by Glen L. Hall
Bretta rode a horse better than most and quickly caught up with Braden.
Rounding a hill, they could see the outline of Dunstanburgh Castle rising sharply to meet the night sky. A sea of figures was moving towards the castle and the outer walls were already swarming with the unliving. They were clambering over each other to scale the walls just like giant spiders.
‘Take their heads off!’ called Ged.
In the night the five companions rode alongside one another, their weapons drawn, and came down on the throng like thunder. The mass did not turn to defend themselves, but still drove on towards the castle walls. It was a ghastly business as the five slaughtered all within their reach. They showed no mercy, swinging their weapons like crazed animals themselves, only too aware of the horde’s dark and evil intent. Whatever was driving them wanted to get into the castle at any cost.
Jarl felt sick to the core as he tried to force his way through the horde, knowing without doubt that Eagan, Emily and Sam were trapped. Beside him, Ged was sweeping the crow-men from their path, whirling his two swords effortlessly above his head, whilst Braden was letting his anger lead the way as he avenged all those who had lost their lives. Jolan and Bretta were working together as a team and headless crow-men were falling steadily before them.
The five companions pushed on, but still there was no way through. Before them Dunstanburgh Castle stood besieged, the unliving now launching themselves forwards in a tide of madness that threatened to sweep the castle from its rocky perch. Jarl watched in horror as they tore at one another in their frenzied attempt to breach the wall. It seemed they weren’t even aware that they were being attacked from the flank. They were being driven on like cattle, crazed and ferocious, paying no attention to the people on horses who kept cutting them down.
Jarl sat back, exhausted and sick from the bloodshed, his horse drenched in sweat.
Ged, too, had stopped fighting. He had slain untold numbers and it had made no difference. Now a new foreboding had arisen in his mind.
He stepped away from the carnage and found himself drawn to the edge of the cliffs. He looked out at the dark sea, its crashing waves churning white, and there they were. At first they rolled with the waves, but as they reached the shore they got to their feet. In the dark and from this distance he could not make out who they were, although he knew they were not crow-men from their walk. They were now free of the swirling sea and something about the lead figure made him step forwards, a chill shiver slipping between his shoulder blades.
Coming up towards the hill towards him were Dwarrow Dun-Rig and a host of Reivers – the Reivers he had watched Braden bury in Birling Wood two days ago.
Jarl heard Ged’s voice calling above the clamour of the dead. Swinging his horse around, he saw the weapons master racing from the cliffs, clearly panic-stricken.
‘Dwarrow!’ panted Ged, as he reached the others. ‘Dwarrow is here!’
At that moment Bretta gave a bloodcurdling scream. She was staring at the cliffs, her face a mask of terror.
The rest turned quickly towards the cliffs, where figures were beginning to appear. The first was a giant man in a long black coat. Other figures were appearing to his left and right. In the night their milky eyes were shining.
‘I cannot fight my cousin,’ gasped Braden.
‘He is not your cousin anymore,’ said Ged coldly, his sword already in his hand.
‘But they are our own people!’ said Bretta not taking her eyes from the figures. A dozen were now standing on the cliffs.
‘Our own people perished in Birling Wood. These are no longer Reivers,’ answered Ged.
‘What can be done against such madness?’ asked Braden.
The Reivers sat unmoving in the darkness, on horses that were beginning to kick and snort with terror.
‘Look,’ said Jolan.
A deathly silence was falling all around them. The dead were no longer trying to claw one another’s eyes out to get inside the castle. Several hundred were now standing motionless before the castle walls, with a hundred more atop them.
Jarl’s stomach clenched. Was this a sign that whoever was in the castle was dead? Had the enemy won? Had they perished – his son Eagan, his niece Emily and the person they had let down at every turn – Sam?
Then the milky-eyed Reivers moved forwards at last. Jarl, Ged, Braden, Jolan and Bretta watched in silent horror as their own people came to kill them.
