The Ragwitch
The Ragwitch
Garth Nix
From the author of Abhorsen comes classic fantasy set in a world dominated by the Ragwitch, a being of sinister, destructive intent.An ancient spirit wreaks death and destruction on the world that sought to cripple her powers.“Julia turned around – and Paul skidded to a stop in shock. He felt like he’d been winded, struck so hard he couldn’t breathe at all. For the person in front of him wasn’t Julia at all, but a hideous mixture of girl and doll: half flesh, half cloth, and the eyes and face had nothing of Julia left at all, only the evil features of the doll.”When Julia finds the ugly doll in the strange ball of feathers on the beach, Paul instinctively knows that his sister has meddled with something that is going to cause trouble. But already it’s too late –the power behind the doll already has his sister in its thrall and, later that night, the Ragwitch claims Julia for its own.Fighting against his natural urge to run from this hideous being, Paul is drawn into the creature’s own world. Can he save his sister –or even himself?
The Ragwitch
Garth Nix
TO SHAHNAZ,
MY FAMILY, AND FRIENDS
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u9fa91759-4d5a-5a8e-aef6-97bcf7a8c9b7)
Title Page (#u127a93eb-1402-5e68-8dc1-4d4b249ad3fa)
1. The Midden (#u54075c9a-3586-5a4f-82f7-99d9c65c19ae)
2 The Forest of the May Dancers The Sea Caves (#u72175c45-035f-5d7f-b74f-89101ece1175)
3. Awqinn / The Spire (#ud47350d2-063b-5d3f-b22c-f1fd4fe6a3b9)
4. Gwarulch by Night / The Raqwitch Looks to the South (#u93ca28a8-2c67-55ce-948b-46bc78686250)
5. Rhysamarn / The Mountain of the Wise (#u845b1bb0-d3b4-51a7-987a-07d52c25c963)
6. Tanboule’s Advice / The Sack of Bevallan (#u65343dfb-481c-532d-a012-af41f199373c)
7 A Friend of Beasts / Lyssa (#litres_trial_promo)
8. A Guide / The Namyr Steps (#litres_trial_promo)
9. The Wind Moot / Glazed Folk (#litres_trial_promo)
10. The Memory / A Village by the Sea (#litres_trial_promo)
11. The Sed Festival (#litres_trial_promo)
12. The Beast /To the Water Lord (#litres_trial_promo)
13. Golden Fire / The Water Lord’s Catch (#litres_trial_promo)
14. Sleye Midden / Sharks (#litres_trial_promo)
15. Anhyvar / Aleyne (#litres_trial_promo)
16. A Picnic With Lyssa / Master Caqael and Friends (#litres_trial_promo)
17. Reddow Cairn (#litres_trial_promo)
18. Julia Is Summoned / Dancing With Fire (#litres_trial_promo)
19. Within Her Mind/ Rhysamarn (#litres_trial_promo)
20. The Potato Harvest / The Raqwitch Attacks (#litres_trial_promo)
21. The Challenge / Thruan (#litres_trial_promo)
22. The Worm / Dreams and Shadows (#litres_trial_promo)
23. The Spire / The Forge (#litres_trial_promo)
24. The Last Battle (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Garth Nix (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1. The Midden (#ulink_1c397dc0-7ec1-5e53-ab42-f5e680bb701b)
“COME ON, PAUL!” shrieked Julia as she ran down the dune, the sand sliding away under her bare feet. Below her lay the beach, a white expanse bordered by mounds of seaweed. Beyond the seaweed lay the sea, a great mass of slow, tumbling waves, each solemnly dumping another load of the green-brown kelp.
Julia didn’t wait for an answer to her call – a brief backward glance showed Paul atop the dune, staring single-mindedly into the sea. She kept on running, breaking into an erratic skip to avoid the stinging bluebottles cast ashore to die in the morning sun.
Entranced by the view, Paul slowly moved his gaze along the beach, like a swivelling human telescope. He looked mainly to the north, where grey rocks thrust out into the sea, forming a spit, full of intricate pools and dangerous channels.
Above the spit, a strange hill rose out of the sand, a reddish hill, crowned with thousands of gleaming white fragments and shells. The hill dominated the shore, rising high above the lesser dunes that flanked it.
“Come on!” shouted Julia again. Paul looked down and saw that she was already walking towards the spit. He quickly switched from looking to walking mode and took a diagonal path to meet her, half sliding down the face of the great dune.
“Isn’t it fantastic?” burbled Julia, as Paul finally arrived at the spit, panting from his exertions. She spoke without looking at him, intent on the tiny fish that swirled about her toes in the rock pool.
“Yeah, great!” answered Paul enthusiastically. “Do you want to go out on the spit? We might see a dolphin from the end.”
“Not now. Wouldn’t you rather climb that?” asked Julia, pointing at the hill.
“What sort of hill is that?” asked Paul. “I’ve never seen a hill like that on a beach!”
“It’s a midden. Daddy told me about it last night. You can just see it from the house.”
“What’s a midden?”
“An Aboriginal midden,” explained Julia, “is sort of a really old rubbish tip. It took thousands of years to build up, just by people dropping shells in the same place. That’s what those white things are.”
“But what about the red dirt?”
“Oh, that,” whispered Julia, her eyes widening in mock fear. “The dirt is the remains of old, old bones.”
“Maybe I don’t want to go up there after all,” said Paul, echoing Julia’s tone of mock fear. Deep inside though, he was a little frightened. The Midden looked quite safe in the bright sunlight, but at night, it could easily be a different, more chilling place.
“Let’s go then,” shouted Julia, springing to her feet and bounding up towards the Midden. Not quite so eager, Paul slowly got to his feet and walked after her.
It took several minutes to climb to the top, as the shell fragments cut their bare feet, making it like walking across a field of broken glass. Still, it was possible to thread a precarious path through the shell patches by keeping to the sections of plain red earth.
On top of the Midden, the sea breeze was much stronger and the scent of salt was heavy in the air. From their vantage point, they could see clearly for kilometres, both to the north and south. With their newly extended horizon, an ocean-racing yacht had just become visible out to sea.
“The Sydney to Hobart race goes by here,” said Paul, watching the yacht’s spinnaker billow out to catch a sudden breeze. “We might see them go by if we stay long enough.”
“Hey, I’ve found a nest!” cried Julia, who had started exploring the irregular bumps and hollows at the top of the Midden. Paul didn’t come at once, so Julia re-emerged from her hollow and dragged him round to see her find.
The nest, if it was one, measured a good two metres in diameter, and was made of loosely woven sticks and dried mud. It was empty, save for a single ball of feathers about half a metre wide. Paul looked at it curiously, noticing that some of the feathers were longer than his arm and very, very black.
“Julia, what sort of bird makes a nest like this?”
“Oh, some sort of sea eagle,” replied Julia, who was poking at the ball of feathers. She found a scrap of brightly coloured cloth and eagerly began to take the ball apart to find whatever might be inside.
“Sea eagles don’t have black feathers,” said Paul. “Anyway, this bird must be a lot bigger than a sea eagle.”
“Must be a wedge-tailed eagle then. They’re the biggest birds in Australia. Everyone knows that!”
“I think we ought to go,” said Paul, a chill fear suddenly creeping up the back of his neck. As he spoke, the sun went behind a large black cloud that had sneaked in from the west. Almost instantly, the Midden was dark, the summer heat suddenly absent.
“I’ll go when I find out what’s in this,” replied Julia, ripping feathers from the ball. “I think it’s some sort of doll.”
“Who cares?” shouted Paul. “This place isn’t safe. Let’s go!”
Julia ignored him and continued to pull feathers from the ball. Already she had uncovered a hand made from shiny pink cloth and was pulling free a head.
In the twilight created by the cloud, a darker shadow swept across the nest, accompanied by a cawing shriek, horrifyingly loud. Instinctively, Paul looked up, and screamed. Hovering above them was a giant crow, its wings beating down a ferocious wind.
“Come on!” shouted Paul, holding a hand over his eyes to keep out the swirling dust. With the other, he grabbed Julia and tried to pull her away from the nest.
“No!” cried Julia, pushing him away. “I’ve almost got it!”
Overhead the crow screamed and dropped like a stone, landing directly in front of Paul, who grabbed Julia. Both of them tumbled over backwards. The giant crow lunged forward as they fell, its vicious beak jabbing through the air, missing them by centimetres.
Lying on his back, Paul looked up into the crow’s black eyes, glittering above the long, lethal beak. He saw the sudden spark of calculation as the crow decided who it was going to skewer.
The beak flashed through the air straight at Julia, but at the same instant, she pulled the rag doll free of the last remaining feathers. The crow disappeared in mid-lunge, leaving only an impotent shadow. Even that faded as the sunlight splashed on to the Midden, now no longer obscured by the black cloud.
“Look,” said Julia, holding up the doll. “She’s beautiful.”
Paul looked at it, bemused, still half expecting the crow to come back. He saw an old rag doll in fairly good condition. It seemed unexceptional, save for the face, which to him looked malign and thoroughly evil. Its eyes were made of black-pupilled greenstone and seemed to follow him with an uncanny interest.
“It’s evil!” exclaimed Paul, unable to believe his sister had become entranced by such a horrific thing. She hadn’t even said anything about the giant crow and now only had eyes for a grotesque doll.
“No, she isn’t!” snapped Julia, clutching the doll to her and getting to her feet. “Her name is…her name is…”
“The Ragwitch,” intoned a voice in Paul’s mind, like the bass boom of a warning bell.
“Her name is Sylvie,” said Julia, kissing it on the forehead. “Yes – I shall call her Sylvie.”
As Julia kissed the rag doll, Paul thought he almost saw it curl a lip in satisfaction. He blinked–the doll’s lips were unmoving, sewn into a perpetual smile.
Their walk back to the house felt strange to Paul. Normally, Julia skipped ahead, shouting at him to come and look at things, or just to catch up. Now she lagged behind, clutching the rag doll, hardly looking to left or right.
Crossing over from beach to grass, Paul felt more cheerful. They were almost at their house, and surely his parents would notice Julia’s odd behaviour; and they wouldn’t approve of picking up a strange doll from the beach, particularly if he told them about the giant crow.
But he didn’t. Within the first ten minutes, Paul knew that his mother couldn’t see the rag doll. She’d even straightened Julia’s shirt without paying any attention to the doll cradled in the girl’s arms. If she couldn’t see the doll, his businesslike father didn’t have a hope. And Julia’s behaviour was put down to tiredness–normal after the first day’s holiday at the beach.
“What about me?” Paul wanted to ask. “I’m not tired! Anyway, Julia never gets tired!”
But he knew that they wouldn’t understand this simple logic. After all, they had a logic of their own. If Julia was tired, then Paul must be even more tired–so both of them would go to bed early.
Instead of going to bed and trying to forget his troubles, Paul went over to Julia’s room. She was lying in bed, whispering to the doll. She didn’t notice Paul until he spoke.
“Julia,” Paul said anxiously, “Mum and Dad can’t see your doll.”
“I know,” replied Julia smugly, looking up from the doll.
“She told me that they wouldn’t. You shouldn’t be able to either, you know.”
“Well, I can see it!” cried Paul angrily. “And I don’t like it. It’s evil and horrible, and it’s making you go all strange!”
Julia was silent for a second, then she looked into the doll’s black-pupilled eyes. They seemed to sparkle with their own dark flame, telling her what to do.
“Goodnight, Paul,” Julia said remotely. “Please turn the light off when you go.”
“No,” said Paul. “The doll told you to say that. You can see it in its eyes. Throw it away, Julia!”
Julia shivered, and Paul saw a tremor pass across her face. Slowly, she began to turn her head back to the Ragwitch, drawn to the black-glinting eyes. Horrified, Paul dashed forward to grab it, to throw it away–anywhere away from Julia.
But when he touched the doll, it spat aloud and huddled closer to Julia, twining its three-fingered hands through her hair. And a chill voice burst into Paul’s head, hurting the inside of his ears and somehow cutting at his mind.
“I am the Ragwitch!” screamed the voice in his head. “Your sister is nothing–she is only part of ME!”
With that “ME!”, the Ragwitch screamed again, still inside Paul’s head. He felt his arms stiffen, the muscles tensing, and suddenly he felt himself being hurled backwards, without control, to land sprawling against the door. Desperately, he tried to get his hands to obey him, but they crept up the door towards the light-switch, and then, with a frenzied twitch, flicked off the lights.
In the darkness, the Ragwitch spoke again, but this time the voice was real–and it came from Julia. Low and hissing, it crawled about Paul, sending shivers from his stomach out along his spine.
“Leave, boy. What can you do against my power? Your sister is mine and MINE ALONE!”
Paul shuddered under the impact of the voice and felt tears start in his eyes. The voice got into his head, and again his hands were moving, under Her control. Slowly, his hand turned the doorknob and his legs began shuffling him out, away from Julia, out of the darkness and into the light.
“No,” said Julia, in her normal, everyday voice. She sat up in bed and looked straight at Paul. A shaft of light from the open door caught her face, and as their eyes met, Paul felt his muscles relax. Hesitantly, he tried to move and found himself free of Her control.
“She wants to take me somewhere,” whispered Julia, her face contorting under some great, unseen pressure. “Paul, you must…She wants to take me to…”
Looking into Julia’s eyes, Paul saw them suddenly glow and change colour–a black wash floating out to cover the white. Slowly, the black coalesced around the pupil, and the white started to green over in exact duplication of the rag doll’s evil eyes.
Paul felt himself becoming drowsy, looking into those gleaming, black-pupilled eyes. They seemed to get bigger, become like lanterns…lanterns illuminating a ground far below, as he fell towards them…
“Run!” screamed Julia–the real Julia. “Paul! Run!”
Shocked free from the mesmeric eyes, Paul turned and ran, slamming the door behind him.
Paul spent the rest of the night half-awake, with the light on and his door open. Every time a board creaked, he felt a start of fear–but the house was old and prone to settling, and nothing stalked him through the night. His parents, normally guardians against fear, slept with an unnatural soundness and could not be woken.
At last, towards dawn, fear became weaker than exhaustion and Paul fell into a troubled sleep. He dreamt of giant black crows screaming in from the sky, only to turn into huge rag dolls, with black-pupilled eyes against green–eyes that grew larger and larger, and more menacing, filling the whole horizon with their glowing evil…
With a stifled scream, Paul fell out of bed, dragging the blankets with him. It took a few seconds for him to really wake up and his heart to slow its pounding. Bright, cheery sunlight filtered in around the curtains. Sleepily, Paul looked at the radio clock next to his bed. It said six o’clock – at least an hour too early to get up. Paul yawned and climbed back into bed, rearranging the blankets with a few kicks and half-hearted dragging motions.
He was just rearranging the pillow when he heard the front door close–the slight, snicking sound of someone easing the door shut as quietly as possible.
Paul knew it had to be Julia. His parents never woke up before eight. He felt an unpleasant butterfly in his stomach, remembering the events of the night before. And Julia’s words: “She wants to take me somewhere.”
“I’ll have to save her,” said Paul aloud, hoping the sound of his own voice would make him feel better. But it didn’t – it only made everything seem even scarier than before. He just didn’t know what to do. Julia was the one who knew what to do–Julia was the one who always knew, and now she was the problem.
Paul felt tears welling up in his eyes and a terrible feeling of hopelessness swept over him. What would Julia do, if it was me? he suddenly thought–and there was the answer. Julia wouldn’t abandon him, so he wouldn’t abandon her. He quickly threw on his clothes, laced his sandshoes and ran out of the house, not bothering to be quiet with the door.
There was no sign of Julia, but her tracks were easy to follow across the sand and down to the sea. Paul ran at first, but he soon slowed down. It was too tiring to run on sand.
But Julia hadn’t stopped at the sea. Turning along the coast, she was heading for the rocky spit–or the Midden. Paul thought he knew which one it would be. Grimly, he began to run again, up towards the Midden, the hill of ancient bones.
As Paul expected, Julia was there, kneeling near the giant crow’s nest, doing something with the sticks that it was made of. Paul could see no sign of the rag doll. Relieved, he sprinted up the last few metres, calling out, “Julia!”
Julia turned around–and Paul skidded to a stop in shock. He felt like he’d been winded, struck so hard he couldn’t breathe at all. For the person in front of him wasn’t Julia at all, but a hideous mixture of girl and doll: half flesh, half cloth, and the eyes and face had nothing of Julia left at all, only the evil features of the doll.
“Callach!” spat the Ragwitch, raising one three-fingered hand–and Paul was rooted to the spot: paralysed, save for his eyes, which darted from side to side, looking for escape. He wanted to close them, to not see whatever was going to happen, but his eyelids refused to move.
The Ragwitch laughed, a chilling cackle that sent a spark of fear right through Paul. Then She turned back to the nest and started to rearrange the sticks.
He had obviously been granted a slight reprieve. Paul watched the Ragwitch with some glimmerings of hope. She was taking the sticks out of the nest and making them into a sort of pyramid, breaking the tangled ring and giving it an ordered shape.
She worked quickly. In minutes the nest was no more and the pyramid was complete: a neat construction of sticks, as tall as Paul. He watched, fascinated, as the Ragwitch drew designs in the red earth around the pyramid–strange symbols that were all straight lines and nasty looking pictures, like some ancient form of writing.
She didn’t look at Paul until the writing was complete. Then She stood up, looming over him. Even in the short time since he’d first seen Her at the nest, She’d grown rapidly and was now at last two metres tall.
He noticed that She now had teeth as well–rows of thin, shark-like teeth, hideously out of place in that smiling, redlipped doll’s face.
She came closer and Paul shuddered, watching the teeth as She leant over him. But he made his eyes go out of focus–he wouldn’t look into Her eyes, not after the night before. Her breath struck his face, cold, and somehow smelling of darkness and fear. Paul stared his eyes into even more of a blur and waited to be killed.
Then the Ragwitch spoke, using Julia’s voice–a voice changed and tainted but still recognisably Julia’s.
“You will stand here for ever, boy, as a monument to those who would keep Me penned here. Alive, unmoving and wishing you were dead. Much like your sister. Yes, she still lives…but only inside Me!”
The Ragwitch laughed again and turned back to the pyramid of sticks. She extended Her three-fingered hand and began to chant: a rhythmic, dissonant series of words that rose and fell in a grating counterpoint, jarring Paul’s ears.
As She continued the chant, sparks started to form about Her hand. The bright red flecks of light danced around, forming a globe of flickering light about Her three fingers. Suddenly, the Ragwitch stopped chanting and the globe of sparks flew forward into the pyramid of sticks, which exploded into flame. As the red flames flickered up, Paul felt a rush of cold bursting out from the fire, as though the fire itself were a giant, living icicle.
The Ragwitch bent over and drew another sign in the red soil. The flames licked still higher and turned green at the tips, and a dull roaring filled the air, like a rushing wave. She stepped into the fire and turned to face Paul with Her arms outstretched. Paul saw that She was laughing again, but he could only hear the roaring and the cold blasting at him from Her magical pyre.
Then the flames blew sideways, almost out to Paul’s feet. Each tongue of flame was like the petal of a flower, with the Ragwitch in the middle, cupped like a dragonfly in a water lily. The flames flickered once, twice, and then snapped back in a blinding flash. The pyramid exploded, sending burning sticks flying into the air, some landing on Paul, to scar him with their icy flames.
There was no sign of the Ragwitch–and Paul found that he could move again. Numb from fear and disbelief, Paul’s first thoughts were of anger.
“You were wrong,” he shouted at the sky. “Your magic’s no good. I’m going to find You and get Julia back! You won’t get away from me!”
The shouting seemed to help a bit and Paul felt strangely confident. Carefully, he began to gather the still-burning sticks, rearranging them into a rough copy of the Ragwitch’s pyramid.
Together again, the sticks burnt heartily, washing Paul with cold. He looked at the red flames, had his second thoughts and copied the last sign he’d seen the Ragwitch draw. The flames turned green at the tips and the roaring sound began. Paul took a deep breath, screwed his eyes shut and stepped into the icy heart of the fire.
2. The Forest of the May Dancers The Sea Caves (#ulink_373cd65d-705a-5028-a41f-f3c8ac1f0325)
AVAGRANT WIND pushed leaves aside as it made an erratic progress through the forest, cooling the warm afternoon air. Birds called in the wind’s wake, hawking after insects that the sudden breeze had carried with it.
Paul felt the wind against his face, refreshing after the stabbing cold of the fire. This was no sea air, he knew, for it was heavy with the dank, green smell of trees. The light that crept through his slowly opening eyes was different too: a cool, diffuse light, filtered through a thousand layers of leaves.
Eyes fully opened, Paul looked about cautiously, already afraid of what he’d done and where he might be. All around him, great trees towered, their upper branches interlocking to block out the sky. Vines crept around their trunks, growing out among the lesser trees and bushes that struggled to survive in the shady half-light of the lower forest.
Something rustled in the undergrowth to Paul’s side, a slight noise, no more than a falling branch. Even so, he leapt away with a sudden surge of fright-born energy. But the noise faded and was lost in the silence of the trees.
Gingerly, Paul began to pick his way through the spiky undergrowth. He thought about looking for Julia, but there was obviously no one about. Worse, he couldn’t see the sun through the leafy canopy, though even if he could, he still wouldn’t know which direction to take.
“You have to know where you are to know where to go,” muttered Paul, mostly to hear his own voice. It sounded strange in the forest, a short break in the silence, soon gone and instantly forgotten. Did I even speak at all, wondered Paul, or just think loudly to myself?
After only a few metres, he came to a small clearing–a blanket-sized patch of grass and daisies, alone in the wilderness. Even that small distance had taken its toll. Shorts, while fine for the beach, were not the best clothing for thorn-laden undergrowth and spiked bushes. At least some of the scratches were from blackberries, Paul thought, comparing the purple stains on his fingers to the long red scratches on his legs. Starvation wouldn’t be an immediate problem, though he was already bored with a diet of blackberries.
Beyond the clearing, the forest grew even thicker: darker, more impenetrable and daunting. Reluctant to enter that darkness, Paul sat down in the brightest patch of greenish sunlight and thought about his predicament.
First, he thought, I am all alone in a forest. I have no idea where it is, as I got here by walking through a fire. My sister has been taken over by a magical rag doll and I have to do something about it.
But what? Julia was the one who had the ideas and knew what to do. Paul was a follower. He needed programming for something like this–he needed someone to give him instructions.
I wasn’t meant to be in impossible situations, Paul thought mournfully, eyeing the green walls that surrounded him.
“It’s not fair!” he shouted at the forest. But the trees absorbed the shout and it was gone. No one will come, said the darkness between the trees; you will wander the forest, alone until you die.
“No, I won’t,” Paul whispered, brushing away the morbid thoughts that swelled up from the back of his head. “I’ll find a path, and people, and Julia!” With this whisper, Paul summoned up some reserve of determination and got to his feet. Filled with resolve, he plunged forward into the dim forest.
An hour later, much of the resolve and determination had drained away. There was still no end to the forest and the light was getting dimmer. Cool breezes were no longer refreshing–they were just cool, and becoming cold. Worse, there were no more blackberries. Without their refreshing juice, Paul was drying out, his stamina fading as his throat parched.
But he could think of nothing else to do, so he kept on, dragging his scratched legs through more bushes and brambles, hoping to find another clearing or a path. Gradually, the light slipped away and the shadows steadily merged, shifting from grey to black.
The shadows at last became one and the forest was in true twilight, if only for a short time. Paul paused to look at the darkening sky and began to hear the noises of the forest night. Still he kept on, stumbling over the roots and vines he could no longer see. Panic was beginning to fill his mind and he could not think of stopping.
Suddenly, without notice, it was fully dark–a blackness so complete that Paul couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. Exhausted, he slipped to the ground, shivering between the two cradling arms of a giant root.
Everywhere there were subtle sounds: leaves crunching, twigs snapping–each tiny noise magnified by the total blackness. Paul’s heartbeat filled his ears, vibrating up through his cheekbones, a bass rhythm in counterpoint to the tenor sounds of something creeping through the night.
The noises became louder and Paul stopped breathing, holding a hand over his mouth and nose. Whatever was making the noise was large, purposeful–and it was sniffing…searching…following his trail. Fear, sweat and blackberries, the scent of a hiding Paul.
The noise became footsteps, gentle, stalking footsteps, coming towards Paul. It knows I’m here, thought Paul desperately. It’s coming quietly, hoping to catch me asleep, or unawares, it’s…
Here! A sudden rush of footsteps, an abortive leap by Paul, and something cold and leathery wrapped round his legs. Ankles trapped, he crashed forward, face down on to the brown mulch of the forest floor.
More leathery tentacles wrapped round his wrists, and Paul’s mind gave way to fear and exhaustion, screaming back into the impenetrable fortress of unconsciousness.
Paul awoke in sunlight, with the vague feeling that he was lucky to be awake at all. He felt strange, cramped, and in an unfamiliar bed. Then, fully awake, he remembered the events of the night before. In the daylight he saw that the leathery tentacles were just some sort of rope, and they were the reason for his cramped awakening.
He was lying on a wooden bed that was a little like a shallow baby’s cot, with his hands and feet tied to the siderails. Surrounding the bed were earth walls–he was obviously in some sort of hole. High above, the sun beamed down, harsh and bright without any leafy interference. On the far side of the hole, a rope ladder hung down from the surface, which was three metres or so above, at least by Paul’s reckoning.
A prison hole, thought Paul gloomily, just like in the film on TV the week before last. Only in the film the bad guys ended up in the hole. But then, in the movies, heroes didn’t go running around weird forests in shorts, trainers and dirty white T-shirts. They also didn’t worry about things like food and drink, Paul thought, acutely aware of his dry and cracking lips, and the dull, rumbling complaint of his stomach.
