'I am not,' said James. Then he said, because it was Christmas Eve, 'Well, yes, I expect I was. Sorry.' And Mary was so taken aback that she deposited all her parcels in silence, unable to think of anything to say.

 

On Christmas night, Will always slept with James. Both twin beds were still in James's room from the time before Will had moved up to Stephen's attic. The only difference now was that James kept Will's old bed piled with op art cushions, and referred to it as 'my chaise longue'. There was something about Christmas Eve, they both felt, that demanded company; one needed somebody to whisper to, during the warm beautiful dream-taut moments between hanging the empty stocking at the end of the bed, and dropping into the cosy oblivion that would flower into the marvel of Christmas morning.

 

While James was splashing in the bathroom, Will slipped off his belt, buckled it again round the three Signs, and put them under his pillow. It seemed prudent, even though he still knew without question that no one and nothing would trouble him or his home during this night. Tonight, perhaps for the last time, he was an ordinary boy again.

 

Strands of music and the soft rumble of voices drifted up from below. In solemn ritual, Will and James looped their Christmas stockings over their bedposts: precious, unbeautiful brown stockings of a thick, soft stuff, worn by their mother in some unimaginably distant time and misshapen now by years of service as Christmas holdalls. When filled, they would become top-heavy, and could no longer hang; they would be discovered instead lying magnificent across the foot of the beds.

 

'Bet I know what Mum and Dad are giving you,' James said softly. 'Bet it's a - '

 

'Don't you dare,' Will hissed, and his brother giggled and dived under the blankets.

 

'G'night, Will.'

 

'Night. Happy Christmas.'

 

'Happy Christmas.'

 

And it was the same as it always was, as he lay curled up happily in his snug wrappings, promising himself that he would stay awake, until, until...

 

... until he woke, in the dim morning room with a glimmer of light creeping round the dark square of the curtained window, and saw and heard nothing for an enchanted expectant space, because all his senses were concentrated on the weighty feel, over and around his blanketed feet, of strange bumps and corners and shapes that had not been there when he fell asleep. And it was Christmas Day.

 

 

 

Part Two: The Learning

Christmas Day

 

When he knelt beside the Christmas tree and pulled of the gay paper wrapping from the giant box labelled 'Will', the first thing he discovered was that it was not a box at all, but a wooden crate. A Christmas choir warbled distant and joyful from the radio in the kitchen; it was the after-Christmas-stocking, before-breakfast gathering of the family, when each member opened just one of his 'tree presents'. The rest of the bright pile would lie there until after dinner, happily tantalising.

 

Will, being the youngest, had the first turn. He had made a beeline for the box, partly because it was so impressively large and partly because he suspected it came from Stephen. He found that someone had taken the nails out of the wooden lid, so that he could open it easily.

 

'Robin pulled out the nails, and Bar and I put the paper on,' said Mary at his shoulder, all agog. 'But we didn't look inside. Come on, Will, come on.'

 

He took off the lid. 'It's full of dead leaves! Or reeds or something.'

 

'Palm leaves,' said his father, looking. 'For packing, I suppose. Mind your fingers, they can have sharp edges.'

 

Will tugged out handfuls of the rustling fronds, until the first hard shape of something began to show. It was a thin strange curving shape, brown, smooth, like a branch; it seemed to be made of a hard kind of papier-machè. It was an antler, like and yet not like the antler of a deer. Will paused suddenly. A strong and totally unexpected feeling had leapt out at him when he touched the antler. It was not a feeling he had ever had in the presence of the family before; it was the mixture of excitement, security and delight that came over him whenever he was with one of the Old Ones.

 

He saw an envelope poking out of the packing beside the antler and opened it. That paper bore the neat letterhead of Stephen's ship.

 

Dear Will: Happy birthday. Happy Christmas. I always swore never to combine the two, didn't I? And here I am doing it. Let me tell you why. I don't know whether you'll understand, specially after you see what the present is. But perhaps you will. You've always been a bit different from everybody else. I don't mean daft! Just different.

 

It was like this. I was in the oldest part of Kingston one day during carnival. Carnival in these islands is a very special time - great fun, with echoes going back a long, long way. Anyway I got mixed up in a procession, all laughing people and jingling steel bands and dancers in wild costumes, and I met an old man. He was a very impressive old man, his skin very black and his hair very white, and he sort of appeared out of nowhere and took me by the arm and pulled me out of the dancing. I'd never seen him in my life before, anywhere, I'm sure of it. But he looked at me and he said, 'You are Stephen Stanton, of Her Majesty's Navy. I have something for you. Not for you yourself, but for your youngest brother, the seventh son. You will send it to him as a present, for his birthday this year and his Christmas, combined in one. It will be a gift from you his brother, and he will know what to do with it in due course, although you will not.'

