Now, that attitude seemed to strike a familiar note somewhere in Jimmy’s head; a note of recognition. The face, covered as it was by so much facial undergrowth, where had he seen ...? The thought suddenly struck him between the eyes, in between the probing and dark words.
“Mr Bolam!” he burst out without thinking about the consequences of such impetuous actions.
“You seem singularly intent on distracting by your inattention, young man, so I will fix your thoughts by speech,” the apparition burst in rather annoyed, seeming much less like a ghost than at first suggested.
Yes, that was definitely Mr Bolam, Jimmy thought; that turn of temper, that sarcasm, that ...
His tongue suddenly stuck to the roof of his mouth, making him unable to open his lips or to focus his attention on anything other than the visitor. His eyes were drawn, reluctantly, to his form, which grew brighter as the surroundings became dimmer and more indistinct, drawing in a thick grey mist to form a halo around his shape.
“I am Gor-ifan, whom some would name The Old Man of the Mountains,” he said in a voice which seemed to come from somewhere below them, struggling to take form and give substance to its user. “I am - was - brother to the Wicked Lord of Seth. I was the Seth before my brother, Tar-igor, banished me to a half-life in the waiting Land of Four, and took my title and my birthright, becoming himself the Seth.”
There was a momentary pause as the mist threatened to overwhelm him, but he gradually reasserted his mastery and continued.
“You two, I deem, may be able to aid my cause. You will come with me.”
The change was sudden, unexpected, as the mist darkened and began to move outwards, away from Gor-ifan, like a window slowly demisting. At first, the space behind him was dark and indistinct, but as the mist retreated so the light grew in intensity and colour until it reached its final pale yellow.
The land they walked in was flat, featureless and bare of all save themselves. As they watched, tiny black dots appeared on the yellow land and began to grow upwards, straight and tall, as if making up for lost time. Within a few minutes, a forest of sapling pine trees had sprouted thick and dark before their disbelieving eyes. Within the time it would take to plant one of the trees, a thick forest of black spruce had reached maturity. To the south of the forest, directly before their feet, a bright silver ribbon trickled, grew and flowed in its quest for the sea.
This land creation continued, unchecked, unabated, its virgin birth showing none of the usual growing pains. The plan had been formed long ago, awaiting a trigger; that trigger had been sprung. Nothing could now halt its progress.
As the ribbon of a river reached its destination, the brothers became aware of a darkness creeping over them. Startled, they looked around, to find they were standing under the eaves of a great, dark forest where once there had been plains. Dark, forbidding trees of a type unknown to them formed an eerily quiet body, like some still but watchful beast. For this was no haphazard collection of individual trees, the wood had a corporate life, and it breathed as a single vast being.
Again, as they watched, unable to speak or move, dark mists formed and wove themselves around the tree boles, bringing to the forest a profound feeling of mystery, and to the boys a deep sense of unease.
“Where have you brought us?” Tommy asked of Gor-ifan, turning to face him. His question lay where he had dropped it, unanswered. Gor-ifan was no longer there. They were again utterly alone!
As near a mixture of panic and relief swept over Tommy and Jimmy in a joint involuntary spasm, feeling fear and joy at once again being alone. But were they...?
“I’m glad he’s gone,” Jimmy finally ruptured the silence.
“Yes, but don’t you get the feeling that we’re being watched by ... something or other, out there?” Tommy said with a grimace and a vague sweep of his arm.
“I suppose you’re right,” Jimmy answered. “There’s something vaguely unsettling about a place that doesn’t behave as it should. But then that could be said about the whole of this country. I’m beginning to wish Uncle Reub ...”
“Shsh!” interrupted his brother in a low whisper. “Be quiet. I can hear something rustling over there.”
The mist, which by this time had completely enveloped them, suddenly rolled away, leaving everything clear and clean and new. They were now deep in the forest with the feeling that they were standing on un-trodden earth in a place where fear had no substance or place.
Again they stopped, taken utterly by surprise, for in a small clearing, surrounded by hawthorn bushes, was a large flat stone, set on its end against a rock face about man high. Tommy turned to point this out to his brother, but he became somewhat puzzled to find it had disappeared.
“Must have been dreaming,” he muttered, shrugging off his mistake.
“No; look!” Jimmy whispered, nodding towards the clearing again. This time Tommy gasped, for the stone, which must have weighed half a ton or more, had been rolled back to one side, revealing a dark hole. Leading up to this hole were five smoothly cut steps inviting entry to its gloomy interior. Nothing else could be seen.
They blinked, and on opening their eyes again, they were surprised to see the clearing and cave entrance still there, but with one subtle change. A light now poured down the steps making entrance to those secrets beyond a little more inviting.
To Jimmy, the welcome was unmistakable; it said ‘come in’. So he skipped across to the clearing and had set foot on the bottom step before his brother had had time to think, let alone move. As his foot touched the top step - the last before the threshold - Tommy suddenly came to life, finally realising his brother was about to disappear again. Mother wouldn’t be at all pleased if he lost him again, so he had no alternative but to bound after him.
“Whoa, Jim!” he shouted. “Hang on a bit. Wait for me! We ought to ...”