The arrows came out of the night, their white feathers shimmering through the darkness, striking the dead through their throats and stopping them in their tracks.
Jarl turned to see the ghostly company standing on the hillside, their bows flashing arrows into the night.
* * * * * *
‘They’re over the wall!’ Eagan shouted.
Emily faltered as she ran. The far tower was ahead of them, no more than a hundred yards away, but the possibility of reaching it was draining away.
Sam could hear Emily’s sobs and feel her hands grabbing hold of him. Eagan was circling them, his eyes flashing fear and anger, preparing to make a last stand, but Sam knew it would be futile against such numbers. He felt sick to the core, for he knew Eagan was preparing to die for them. This was no traitor.
In the night hundreds of milky eyes were now surging over the walls. It would soon be over. Sam could see their broken and twisted bodies, their unblinking eyes. These were creatures that had no place in the world of the living.
Then their caws died away and silence fell throughout the empty shell of the castle.
Eagan tightened his grip on his knives. ‘What’s happening? Why have they stopped?’
Moonlight was flooding across the hill and the air was now chill. His breath left his mouth in a swirling maelstrom, curling like smoke rings into the icy night. He paused and glanced at Sam.
Sam had felt it too. A trickle of ice ran down the length of his spine. There was a rawness inside him that he had felt before. The hideous understanding that something wicked was on its way.
‘The Shadow is coming.’
His words sent a cold tremor through him, but Emily didn’t reply. He turned to see her looking back the way they had come.
‘It’s so cold. How has autumn turned to winter?’ she asked through chattering teeth.
It was eerily quiet and in the peculiar half-light of the moon it felt for a moment as if time itself had been captured in the silence. They looked at each other, their faces pinched and cold.
‘How…?’
‘I don’t know.’
Whether it had been there all the time Sam could never quite recall, but there in the north wall of the castle was a round oak door.
Eagan stared at it. Somehow it was familiar. It reminded him of the solid round doors in the old school house and on the seventh floor of the bookshop. But he was surprised when, without hesitation, Sam took a key from his pocket, placed it in the keyhole, turned it gently and heard the lock click back.
He helped Sam pull the heavy door open and they stepped into a place of absolute stillness. The moonlight was gone, replaced by a serene darkness. But it wasn’t just the calmness of the place that stole over them, but also its awareness. It was alive with electricity, with consciousness.
Eagan felt suddenly disorientated. The door should have opened out onto the cliffs and the jagged rocks below, but instead as they passed through it the darkness lifted and he saw they had somehow entered a walled garden. Fluttering around him in the half-light was electricity, like hummingbirds’ wings. He shook his head. It was difficult to focus, but the further he went into the garden, the softer the beat of the hummingbirds’ wings became and the firmer the ground beneath his feet.
Sam took them up a slight incline and through a ring of ancient trees until they were standing in front of a pond, ringed by wooden benches.
‘I never knew Duns
tanburgh Castle had a garden. I would have known about the garden,’ Eagan said. ‘Where are we?’
He looked at Sam and Emily and even as he asked the question, the realisation was flooding through him.
‘This is where I met Oscar,’ Sam told him. ‘He was sitting on that bench, on a night like this. It feels as though I’ve come full circle. Even the words feel familiar.’
‘But that’s impossible – the Garden of Druids can’t be in Dunstanburgh.’
‘Just like it couldn’t have been in Birling Wood?’ asked Emily.
Eagan felt dumbfounded. This was a reality every bit as disturbing as the one they had left outside. If ‘outside’ was the right word. When he looked back the way they’d come, there was a wall of darkness that was deeply unsettling.
‘So where are we? I’m not sure we’re anywhere.’
‘You don’t need to be anywhere to understand that this is somewhere,’ said a voice behind them.
Even before Eagan turned, he knew who it was.
‘What place is this?’ asked Oscar.