 

It was all so unexpected it really knocked me off balance. All I could say was, 'But who are you? How do you know me?' And the old man just looked at me again with very dark, deep eyes that seemed to be looking through me into the day after tomorrow, and he said, 'I would know you anywhere. You are Will Stanton's brother. There is a look that we Old Ones have. Our families have something of it too.'

 

And that was about it, Will. He didn't say another word. That last bit makes no sense, I know, but that was what he said. Then he just moved into the carnival procession and out again, and when he came out he was carrying - wearing, actually - the thing you will find in this box.

 

So here I am sending it to you. Just as I was told. It seems mad, and I can think of lots of things you'd have liked better. But there it is. There was something extraordinary about that old man, and I just somehow had to do what he told me. Hope you like your crazy present, mate. I'll be thinking of you, both days.

 

Love, Stephen.

 

Slowly Will folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. 'A look that we Old Ones have ...' So the circle stretched all the way round the world. But of course it did, there would be no point in it otherwise. He was glad to have Stephen part of the pattern; it was right, somehow.

 

'Oh, come on, Will!' Mary was hopping with curiosity, her dressing-gown flapping. 'Open it, open it!'

 

Will suddenly realised that his tradition-minded family had been standing, patiently immobile, waiting for five minutes while he read his letter. Using the lid of the crate as a tray, he hastily began hauling out more and more palm-leaf packing until finally the object inside was clear. He pulled it out, staggering as he took the weight, and everybody gasped. It was a giant carnival head, brilliant and grotesque. The colours were bright and crude, the features boldly made and easily recognisable, all done in the same smooth, light substance like papier-machè or a kind of grainless wood. And it was not the head of a man. Will had never seen anything like it before. The head from which the branching antlers sprang was shaped like the head of a stag, but the ears beside the horns were those of a dog or a wolf. And the face beneath the horns was a human face - but with the round feather-edged eyes of a bird. There was a strong, straight human nose, a firm human mouth, set in a slight smile. There was not much else that was purely human about the thing at all. The chin was bearded, but the beard so shaped that it might as easily have been the chin of a goat or deer as of a man. The face could have been frightening; when everyone had gasped, the sound Mary made and hastily muffled had been more like a small scream. But Will felt that its effect would depend on who was looking at it. The appearance was nothing. It was neither ugly nor beautiful, frightening nor funny. It was a thing made to call out deep responses from the mind. It was very much a thing of the Old Ones.

 

'My word!' his father said.

 

'That's a funny sort of present,' said James.

 

His mother said nothing.

 

Mary said nothing, but edged away a little.

 

'Reminds me of someone I know,' Robin said, grinning.

 

Paul said nothing.

 

Gwen said nothing.

 

Max said softly, 'Look at those eyes!'

 

Barbara said, 'But what's it for?'

 

Will ran his fingers over the strange great face. It took him only a moment to find what he was looking for; it was almost invisible unless you were expecting it, engraved on the forehead, between the horns. The imprint of a circle, quartered by a cross.

 

He said, 'It's a West Indian carnival head. It's old. It's special. Stephen found it in Jamaica.'

 

James was beside him now, peering up inside the head. 'There's a kind of wire framework that rests on your shoulders. And a slit where the mouth's just a bit open, I suppose you look out through that. Come on, Will, put it on.' He heaved up the head from behind to slip it over Will's shoulders. But Will drew away, as some other part of his mind spoke silently to him. 'Not now,' he said. 'Somebody else open their present.'

 

And Mary forgot the head and her reaction to it, in the happy instant of finding that it was her turn for Christmas. She dived at the pile of presents by the tree, and the cheerful discoveries began again.

 

One present each; they had almost done, and it was almost time for breakfast, when the knocking came at the front door. Mrs Stanton had been about to reach for her own ritual parcel; her arm dropped to her side, and she looked up blankly.

 

'Who on earth can that be?'

 

They all stared at one another, and then at the door, as if it might speak. This was all wrong, like a phrase of music changing in mid-melody. Nobody ever came to the house at this hour on Christmas Day, it was not in the pattern.

 

'I wonder ...' said Mr Stanton, with a faint surmise waking in his voice; and he pushed his feet more firmly into his slippers and got up to open the front door. They heard the door open. His back filled the space and stopped them from seeing the visitor, but his voice rose in obvious pleasure. 'My dear chap, how very good of you ... come in, do come in . . .' And as he turned back towards the living-room he was holding a small package in one hand that had not been there before, clearly a product of the tall figure that now loomed in the doorway, following him in. Mr Stanton was beaming and glowing, busy with introductions, 'Alice, love, this is Mr Mitothin . . . so kind, all this way on Christmas morning just to deliver ... shouldn't have taken the . . . Mitothin, my son Max, my daughter Gwen . . . James, Barbara ...'

