A/N: A somewhat long chapter this time. Enjoy, it may be some time till the next. Sadness. But school's starting again, and I'll also be spending lots of time this fall flying to various places for interviews. Not much fun, and it takes too much time away from writing. Bah humbug. Still, please read and review! And I'm selfish enough to say that the more reviews I get . . . the sooner the next chapter will go up. : ).
Miruvour: Thanks for the review, I love new reviewers. Sorry about the cliffie, I can't resist them. It's slowly becoming an addiction.
AutumnHeart: Will's cloak . . . hmm, I didn't really think of the glowing cloak as any kind of specific spell. Honestly, I'm afraid that I added it in because I thought it was – as you so aptly described it – kinda funky. I've always seen magic as something that just simply happens, something that's in the air around you and which may act in weird and unpredictable ways. Much as I love Harry Potter, I've never had much use for wands and incantations. So really, I don't even know if Will realized that his cloak was glowing. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Either way, I don't think he was very much surprised : ).
Standard Disclaimers Apply. Susan Cooper owns Will Stanton and The Dark Is Rising Series.
CHAPTER NINE"Nothing is written."
Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia
First everything went utterly black. Eyes wide open, Peter stared blindly into an abyss. It was much worse than the darkness you see when you look at the inside of your eyelids. This was spatial. Peter could feel the immensity of the emptiness, and his terror was made all the more real by the fact that there was nothing supporting him in the great void. He plummeted wildly through nothingness.
But then there was a great explosion of images, like fireworks against a velvety summer sky. One by one they flashed swiftly before him, only to fade quickly and be replaced by something else.
A large tree grew upon a hill, and a black tornado roared towards it. A red-haired man with icy blue eyes rode a black horse through a thunderous sky and then was rearing above him on a snow-covered lane that ran through a wood. He saw an immense sad face, neither male nor female, covered with leaves and berries, peering closely at him, wailing in an echoing voice: "My secret . . . my secret . . .!" There was a golden white horse to complement the black, and an old man with wild white hair and a large hooked nose. A dancing skeleton horse, ribbons entwined within its skull, jeering at him with the clattering teeth of madness. A cup of some sort, spinning brilliantly in the air before plunging down into the blue waters of a sun-dappled bay. Six circles quartered by crosses, joined together by links of gold, burning burning.
Faces rushed him. A slender, white-haired boy stood upon Cader Idris with a white dog bristling by his side. The dog's eyes were silver. And he saw another boy, his sweating face flushed with fever, mumbling, "I've lost it, I've lost it!" Three different children, two boys and a girl, bent over a piece of brittle parchment in an attic. One of the children, the girl, cowering defiantly before a horned monster that rose up out of a lake before her. The white-haired boy angrily gesturing from the bluff above her.
And a man's bearded face, strangely familiar, staring at him gravely with blue eyes from beneath the hood of a blue-green robe. "Beware your own race, Bran Davies. They are the only ones that will ever harm you, in the end." A sword glimmered from the man's waist. The old man with wild white hair stood by his side, cloaked in midnight blue. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen stood upon a hillside, her white arms stretched out in supplication to someone unseen, her loose black hair streaming in the wind. Tears ran down her pale cheeks. And then another face, terrifyingly unnatural, because it was neither man nor beast, but an abnormal blending of the two. Horns sprouted from the curly hair, and the mouth was twisted with pride and ferocity. And then Peter saw the eyes and gasped in horror. They were his own eyes, owl's eyes, golden orbs rimmed by great pale feathery lashes.
The creature vanished, and once more there was the black tornado roaring down upon the tree on a hill. He could see six figures – or was it seven? – encircling the tree, holding something in their hands that blazed out at the darkness threatening to engulf them. And then there was an even greater blaze, that one figure swung at the tree. A great flash and a shrill scream, and everything went dark.
And suddenly Peter was back upon the balcony, the creaky wood straining under his feet and the breath roaring in and out of his lungs. His fingers were hurting, and he realized that his hand was clutching at Will's in a panic. He gasped and slowly loosened his grip. Flecks of color dotted his vision, and he shook his head to clear them away. Beads of sweat flew from his forehead.
