by John Burke
“Then you ought to,” said Simon. “You know quite well you’re running a terrible risk if you use an unwilling, untrained helper. It should be an adept, really.”
“Are you volunteering, then?”
“I am not.”
Jonathan stood up. He seemed to feel more assurance when he was above them.
“To carry out the ritual,” he said importantly, “I need a human being who will surrender himself or herself to my spiritual control. Physical contact is necessary before the gods can return to earth—”
“A sacrifice!” said Frank.
“No, young man. Nothing to fear, I assure you.” He glanced apprehensively at Simon, but Simon remained quiet. “I’m asking for your help,” Jonathan proceeded. “I’ll be frank. If I don’t get it willingly, I’ll force someone to help me.”
“The risk—”
“The risk doesn’t count. I know enough to overcome any danger. We can’t hold back now. Well…? I’m asking for your help: it’s a real privilege I’m offering you.”
He sounded like a conjurer asking for a watch or a pack of cards. There was no response.
“No offers?” said Simon jocularly. “Mr. Jonathan can’t perform his miracles without some help, you know. The vibrant force of a human being is necessary before the ritual can be carried out. It’s on much the same lines as a séance: visions can only appear when there is a medium present—preferably a medium with the ability to produce ectoplasmic phenomena. There must be this human reservoir on which to draw. That’s what Jonathan is asking for, in his own friendly way.”
The fire spluttered. They all sat still.
Nora stared in front of her, incredulous. This was real. She might blink, make surreptitious movements, and pinch herself, but nothing would shake the solid, convincing scene before her. This was real.
“Since there’s no reply,” said Jonathan, “we’ll have to try the other way.”
Denis launched himself from his chair.
Simon cried out, but he was too late. Denis seemed to reel against Jonathan, then he clutched at his head and was thrown backwards, although Jonathan had done no more than raise his right hand sharply. Frank caught Denis as he staggered, and lowered him back into his chair, pale and shaking.
“Don’t try that sort of game,” said Jonathan, glancing at Simon to see how he was taking this display of ability.
Simon said: “Well, what are you going to do?”
“The word séance strikes a chord,” said Jonathan pleasantly. “There’s a little ritual.… Yes, I think that a tranquil soul would be a good thing, for all of us. Since I must take possession by force—”
“So you’re hoping to do it that way?” said Simon thoughtfully.
“You know what I am proposing?”
“Very well. Yes, I know it very well.”
Nora appealed to Simon with an instinctive gesture. He made no reply, but he did not seem worried, and she felt a stir of hope.
“Let’s make preparations,” said Jonathan, striking the back of the chair nearest to him, and making Mr. Morris jump violently. “The time is short. We must lower the light…and we’ll have no more stupid assaults on me, if you please. I can make the results more unpleasant: I refrained this time because”—significantly—“I thought our young friend might be useful. One can never tell: he may be the one.”
Nora continued to stare at Simon. Slowly he became aware of her rapt attention, and smiled reassuringly at her.
She said: “Shall we—?”
“We’ll go ahead as Mr. Jonathan wishes,” said Simon. “It will be best that way.”
She could not tell if he spoke confidently or with dull resignation.
CHAPTER TEN
The wick was turned down. The lamp plopped twice like a flashing lighthouse and then went out. Jonathan, arranging chairs to his satisfaction, smiled. “Thank you.” The firelight flickered on his face—too grimly appropriate, thought Nora.
She felt that they were not the only people in the room. There were others, crowding about them, filling the room with a surge of unnatural life. The impression was so overpowering that when someone touched her arm she had difficulty in stifling a whimper.
“You’re very jumpy,” said Simon.
The touch of his hand on her arm became strangely comforting.
“Are you sure this is all right?” she asked in a low voice. “I don’t know what it’s all leading up to, but are you sure you can handle it?”
