Soon the four were grouped round him in the centre of the Lady’s hall, each facing outward, four corners of a square. And as the Walker called his long summons of the Dark, the hall itself began again to change. Strange lights and flames flickered along the walls, obscuring the windows and hangings. Here and there at the sound of a particular name, blue fire would dart up into the air, hiss, and die down again. On each of the three walls facing the hearth, three great sinister flames shot up which did not afterwards die down, but remained dancing and curving in ominous brilliance, filling the hall with cold light.
Before the hearth, in the big carved chair he had occupied from the beginning, Merriman sat motionless. There was a terrible restrained strength in his sitting; Will looked at the broad shoulders with foreboding, as he would have looked at a gigantic spring that might at any moment snap loose.
The Walker chanted louder: “Come Uath, come Truith, come Eriu, come Loth! Come Heurgo, come Celmis, I bring you in. . . .”
Merriman stood up, a great black white-plumed pillar. His cloak was wrapped round him. Only his carved-stone face was clear, with the light blazing in his mass of white hair. The Walker looked at him and faltered. Thick round the hall, the fires and flames of the Dark hissed and danced, all white and blue and black, with no gold or red or warm yellow in any. The nine tallest flames stood up like menacing trees.
But the Walker seemed to have lost his voice again. He looked once more at Merriman and shrank back a little. And through the mixture of longing and fear in the bright eyes, suddenly Will knew him.
“Hawkin,” Merriman said softly, “there is still time to come home.”
• The Hawk in the Dark • The Walker said in a whisper, “No.”
“Hawkin,” Merriman said again, gently, “every man has a last choice after the first, a chance of forgiveness. It is not too late. Turn. Come to the Light.”
The voice was scarcely audible, a mere husking breath. “No.”
The flames hung still and stately round the great hall. No one moved.
“Hawkin,” Merriman said, and there was no command in the tone but only warmth and entreaty. “Hawkin, liege man, turn away from the Dark. Try to remember. There was love and trust between us, once.”
The Walker stared at him like a doomed man, and now in the pointed, lined face Will could see clearly the traces of the small, bright man Hawkin, who had been brought forward out of his time for the retrieving of the Book of Gramarye, and had through the shock of facing death betrayed the Old Ones to the Dark. He remembered the pain that had been in Merriman’s eyes as they watched that betrayal begin, and the terrible certainty with which he had contemplated Hawkin’s doom.
The Walker still stared at Merriman, but his eyes did not see. They looked back through time, as the old man rediscovered all that he had forgotten, or pushed out of his mind. He said slowly, with mounting reproach, “You made me risk my life for a book. For a book. Then because I looked at kinder masters, you sent me back to my own time, but not as I had been before. You gave me then the doom of bearing the Sign.” His voice grew stronger with pain and resentment as he remembered. “The Sign of Bronze, through the centuries. You changed me from a man into a creature always running, always searching, always hunted. You stopped me from growing decently old in my own time, as all men after their lives grow old and tired and sink to sleep in death. You took away my right to death. You set me in my own century with the Sign, long, long ago, and you made me carry it through six hundred years until this age.”
His eyes flickered towards Will, and flashed with hatred. “Until the last of the Old Ones should be born, to take the Sign from me. You, boy, it is all through you. This turning in time, that took away my good life as a man, it was all on your account. Before you were born, and after. For your damned gift of Gramarye, I lost everything I had ever loved.”
“I tell you,” Merriman cried out, “you may come home, Hawkin! Now! It is the last chance, and you may turn to the Light and be as you were.” His proud, towering figure leaned forward, beseeching, and Will felt pain for him, knowing that he felt it was his own misjudgment that had brought his servant Hawkin into betrayal and the life of the wretched Walker, a whining shell committed to the Dark.
Merriman said huskily: “I pray you, my son.”
