The Dark Is Rising (8 page)

It was as if the word released a spring. In an instant, all the fear and suspicion in the twisted old face relaxed into childish obedience. With a smile of almost foolish eagerness the Walker fumbled with a broad leather strap that he wore diagonally across his chest, and he pulled from it a quartered circle identical with the one that Will wore on his belt, but gleaming with the dull brown-gold sheen of bronze. He put it into Will's hands, and gave a high cackling little laugh of astonished glee.

The yellow-flaming branch on the snow before them blazed suddenly brighter, and went out.

The branch lay just as it had when Will first came down the Alley: grey, uncharred, cold, as if no part of it had ever been touched by spark or flame. Clutching the bronze circle, Will stared down at the rough-barked wood, lying there on unmarked snow. Now that its light was gone, the day seemed suddenly much more murky, full of shadows, and he realised with a shock how little of the afternoon was left. It was late. He must go. And then a clear voice said, out of the shadows ahead, “Hello, Will Stanton.”

The Walker squealed in terror, a thin, ugly sound. Will slipped the bronze circle quickly into his pocket, and stepped stiffly forward. Then he almost sat down on the snow in relief, as he saw that the
newcomer was only Maggie Barnes, the dairy-girl from Dawsons' Farm. Nothing sinister about Maggie, Max's apple-cheeked admirer. Her dumpling form was all muffled up in coat and boots and scarf; she was carrying a covered basket, and heading down towards the main road. She beamed at Will, then peered accusingly at the Walker.

“Why,” she said, in her round Buckinghamshire voice, “'tis that old tramp that's been hanging around this past fortnight. Farmer said he wanted to see the back of you, old man. He been bothering you, young Will? I bet he has, now.” She glared at the Walker, who shrank sullenly into his dirty cape-like coat.

“Oh, no,” Will said. “I was just running down from the bus from Slough, and I — bumped into him. Really bumped. Dropped all my Christmas shopping,” he added hastily, and bent to collect his parcels and packages that still lay scattered on the snow.

The Walker sniffed, hunched himself deeper inside his coat, and made to shuffle off past Maggie up the track. But as he drew level with her, he stopped abruptly, jerking back as if he had struck some invisible barrier. He opened his mouth, but no sound came. Will straightened up slowly, watching, his arms full of bundles. A dreadful sense of misgiving began to creep over him, like the chill of a cold breeze.

Maggie Barnes said amiably: “Long time since the last bus from Slough, young Will. Fact, I'm just off to catch the next one. You always take half an hour to do that five-minute walk from the bus stop, Will Stanton?”

“I don't see that it's any business of yours how long I take about anything,” Will said. He was watching the frozen Walker, and some very confused images were turning about in his head.

“Manners, manners,” said Maggie. “Such a nicely brought-up little boy as you, too.” Her eyes were very bright, peering at Will from the scarf-wrapped head.

“Well, good-by, Maggie,” said Will. “I've got to get home. Tea's past ready.”

“The trouble with nasty dirty tramps, like this one you just bumped into but who isn't bothering you,” Maggie Barnes said softly, without moving, “the trouble with them is, they steal things. And this one stole something the other day from the farm, young Will, something
belonging to me. An ornament. A big goldeny-brown coloured kind of ornament, circle-shaped, that I wore on a chain round my neck. And I want it back.
Now!”
The last word flicked out viciously, and then she was all soft sweetness again, as if her gentle voice had never changed. “I want it back, I do. And I do think he might just have slipped it in your pocket when you weren't looking, when you bumped into him. If he saw me coming, that is, as he might well have done in the light of that funny little bonfire I saw burning up here just now. What do you think of all that, young Will Stanton, hey?”

Will swallowed. The hair was prickling upright on the back of his neck as he listened to her. There she stood, looking just the same as ever, the rosy-cheeked, uncomplicated farm girl who ran Dawsons' milking-machine and reared the smallest calves; and yet the mind out of which these words were coming could be nothing but the mind of the Dark. Had they stolen Maggie? Or had Maggie always been one of them ? If she had, what else could she do?

