Now it was mid-afternoon, and the landscape around them was sere and unwelcoming. Paper-thin, dry leaves crackled underfoot, the remains of trees long dead. The dusty wind caught in their throats, and made their eyes water.
Still they kept on walking, saying nothing, but all thinking of what lay before them.
The sun was beginning to sink behind them when they saw a towered palace in front of them, dwarfed by the Cloud, on the edge of which the palace seemed to stand. It was made of pure white stone and was so caught by the light of the sinking sun that it seemed to burn with an unconsuming fire.
"What is it?" said Graham, squinting against the brightness of the shining stone.
"It looks like some sort of temple, or palace," said Colin.
"Look how it's shining," Gwen said. "It's the most beautiful place I've ever seen."
"Perhaps it isn't there," said Graham. "Perhaps it's some sort of mirage."
"Don't be daft," said Colin. "It's real all right."
"Should we go there?" said Gwen.
"I suppose we've got to," her brother replied. "Personally I've never been so thirsty."
"Nor me," said Graham. "Anyway, maybe whoever lives there knows the way to the Darkest Places? Come on."
They walked on towards it. As they approached the Palace, the splendour of its towers and pillars became clearer. They could see the twisted golden spires, which erupted from each tower, and they began to pick out the windows, all shapes and sizes, reflecting the sun and gleaming like jewels.
Night was closing in, and torches had been lit within the palace, flaring through the stained-glass windows with blood-reds and rich yellows, blues as changing as the sky, vivid greens, purples and violets.
The children stood before the palace on Desolation's edge and wondered at its beauty, as many travellers had done before, from the time that an ancient and unknown King had built it. They were lucky, being able to see it, for they were the last travellers to witness its many miracles.
There was no sound from within the Palace. The gates were open and unguarded.
"We might as well go in," said Graham.
"There's no use in waiting for an invitation." Colin agreed.
"Suppose there's nobody here," said Gwen suddenly. "I mean, maybe it's deserted."
"It's certainly quiet," said Graham.
"Still the torches are lit," Colin said.
"Well maybe they all left in a hurry. Like the Marie Celeste!"
"Sometimes," said Colin, beginning to lose his nerve, "I could do without your comments."
"Sorry."
Colin slipped through the gates, followed closely by the other two. They found themselves in a deserted courtyard in the middle of which stood a fountain made of white marble like the rest of the Palace, from which the water had long-since ceased to cascade. Several white doves sat in a dead tree and watched them with pink eyes.
"Which way?" asked Gwen. There were endless arches leading into pillared shadows.
"Straight ahead," said Colin determinedly.
They passed under the arch into a sort of corridor, lit by flickering torches, which made their shadows leap and flit grotesquely on the walls. "Hey, all the walls are painted," said Graham.
"They're frescos," said Colin.
"Eh?"
"Paintings on walls are called frescoes."
"Oh."
The frescoes were very beautiful. In them, the artists had painted graceful and happy people dancing and hunting and feasting.
"There are mosaics on the floor," said Gwen. "Hundreds of little stones. And there are jewels in the people's eyes. And jewels for stars."
They passed under another soaring arch, and another. Each time the hallway grew larger, the paintings more magnificent, the shadows more grotesque. But there were no people to be seen anywhere.
"There are doors at the end. Look!"
Graham's voice echoed eerily in the empty space. Then, from behind the great golden doors at the end of the hallway, set with jewels and tiny mirrors, and beaten into intricate patterns, there came the murmuring sound of a crowd.
"People!" whispered Gwen.
"People! People! People!" the walls echoed.
"Shall we go in?" said Graham.
"Well we haven't come this far to turn back again."
Between them, Colin and Graham just managed to push one of the huge doors open wide enough for the three of them to enter.
Inside, it was gloomy and oppressive, and the crowd filled the vast chamber. The atmosphere was like that of a theatre before a play begins; filled with excitement and a sort of awe. The children pushed through the crowd to get a better view of what was going on. The people were all dressed finely, but were painted like dolls, with china-white faces, and rouged cheeks. Even the men wore make-up, so that they looked rather like pathetic clowns.
"These aren't the happy people in the paintings," said Gwen.
"Maybe they were," said Colin. "A long time ago."
"What are they doing here?"
"How should I know? They all look as if they're all waiting for something to happen."
"Maybe it's a play," suggested Gwen.
"Oh for goodness sake," said her brother, "in a few days, perhaps even hours, this place is going to be destroyed by the Cloud. Who in their right minds would be watching a play?"
"Perhaps they're arranging a mass evacuation," said Graham. "Perhaps –"
"Look!" hissed Graham. "Something is going to happen."
At the far end of the chamber, a large number of brilliant, firework-like flares had been lit. The light was dazzling.
The murmuring died away, and an expectant hush fell. Into the light thrown by the flames walked the figure of a boy. He looked about the same age as Graham, and he was dressed from hand to foot in white, with a high collar set with red and green jewels rising behind his dark hair. His skin was the color of the moon.