He tried licking his lips, but there was no moisture in his mouth. Even tears were beyond his dried-out body and he found himself unable to cry. Closing his eyes, Paul thought he might as well die then and there, and save himself the trouble later on–when a few lumps of earth fell on to his chest.
“What were you doing in the forest?” a voice suddenly asked from somewhere above–behind Paul’s head, so he couldn’t see who it was. “And how did you get where you were?”
Paul’s mind snapped back from his despairing thoughts and he craned his neck back to see who was talking. But he couldn’t raise his body from the bed, and so couldn’t arch back far enough. He tried to answer, but only a dull croak came out.
“You wish for some water?” asked the voice, though not in a particularly compassionate tone. “Open your mouth.”
Paul did so immediately, and a cascade of water splashed over his face and up his nose. A little found his mouth. Despite being nearly drowned, it was a very welcome drink, revitalising Paul’s tiny store of determination, and lessening his feelings of despair.
“Now,” said the stern, deep voice. “What were you doing in our forest?”
“I didn’t mean anything,” croaked Paul. “I was just looking for my sister, and then…I was just looking for people.”
“People?” said the voice. “What sort of people were you looking for?”
Frightened by the voice, Paul didn’t answer for a moment. It sounded odd, murky and overlaid with rustling sounds, as if the speaker had to think before talking, and move his lips through a layer of leaves.
“I wanted to find someone. Anyone who could help me find Julia. A town, or a house, where I could find out where I was…where the forest is, I mean.”
“Julia, towns, houses,” muttered the voice, as if cataloguing items of interest. “You won’t find any of them here. And you say you don’t know where the forest is?”
“No, I don’t…is it…is it very far away from Australia?”
“Australia?” repeated the voice, with an odd pronunciation of the name–all drawn and twisted. “Perhaps you are even farther away than you can reckon. If it is of any use to you, this is the Forest of the May Dancers…I am a May Dancer,” added the voice, suddenly closer. “At least, that is what your kind call us.”
Paul felt a slight shudder go through his heart–a tremor of fear that passed through like a metal sliver. Footsteps crunched on the dirt above and Paul looked up.
He had expected to see some sort of man. But the May Dancer who looked down on him had only the shape of a human. He was covered in shifting patterns of leaves, that rustled and moved about his body, revealing skin the texture and colour of ancient bark. His head was also covered in leaves, which streamed behind him in a russet mane. And his eyes were those of an animal: the eyes of a cat carefully watching its prey.
Paul felt just like a mouse caught in the petrifying gaze of a hunter. Even the smallest movement might cause this strange creature to spring, to suddenly snap the tension.
“So,” said the May Dancer, half closing his fearsome eyes, “you have not seen our kind before.”
It was a statement rather than a question, Paul understood. Somehow, he had become the mouse that the cat couldn’t be bothered chasing.
“You have never seen a May Dancer before,” said the creature above, in a half-whisper, as if thinking aloud. “Therefore, you have never seen us dance on the borders of the forest. In fact, as you have never even heard of us, you cannot even be of this Kingdom. And you seek a…Julia.”
Without warning, the May Dancer leapt across the hole and was gone. Startled, Paul instinctively flexed his body to leap away–succeeding only in hurting his wrists and back, held by those leathery ropes.
The next few hours passed in a half-dream, marked by the slow drifting of clouds overhead. Faint sounds carried to him, the noises of the forest: strange bird-calls, and occasionally the heavier thumping of something larger passing nearby. From all this, Paul assumed that he was still in the forest, though the clear sky above indicated a large clearing.
My mid-afternoon, the sun was high above the hole. Paul lay beneath a layer of sunshine with only his feet in shadow, unable to look up because of the glare. The sun made him tired, despite his hunger, and he began to slowly drift off into a nightmarish sleep.
When he awoke, the hole was in darkness, though it was not cold. There were slight sounds all about the hole, sounds that might have been footsteps or muffled whispers…sounds that Paul almost heard and then wondered if he’d imagined them.
Then the May Dancer spoke again. “We have talked of you among those of our people here, and you are to say more. Questions will be asked and you will answer them. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Paul. “Yes–anything you like.”
Another Dancer, farther from the hole, asked the first question, in a softer, stranger voice than the original May Dancer. The words seemed to be more of a wind song than speech and Paul couldn’t understand it, being mesmerised by the lilting tone, rather than listening. The first May Dancer repeated the question: “How did you come to be in the forest?”
“I was following my sister,” replied Paul. He wasn’t sure how he’d come to the forest himself “Her and that horrible doll. They’d built a sort of fire–and then they just disappeared. The fire was sort of scattered, but I rebuilt it and jumped through–and I was in the forest. I didn’t mean to be there–I was just trying to find Julia.”
“Enough,” interrupted the May Dancer. Paul listened to him talking to the others, whispers like wind in the reeds, a tune played by the earth rather than by man. It was rather eerie, he thought, listening to the long, sighing notes in the darkness. Only then did Paul notice that there were no stars–none at all in the vast expanse of the black sky.
“Why did your sister build this fire?” asked the May Dancer, his voice loud above the whisperings.
“I don’t know,” replied Paul, trying to make out the May Dancer’s form above him. “It wasn’t really her. I mean it was her building the fire, but she’d been taken over. The doll had her under its control.” Paul thought back to the Midden, and the words Julia had spat at him in another voice. “The doll spoke to me before it…they jumped in the fire. It talked of being imprisoned and it called itself…the Ragwitch.”
“The Ragwitch,” echoed the May Dancer, the words twisting into a screaming wind, to be picked up by the other Dancers and made into a raging shout. A shout of anger and hatred, but also a shout of ancient fear. The Dancers were moving as well, no longer silently gathered around the prison hole. Branches snapped and crackled, the ground thudded with their heavy, stamping footsteps. Paul closed his eyes and turned his head to the side, blocking the sound from at least one ear. The noise above was like a violent storm, filling the darkness with threats and danger–the sounds heard by people found crushed by falling trees or struck by lightning during a thunderstorm.
Slowly, the noises died. The May Dancers crept back to the hole, drained of noise, if not the fear and anger. Paul listened to their whisperings again, tense, waiting for them to decide his fate. They seemed to be arguing in some fashion, for there were many interruptions and changes of tone–but there was no foot-stamping anger, nor the sudden violence of their shouting.
A few stars appeared in the sky. Paul watched them spring into sight and dimly saw the ragged edge of the long black cloud that had cloaked them. The cloud was blowing north and more stars began to sparkle, lightening the sky.
The May Dancer leant over to speak again and Paul saw a dim silhouette, edged with starlight. Past him, Paul could vaguely make out “human” shapes, blacker than the darkness behind them. They moved slightly all the time, shifting positions to no apparent pattern or purpose.
“We have decided to release you,” the May Dancer said flatly. “You will be taken to the edge of the forest and from there you can go where you will–though you must not come here again.”
Paul nodded dumbly, unable to speak. They were going to let him go and the forest was the last place he’d ever go back to! But he was still wary of the May Dancers. They’d captured him and tied him up, and now they were going to let him go–just like that. But none of it made any sense! Why bother to tie him up if they were going to let him go all along?
The May Dancer dropping into the hole made Paul start, then he relaxed as his bonds were untied. It was odd to see the leafy Dancer so close—the smell of him was like trees newly washed in a summer storm.
Blood rushed into Paul’s hands and feet so quickly he yelped and bent to massage his ankles. A second later, a leafy hand covered his eyes, leaving behind two large green leaves which totally blocked his sight.
“Hey,” exclaimed Paul, letting go of his ankles to feel his eyes. “What are you doing to my eyes?”
“It is a law,” replied the May Dancer, picking up Paul and easily hoisting him on to his shoulder. “No one of your kind is allowed to see us or the forest, save at our dances.”
“But I’ve already seen you…” said Paul. “I mean, just briefly–I didn’t really see anything…”
“You saw enough,” said the Dancer. “But you are only a child and our Laws are not strict for children of any folk. Also, there is the matter of your arrival and your purpose…It is better that we do not interfere…”
The May Dancer stopped talking and Paul felt himself tip sideways as they climbed over the edge of the hole. He could dimly see the starlight though his leaf-blindfold, and when it suddenly became dark, he guessed they were deep in the forest–a guess made easier by the crackling of leaves and twigs underfoot.
An hour later, Paul was eagerly waiting for the leaves and twigs to stop crackling and the May Dancer to stop his steady, stomach-bruising stride. Paul had an awfully cramped leg and his position was several degrees from comfortable.
At last the May Dancer stopped and lowered Paul on to the ground–face down. The leaves fell from his eyes and he rolled over to look up into the night. Ahead, the moon had just risen to illuminate the open lands beyond the forest.
Far to the north of the Forest of the May Dancers, the sea beat against the cliffs and dark waves foamed into deep caves–the Sea Caves, ancient home of many of the Ragwitch’s evil-hearted minions.
In a black pool, far underground, the water seethed and bubbled, and the air above it grew suddenly chill. A red light filled the cave, banishing the darkness of centuries. The light grew brighter, and then the Ragwitch appeared in the pool, Her arms still outstretched, the eversmiling mouth still chanting. She had lost all trace of Julia’s form and was now only a gross parody of a rag doll. She was taller than a man, with huge bulging arms and legs that leaked straw. Her painted face appeared even more malign in its new proportions.
Floating easily in the pool, She looked around the cave and laughed–the chilling cackle that had scared Paul and thousands of others over her grim past. Still cackling, She hauled herself up on a ledge and took stock of Her surroundings.
Julia woke with a start, suddenly feeling that she was late for something. She sat up sleepily, opening her eyes–to see nothing but absolute blackness. Everything was black, totally black, and for a second Julia panicked, thinking she’d been struck blind. Then she remembered previous mornings, of waking up before dawn with the curtains tightly closed against any light that might be outside.
Giggling a little nervously, Julia reached down to throw off her blankets–and somersaulted. Just by reaching forward–but it was a slow somersault, like being underwater. Forgetting to be scared, Julia somersaulted again, and then did a few corkscrews ending with a flip. She seemed to be suspended in something like water, but it was stiffer, less fluid–like glue. And she could still breathe.
Then Julia remembered the Ragwitch.
“Oh, Paul,” whispered Julia. “How could I be so stupid?”
A dull rumble, like distant laughter, punctuated her whisper and, at the same time, Julia caught sight of a small spark of light, like a candle in a distant window. As it was the only thing visible in the blackness, Julia headed for it, breaststroking through the strange atmosphere.
Slowly, the light became brighter and Julia saw that it was some sort of globe. It seemed to produce the light itself, in irregular flashes–occasionally shifting through the spectrum, but always coming back to a clear white light.
Julia circled it, delighting in the light that made her new environment so clear and beautiful. She flipped end over end with ease, breaking into a swan dive to float slowly down past the globe. An eddy in the fluid pushed her close to the globe and, without thinking, she touched it.
Instantly, all was black again and the fluid suddenly went cold. A voice came to her mind, chill and biting–the voice of the Ragwitch.
“Ah–you have found your way to the globe. But where do you think you are, little Julia?”
“I don’t know,” shouted Julia, half-angry, but afraid to show this to the awful creature who spoke into her mind.
“You are inside Me,” whispered the Ragwitch maliciously. “Your essence has been consumed. But I will let you live a little longer, for My amusement…and other things. Perhaps they will amuse you too, My little Julia, who loves her dolls. Look into the globe…”
Julia promptly somersaulted away, deciding not to do anything the Ragwitch wanted–though she felt more scared than ever. But even as she straightened out to swim away, a force gripped her, holding fiercely to the muscles in her arms and legs, twisting them back and forth, rippling them spastically under the skin. Then with a sudden wrench, her head twisted back towards the globe, and the rest of her body followed painfully.
Julia closed her eyes, but the thing inside pushed them open, making her look at the globe. Again, Julia forced them closed, only to have her own hands rise up to keep them prized open. Open–and looking directly into the swirling colours of the globe, colours that seemed to swarm out, enveloping her in a mist, suddenly going from rainbow-coloured to a dull, choking grey.
It swept her up and dashed her down into the globe. Falling, she felt her body become weightless–and then nonexistent. Without any physical sensations at all, Julia fell into darkness.
What might have been days or years later, Julia felt her senses returning. She could feel pain and sense a glimmer of light emanating from somewhere. But her body felt strange and cumbersome, and her lips felt cold and leathery to her clumsy tongue.
Hesitantly, she opened her eyes, letting them adjust to the light. They hurt at first, but slowly came into focus. She seemed to be in a rocky cave which was bathed in a dim reddish light. Eagerly, Julia looked around, hope welling up inside her. Escape from the Ragwitch?
Then she took a step forward and, looking down, saw her feet–long, leathery feet, that somehow seemed to be stitched and were leaking a yellow, wet, straw stuffing…
Julia’s scream was the first and last time she had control of the Ragwitch’s mouth. Even as it echoed, it was overlaid with a grim cackle and Julia was paralysed. She could still see, and hear, and feel, but could no longer move even the most insignificant muscle.
“For your amusement,” said the Ragwitch out into the cave, though it was solely for Julia to hear. “For your amusement I will let you see through My eyes, hear through My ears, feel what I touch. But you will never inhabit your body again.” Then the Ragwitch laughed, an obscene cackle, echoing out in the dark underground chamber. Still laughing, She began to run through the black tunnels, heading upwards towards the light.
3. Awqinn / The Spire (#ulink_9041df1f-49ca-58f4-b2b2-5f011b3fc392)
AFTER THE MAY Dancer dumped him on the edge of the forest, Paul spent an uncomfortable few hours trying to sleep in a leaf-filled hollow, but he kept waking at the slightest noise, so he spent the remainder of the night awake and listening. Fortunately, dawn came before too long, promising something better than a cold hollow frequented by ants.
In the bright new sunlight, Paul saw that the lands ahead were clear and obviously populated. Green fields stretched as far as he could see, gently climbing over small hills, or around the occasional small wood or copse–each full of trees quite different from those in the dark, crowded forest.
The forest lay quite high on the hill behind him, so Paul went straight down, delighting in the ability to run free of vines and clinging roots. Every now and then, a rough stone wall barred his progress–proof that these pleasant green hills were inhabited.
Then, as if further proof were needed, Paul spotted a flock of sheep and, more importantly, a shepherd. Eagerly, he ran towards them–before suddenly faltering. What if the shepherd were another creature, like the May Dancers, or possibly something worse? Paul quickly turned back to the nearest stone wall and hid near where the shepherd and his flock should pass.
As they drew closer, his fear lessened. The shepherd wore a rough wool cloak, but the hood was pushed well back, revealing the cheerful, straggly-bearded face of an old man, who was whistling between his two front teeth–a pleasant tune, that sounded a little like Greensleeves.
Paul needed no more, so he stood up and said, “Hello!”
The shepherd looked up and stopped whistling. He looked dumbfounded by Paul’s sudden appearance and made no move to speak–or indeed, to do anything.
“Hello,” said Paul, giving him a small wave. This seemed to puzzle the shepherd even more. He looked over his shoulder once, then looked past Paul, up to the forest, before answering, and his hand fell to the cudgel thrust through his belt.
“Hello,” said the shepherd warily. “What are you doing up here?”
“Nothing,” replied Paul. “I just came down–out of the forest…”
“The forest!” interrupted the shepherd, quickly making a strange sign with thumb and forefinger against his head. “What were you doing in the forest? You didn’t upset the May Dancers?”
“No…” said Paul hesitantly, somewhat taken aback by the old man’s vehemence. “I don’t think so. They let me go. One of them even carried me out of the forest–he dropped me just up there, at the top of the hill.”
The shepherd appeared quite relieved at this and Paul noticed that he was no longer fingering the thick wooden cudgel at his side.
“That is well. The May Dancers are strange folk, best left undisturbed by the likes of us. Which village are you from, lad–and where did you get your strange garments?”
“I’m not from any village,” Paul said, wishing that he was from somewhere nearby. He fingered the dirty hem of his Tshirt and added, “And these are my normal clothes.”
“Not from any village?” the shepherd asked, backing off and making the sign with his thumb and forefinger again. “Carried here by the May Dancers…”
He began to back off still further, so Paul tried to put him at ease. “I’m only a boy–I was just looking for my sister. It’s hard to explain…but I’d never even heard of the May Dancers before last night. Honest!”
“Just a boy,” repeated the shepherd, as if trying to convince himself this was true. “You’re not…a creature from the north?”
“No. I’m a normal boy. It’s just that strange things have been happening…” Paul looked back over his shoulder, up at the brooding forest. Suddenly, the full enormity of it all became too much. He was alone in a strange world populated by strange creatures and suspicious old men, and worst of all, there was no Julia to tell him what to do. Unable to help it, he sat down on the stone wall and began to cry, brushing away the tears with the back of a dirty hand.
“Here, then,” said the shepherd, somewhat surprised. “I meant no harm. Some strange folk sometimes cross near the forest–some of them might even take the shape of a young lad. But tears are beyond that sort…I think.” The shepherd looked at his flock for a second, and then at the sky, where the sun was just climbing up to its morning brilliance. “You’d best come with me, now. We’ll start back down to the village. The sheep’ll just have to eat as best they can on the way.”
Paul looked up and, taking a deep breath, said (almost steadily), “Thank you. I’m sorry to make your sheep go hungry.”
“Nay, lad,” said the shepherd. “I’ve a bit of fodder for them at home, and they’ll be up here tomorrow for a week. Here–you go over there and we’ll have ’em turned around before they knows it.”
On the way down to the village, the shepherd told Paul that his name was Malgar, commonly known as Malgar the Shepherd, as there were two other (unrelated) Malgars in the village of Awginn-on-Awgaer.
Paul listened carefully, and asked several questions about the village and the surrounding lands. Malgar answered easily and gave no sign that he knew Paul was a stranger, not only to the village, but to the whole country.
He explained that Awginn lay in the Canton of Sasterisk, a large town to the northeast. This, with twelve other Cantons, made up the Kingdom of Yendre. It was more a loose collection of states than a Kingdom, except in times of war and trouble, of which the country had been free for many years. Malgar knew of no other lands, except for the wild country to the north, in which no people dwelt.
Paul had already guessed that he had been taken to another world by the Ragwitch’s fire and was now completely sure he wasn’t anywhere on Earth. He had never heard of the places Malgar talked of, and the May Dancers were obviously not something he had dreamt up, since Malgar knew they lived in the forest. Paul felt sick at the thought that he was impossibly far from home. Running off to rescue Julia seemed like the dumbest thing he’d ever done.
It took several hours to walk down the gently sloping fields and through countless gates in the low stone fences. They saw a few other shepherds and their flocks, but Malgar took paths away from them, as if he didn’t want Paul to meet them. And still they kept on walking, till Paul was staggering along behind, despairing of ever reaching the village, having a rest and getting something to eat beyond a piece of Malgar’s bread and cheese. He was half dreaming of water beds and roast chicken, when Malgar stopped and pointed out a stand of oaks ahead. Between them, and some distance away, Paul saw the dark blue strip of a river.
“The Awgaer,” said Malgar. “Many boats pass along it, from Sasterisk down to the sea.”
“It doesn’t look wide enough for boats,” said Paul in a small, worn-out voice. “It must only be ten metres wide at the most. You couldn’t get much of a boat down that, surely?”
“This is one of the narrow sections, lad. It widens out before and after this point. But you are right. The river folk use special craft of narrow beam and shallow draught, which they pole along at a great pace. Strange people, but kindly enough. Come–the village is only a little way along the river.”
In fact, Malgar’s “little way” was still at least a kilometre. Despite his hunger pangs, Paul was half asleep by the time they got there–so much so that he hardly looked at the neat, whitewashed stone cottages, with their yellow thatched roofs. It wasn’t until they stood in the village square that he lifted his head to gaze about through eyes heavy with exhaustion.
In front of him, Malgar stood frowning, obviously in deep thought. Past Malgar stood a large building with a faded inn sign hanging above the door–a green head, garlanded with yellow flowers.
“Now we’re here,” said Malgar, “I don’t rightly know what to do with you. I have to get these sheep home, but it’s still half a league to my stead.” He scratched his head again and cast a slightly wistful glance at the inn, before deciding. “Well, best you come with me, lad. Can you still walk?”
Paul nodded, unenthusiastic about the prospect of walking further, and started to stand up, when a man stepped up from behind him and laid a hand on Malgar’s shoulder.
“Going where, Malgar Sheep-herder?”
Malgar turned to face the man and inclined his head in a sort of half-bow. Paul wondered why he did that–the other man didn’t look much different. He was dressed in much the same way as Malgar, except he had a short dagger hanging from his belt rather than a bog-oak cudgel. He was younger too, black-haired, with a long drooping moustache and sharp blue eyes.
“To tell you the truth, Sir Aleyne,” said Malgar, with some relief, “I’m glad you’re here.” Rapidly, he outlined how he’d found Paul, and the small amount the boy had told him about the May Dancers, his lost sister and his home.
Aleyne listened carefully, occasionally glancing towards Paul. When Malgar had finished, he said, “Take your sheep home, Malgar. I will take the boy. To the inn, for rest–and then, I think, to Rhysamarn.”
“Rhysamarn?” asked Malgar, obviously upset. “You really think the boy should go there?”
“I would say it is the only place for him,” replied Aleyne. He looked down at Paul, who had fallen asleep against a large, conveniently resting sheep. Paul was much the worse for wear for his adventures and Aleyne saw only a short, slightly plump boy of eleven or so, covered in dirt–a strange appearance for a visitor from other lands.
“He will sleep through this afternoon and night, I think,” continued Aleyne. “And perhaps tomorrow. I shall take him to Rhysamarn myself, the day after. You have done well, Malgar.”
Malgar looked down on the boy anxiously. “He seems a nice enough lad. He won’t come to any…harm…on Rhysamarn?”
Aleyne smiled and picked Paul up, easily cradling him in his strong arms. “It is the Mountain of the Wise, Malgar – not some cavern of the Ragwitch.”
“The Ragwitch…” muttered Paul in his sleep. Aleyne looked down and saw Paul grimace as he spoke, teeth clenched and lips drawing back in a feral snarl.
“Yes,” he said, as Malgar made the sign against evil magic. “Definitely, he must go to Rhysamarn.”
As the night inked into the sky, the Ragwitch climbed out of the cave mouth and surveyed Her realm. Awestricken, Julia watched through the Ragwitch’s eyes, as She surveyed the great crescent-shaped bay that curved around them. The Ragwitch stood on a slab of rock which thrust out high above the sea. Below this slab and right around the bay, other caves and holes stood out darkly against the grey stone. The sun lay low in the west, already beginning to set–and with the passing of the light, the caves became darker and the sea went from blue to deepest black. Down below, the pounding of the surf in the deep caves became an ominous drumbeat.
Then the Ragwitch screamed, a long, chilling scream that rose and fell with the rhythm of the surf Deep inside the Ragwitch’s mind, Julia felt what it was like to deliver that scream–the exultation of freedom, the flexing of power and worst of all…the expectation of an answer.
At first, silence greeted the Ragwitch’s scream, the silence of an audience just before the applause. But the answering calls were not long in coming: the dull rumblings of vast creatures, woken far beneath the earth, and the shrill whistlings of other beings closer to hand.
“You see, My little Julia,” whispered the Ragwitch, Her leathery lips barely moving. “My servants remember My power well–even in this shape, they recognise Me! They still come when I call. You will like them.”
“No,” said Julia defiantly. She was absolutely sure that the things that made those noises would not be likeable at all.
“Yes,” murmured the Ragwitch. “You will like them. Eventually.”
She turned to the cliff and began to climb up towards the top. Julia noticed that there was some sort of path or eroded staircase—whichever it was, the Ragwitch seemed to know every turn and rise, neatly avoiding places where the cliff had fallen away. Below them, the screams and cries diminished to be replaced by the sounds of movement: sounds of scraping claws and footfalls that did not sound human.
Locked within the Ragwitch’s mind, Julia kept trying to turn her head–a reflex to see those things behind her. But while she knew her head should turn, it could not: Julia’s eyes were only those of the Ragwitch, and they were intent on the path ahead.
Eventually, the huge leathery form of the Ragwitch reached the top of the cliff, a flat expanse of low shrubs and grasses, ill-lit in the last red light of the sun. The Ragwitch set off purposefully, pausing only to thrust back some of the yellow stuffing that leaked from Her side. Once again, She did not look back.
Crossing this flat, monotonous terrain seemed to take hours and Julia dozed–asleep without closing her eyes, which were the Ragwitch’s, and so never shut. A dream-like pattern of images filled her mind: loping through this dull land, then hurrying towards a rocky spire, a tower of twisted, volcanic rock which sparkled even in the starlight. The Ragwitch went to the spire and began to climb…tirelessly, hand over hand, up to the very pinnacle, up to the blackest part of the night sky.
Julia woke up in slow stages, as though she were swimming up from the bottom of a deep pool. The Ragwitch was now sitting on some sort of throne carved out of the glassy rock. Runes of red gold ran along the arms, disappearing down the front of the throne.
Then the Ragwitch looked down–and Julia felt her mind twitch, trying to tell non-existent hands to grab hold of something before she fell…for the throne was on the very peak of the spire she had thought was a waking dream. The throne rested hundreds of metres up, on the thin needlepoint of the spire’s peak, with nothing else about it, no flat place nor protective railing.
The Ragwitch looked up again, tilting Her head back, and Julia felt Her lips creaking back across the snail-flesh gums, the mouth opening to scream again. The Calling Scream, the Voice of Summoning, welled up from the recesses of the Ragwitch’s dark power, high on Her ancient throne that men had called the Spire.
This time, Julia screamed as well, a thin, mental shriek that was swallowed up by the Ragwitch’s own great roar. But it was there–a sign of Julia’s resistance to her captor.