He stood facing her, one hand clutching his parcels, one hand sliding cautiously into his pocket. The bronze Sign was cold, cold to his touch. He summoned up all the power of thought that he could find to drive her away, and still she stood there, smiling coldly at him. He conjured her to leave by all the names of power that he could remember Merriman using: by the Lady, by the Circle, by the Signs. But he knew he did not have the right things to say. And Maggie laughed aloud and moved deliberately forward, looking into his face, and Will found that he could not move a muscle.

He was caught, frozen just like the Walker; fixed immobile in a position he could not alter by so much as an inch. He glared furiously at Maggie Barnes, in her smooth red scarf and demure black coat, as she calmly slipped her hand past his into his coat pocket and drew out the bronze Sign. She held it in front of his face, and then rapidly unbuttoned his coat, flicked his belt away from him, and threaded the bronze circle on it to stand next to the iron.

“Hold up your trousers, Will Stanton,” she said mockingly. “Oh, dear now, you can't, can you. . . . But then you don't really wear that belt to keep up your trousers, do you? You wear it to keep this little . . . decoration . . . safe. . . .” Will noticed that she held the two Signs as lightly as possible, and winced when she had to touch them
with any firmness; the cold that was beating out of them must surely be burning her to the bone.

He watched in utter despair. There was nothing he could do. All his effort and questing was coming to an end before it had even properly begun, and there was nothing he could do. He wanted both to shout with rage and to weep. And then, deep down, something stirred in his mind. Some detail of memory flickered, but he could not catch it. He remembered it only at the moment when fresh-faced Maggie Barnes held up his belt before him with the first and second circle threaded there together, dull iron and gleaming bronze side by side. Staring greedily at the two circles, Maggie broke into a low gurgle of sneering laughter that sounded the more evil for the rosy openness of the face from which it came. And Will remembered.

. . .
when his circle is on your belt beside the first, I shall come
. . . .

At that same moment, fire leaped up out of the fallen elm tree branch that Will had briefly lighted before, and flames cracked down from nowhere in a circle of searing white light all around Maggie Barnes, a circle of light higher than her head. She crouched down suddenly on the snow, cringing, her mouth slack with fear. The belt with the two linked Signs dropped out of her limp hand.

And Merriman was there. Tall in the long dark cloak, his face hidden in shadow by the enveloping hood, he was there at the side of the road, just beyond the flaring circle and the cowering girl.

“Take her from this road,” he said in a clear loud voice, and the blazing circle of light moved slowly to one side, forcing the girl Maggie to stumble with it, until it hovered on the rough ground next to the road. Then with an abrupt crackling sound it was gone, and Will saw instead a great barrier of light spring up on either side of the road, edging it on both sides with leaping fire, stretching far into the distance in both directions — a great deal further than the length of the track that Will knew as Tramps' Alley. He stared at it, a little frightened. Out in the dimness he could see Maggie Barnes grovelling wretchedly in the snow, her arms shielding her eyes from the light. But he and Merriman and the Walker stood in a great endless tunnel of cold white flame.

Will bent and picked up his belt, and in a kind of relieved greeting he grasped the two Signs in his hands, iron in his left hand, bronze in his right. Merriman came to his side, raised his right arm so that
the cloak swept down from it like the wing of some great bird, and pointed one long finger at the girl. He called out a long strange name, that Will had never heard before and could not keep in his mind, and the girl Maggie wailed aloud.

Merriman said, with scorn death-cold in his voice, “Go back, and tell them that the Signs are beyond their touching. And if you would remain unharmed, do not try again to work your will while you stand on one of our Ways. For the old roads are wakened, and their power is alive again. And this time, they will have no pity and no remorse.” He called out the strange name again, and the flames edging the road leaped higher, and the girl screamed high and shrill as if she were in great pain. Then she scuffled away across the snowy field like a small hunched animal.