“This is the only way.” They stood back as Jonathan completed the circle of chairs and dusted his hands smugly. “There would have to be a fight between us sooner or later: I prefer to get it over now. We shall each draw on reserves of which we know, and.…” He pursed his lips. “Well, we shall see. There’s no way of avoiding it.”
Jonathan stood in the centre of the circle and waved his hand invitingly towards the chairs. “Are you ready, ladies and gentlemen?”
“Just like Christmas,” said Denis. He still moved weakly and uncertainly, like someone recovering from a violent electric shock.
They sat down.
“In order to maintain the Christmas spirit,” said Jonathan ironically, “will you please hold hands? It is necessary to establish an unbroken chain. And let me warn you not to break it or to attempt any foolishness. I can deal with all of you if needs be. Let’s be sociable about it. Young Simon will tell you that this is a dangerous ritual: any attempt you make on my life will inevitably result in the loss of your own—and almost certainly the lives of your friends also.”
Nora was holding Simon’s left hand and Frank’s right hand. Frank was tense, but Simon did not seem to be worried. She stared straight ahead. Someone would start talking in a minute—about an operation, wasn’t it? They would say, “Here’s the patient’s eye,” and put a wet gooseberry in your hand, and so it would go on. Then she noticed her mother taking Jonathan’s hand with an involuntary shudder, and said: “Change places with me.…”
Simon’s hand pressed hers.
Mrs. Morris said: “There’s quite comfy I am, Nora.” She was afraid, but she refused to show it. Nora turned to Simon, trying to make him understand how dangerous it was: her mother was next to Jonathan, and…? Simon shook his head.
“Can we settle down?” said Jonathan pleasantly.
There was silence save for the spasmodic hiccupping of the fire. Denis shuffled his feet once. Frank’s hand became warm; Simon’s still lay motionless.
Jonathan’s head fell slightly forward and his eyes began to close, but Nora was sure that he still knew all that might happen about him. He was not defenceless; she glanced warningly at her brother, who was holding Jonathan’s left hand and might conceivably be planning some misguided jujitsu effort. Denis, however, was looking down at the floor, his toes lined up with a crack in the tiles.
The room became more and more oppressive, and they all became aware of an unaccountable activity, a frenzied coming and going. Nora wanted to turn her head, sure that someone stood behind her, but there was no sign of movement close to anyone else’s chair, so why should there be any behind hers? She kept still, listening to Jonathan’s harsh breathing and the intermittent creaking of one of the chairs. It was the chair with the loose rung. Who was sitting on it? As soon as she tried to locate it, the squeaks seemed to come from every direction, and the rustle of unseen beings intensified.
Jonathan’s head fell forward on his chest, but he was still taut and responsive. Nora felt Simon twitch slightly, and saw that he had his eyes closed—or was it the effect of the shadows that rose from about his chair and covered his face with a swaying veil?
The waiting was unbearable. The ticking of the clock became a steady pounding and then faltered; she heard it wheezing and producing noises she had never heard before, as though it could no longer force itself to rap out the time. Jonathan was still. Her father, she saw, trying to make a comforting joke out of the familiar sight, was falling off to sleep. Her own eyes felt heavy. It was surpri
singly comforting to shut them, cutting out the smudged, flickering vision of the room…and then she opened them again, and but for the firm clasp of Frank’s hand and Simon’s light but compelling touch, she would have rubbed them to wakefulness. Perhaps sleep was what Jonathan was trying to will upon her, or upon any of them: perhaps he was waiting for one of them to nod and to fall asleep, so that he could take possession. Her father’s drowsiness ceased to be a subject of even the mildest would-be amusement.
Without warning, a lump of coal in the grate split and fell apart, pieces rattling into the fender and a flame leaping up to shine with crimson laughter in the face of Jonathan. Then it died, and the unseen beings came back from the crowded corners, whispering and jostling, urging, complaining, setting the air quivering with notes outside the human range.
