Disclaimer: All characters and plot elements from The Dark Is Rising sequence belong to Susan Cooper. The rest is mine.
A/N Sorry for the wait - I haven't had much time to myself the past week, so this has taken a bit longer than expected.
11. The Gift of Love
Will, Jane and Bran stood in the middle of the Court room facing Merriman, wondering what was going to happen next. Merriman's inscrutable features regarded them sternly.
From where he sat, Wittan said, "Bran, you must now undertake the final challenge."
Unexpectedly, Merriman took a step to his left and behind him they saw a wooden stand which hadn't been there before. On top was a small bundle wrapped in a dark red silk cloth. Merriman turned and undid the cloth revealing a circular piece of curved glass, like the lens of a large magnifying glass. He looked very seriously at Bran and when he spoke his deep, powerful voice filled the whole room.
"This is called a Diviner's Eye, Bran. Look into it and say what you can see."
Bran moved forward to look. Tiny sparks of light seemed to swirl around inside the glass, like a snow globe that had just been shaken. As they gradually stilled, Bran could make out the image of something - the image of a person.
"Will, look," he said, "I can see someone."
Will too peered into the sparkling glass. He saw Jane's face reflected back, which was strange because she seemed too far away.
"Who do you see?" Will asked, pushing away the thoughts that jumped into his mind.
"I can see a woman lying on a platform inside a stone building. Her eyes are shut, but she's not sleeping. I don't think she's dead either. That's strange, it's like she's just resting."
"Who is she, Bran?" asked Merriman with a marked softening of his voice.
"I don't kn-- " He stopped, mouth open, looking totally stunned. He looked at Merriman. "What's happened to her? What've you done?"
"Bran, who is it?" asked Jane. Before he said it, Will knew.
"It's my mother." Bran's eyes were wide.
"She is caught out of time and can only be released by her true son," said Merriman. "That is the final challenge, to prove your identity."
Bran hardly seemed to hear these last words. Fury bubbled inside him and his rage suddenly spilled out. "Why have you done this to her? Didn't she suffer enough when you made her give me up and leave me so far away in time and space?"
"It was done because she asked me to do it," Merriman said gravely.
"But why?"
Merriman sighed and seemed pained to go on.
"After she left you, she tried to live a life of solitude and contemplation, afraid of what your father would do. She used this glass to watch you as you began to grow in your quiet valley. But it became too much to see you everyday and never be allowed any closer, to talk to you or touch you. So she begged me to take her out of time until you came back to her. I refused for a long, long while, until I could see that her heart was breaking in anguish. Finally, I gave her what she wished for and she has been caught out of time, waiting for you ever since."
Will had never seen Merriman so moved as he remembered these events of long ago.
Hot tears prickled Bran's eyes as he looked back at the image in the glass. "Where is she? I want to go to her now!"
"She is in a chapel near the woods, not far from here. But you must have a little patience. The formalities of the Court—"
"No!" Bran's anger suddenly sparked back into life. "I've had enough of being patient. I've waited fifteen years to see her, I'm not waiting any longer."
He drew the crystal sword from the scabbard at his side. It cut through the air with a menacing swish. Wittan and several members of the Court stood up in alarm, but with a swift movement Bran swung the blade downwards and held the hilt in two hands. He snapped his body upright and in the same instant vanished.
Will and Jane stood there, open-mouthed.
The rest of the astonished Court were on their feet and a loud, outraged murmur spread around the room. Merriman, tight-lipped, his shadowy eyes blazing, held up his hand for silence. He seemed about to pronounce some dreadful sentence upon Bran.
"Wait Merriman!" blurted out Will. "Let Jane and I go after him, he'll listen to us and we'll bring him back." Fearfully he looked up at the oldest Old One, desperately hoping Bran's impetuousness wouldn't mean the end for his friend.
The utter stillness that prevailed pressed in on Will; he hardly dared breathe.
After a moment that seemed to last a lifetime The Lady stepped forward and touched Merriman on the arm. Her movement seemed to diffuse the tension in the chamber.
"Bran is so like his father at that age, don't you think Merriman? Let us not be too hasty in passing judgement on him. "
Merriman glanced at her and his brow became less furrowed but he said nothing. Swinging his cloak around him, he went to sit back down on his chair.
The Lady turned to Will with a gentle smile. For a moment Jane saw a glazed, blank looked cross Will's face and guessed it was the silent communication of the Old Ones.
"You know what to do, Will," said The Lady. "There's no need to bring Bran back here, he's in the place he needs to be for the last test. But remember, Bran must fulfill the challenge by himself. "
Will nodded, looking relieved, then said, "Come on Jane. We'd better find our renegade prince." She smiled, feeling the weight of the situation lift.
The Lady said to her, "Just put your fingers on the edge of the Diviner's Eye and look into the glass."
The two teenagers stood opposite each other, both feeling the smooth crystal beneath their fingers as they gazed at the sparkling lights. Will let his eyes flick momentarily to Jane's face where he saw such an expression of calm, almost serene, concentration that he nearly forgot what he was doing.
Clearing her thoughts, Jane focussed on the glass and gradually she felt as if her body was getting lighter while everything around became hazy. The vision of the reclining woman steadily grew sharper and more solid. Then, without quite knowing how, they were suddenly there in the chapel.