He didn’t manage to finish his sentence. There sprang up a hoarse screech behind him as something whistled through the air. It stopped its flight when it met the back of Tommy’s head with a dull sickening thud, pitching him forward onto his face across the flight of stone steps not five paces behind his brother. The lights went out suddenly in his brain, leaving him helpless prey to his unseen assailant.
The darkness was total. Jimmy could neither see nor hear anything. The urge to enter had been irresistible, and had seized him from across the clearing. Now he was in the cave, he was not quite as sure, but the urge was no less strong. His eyes were useless to him at the moment, but to compensate, his sense of smell had been heightened, giving him scents he knew and loved – new oak and leather. A thought flicked across his mind, leaving him grasping and unsure. He knew where he’d experienced those same smells previously; on one occasion only. A strange sort of light began slowly to well up from the floor as if filling a transparent vessel with its golden warmth.
There was nothing he could recognise at first, but as the light grew, spread and intensified, an image began to clarify in his confused brain. Suddenly the light rang out into its final startling clarity, and Jimmy’s confusion was complete. He was as a sleeper gradually surfacing through the various levels of consciousness until the ultimate emergence imprinted a picture of reality upon his mind.
That scene before him now, although experienced once only before, was part of his conscious and subconscious knowledge in such a way that it would never be forgotten. In all details save one, the scene before him was ...
“...Uncle Reuben’s study!” he gasped, hardly able to believe what he saw. Had he dreamed all his adventures, or had they been part of Reuben’s own story? The great desk, the wall trappings, the shelves were those he had indelibly fixed in his mind’s eye - everything was exactly as he had remembered. Then his gaze was riveted by the one detail which told him immediately that he was somewhere else... the floor was sawdust and cork chippings, and not the deep pile carpet of his uncle’s study.
“You are correct ... and yet not so,” boomed a voice from across the room. It came from a figure that Jimmy hadn’t noticed, half-hidden beside one of those panelled book shelves, and it made him start rather. He swung round on his heels to see where the voice had come from, and on locating the person, let out an involuntary gasp of shock and surprise to see ...
“Uncle Reuben!”
“I am Algan,” the voice boomed again, ignoring his statement, “and you are now in my realm.”
Realising too late that he had betrayed the one confidence his uncle had wanted him to guard - the existence of his study - Jimmy’s chin dropped to his chest and he stared at his uneasily shuffling feet as they made symmetrical patterns in the oak chippings. Suddenly, he felt his face being lifted, but not by Algan, who had remained motionless where Jimmy had first seen him. Face level with the magician’s, their eyes met and the boy’s mind was held, and then it was that he knew his secret was safe. During that short time, Jimmy’s mind was stripped of all relevant information, and his thoughts released as quickly as they had been seized.
“We will talk later,” Algan burst through the barrier of silence. “As much information relevant to your needs I already have, I see no point in continuing for the present, and ...”
“Excuse me for butting in,” Jimmy asked politely, but getting a little more fidgety, “can you tell me where my brother, Tommy, is? You see, he came here with me, and now I seem to have lost him.”
Algan beckoned Jimmy to follow, and they set off at a reasonable speed towards the inner door, which no doubt led to somewhere interesting.
The inner part of the cave was entirely different from anything he had ever seen before. In fact, the two parts were so different that they could have been in separate worlds.
They entered now a series of corridors - borings might have been nearer the mark - which could have been caused by some giant passing worm, the sides of which were smooth to the point of glassiness. The floors were still covered by the same universal cork and sawdust, which lay so thickly on the ground that the only noise they could hear was a swish and squeak as they padded along.
There were no adornments to the circular walls except for the occasional strange-looking serpent lanterns casting an eerie soft green light everywhere. He was so entranced by the appearance of it all that he never noticed the transition from the corridor to another, similar, room. In fact, he wasn’t even certain there had been a transfer; if there had, the door must have vanished for certainly no door was to be seen anywhere in that room.
He allowed his gaze to wander around the room, jumping from groups of bottles and jars on tables to globes and maps, to other pieces of equipment he didn’t recognise at all. His eyes skidded to a halt as they caught sight of a long, low table covered by a white mark-free cloth; and it was there his heart lurched and his breath almost stopped, as a gasp sped from his lungs to explode from his mouth into the room.
Under that sheet lay a body, totally covered to the chin. The skin, white almost to the point of transparency, and the form were those of a boy; eyes fast shut, breathless, still, frozen in that last eternal sleep of death.
It was Tommy.
Chapter Nine
The night was black; blacker than had been seen for many an age. An occasional wandering chink in the cloud curtain allowed enough light from the intense blue moon to pour onto the rise and fall of the Southern Downs, crowned by the mysterious, ancient standing stones. Smooth, round, hard and black, the stones had been set on the uppermost rise of the range of hills many ages of man before, for what reason no one now knew, save the lore masters and magicians of that realm. Rumour and legend had it that they were part of the magic of old, and had since become a trysting place, a refuge for restless spirits and evil beings. Black they were; blacker than the surrounding gloom, picking them out like a brooding menace in the shadows.