As the Calling Scream died away, the moon’s first light crept across the ground. It slowly inched forward, crossing the sparkling rock of the Spire, to light up the ground before it: a sunken bowl of that same glassy, lifeless rock. But long ago the rock had been shaped into tiers of seats, which wound erratically around and around in a giant spiral, as though shaped by a drunken architect.
Then the Ragwitch’s Calling Scream was answered from the Terrace-Hole below by bellows and screams, mad hyena-like laughter and shrill whistlings.
“Now you see them,” whispered the Ragwitch, Her thoughts battering at the silent Julia. “Do you like them?”
Julia didn’t answer, horrified at the sight of the creatures that thronged in the moonlight below. The Ragwitch smiled again and looked down at a particular group of followers.
Tall, sallow, humanoid in shape, they had patches of scale underlying their jaws and throats, and out-thrust upper jaws, with dog-like fangs made for rending flesh. Their arms were long and gibbon-like, ending in yellow-taloned hands. Their piggy, deep-set eyes looked up at the Ragwitch in adoration.
“The Gwarulch,” muttered the Ragwitch. “Sneaking beasts–hungry for meat, but not too eager to fight for it. Except in My service.
Julia shuddered, feeling the Ragwitch’s thoughts of blood and killing. And not just thoughts, but memories too. Stark, frightening images of past slaughters, the Ragwitch triumphant, feasting…
Julia screamed again, forcing the Ragwitch’s memories away. But still she could not close her eyes, and the Ragwitch looked down upon more of Her creatures, awaiting orders in the Terrace-Hole below.
“Angarling,” She told Julia, mentally pointing out a group of huge, pale white stones, roughly cut columns. Julia had taken them for statues or part of the rock terraces. Through the Ragwitch’s eyes and memory, she now saw that on each of the huge stones was the weathered carving of an ancient face–full of sorrow and torment, anger and evil, all etched into the white stone.
“Angarling!” shouted the Ragwitch, and the stones moved. Slowly at first, then more rapidly, they tramped to the base of the Spire. There they halted, and then came a great, welling boom which drowned out the cries of all the Ragwitch’s lesser servants.
A dark shadow suddenly fell across the Ragwitch’s face and Julia quivered, though no reflex of the Ragwitch moved. Her huge leathery head slowly tilted back, greasy yellow locks of dank hair falling around Her shoulders. Up above, a creature fluttered, its wings casting a shadow right across the throne.
“The Meepers,” whispered the Ragwitch.
It looks like a bat, thought Julia for an instant, but at the same time, she knew it did not. It had the wings and furry body of a bat, but the head was a fanged nightmare–a scaly mixture of piranha and serpent, with row upon row of gleaming teeth. And it was thirty times bigger than any bat, with wings that seemed wider than the sail on the yacht Julia had seen only the day before.
The Meeper straightened its wings and dropped past the Spire, falling away to the right. Others followed it, and the Ragwitch laughed as they hissed and bit at each other for their place in the line.
Several hundred of the Meepers flew past in what seemed like several hours. Julia soon got more bored than frightened, and found that she could peer out of the corners of “her” eyes–perhaps even seeing things the Ragwitch could not. The creatures below disturbed her less now, and she began to count them–with a growing feeling of unease. She counted (or guessed at) over a thousand Gwarulch, at least a hundred of the statue-like Angarling and many hundreds of Meepers. And the thoughts of the Ragwitch were of fire and blood, death and destruction…Julia hastily tried to do sums in her head, barricading her mind against the memories–particularly the eating…
“Gwarulch, Angarling and Meepers!” shouted the Ragwitch, Her voice sharp and malevolent, echoed everywhere by the black stone. “But where is Oroch? Who is Oroch to disdain Me when I stand upon My Spire?”
Down below, the Gwarulch shifted uneasily, muttering in their guttural language. Above, the Meepers flew in circles, angrily whistling at this Oroch who failed the Ragwitch. Only the Angarling were silent, white shapes impervious to any thoughts save the command of their Mistress.
“Again, I say,” spat the Ragwitch, “Oroch! Your Mistress calls!”
Inside the Spire, a rock cracked–and then another. Through the Ragwitch’s straw-stuffed feet, Julia felt the Spire shiver, and for a giddy second was certain She would fall–that they would fall.
Then the Spire steadied and a single block of stone fell from halfway up, to smash unnoticed among the ranks of the silent Angarling. Julia watched, transfixed, as a hand emerged from the hole–a barely recognisable hand, wrapped in what looked like tar-cloth, or linen soaked in treacle.
It was followed by another hand and then a head, a faceless, cloth-wrapped head, that tilted back and forth like a broken toy. Then it steadied and opened its mouth, a red, wet maw, stark and toothless against the black cloth.
“Oroch was trapped, Mistress,” the thing moaned. “Locked in the Spire I built for you. But their work could not keep me when You called.”
“Oroch,” said the Ragwitch with satisfaction. “Come to Me.”
The Ragwitch held out a single three-fingered hand, in gross parody of a handshake. She flexed Her fingers and Julia felt a thrill run through them, a spark of sudden power. Quick as that spark, Oroch was there, holding Her fingers with both his tar-black, bandaged hands. His legs scrabbled for a second, then he relaxed, swinging slightly from side to side. Julia marvelled at the Ragwitch’s strength, for Oroch was at least two metres tall, though thin and spindly.
“Your power is not diminished, oh Mistress,” gasped Oroch, his red maw panting.
“It is increased!” shouted the Ragwitch, suddenly throwing Oroch in the air and catching him as he hurtled back down. “Now that I have a body of undying cloth, it is increased!”
4. Gwarulch by Night / The Raqwitch Looks to the South (#ulink_2e521000-a4bb-5ddd-a34e-89f1899d4d23)
“THE AWE-GUH-AY-ER,” PAUL said once again, trying to match Aleyne’s pronunciation. The two of them sat at the prow of the River Daughter, which was rapidly making progress down that difficultly named river, aided by the current and the poling of Ennan and Amos, the brothers who owned the narrowboat.
As Aleyne had expected, Paul had slept through two nights and a day, waking only that morning, rested if no less anxious. They had immediately embarked on the River Daughter and the pair had spent the morning talking. Paul had spoken of his “adventures”, and of Julia and the Ragwitch; he’d also learnt that Aleyne was in fact Sir Aleyne, a Knight of the Court at Yendre–though from Aleyne’s description of what he did, he sounded more like a cross between a policeman and a park ranger, and he didn’t look at all like the knights in books or films. Aleyne had a particular love of the river Awgaer and spent much of his time on its waters, or in the villages that shared the river banks with the wildfowl and water rats.
“Perhaps you should just call it ‘the river’,” said Aleyne, laughing at Paul’s eighth attempt. “I hope you can do better with Rhysamarn–the Wise might refuse to see you if you can’t pronounce the name of their favourite mountain.”
“Really?” asked Paul, who was often taken in by Julia’s jokes, but Aleyne was already laughing, his black moustache quivering with each chuckle.
“No, lad–just my joke! But the Wise are strange, it’s true, and Rhysamarn is a strange mountain–or so they say.”
“You’ve never been there?”
“Well, I have almost been there,” replied Aleyne, “but I didn’t see the Wise. It was some years ago, when I was more foolish and rather vain. I thought to ask the Wise…well, I thought to gain some insight into procuring the love of a certain lady–a passing fancy, nothing more.”
“What happened?” asked Paul eagerly, hoping that Aleyne (who was looking rather sheepish) wouldn’t avoid the question and trail off into a completely different story.
“To tell the truth,” continued Aleyne, “I was halfway up the mountain when my horse brushed a tree and knocked down a wasps’ nest. The wasps chased me all the way down to the water trough at the Ascendant’s Inn, and my face was so stung I couldn’t go to Court for weeks–or see the lady.”
“Perhaps you did see the Wise after all,” laughed Amos, who had been listening at the stern. Ennan laughed too, till both had to pole hard to keep the narrowboat straight within the current.
“Maybe I did,” said Aleyne. “The lady in question did turn out to be rather different from what I had thought…”
“Yes, but why are you taking me to this Rhysamarn place?” asked Paul. “Will the Wise find my sister and take both of us back where we belong?”
“As to the first,” answered Aleyne, “only the Wise could possibly know what has become of your sister–especially if she has become mixed up with…the One from the North.”
Paul noticed that while Aleyne didn’t make the sign against witchcraft as often as old Malgar the Shepherd, he still did it occasionally–and he didn’t like using the Ragwitch’s name, now that he suspected She really did exist. “The One from the North” was the phrase he used to speak of the Ragwitch, or “Her”, with a hissing, audible capital “H”.
“And for the second,” Aleyne continued, “I have never heard of such a place as yours, with its…carz and Magics, so I suspect that if it does exist–and I believe you–the Wise will know of some way to get you back there.”
“I hope so,” replied Paul sadly. Relaxing in this boat was all very well, and safely exciting, but it was still the world of the May Dancers, their forest…and the Ragwitch. Paul wished the Ragwitch had taken him, rather than Julia, so his sister would be the one who had to look for him. Still, from what Aleyne had hinted at, being with the Ragwitch wouldn’t be very nice at all–maybe even scarier than the forest…
Paul slowly drifted off to sleep, one hand trailing over the side, occasionally brushing the water. Aleyne watched him as he turned and mumbled about his sister Julia, and how life just wasn’t fair.
When Paul awoke, it was early evening. The River Daughter was rocking gently, tied up against a jetty of old, greenish logs. Sitting up, Paul saw that the river was no longer narrow, but had widened into a majestic, slowmoving stretch of water at least a hundred metres wide. On either bank, open woodland sloped away from the river. To the west, yellow sunlight filtered down through the trees, the evening sun dipping down behind the upper parts of the wood. Paul watched sleepily as a bird flew up from the trees, crying plaintively as it rose higher into the greying sky.
“Ornware’s Wood,” said Aleyne, who had been sitting on the wharf “Not as old as the May Dancers’ forest, but much more pleasant. And the only creatures you should find here are hedge-pigs, deer, squirrels and suchlike.”
“No kangaroos?” asked Paul, half-heartedly. From the sound of it, they were going to have to walk through this wood, and it was still much like the May Dancers’ forest, no matter what Aleyne said.
“Kangaroos,” mused Aleyne (after Paul had described them). “No, I think there are none of those in Ornware’s Wood. But I have heard of animals like you describe, far to the south. Anyway, we must be going. There’s still an hour left of this half-light and we will camp not too far away.”
“OK,” replied Paul. “But where’s Ennan and Amos?”
Aleyne looked at the empty boat for a second, then answered, “They’ve gone to pay their respects to a…man…who holds power over the next stretch of the river.”
Paul wondered about Aleyne’s hesitation in describing the person the boatmen had gone to see. But Aleyne had already grabbed his pack and the smaller one he’d made up for Paul–though it seemed heavy enough to its bearer.
Half an hour later it seemed even heavier, although the going was easy and the wood pleasantly cool. Paul was glad when Aleyne finally stopped and dropped his pack against a gnarled old oak. Paul thankfully followed suit and sat down next to his temporarily eased burden.
“We shall camp here,” said Aleyne. “There’s a small stream beyond that clump of trees. It drains into the river and its water is clear and fresh. This will do very well; and from here it is a little less than a day to the Ascendant’s Inn at the foot of Rhysamarn.”
Paul looked glumly around the camp site. He didn’t like camping, particularly when there was no shower and toilet building nearby, nor a caravan in case it rained. Julia, of course, loved camping, though she normally didn’t get the chance if Paul had anything to do with it.
“Where’s our tent?” he asked Aleyne, as the latter opened up his pack and took out a small iron pot.
“Tent?” replied Aleyne, holding up the pot to the setting sun to look inside. “I have no tent–nor indeed a horse to carry such a heavy thing, all poles and cloth! I’ve a wool cloak, same as you’ll find in your pack. Good greasy wool will keep the weather out.”
“Oh,” said Paul, who hated the feel of wool, and didn’t like the sound of “greasy” wool. “Do you think it will rain?”
Aleyne cast an eye up at the darkening sky and said, “No clouds up there tonight. It might be cold, but it won’t rain.”
Paul looked up, noticing how dark the sky was becoming. Night seemed very close–and of a threatening blackness. Paul shivered and hastily opened his pack to find the wool cloak. Aleyne smiled and, putting the pot aside, began to gather sticks from a dead branch that had fallen nearby.
A few hours later Paul sat by the crackling fire, drinking soup that Aleyne had made in the pot, from salt-dried beef and herbs he’d gathered in the forest. Paul dreamily watched the sparks creeping up the side of the little pot to suddenly launch themselves into the air with a snap and crackle. Warm and content, he wrapped himself in his woollen cloak and fell asleep.
Across the fire, Aleyne started, as if disturbed by a sudden thought. He stood up, listened, then rapidly doused the fire, smothering it in dirt. With the fire gone, the night was once again complete. Aleyne listened in the darkness for a while, then lay down between the roots of the old oak. He didn’t wrap himself in his cloak and kept his dagger close at hand. As he fell into a wary sleep, an old memory crept into Aleyne’s mind of a picture in his father’s house: a picture of a distant ancestor, standing fully armed and armoured upon a battlefield, a dead North-Creature at his feet. Aleyne had always wondered why the artist had made him look more than a little afraid…
Paul awoke in darkness to find Aleyne crouched as his side, barely visible in the starlight. He opened his mouth, but Aleyne quickly put his hand over it, before leaning forward to whisper, “Do not speak normally. We must be quiet.”
Paul nodded. “Why?”
“There are creatures in the forest. I heard them earlier, in the distance, but now they are nearby. I think they are…dangerous and they seem to be hunting. Get up–we must leave now, before light.”
Paul nodded again and began to crawl towards his pack. Aleyne stopped him again and gestured to leave it. Taking the boy’s hand, he began to creep away, leaving his pack as well. Paul stumbled after him, still too sleepy to argue.
Several hundred metres and many scratches and bumps later, Paul felt Aleyne suddenly stop and kneel down, dragging Paul with him. Aleyne pointed to his ear and then back the way they had come. At first Paul heard nothing, then he caught a sort of snorting sound–and the jangle of metal. The old iron pot, realised Paul, probably being thrown against a tree. Whatever it was back there obviously had a bad temper.
Paul started to get up again, but Aleyne didn’t move, so he knelt back down. The snorting sounds were louder, and butterflies started in Paul’s stomach as he realised they were getting nearer. Then the snorts suddenly stopped, to be replaced by a long, high-pitched howl. With a sudden jerk, Aleyne leapt to his feet, dragging Paul with him.
“They’ve found our trail!” he shouted, careless of the noise. “Run!”
But Paul was already running, almost as Aleyne spoke. He knew this forest would turn out just as bad as the other one and had no desire to meet anything that howled like the thing behind them. Crashing through branches and stumbling over the uneven ground, Paul was unaware of Aleyne behind him, till he touched his shoulder, directing him to the right.
“This way,” shouted Aleyne. “It’s our only chance!”
“Can’t you fight them?” panted Paul, narrowly ducking an overhanging branch, a dim outline seem at the last moment.
“I don’t even know what they are,” replied Aleyne, stumbling behind him. “But if they’re what I think they are–no!”
“What do you think–ow!–they are?” asked Paul, panting for air. But Aleyne didn’t answer, only pushing him on from behind. The ground was rising steeply in front of them and the trees were becoming thicker, so Paul often had to use both hands to fend off branches. Oddly enough, the trees seemed to be in rows after a while, and the way became easier, almost like an overgrown road–though Paul was so short of breath he hardly noticed.
Then the howling began again, closer behind them, and Paul forgot about breathing. All his thoughts went into his legs, and into watching the way ahead in the dim, pre-dawn starlight. But no matter how fast he ran, the howling drew closer and closer, until Paul felt he had to look behind. A low branch chose this precise moment to get in the way of his foot and Paul went flying over into the leaf-littered ground. Aleyne checked in mid-stride and turned to face their pursuers, his pitiful dagger at the ready.
Paul quickly rolled over and looked back to see Aleyne silhouetted above him, the starlight reflecting on his blade. And there, in front of him, loomed a larger shadow, over two metres tall, with grossly overlong arms, and talons as long as knives, that seemed to crawl with shadows.
“Ornware!” shouted Aleyne, drawing his dagger across his thumb and then plunging it into the trunk of the nearest tree. “Ornware! Blood of mine, and Blood of Tree, on Ornware’s Road to Summon Thee!”
Nothing happened and their pursuer loped forward, making small grunting sounds. Aleyne stepped back before it, aware that it could kill him whenever it chose. Paul kept his eyes on the creature and started to slip back under the trees.
“Gwarulch,” whispered Aleyne, as the monster crept forward, stalking its prey.
As he spoke, the Gwarulch struck, an arm swinging across at throat level, talons extended for a killing slash. But Aleyne saw it coming. Ducking under the blow, he threw himself sideways under Paul’s tree as the Gwarulch leapt forward.
“You should have thrown the dagger at it!” shouted Paul, stumbling away as the Gwarulch burst through the branches. Aleyne didn’t answer, for the creature struck at him again–this time successfully, tearing open the front of his tunic and shallowly slicing his chest. He tried to dodge again, but the Gwarulch was too quick, backhanding him across the head. With the crack of branches, Aleyne fell to the forest floor, in front of Paul’s horrified gaze.
The Gwarulch looked at Paul with deep-set, piggy eyes–and pounced, talons extended. But Paul’s small size was to his advantage among the thick foliage; he slid between two large branches and the talons raked bark instead of flesh.
Despite this, Paul knew the Gwarulch would get him eventually. He desperately looked around for a branch or a stone, or any sort of weapon–and then he saw Aleyne’s dagger, still protruding from the tree. He leapt for it, as the Gwarulch leapt at him.
Paul’s hand fastened around the hilt and he half-turned, to draw and throw it, as the Gwarulch emerged from under the tree. Out of the tree-shadow, it was a hideous sight. Vaguely ape-like, its upper jaw protruded to show ripping fangs, and its eyes were piggy and lit with an evil intelligence. It eyed Paul with something like amusement and licked its lips in a very human gesture.
Paul vainly tugged at the dagger as the Gwarulch advanced, still licking its lips with a bluish, forked tongue. It reached out a taloned hand and, gripping Paul’s hand in its own, pulled the dagger out of the tree.
With his free hand, Paul punched the Gwarulch in the stomach, almost breaking his fingers on the thick, leathery flesh. It hurt him so much, he thought it couldn’t possibly have harmed the huge creature–when it gave a surprised sort of yelp and sank to its knees. Dragged down with it, Paul looked into its fading eyes as it toppled over, letting go of his hand.
Then he saw what had really killed it. A wooden spearshaft projected from its back, a thick spear of dark wood, engraved with runes that seemed to dance along its length.
In between the trees, Paul saw another silhouette. Instinctively, he knew it was the thrower of the wooden spear. Although man-like, the figure’s head seemed strange and Paul had to look twice before he saw that the man, if man it was, had a full set of antlers.
“Who calls Ornware?” said the antlered man. “When Gwarulch walk among his trees?”
Paul gulped and tried to sit up. Aleyne had called out to Ornware, but Aleyne was lying over by a tree, unconscious, if not…dead.
“We did,” he whispered, not daring to look up. Dawn was closer now, and the first cast of light was just allowing real shadows to creep out from the pale, star-lit imitations. And the shadows that lay across Paul were of antlers.
Paul heard an amused snuffle above him and risked a glance upwards. The antlered creature was still there, but it had moved closer to the dead Gwarulch and was pulling out the spear. It came out easily enough, surprising Paul–the spear had almost gone through the other side, and he knew no normal man could have removed it. But then normal men didn’t have antlers.
The creature twirled the spear, then approached Paul, driving the butt of the spear into the ground near the boy’s feet. Paul looked up–straight at that antlered head, meeting the creature’s eyes: deep yellow eyes, the colour of daisies, with thin, bar-like pupils of darkest green. They held power, those eyes, and violence lay beneath the placid daisy-yellow.
“I am Ornware,” said the eyes to Paul, communicating a sense of power, like the overhanging branches of a huge oak. “I am Ornware of Ornware’s Wood, as the trees are Ornware, the earth, the birds, the animals. All are Ornware.”
“Aleyne called you,” said Paul, his voice quavering, eyes still locked into Ornware’s–lost in those deep yellow pools.
Then a few hundred metres away, a Gwarulch howled–their tracking sound. Paul flinched and blinked, breaking his gaze away from Ornware’s.
Ornware’s antlered head turned to face the direction of the howling, and he twirled the spear again, bringing the bloodied point close to his mouth. Paul watched, horrified, as a wide, crimson-red tongue lashed out, cleansing the point with one swift motion. then Ornware was gone, leaping into the trees like a stag towards the approaching Gwarulch.
“The Gwarulch will bother us no more today,” said a cracked voice behind Paul. Aleyne was sitting up, fingering his head. His unruly hair was caked in drying blood. “But I am glad Ornware has other foe to hunt, else he might have turned against us.”
“But I thought you called him?” asked Paul, going over to help Aleyne up.
“You may call him,” replied Aleyne, looking back down the path, “but only in dire need. Ornware is the walking dream of the forest, only woken at its need, or by a call such as mine. But he is a dream of the forest’s fear and anger, and knows little more than blood. Worse, being a creature of raw passions, he likes nothing but the hunt and the kill. He is like a summer storm that saves you by dousing a fire, only to strike with lightning moments later.”
A howl farther in the distance punctuated Aleyne’s words, and he answered Paul’s unspoken question with a finger drawn across his throat. Obviously, the rune-carved spear had found another Gwarulch heart.
“Come on,” said Aleyne, leaning on Paul. “There should be a stream on the other side of this hill, where I can wash these cuts, and try to get us halfway clean for Rhysamarn and its Wise Men. With such an early start, we should be there by mid-afternoon.”
The Gwarulch had not been idle in reaching as far south as Ornware’s Wood so soon after the Ragwitch’s ordering Her war. While the settled folk to the south were unaware of it, the Gwarulch had long lived near, or even within, the northern border, and the Meepers had been quick to fly to isolated bands with orders to waylay travellers and other isolated folk.
Julia had not been idle either. When the Ragwitch was busy, she found it was possible to wrench her mind away. When she did this, she only ended up back “inside” the Ragwitch, near the globe, but at least she got her own body back–despite the Ragwitch’s past assurances that Julia would never feel her own body again. The Ragwitch even seemed amused by her efforts to escape and never punished the girl–apart from forcing her mind back to attach itself to the Ragwitch’s senses.
“What lies between us and the Old Border, Oroch?” asked the Ragwitch, as Her lieutenant alighted from the back of a large, leather-winged Meeper. She had taken up residence (if you could call it that, for She never slept) at the base of the Spire, where She received the reports of the Meepers and gave orders to Her army.
“A new town, Mistress,” replied Oroch, in his mewing, high-pitched tone. “Bevallan, they call it. A small place, without walls or castle. Only a tower, and that is of no great size. They have discovered peace in Your absence, Mistress.”
“It will not be a discovery they enjoy much longer,” spat the Ragwitch. “But what of their Magic: their famous Magi, all cluttered up with Staves and Rings and Talismans; those Wizards, whose flesh is foul and blood rancid?”
“None, Mistress,” chuckled Oroch, bandages whipping in the breeze as he laughed. “The Art is forgotten, as You were…” He stopped in mid-sentence, dropping to his knees as the Ragwitch towered above him to encircle his puny, bandaged neck with one of Her hands.
“Forgotten?” hissed the Ragwitch, spit bubbling between the rows of Her needle-teeth. “Then I shall remind them, will I not, Oroch, My Architect? I shall remind them, and Myself remember the sweetness of their flesh.”
Behind Her, the stone shapes of the Angarling boomed, feeling their Mistress’ anger. The Gwarulch moved about uneasily, careful to avoid the rocking, moving Angarling as they drew closer to the Spire. The Meepers, high above, twirled and dived about the Spire, revelling in the prospect of bloodshed.
Watching through the Ragwitch’s eyes, Julia shuddered and once again started to do sums in her head. Even the thirteen times tables was preferable to the Ragwitch’s memories, presented to Julia as they were with every nuance of sight, hearing, feeling…and taste.
“Assemble the Gwarulch chieftains and the Old Meeper,” the Ragwitch instructed Oroch. “I will…talk…to the Angarling.”
Julia breathed a mental sigh of relief as the memories of pillage and feasting faded, to be replaced by a strong memory of the Angarling, still as stone, being woken by a young, human Witch on her first small steps to power…Surely not the Ragwitch, thought Julia, as she felt her host clumsily lumbering towards the Angarling, those straw-stuffed legs straight and never bending, the puffy three-fingered hand outstretched to caress Her oldest allies–the Stone Knights of Drowned Angarling.
“Tomorrow,” She said, touching the white stone of the nearest Angarling, caressing the lines of the frozen face. “Tomorrow shall be death and ruin, and the sun will sink all bloody in a sky as red as fire.”
“The sun is high, my stomach grumbles and I think it’s lunchtime,” said Aleyne, pausing to let Paul catch up to him. They were climbing up a hill again, where the forest grew less thickly, but Paul was always slow uphill.
“I also think Rhysamarn is only a little way away, and at its foot there is the Ascendant’s Inn. And since…”
“We lost our packs,” interrupted Paul, “we might as well go on because there’s nothing for lunch anyway.”
“Exactly,” smiled Aleyne, who hadn’t missed Paul’s bad temper or the slight quiver of his lower lip. “How are your feet?”
“Sore,” grumbled Paul, who was now well over the night’s dangers and more concerned with his various discomforts. Trust Julia to get kidnapped to a place without buses, he thought sourly as Aleyne set off again, trying to pick the easiest way up the hill. And every “adventure” I have is always without food, and in forests full of prickles and thorns…
Paul was still thinking about thistles, because they were the most immediate nuisance, when Aleyne suddenly stopped ahead of him. Paul looked up from the ground and saw that the trees no longer rose up to the sky, and only a few metres further on lay the top of the hill–the real top, and not just another tantalisingly close ridge.
