The Dark Is Rising (6 page)

“Don't open that door!”
There was a hint of desperation in the deep
voice that told Will, through instinct, that in the last resort Merriman was powerless to stop him.

“That is not your mother, Will,” the old lady said clearly.

“Please, Will!” his mother's voice begged.

“I'm coming!” Will reached out to the door's heavy latch, but in his haste he stumbled, and knocked against the great head-high candlestick so that his arm was jarred against his side. There was a sudden searing pain in his forearm, and he cried out and dropped to the floor, staring at the inside of his wrist where the sign of the quartered circle was burned agonisingly red into his skin. Once more the iron symbol on his belt had caught him with its ferocious bite of cold; it burned this time with a cold like white heat, in a furious flaring warning against the presence of evil — the presence that Will had felt but forgotten. Merriman and the old lady still had not moved. Will stumbled to his feet and listened, while outside the door his mother's voice wept, then grew angry, and threatened; then softened again and coaxed and cajoled; then finally ceased, dying away in a sob that tore at him even though his mind and senses told him it was not real.

And the door faded with it, melting like mist, until the grey stone wall was solid and unbroken as before. Outside, the dreadful inhuman chorus of moaning and wailing began again.

The old lady rose to her feet then and came across the hall, her long green dress rustling gently at every step. She took Will's hurt forearm in both her hands and put her cool right palm over it. Then she released him. The pain in Will's arm was gone, and where the red burn had been he saw now the shiny, hairless skin that grows in when a burn has been long healed. But the shape of the scar was clear, and he knew he would bear it to the end of his life; it was like a brand.

The nightmare sounds beyond the wall rose and fell in uneven waves.

“I'm sorry,” Will said miserably.

“We are besieged, as you see,” Merriman said, coming forward to join them. “They hope to gain a hold over you while you are not yet grown into your full power. And this is only the beginning of the peril, Will. Through all this midwinter season their power will be waxing very strong, with the Old Magic able to keep it at a distance
only on Christmas Eve. And even past Christmas it will grow, not losing its high force until the Twelfth Day, the Twelfth Night — which once was Christmas Day, and once before that, long ago, was the high winter festival of our old year.”

“What will happen?” Will said.

“We must think only of the things that we must do,” the old lady said. “And the first is to free you from the circle of dark power that is drawn now round this room.”

Merriman said, listening intently, “Be on your guard. Against anything. They have failed with one emotion; they will try to trap you through another next.”

“But it must not be fear,” she said. “Remember that, Will. You will be frightened, often, but never fear them. The powers of the Dark can do many things, but they cannot destroy. They cannot kill those of the Light. Not unless they gain a final dominion over the whole earth. And it is the task of the Old Ones — your task and ours — to prevent that. So do not let them put you into fear or despair.”

She went on, saying more, but her voice was drowned like a rock submerged in a high-tide wave, as the horrible chorus that whined and keened outside the walls rose louder, louder, faster and angrier, into a cacophony of screeches and unearthly laughter, shrieks of terror and cackles of mirth, howlings and roars. As Will listened, his skin crept and grew damp.

As if in a dream he heard Merriman's deep voice ring out through the dreadful noise, calling him. He could not have moved if the old lady had not taken his hand, drawing him across the room, back towards the table and the hearth, the only cave of light in the dark hall. Merriman spoke close to his ear, swift and urgent, “Stand by the circle, the circle of light. Stand with your back to the table, and take our hands. It is a joining they cannot break.”

Will stood there, his arms spread wide, as out of sight beside him each of them took one of his hands. The light of the fire in the hearth died, and he became aware that behind him the flames of the candle-circle on the table had grown tall, gigantic, so high that when he tilted back his head he could see them rising far over him in a white pillar of light. There was no heat from this great tree of flame, and though it glowed with great brilliance it cast no light beyond the table. Will could not see the rest of the hall, not the walls nor the
pictures nor any door. He could see nothing but blackness, the vast black emptiness of the awful looming night.