As soon as he appeared, the crowd went mad with excitement. They screamed and yelled and stamped their feet, many of them weeping openly, making their dolls faces run with tears. Then the boy half-spoke, half-sang, but the crowds meant nothing to the children. The crowd did not cease their screaming when he sang, but redoubled it when the song came to an end.
"What's so special about him?" said Graham.
"He'll never make the charts, whoever he is," said Colin.
The boy sang again. The song was the same, but the crowd reacted with wilder singings and more impassioned screeches. People were fainting to right and left, and nobody bothered to pick them up. Gwen tried to help up a woman who collapsed near her, but it was impossible. The crowd was surging forward so much that she could not get to the woman.
Then it was over. The flames began to splutter and go out. The boy in white retreated into the darkness, his moon-pale features sparkling with sweat. The audience subsided, exhausted, and began to make their way out of the chamber by various doors, shaking their heads as if they could hardly believe what they had seen; men, women and even children with tears streaming down their faces.
Colin, Gwen and Graham followed the flood of people out of the chamber.
"What now?" asked Gwen.
"I don't know," Colin murmured, looking at the floor.
"What's wrong, Col?" asked graham.
"Leave me alone."
"What's wrong?"
Colin looked up. There were tears in his eyes.
"I don't know why," he said, "but when he sang, I wanted to cry like the rest of them. It's stupid."
"Do you think they know about the Cloud?" said Graham. "I mean, if they don't, hadn't we better tell them?"
"Oh, they know all right," said Colin. "But they don't care."
"How do you know?"
"It's in their faces. A sort of resignation. And that boy, he was telling them that it would all be all right again," Colin said.
"But I couldn't understand a word he was saying."
"Neither could I. But it was about the people in the pa
intings, I know. And the men with jewels for eyes."
Gwen and Graham looked at Colin, confused. It was unlike him to be so dreamy. Usually he laughed at that kind of thing, said that it was rubbish.
The people had drifted away into the shadows between the pillars to drink wine from delicate goblets.
"Shall we speak to them?" said Gwen. "We can try," said Colin.
But it was as if the children were ghosts, and the people could not see or hear them. Though they tried, nobody would listen, or answer their questions.
"They're all mad," concluded Graham after half a dozen fruitless attempts. "Or brainwashed."
"What shall we do? Just take some food and drink and leave?" said Gwen.
"No," said Colin quietly. "What then?"
"Which way leads to the place where we saw the boy?"
"That way, I think, but -"
"Come on, then. Perhaps he can explain all this to us. Before I leave here I want to know who they were –"
"Who who were?" said Graham.
"The people with jewels for eyes," Colin replied, and ran off down the pillared hallway.
The Boy
They returned to the chamber. It was empty. At the far end, at the back of the stage on which the boy had sung, there was a small door. It opened on to a winding stairway.
"This must go up one of the towers," said Colin. "Come on."
They started to climb. Graham gave up counting the worn marble steps after five hundred. It was dizzying and frightening climbing so high, and in the dark, for there were no torches to light the stairs.
Finally they came to an end, and the children arrived at the top of the tallest tower in the Palace. There was only one door in front of them.
"No guards," said Graham.
"Why should there be?" said Colin. "None of that lot down there look as if they could climb the stairs."
"Shall we knock?" said Gwen.
"No."
Colin turned the handle of the beaten-gold door. The lock clanked, and the door swung open ponderously on huge hinges.
Inside, there was chaos. The white outfit the boy had been wearing was strewn across the floor. A number of other spectacular costumes had been flung into a corner. There were upset wine cups on the floor, staining the exquisitely woven carpet with purple dregs. A large, round window dominated one wall, but it was so dark outside that no light passed through it.
Lying on a pile of cushions, dressed in a gown of cream-colored silk, lay the boy, his limbs splayed in exhausted sleep.
He seemed to feel their eyes upon him, and he woke. His dark eyes looked at the children imperiously.
"What are you doing in here?" he demanded. "I –" Gwen began. "We came – I mean –"
"We want to speak to you," said Colin, determinedly, "in the hope that you have a little more sense than the others."
"You're not from the Palace," said the boy.
"No. We're just passing through," said Colin, with a grim smile.
"Where are you going?"
"Into Desolation," said Colin.
"To the Darkest Places," said Graham.
The boy said nothing. His eyes fell.
"I know nothing of such a place," the boy said. "Please go."
"Oh come on now -"
"I said -"
"I heard what you said!" replied Colin. "But I don't believe you."
"I don't want you here," said the boy. "I don't know you and I don't wish to. You will go!"
He rose, eyes blazing.
"We've got to know how we get to the Darkest Places," said Gwen. "Tell us, and we'll go."
"I don't know. I've never heard of them."
"Don't you understand?" Gwen said, tears in her eyes. "If you stay in here, the Cloud will cover this Palace, and there'll be nothing here but slime."
"Leave him, Gwen," said Colin. "He knows as well as the rest of them. But he wants to die."
"I don't," said the boy.
"Then why stay?"
"For my people. I am their King."
"You? A King?" said Graham.
"Yes. I have been King ever since my father disappeared into the Cloud."
"Why don't you lead your people away?" said Graham. "You could escape."