“Well,” said Aleyne, “we’re there–or near enough.” Paul rushed up the last few metres, on to the flat rock where Aleyne gazed to the east. They were truly on top of the hill, for below them the forest thinned out to nothing, to be replaced by green fields which stretched down to a narrow river spanned by a wooden bridge.
On the other side of the river, the land stretched up again, turning from lush farmland to yellow heather, which grew up and up along the slopes of a mountain that disappeared into mist.
“Rhysamarn,” said Aleyne, in a sort of deep, polite tone. Just like he was talking about a church, thought Paul, who was busy looking for the inn. Then he saw it–a large yellow house, with several red-brick chimneys, the whole place nestled in the folds of the heather, just a little way up the Mountain of the Wise.
“Let’s go,” said Aleyne, looking back from the mountain to see the boy several metres below him. Aleyne noted with amusement that Paul was not slow going down hills–at least those with the prospect of food and shelter at the end. But then neither was Sir Aleyne, sometime Knight and watcher of events on the River Awgaer.
5. Rhysamarn / The Mountain of the Wise (#ulink_4e3c40a6-8e72-5694-9a2c-8b1990e6e274)
THREE DAYS LATER, Paul was looking down on the Ascendant’s Inn again, but this time he was standing amidst luxuriant yellow heather, headed for the secret heights of Rhysamarn. And this time he was alone.
The Ascendant’s Inn had provided a very welcome rest. The innkeeper, Master Aran, had welcomed them with foaming pints of a heady beer, of which half a pint was sufficient to stun Paul. Then they enjoyed three days of idling around the fire, fishing in the river Rhysamarn, and best of all, sleeping on the goose-feather beds under heavy eiderdowns.
Then, on the morning of the fourth day, Master Aran had said that Paul should go up–alone. How he knew, he didn’t say, but Aleyne said that this was the normal practice, and Paul must go if Aran said so.
It’s all very well for him, thought Paul crossly, looking down at the distant figure of Aleyne standing outside the inn. He doesn’t have to struggle up this mountain where it’s all cold and damp.
It was cold and damp, but to tell the truth Paul hadn’t really been bothered by it. Aleyne had bought him good woollen clothes from Aran, and roughly cut them down to size. With a sheepskin coat, soft doeskin boots and a broad-brimmed hat, Paul didn’t feel the cold at all.
All I need is a sword, thought Paul, or a short-sword anyway. He practised a few film-style lunges and slashes, and thought swashbuckling thoughts, till it occurred to him that he might really need a sword–and if he were attacked by things like the Gwarulch it wouldn’t make much difference anyway.
“Just let me find Julia,” he whispered up at the mountain. “And get us back to where it’s safe.”
Suddenly, the mountain looked less of an obstacle, compared to the problems he might have to overcome to get home–the Ragwitch and all her powers, for one. Setting his hat firmly on his small head Paul set off, up into the mist that shrouded the Mountain of the Wise.
There was a sort of path up through the heather, which wound its way between the large rocky outcrops that occasionally loomed up out of the mist. Paul took care to follow the path–the mist had become much thicker and he knew that getting lost here would mean certain death, as no rescue teams or helicopters would be around to find him.
The mountain grew steeper, and the rocky parts more numerous, and Paul was forced to use his hands to scramble up. The path became less distinct among the rocks, and he had to stop and look for it several times. Hours passed in this stop-start way and Paul began to feel less confident. Suddenly, climbing a mountain all by himself seemed incredibly stupid. He wouldn’t have done it at home, after all. And looking for “the Wise” didn’t seem very sensible – he didn’t even know what they looked like!
Aleyne had said to keep to the path and not to stop for too long, thought Paul. He started up the mountain again, then he suddenly remembered Aleyne first telling him about the Wise and his journey up the mountain. Aleyne had said “I rode my horse”–but the path was too steep and narrow for a horse.
I must have gone the wrong way! thought Paul, angry at all his wasted climbing. He thought of all that effort and considered going on. But it was obviously the wrong path…
“Down it is,” said Paul aloud, turning back down the path. But even as he took the first, easy, downhill steps, the path seemed to fade away, melting into the yellow heather or the green-grey mottled stone.
He took a few more steps, but the path disappeared, leaving no sign of its prior existence. He quickly looked around and the path uphill was going too–though it was contracting, racing up the hill, rather than fading.
With a strangled yelp, Paul jumped after it, taking great bounding steps up the slope. The heather brushed against his legs as he crashed through it, chasing the path that retreated just a little faster than he could run.
Then, without warning, both the path and the boy burst out of the mist into yellow sunlight. The path suddenly stopped and Paul jumped on it, taking great satisfaction in seeing his boot-prints on the open dirt. He took a few steps along it, to give himself a head start in case it started to race away again, and looked around.
Downhill, a thick wall of mist obscured any view, but uphill, the sun was shining, its warmth already touching Paul’s mist-wet clothes and face. A little further along, the heather started to fall back, and above this border of heather loomed the grey shale peak that was the top of Rhysamarn.
But it was what lay in between that attracted Paul’s attention. Just above the heather, but before the grey stone, lay a field of dark brown earth. It was larger than a suburban garden, but not really a decent market garden size. And in the middle of it, an old man was planting something that looked very like cabbages.
Hesitantly, Paul walked over to the field. Aleyne had told him that the Wise appeared in different guises, but he hadn’t expected an old man planting (or transplanting) baby cabbages.
“Hello,” said Paul, upon reaching the edge of the field. “I’m Paul. I’m looking for the Wise.”
The old man looked up from the cabbages, revealing a lined face, rosy cheeks and a reddish nose. His white hair and moustache threatened to weave a mask around his face, but he parted the long locks with a dirty hand. The bright eyes that looked at Paul were in no way obscured or dimmed by his bushy, walrus-like eyebrows, which quivered as he spoke.
“The Wise, eh? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Rhysamarn–the Mountain of the Wise. Or literally, Place of Wisdom Mountain.”
“Yes,” said Paul doubtfully. This wasn’t the reception he’d been expecting, particularly since the old man hadn’t stopped transplanting cabbages. He had hundreds of them, it seemed, in a wooden box that he dragged along between the rows.
“Well, come and help, boy,” snapped the old man. “Part of being wise is knowing the value of things. And advice got for nothing is often worthless. In your case, I would say you need counselling to the value of…about eighty transplanted cabbages.”
“Uh,” said Paul, who’d avoided even doing the weeding in his father’s garden. But he knelt down next to the box of cabbages and asked, “What do I do?”
The old man told him, demonstrating how to make a suitable hole, with a clenched fist pushed into the soil and twisted several times. Paul soon learnt the knack of it, but even so he lagged behind the old man. Closer to, this potential sage looked even more unsuitable for the role of one of the Wise. He was dressed in a simple robe of what looked like sackcloth, and wore wooden sandals that clattered as he crawled forward on his knees. And having been in the cabbage field all day, he was covered in dirt.
The sun rose higher above the cabbage planters and then began its slow decline into the west. As the shadows lengthened, Paul kept looking at the old man, hoping that he was about to call it quits. The cabbage planting business had seemed easy enough at first, but it soon became tiring and his back was stiff from being bent over all day.
Failing the signal to stop work, Paul would have welcomed some conversation, or at least some questions regarding why he was there. But the old man was silent as he planted the cabbages with a monotonous regularity; left fist in to make the hole, right hand to pick up the cabbage and place it carefully, left hand to smooth the dirt around it. Over and over again.
Eventually, the sun sank low enough to send the distant clouds red and Paul had had enough. He stuffed his current cabbage in the hole, smoothed it over and stood up, his back creaking. “I’ve had enough,” he said, a trace of self-righteousness creeping into his voice. “I’ve been planting cabbages nearly all day–a lot more than eighty cabbages!”
“One hundred and thirty-two, by my count,” said the old man cheerfully. “I was wondering when you’d realise.” He got up, straightening his back with the help of both hands thrust against his backbone. “Well, I suppose for that number of cabbages, I can give you supper as well.”
The old man bent down again and pulled a thick, oilcloth covering over the box with the remaining cabbages.
“What do I call you then?” he asked Paul. “Boy? Cabbage-planter?”
“My name is Paul,” said Paul. “What shall I call you?”
“Old Man?” suggested the sage, rolling it off his tongue as if to see how it sounded. “Cabbage-planter? Tanboule? Tanboule is the name of my house–so you may call me that. Tanboule the house and Tanboule the old man. And one shall go to the other for a supper of cabbage and bacon, bread and tea. Eh, Paul?”
“Err…that sounds very nice,” said Paul, who was thinking Tanboule didn’t seem so much wise as mad. Still, he did seem to be on Rhysamarn mountain…
Obviously encouraged by the mention of supper, Tanboule took off up the slope at once, easily outpacing Paul with his long strides. Unlike Aleyne, he didn’t stop for Paul to catch up with him and was soon a dark speck against the grey shale. Paul struggled on angrily, slipping on the wet slabs of stone and wishing he’d never even seen the stupid old man and his cabbages.
Then he looked up, and even the dark speck had gone. Tanboule was nowhere to be seen and there was no sign of a house up on the rocky peak, or even a cave mouth. Paul hesitated and looked back down the mountain, but the mist was as thick as ever. And he could clearly see the cabbage-field–a little square of dirt on which he’d spent considerable labour.
“At least I deserve to eat some cabbage,” muttered Paul. “And I’m going to get some, like it or not!” And with that promise, he started back up the shale, using his hands when the rockface became too steep or broken.
Twenty minutes later, he reached the approximate spot where Tanboule had vanished–and the mystery of his sudden disappearance was explained. Paul had been climbing a peak that he thought was the very pinnacle of Rhysamarn, but it was only a lesser projection from the high mountain that lay before him. Down below Paul, there lay a saddle between the two peaks: a tiny valley of yellow heather, nestled between the greater and lesser peaks of grey shale.
In the centre of this valley, halfway between each peak, there was a house. Or at least, Paul thought it was a house. It was obviously wooden, but each end was curved up to touch the red-tiled roof and its iron chimneys (of which there were three). Even stranger, it didn’t appear to have a door and the only windows were high up on the sides, and round like portholes. In fact, it looked like a particularly fat houseboat, stranded in the heather at least six hundred metres above sea-level, and over two hundred kilometres from the nearest coast. A bird flew from its roof, a black shape silhouetted against the orange sky, triggering memories of old pictures showing an ark atop a mountain and an old man sending out a dove.
But it was still a long way down and the air was chilling as the sun set, so Paul steeled himself and carefully began to make his way down the treacherous slate.
When Paul at last arrived at Tanboule’s peculiar house, the sun had finally given in to the night. But the house was lit up inside, with cheerful yellow light flickering through the porthole-windows, and smoke billowing from at least two chimneys, carrying with it the smell of frying bacon and cabbage.
But Paul couldn’t find a door. He walked around the whole building twice, and even felt the wooden planks, but there was definitely no doorknob, handle or bell.
“Hello in there!” shouted Paul, after his third circumnavigation. “Mister Tanboule! It’s me, Paul! Can I come in?”
“Of course, lad,” came the reply, in Tanboule’s voice–but Paul couldn’t see him till a rattling sound attracted him to the other end of the house. There, a rope ladder was dangling down the side, leading up to what looked like the tiled roof. However, by shielding his eyes from the lantern light, Paul saw that there was a space between the eaves of the roof and the top of the wall–and that was the door.
Tanboule was waiting at the top as Paul climbed in through the hatch. “Welcome aboard, Paul,” he said, standing aside to let Paul drop down from the roof-door.
But Paul was staring at the interior of the house through the hatch and wasn’t moving.
Immediately below him, Tanboule was standing on a raised platform next to a shining binnacle, complete with a huge bronze compass. Next to that stood a ship’s wheel, with a note tacked to it which read Rudder temporarily disconnected, T.
A ladder led down from the first platform to another which extended for most of the length of the house, ending in another ladder going to a forward platform and down through an open hatch. In between the two higher platforms were casks and bags, chests and rugs, all piled haphazardly around some old wooden furniture, and three cast iron stoves, one of which had a frying pan hissing away on it. On the floor next to the cooking stove, a cat was playing with what looked like a piece of dried haddock.
“So it is a boat!” exclaimed Paul, jumping down to admire the binnacle. “I suppose you ended up here when the floods went down?”
Tanboule shook his head sadly. “I built it here. Forty years I studied with the stars, calculating the advent and time of a Great Flood. Then ten years building this craft, high up on the mountain.”
“To save all the animals?” asked Paul, looking around. It didn’t really look big enough for two of everything, not with all the junk.
“To save myself!” declared Tanboule. “I never did like animals much. But it was all a mistake. The Flood never came!”
“Why?” asked Paul. “Were the stars wrong?”
“They weren’t wrong,” snapped Tanboule. “The stars don’t lie–but they can be mischievous. There’s nothing they like better than a joke, particularly if it’s a long one, played on someone who deserves it.”
“Why did you deserve it?” asked Paul as they descended to the long platform, which he already thought of as the “main deck”.
“I deserved it because I was wise and selfish,” sighed Tanboule, flicking a tear from a white-browed eye. “Now, I am wiser (I hope) and less selfish. Which reminds me—why are you here?”
“Well…” began Paul, but Tanboule interrupted him, crying out: “Cabbage! The cabbage is burning! Come on, lad–save the cabbage. You can tell me your story over dinner!”
Over a dinner of slightly burnt cabbage, bacon, tea and thick, crusty bread, Paul explained his troubles to Tanboule. At first, the old man hadn’t seemed terribly interested, but he soon became more serious and asked Paul many questions, particularly about Julia and the pyramid of flaming sticks that had transported Paul from his world to that of Tanboule (as he put it).
“So,” said Paul, when he had told all he could remember. “Will you help me?”
Tanboule sighed and rubbed his great white eyebrows with the back of a gnarled hand. “We will help you, Paul–but I fear that more than good advice is needed here. For your story is but a little part of a bigger story, one in which many people have played their parts, for better or for worse or for no effect at all.”
“What do you mean?” asked Paul, who thought his troubles were complicated enough already. The fact that they might be like one tiny part of a huge puzzle was both terrifying and hard to understand.
“It is partly your story,” said Tanboule, taking a great swig of his tea, “because it is the story of the Ragwitch. A long and sadly true tale which has yet to find a happy ending. Since it will undoubtedly have some bearing on your troubles, I suppose I’d better tell it to you–though this particular tale is worth far more than the planting of one hundred and thirty-two cabbages. Fetch me another cup of tea, Paul, while I compose my voice.”
Composing his voice seemed to entail Tanboule eating more bread, so Paul poured himself some more tea as well while he was waiting. Not that the drink was exactly what he’d call tea–it was sweeter, and scented with lemon and raspberry, but it was made from similar leaves and boiling water.
At last Tanboule finished eating and, stretching himself back, began, without introduction, his rambling tale–part history, part legend, but mostly a true account of an ancient evil.
“Quite a few centuries ago, this Kingdom was a less settled place than it is now,” began Tanboule. “There were no northern towns or castles, and fell creatures held sway over the lands north of the river Twyn and regularly came south to raid the smaller towns and villages.
“These raids, by such creatures as the Gwarulch, were an accepted part of life, albeit an unsavoury part. But, as such acceptance is wont to do, it merely prolonged the crisis that was to arrive.
“In this case, the raids became worse, and after a few years, the creatures were no longer merely raiding, but actually conquering the northern marches of the Kingdom.
“The King in those times was a lazy fellow, addicted to the quiet contemplation of dragonflies on mirror-smooth lakes. In fact, he even had a mechanical dragonfly that flew over a pool of the stillest mercury. Without his active control, the Canton Lords each tried to deal with the problem individually–but they failed to check the hordes of North-Creatures that were pouring over the Twyn. At last, the creatures came to the inner Cantons of Salace and Thrisk–and the King was forced to do something.
“Fortunately, he did the right thing, which was to abdicate in favour of his son, who became King Mirran the Ninth. He was the total opposite of the old, dragonfly-watching King, and he gathered his army and attacked the North-Creatures, driving them back across the Twyn and into the far north.
“This took several years, of course, and during that time the nature of the war changed. And sadly, it was King Mirran who was responsible for the changes and the destruction that was to come of them.
“You see, all through this long war, Magic had played no part. There were more Sorcerers, Wizards, Witches and even mere dabblers about in those days, but the Patchwork King would not allow them the use of Magic for war.”
“The Patchwork King?” asked Paul. “Who was he?”
“He ruled, and as far as I know still rules, in the land of Dreams and Shadows, where everything that could be is and isn’t at the same time–and if you can understand that, you’re wiser than all of us here at Rhysamarn. But it is from this land that all Magic stems, and it is to this land that all Magic-Workers must go, though now I doubt if any more than a handful know the way.
“This was not always so, for there were tales and legends of an Age of Magic, when wars were fought with all manner of Magic. Yet no true records survived from this Age and it became no more than a legend known only to a few who sought after ancient lore.
“One such person was a young Witch, who worked as a healer with the King’s Army, for the Patchwork King allowed Magic for this purpose…”
“A Witch?” interrupted Paul. “I thought they were always evil?”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” asked Tanboule. “They’re like everybody else–good, bad or middling. Anyway, she sought greater powers, and when not actively working, she researched ancient lore, talked among the stars and learnt spells that had been lost for many centuries.
“It was this learning that she took to the King. For somewhere she had learnt of the Angarling: ancient warriors turned to stone and submerged beneath the sea in the shallow waters off the Sleye peninsula. These warriors, she told the King, had sworn to serve against evil, but had been taken unawares by an enemy Sorcerer and turned to stone. The existence of these Angarling proved that the ancient wars of Magic had occurred, and that there had been a time when the Patchwork King did not rule all Magic.
“Obviously, these Angarling knights were from this time, before the Patchwork King, so he would not be able to forbid their use. Furthermore, the spells required to wake them and make them serve were also from a time outside the reign of the Patchwork King–and the Magic the spells contained did not come from his land of Dreams and Shadows.
“Anxious for any help, the King agreed to let the Witch do her work. Foolishly, he did not consider one obvious fact: that if this waking Magic did not come from the Patchwork King, it could only belong to that other, Nameless Realm, so long closed to mankind–a place of death and witless violence, nightmares and fear, ruled by no one and composed only of a raw, ungovernable power…a power wishing the destruction of all life that did not worship it.
“Indeed, the Witch had already gone too far in her researches, and had been tainted by the lure of this power. With the King’s permission she continued, and opened one forgotten door too many. She walked within the dark void beyond and exchanged her heart for power, and her love became a lust for slaughter and dominion over every living thing.
“She danced the steps of Seven Wakenings, and the Angarling made their heavy way out of the sea at Sleye. But not to join the King. She cast another spell and the oncenoble Knights were perverted to her cause. With the Stone Knights’ help, she joined the North-Creatures and became their Queen.”
Tanboule paused to move the cat from where it had started to play with his empty plate, and took it up to lie in his lap. The cat purred happily, as Tanboule stroked it and resumed telling the story.
“The war went badly for us then, with retreat after retreat, each following a great victory of the North-Creatures. For the Patchwork King still allowed no use of Magic, and the North-Queen used all the dark powers of the Nameless Realm.
“At last, our armies were defeated, broken and dispersed. All save a tattered remnant, besieged within the shattered walls of Yendre, once the bright capital of a cheerful, wealthy land. The King was there too, a wreck of a man, who took all the blame for the Kingdom’s destruction upon himself.
“The North-Queen’s creatures attacked the castle at dusk, and after a fierce battle, carried the day. King Mirran was slain, as were all the defenders in that last, hopeless stand.”
“What happened then?” asked Paul, as Tanboule faltered and stared into space, gently running his old hands over the cat’s ears.
“What happened then…” said Tanboule softly, “what happened then should have no part in any tale. It is enough to say that…for several years after that, the North-Queen ruled from the Spire–a grim edifice raised for Her by a renegade Wizard and pupil of Her foul Magic–and Her creatures roamed the Kingdom, carrying out Her will. They slew every living thing they could find, destroyed forests, fouled rivers and salted fields–and in the doing of it, turned much of the Kingdom into a desert, a desert that grew with every passing day.
“All this time, the Magi, the Magic-Workers who might have been able to oppose the North-Queen, were being hunted down and slain. For the Patchwork King still would not allow the use of Magic. Till, one day, the Magi began to gather at Alnwere Hill–where the standing stones climb up to the Pool of Alnwere, all ringed about with a hedge of rowan trees, themselves older than the stones.
“By this time, there were few of the Magi left alive. But they gathered together and bided their time, hidden beneath the protection of stone and tree. Midwinter was their goal, when the icicles hang all asilver from the trees, and the white of snow removes all colour from the land. Midwinter–the time when man and woman, child and beast, curl up and dream of warmth and light and colours richer than those of any worldly spring.
“At such a time, the land of Dreams and Shadows is close to that of ours, and this greatly augmented the Magi’s powers. They lit the great Midwinter Fire, and at the striking of the midnight bell they cast the first of their great spells against the North-Queen, where She held state atop Her Spire, hundreds of leagues to the north.
“In some ways the battle of Magic that was fought between North-Queen and Magi was worse than the original destruction wrought by the North-Creatures. Her spells spread ruin across the land and the Magi were themselves forced to turn to similar destructive Magic.
“In the end, She would have won. The Magi’s Magic was never one of destruction and they could not match Her power. Alnwere Pool lay dark and showed no vision, and the great Midwinter Fire lay in ashes. The Magi lay about it: Wizard and Witch, Sorcerer and Enchanter–all too weak to resist as the North-Queen’s dark Magic overwhelmed them.”
Tanboule paused, and Paul looked away from his face for the first time. He’d been so intent on listening, he hadn’t noticed the room growing cold. The nearer fire had burnt down to ashes and the stove was no longer glowing a cheerful cherry red. Tanboule sighed, and indicated to Paul to stoke up the fire and put in a few pieces of the heavy wood that lay stacked at its side. Paul quickly did so, eager to regain the cosy warmth in which Tanboule had begun his tale–though from the sound of it, a blazing fire would be small comfort for the horrors Tanboule was about to reveal.
“The Magi were beaten…” hinted Paul, when the fire was burning brightly again and Tanboule seemed ready to resume.
“Yes…” said the old man. “They seemed beaten, when from a most unexpected quarter came help for the dying Magi. Help from Ornware and his kind, the wild spirits of forest and lake, wood and stream. And with them rose the Wild Magic, that untamed power of Nature, in all its uncontrollable passion.
“No one knows what happened in the last wild hour, in the darkest part of the night. Who called the Wild Magic (if anyone did) no one knows, and whether it served them or itself is also a mystery. But in the morning, the North-Queen was gone and all the Magi were dead, their Magic broken. Alnwere Pool was dry, the standing stones fallen. Only the rowans remained, bent over as if from a great wind.
“Later, a few Hedge-Wizards and minor adepts learned a little of what had occurred. And they discovered one important fact: the North-Queen had not been killed. She had been thrown out of this world–an act which should have killed Her. But even at the end, and amidst the bitter cold of the transfer, She had great power. She conjured a body for Herself, one that would be unsleeping, tireless, with no bones to break, or blood to bleed, or heart to stop.”
Tanboule paused and watched Paul’s face. Paul saw Her in his mind, all bloated limbs and leaking straw, and said, “A rag doll…”
“Yes. A rag doll. And Her spirit passed into that body, and She went from being North-Queen to being Ragwitch. Oh, She was banished to another world–a simple world, where the people understood Magic and that it should be left alone. And wards and guards were set upon Her (for that was the nest and the crow), but She was still alive. As were Her creatures, though they scattered to the north, and most of Her major servants vanished with Her, being either slain or banished on that grim Midwinter Night.
“Here, Her fate became a thing for tales and stories, songs and legend. Genuine fear of the North-Queen became a sort of tame uneasiness about the Ragwitch, and She became the common blame for all household misfortunes or petty ills.
“Yet even this has faded with time and now the Ragwitch is thought of only as a name, as the common conception of evil and all that’s ‘not right’. Her North-Creatures have kept to the Sea Caves and other such remote corners of the land, and are rarely seen near even the most northerly settlements. Till now, of course. Gwarulch roam ahunting, and worse things are to follow. It is a pity your folk lacked the wisdom of the people who made the Hill of Bones–but perhaps the Ragwitch already had Julia under Her control. In any case, because of your sister She is back–and make no mistake, She is still North-Queen, as well as Ragwitch. And She will destroy this Kingdom if She can…and everyone in it.”
6. Tanboule’s Advice / The Sack of Bevallan (#ulink_13501cff-1cce-5c96-b959-c17374975e6e)
PAUL SAT STUNNED, a half-empty cup of cold tea in front of him. He knew Julia was in trouble, but not that much trouble! And everything was suddenly becoming very complicated–it was getting worse than maths homework, or writing a report on some stupid play. Except here, failure meant much worse than a bad report.
“So where is Julia?” he asked Tanboule, who was sitting open-mouthed, staring at the tiny red glow of the fire between the bars of the stove. “How can I get her back?”
“Where is Julia?” repeated Tanboule dreamily. “Where indeed, but in a place far stranger than any you or I have trod. She has been consumed, and any part of her mind that still exists will be within the Ragwitch.”