This was the Dark, rising, rising to swallow Will Stanton before he could grow strong enough to do it harm. In the light from the strange candles, Will held fast to the old lady's frail fingers, and Merriman's wood-hard fist. The shrieking of the Dark grew to an intolerable peak, a high triumphant whinnying, and Will knew without sight that before him in the darkness the great black stallion was rearing up as it had done outside the hut in the woods, with the Rider there to strike him down if the new-shod hooves did not do their work. And no white mare this time could spring from the sky to his rescue.

He heard Merriman shout, “The tree of flame, Will! Strike out with the flame! As you spoke to the fire, speak to the flame, and strike!”

In desperate obedience Will filled his whole mind with the picture of the great circle of tall, tall candle-flames behind him, growing like a white tree; and as he did so, he felt the minds of his two supporters doing the same, knew that the three of them together could accomplish more than he ever imagined. He felt a quick pressure in each hand from the hand holding it, and he struck forward in his mind with the column of light, lashing it out as if it were a giant whip. Over his head there came a vast crashing flash of white light, as the tall flames reared forward and down in a bolt of lightning, and a tremendous shriek from the darkness beyond as something — the Rider, the black stallion, both — fell away, out, down, endlessly down.

And in the gap cleft in the darkness there before them, while he still blinked dazzled eyes, stood the two great carved wooden doors through which he had first come into the hall.

In the sudden silence Will heard himself shout triumphantly, and he leapt forward, tugging free of the hands that held his own, to run to the doors. Both Merriman and the old lady cried out in warning, but it was too late. Will had broken the circle, he was standing alone. No sooner did he realise it than he felt giddy, and staggered, clutching his head, a strange ringing sound beginning to thrum in his ears. Forcing his legs to move, he lurched to the doors, leaned against them, and beat feebly on them with his fists. They did not move.
The eerie ringing in his head grew. He saw Merriman moving up before him, walking with great effort, leaning far forward as though he were straining against a high wind.

“Foolish,” Merriman gasped. “Foolish, Will.” He seized the doors and shook them, thrusting forward with the strength of both his arms so that the twisted veins beside his brows stood up from the skin like thick wire; and as he did so, he lifted his head and shouted a long commanding phrase that Will did not understand. But the doors did not move, and Will felt weakness drawing him down, as if he were a snowman melting in the sun.

The thing that brought him back to wakefulness, just as he was beginning to drift into a kind of trance, was something he was never able to describe — or even to remember very well. It was like the ending of pain, like discord changing to harmony; like the lightening of the spirits that you may feel suddenly in the middle of a grey dull day, unaccountable until you realise that the sun has begun to shine. This silent music that entered Will's mind and took hold of his spirit came, he knew instantly, from the old lady. Without speech, she was speaking to him. She was speaking to both of them — and to the Dark. He looked back, dazzled; she seemed taller, bigger, more erect than before, a figure on an altogether larger scale. And there was a golden haze about her figure, a glow that did not come from the candlelight.

Will blinked, but he could not see clearly; it was as if he were separated from her by a veil. He heard Merriman's deep voice, gentler than he had yet heard it, but wrung with some strong sudden unhappiness. “Madam,” Merriman said wretchedly. “Take care, take care.”

No voice replied, but Will had a feeling of benison. Then it was gone, and the tall, glowing form that was and yet was not the old lady moved slowly forward in the darkness towards the doors, and for an instant Will heard again the haunting phrase of music that he could never capture in his memory, and the doors slowly opened. Outside there was a grey light and silence, and the air was cold.

Behind him, the light of the candle-ring was gone, and there was only darkness. It was an uneasy, empty darkness, so that he knew the hall was no longer there. And suddenly he realised that the luminous golden figure before him was fading too, vanishing away,
like smoke that grows thinner, thinner, until it cannot be seen at all. For an instant there was a flash of rose-coloured brilliance from the huge ring that had been on the old lady's hand, and then that too dimmed, and her bright presence faded into nothing. Will felt a desperate ache of loss, as if his whole world had been swallowed up by the Dark, and he cried out.