 

Will listened without attention to the grown-up politenesses; it was only at the voice of the stranger that he glanced up. There was something familiar in the deep, slightly nasal voice with a trace of accent, carefully repeating the names: 'How do you do, Mrs Stanton . . . Compliments of the season to you, Max, Gwen ...' And Will saw the outline of the face, and the longish red-brown hair, and he froze. It was the Rider. This Mr Mitothin, his father's friend from goodness-knows-where, was the Black Rider from somewhere outside Time.

 

Will seized the nearest thing to his hand, a sweep of bright cloth that was Stephen's present from Jamaica to his sister Barbara, and pulled it quickly over the carnival head to mask it from view. As he turned again, the Rider raised his head to look further back into the room, and saw him. He stared at Will in open triumphant challenge, a small smile on his lips. Mr Stanton beckoned, flapping a hand, 'Will, come here a minute - my youngest son, Mr - '

 

Will was instantly a furious Old One, so furious that he did not pause to think what he should do. He could feel every inch of himself, as if he had grown in his rage to three times his own height. He stretched out his right hand with its fingers spread stiff towards his family, and saw them instantly caught into a stop in time, frozen out of all movement. Like waxworks they stood stiff and motionless round the room.

 

'How dare you come in here!' he shouted at the Rider. The two of them stood facing one another across the room, the only living and moving objects there: no human moved, the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece did not move, and though the flames of the fire flickered, they did not consume the logs that they burned.

 

'How dare you! At Christmas, on Christmas morning! Get out!' It was the first time in his life he had ever felt such rage, and it was not pleasant, but he was outraged that the Dark should have dared to interrupt this his most precious family ritual.

 

The Rider said softly, 'Contain yourself.' In the Old Speech, his accent was suddenly much more marked. He smiled at Will without a flicker of change in his cold blue eyes. 'I can cross your threshold, my friend, and pass your berried holly, because I have been invited. Your father, in good faith, asked me to enter the door. And he is the master of this house, and there is nothing you can do about that.'

 

'Yes, there is,' Will said. Staring at the Rider's confident smile, he focused all his powers in an effort to see into his mind, find what he intended to do there. But he came up sharp against a black wall of hostility, unbreakable. Will felt this should not be possible, and he was shaken. He groped angrily in his memory for the words of destruction with which in the last resort - but only the very last resort - an Old One might break the power of the Dark. And the Black Rider laughed.

 

'Oh no, Will Stanton,' he said easily. 'That won't do. You cannot use weapons of that kind here, not unless you wish to blast your whole family out beyond Time.' He glanced pointedly at Mary, who stood unmoving next to him, her mouth half-open, caught out of life in the middle of saying something to her father.

 

'That would be a pity,' the Rider said. Then he looked back at Will, and the smile dropped from his face as if he had spat it away, and his eyes narrowed. 'You young fool, do you think that for all your Gift of Gramarye you can control me? Keep your place. You are not one of the masters yet. You may do things as best you can contrive, but the high powers are not for your mastering yet. And nor am I.'

 

'You are afraid of my masters,' Will said suddenly, not knowing quite what he meant, but knowing it was true.

 

The Rider's pale face flushed. He said softly, 'The Dark is rising, Old One, and this time we do not propose that anything shall hinder its way. This is the time for our rising, and these next twelve months shall see us established at last. Tell your masters that. Tell them that nothing shall stop us. Tell them, all the Things of Power that they hope to possess we shall take from them, the grail and the harp and the Signs. We shall break your Circle before it can ever be joined. And none shall stop the Dark from rising!'

 

The last words keened out in a high shriek of triumph, and Will shivered. The Rider stared at him, his pale eyes glittering; then scornfully he spread out his hands towards the Stantons, and at once they started into life again and the bustle of Christmas was back, and there was nothing Will could do.

 

' - that box for?' Mary said.

 

' - Mitothin, this is our Will.' Mr Stanton put his hand on Will's shoulder.

 

Will said coldly, 'How do you do?'

 

'The compliments of the season to you, Will,' the Rider said.

 

'I wish you the same as you wish me,' Will said.

 

'Very logical,' said the Rider.

 

'Very pompous, if you ask me,' Mary said, tossing her head. 'He's like that sometimes. Daddy, who is that box for, that he brought?'