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Garth Nix
From the author of Abhorsen comes classic fantasy set in a world dominated by the Ragwitch, a being of sinister, destructive intent.An ancient spirit wreaks death and destruction on the world that sought to cripple her powers.“Julia turned around – and Paul skidded to a stop in shock. He felt like he’d been winded, struck so hard he couldn’t breathe at all. For the person in front of him wasn’t Julia at all, but a hideous mixture of girl and doll: half flesh, half cloth, and the eyes and face had nothing of Julia left at all, only the evil features of the doll.”When Julia finds the ugly doll in the strange ball of feathers on the beach, Paul instinctively knows that his sister has meddled with something that is going to cause trouble. But already it’s too late –the power behind the doll already has his sister in its thrall and, later that night, the Ragwitch claims Julia for its own.Fighting against his natural urge to run from this hideous being, Paul is drawn into the creature’s own world. Can he save his sister –or even himself?
The Ragwitch
Garth Nix
TO SHAHNAZ,
MY FAMILY, AND FRIENDS
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u9fa91759-4d5a-5a8e-aef6-97bcf7a8c9b7)
Title Page (#u127a93eb-1402-5e68-8dc1-4d4b249ad3fa)
1. The Midden (#u54075c9a-3586-5a4f-82f7-99d9c65c19ae)
2 The Forest of the May Dancers The Sea Caves (#u72175c45-035f-5d7f-b74f-89101ece1175)
3. Awqinn / The Spire (#ud47350d2-063b-5d3f-b22c-f1fd4fe6a3b9)
4. Gwarulch by Night / The Raqwitch Looks to the South (#u93ca28a8-2c67-55ce-948b-46bc78686250)
5. Rhysamarn / The Mountain of the Wise (#u845b1bb0-d3b4-51a7-987a-07d52c25c963)
6. Tanboule’s Advice / The Sack of Bevallan (#u65343dfb-481c-532d-a012-af41f199373c)
7 A Friend of Beasts / Lyssa (#litres_trial_promo)
8. A Guide / The Namyr Steps (#litres_trial_promo)
9. The Wind Moot / Glazed Folk (#litres_trial_promo)
10. The Memory / A Village by the Sea (#litres_trial_promo)
11. The Sed Festival (#litres_trial_promo)
12. The Beast /To the Water Lord (#litres_trial_promo)
13. Golden Fire / The Water Lord’s Catch (#litres_trial_promo)
14. Sleye Midden / Sharks (#litres_trial_promo)
15. Anhyvar / Aleyne (#litres_trial_promo)
16. A Picnic With Lyssa / Master Caqael and Friends (#litres_trial_promo)
17. Reddow Cairn (#litres_trial_promo)
18. Julia Is Summoned / Dancing With Fire (#litres_trial_promo)
19. Within Her Mind/ Rhysamarn (#litres_trial_promo)
20. The Potato Harvest / The Raqwitch Attacks (#litres_trial_promo)
21. The Challenge / Thruan (#litres_trial_promo)
22. The Worm / Dreams and Shadows (#litres_trial_promo)
23. The Spire / The Forge (#litres_trial_promo)
24. The Last Battle (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Garth Nix (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1. The Midden (#ulink_1c397dc0-7ec1-5e53-ab42-f5e680bb701b)
“COME ON, PAUL!” shrieked Julia as she ran down the dune, the sand sliding away under her bare feet. Below her lay the beach, a white expanse bordered by mounds of seaweed. Beyond the seaweed lay the sea, a great mass of slow, tumbling waves, each solemnly dumping another load of the green-brown kelp.
Julia didn’t wait for an answer to her call – a brief backward glance showed Paul atop the dune, staring single-mindedly into the sea. She kept on running, breaking into an erratic skip to avoid the stinging bluebottles cast ashore to die in the morning sun.
Entranced by the view, Paul slowly moved his gaze along the beach, like a swivelling human telescope. He looked mainly to the north, where grey rocks thrust out into the sea, forming a spit, full of intricate pools and dangerous channels.
Above the spit, a strange hill rose out of the sand, a reddish hill, crowned with thousands of gleaming white fragments and shells. The hill dominated the shore, rising high above the lesser dunes that flanked it.
“Come on!” shouted Julia again. Paul looked down and saw that she was already walking towards the spit. He quickly switched from looking to walking mode and took a diagonal path to meet her, half sliding down the face of the great dune.
“Isn’t it fantastic?” burbled Julia, as Paul finally arrived at the spit, panting from his exertions. She spoke without looking at him, intent on the tiny fish that swirled about her toes in the rock pool.
“Yeah, great!” answered Paul enthusiastically. “Do you want to go out on the spit? We might see a dolphin from the end.”
“Not now. Wouldn’t you rather climb that?” asked Julia, pointing at the hill.
“What sort of hill is that?” asked Paul. “I’ve never seen a hill like that on a beach!”
“It’s a midden. Daddy told me about it last night. You can just see it from the house.”
“What’s a midden?”
“An Aboriginal midden,” explained Julia, “is sort of a really old rubbish tip. It took thousands of years to build up, just by people dropping shells in the same place. That’s what those white things are.”
“But what about the red dirt?”
“Oh, that,” whispered Julia, her eyes widening in mock fear. “The dirt is the remains of old, old bones.”
“Maybe I don’t want to go up there after all,” said Paul, echoing Julia’s tone of mock fear. Deep inside though, he was a little frightened. The Midden looked quite safe in the bright sunlight, but at night, it could easily be a different, more chilling place.
“Let’s go then,” shouted Julia, springing to her feet and bounding up towards the Midden. Not quite so eager, Paul slowly got to his feet and walked after her.
It took several minutes to climb to the top, as the shell fragments cut their bare feet, making it like walking across a field of broken glass. Still, it was possible to thread a precarious path through the shell patches by keeping to the sections of plain red earth.
On top of the Midden, the sea breeze was much stronger and the scent of salt was heavy in the air. From their vantage point, they could see clearly for kilometres, both to the north and south. With their newly extended horizon, an ocean-racing yacht had just become visible out to sea.
“The Sydney to Hobart race goes by here,” said Paul, watching the yacht’s spinnaker billow out to catch a sudden breeze. “We might see them go by if we stay long enough.”
“Hey, I’ve found a nest!” cried Julia, who had started exploring the irregular bumps and hollows at the top of the Midden. Paul didn’t come at once, so Julia re-emerged from her hollow and dragged him round to see her find.
The nest, if it was one, measured a good two metres in diameter, and was made of loosely woven sticks and dried mud. It was empty, save for a single ball of feathers about half a metre wide. Paul looked at it curiously, noticing that some of the feathers were longer than his arm and very, very black.
“Julia, what sort of bird makes a nest like this?”
“Oh, some sort of sea eagle,” replied Julia, who was poking at the ball of feathers. She found a scrap of brightly coloured cloth and eagerly began to take the ball apart to find whatever might be inside.
“Sea eagles don’t have black feathers,” said Paul. “Anyway, this bird must be a lot bigger than a sea eagle.”
“Must be a wedge-tailed eagle then. They’re the biggest birds in Australia. Everyone knows that!”
“I think we ought to go,” said Paul, a chill fear suddenly creeping up the back of his neck. As he spoke, the sun went behind a large black cloud that had sneaked in from the west. Almost instantly, the Midden was dark, the summer heat suddenly absent.
“I’ll go when I find out what’s in this,” replied Julia, ripping feathers from the ball. “I think it’s some sort of doll.”
“Who cares?” shouted Paul. “This place isn’t safe. Let’s go!”
Julia ignored him and continued to pull feathers from the ball. Already she had uncovered a hand made from shiny pink cloth and was pulling free a head.
In the twilight created by the cloud, a darker shadow swept across the nest, accompanied by a cawing shriek, horrifyingly loud. Instinctively, Paul looked up, and screamed. Hovering above them was a giant crow, its wings beating down a ferocious wind.
“Come on!” shouted Paul, holding a hand over his eyes to keep out the swirling dust. With the other, he grabbed Julia and tried to pull her away from the nest.
“No!” cried Julia, pushing him away. “I’ve almost got it!”
Overhead the crow screamed and dropped like a stone, landing directly in front of Paul, who grabbed Julia. Both of them tumbled over backwards. The giant crow lunged forward as they fell, its vicious beak jabbing through the air, missing them by centimetres.
Lying on his back, Paul looked up into the crow’s black eyes, glittering above the long, lethal beak. He saw the sudden spark of calculation as the crow decided who it was going to skewer.
The beak flashed through the air straight at Julia, but at the same instant, she pulled the rag doll free of the last remaining feathers. The crow disappeared in mid-lunge, leaving only an impotent shadow. Even that faded as the sunlight splashed on to the Midden, now no longer obscured by the black cloud.
“Look,” said Julia, holding up the doll. “She’s beautiful.”
Paul looked at it, bemused, still half expecting the crow to come back. He saw an old rag doll in fairly good condition. It seemed unexceptional, save for the face, which to him looked malign and thoroughly evil. Its eyes were made of black-pupilled greenstone and seemed to follow him with an uncanny interest.
“It’s evil!” exclaimed Paul, unable to believe his sister had become entranced by such a horrific thing. She hadn’t even said anything about the giant crow and now only had eyes for a grotesque doll.
“No, she isn’t!” snapped Julia, clutching the doll to her and getting to her feet. “Her name is…her name is…”
“The Ragwitch,” intoned a voice in Paul’s mind, like the bass boom of a warning bell.
“Her name is Sylvie,” said Julia, kissing it on the forehead. “Yes – I shall call her Sylvie.”
As Julia kissed the rag doll, Paul thought he almost saw it curl a lip in satisfaction. He blinked–the doll’s lips were unmoving, sewn into a perpetual smile.
Their walk back to the house felt strange to Paul. Normally, Julia skipped ahead, shouting at him to come and look at things, or just to catch up. Now she lagged behind, clutching the rag doll, hardly looking to left or right.
Crossing over from beach to grass, Paul felt more cheerful. They were almost at their house, and surely his parents would notice Julia’s odd behaviour; and they wouldn’t approve of picking up a strange doll from the beach, particularly if he told them about the giant crow.
But he didn’t. Within the first ten minutes, Paul knew that his mother couldn’t see the rag doll. She’d even straightened Julia’s shirt without paying any attention to the doll cradled in the girl’s arms. If she couldn’t see the doll, his businesslike father didn’t have a hope. And Julia’s behaviour was put down to tiredness–normal after the first day’s holiday at the beach.
“What about me?” Paul wanted to ask. “I’m not tired! Anyway, Julia never gets tired!”
But he knew that they wouldn’t understand this simple logic. After all, they had a logic of their own. If Julia was tired, then Paul must be even more tired–so both of them would go to bed early.
Instead of going to bed and trying to forget his troubles, Paul went over to Julia’s room. She was lying in bed, whispering to the doll. She didn’t notice Paul until he spoke.
“Julia,” Paul said anxiously, “Mum and Dad can’t see your doll.”
“I know,” replied Julia smugly, looking up from the doll.
“She told me that they wouldn’t. You shouldn’t be able to either, you know.”
“Well, I can see it!” cried Paul angrily. “And I don’t like it. It’s evil and horrible, and it’s making you go all strange!”
Julia was silent for a second, then she looked into the doll’s black-pupilled eyes. They seemed to sparkle with their own dark flame, telling her what to do.
“Goodnight, Paul,” Julia said remotely. “Please turn the light off when you go.”
“No,” said Paul. “The doll told you to say that. You can see it in its eyes. Throw it away, Julia!”
Julia shivered, and Paul saw a tremor pass across her face. Slowly, she began to turn her head back to the Ragwitch, drawn to the black-glinting eyes. Horrified, Paul dashed forward to grab it, to throw it away–anywhere away from Julia.
But when he touched the doll, it spat aloud and huddled closer to Julia, twining its three-fingered hands through her hair. And a chill voice burst into Paul’s head, hurting the inside of his ears and somehow cutting at his mind.
“I am the Ragwitch!” screamed the voice in his head. “Your sister is nothing–she is only part of ME!”
With that “ME!”, the Ragwitch screamed again, still inside Paul’s head. He felt his arms stiffen, the muscles tensing, and suddenly he felt himself being hurled backwards, without control, to land sprawling against the door. Desperately, he tried to get his hands to obey him, but they crept up the door towards the light-switch, and then, with a frenzied twitch, flicked off the lights.
In the darkness, the Ragwitch spoke again, but this time the voice was real–and it came from Julia. Low and hissing, it crawled about Paul, sending shivers from his stomach out along his spine.
“Leave, boy. What can you do against my power? Your sister is mine and MINE ALONE!”
Paul shuddered under the impact of the voice and felt tears start in his eyes. The voice got into his head, and again his hands were moving, under Her control. Slowly, his hand turned the doorknob and his legs began shuffling him out, away from Julia, out of the darkness and into the light.
“No,” said Julia, in her normal, everyday voice. She sat up in bed and looked straight at Paul. A shaft of light from the open door caught her face, and as their eyes met, Paul felt his muscles relax. Hesitantly, he tried to move and found himself free of Her control.
“She wants to take me somewhere,” whispered Julia, her face contorting under some great, unseen pressure. “Paul, you must…She wants to take me to…”
Looking into Julia’s eyes, Paul saw them suddenly glow and change colour–a black wash floating out to cover the white. Slowly, the black coalesced around the pupil, and the white started to green over in exact duplication of the rag doll’s evil eyes.
Paul felt himself becoming drowsy, looking into those gleaming, black-pupilled eyes. They seemed to get bigger, become like lanterns…lanterns illuminating a ground far below, as he fell towards them…
“Run!” screamed Julia–the real Julia. “Paul! Run!”
Shocked free from the mesmeric eyes, Paul turned and ran, slamming the door behind him.
Paul spent the rest of the night half-awake, with the light on and his door open. Every time a board creaked, he felt a start of fear–but the house was old and prone to settling, and nothing stalked him through the night. His parents, normally guardians against fear, slept with an unnatural soundness and could not be woken.
At last, towards dawn, fear became weaker than exhaustion and Paul fell into a troubled sleep. He dreamt of giant black crows screaming in from the sky, only to turn into huge rag dolls, with black-pupilled eyes against green–eyes that grew larger and larger, and more menacing, filling the whole horizon with their glowing evil…
With a stifled scream, Paul fell out of bed, dragging the blankets with him. It took a few seconds for him to really wake up and his heart to slow its pounding. Bright, cheery sunlight filtered in around the curtains. Sleepily, Paul looked at the radio clock next to his bed. It said six o’clock – at least an hour too early to get up. Paul yawned and climbed back into bed, rearranging the blankets with a few kicks and half-hearted dragging motions.
He was just rearranging the pillow when he heard the front door close–the slight, snicking sound of someone easing the door shut as quietly as possible.
Paul knew it had to be Julia. His parents never woke up before eight. He felt an unpleasant butterfly in his stomach, remembering the events of the night before. And Julia’s words: “She wants to take me somewhere.”
“I’ll have to save her,” said Paul aloud, hoping the sound of his own voice would make him feel better. But it didn’t – it only made everything seem even scarier than before. He just didn’t know what to do. Julia was the one who knew what to do–Julia was the one who always knew, and now she was the problem.
Paul felt tears welling up in his eyes and a terrible feeling of hopelessness swept over him. What would Julia do, if it was me? he suddenly thought–and there was the answer. Julia wouldn’t abandon him, so he wouldn’t abandon her. He quickly threw on his clothes, laced his sandshoes and ran out of the house, not bothering to be quiet with the door.
There was no sign of Julia, but her tracks were easy to follow across the sand and down to the sea. Paul ran at first, but he soon slowed down. It was too tiring to run on sand.
But Julia hadn’t stopped at the sea. Turning along the coast, she was heading for the rocky spit–or the Midden. Paul thought he knew which one it would be. Grimly, he began to run again, up towards the Midden, the hill of ancient bones.
As Paul expected, Julia was there, kneeling near the giant crow’s nest, doing something with the sticks that it was made of. Paul could see no sign of the rag doll. Relieved, he sprinted up the last few metres, calling out, “Julia!”
Julia turned around–and Paul skidded to a stop in shock. He felt like he’d been winded, struck so hard he couldn’t breathe at all. For the person in front of him wasn’t Julia at all, but a hideous mixture of girl and doll: half flesh, half cloth, and the eyes and face had nothing of Julia left at all, only the evil features of the doll.
“Callach!” spat the Ragwitch, raising one three-fingered hand–and Paul was rooted to the spot: paralysed, save for his eyes, which darted from side to side, looking for escape. He wanted to close them, to not see whatever was going to happen, but his eyelids refused to move.
The Ragwitch laughed, a chilling cackle that sent a spark of fear right through Paul. Then She turned back to the nest and started to rearrange the sticks.
He had obviously been granted a slight reprieve. Paul watched the Ragwitch with some glimmerings of hope. She was taking the sticks out of the nest and making them into a sort of pyramid, breaking the tangled ring and giving it an ordered shape.
She worked quickly. In minutes the nest was no more and the pyramid was complete: a neat construction of sticks, as tall as Paul. He watched, fascinated, as the Ragwitch drew designs in the red earth around the pyramid–strange symbols that were all straight lines and nasty looking pictures, like some ancient form of writing.
She didn’t look at Paul until the writing was complete. Then She stood up, looming over him. Even in the short time since he’d first seen Her at the nest, She’d grown rapidly and was now at last two metres tall.
He noticed that She now had teeth as well–rows of thin, shark-like teeth, hideously out of place in that smiling, redlipped doll’s face.
She came closer and Paul shuddered, watching the teeth as She leant over him. But he made his eyes go out of focus–he wouldn’t look into Her eyes, not after the night before. Her breath struck his face, cold, and somehow smelling of darkness and fear. Paul stared his eyes into even more of a blur and waited to be killed.
Then the Ragwitch spoke, using Julia’s voice–a voice changed and tainted but still recognisably Julia’s.
“You will stand here for ever, boy, as a monument to those who would keep Me penned here. Alive, unmoving and wishing you were dead. Much like your sister. Yes, she still lives…but only inside Me!”
The Ragwitch laughed again and turned back to the pyramid of sticks. She extended Her three-fingered hand and began to chant: a rhythmic, dissonant series of words that rose and fell in a grating counterpoint, jarring Paul’s ears.
As She continued the chant, sparks started to form about Her hand. The bright red flecks of light danced around, forming a globe of flickering light about Her three fingers. Suddenly, the Ragwitch stopped chanting and the globe of sparks flew forward into the pyramid of sticks, which exploded into flame. As the red flames flickered up, Paul felt a rush of cold bursting out from the fire, as though the fire itself were a giant, living icicle.
The Ragwitch bent over and drew another sign in the red soil. The flames licked still higher and turned green at the tips, and a dull roaring filled the air, like a rushing wave. She stepped into the fire and turned to face Paul with Her arms outstretched. Paul saw that She was laughing again, but he could only hear the roaring and the cold blasting at him from Her magical pyre.
Then the flames blew sideways, almost out to Paul’s feet. Each tongue of flame was like the petal of a flower, with the Ragwitch in the middle, cupped like a dragonfly in a water lily. The flames flickered once, twice, and then snapped back in a blinding flash. The pyramid exploded, sending burning sticks flying into the air, some landing on Paul, to scar him with their icy flames.
There was no sign of the Ragwitch–and Paul found that he could move again. Numb from fear and disbelief, Paul’s first thoughts were of anger.
“You were wrong,” he shouted at the sky. “Your magic’s no good. I’m going to find You and get Julia back! You won’t get away from me!”
The shouting seemed to help a bit and Paul felt strangely confident. Carefully, he began to gather the still-burning sticks, rearranging them into a rough copy of the Ragwitch’s pyramid.
Together again, the sticks burnt heartily, washing Paul with cold. He looked at the red flames, had his second thoughts and copied the last sign he’d seen the Ragwitch draw. The flames turned green at the tips and the roaring sound began. Paul took a deep breath, screwed his eyes shut and stepped into the icy heart of the fire.
2. The Forest of the May Dancers The Sea Caves (#ulink_373cd65d-705a-5028-a41f-f3c8ac1f0325)
AVAGRANT WIND pushed leaves aside as it made an erratic progress through the forest, cooling the warm afternoon air. Birds called in the wind’s wake, hawking after insects that the sudden breeze had carried with it.
Paul felt the wind against his face, refreshing after the stabbing cold of the fire. This was no sea air, he knew, for it was heavy with the dank, green smell of trees. The light that crept through his slowly opening eyes was different too: a cool, diffuse light, filtered through a thousand layers of leaves.
Eyes fully opened, Paul looked about cautiously, already afraid of what he’d done and where he might be. All around him, great trees towered, their upper branches interlocking to block out the sky. Vines crept around their trunks, growing out among the lesser trees and bushes that struggled to survive in the shady half-light of the lower forest.
Something rustled in the undergrowth to Paul’s side, a slight noise, no more than a falling branch. Even so, he leapt away with a sudden surge of fright-born energy. But the noise faded and was lost in the silence of the trees.
Gingerly, Paul began to pick his way through the spiky undergrowth. He thought about looking for Julia, but there was obviously no one about. Worse, he couldn’t see the sun through the leafy canopy, though even if he could, he still wouldn’t know which direction to take.
“You have to know where you are to know where to go,” muttered Paul, mostly to hear his own voice. It sounded strange in the forest, a short break in the silence, soon gone and instantly forgotten. Did I even speak at all, wondered Paul, or just think loudly to myself?
After only a few metres, he came to a small clearing–a blanket-sized patch of grass and daisies, alone in the wilderness. Even that small distance had taken its toll. Shorts, while fine for the beach, were not the best clothing for thorn-laden undergrowth and spiked bushes. At least some of the scratches were from blackberries, Paul thought, comparing the purple stains on his fingers to the long red scratches on his legs. Starvation wouldn’t be an immediate problem, though he was already bored with a diet of blackberries.
Beyond the clearing, the forest grew even thicker: darker, more impenetrable and daunting. Reluctant to enter that darkness, Paul sat down in the brightest patch of greenish sunlight and thought about his predicament.
First, he thought, I am all alone in a forest. I have no idea where it is, as I got here by walking through a fire. My sister has been taken over by a magical rag doll and I have to do something about it.
But what? Julia was the one who had the ideas and knew what to do. Paul was a follower. He needed programming for something like this–he needed someone to give him instructions.
I wasn’t meant to be in impossible situations, Paul thought mournfully, eyeing the green walls that surrounded him.
“It’s not fair!” he shouted at the forest. But the trees absorbed the shout and it was gone. No one will come, said the darkness between the trees; you will wander the forest, alone until you die.
“No, I won’t,” Paul whispered, brushing away the morbid thoughts that swelled up from the back of his head. “I’ll find a path, and people, and Julia!” With this whisper, Paul summoned up some reserve of determination and got to his feet. Filled with resolve, he plunged forward into the dim forest.
An hour later, much of the resolve and determination had drained away. There was still no end to the forest and the light was getting dimmer. Cool breezes were no longer refreshing–they were just cool, and becoming cold. Worse, there were no more blackberries. Without their refreshing juice, Paul was drying out, his stamina fading as his throat parched.
But he could think of nothing else to do, so he kept on, dragging his scratched legs through more bushes and brambles, hoping to find another clearing or a path. Gradually, the light slipped away and the shadows steadily merged, shifting from grey to black.
The shadows at last became one and the forest was in true twilight, if only for a short time. Paul paused to look at the darkening sky and began to hear the noises of the forest night. Still he kept on, stumbling over the roots and vines he could no longer see. Panic was beginning to fill his mind and he could not think of stopping.
Suddenly, without notice, it was fully dark–a blackness so complete that Paul couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. Exhausted, he slipped to the ground, shivering between the two cradling arms of a giant root.
Everywhere there were subtle sounds: leaves crunching, twigs snapping–each tiny noise magnified by the total blackness. Paul’s heartbeat filled his ears, vibrating up through his cheekbones, a bass rhythm in counterpoint to the tenor sounds of something creeping through the night.
The noises became louder and Paul stopped breathing, holding a hand over his mouth and nose. Whatever was making the noise was large, purposeful–and it was sniffing…searching…following his trail. Fear, sweat and blackberries, the scent of a hiding Paul.
The noise became footsteps, gentle, stalking footsteps, coming towards Paul. It knows I’m here, thought Paul desperately. It’s coming quietly, hoping to catch me asleep, or unawares, it’s…
Here! A sudden rush of footsteps, an abortive leap by Paul, and something cold and leathery wrapped round his legs. Ankles trapped, he crashed forward, face down on to the brown mulch of the forest floor.
More leathery tentacles wrapped round his wrists, and Paul’s mind gave way to fear and exhaustion, screaming back into the impenetrable fortress of unconsciousness.
Paul awoke in sunlight, with the vague feeling that he was lucky to be awake at all. He felt strange, cramped, and in an unfamiliar bed. Then, fully awake, he remembered the events of the night before. In the daylight he saw that the leathery tentacles were just some sort of rope, and they were the reason for his cramped awakening.
He was lying on a wooden bed that was a little like a shallow baby’s cot, with his hands and feet tied to the siderails. Surrounding the bed were earth walls–he was obviously in some sort of hole. High above, the sun beamed down, harsh and bright without any leafy interference. On the far side of the hole, a rope ladder hung down from the surface, which was three metres or so above, at least by Paul’s reckoning.
A prison hole, thought Paul gloomily, just like in the film on TV the week before last. Only in the film the bad guys ended up in the hole. But then, in the movies, heroes didn’t go running around weird forests in shorts, trainers and dirty white T-shirts. They also didn’t worry about things like food and drink, Paul thought, acutely aware of his dry and cracking lips, and the dull, rumbling complaint of his stomach.
He tried licking his lips, but there was no moisture in his mouth. Even tears were beyond his dried-out body and he found himself unable to cry. Closing his eyes, Paul thought he might as well die then and there, and save himself the trouble later on–when a few lumps of earth fell on to his chest.
“What were you doing in the forest?” a voice suddenly asked from somewhere above–behind Paul’s head, so he couldn’t see who it was. “And how did you get where you were?”
Paul’s mind snapped back from his despairing thoughts and he craned his neck back to see who was talking. But he couldn’t raise his body from the bed, and so couldn’t arch back far enough. He tried to answer, but only a dull croak came out.