"No. This is where my people have always lived, even in the years of the Old Kingdom, when they knew the stars. And this is where they will die."
"But we have the means to stop the Cloud," said Graham.
"It isn't any use," said the boy.
"What do you mean?"
"You can't turn back the Darkness. I know that, and so do you."
"We can try," said Graham.
"Of course," said the boy, "but why die failing to accomplish the impossible? It is wiser to realise the ridiculousness of your quest, and put an end to it now."
"We've not come this far just to give up," said Gwen. The boy smiled.
"There is a difference," he said, "between the wise man who gives up because the task is beyond him, and the coward who does not even consider trying. You are brave, but bravery is not enough. Sit down – I will pour some wine."
They drank the wine from silver cups. Colin drank his first cup off all at once, and the boy poured him another.
"I know that Desolation approaches," the boy-King went on, "but it will, in time, encompass the world – and it is a vain and heart-straining gesture to run from it. Such foolishness does not befit my people, who were once the wisest and most beautiful on earth."
"Why do you sing?" asked Gwen.
"To remind them of the days of the Old Kingdom, and to tell them not to be afraid. They are weak now, and a sort of madness has come upon them. They are only half-awake," the boy said sadly, "Stay with me here. I do not want to be alone when the Cloud comes upon us. Even Kings can be frightened."
"We can't stay," said Gwen. "They're all depending on us. In this world and at home."
"Do you still believe in your power to withstand the Cloud?" said the boy.
"Yes," answered Graham, but the old doubts returned to him.
"I too once believed in my power," said the boy. "I thought that Kings could work miracles. But persuasion comes easily when it is to convince you of your own importance."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, come on, Gwen," said Colin softly. "He's telling us we only think we can do anything because it makes us feel important. Because we fancy ourselves world-savers."
"But Darach said –" began Graham.
"Darach said the stars were holes in heaven! Isn't it about time we stopped making idiots of ourselves? Let's stay here – at least we'll have the frescoes to look at when the end comes."
There was a long, long silence, broken only by Gwen's stifled sobs.
The boy traced the patterns on the carpet, with the familiarity of someone who has been idle enough to do so a hundred times a day.
"If we're not any use," said Graham, "why did the candle bring us here? Why aren't we at home?"
"Home?" said Colin. "Where's home? A long way off. Perhaps it doesn't exist. Perhaps we dreamt it all. Perhaps," he laughed strangely, with the wine making his head spin, "perhaps we're still dreaming!"
Through the Window
Night turned gradually to day, and so to night again.
The boy sang his song of the Old Kingdom in the chamber below the tower, and his people gathered to listen to him, to weep, and to drift away into the pillared halls again.
In the East, the Maggot-Cloud seethed and boiled and grew nearer and nearer the beautiful Palace.
Up in the tower with the boy-King the, children drank the rich wine that dulled their minds, and fell into a despairing sleep, waking to glimpse the mournful, silent boy standing by the window, with the blood- red light from the stained glass on his skin.
In their fitful sleep, strange and distant images appeared to tease them, only to disappear down black and echoing corridors.
Faces emerged from the darkness over and over again, and then sank into the night-black
sea. Darach, the Queen, Benedick, the Keeper, the horsemen and the boy.
They glimpsed in sleep the marshlands, mist-bound, and the Beacon, fought the crab again, and ran in the forest, or in the field of buttercups where they had met with the rider.
And sometimes they caught hints of more distant places, places they had almost forgotten.
Rows of semi-detached houses on a bleak November morning, with the frost on the lawns and hedges, on the dead leaves in the gutter. Rain running down the window, blurring the street outside.
Memories of when they were small. The swing in an Aunt's back-garden, the smell of new-mown grass, a day at the sea-side with sand in the sandwiches, school playgrounds, a nosebleed, a loose tooth, 'All things bright and beautiful' sung in the Infants' school, with the dust caught in the sun through the window. Sad days and happy days. Warm feelings of Christmas, and the first day of the holidays.
All these things and a hundred more came to the children as they slept, and they woke with the Cloud nearer than ever, and the boy still standing by the window.
Another day passed.
Now the Cloud was very close. Outside the Palace, it was creeping across the ground. Cracks ran in the earth, opening by slow degrees into smoking fissures. Within the Cloud, the gloom was deep and all- pervading. It was like the end of the world; a landscape of slime and stone and smoke-belching crevices. All species of life were returning to the forms of their predecessors, and eventually to the mire and the tar pit.
Birds took on scales and teeth, as their fearsome forefathers had worn.
The great lizards returned to stamp the earth for a brief span, before they, in their turn, disappeared as the darkness deepened, and only the slime remained.
Thus the Cloud made an end to all life which its shadow fell upon.
Inside the Palace, the children wandered the echoing halls without purpose, their eyes unseeing, their minds unthinking. The Palace, the mosaics, the sweet wine and the boy had all worked their magic on the children, so that they had no will left in them.
Now even their dreams of their former lives had faded, and they could not remember how they came to be in the Palace. Darach, Desolation – they were just names, and meant nothing.
And the boy-King was pleased, for he had companions at last, although they were his unknowing prisoners. He had been lonely and frightened since he had become King.