Merriman looked down at Will. “Remember the two things that saved you,” he said, the light glinting now on his beaked nose and deep-set eyes under the shadowing hood. “First, I knew her real name. The only way to disarm one of the creatures of the Dark is to call him or her by his real name: names that they keep very secret. Then, as well as the name, there was the road. Do you know the name of this track?”

“Tramps' Alley,” Will said automatically.

“That is not a real name,” Merriman said with distaste.

“Well, no. Mum won't ever use it, and we're not supposed to. It's ugly, she says. But nobody else I know ever calls it anything else. I'd feel silly if I called it Oldway —” Will stopped suddenly, hearing and tasting the name properly for the first time in his life. He said slowly, “If I called it by its real name, Oldway Lane.”

“You would feel silly,” said Merriman grimly. “But the name that would make you feel silly has helped to save your life. Oldway Lane. Yes. And it was not named for some distant Mr Oldway. The name simply tells you what the road is, as the names of roads and places in old lands very often do, if only men would pay them more attention. It was lucky for you that you were standing on one of the Old Ways, trodden by the Old Ones for some three thousand years, when you played your little game with fire, Will Stanton. If you had been anywhere else, in your state of untrained power, you would have made yourself so vulnerable that all the things of the Dark that are in this land would have been drawn towards you. As the
witch-girl was drawn by the birds. Look hard at this road now, boy, and do not call it by vulgar names again.”

Will swallowed and stared at the flame-edged Way stretching into the distance like some noble road of the sun, and on a sudden wild impulse he made it a clumsy little bow, bending from the waist as well as his armful of packages would let him. The flames leapt again, and curved inward, almost as if they were bowing in return. Then they went out.

“Well done,” said Merriman, with surprise and a touch of amusement.

Will said, “I will never, never again do anything with the — the power, unless there is a reason. I promise. By the Lady and the old world. But” — he could not resist it — “Merriman, it was my fire that brought the Walker to me, wasn't it, and the Walker had the Sign.”

“The Walker was waiting for you, stupid boy,” said Merriman irritably. “I told you that he would find you, and you did not remember. Remember now. In this our magic, every smallest word has a weight and a meaning. Every word that I say to you — or that any other Old One may say. The Walker? He has been waiting for you to be born, and to stand alone with him and command the Sign from him, for time past your imagining. You did that well, I will say — it was a problem to bring him to the point of giving up the Sign when the time came. Poor soul. He betrayed the Old Ones once, long ago, and this was his doom.” His voice softened a little. “It has been a hard age for him, the carrying of the second Sign. He has one more part in our work, before he may have rest, if he chooses. But that is not yet.”

They both looked at the motionless figure of the Walker, still standing caught in frozen movement at the side of the road as Maggie Barnes had left him.

“That's an awfully uncomfortable position,” Will said.

“He feels nothing,” said Merriman. “Not a muscle will even grow stiff. Some small powers the Old Ones and the people of the Dark have in common, and one of them is this catching a man out of Time, for as long as is necessary. Or in the case of the Dark, for as long as they find it amusing.”

He pointed a finger at the immobile, shapeless form, and spoke some soft rapid words that Will did not hear, and the Walker relaxed
into life like a figure in a moving film that has been stopped and then started again. Staring wide-eyed, he looked at Merriman and opened his mouth, and made a curious dry, speechless sound.

“Go,” Merriman said. The old man cringed away, clasping his flapping garments around him, and shambled off at a half-run up the narrow path. Watching him as he went, Will blinked, then peered hard, then rubbed his eyes; for the Walker seemed to be fading, growing strangely thinner, so that you could see the trees through his body. Then all at once he was gone, like a star blotted out by a cloud.

Merriman said, “My doing, not his own. He deserves peace for a while, I think, in another place than this. That is the power of the Old Ways, Will. You would have used the trick to escape from the witch-girl, very easily, if you had known how. You will learn that, and the proper names and much else very soon now.”