filled with an unfamiliar emotion: there was in it a note of half-controlled panic that horrified him. It came again. “Will? I need you . . . where are you, Will? Oh, please, Will, come and help me — ” And then an unhappy break at the end, like a sob.

Will could not bear it. He lurched forward and ran towards the door. Merriman's voice came after him like a whiplash. “Stop!”

“But I must go, can't you hear her?” Will shouted angrily.“They've got my mother: I've got to help — ”