“You wish for some water?” asked the voice, though not in a particularly compassionate tone. “Open your mouth.”
Paul did so immediately, and a cascade of water splashed over his face and up his nose. A little found his mouth. Despite being nearly drowned, it was a very welcome drink, revitalising Paul’s tiny store of determination, and lessening his feelings of despair.
“Now,” said the stern, deep voice. “What were you doing in our forest?”
“I didn’t mean anything,” croaked Paul. “I was just looking for my sister, and then…I was just looking for people.”
“People?” said the voice. “What sort of people were you looking for?”
Frightened by the voice, Paul didn’t answer for a moment. It sounded odd, murky and overlaid with rustling sounds, as if the speaker had to think before talking, and move his lips through a layer of leaves.
“I wanted to find someone. Anyone who could help me find Julia. A town, or a house, where I could find out where I was…where the forest is, I mean.”
“Julia, towns, houses,” muttered the voice, as if cataloguing items of interest. “You won’t find any of them here. And you say you don’t know where the forest is?”
“No, I don’t…is it…is it very far away from Australia?”
“Australia?” repeated the voice, with an odd pronunciation of the name–all drawn and twisted. “Perhaps you are even farther away than you can reckon. If it is of any use to you, this is the Forest of the May Dancers…I am a May Dancer,” added the voice, suddenly closer. “At least, that is what your kind call us.”
Paul felt a slight shudder go through his heart–a tremor of fear that passed through like a metal sliver. Footsteps crunched on the dirt above and Paul looked up.
He had expected to see some sort of man. But the May Dancer who looked down on him had only the shape of a human. He was covered in shifting patterns of leaves, that rustled and moved about his body, revealing skin the texture and colour of ancient bark. His head was also covered in leaves, which streamed behind him in a russet mane. And his eyes were those of an animal: the eyes of a cat carefully watching its prey.
Paul felt just like a mouse caught in the petrifying gaze of a hunter. Even the smallest movement might cause this strange creature to spring, to suddenly snap the tension.
“So,” said the May Dancer, half closing his fearsome eyes, “you have not seen our kind before.”
It was a statement rather than a question, Paul understood. Somehow, he had become the mouse that the cat couldn’t be bothered chasing.
“You have never seen a May Dancer before,” said the creature above, in a half-whisper, as if thinking aloud. “Therefore, you have never seen us dance on the borders of the forest. In fact, as you have never even heard of us, you cannot even be of this Kingdom. And you seek a…Julia.”
Without warning, the May Dancer leapt across the hole and was gone. Startled, Paul instinctively flexed his body to leap away–succeeding only in hurting his wrists and back, held by those leathery ropes.
The next few hours passed in a half-dream, marked by the slow drifting of clouds overhead. Faint sounds carried to him, the noises of the forest: strange bird-calls, and occasionally the heavier thumping of something larger passing nearby. From all this, Paul assumed that he was still in the forest, though the clear sky above indicated a large clearing.
My mid-afternoon, the sun was high above the hole. Paul lay beneath a layer of sunshine with only his feet in shadow, unable to look up because of the glare. The sun made him tired, despite his hunger, and he began to slowly drift off into a nightmarish sleep.
When he awoke, the hole was in darkness, though it was not cold. There were slight sounds all about the hole, sounds that might have been footsteps or muffled whispers…sounds that Paul almost heard and then wondered if he’d imagined them.
Then the May Dancer spoke again. “We have talked of you among those of our people here, and you are to say more. Questions will be asked and you will answer them. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Paul. “Yes–anything you like.”
Another Dancer, farther from the hole, asked the first question, in a softer, stranger voice than the original May Dancer. The words seemed to be more of a wind song than speech and Paul couldn’t understand it, being mesmerised by the lilting tone, rather than listening. The first May Dancer repeated the question: “How did you come to be in the forest?”
“I was following my sister,” replied Paul. He wasn’t sure how he’d come to the forest himself “Her and that horrible doll. They’d built a sort of fire–and then they just disappeared. The fire was sort of scattered, but I rebuilt it and jumped through–and I was in the forest. I didn’t mean to be there–I was just trying to find Julia.”
“Enough,” interrupted the May Dancer. Paul listened to him talking to the others, whispers like wind in the reeds, a tune played by the earth rather than by man. It was rather eerie, he thought, listening to the long, sighing notes in the darkness. Only then did Paul notice that there were no stars–none at all in the vast expanse of the black sky.
“Why did your sister build this fire?” asked the May Dancer, his voice loud above the whisperings.
“I don’t know,” replied Paul, trying to make out the May Dancer’s form above him. “It wasn’t really her. I mean it was her building the fire, but she’d been taken over. The doll had her under its control.” Paul thought back to the Midden, and the words Julia had spat at him in another voice. “The doll spoke to me before it…they jumped in the fire. It talked of being imprisoned and it called itself…the Ragwitch.”
“The Ragwitch,” echoed the May Dancer, the words twisting into a screaming wind, to be picked up by the other Dancers and made into a raging shout. A shout of anger and hatred, but also a shout of ancient fear. The Dancers were moving as well, no longer silently gathered around the prison hole. Branches snapped and crackled, the ground thudded with their heavy, stamping footsteps. Paul closed his eyes and turned his head to the side, blocking the sound from at least one ear. The noise above was like a violent storm, filling the darkness with threats and danger–the sounds heard by people found crushed by falling trees or struck by lightning during a thunderstorm.
Slowly, the noises died. The May Dancers crept back to the hole, drained of noise, if not the fear and anger. Paul listened to their whisperings again, tense, waiting for them to decide his fate. They seemed to be arguing in some fashion, for there were many interruptions and changes of tone–but there was no foot-stamping anger, nor the sudden violence of their shouting.
A few stars appeared in the sky. Paul watched them spring into sight and dimly saw the ragged edge of the long black cloud that had cloaked them. The cloud was blowing north and more stars began to sparkle, lightening the sky.
The May Dancer leant over to speak again and Paul saw a dim silhouette, edged with starlight. Past him, Paul could vaguely make out “human” shapes, blacker than the darkness behind them. They moved slightly all the time, shifting positions to no apparent pattern or purpose.
“We have decided to release you,” the May Dancer said flatly. “You will be taken to the edge of the forest and from there you can go where you will–though you must not come here again.”
Paul nodded dumbly, unable to speak. They were going to let him go and the forest was the last place he’d ever go back to! But he was still wary of the May Dancers. They’d captured him and tied him up, and now they were going to let him go–just like that. But none of it made any sense! Why bother to tie him up if they were going to let him go all along?
The May Dancer dropping into the hole made Paul start, then he relaxed as his bonds were untied. It was odd to see the leafy Dancer so close—the smell of him was like trees newly washed in a summer storm.
Blood rushed into Paul’s hands and feet so quickly he yelped and bent to massage his ankles. A second later, a leafy hand covered his eyes, leaving behind two large green leaves which totally blocked his sight.
“Hey,” exclaimed Paul, letting go of his ankles to feel his eyes. “What are you doing to my eyes?”
“It is a law,” replied the May Dancer, picking up Paul and easily hoisting him on to his shoulder. “No one of your kind is allowed to see us or the forest, save at our dances.”
“But I’ve already seen you…” said Paul. “I mean, just briefly–I didn’t really see anything…”
“You saw enough,” said the Dancer. “But you are only a child and our Laws are not strict for children of any folk. Also, there is the matter of your arrival and your purpose…It is better that we do not interfere…”
The May Dancer stopped talking and Paul felt himself tip sideways as they climbed over the edge of the hole. He could dimly see the starlight though his leaf-blindfold, and when it suddenly became dark, he guessed they were deep in the forest–a guess made easier by the crackling of leaves and twigs underfoot.
An hour later, Paul was eagerly waiting for the leaves and twigs to stop crackling and the May Dancer to stop his steady, stomach-bruising stride. Paul had an awfully cramped leg and his position was several degrees from comfortable.
At last the May Dancer stopped and lowered Paul on to the ground–face down. The leaves fell from his eyes and he rolled over to look up into the night. Ahead, the moon had just risen to illuminate the open lands beyond the forest.
Far to the north of the Forest of the May Dancers, the sea beat against the cliffs and dark waves foamed into deep caves–the Sea Caves, ancient home of many of the Ragwitch’s evil-hearted minions.
In a black pool, far underground, the water seethed and bubbled, and the air above it grew suddenly chill. A red light filled the cave, banishing the darkness of centuries. The light grew brighter, and then the Ragwitch appeared in the pool, Her arms still outstretched, the eversmiling mouth still chanting. She had lost all trace of Julia’s form and was now only a gross parody of a rag doll. She was taller than a man, with huge bulging arms and legs that leaked straw. Her painted face appeared even more malign in its new proportions.
Floating easily in the pool, She looked around the cave and laughed–the chilling cackle that had scared Paul and thousands of others over her grim past. Still cackling, She hauled herself up on a ledge and took stock of Her surroundings.
Julia woke with a start, suddenly feeling that she was late for something. She sat up sleepily, opening her eyes–to see nothing but absolute blackness. Everything was black, totally black, and for a second Julia panicked, thinking she’d been struck blind. Then she remembered previous mornings, of waking up before dawn with the curtains tightly closed against any light that might be outside.
Giggling a little nervously, Julia reached down to throw off her blankets–and somersaulted. Just by reaching forward–but it was a slow somersault, like being underwater. Forgetting to be scared, Julia somersaulted again, and then did a few corkscrews ending with a flip. She seemed to be suspended in something like water, but it was stiffer, less fluid–like glue. And she could still breathe.
Then Julia remembered the Ragwitch.
“Oh, Paul,” whispered Julia. “How could I be so stupid?”
A dull rumble, like distant laughter, punctuated her whisper and, at the same time, Julia caught sight of a small spark of light, like a candle in a distant window. As it was the only thing visible in the blackness, Julia headed for it, breaststroking through the strange atmosphere.
Slowly, the light became brighter and Julia saw that it was some sort of globe. It seemed to produce the light itself, in irregular flashes–occasionally shifting through the spectrum, but always coming back to a clear white light.
Julia circled it, delighting in the light that made her new environment so clear and beautiful. She flipped end over end with ease, breaking into a swan dive to float slowly down past the globe. An eddy in the fluid pushed her close to the globe and, without thinking, she touched it.
Instantly, all was black again and the fluid suddenly went cold. A voice came to her mind, chill and biting–the voice of the Ragwitch.
“Ah–you have found your way to the globe. But where do you think you are, little Julia?”
“I don’t know,” shouted Julia, half-angry, but afraid to show this to the awful creature who spoke into her mind.
“You are inside Me,” whispered the Ragwitch maliciously. “Your essence has been consumed. But I will let you live a little longer, for My amusement…and other things. Perhaps they will amuse you too, My little Julia, who loves her dolls. Look into the globe…”
Julia promptly somersaulted away, deciding not to do anything the Ragwitch wanted–though she felt more scared than ever. But even as she straightened out to swim away, a force gripped her, holding fiercely to the muscles in her arms and legs, twisting them back and forth, rippling them spastically under the skin. Then with a sudden wrench, her head twisted back towards the globe, and the rest of her body followed painfully.
Julia closed her eyes, but the thing inside pushed them open, making her look at the globe. Again, Julia forced them closed, only to have her own hands rise up to keep them prized open. Open–and looking directly into the swirling colours of the globe, colours that seemed to swarm out, enveloping her in a mist, suddenly going from rainbow-coloured to a dull, choking grey.
It swept her up and dashed her down into the globe. Falling, she felt her body become weightless–and then nonexistent. Without any physical sensations at all, Julia fell into darkness.
What might have been days or years later, Julia felt her senses returning. She could feel pain and sense a glimmer of light emanating from somewhere. But her body felt strange and cumbersome, and her lips felt cold and leathery to her clumsy tongue.
Hesitantly, she opened her eyes, letting them adjust to the light. They hurt at first, but slowly came into focus. She seemed to be in a rocky cave which was bathed in a dim reddish light. Eagerly, Julia looked around, hope welling up inside her. Escape from the Ragwitch?
Then she took a step forward and, looking down, saw her feet–long, leathery feet, that somehow seemed to be stitched and were leaking a yellow, wet, straw stuffing…
Julia’s scream was the first and last time she had control of the Ragwitch’s mouth. Even as it echoed, it was overlaid with a grim cackle and Julia was paralysed. She could still see, and hear, and feel, but could no longer move even the most insignificant muscle.
“For your amusement,” said the Ragwitch out into the cave, though it was solely for Julia to hear. “For your amusement I will let you see through My eyes, hear through My ears, feel what I touch. But you will never inhabit your body again.” Then the Ragwitch laughed, an obscene cackle, echoing out in the dark underground chamber. Still laughing, She began to run through the black tunnels, heading upwards towards the light.
3. Awqinn / The Spire (#ulink_9041df1f-49ca-58f4-b2b2-5f011b3fc392)
AFTER THE MAY Dancer dumped him on the edge of the forest, Paul spent an uncomfortable few hours trying to sleep in a leaf-filled hollow, but he kept waking at the slightest noise, so he spent the remainder of the night awake and listening. Fortunately, dawn came before too long, promising something better than a cold hollow frequented by ants.
In the bright new sunlight, Paul saw that the lands ahead were clear and obviously populated. Green fields stretched as far as he could see, gently climbing over small hills, or around the occasional small wood or copse–each full of trees quite different from those in the dark, crowded forest.
The forest lay quite high on the hill behind him, so Paul went straight down, delighting in the ability to run free of vines and clinging roots. Every now and then, a rough stone wall barred his progress–proof that these pleasant green hills were inhabited.
Then, as if further proof were needed, Paul spotted a flock of sheep and, more importantly, a shepherd. Eagerly, he ran towards them–before suddenly faltering. What if the shepherd were another creature, like the May Dancers, or possibly something worse? Paul quickly turned back to the nearest stone wall and hid near where the shepherd and his flock should pass.
As they drew closer, his fear lessened. The shepherd wore a rough wool cloak, but the hood was pushed well back, revealing the cheerful, straggly-bearded face of an old man, who was whistling between his two front teeth–a pleasant tune, that sounded a little like Greensleeves.
Paul needed no more, so he stood up and said, “Hello!”
The shepherd looked up and stopped whistling. He looked dumbfounded by Paul’s sudden appearance and made no move to speak–or indeed, to do anything.
“Hello,” said Paul, giving him a small wave. This seemed to puzzle the shepherd even more. He looked over his shoulder once, then looked past Paul, up to the forest, before answering, and his hand fell to the cudgel thrust through his belt.
“Hello,” said the shepherd warily. “What are you doing up here?”
“Nothing,” replied Paul. “I just came down–out of the forest…”
“The forest!” interrupted the shepherd, quickly making a strange sign with thumb and forefinger against his head. “What were you doing in the forest? You didn’t upset the May Dancers?”
“No…” said Paul hesitantly, somewhat taken aback by the old man’s vehemence. “I don’t think so. They let me go. One of them even carried me out of the forest–he dropped me just up there, at the top of the hill.”
The shepherd appeared quite relieved at this and Paul noticed that he was no longer fingering the thick wooden cudgel at his side.
“That is well. The May Dancers are strange folk, best left undisturbed by the likes of us. Which village are you from, lad–and where did you get your strange garments?”
“I’m not from any village,” Paul said, wishing that he was from somewhere nearby. He fingered the dirty hem of his Tshirt and added, “And these are my normal clothes.”
“Not from any village?” the shepherd asked, backing off and making the sign with his thumb and forefinger again. “Carried here by the May Dancers…”
He began to back off still further, so Paul tried to put him at ease. “I’m only a boy–I was just looking for my sister. It’s hard to explain…but I’d never even heard of the May Dancers before last night. Honest!”
“Just a boy,” repeated the shepherd, as if trying to convince himself this was true. “You’re not…a creature from the north?”
“No. I’m a normal boy. It’s just that strange things have been happening…” Paul looked back over his shoulder, up at the brooding forest. Suddenly, the full enormity of it all became too much. He was alone in a strange world populated by strange creatures and suspicious old men, and worst of all, there was no Julia to tell him what to do. Unable to help it, he sat down on the stone wall and began to cry, brushing away the tears with the back of a dirty hand.
“Here, then,” said the shepherd, somewhat surprised. “I meant no harm. Some strange folk sometimes cross near the forest–some of them might even take the shape of a young lad. But tears are beyond that sort…I think.” The shepherd looked at his flock for a second, and then at the sky, where the sun was just climbing up to its morning brilliance. “You’d best come with me, now. We’ll start back down to the village. The sheep’ll just have to eat as best they can on the way.”
Paul looked up and, taking a deep breath, said (almost steadily), “Thank you. I’m sorry to make your sheep go hungry.”
“Nay, lad,” said the shepherd. “I’ve a bit of fodder for them at home, and they’ll be up here tomorrow for a week. Here–you go over there and we’ll have ’em turned around before they knows it.”
On the way down to the village, the shepherd told Paul that his name was Malgar, commonly known as Malgar the Shepherd, as there were two other (unrelated) Malgars in the village of Awginn-on-Awgaer.
Paul listened carefully, and asked several questions about the village and the surrounding lands. Malgar answered easily and gave no sign that he knew Paul was a stranger, not only to the village, but to the whole country.
He explained that Awginn lay in the Canton of Sasterisk, a large town to the northeast. This, with twelve other Cantons, made up the Kingdom of Yendre. It was more a loose collection of states than a Kingdom, except in times of war and trouble, of which the country had been free for many years. Malgar knew of no other lands, except for the wild country to the north, in which no people dwelt.
Paul had already guessed that he had been taken to another world by the Ragwitch’s fire and was now completely sure he wasn’t anywhere on Earth. He had never heard of the places Malgar talked of, and the May Dancers were obviously not something he had dreamt up, since Malgar knew they lived in the forest. Paul felt sick at the thought that he was impossibly far from home. Running off to rescue Julia seemed like the dumbest thing he’d ever done.
It took several hours to walk down the gently sloping fields and through countless gates in the low stone fences. They saw a few other shepherds and their flocks, but Malgar took paths away from them, as if he didn’t want Paul to meet them. And still they kept on walking, till Paul was staggering along behind, despairing of ever reaching the village, having a rest and getting something to eat beyond a piece of Malgar’s bread and cheese. He was half dreaming of water beds and roast chicken, when Malgar stopped and pointed out a stand of oaks ahead. Between them, and some distance away, Paul saw the dark blue strip of a river.
“The Awgaer,” said Malgar. “Many boats pass along it, from Sasterisk down to the sea.”
“It doesn’t look wide enough for boats,” said Paul in a small, worn-out voice. “It must only be ten metres wide at the most. You couldn’t get much of a boat down that, surely?”
“This is one of the narrow sections, lad. It widens out before and after this point. But you are right. The river folk use special craft of narrow beam and shallow draught, which they pole along at a great pace. Strange people, but kindly enough. Come–the village is only a little way along the river.”
In fact, Malgar’s “little way” was still at least a kilometre. Despite his hunger pangs, Paul was half asleep by the time they got there–so much so that he hardly looked at the neat, whitewashed stone cottages, with their yellow thatched roofs. It wasn’t until they stood in the village square that he lifted his head to gaze about through eyes heavy with exhaustion.
In front of him, Malgar stood frowning, obviously in deep thought. Past Malgar stood a large building with a faded inn sign hanging above the door–a green head, garlanded with yellow flowers.
“Now we’re here,” said Malgar, “I don’t rightly know what to do with you. I have to get these sheep home, but it’s still half a league to my stead.” He scratched his head again and cast a slightly wistful glance at the inn, before deciding. “Well, best you come with me, lad. Can you still walk?”
Paul nodded, unenthusiastic about the prospect of walking further, and started to stand up, when a man stepped up from behind him and laid a hand on Malgar’s shoulder.
“Going where, Malgar Sheep-herder?”
Malgar turned to face the man and inclined his head in a sort of half-bow. Paul wondered why he did that–the other man didn’t look much different. He was dressed in much the same way as Malgar, except he had a short dagger hanging from his belt rather than a bog-oak cudgel. He was younger too, black-haired, with a long drooping moustache and sharp blue eyes.
“To tell you the truth, Sir Aleyne,” said Malgar, with some relief, “I’m glad you’re here.” Rapidly, he outlined how he’d found Paul, and the small amount the boy had told him about the May Dancers, his lost sister and his home.
Aleyne listened carefully, occasionally glancing towards Paul. When Malgar had finished, he said, “Take your sheep home, Malgar. I will take the boy. To the inn, for rest–and then, I think, to Rhysamarn.”
“Rhysamarn?” asked Malgar, obviously upset. “You really think the boy should go there?”
“I would say it is the only place for him,” replied Aleyne. He looked down at Paul, who had fallen asleep against a large, conveniently resting sheep. Paul was much the worse for wear for his adventures and Aleyne saw only a short, slightly plump boy of eleven or so, covered in dirt–a strange appearance for a visitor from other lands.
“He will sleep through this afternoon and night, I think,” continued Aleyne. “And perhaps tomorrow. I shall take him to Rhysamarn myself, the day after. You have done well, Malgar.”
Malgar looked down on the boy anxiously. “He seems a nice enough lad. He won’t come to any…harm…on Rhysamarn?”
Aleyne smiled and picked Paul up, easily cradling him in his strong arms. “It is the Mountain of the Wise, Malgar – not some cavern of the Ragwitch.”
“The Ragwitch…” muttered Paul in his sleep. Aleyne looked down and saw Paul grimace as he spoke, teeth clenched and lips drawing back in a feral snarl.
“Yes,” he said, as Malgar made the sign against evil magic. “Definitely, he must go to Rhysamarn.”
As the night inked into the sky, the Ragwitch climbed out of the cave mouth and surveyed Her realm. Awestricken, Julia watched through the Ragwitch’s eyes, as She surveyed the great crescent-shaped bay that curved around them. The Ragwitch stood on a slab of rock which thrust out high above the sea. Below this slab and right around the bay, other caves and holes stood out darkly against the grey stone. The sun lay low in the west, already beginning to set–and with the passing of the light, the caves became darker and the sea went from blue to deepest black. Down below, the pounding of the surf in the deep caves became an ominous drumbeat.
Then the Ragwitch screamed, a long, chilling scream that rose and fell with the rhythm of the surf Deep inside the Ragwitch’s mind, Julia felt what it was like to deliver that scream–the exultation of freedom, the flexing of power and worst of all…the expectation of an answer.
At first, silence greeted the Ragwitch’s scream, the silence of an audience just before the applause. But the answering calls were not long in coming: the dull rumblings of vast creatures, woken far beneath the earth, and the shrill whistlings of other beings closer to hand.
“You see, My little Julia,” whispered the Ragwitch, Her leathery lips barely moving. “My servants remember My power well–even in this shape, they recognise Me! They still come when I call. You will like them.”
“No,” said Julia defiantly. She was absolutely sure that the things that made those noises would not be likeable at all.
“Yes,” murmured the Ragwitch. “You will like them. Eventually.”
She turned to the cliff and began to climb up towards the top. Julia noticed that there was some sort of path or eroded staircase—whichever it was, the Ragwitch seemed to know every turn and rise, neatly avoiding places where the cliff had fallen away. Below them, the screams and cries diminished to be replaced by the sounds of movement: sounds of scraping claws and footfalls that did not sound human.
Locked within the Ragwitch’s mind, Julia kept trying to turn her head–a reflex to see those things behind her. But while she knew her head should turn, it could not: Julia’s eyes were only those of the Ragwitch, and they were intent on the path ahead.
Eventually, the huge leathery form of the Ragwitch reached the top of the cliff, a flat expanse of low shrubs and grasses, ill-lit in the last red light of the sun. The Ragwitch set off purposefully, pausing only to thrust back some of the yellow stuffing that leaked from Her side. Once again, She did not look back.
Crossing this flat, monotonous terrain seemed to take hours and Julia dozed–asleep without closing her eyes, which were the Ragwitch’s, and so never shut. A dream-like pattern of images filled her mind: loping through this dull land, then hurrying towards a rocky spire, a tower of twisted, volcanic rock which sparkled even in the starlight. The Ragwitch went to the spire and began to climb…tirelessly, hand over hand, up to the very pinnacle, up to the blackest part of the night sky.
Julia woke up in slow stages, as though she were swimming up from the bottom of a deep pool. The Ragwitch was now sitting on some sort of throne carved out of the glassy rock. Runes of red gold ran along the arms, disappearing down the front of the throne.
Then the Ragwitch looked down–and Julia felt her mind twitch, trying to tell non-existent hands to grab hold of something before she fell…for the throne was on the very peak of the spire she had thought was a waking dream. The throne rested hundreds of metres up, on the thin needlepoint of the spire’s peak, with nothing else about it, no flat place nor protective railing.
The Ragwitch looked up again, tilting Her head back, and Julia felt Her lips creaking back across the snail-flesh gums, the mouth opening to scream again. The Calling Scream, the Voice of Summoning, welled up from the recesses of the Ragwitch’s dark power, high on Her ancient throne that men had called the Spire.
This time, Julia screamed as well, a thin, mental shriek that was swallowed up by the Ragwitch’s own great roar. But it was there–a sign of Julia’s resistance to her captor.
As the Calling Scream died away, the moon’s first light crept across the ground. It slowly inched forward, crossing the sparkling rock of the Spire, to light up the ground before it: a sunken bowl of that same glassy, lifeless rock. But long ago the rock had been shaped into tiers of seats, which wound erratically around and around in a giant spiral, as though shaped by a drunken architect.
Then the Ragwitch’s Calling Scream was answered from the Terrace-Hole below by bellows and screams, mad hyena-like laughter and shrill whistlings.
“Now you see them,” whispered the Ragwitch, Her thoughts battering at the silent Julia. “Do you like them?”