And as Nora clenched her teeth and decided to pull her hands free, to stand up and shout out any nonsense at all that would break the iron circle of their mute imprisonment, Jonathan began to speak.
He said: “There is a voice crying out across the frozen plain. Come closer. This is your servant, and here is your chalice of fulfilment.” Then he muttered something unintelligible.
At once the sense of being watched deserted Nora, and it was as though a cloud of hovering birds had drifted over Jonathan’s chair. He raised his head, and his face was contorted.
“Shall we choose?”
The room throbbed to the beating of eager wings.
Simon made a brief noise in his throat.
“This is the hour of the choice,” said Jonathan. “Lend me your powers. Reach out from the cold wastes beyond Yagrath and infuse me with the spirit that will bind a mortal to me until I lay him at your feet. Tonight we choose the opener of the way. In the morning, when day is born, the gateway shall be flung wide.”
He lifted his arms as high as he could, holding up those of his neighbours, like an ancient prophet crying out. There was a rushing wave of cold that splashed bitterly into the room, an intense cold that dragged at the breath and gnawed with vicious rapidity into the stomach.
“This is the wind of the coldest of hells,” said an unexpected voice. Nora, tightening her grasp, realised that Simon was speaking.
Jonathan’s eyelids flickered for a moment, and there was a vague stirring in the air.
Simon said: “Is it, then, for a puny dilettante to command the lords of darkness? Is it a sound of rejoicing I hear, or the hollow laughter of mockery?”
There was some force gathering its strength within him. The two adversaries faced one another across the small circle of tiled floor.
“I call on the lords of Annwn,” cried Jonathan, “on the riders of the wind, the dogs of—”
Simon’s laugh cut him short. “Can you appeal no higher than that? What of those who are masters of the lords of Annwn? What of.…” He uttered a name that was like no name Nora had ever heard. It was not a sound of normal speech; it was not a word, but a cry. It thrummed reverberatingly, and was roared triumphantly back by the echoes. Jonathan cowered away.
“To know the name,” said Simon, “is to hold power in one’s fingers.”
Jonathan spat a short sentence at him, and once more it was as though unseen forces met above their heads in the clash of tortured conflict.
This, then, was the battle Simon had foretold. Jonathan was savage, holding back his enemy with sharp, angry blows, while Simon mocked and seemed to be playing.
“There was a day long ago,” he began calmly, addressing them all as though this were a normal conversation, but not letting go of his neighbours’ hands, “when Owain Glyndwr swept the English across Wales. It was a typical campaign of its kind, but there were times when it was thought that he could actually banish the conquerors from his country forever, and behind the red dragon came not only the patriots and warriors, but many priests and devotees of old secret religions, believing that the day was at hand when they could establish at least a form of the old worship. There were many hopeful hearts in those days. And none was more hopeful than one Llewelyn the Black, son of an unknown father and a mother who was known to be a witch. He was one of the Adepts, a great man among the faithful children of the cults that had for so long been driven underground. He was old, and afraid that death would come riding behind him before he saw even the first sign of the great rebirth of which all like him had dreamed for so long. And then, along with the straggling but victorious men of Glyndwr, this tired adept came to the castle.
“It was not a ruin then, but a stronghold from which the English had been dislodged only at a heavy price. There were legends about the castle; no one could say how old it was; but no one asked many questions, for it was a splendid watchtower, commanding so much of the countryside from which reprisals might be expected. The soldiers were thankful for shelter, and the Black Adept was thankful that his footsteps had been directed to this place while his powers were still strong. For he recognised the arch, as it had been described to him. He said the prescribed words of homage before it, and the stir of acknowledgment confirmed that this was indeed the place. He rejoiced, and sought out his followers, and chose from them a willing disciple who would give his body over to the impatient gods so that contact might be established. This, they said, explaining away their personal lusts and anticipation of reward by a plea of patriotism, this will mean victory for the Welsh cause. With the help of the great old gods, Glyndwr might be nominally ruler of the world. It was a mad, lustful dream, but it seemed so easily attainable. All the old manuscripts had not yet been recovered, but they knew many incantations that had been passed down from father to son, and they felt that the gods would help them to achieve their liberation.