“No,” the Walker said. “I found better masters than you.” The nine flames of the Dark round the walls sprang cold and high and burned with a blue light, quivering. He clutched closer at the dark blanket wrapped round him, and stared wildly about the hall. Shrilly defiant, he shouted, “Masters of the Dark, I bring you in!”
And the nine flames moved in closer from the walls to the centre of the room, approaching Will and the four outward-facing Old Ones. Will was blinded by their blue-white brilliance; he could no longer see the Walker. Somewhere beyond the great lights, the shrill voice shrieked on, high and mad with bitterness. “You risked my life for the Book! You made me carry the Sign! You let the Dark hound me through the centuries, but never let me die! Now it is your turn!”
“Your turn! Your turn!” echoed the scream round the walls. The nine tall flames moved slowly closer, and the Old Ones stood in the centre of the floor and watched them approach. Beside the hearth Merriman turned slowly towards the centre of the room. Will saw that his face was impassive again, the deep eyes dark and empty and the lines drawn firm, and he knew that no one would see any strong self-revealing emotion on that face for a very long time. The Walker’s chance to turn back to the mind and heart of Hawkin had come and been rejected, and now it was gone forever.
Merriman raised both his arms, and the cloak fell from them like wings. His deep voice whipped into the crackling silence: “Stop!”
The nine flames paused, and hung.
“In the name of the Circle of Signs,” Merriman said, clear and firm, “I command you to leave this house.”
The cold light of the Dark that was all around the hall behind the great standing flames flickered and crackled like laughter. And out of the blackness beyond, the voice of the Black Rider came.
“Your circle is not complete and has not that force,” he called mockingly. “And your liege man has called us into this house, as he did before, and can again. Our liege man, my lord. The hawk is in the Dark. . . . You can drive us from here no longer. Not with flame, nor force, nor conjoined power. We shall break your sign of Fire before it can be released, and your Circle will never be joined. It will break in the cold, my lord, in the Dark and the cold. . . .”
Will shivered. It was growing cold indeed in the hall, very cold. The air was like a current of chill water, coming at them from all sides. The fire in the great hearth gave out no warmth now, no warmth that was not sucked in by the cold blue flames of the Dark all around. The nine flames quivered again, and as he looked at them, he could have sworn that they were not flames but gigantic icicles, blue-white as before but solid, menacing, great pillars ready to topple inward and crush them all with weight and cold.
“ . . . cold. . . .” said the Black Rider softly from the shadows, “ . . . cold. . . .”
Will looked at Merriman in alarm. He knew that each of them, every Old One in the room, had been thrusting against the Dark with every power he possessed since the Rider’s voice began, and he knew that none of it had had any effect.
Merriman said softly, “Hawkin lets them in, as he did in his first betrayal, and we cannot prevent that. He had my trust once, and it gives him still that power even though the trust is gone. Our only hope is what it was in the beginning: that Hawkin is no more than a man. . . . When the spells of the deep cold are made, there is little that can be done against them.”
He stood frowning as the ring of blue-white fire flickered and danced; even he looked cold, with a dark pinched look round the bones of his face. “They bring in the deep cold,” he said, half to himself. “The cold of the void, of black space. . . .”
And the cold grew more and more intense, cutting through the body to the min
d. Yet the flames of the Dark seemed at the same time to grow dim, and Will realised that his own century was again fading in around them, and that they were back in Miss Greythorne’s manor.
And the cold was there too.
Everything was changing now; the murmur of voices had dropped from a cheerful buzz to an anxious mutter, and the tall room was only dimly lit, by candles set in candlesticks and cups and plates, wherever there was space. All the bright electric lamps were dark, and the long metal radiators that warmed most of the room gave off no heat.
Merriman swooped bafflingly up near him with the speed of one returned from a brisk errand; his cloak was subtly different, changed to the sweeping overcoat he had worn earlier that day. He said to Miss Greythorne, “There’s not much we can do down there, ma’am. The furnace is out, of course. All the electric power lines are quite dead. So is the telephone. I have had all the house blankets and quilts brought out, and Miss Hampton is making quantities of soup and hot drinks.”