Bran was kneeling on the floor next to a waist-high stone plinth. Stretched out on it was a woman, neither old nor young, with long, black hair and skin almost as pale as Bran's. Her hands were clasped across her middle and she wore a long, plain green dress. Around her was a faint shimmering light that gave her body a ghostly appearance. They saw Eirias, the crystal sword, lying on the ground near Bran, like an abandoned child's toy. He looked round, aware now of Will and Jane's presence. His previously angry expression had been replaced by one of sadness and resignation.
"I suppose you've come to take me back to their worships," he said with a note of bitterness.
"No actually," said Will, "though you came very close to being fried on the spot by Merriman."
Bran's eyes widened and a hint of a smile appeared on his lips. "Oh. He wouldn't have dared though…would he?"
Will's expression suggested otherwise. "Don't underestimate him Bran."
"Oh" said Bran again, standing up. "So how did you stop him?"
"You must thank The Lady for that. She's sent us here to tell you about the last test."
They all looked back at Bran's mother and Jane moved closer to where she lay.
"She looks so peaceful, just as if she were sleeping. She must've loved you so much, Bran, to trust that you'd return to her one day."
"What scares me is that I nearly didn't. What if I'd never come back? She might have been left like this forever."
"That doesn't matter any more. You're here now and you'll do your best to help her." She put her hand briefly on his shoulder in a gesture of comfort.
Watching Jane, Will felt a jolt inside him. He had been struck by the tenderness and wisdom of her words, and as he looked at her, he wished it was him not Bran that she had touched. Suddenly he felt like he was seeing her for the first time and wondered why he hadn't noticed how pretty she'd become. There was a gentle beauty in her clear blue eyes, and the way her hair fell across her cheek made him want to reach out and smooth it back.
Bran turned his head and caught Will staring mouth half-open at Jane. Despite the other things on his mind, he couldn't help but smile.
"Ahem… Old One, are you going to tell me what The Lady had to say?"
Will started and shook his head. "Erm…Oh yes." He felt his cheeks redden. "I'm supposed to tell you – 'The task is set in stone'. "
"Oh not more riddles," said Bran rolling his eyes.
"I think you just have to look around a bit," said Jane, who had noticed something the other two hadn't.
Bran glanced back at the stone plinth his mother was resting on. Along the side he saw something had been finely carved into the smooth, grey blocks. He brushed some dust away and read out the words he found:
For my one true son I wait in peace,
Till the gift of love brings my release.
Bran sighed. "Well I'm her true son, but what's the gift of love? Should I give her a kiss?"
Will couldn't help laughing. "This is not Sleeping Beauty, Bran. Someone caught out of time would never feel that."
"What if I tell her I love her?" 'Like someone should tell someone else' he thought.
"No, it's got to be something only you as her son could do or give her. It's Merriman's magic, so try to think what he would have done. I'm sorry, I can't help you any more, you must do the rest on your own." Merriman's words drifted back into Will's mind, 'If he is true to his father, he will be given the power' and he smiled because he suddenly knew where the answer lay.
Bran looked at him, baffled. Jane nervously tucked her hair back behind her ear and Bran noticed again the ring with the blue-green stone. Remembering he also had a Lightning Stone, he closed his eyes and touched the little pendant round his neck. After a few seconds of whirling thoughts, he saw in his mind Owen Davies as they had parted at the lake. He felt a sharp stab of pain at the memory, and wondered why he was thinking about it. He glanced down at his mother again, then, more by instinct than by thought, he put his hand into his pocket and drew out the sprig of rosemary.
For a moment he looked at it blankly, but a smile spread slowly across his face as the solution dawned on him. "Of course! He wanted me to give it to you. Thanks Da," he said with relief.
Bran gently tucked the rosemary between his mother's clasped fingers and said in his lilting Welsh accent: "The gift of love you left for me, I now give back to you."
Somewhere in the distance there was a ripple of bell-like music and Bran's mother opened her eyes. The ghostly light around her disappeared and Bran gently touched her hand.
"My son, you are here," she said softly. "I knew you would return to me one day." Carefully he helped her to sit up.
Bran looked into her eyes. "I have seen you so many times in my dreams. I never thought I'd really be here by your side."
They embraced tenderly, until the sound of a door opening made them draw apart and look round. Standing in the doorway, his sea-blue cloak swirling about his feet, was King Arthur, Bran's father. He walked forward and knelt before the woman.
"My Lady Guinevere, how long I have waited for this moment."
He took her hand and kissed it gently, gazing up into her eyes.
"My lord, how can you forgive me after all the hurt I caused you?"
He shook his head slowly. "The hurt has long since passed away. Since then, since I learned what you had persuaded Merlion to do, I realised that I had lost the one person that I didn't want to live without. Forgiving you came easily, but I have never been able to forgive myself for making you so afraid that you hid yourself and our son from me." He got up and held out his arm for his wife to lean on as she too shakily stood up.
Arthur turned to Bran with an expression of controlled delight. "When you didn't come with me before, I thought I had lost everything. But then I felt the stirring within the High Magic and hoped beyond hope that you might be given this second chance. And now you are here and my Lady Guinevere is released, we can all be together as we should have been long ago."
Watching all this, Will caught Jane's eye and nodded towards the door. They went out into the warmth of the sunshine.
"I think we should leave them alone for a while," he said. "Let's walk back towards the castle."