Julia didn’t answer, horrified at the sight of the creatures that thronged in the moonlight below. The Ragwitch smiled again and looked down at a particular group of followers.
Tall, sallow, humanoid in shape, they had patches of scale underlying their jaws and throats, and out-thrust upper jaws, with dog-like fangs made for rending flesh. Their arms were long and gibbon-like, ending in yellow-taloned hands. Their piggy, deep-set eyes looked up at the Ragwitch in adoration.
“The Gwarulch,” muttered the Ragwitch. “Sneaking beasts–hungry for meat, but not too eager to fight for it. Except in My service.
Julia shuddered, feeling the Ragwitch’s thoughts of blood and killing. And not just thoughts, but memories too. Stark, frightening images of past slaughters, the Ragwitch triumphant, feasting…
Julia screamed again, forcing the Ragwitch’s memories away. But still she could not close her eyes, and the Ragwitch looked down upon more of Her creatures, awaiting orders in the Terrace-Hole below.
“Angarling,” She told Julia, mentally pointing out a group of huge, pale white stones, roughly cut columns. Julia had taken them for statues or part of the rock terraces. Through the Ragwitch’s eyes and memory, she now saw that on each of the huge stones was the weathered carving of an ancient face–full of sorrow and torment, anger and evil, all etched into the white stone.
“Angarling!” shouted the Ragwitch, and the stones moved. Slowly at first, then more rapidly, they tramped to the base of the Spire. There they halted, and then came a great, welling boom which drowned out the cries of all the Ragwitch’s lesser servants.
A dark shadow suddenly fell across the Ragwitch’s face and Julia quivered, though no reflex of the Ragwitch moved. Her huge leathery head slowly tilted back, greasy yellow locks of dank hair falling around Her shoulders. Up above, a creature fluttered, its wings casting a shadow right across the throne.
“The Meepers,” whispered the Ragwitch.
It looks like a bat, thought Julia for an instant, but at the same time, she knew it did not. It had the wings and furry body of a bat, but the head was a fanged nightmare–a scaly mixture of piranha and serpent, with row upon row of gleaming teeth. And it was thirty times bigger than any bat, with wings that seemed wider than the sail on the yacht Julia had seen only the day before.
The Meeper straightened its wings and dropped past the Spire, falling away to the right. Others followed it, and the Ragwitch laughed as they hissed and bit at each other for their place in the line.
Several hundred of the Meepers flew past in what seemed like several hours. Julia soon got more bored than frightened, and found that she could peer out of the corners of “her” eyes–perhaps even seeing things the Ragwitch could not. The creatures below disturbed her less now, and she began to count them–with a growing feeling of unease. She counted (or guessed at) over a thousand Gwarulch, at least a hundred of the statue-like Angarling and many hundreds of Meepers. And the thoughts of the Ragwitch were of fire and blood, death and destruction…Julia hastily tried to do sums in her head, barricading her mind against the memories–particularly the eating…
“Gwarulch, Angarling and Meepers!” shouted the Ragwitch, Her voice sharp and malevolent, echoed everywhere by the black stone. “But where is Oroch? Who is Oroch to disdain Me when I stand upon My Spire?”
Down below, the Gwarulch shifted uneasily, muttering in their guttural language. Above, the Meepers flew in circles, angrily whistling at this Oroch who failed the Ragwitch. Only the Angarling were silent, white shapes impervious to any thoughts save the command of their Mistress.
“Again, I say,” spat the Ragwitch, “Oroch! Your Mistress calls!”
Inside the Spire, a rock cracked–and then another. Through the Ragwitch’s straw-stuffed feet, Julia felt the Spire shiver, and for a giddy second was certain She would fall–that they would fall.
Then the Spire steadied and a single block of stone fell from halfway up, to smash unnoticed among the ranks of the silent Angarling. Julia watched, transfixed, as a hand emerged from the hole–a barely recognisable hand, wrapped in what looked like tar-cloth, or linen soaked in treacle.
It was followed by another hand and then a head, a faceless, cloth-wrapped head, that tilted back and forth like a broken toy. Then it steadied and opened its mouth, a red, wet maw, stark and toothless against the black cloth.
“Oroch was trapped, Mistress,” the thing moaned. “Locked in the Spire I built for you. But their work could not keep me when You called.”
“Oroch,” said the Ragwitch with satisfaction. “Come to Me.”
The Ragwitch held out a single three-fingered hand, in gross parody of a handshake. She flexed Her fingers and Julia felt a thrill run through them, a spark of sudden power. Quick as that spark, Oroch was there, holding Her fingers with both his tar-black, bandaged hands. His legs scrabbled for a second, then he relaxed, swinging slightly from side to side. Julia marvelled at the Ragwitch’s strength, for Oroch was at least two metres tall, though thin and spindly.
“Your power is not diminished, oh Mistress,” gasped Oroch, his red maw panting.
“It is increased!” shouted the Ragwitch, suddenly throwing Oroch in the air and catching him as he hurtled back down. “Now that I have a body of undying cloth, it is increased!”
4. Gwarulch by Night / The Raqwitch Looks to the South (#ulink_2e521000-a4bb-5ddd-a34e-89f1899d4d23)
“THE AWE-GUH-AY-ER,” PAUL said once again, trying to match Aleyne’s pronunciation. The two of them sat at the prow of the River Daughter, which was rapidly making progress down that difficultly named river, aided by the current and the poling of Ennan and Amos, the brothers who owned the narrowboat.
As Aleyne had expected, Paul had slept through two nights and a day, waking only that morning, rested if no less anxious. They had immediately embarked on the River Daughter and the pair had spent the morning talking. Paul had spoken of his “adventures”, and of Julia and the Ragwitch; he’d also learnt that Aleyne was in fact Sir Aleyne, a Knight of the Court at Yendre–though from Aleyne’s description of what he did, he sounded more like a cross between a policeman and a park ranger, and he didn’t look at all like the knights in books or films. Aleyne had a particular love of the river Awgaer and spent much of his time on its waters, or in the villages that shared the river banks with the wildfowl and water rats.
“Perhaps you should just call it ‘the river’,” said Aleyne, laughing at Paul’s eighth attempt. “I hope you can do better with Rhysamarn–the Wise might refuse to see you if you can’t pronounce the name of their favourite mountain.”
“Really?” asked Paul, who was often taken in by Julia’s jokes, but Aleyne was already laughing, his black moustache quivering with each chuckle.
“No, lad–just my joke! But the Wise are strange, it’s true, and Rhysamarn is a strange mountain–or so they say.”
“You’ve never been there?”
“Well, I have almost been there,” replied Aleyne, “but I didn’t see the Wise. It was some years ago, when I was more foolish and rather vain. I thought to ask the Wise…well, I thought to gain some insight into procuring the love of a certain lady–a passing fancy, nothing more.”
“What happened?” asked Paul eagerly, hoping that Aleyne (who was looking rather sheepish) wouldn’t avoid the question and trail off into a completely different story.
“To tell the truth,” continued Aleyne, “I was halfway up the mountain when my horse brushed a tree and knocked down a wasps’ nest. The wasps chased me all the way down to the water trough at the Ascendant’s Inn, and my face was so stung I couldn’t go to Court for weeks–or see the lady.”
“Perhaps you did see the Wise after all,” laughed Amos, who had been listening at the stern. Ennan laughed too, till both had to pole hard to keep the narrowboat straight within the current.
“Maybe I did,” said Aleyne. “The lady in question did turn out to be rather different from what I had thought…”
“Yes, but why are you taking me to this Rhysamarn place?” asked Paul. “Will the Wise find my sister and take both of us back where we belong?”
“As to the first,” answered Aleyne, “only the Wise could possibly know what has become of your sister–especially if she has become mixed up with…the One from the North.”
Paul noticed that while Aleyne didn’t make the sign against witchcraft as often as old Malgar the Shepherd, he still did it occasionally–and he didn’t like using the Ragwitch’s name, now that he suspected She really did exist. “The One from the North” was the phrase he used to speak of the Ragwitch, or “Her”, with a hissing, audible capital “H”.
“And for the second,” Aleyne continued, “I have never heard of such a place as yours, with its…carz and Magics, so I suspect that if it does exist–and I believe you–the Wise will know of some way to get you back there.”
“I hope so,” replied Paul sadly. Relaxing in this boat was all very well, and safely exciting, but it was still the world of the May Dancers, their forest…and the Ragwitch. Paul wished the Ragwitch had taken him, rather than Julia, so his sister would be the one who had to look for him. Still, from what Aleyne had hinted at, being with the Ragwitch wouldn’t be very nice at all–maybe even scarier than the forest…
Paul slowly drifted off to sleep, one hand trailing over the side, occasionally brushing the water. Aleyne watched him as he turned and mumbled about his sister Julia, and how life just wasn’t fair.
When Paul awoke, it was early evening. The River Daughter was rocking gently, tied up against a jetty of old, greenish logs. Sitting up, Paul saw that the river was no longer narrow, but had widened into a majestic, slowmoving stretch of water at least a hundred metres wide. On either bank, open woodland sloped away from the river. To the west, yellow sunlight filtered down through the trees, the evening sun dipping down behind the upper parts of the wood. Paul watched sleepily as a bird flew up from the trees, crying plaintively as it rose higher into the greying sky.
“Ornware’s Wood,” said Aleyne, who had been sitting on the wharf “Not as old as the May Dancers’ forest, but much more pleasant. And the only creatures you should find here are hedge-pigs, deer, squirrels and suchlike.”
“No kangaroos?” asked Paul, half-heartedly. From the sound of it, they were going to have to walk through this wood, and it was still much like the May Dancers’ forest, no matter what Aleyne said.
“Kangaroos,” mused Aleyne (after Paul had described them). “No, I think there are none of those in Ornware’s Wood. But I have heard of animals like you describe, far to the south. Anyway, we must be going. There’s still an hour left of this half-light and we will camp not too far away.”
“OK,” replied Paul. “But where’s Ennan and Amos?”
Aleyne looked at the empty boat for a second, then answered, “They’ve gone to pay their respects to a…man…who holds power over the next stretch of the river.”
Paul wondered about Aleyne’s hesitation in describing the person the boatmen had gone to see. But Aleyne had already grabbed his pack and the smaller one he’d made up for Paul–though it seemed heavy enough to its bearer.
Half an hour later it seemed even heavier, although the going was easy and the wood pleasantly cool. Paul was glad when Aleyne finally stopped and dropped his pack against a gnarled old oak. Paul thankfully followed suit and sat down next to his temporarily eased burden.
“We shall camp here,” said Aleyne. “There’s a small stream beyond that clump of trees. It drains into the river and its water is clear and fresh. This will do very well; and from here it is a little less than a day to the Ascendant’s Inn at the foot of Rhysamarn.”
Paul looked glumly around the camp site. He didn’t like camping, particularly when there was no shower and toilet building nearby, nor a caravan in case it rained. Julia, of course, loved camping, though she normally didn’t get the chance if Paul had anything to do with it.
“Where’s our tent?” he asked Aleyne, as the latter opened up his pack and took out a small iron pot.
“Tent?” replied Aleyne, holding up the pot to the setting sun to look inside. “I have no tent–nor indeed a horse to carry such a heavy thing, all poles and cloth! I’ve a wool cloak, same as you’ll find in your pack. Good greasy wool will keep the weather out.”
“Oh,” said Paul, who hated the feel of wool, and didn’t like the sound of “greasy” wool. “Do you think it will rain?”
Aleyne cast an eye up at the darkening sky and said, “No clouds up there tonight. It might be cold, but it won’t rain.”
Paul looked up, noticing how dark the sky was becoming. Night seemed very close–and of a threatening blackness. Paul shivered and hastily opened his pack to find the wool cloak. Aleyne smiled and, putting the pot aside, began to gather sticks from a dead branch that had fallen nearby.
A few hours later Paul sat by the crackling fire, drinking soup that Aleyne had made in the pot, from salt-dried beef and herbs he’d gathered in the forest. Paul dreamily watched the sparks creeping up the side of the little pot to suddenly launch themselves into the air with a snap and crackle. Warm and content, he wrapped himself in his woollen cloak and fell asleep.
Across the fire, Aleyne started, as if disturbed by a sudden thought. He stood up, listened, then rapidly doused the fire, smothering it in dirt. With the fire gone, the night was once again complete. Aleyne listened in the darkness for a while, then lay down between the roots of the old oak. He didn’t wrap himself in his cloak and kept his dagger close at hand. As he fell into a wary sleep, an old memory crept into Aleyne’s mind of a picture in his father’s house: a picture of a distant ancestor, standing fully armed and armoured upon a battlefield, a dead North-Creature at his feet. Aleyne had always wondered why the artist had made him look more than a little afraid…
Paul awoke in darkness to find Aleyne crouched as his side, barely visible in the starlight. He opened his mouth, but Aleyne quickly put his hand over it, before leaning forward to whisper, “Do not speak normally. We must be quiet.”
Paul nodded. “Why?”
“There are creatures in the forest. I heard them earlier, in the distance, but now they are nearby. I think they are…dangerous and they seem to be hunting. Get up–we must leave now, before light.”
Paul nodded again and began to crawl towards his pack. Aleyne stopped him again and gestured to leave it. Taking the boy’s hand, he began to creep away, leaving his pack as well. Paul stumbled after him, still too sleepy to argue.
Several hundred metres and many scratches and bumps later, Paul felt Aleyne suddenly stop and kneel down, dragging Paul with him. Aleyne pointed to his ear and then back the way they had come. At first Paul heard nothing, then he caught a sort of snorting sound–and the jangle of metal. The old iron pot, realised Paul, probably being thrown against a tree. Whatever it was back there obviously had a bad temper.
Paul started to get up again, but Aleyne didn’t move, so he knelt back down. The snorting sounds were louder, and butterflies started in Paul’s stomach as he realised they were getting nearer. Then the snorts suddenly stopped, to be replaced by a long, high-pitched howl. With a sudden jerk, Aleyne leapt to his feet, dragging Paul with him.
“They’ve found our trail!” he shouted, careless of the noise. “Run!”
But Paul was already running, almost as Aleyne spoke. He knew this forest would turn out just as bad as the other one and had no desire to meet anything that howled like the thing behind them. Crashing through branches and stumbling over the uneven ground, Paul was unaware of Aleyne behind him, till he touched his shoulder, directing him to the right.
“This way,” shouted Aleyne. “It’s our only chance!”
“Can’t you fight them?” panted Paul, narrowly ducking an overhanging branch, a dim outline seem at the last moment.
“I don’t even know what they are,” replied Aleyne, stumbling behind him. “But if they’re what I think they are–no!”
“What do you think–ow!–they are?” asked Paul, panting for air. But Aleyne didn’t answer, only pushing him on from behind. The ground was rising steeply in front of them and the trees were becoming thicker, so Paul often had to use both hands to fend off branches. Oddly enough, the trees seemed to be in rows after a while, and the way became easier, almost like an overgrown road–though Paul was so short of breath he hardly noticed.
Then the howling began again, closer behind them, and Paul forgot about breathing. All his thoughts went into his legs, and into watching the way ahead in the dim, pre-dawn starlight. But no matter how fast he ran, the howling drew closer and closer, until Paul felt he had to look behind. A low branch chose this precise moment to get in the way of his foot and Paul went flying over into the leaf-littered ground. Aleyne checked in mid-stride and turned to face their pursuers, his pitiful dagger at the ready.
Paul quickly rolled over and looked back to see Aleyne silhouetted above him, the starlight reflecting on his blade. And there, in front of him, loomed a larger shadow, over two metres tall, with grossly overlong arms, and talons as long as knives, that seemed to crawl with shadows.
“Ornware!” shouted Aleyne, drawing his dagger across his thumb and then plunging it into the trunk of the nearest tree. “Ornware! Blood of mine, and Blood of Tree, on Ornware’s Road to Summon Thee!”
Nothing happened and their pursuer loped forward, making small grunting sounds. Aleyne stepped back before it, aware that it could kill him whenever it chose. Paul kept his eyes on the creature and started to slip back under the trees.
“Gwarulch,” whispered Aleyne, as the monster crept forward, stalking its prey.
As he spoke, the Gwarulch struck, an arm swinging across at throat level, talons extended for a killing slash. But Aleyne saw it coming. Ducking under the blow, he threw himself sideways under Paul’s tree as the Gwarulch leapt forward.
“You should have thrown the dagger at it!” shouted Paul, stumbling away as the Gwarulch burst through the branches. Aleyne didn’t answer, for the creature struck at him again–this time successfully, tearing open the front of his tunic and shallowly slicing his chest. He tried to dodge again, but the Gwarulch was too quick, backhanding him across the head. With the crack of branches, Aleyne fell to the forest floor, in front of Paul’s horrified gaze.
The Gwarulch looked at Paul with deep-set, piggy eyes–and pounced, talons extended. But Paul’s small size was to his advantage among the thick foliage; he slid between two large branches and the talons raked bark instead of flesh.
Despite this, Paul knew the Gwarulch would get him eventually. He desperately looked around for a branch or a stone, or any sort of weapon–and then he saw Aleyne’s dagger, still protruding from the tree. He leapt for it, as the Gwarulch leapt at him.
Paul’s hand fastened around the hilt and he half-turned, to draw and throw it, as the Gwarulch emerged from under the tree. Out of the tree-shadow, it was a hideous sight. Vaguely ape-like, its upper jaw protruded to show ripping fangs, and its eyes were piggy and lit with an evil intelligence. It eyed Paul with something like amusement and licked its lips in a very human gesture.
Paul vainly tugged at the dagger as the Gwarulch advanced, still licking its lips with a bluish, forked tongue. It reached out a taloned hand and, gripping Paul’s hand in its own, pulled the dagger out of the tree.
With his free hand, Paul punched the Gwarulch in the stomach, almost breaking his fingers on the thick, leathery flesh. It hurt him so much, he thought it couldn’t possibly have harmed the huge creature–when it gave a surprised sort of yelp and sank to its knees. Dragged down with it, Paul looked into its fading eyes as it toppled over, letting go of his hand.
Then he saw what had really killed it. A wooden spearshaft projected from its back, a thick spear of dark wood, engraved with runes that seemed to dance along its length.
In between the trees, Paul saw another silhouette. Instinctively, he knew it was the thrower of the wooden spear. Although man-like, the figure’s head seemed strange and Paul had to look twice before he saw that the man, if man it was, had a full set of antlers.
“Who calls Ornware?” said the antlered man. “When Gwarulch walk among his trees?”
Paul gulped and tried to sit up. Aleyne had called out to Ornware, but Aleyne was lying over by a tree, unconscious, if not…dead.
“We did,” he whispered, not daring to look up. Dawn was closer now, and the first cast of light was just allowing real shadows to creep out from the pale, star-lit imitations. And the shadows that lay across Paul were of antlers.
Paul heard an amused snuffle above him and risked a glance upwards. The antlered creature was still there, but it had moved closer to the dead Gwarulch and was pulling out the spear. It came out easily enough, surprising Paul–the spear had almost gone through the other side, and he knew no normal man could have removed it. But then normal men didn’t have antlers.
The creature twirled the spear, then approached Paul, driving the butt of the spear into the ground near the boy’s feet. Paul looked up–straight at that antlered head, meeting the creature’s eyes: deep yellow eyes, the colour of daisies, with thin, bar-like pupils of darkest green. They held power, those eyes, and violence lay beneath the placid daisy-yellow.
“I am Ornware,” said the eyes to Paul, communicating a sense of power, like the overhanging branches of a huge oak. “I am Ornware of Ornware’s Wood, as the trees are Ornware, the earth, the birds, the animals. All are Ornware.”
“Aleyne called you,” said Paul, his voice quavering, eyes still locked into Ornware’s–lost in those deep yellow pools.
Then a few hundred metres away, a Gwarulch howled–their tracking sound. Paul flinched and blinked, breaking his gaze away from Ornware’s.
Ornware’s antlered head turned to face the direction of the howling, and he twirled the spear again, bringing the bloodied point close to his mouth. Paul watched, horrified, as a wide, crimson-red tongue lashed out, cleansing the point with one swift motion. then Ornware was gone, leaping into the trees like a stag towards the approaching Gwarulch.
“The Gwarulch will bother us no more today,” said a cracked voice behind Paul. Aleyne was sitting up, fingering his head. His unruly hair was caked in drying blood. “But I am glad Ornware has other foe to hunt, else he might have turned against us.”
“But I thought you called him?” asked Paul, going over to help Aleyne up.
“You may call him,” replied Aleyne, looking back down the path, “but only in dire need. Ornware is the walking dream of the forest, only woken at its need, or by a call such as mine. But he is a dream of the forest’s fear and anger, and knows little more than blood. Worse, being a creature of raw passions, he likes nothing but the hunt and the kill. He is like a summer storm that saves you by dousing a fire, only to strike with lightning moments later.”
A howl farther in the distance punctuated Aleyne’s words, and he answered Paul’s unspoken question with a finger drawn across his throat. Obviously, the rune-carved spear had found another Gwarulch heart.
“Come on,” said Aleyne, leaning on Paul. “There should be a stream on the other side of this hill, where I can wash these cuts, and try to get us halfway clean for Rhysamarn and its Wise Men. With such an early start, we should be there by mid-afternoon.”
The Gwarulch had not been idle in reaching as far south as Ornware’s Wood so soon after the Ragwitch’s ordering Her war. While the settled folk to the south were unaware of it, the Gwarulch had long lived near, or even within, the northern border, and the Meepers had been quick to fly to isolated bands with orders to waylay travellers and other isolated folk.
Julia had not been idle either. When the Ragwitch was busy, she found it was possible to wrench her mind away. When she did this, she only ended up back “inside” the Ragwitch, near the globe, but at least she got her own body back–despite the Ragwitch’s past assurances that Julia would never feel her own body again. The Ragwitch even seemed amused by her efforts to escape and never punished the girl–apart from forcing her mind back to attach itself to the Ragwitch’s senses.
“What lies between us and the Old Border, Oroch?” asked the Ragwitch, as Her lieutenant alighted from the back of a large, leather-winged Meeper. She had taken up residence (if you could call it that, for She never slept) at the base of the Spire, where She received the reports of the Meepers and gave orders to Her army.
“A new town, Mistress,” replied Oroch, in his mewing, high-pitched tone. “Bevallan, they call it. A small place, without walls or castle. Only a tower, and that is of no great size. They have discovered peace in Your absence, Mistress.”
“It will not be a discovery they enjoy much longer,” spat the Ragwitch. “But what of their Magic: their famous Magi, all cluttered up with Staves and Rings and Talismans; those Wizards, whose flesh is foul and blood rancid?”
“None, Mistress,” chuckled Oroch, bandages whipping in the breeze as he laughed. “The Art is forgotten, as You were…” He stopped in mid-sentence, dropping to his knees as the Ragwitch towered above him to encircle his puny, bandaged neck with one of Her hands.
“Forgotten?” hissed the Ragwitch, spit bubbling between the rows of Her needle-teeth. “Then I shall remind them, will I not, Oroch, My Architect? I shall remind them, and Myself remember the sweetness of their flesh.”
Behind Her, the stone shapes of the Angarling boomed, feeling their Mistress’ anger. The Gwarulch moved about uneasily, careful to avoid the rocking, moving Angarling as they drew closer to the Spire. The Meepers, high above, twirled and dived about the Spire, revelling in the prospect of bloodshed.
Watching through the Ragwitch’s eyes, Julia shuddered and once again started to do sums in her head. Even the thirteen times tables was preferable to the Ragwitch’s memories, presented to Julia as they were with every nuance of sight, hearing, feeling…and taste.
“Assemble the Gwarulch chieftains and the Old Meeper,” the Ragwitch instructed Oroch. “I will…talk…to the Angarling.”
Julia breathed a mental sigh of relief as the memories of pillage and feasting faded, to be replaced by a strong memory of the Angarling, still as stone, being woken by a young, human Witch on her first small steps to power…Surely not the Ragwitch, thought Julia, as she felt her host clumsily lumbering towards the Angarling, those straw-stuffed legs straight and never bending, the puffy three-fingered hand outstretched to caress Her oldest allies–the Stone Knights of Drowned Angarling.
“Tomorrow,” She said, touching the white stone of the nearest Angarling, caressing the lines of the frozen face. “Tomorrow shall be death and ruin, and the sun will sink all bloody in a sky as red as fire.”
“The sun is high, my stomach grumbles and I think it’s lunchtime,” said Aleyne, pausing to let Paul catch up to him. They were climbing up a hill again, where the forest grew less thickly, but Paul was always slow uphill.
“I also think Rhysamarn is only a little way away, and at its foot there is the Ascendant’s Inn. And since…”
“We lost our packs,” interrupted Paul, “we might as well go on because there’s nothing for lunch anyway.”
“Exactly,” smiled Aleyne, who hadn’t missed Paul’s bad temper or the slight quiver of his lower lip. “How are your feet?”
“Sore,” grumbled Paul, who was now well over the night’s dangers and more concerned with his various discomforts. Trust Julia to get kidnapped to a place without buses, he thought sourly as Aleyne set off again, trying to pick the easiest way up the hill. And every “adventure” I have is always without food, and in forests full of prickles and thorns…
Paul was still thinking about thistles, because they were the most immediate nuisance, when Aleyne suddenly stopped ahead of him. Paul looked up from the ground and saw that the trees no longer rose up to the sky, and only a few metres further on lay the top of the hill–the real top, and not just another tantalisingly close ridge.
“Well,” said Aleyne, “we’re there–or near enough.” Paul rushed up the last few metres, on to the flat rock where Aleyne gazed to the east. They were truly on top of the hill, for below them the forest thinned out to nothing, to be replaced by green fields which stretched down to a narrow river spanned by a wooden bridge.