Miss Greythorne nodded in brisk approval. “Good thing we kept the old gas stoves. They wanted me to change, y’know, Lyon, when we had the central heating done. I wouldn’t, though. Electricity, bah — always knew the old house didn’t approve.”
“I am having as much wood as possible brought in to keep the fire up,” Merriman said, but in the same instant, as if in mockery, a great hissing and steaming came from the broad fireplace, and those nearest it jerked away, choking and spluttering. Through the sudden inblown cloud of smoke Will could see Frank Dawson and Old George working to clear something out of the fire.
But the fire had gone out.
“Snow down the chimney!” Farmer Dawson called, coughing. “We’ll need buckets, Merry, quickly. There’s a right mess here.”
“I’ll go,” Will shouted, and bolted for the kitchen, glad of the chance to move. But before he could get to the door through the huddled groups of chilled, frightened people, a figure rose up before him to block his way, and two hands caught his arms in a grip so tight that he gasped in sudden pain. Bright eyes bored into his, glittering with wild triumph, and the Walker’s high, thin voice was screeching in his ear.
“Old One, Old One, last of the Old Ones, you know what’s going to happen to you? The cold is coming in, and the Dark will freeze you. Cold and stiff and all of you helpless. No one to protect the little Signs on your belt.”
“Let go!” Will twisted angrily, but the old man’s hold on his wrist was the clasp of madness.
“And you know who will take the little Signs, Old One? I shall. The poor Walker, I shall wear them. They are promised to me in reward for my services — no lords of the Light ever offered me such reward. Or any other . . . I shall be the Sign-Seeker, I shall, and all that would have been yours at the last shall come to me. . . .”
He grabbed for Will’s belt, his face twisted with triumph, spittle ringing his mouth like foam, and Will yelled for help. In an instant John Smith was at his side, with Dr Armstrong close behind, and the big smith had pinned the Walker’s clutching hands behind his back. The old man cursed and shrieked, his eyes burning with hatred at Will, and both men had to struggle to hold him back. At length they had him trapped and harmless, and Dr Armstrong drew back with an exasperated sigh.
“This chap must be the only warm object in the country,” he said. “Of all times to run berserk — pulse or no pulse, I’m going to put him to sleep for a while. He’s a danger to the community and to himself.”
Will thought, rubbing his sore wrist: if you only knew quite what sort of danger he is. . . . Then suddenly he began to see what Merriman had meant. Our only hope is what it was in the beginning: that Hawkin is no more than a man . . .
“Keep him there, John, while I get my bag.” The doctor disappeared. John Smith, one big fist grasping the Walker’s shoulder and the other both his wrists, winked encouragingly at Will and jerked his head to the kitchen; Will suddenly remembered his original errand, and ran. When he came tearing back with two empty buckets swinging from each hand, there was a fresh commotion at the fireplace; a new hissing had begun, smoke spewed out, and Frank Dawson came staggering backwards.
“Hopeless!” he said furiously. “Hopeless! You get the hearth clear for a moment, and more snow comes pouring down. And the cold —” He looked despairingly about him. “Look at them, Will.”
The room was misery and chaos: small babies wailing, parents huddling their bodies round their children to keep them warm enough to breathe. Will rubbed his chill hands together, and tried to feel his feet and his face through the numbness of cold. The room was becoming colder and colder, and from the freezing world outside there was no sound even of the wind. The sense of being within two levels of Time at once still hovered in his mind, though all that he could feel now of the ancient manor was the awareness, ominous and persistent, of the nine great ice-candles glimmering round three sides of the room. They had been ghost-like, scarcely visible, when first he found himself brought back by the new cold to his own time, but as the cold grew more intense, so they were growing clearer. Will stared at them. He knew that somehow they embodied the power of the Dark at its Midwinter peak; yet he knew too that they were part of an independent magic harnessed by the Dark, which like so much else in their long battle could be taken away by the Light if only the right thing were done at the right time. How? How?