‘Oscar!’ said Eagan, almost falling to his knees. He had not seen Oscar for over fifteen years. He was surprised to see how young he looked. This was an Oscar in his late forties.
‘Who are you?’ said Oscar. ‘Let me see your face.’
‘Eagan Reign,’ said Emily, faintly. ‘We brought him to you seven days ago. He was poisoned. Your servant took him into the waters and cleansed him of the poison.’
Oscar seemed unsure, looking from Sam to Emily and then settling again on Eagan.
‘Was this supposed to happen?’ Eagan thought. ‘Oscar seems a little befuddled, to say the least.’
‘My father is Jarl Reign,’ he prompted.
‘Jarl Reign!’
At last they had found a common thread. It seemed Jarl’s name had jogged a distant memory.
‘He is a friend of my sons,’ continued Oscar. ‘They are very fond of him.’
‘Brennus and Drust Hood,’ said Emily, faintly.
‘That’s right. And James. Fine boys, full of good manners. Now, whilst we have some time, come along, all of you – tell me why you have brought me here.’
Oscar tapped the bench, signalling for them to sit down. They sat together. Eagan couldn’t help but notice Sam and Emily’s dazed expressions. Hadn’t Oscar brought Sam here, he wondered, and not the other way round? Hadn’t he just helped him to escape from the unliving? He shifted uneasily on the bench.
‘So tell me,’ Oscar repeated, ‘why you have called me to this place.’
Eagan watched Sam take a deep breath. ‘You brought a message to me when we met in the Fellows’ Garden in Oxford. You asked me to deliver it to Brennus and Drust Hood. You gave me two letters. You said the Circle was broken and a Shadow was moving through the Otherland, that the Dead Water was lost and the Fall was dying. You asked the professors to seek the help of the Three.’
A look of profound disbelief crossed Oscar’s face. ‘That is a message that was delivered to me a long time ago! If you’re certain that it was me who delivered it, then we have very little time. You’ve done well to reach me, for no doubt the Shadow will have come through the Fall. Tell me quickly all that has happened since we met. Come now, speak – you look as confused as I did all those years ago!’
Sam opened his mouth, but then came a noise that stopped him in his tracks, a low thrum that seemed to break across all their thoughts. They watched as a thousand tiny ripples skittered across the surface of the pond.
‘Ah. It would appear that you have led the Shadow to me.’ Oscar said the words quietly, almost to himself. The heavy thrum cam again. This time it made their vision jump. It seemed to be getting louder, perhaps closer.
‘Oscar,’ interrupted Eagan, ‘I don’t know how this is happening, but Sam and Emily met you in the Garden of Druids and you battled the Shadow, trapping it in Oxford. I have a feeling that this is still to happen.’
‘There is something else,’ Sam interrupted quickly. ‘I was told by your wife that you led – I mean will lead – a fellowship into the Otherland. At first—’
He broke off as a shudder passed through their feet and the moonlight flickered as if something had passed through it.
‘Stop!’ Oscar said. ‘It is dangerous to tell me what the future may hold.’
‘No, listen,’ Sam persisted, ‘you will go in search of a child. You will travel through a place called the Dead Water. We need to know—’
‘Stop!’ Oscar shook his head. ‘I can see you are intent on telling me all that you know,’ he added, ‘but please stop. Bringing the future back to the past is a dangerous thing to do!’
‘My father will be killed on those shores!’
‘Sam, enough!’ Oscar stood, clearly startled by Sam’s words.
‘But if this is the past, then we can change the future!’
Oscar turned to Sam. ‘This place is beyond time. Past, present and future have no meaning here. The moment you enter the garden, every moment that has ever been and every moment that will ever be fade away. I have been coming here since my father brought me, and his father before him. The Hoods have always been coming to this place. How you have found me here I cannot say for certain, but I do know that if the Shadow is coming, then we must prepare.’
He was interrupted by a haunting wail that echoed through the mist. It was a sound to break a man’s courage.
‘Even now, it seeks a way in. Come along, follow me.’