On the other side of the river, the land stretched up again, turning from lush farmland to yellow heather, which grew up and up along the slopes of a mountain that disappeared into mist.
“Rhysamarn,” said Aleyne, in a sort of deep, polite tone. Just like he was talking about a church, thought Paul, who was busy looking for the inn. Then he saw it–a large yellow house, with several red-brick chimneys, the whole place nestled in the folds of the heather, just a little way up the Mountain of the Wise.
“Let’s go,” said Aleyne, looking back from the mountain to see the boy several metres below him. Aleyne noted with amusement that Paul was not slow going down hills–at least those with the prospect of food and shelter at the end. But then neither was Sir Aleyne, sometime Knight and watcher of events on the River Awgaer.
5. Rhysamarn / The Mountain of the Wise (#ulink_4e3c40a6-8e72-5694-9a2c-8b1990e6e274)
THREE DAYS LATER, Paul was looking down on the Ascendant’s Inn again, but this time he was standing amidst luxuriant yellow heather, headed for the secret heights of Rhysamarn. And this time he was alone.
The Ascendant’s Inn had provided a very welcome rest. The innkeeper, Master Aran, had welcomed them with foaming pints of a heady beer, of which half a pint was sufficient to stun Paul. Then they enjoyed three days of idling around the fire, fishing in the river Rhysamarn, and best of all, sleeping on the goose-feather beds under heavy eiderdowns.
Then, on the morning of the fourth day, Master Aran had said that Paul should go up–alone. How he knew, he didn’t say, but Aleyne said that this was the normal practice, and Paul must go if Aran said so.
It’s all very well for him, thought Paul crossly, looking down at the distant figure of Aleyne standing outside the inn. He doesn’t have to struggle up this mountain where it’s all cold and damp.
It was cold and damp, but to tell the truth Paul hadn’t really been bothered by it. Aleyne had bought him good woollen clothes from Aran, and roughly cut them down to size. With a sheepskin coat, soft doeskin boots and a broad-brimmed hat, Paul didn’t feel the cold at all.
All I need is a sword, thought Paul, or a short-sword anyway. He practised a few film-style lunges and slashes, and thought swashbuckling thoughts, till it occurred to him that he might really need a sword–and if he were attacked by things like the Gwarulch it wouldn’t make much difference anyway.
“Just let me find Julia,” he whispered up at the mountain. “And get us back to where it’s safe.”
Suddenly, the mountain looked less of an obstacle, compared to the problems he might have to overcome to get home–the Ragwitch and all her powers, for one. Setting his hat firmly on his small head Paul set off, up into the mist that shrouded the Mountain of the Wise.
There was a sort of path up through the heather, which wound its way between the large rocky outcrops that occasionally loomed up out of the mist. Paul took care to follow the path–the mist had become much thicker and he knew that getting lost here would mean certain death, as no rescue teams or helicopters would be around to find him.
The mountain grew steeper, and the rocky parts more numerous, and Paul was forced to use his hands to scramble up. The path became less distinct among the rocks, and he had to stop and look for it several times. Hours passed in this stop-start way and Paul began to feel less confident. Suddenly, climbing a mountain all by himself seemed incredibly stupid. He wouldn’t have done it at home, after all. And looking for “the Wise” didn’t seem very sensible – he didn’t even know what they looked like!
Aleyne had said to keep to the path and not to stop for too long, thought Paul. He started up the mountain again, then he suddenly remembered Aleyne first telling him about the Wise and his journey up the mountain. Aleyne had said “I rode my horse”–but the path was too steep and narrow for a horse.
I must have gone the wrong way! thought Paul, angry at all his wasted climbing. He thought of all that effort and considered going on. But it was obviously the wrong path…
“Down it is,” said Paul aloud, turning back down the path. But even as he took the first, easy, downhill steps, the path seemed to fade away, melting into the yellow heather or the green-grey mottled stone.
He took a few more steps, but the path disappeared, leaving no sign of its prior existence. He quickly looked around and the path uphill was going too–though it was contracting, racing up the hill, rather than fading.
With a strangled yelp, Paul jumped after it, taking great bounding steps up the slope. The heather brushed against his legs as he crashed through it, chasing the path that retreated just a little faster than he could run.
Then, without warning, both the path and the boy burst out of the mist into yellow sunlight. The path suddenly stopped and Paul jumped on it, taking great satisfaction in seeing his boot-prints on the open dirt. He took a few steps along it, to give himself a head start in case it started to race away again, and looked around.
Downhill, a thick wall of mist obscured any view, but uphill, the sun was shining, its warmth already touching Paul’s mist-wet clothes and face. A little further along, the heather started to fall back, and above this border of heather loomed the grey shale peak that was the top of Rhysamarn.
But it was what lay in between that attracted Paul’s attention. Just above the heather, but before the grey stone, lay a field of dark brown earth. It was larger than a suburban garden, but not really a decent market garden size. And in the middle of it, an old man was planting something that looked very like cabbages.
Hesitantly, Paul walked over to the field. Aleyne had told him that the Wise appeared in different guises, but he hadn’t expected an old man planting (or transplanting) baby cabbages.
“Hello,” said Paul, upon reaching the edge of the field. “I’m Paul. I’m looking for the Wise.”
The old man looked up from the cabbages, revealing a lined face, rosy cheeks and a reddish nose. His white hair and moustache threatened to weave a mask around his face, but he parted the long locks with a dirty hand. The bright eyes that looked at Paul were in no way obscured or dimmed by his bushy, walrus-like eyebrows, which quivered as he spoke.
“The Wise, eh? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Rhysamarn–the Mountain of the Wise. Or literally, Place of Wisdom Mountain.”
“Yes,” said Paul doubtfully. This wasn’t the reception he’d been expecting, particularly since the old man hadn’t stopped transplanting cabbages. He had hundreds of them, it seemed, in a wooden box that he dragged along between the rows.
“Well, come and help, boy,” snapped the old man. “Part of being wise is knowing the value of things. And advice got for nothing is often worthless. In your case, I would say you need counselling to the value of…about eighty transplanted cabbages.”
“Uh,” said Paul, who’d avoided even doing the weeding in his father’s garden. But he knelt down next to the box of cabbages and asked, “What do I do?”
The old man told him, demonstrating how to make a suitable hole, with a clenched fist pushed into the soil and twisted several times. Paul soon learnt the knack of it, but even so he lagged behind the old man. Closer to, this potential sage looked even more unsuitable for the role of one of the Wise. He was dressed in a simple robe of what looked like sackcloth, and wore wooden sandals that clattered as he crawled forward on his knees. And having been in the cabbage field all day, he was covered in dirt.
The sun rose higher above the cabbage planters and then began its slow decline into the west. As the shadows lengthened, Paul kept looking at the old man, hoping that he was about to call it quits. The cabbage planting business had seemed easy enough at first, but it soon became tiring and his back was stiff from being bent over all day.
Failing the signal to stop work, Paul would have welcomed some conversation, or at least some questions regarding why he was there. But the old man was silent as he planted the cabbages with a monotonous regularity; left fist in to make the hole, right hand to pick up the cabbage and place it carefully, left hand to smooth the dirt around it. Over and over again.
Eventually, the sun sank low enough to send the distant clouds red and Paul had had enough. He stuffed his current cabbage in the hole, smoothed it over and stood up, his back creaking. “I’ve had enough,” he said, a trace of self-righteousness creeping into his voice. “I’ve been planting cabbages nearly all day–a lot more than eighty cabbages!”
“One hundred and thirty-two, by my count,” said the old man cheerfully. “I was wondering when you’d realise.” He got up, straightening his back with the help of both hands thrust against his backbone. “Well, I suppose for that number of cabbages, I can give you supper as well.”
The old man bent down again and pulled a thick, oilcloth covering over the box with the remaining cabbages.
“What do I call you then?” he asked Paul. “Boy? Cabbage-planter?”
“My name is Paul,” said Paul. “What shall I call you?”
“Old Man?” suggested the sage, rolling it off his tongue as if to see how it sounded. “Cabbage-planter? Tanboule? Tanboule is the name of my house–so you may call me that. Tanboule the house and Tanboule the old man. And one shall go to the other for a supper of cabbage and bacon, bread and tea. Eh, Paul?”
“Err…that sounds very nice,” said Paul, who was thinking Tanboule didn’t seem so much wise as mad. Still, he did seem to be on Rhysamarn mountain…
Obviously encouraged by the mention of supper, Tanboule took off up the slope at once, easily outpacing Paul with his long strides. Unlike Aleyne, he didn’t stop for Paul to catch up with him and was soon a dark speck against the grey shale. Paul struggled on angrily, slipping on the wet slabs of stone and wishing he’d never even seen the stupid old man and his cabbages.
Then he looked up, and even the dark speck had gone. Tanboule was nowhere to be seen and there was no sign of a house up on the rocky peak, or even a cave mouth. Paul hesitated and looked back down the mountain, but the mist was as thick as ever. And he could clearly see the cabbage-field–a little square of dirt on which he’d spent considerable labour.
“At least I deserve to eat some cabbage,” muttered Paul. “And I’m going to get some, like it or not!” And with that promise, he started back up the shale, using his hands when the rockface became too steep or broken.
Twenty minutes later, he reached the approximate spot where Tanboule had vanished–and the mystery of his sudden disappearance was explained. Paul had been climbing a peak that he thought was the very pinnacle of Rhysamarn, but it was only a lesser projection from the high mountain that lay before him. Down below Paul, there lay a saddle between the two peaks: a tiny valley of yellow heather, nestled between the greater and lesser peaks of grey shale.
In the centre of this valley, halfway between each peak, there was a house. Or at least, Paul thought it was a house. It was obviously wooden, but each end was curved up to touch the red-tiled roof and its iron chimneys (of which there were three). Even stranger, it didn’t appear to have a door and the only windows were high up on the sides, and round like portholes. In fact, it looked like a particularly fat houseboat, stranded in the heather at least six hundred metres above sea-level, and over two hundred kilometres from the nearest coast. A bird flew from its roof, a black shape silhouetted against the orange sky, triggering memories of old pictures showing an ark atop a mountain and an old man sending out a dove.
But it was still a long way down and the air was chilling as the sun set, so Paul steeled himself and carefully began to make his way down the treacherous slate.
When Paul at last arrived at Tanboule’s peculiar house, the sun had finally given in to the night. But the house was lit up inside, with cheerful yellow light flickering through the porthole-windows, and smoke billowing from at least two chimneys, carrying with it the smell of frying bacon and cabbage.
But Paul couldn’t find a door. He walked around the whole building twice, and even felt the wooden planks, but there was definitely no doorknob, handle or bell.
“Hello in there!” shouted Paul, after his third circumnavigation. “Mister Tanboule! It’s me, Paul! Can I come in?”
“Of course, lad,” came the reply, in Tanboule’s voice–but Paul couldn’t see him till a rattling sound attracted him to the other end of the house. There, a rope ladder was dangling down the side, leading up to what looked like the tiled roof. However, by shielding his eyes from the lantern light, Paul saw that there was a space between the eaves of the roof and the top of the wall–and that was the door.
Tanboule was waiting at the top as Paul climbed in through the hatch. “Welcome aboard, Paul,” he said, standing aside to let Paul drop down from the roof-door.
But Paul was staring at the interior of the house through the hatch and wasn’t moving.
Immediately below him, Tanboule was standing on a raised platform next to a shining binnacle, complete with a huge bronze compass. Next to that stood a ship’s wheel, with a note tacked to it which read Rudder temporarily disconnected, T.
A ladder led down from the first platform to another which extended for most of the length of the house, ending in another ladder going to a forward platform and down through an open hatch. In between the two higher platforms were casks and bags, chests and rugs, all piled haphazardly around some old wooden furniture, and three cast iron stoves, one of which had a frying pan hissing away on it. On the floor next to the cooking stove, a cat was playing with what looked like a piece of dried haddock.
“So it is a boat!” exclaimed Paul, jumping down to admire the binnacle. “I suppose you ended up here when the floods went down?”
Tanboule shook his head sadly. “I built it here. Forty years I studied with the stars, calculating the advent and time of a Great Flood. Then ten years building this craft, high up on the mountain.”
“To save all the animals?” asked Paul, looking around. It didn’t really look big enough for two of everything, not with all the junk.
“To save myself!” declared Tanboule. “I never did like animals much. But it was all a mistake. The Flood never came!”
“Why?” asked Paul. “Were the stars wrong?”
“They weren’t wrong,” snapped Tanboule. “The stars don’t lie–but they can be mischievous. There’s nothing they like better than a joke, particularly if it’s a long one, played on someone who deserves it.”
“Why did you deserve it?” asked Paul as they descended to the long platform, which he already thought of as the “main deck”.
“I deserved it because I was wise and selfish,” sighed Tanboule, flicking a tear from a white-browed eye. “Now, I am wiser (I hope) and less selfish. Which reminds me—why are you here?”
“Well…” began Paul, but Tanboule interrupted him, crying out: “Cabbage! The cabbage is burning! Come on, lad–save the cabbage. You can tell me your story over dinner!”
Over a dinner of slightly burnt cabbage, bacon, tea and thick, crusty bread, Paul explained his troubles to Tanboule. At first, the old man hadn’t seemed terribly interested, but he soon became more serious and asked Paul many questions, particularly about Julia and the pyramid of flaming sticks that had transported Paul from his world to that of Tanboule (as he put it).
“So,” said Paul, when he had told all he could remember. “Will you help me?”
Tanboule sighed and rubbed his great white eyebrows with the back of a gnarled hand. “We will help you, Paul–but I fear that more than good advice is needed here. For your story is but a little part of a bigger story, one in which many people have played their parts, for better or for worse or for no effect at all.”
“What do you mean?” asked Paul, who thought his troubles were complicated enough already. The fact that they might be like one tiny part of a huge puzzle was both terrifying and hard to understand.
“It is partly your story,” said Tanboule, taking a great swig of his tea, “because it is the story of the Ragwitch. A long and sadly true tale which has yet to find a happy ending. Since it will undoubtedly have some bearing on your troubles, I suppose I’d better tell it to you–though this particular tale is worth far more than the planting of one hundred and thirty-two cabbages. Fetch me another cup of tea, Paul, while I compose my voice.”
Composing his voice seemed to entail Tanboule eating more bread, so Paul poured himself some more tea as well while he was waiting. Not that the drink was exactly what he’d call tea–it was sweeter, and scented with lemon and raspberry, but it was made from similar leaves and boiling water.
At last Tanboule finished eating and, stretching himself back, began, without introduction, his rambling tale–part history, part legend, but mostly a true account of an ancient evil.
“Quite a few centuries ago, this Kingdom was a less settled place than it is now,” began Tanboule. “There were no northern towns or castles, and fell creatures held sway over the lands north of the river Twyn and regularly came south to raid the smaller towns and villages.
“These raids, by such creatures as the Gwarulch, were an accepted part of life, albeit an unsavoury part. But, as such acceptance is wont to do, it merely prolonged the crisis that was to arrive.
“In this case, the raids became worse, and after a few years, the creatures were no longer merely raiding, but actually conquering the northern marches of the Kingdom.
“The King in those times was a lazy fellow, addicted to the quiet contemplation of dragonflies on mirror-smooth lakes. In fact, he even had a mechanical dragonfly that flew over a pool of the stillest mercury. Without his active control, the Canton Lords each tried to deal with the problem individually–but they failed to check the hordes of North-Creatures that were pouring over the Twyn. At last, the creatures came to the inner Cantons of Salace and Thrisk–and the King was forced to do something.
“Fortunately, he did the right thing, which was to abdicate in favour of his son, who became King Mirran the Ninth. He was the total opposite of the old, dragonfly-watching King, and he gathered his army and attacked the North-Creatures, driving them back across the Twyn and into the far north.
“This took several years, of course, and during that time the nature of the war changed. And sadly, it was King Mirran who was responsible for the changes and the destruction that was to come of them.
“You see, all through this long war, Magic had played no part. There were more Sorcerers, Wizards, Witches and even mere dabblers about in those days, but the Patchwork King would not allow them the use of Magic for war.”
“The Patchwork King?” asked Paul. “Who was he?”
“He ruled, and as far as I know still rules, in the land of Dreams and Shadows, where everything that could be is and isn’t at the same time–and if you can understand that, you’re wiser than all of us here at Rhysamarn. But it is from this land that all Magic stems, and it is to this land that all Magic-Workers must go, though now I doubt if any more than a handful know the way.
“This was not always so, for there were tales and legends of an Age of Magic, when wars were fought with all manner of Magic. Yet no true records survived from this Age and it became no more than a legend known only to a few who sought after ancient lore.
“One such person was a young Witch, who worked as a healer with the King’s Army, for the Patchwork King allowed Magic for this purpose…”
“A Witch?” interrupted Paul. “I thought they were always evil?”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” asked Tanboule. “They’re like everybody else–good, bad or middling. Anyway, she sought greater powers, and when not actively working, she researched ancient lore, talked among the stars and learnt spells that had been lost for many centuries.
“It was this learning that she took to the King. For somewhere she had learnt of the Angarling: ancient warriors turned to stone and submerged beneath the sea in the shallow waters off the Sleye peninsula. These warriors, she told the King, had sworn to serve against evil, but had been taken unawares by an enemy Sorcerer and turned to stone. The existence of these Angarling proved that the ancient wars of Magic had occurred, and that there had been a time when the Patchwork King did not rule all Magic.
“Obviously, these Angarling knights were from this time, before the Patchwork King, so he would not be able to forbid their use. Furthermore, the spells required to wake them and make them serve were also from a time outside the reign of the Patchwork King–and the Magic the spells contained did not come from his land of Dreams and Shadows.
“Anxious for any help, the King agreed to let the Witch do her work. Foolishly, he did not consider one obvious fact: that if this waking Magic did not come from the Patchwork King, it could only belong to that other, Nameless Realm, so long closed to mankind–a place of death and witless violence, nightmares and fear, ruled by no one and composed only of a raw, ungovernable power…a power wishing the destruction of all life that did not worship it.
“Indeed, the Witch had already gone too far in her researches, and had been tainted by the lure of this power. With the King’s permission she continued, and opened one forgotten door too many. She walked within the dark void beyond and exchanged her heart for power, and her love became a lust for slaughter and dominion over every living thing.
“She danced the steps of Seven Wakenings, and the Angarling made their heavy way out of the sea at Sleye. But not to join the King. She cast another spell and the oncenoble Knights were perverted to her cause. With the Stone Knights’ help, she joined the North-Creatures and became their Queen.”
Tanboule paused to move the cat from where it had started to play with his empty plate, and took it up to lie in his lap. The cat purred happily, as Tanboule stroked it and resumed telling the story.
“The war went badly for us then, with retreat after retreat, each following a great victory of the North-Creatures. For the Patchwork King still allowed no use of Magic, and the North-Queen used all the dark powers of the Nameless Realm.
“At last, our armies were defeated, broken and dispersed. All save a tattered remnant, besieged within the shattered walls of Yendre, once the bright capital of a cheerful, wealthy land. The King was there too, a wreck of a man, who took all the blame for the Kingdom’s destruction upon himself.
“The North-Queen’s creatures attacked the castle at dusk, and after a fierce battle, carried the day. King Mirran was slain, as were all the defenders in that last, hopeless stand.”
“What happened then?” asked Paul, as Tanboule faltered and stared into space, gently running his old hands over the cat’s ears.
“What happened then…” said Tanboule softly, “what happened then should have no part in any tale. It is enough to say that…for several years after that, the North-Queen ruled from the Spire–a grim edifice raised for Her by a renegade Wizard and pupil of Her foul Magic–and Her creatures roamed the Kingdom, carrying out Her will. They slew every living thing they could find, destroyed forests, fouled rivers and salted fields–and in the doing of it, turned much of the Kingdom into a desert, a desert that grew with every passing day.
“All this time, the Magi, the Magic-Workers who might have been able to oppose the North-Queen, were being hunted down and slain. For the Patchwork King still would not allow the use of Magic. Till, one day, the Magi began to gather at Alnwere Hill–where the standing stones climb up to the Pool of Alnwere, all ringed about with a hedge of rowan trees, themselves older than the stones.
“By this time, there were few of the Magi left alive. But they gathered together and bided their time, hidden beneath the protection of stone and tree. Midwinter was their goal, when the icicles hang all asilver from the trees, and the white of snow removes all colour from the land. Midwinter–the time when man and woman, child and beast, curl up and dream of warmth and light and colours richer than those of any worldly spring.
“At such a time, the land of Dreams and Shadows is close to that of ours, and this greatly augmented the Magi’s powers. They lit the great Midwinter Fire, and at the striking of the midnight bell they cast the first of their great spells against the North-Queen, where She held state atop Her Spire, hundreds of leagues to the north.
“In some ways the battle of Magic that was fought between North-Queen and Magi was worse than the original destruction wrought by the North-Creatures. Her spells spread ruin across the land and the Magi were themselves forced to turn to similar destructive Magic.
“In the end, She would have won. The Magi’s Magic was never one of destruction and they could not match Her power. Alnwere Pool lay dark and showed no vision, and the great Midwinter Fire lay in ashes. The Magi lay about it: Wizard and Witch, Sorcerer and Enchanter–all too weak to resist as the North-Queen’s dark Magic overwhelmed them.”
Tanboule paused, and Paul looked away from his face for the first time. He’d been so intent on listening, he hadn’t noticed the room growing cold. The nearer fire had burnt down to ashes and the stove was no longer glowing a cheerful cherry red. Tanboule sighed, and indicated to Paul to stoke up the fire and put in a few pieces of the heavy wood that lay stacked at its side. Paul quickly did so, eager to regain the cosy warmth in which Tanboule had begun his tale–though from the sound of it, a blazing fire would be small comfort for the horrors Tanboule was about to reveal.
“The Magi were beaten…” hinted Paul, when the fire was burning brightly again and Tanboule seemed ready to resume.
“Yes…” said the old man. “They seemed beaten, when from a most unexpected quarter came help for the dying Magi. Help from Ornware and his kind, the wild spirits of forest and lake, wood and stream. And with them rose the Wild Magic, that untamed power of Nature, in all its uncontrollable passion.
“No one knows what happened in the last wild hour, in the darkest part of the night. Who called the Wild Magic (if anyone did) no one knows, and whether it served them or itself is also a mystery. But in the morning, the North-Queen was gone and all the Magi were dead, their Magic broken. Alnwere Pool was dry, the standing stones fallen. Only the rowans remained, bent over as if from a great wind.
“Later, a few Hedge-Wizards and minor adepts learned a little of what had occurred. And they discovered one important fact: the North-Queen had not been killed. She had been thrown out of this world–an act which should have killed Her. But even at the end, and amidst the bitter cold of the transfer, She had great power. She conjured a body for Herself, one that would be unsleeping, tireless, with no bones to break, or blood to bleed, or heart to stop.”
Tanboule paused and watched Paul’s face. Paul saw Her in his mind, all bloated limbs and leaking straw, and said, “A rag doll…”
“Yes. A rag doll. And Her spirit passed into that body, and She went from being North-Queen to being Ragwitch. Oh, She was banished to another world–a simple world, where the people understood Magic and that it should be left alone. And wards and guards were set upon Her (for that was the nest and the crow), but She was still alive. As were Her creatures, though they scattered to the north, and most of Her major servants vanished with Her, being either slain or banished on that grim Midwinter Night.
“Here, Her fate became a thing for tales and stories, songs and legend. Genuine fear of the North-Queen became a sort of tame uneasiness about the Ragwitch, and She became the common blame for all household misfortunes or petty ills.
“Yet even this has faded with time and now the Ragwitch is thought of only as a name, as the common conception of evil and all that’s ‘not right’. Her North-Creatures have kept to the Sea Caves and other such remote corners of the land, and are rarely seen near even the most northerly settlements. Till now, of course. Gwarulch roam ahunting, and worse things are to follow. It is a pity your folk lacked the wisdom of the people who made the Hill of Bones–but perhaps the Ragwitch already had Julia under Her control. In any case, because of your sister She is back–and make no mistake, She is still North-Queen, as well as Ragwitch. And She will destroy this Kingdom if She can…and everyone in it.”
6. Tanboule’s Advice / The Sack of Bevallan (#ulink_13501cff-1cce-5c96-b959-c17374975e6e)
PAUL SAT STUNNED, a half-empty cup of cold tea in front of him. He knew Julia was in trouble, but not that much trouble! And everything was suddenly becoming very complicated–it was getting worse than maths homework, or writing a report on some stupid play. Except here, failure meant much worse than a bad report.
“So where is Julia?” he asked Tanboule, who was sitting open-mouthed, staring at the tiny red glow of the fire between the bars of the stove. “How can I get her back?”
“Where is Julia?” repeated Tanboule dreamily. “Where indeed, but in a place far stranger than any you or I have trod. She has been consumed, and any part of her mind that still exists will be within the Ragwitch.”
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Гарт Никс
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Детская фантастика
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: From the author of Abhorsen comes classic fantasy set in a world dominated by the Ragwitch, a being of sinister, destructive intent.An ancient spirit wreaks death and destruction on the world that sought to cripple her powers.“Julia turned around – and Paul skidded to a stop in shock. He felt like he’d been winded, struck so hard he couldn’t breathe at all. For the person in front of him wasn’t Julia at all, but a hideous mixture of girl and doll: half flesh, half cloth, and the eyes and face had nothing of Julia left at all, only the evil features of the doll.”When Julia finds the ugly doll in the strange ball of feathers on the beach, Paul instinctively knows that his sister has meddled with something that is going to cause trouble. But already it’s too late –the power behind the doll already has his sister in its thrall and, later that night, the Ragwitch claims Julia for its own.Fighting against his natural urge to run from this hideous being, Paul is drawn into the creature’s own world. Can he save his sister –or even himself?