Two bright spots of red burned in Annie's cheeks. She looked invigorated, animated, shining with exhilaration. Her blue eyes moved to meet her brother's golden ones, and she gave him a look that was the silent equivalent of "Whoowhee!"
Will withdrew his hands from theirs and folded his arms across his chest and said nothing.
Annie looked away from her brother and turned her eyes up to Will. Her face was eager and impatient. "That boy, the one with the silver dog. Was that Dad?"
Will nodded. "Yes, Annie. That was your father when he was three years younger than Peter is now, growing up a boy in Wales. That was the first time I met him."
"And Mum? Did we see her?"
"Yes, and your uncles Simon and Barney."
"They were the three children with the map?"
"Of course."
"What was that?" Peter managed to ask, his voice husky. He was still reeling from the vision of those eyes that were so like and unlike his own. So similar in color, but containing a fierceness that wasn't – that couldn't be – human. "And not just the map. Everything. Whatever it was we saw."
"Images from the past, Peter, from the last great rising of the Dark. The battle that your parents, uncles, and myself won for humankind. I showed them to you to help you understand, at least a little, what it is we must do."
"I don't believe you," Peter spat, lying. Fear forced the words from him. "There's nothing we can do, it's too late! The bombs are already fallen." He was suddenly – inexplicably – angry. "Are you daft? Don't you realize we've lost already? And even if what you say is true, why didn't Mum and Dad ever mention it? Why do you tell us now?"
"They didn't tell you because they don't remember," Will answered, his words clipped and abrupt. "It was best that they be made to forget. And I tell you now because you need to know." His face was troubled, and he stared at Peter as if he was confronted with an unanticipated problem he wasn't quite sure he knew how to solve. "And don't be so hopeless, Peter."
Peter didn't hear Will's last sentence through the roaring in his ears, the roaring of falling grey walls. "Know what?" he demanded. "What is it, really, that we need to know?" He couldn't fight the sarcasm that dripped from the words.
"That you two children are somehow woven into the pattern of the battle between Light and Dark. Your blood demands it. And I must now call upon you in this battle, for I myself cannot defeat the evil that Muscharch has unleashed upon this planet."
"Why not? What are you, Will Stanton?"
A mirthless grin crossed the man's face. "I cannot win this battle, Peter, because this is a human problem, and I am not entirely human."
The words fell into a silence that smothered the whole night, dropping them all into a pool of darkness. Peter remembered his mother's accusation from that morning: How can you take this so, Will Stanton? How can you be so . . . so . . . inhuman?
"The Light does not meddle with human affairs, our sole purpose is – was – to defeat the Dark. Over the centuries we have learned, sometimes painfully, that it is best, more wise, to leave men and women to their own management. We do not interfere. Indeed, to do so, even for your benefit, would be to take away your greatest gift." Will's voice sounded tired. "I am merely a Watchman, the last of the Old Ones, set here alone to guard from just such an occurrence as happened yesterday morning, when, through human agency, a remnant of the Dark brought havoc upon humankind."
"This problem stems from the Dark, but it possesses a human face. You could almost say that I don't . . . have complete jurisdiction in such matters. But I am here to help."
Peter remained sullenly silent. Annie's voice was a strange mixture of hope and fear. "Are we . . . are we human, Will?"
Will let out a loud bark of laughter. "Yes, dear heart," he chuckled. "You and your brother are all too human, and thanks the stars for it, too."
Peter felt mulishly awkward and inadequate. "But what can we do, Will? I don't understand what you want from us."
"I want nothing more than what you're willing to give, Peter." Will spread his hands before him in a gesture of trust and acceptance.
Peter scowled. He wanted answers, facts. Not more ambiguities.
Will continued. "There is perhaps a long journey before us, children, but only if you wish it. The Light can force you into nothing. If you wish, you can return to your beds and fall asleep. When you wake in the morning, you will have no recollection of what you saw and heard tonight."
"But who would stop Muscharch then?" Annie asked innocently. The question betrayed her absolute confidence that she herself could do it, if only given the chance.
Will said nothing.