“But they made errors. The world was not yet ready, and the spells were not strong enough. The gateway was neither open nor shut. All the words had not been said, and the great seal was not shattered. The triumphal return was not accomplished. For one night there was a lunatic jarring and twisting of dimensions and planes of being, and hideous distortions were seen in the land. The furious gods, whirled into this disruptive confusion, reached out savagely for the unsuccessful adept and his miserable assistant, and drew them through into that icy world from which they themselves were unable to escape. The adept had blundered, and perhaps in his impatience held back the day when release would at last be achieved. For whenever such an upheaval of cosmic forces took place, there was always the danger that the slumbering White Ones would reappear to break up the association of adepts, making it necessary to begin all over again the slow process of collecting information and establishing contact with other groups. There has always been grave danger when bunglers have tried their hand at calling back the old gods.”
Jonathan sat immobile, his arms still held above his head. His lips began to move, formulating some new curse or some fresh appeal to the power that drove him on, but before he could start, a new voice began to speak, in a pleasant, unhurried manner, like an elderly man telling a simple, attractive fairy tale.
“There was a Sabbath when all the adepts, sorcerers, alchemists, witches, and their familiars in Hungary met on a great plain and built the ceremonial fires.”
Nora could not tell whether this was Simon still speaking. The words seemed to come from the centre of the circle, each one falling with the crystal sound of a stone dropping into a pool.
“It was a splendid occasion, for only recently many families of the old belief had found one another, and had pooled their knowledge. They did not know where the original gateway was, for that particular manuscript had not come into their possession, but they talked among themselves and decided that the gateway was now no more than a symbol. It must have crumbled before this, they argued, and to speak in terms of ‘the gateway’ was to speak symbolically. The gateway, said the wise, well-read adepts, excited by the revelry going on about them on this night of magnificent debauchery, is only an expression: the gateway really exists anywhere and everywhere, and the rites of which we are the most skilled practitio
ners will open it. Then there will be jubilation!
“The lesser magicians and the witches made carnival that night. They crouched over their fires and they rode the wind, so that there was no stillness in that part of the country, and the bravest men locked their doors and prayed for dawn.
“But at dawn, as it was commanded in the books of old wisdom, the greatest of all rituals was to take place. With the dawn of a new day would come the birth of a new era, when old splendours should be renewed and great benefits reaped by those who had been faithful for so long.
“So very, very long.… Was this indeed the day of the great release?
“There was a night of preparation, during which certain of the adepts also indulged in the sensual pleasures that were to be found wherever they sought them. Disturbing music was played by musicians who were nowhere to be seen, and at intervals men and women clustered about smoking fires and chuckled bloodily at what they were doing. Soon the sky would begin to lighten, and then this great assembly of chosen families and their supporters would take part in the recall of their true masters.
“All this we know, for it is written in the records. What came after is but imperfectly described in the records: there would appear to have been some confusion.”
Simon was leaning forward, tense and, one would have said, puzzled.
Jonathan said, in an awed tone: “This is the tale of the Great Destruction—”
“The Great Destruction,” agreed the gentle, urbane voice. “For there was a battle, a great clash of White and Black Adepts that filled the air with a clamour of anguish and a great flame of dissolution, burning more brightly than the morning that touched the skies in the east. No one knew how the White Adepts came to this accursed spot; no one had heard of them for many years, and it was not known where they slept. But somehow—as it has always been and always will be—they awoke from their watchful sleep when they knew that evil was massing its legions in one place, where it might easily be smitten. Preparations were being made to carry out a damnable infamy; such preparations make a psychic disturbance that is like the sound of a warning trumpet to the White Adepts, who are everywhere, not to be escaped or deceived. When the situation warrants it, they can strike—”