Oscar rose to his feet and stretched before offering a hand to Sam and Emily. Sam found it warm to the touch, although he could feel a tingling as their hands met. Emily reached out and took Eagan’s hand, smiling up into his bewildered face.
No sooner had they stepped away from the pond than they were enveloped in a strange half-light. Static electricity seemed to crackle both inside and outside Eagan’s head, an invisible spider’s web that was impossible to brush off.
Just ahead, the landscape unravelled so they could no longer tell whether they were walking forwards or whether the ground beneath their feet was coming to meet them. There was a dizzying stillness that in places covered them in a suffocating mist. But every now and then Oscar would squeeze their hands and his voice would pull them back from the emptiness of their thoughts.
They were no longer walking in a garden – it had fallen away to reveal a tree-lined path that formed an avenue through the strange grey twilight. Every now and then it seemed to Sam that the trees and avenue would jump and flicker. Whether the place was Addison’s Walk or the avenue at Howick Hall, he couldn’t tell. A river meandered beside them, but he couldn’t see where the waters started, or where they were going. But he knew where Oscar was taking them.
To his surprise, though, when they reached the brow of the hill where the circle of stone statues had been there was only darkness.
‘Where is the Circle?’ asked Emily.
‘It is waiting for the last Druid.’
‘The last Druid?’ Sam’s mouth was dry and his mind swirling.
‘Only the last Druid can make the Circle whole again. It is where the beginning meets the end and the end meets the beginning.’
Just then they heard a deep thrum as if something huge was breaking the surface of the sea and drawing its first breath. The landscape was changing again and Eagan found himself standing before two huge iron gates.
‘What are these gates?’ he asked, but he already knew, for they were exactly how Sam had described them, and Oscar was already stepping onto the bridge.
A chill wind began to blow and Eagan drew his long knives. Sam and Emily were rooted to the spot, waiting for the Shadow to show itself, just as it had done before.
And yet Oscar had reached the centre of the bridge with only the darkness for company.
‘I don’t like this,’ Emily managed to say th
rough gritted teeth.
Sam suddenly felt her hand take his. When he looked at her, she was white with fear.
‘It’s different from last time,’ she whispered. ‘What if it’s a trap?’ What if we’ve been led here? What if the Shadow knows of your plan to trap it and send it back to Oxford?’
Sam felt panic rising. What if Emily was right?
‘We need to get out of here!’ she whispered.
‘But how?’ hissed Sam. ‘And where is Culluhin?’ Where was the man who had saved Eagan?
‘Culluhin…’ repeated Oscar slowly. ‘Of course! Culluhin!’ he called, ‘Show yourself! You cannot hide forever. Even the dead cannot hide from me.’
But no answer came.
The tension was so great Sam thought his head would burst and all the while Emily’s hand gripped his.
Eagan stepped forwards, his hands stinging from their grip on his long knives.
Then Oscar turned, with a smile that did not extend to his eyes. ‘I heard you in the Way-curve, Sam!’
They no longer recognised his voice. It was now guttural and edged with venom.
‘It was you who led me to Oscar. It was you who led me to the girl. It is you, like those before you, who will let in the darkness. It is you in whom men will have blind faith, and that will be their downfall.’
Standing in the middle of the bridge, his body suddenly became distorted, twisting grotesquely. Suddenly shadowy torrents were spilling out of his body and where Oscar had been standing now stood the black-hearted stalker from the Way-curve.
A single word slid out from what could once have been a voice: ‘Druidae!’
Sam stood there frozen. He could feel the sheer weight of its malignancy, he could feel its anger rising like a black tide against them. Yet again he could feel it reaching out to strip him of his senses. It was moving, rising up before him, black and shapeless.
Tears slipped down his cheeks and he was unable to stop himself from sinking first to one knee and then a second, but a hand stopped him from sinking further. When he looked up, he found Emily’s tear-stained face pleading with him not to fall.