"Nothing would happen, right?" Peter asked scornfully. "Muscharch will drop another bomb, or Sindal will, or we will, and no one could do anything about it. It's too late."
"Perhaps yes, perhaps no," Will said mildly, deliberately ignoring Peter's rudeness. "It's impossible to tell what might transpire. It's possible that Muscharch or Sindal or the President would chose to refrain from their own free will. Or that they will be persuaded that the path they have chosen is madness."
"But no certainty?"
"There's never any certainty where human affairs are concerned," Will said simply.
Annie raised her hands and lowered her dark hood, shaking her black hair out in the night. She let her arms fall to her sides and made herself as tall as her seven-year-old body would allow. "Of course we'll help, Will," she said proudly. "How could we do anything else?"
"And you, Peter?"
Peter watched Will silently. The face of his father's friend was completely devoid of expression. No help there. He knew what he wanted to say, what it was that he should say, but he had difficulty thinking of the words. They stuck in his throat. It was as if something within him was screaming hysterically, choking off whatever he wanted to say. Peter fought the screaming and pushed it back, deep within himself.
"Naturally, Will," he finally managed to whisper, wondering what it was he was agreeing to. "Anything."
The smile that flashed across Will Stanton's face was sudden and electrifying. Peter stared. From behind the middle-aged man's features, he saw a boy grinning at him. A stocky boy, with a round, placid face and a shock of brown hair that fell in his eyes. It was the boy from the picture. It was as if all sternness and solemnity of the Will Stanton Peter knew was merely a mask, which, having served its purpose, the man not casually tossed away.
And then Will Stanton once again raised his arms to the sky. He began to sing, his rich deep voice rippling through the winter air. Peter had never heard such signing before. He listened, enraptured, to words he couldn't understand. But there was no mistaking the meaning of the song: it was a celebration; a magical invocation of . . . something.
And Peter could feel the music entering him, searching for something. It poked through his mind and memory. And evidently it found whatever it was seeking, for Peter felt a great rip within him, and some darkness he didn't know he had been carrying was torn away. He gasped, suddenly feeling completely light and free. He felt as if he could do anything.
The last note of the song slowly died away, like a distant hawk slowly vanishing into the sunset. Peter tried to catch the final words, amazed to find that he was already forgetting the melody. But now there was just silence.
Annie smiled through tears that gleamed in her eyes. "That was beautiful, Will."
Will smiled and looked a little abashed. "Ah, well," he said. "My brother James' much better than I. But I guess I can do well enough." He turned his head and studied Peter from beneath arched eyebrows. "And how are you feeling now, Peter?" he asked casually.
"Great," Peter said in a daze. "Never felt better."
Will right hand reached into a pocket of his robe. "Good. Then here, I have something for you."
He fumbled for a few seconds and then withdrew his hand from the pocket. He held his clenched fist flat out before them and slowly opened his fingers. Two small blue-green stones lay in his palm.
Annie gasped. "That's Mum's stone! The one Dad gave her when they were children!"
"These stones, Annie, belonged to a king, a man who had forgotten all hope. They had lain forgotten many years before your father and I arrived. He gave them to us as a token, a remembrance of his land that was soon to be lost."
The words pulled at Peter's memory, and he thought he heard a shrill voice shrieking, "Lost . . . lost!" He shook his head in irritation and the voice vanished. He never head it again.
"They are the only relics of the king's land that remain," Will continued. "After the battle between the Light and the Dark, after your father cut the mistletoe from the tree, he forgot what the stone meant. But he didn't truly forget its importance, for he gave it to your mother, the girl who had spoken with the Lady of the Light. I've kept the second one safe for years.'
Peter reached out and delicately picked on of the stones from Will's hand. Despite the cold air, it felt warm to the touch. "What do they do?"
A grin quirked around Will's mouth. "Nothing," he shrugged.
Annie's face fell. "Oh," she muttered.
Will laughed. "Nothing is without significance in this world. Or, for that matter, in any other. If your father and I were given these stones to carry away from the Lost Land, it was done so for a reason. What that reason is I don't know. But I'm willing to bet that you two will discover it."
"Oh," Annie brightened.