Dr Armstrong was coming back towards the sickroom with his black bag. Perhaps there might after all be one way, just one, of stopping the Dark before the cold could reach the point of destruction. One man, unwitting, giving help to another: this might be the one small event to turn aside all the supernatural force of the Dark. . . . Will waited, suddenly taut with excitement. The doctor moved towards the Walker, who still cursed incoherently in John the Smith’s grip, and he had slipped a needle deftly in and out of his arm before the old man knew what he was doing. “There,” he said soothingly. “That’ll help you. Have a sleep.”
Instinctively Will moved forward in case there was need of help, and saw as he did so that Merriman and Farmer Dawson and Old George were drifting closer too. Doctor and patient were closed in by a ring of Old Ones, all round, protecting against interference.
The Walker caught sight of Will and snarled like a dog, showing broken, yellowing teeth. “Freeze, you’ll freeze,” he spat out at him, “and the Signs will be mine, whatever . . . you try . . . whatever. . . .” But he faltered and blinked, his voice dropping as the drug began to spread its drowsiness over him, and even as suspicion began to show in his eyes, the eyelids drooped. Each of the Old Ones took a step or two forward, tightening the circle. The old man blinked again, showing the whites of his eyes in a horrid flash, and then he was unconscious.
And with the mind of the Walker closed, the Dark’s way into the house was closed too.
Instantly there was a difference in the room, a slackening of tension. The cold was less fierce, the unhappiness and alarm all round them like a fog began to lessen. Dr Armstrong straightened up, a questing, puzzled expression in his eyes; the eyes grew wider as he saw the circle of intent faces ringing him round. He began indignantly, “What do — ?”
But the rest of the words were lost to Will, for all at once Merriman was calling them out of the crowd, urgently, silently, in the speech of the mind that men could not hear. “The candles! The candles of the winter! Take them, before they fade!”
The four Old Ones scattered hastily into the hall, where the strange blue-white cylinders still hung ghostly round the three walls, burning with their dead cold flames. Going swiftly to the candles, they grasped them, two in each hand; Will, smaller, leapt hastily on a chair to seize the last. It was cold and smooth and heavy to his touch, like ice that did not melt. In the moment that he touched it he was giddy; his head whirled . . .
. . . and he was back in the great hall of that earlier time with the other four, and beside the hearth the Lady was sitting in her high-backed chair again, with the smith’s blue-eyed wife sitting at her feet.
It was clear what was to be done. Bearing the candles of the Dark, they advanced towards the great iron mandala-ring of holders on the massive table, and one by one fitted the candles into the nine sockets that still stood empty in the central cross-piece. Each candle changed subtly as it was put in place; its flame rose thinner and higher, taking on a golden-white tinge instead of the cold, threatening blue. Will, with his one candle, came last. He reached through to fit it into the last holder in the very centre of the pattern, and as he did so the flames of all the candles shot upwards in a triumphant circle of fire.
The old lady said, in her frail voice, “There is the power seized from the Dark, Will Stanton. By cold magic they called up the candles of winter for destruction. But now that we have seized them for better purposes, the candles become stronger, able to bring you the Sign of Fire. See.”
They drew back, watching, and the last central candle that Will had put in place began to grow. When its flame stood high above the rest it took on colour, becoming yellow, orange, vermilion-red; as it still grew, it changed and became a strange flower on a strange stem. A curved, many-petalled blossom blazed there, each petal a different shade of the colours of flame; slowly and gracefully each petal opened and fell, floating away, melting into the air. And in the end, at the tip of the long curved stem of the flame-red plant, a glowing round seedpod was left, waving gently for a moment and then in a quick, silent burst breaking open, its five sides unfolding all at once like stiffer petals. Inside was a golden-red circle of a shape they all knew.