A hand touched his shoulder. Merriman was at his side. They were through the doors. Slowly the great wooden carved portals swung back behind them, long enough for Will to see clearly that they were indeed the same strange gates that had opened for him before on the white untrodden slope of a Chiltern hill. Then, at the moment that they closed, the doors too were no longer there. He saw nothing: only the grey light of snow that reflects a grey sky. He was back in the snow-drowned woodland world into which he had walked early that morning.

Anxiously he swung round to Merriman. “Where is she? What happened?”

“It was too much for her. The strain was too great, even for her. Never before — I have never seen this before.” His voice was thick and bitter; he stared angrily at nothing.

“Have they — taken her?” Will did not know what words to use for the fear.

“No!” Merriman said. The word was so quick with scorn it might have been a laugh. “The Lady is beyond their power. Beyond any power. You will not ask a question like that when you have learned a little. She has gone away for a time, that is all. It was the opening of the doors, in the face of all that was willing them shut. Though the Dark could not destroy her, it has drained her, left her like a shell. She must recover herself, away alone, and that is bad for us if we should need her. As we shall. As the world always will.” He glanced down at Will without warmth; suddenly he seemed distant, almost threatening, like an enemy; he waved one hand impatiently. “Close your coat, boy, before you freeze.”

Will fumbled with the buttons of his heavy jacket; Merriman, he saw, was wrapped in a long battered blue cloak, high-collared.

“It was my fault, wasn't it?” he said miserably. “If I hadn't run forward, when I saw the doors — if I'd kept hold of your hands, and not broken the circle —”

Merriman said curtly: “Yes.” Then he relented a little. “But it was their doing, Will, not yours. They seized you, through your impatience and your hope. They love to twist good emotion to accomplish ill.”

Will stood hunched with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ground. Behind his mind a chant went sneering through his head:
you have lost the Lady, you have lost the Lady
. Unhappiness was thick in his throat; he swallowed; he could not speak. A breeze blew through the trees, and sprayed snow-crystals into his face.

“Will,” Merriman said. “I was angry. Forgive me. Whether you had broken the Three or not, things would have been the same. The doors are our great gateway into Time, and you will know more about the uses of them before long. But this time you could not have opened them, nor I, nor perhaps any of the circle. For the force that was pushing against them was the full midwinter power of the Dark, which none but the Lady can overcome alone — and even she, only at great cost. Take heart; at the proper time, she will return.”

He pulled at the high collar of his cloak, and it became a hood that he drew over his head. With the white hair hidden he was a dark figure suddenly, tall and inscrutable. “Come,” he said, and led Will through the deep snow, among great beeches and oaks bare of leaves. At length they paused, in a clearing.

“Do you know where you are?” Merriman said.

Will stared round at the smooth snowbanks, the rearing trees. “Of course I don't,” he said. “How could I?”

“Yet before the winter is three-quarters done,” Merriman said, “you will be creeping into this dell to look at the snowdrops that grow everywhere between the trees. And then in the spring you will be back to stare at the daffodils. Every day for a week, to judge from last year.”

Will gaped at him. “You mean the Manor?” he said. “The Manor grounds?”

In his own century, Huntercombe Manor was the great house of the village. The house itself could not be seen from the road, but its grounds lay along the side of Huntercombe Lane opposite the Stantons' house, and stretched a long way in each direction, edged alternately by tall wrought-iron railings and ancient brick walls. A Miss Greythorne owned it, as her family had for centuries, but Will
did not know her well; he seldom saw her or her Manor, which he remembered vaguely as a mass of tall brick gables and Tudor chimneys. The flowers that Merriman had spoken of were private landmarks in his year. For as long as he could remember, he had slipped through the Manor railings at the end of winter to stand in this one magical clearing and gaze at the gentle winter-banishing snowdrops, and later the golden daffodil-glow of spring. He did not know who had planted the flowers; he had never seen anyone visiting them. He was not even sure whether anyone else knew they were there. The image of them glowed now in his mind.