"But I won't have you two losing them. So come. There's someplace we need to go."
Peter's eyes widened as the air just beyond the balcony railing began to ripple and shimmer. Slowly, two great wooden doors materialized before them, floating in the air above the Davies' front yard.
Will leaped lightly atop the balcony railing, balancing effortlessly. His billowing cloak snapped in the risng wind. He turned back to smile broadly at the two children who were watching him in amazement. "Come on," he repeated, holding out his hands once again. Peter and Annie each grasped one and scrambled clumsily up on the railing next to Will. Peter swayed. For one sickening second he thought he was going to tumble down into the snow-covered lavender bush that seemed to be miles below him. But Will's hand tightened on his, and he righted himself with some little effort.
The great doors silently swung open, revealing a hole of darkness in the winter air.
"It's easy now," Will said cheerfully. "Just step forward through the doors, and we'll be where we need to go.
Behind Will's back, Peter and Annie exchanged terrified glances.
But Will had already taken a giant stride off the railing. Before they could even scream, Peter and Annie had stumbled behind him and fell clumsily through the doors.
There was no stomach-dropping fall that Peter had expected. Instead, it simply felt that he tripped forward into . . . someplace else. He fell forward and felt the impact of a wooden floor beneath his hands and knees. "Ouch," he muttered, rubbing his left knee absently. He looked up.
They were in his father's jewelry shop. All the lights were off, and the moonlight slanting in through the front window glinted off glass and silver and transformed the familiar room into a place of intrigue and mystery.
Annie was gazing around herself with stunned eyes. She was reeling a bit. "Whoa . . ." she breathed. "Cool."
"Easy there, Keanu," Peter said absently, still trying to orient himself. She made a grotesque face in his direction.
Will was striding around the shop, cloak billowing behind him, peering curiously into one case after another. His steps were long and elastic. He moved with the graceful ease of a young boy, not the self-contained stiffness of the academic.
"Ah, here we go," Will murmured to himself, bending over a case near the back of the room. "Come here, you two," he beckoned.
Peter and Annie approached. Will stepped back so that they could look into the case. "Bran really does do a remarkable job with these things, doesn't he?" He said, his voice rich with admiration.
Two of Bran Davies' pieces lay nestled inside the glass box upon royal blue velvet. One was a necklace, composed of silver links that twisted in and about one another. The pattern was random, and there were delicate engravings on the heavy links. The other piece was a silver arm band, encrusted with jade and moonstone. The band itself wasn't solid, but made of filigree metalwork in the shapes of flowers and leaves.
"Well," Will said, rolling up the sleeve on his right arm. "The Dark once used its powers to pilfer something infinitely more valuable from the British Museum, so there shouldn't be any problem getting these out. The only difficulty will be explaining to your father just where two of his most valuable pieces disappeared to without a trace." He closed his eyes and laid his right hand upon the glass. His lips muttered a few soundless words, and all expression melted from his face. Slowly, ever so slowly, his hand reached through the glass. Peter stared. It was so odd to see one solid material pass unscathed through other solid material.
Although, some detached, rational part of his mind commented, it's not really solid at all, but empty space sparsely populated with distant nuclei and protons and electrons. If Will could somehow line up his atoms so that . . .
Oh, shut up.
Will had removed his hand by now and had a firm grasp on the necklace and armband. He held out an open palm. Wordlessly, Peter and Annie gave him their stones. He then turned and walked towards Bran Davies small forge at the back of the store.
Annie trotted after him. "Do you . . . do you know how to work with silver, Will?" she asked doubtfully.
Will shot her a look of proud scorn. "Of course I do. Whose father was it, after all, who taught yours everything he knew?"
It took Will several hours to engraft the stones onto the necklace and armband. Exhausted, Peter found himself succumbing to drowsiness while they waited. Soon he was sitting against the wall, snoring softly, Annie's dark head cradled in his lap.
Peter woke as Will slipped the silver necklace over his head and he felt the additional heavy weight of it settle against his chest. Will had worked an extra silver link into the chain from which the blue-green stone hung. He then took Annie's wrist and rolled up her pyjama's sleeve. Gently, he took the band and slid it up the yawning girl's arm until it came to rest just above her elbow. The blue-green stone flashed from the center of the largest flower of the design. Will stood back and surveyed the two children with satisfaction.