At that moment, the cloud split, wide enough to allow the pent up blue light to cascade to the earth like a released waterfall. The light splashed across the black surface of uprights and crosspieces, gathering all to spotlight the great arch underneath, highlighting a black solitary figure on horseback below.
The Horseman! The Wandering Rider! It was him! Figure of legend, phantom of nightmare, he had come again, as in the past, at a time of greatest strife and need. Why had he come? What would be his course? Steed and man were as one, a great shadow cloaked in black. No covering to his head he wore, only a black flowing mane of hair. Motionless they stood, immobile; statues both but for the slight flicking of the horse’s tail.
The last despairing trace of a dying moon splashed desperately across the Rider’s head and face revealing that there was no face!
Hair encircled the featureless visage perfectly but neither eyes nor nose nor mouth looked out from this mask of doom, making it all the more terrifying and terrible to behold.
Suddenly the horse’s tail stopped in mid-twitch, the horseman stiffened and half-stood in the stirrups, head slowly turning from side to side. Those acutely sensitive ears had detected something in the upper airs, something which made their whole corporate being bristle with anticipation.
There was a flash of silver spur and a breeze of mystery as the moon disappeared behind a small cloud. When the orb dared to come out of hiding, the great archway between the standing stones was once again empty. Only his presence could be detected, a much darker imprint on the skyline, which was becoming lighter by the minute as morning swiftly approached. His spirit would not again be easily stilled in that age of the world whilst strife was ever present, and often was his rumour to be heard passing as a bird in the night.
Tears streaming down his face, Jimmy shuffled across to the motionless, un-breathing body of his brother. Near the table, tentatively he stretched out his hand towards the white covering shroud, but involuntarily shrank away before touching it. His hand fell, lifeless, to his side, and his shoulders slumped in resignation, as slow, quiet sobs convulsed his small frame.
“Why are you weeping?” rumbled the magician, an arm around the heaving shoulders.
“My brother ... Tommy ... he’s ...” sobbed Jimmy, overcome at last.
“But,” Algan interrupted, “there is no need; see, the nostrils. Watch.”
Jimmy’s eyes became riveted to the lifeless form before him. At first nothing. He could see nothing but the distortions caused by the tears filling his eyes. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, as the tears dried and left his vision clearer, he thought he detected a slight twitching around the nose ... but no, it must have been a trick ... No! It was no trick! There it was again! Jimmy gulped, rubbed his eyes so as not to be mistaken, and looked again, more closely this time. Movement there certainly was, making him realise that he was not mistaken. His brother was alive!
“But ... but ... he’s ALIVE!” he shouted finally, as Tommy’s eyelids flickered and slowly opened.
“Who on earth’s making all that din?” a faint and trembling voice asked from the table, “and where’s tea? I’m starved.”
“I had the most horrid dream,” muttered Tommy through a mouthful of Algan’s best seed cake. The colour was now flooding back to his cheeks, which were round and firm again thanks to the magician’s wonderful cuisine. “It was like being eaten alive by an enormous bird with a cruel crooked beak and a taste for human flesh.” He paused and shuddered at the thought, but continued with his cake, irrepressible to the last.
“It was no bird I can assure you,” Algan interrupted the intervening silence, “but something which would have turned out to be infinitely worse - capture by the Senti and interrogation by Seth himself.”
“But, we’ve already...” Jimmy protested.
“Been captured and questioned?” Algan finished his sentence with a grim smile.
Jimmy’s jaw dropped open in amazement, and his eyes widened to saucer shape. His unspoken question about how he knew remain
ed unspoken, but had been answered from within by the Great Magician.
“He knows rather more about you than before,” Algan went on, “and is now no doubt furious that he should have let you slip away so easily. Next time there will be no escape.”
His words left the boys in no doubt about their fate should they succumb once again.
“But, the parcel!” Jimmy burst in again, remembering his loss. “I left the parcel when we were captured last time.”
“That is bad news,” Algan answered quietly, a look of concern spreading across his eyes. “Should he manage to get his hands on it, there would be no end to his mastery. Where did you leave the parcel? It must be found.”
“You don’t seem to understand,” Jimmy said quietly and slowly. “Before we were taken into the castle, I pushed it into the cleft trunk of an old tree before the moat... “
“And we think the castle and all the surrounding area have disappeared,” Tommy interrupted, wiping the food from his mouth.
A profound silence fell over the room; so deep, in fact, that they could feel it around them. It felt almost as if they had climbed inside Algan’s mind, with his thoughts blotting out everything, preventing even their movements. They were like statues, frozen in a timeless void of silence, neither able to move nor even to think.
“That is serious news indeed,” Algan broke the silence again, bringing them both to earth with a jolt, enough to make Jimmy’s teeth rattle and Tommy’s cake-filled stomach lurch. “However, I have searched the area ...”, he paused enough to catch the look of utter disbelieving amazement on their faces, and then continued in explanation, “ ... in my mind, and I can find three split-boled trees large enough to take a parcel. Nearer than that I cannot tell. You must return - for I could not do it for you - and retrieve that which you have lost. It is of the utmost urgency that you succeed. If you don’t ...”
Magic Parcel Page 7