"Very good," he murmured. "The combination of my protection, the Lost Land's material, and the Pendragon's workmanship should be sufficient defense against anything we may meet."
Anything? Peter wondered. What is he expecting?
"Do you like them?" Will asked.
"Very much," Annie responded politely, but with an uncertain note in her voice. "But . . ."
"Yes?"
"What about Mum and Da?" she burst out. "Won't they be worried when they wake and find us gone? And we really shouldn't take Da's work. He put a lot of time into these, you know."
Will grinned. "First of all, your father would want you to have these pieces. As long as you're wearing them, you carry his love and protection with you wherever you go. You may need that. Second of all: where do you think you're going? As soon as I can manage it, you two are going back to bed, where you belong."
"But . . ." Peter stammered in confusion. "Shouldn't we be doing something? We can't just wait, can we?"
"Yes, we can, Peter. And that is just what we're going to do."
Doubt crept across Annie's face. "You – you do have a plan, Will, don't you?" she asked archly.
"Well, no, not really. Why, do you?"
Annie looked uncomfortable and shook her head, mouthing a silent 'no.'
"Well, then," Will said cheerfully. "At least we're all on the same page. I say that's a pretty good start."
"Oh, that's brilliant," Peter huffed in indignation. "After all this you're telling us we're going back to bed?!"
"Trust me, Peter. When the right time comes, we'll do something." The merriment faded from Will's face, and he looked from one child to another irresolutely. He spoke slowly: "That said, there's one thing that I want you two to remember."
"What's that, Will?" Annie asked somewhat impatiently.
Will raised his eyebrows. "Always know that in this quest shall harm you. It is the Law of the High Magic that the Dark is not permitted to hurt human beings." Will's voice was confident, but Peter detected uncertainty hovering about his eyes.
"Is that true, Will?" he asked sharply.
"Yes," he replied firmly. "The Dark cannot hurt you. But . . . it can make you harm yourself. It can get inside you, make you think . . . well, boogey-man thoughts." Will shot Peter a swift glance. "And nothing can stop another human being from hurting you, indirectly influenced by the Dark within them." A bitter grin twisted Will's lips. "Nothing prevented Muscharch from dropping that bomb, or the President from dropping the second and third."
Peter was silent. For the first time he realized the magnitude of what was being asked of him and his sister. Deep inside him, the new self that had awoken during Will's song stretched and unfurled further. It wasn't bravery, nor was it resignation he felt. There was simply the awareness of imminent motion, the tense expectation of a runner before a race. He reached under his robe and fingered the blue-green stone at his breast, gazing thoughtfully at his father's friend.
"Here," Will said. "There's something else we should take." He walked over to another case and with the same uncanny smoothness reached through the glass and retrieved two more objects. They were identical silver daggers. "Take these. And keep them safely on you at all time."
"Will," Peter began, casting a disapproving glance at his sister, who was staring avidly with parted lips at the blades. "I don't think – "
His protest was quelled by the snapping fury he saw in her icy blue glare.
"Uh, never mind."
Will smiled. "Don't worry, Peter. These daggers belong now to the Light. They can be used to harm nothing but the Dark. If you tried to cut yourself with them, you'd find that the blade would rebound and refuse to enter the flesh. And if you keep them in these," Will removed two leather sheaths from an invisible pocket on his cloak, "they should be safe enough."
Peter was all astonishment. Wordlessly, he took a dagger in his left hand and a sheath in his right. A leather strap hung from the sheath, and he realized that it was meant to be worn about the neck. A circle quartered by a cross was stitched into the leather with a thread of a slightly darker shade. Annie also took a dagger and a sheath.
There was a rippling of distant music. Peter's head shot up frantically, searching for its source. He saw nothing. But as he looked wildly about him, the same great doors formed themselves again in the middle of his father's jewelry shop.
"Now then," Will said, rubbing his hands together. "I think I remember saying something about getting you two to bed."