 

'Mr Mitothin, not "he",' said her father automatically. 'For your mother, a surprise,' the Rider said. 'Something that wasn't finished last night in time for your father to bring it home.'

 

'From you?'

 

'From Daddy, I think,' said Mrs Stanton, smiling at her husband. She turned to the Rider. 'Will you have breakfast with us, Mr Mitothin?'

 

'He can't,' said Will.

 

'Will!'

 

'He sees I'm in a hurry,' the Rider said smoothly. 'No, I thank you, Mrs Stanton, but I am on the way to spend the day with friends, and I must be off.'

 

Mary said, 'Where are you going?'

 

'North of here ... what long hair you have, Mary. Very pretty.'

 

'Thank you,' said Mary smugly, shaking her long, loose hair back from her shoulders. The Rider reached out and removed a stray hair delicately from her sleeve. 'Allow me,' he said politely.

 

'She's always showing it off,' James said calmly. Mary stuck out her tongue.

 

The Rider looked down the room again. 'That's a magnificent tree. A local one?'

 

'It's a Royal tree,' James said, 'From the Great Park.'

 

'Come and see!' Mary grabbed the Rider's hand and tugged him across. Will bit his lip, and deliberately blanked out all thought of the carnival head from his mind by concentrating very hard on what he was likely to have for breakfast. The Rider, he was fairly sure, could see into the top level of his mind but not perhaps the ones buried deeper than that.

 

But there was no danger. Though the great empty box and its pile of exotic packing stood right beside him, the Rider, surrounded by Stantons, simply peered obediently and admiringly at the ornaments on the tree. He seemed particularly taken with the tiny carved initials from Farmer Dawson's box. 'Beautiful,' he said, absently twirling Mary's left-twined M - which, Will noticed vaguely, was hanging upside-down.

 

Then he turned back to their parents. 'I really must go, and you must have your breakfasts. Will looks rather hungry, I think.' There was a flash of malice as they looked at one another, and Will knew that he had been right about the limits of the Dark's seeing.

 

'I'm really immensely grateful to you, Mitothin,' Mr Stanton said.

 

'No trouble at all, you were right on my way. Compliments of the season to you all - ' With a flurry of farewells he was gone, striding down the path. Will rather regretted that his mother shut the door before they had a chance to hear a car's engine start up. He did not think the Rider had come by car.

 

'Well, my love,' said Mr Stanton, giving his wife a kiss and handing her the box. 'There's your first tree-present. Happy Christmas!'

 

'Oh!' said their mother, when she had opened it. 'Oh, Roger!'

 

Will squeezed past his burbling sisters to have a look. Nestled on white velvet, in a box marked with the name of his father's shop, was his mother's old-fashioned ring: the ring he had watched Mr Stanton checking for loose stones some weeks before, the ring that Merriman had seen in the picture he took out of Will's mind. But encircling it was something else: a bracelet made as an enlargement of the ring, exactly matching it. A gold hand, set with three diamonds in the centre, and three rubies on either side, and engraved with an odd pattern of circles and lines and curves round them all. Will stared at it, wondering why the Rider should have wanted to have it in his hands. For surely that must have been behind the visit this morning; no Lord of the Dark needed to enter any house merely to see what was inside.

 

'Did you make it, Dad?' said Max. 'Lovely bit of work.'

 

'Thank you,' said his father.

 

'Who was that man who brought it?' Gwen said curiously. 'Does he work with you? Such a funny name.'

 

'Oh, he's a dealer,' Mr Stanton said. 'In diamonds, mostly. Strange chap, but very pleasant. I've known him for a couple of years, I suppose. We get quite a lot of stones from his people - including these.' He poked one finger gently at the bracelet. 'I had to leave early yesterday while young Jeffrey was still tightening one setting - and Mitothin happened to be in the shop and offered to drop it of to save me coming back. As he said, he was coming past here this morning anyway. Still, it was good of him, he needn't have offered.'

 

'Very nice,' said his wife. 'But you're nicer. I think it's beautiful.'

 

'I'm hungry,' said James. 'When are we going to eat?'

 

It was only after the bacon and eggs, toast and tea, marmalade and honey were all gone, and the debris of the first present-opening cleared away, that Will realised his letter from Stephen was nowhere to be found. He searched the living-room, investigated everyone's belongings, crawled underneath the tree and around the waiting pile of still-unopened presents, but it was not there. It might, of course, have been inadvertently thrown away, in mistake for wrapping-paper; such things sometimes happened in their crowded Christmas Day.

 

But Will thought he knew what had happened to his letter. And he wondered whether, after all, it had been the chance of investigating his mother's ring that had brought the Black Rider to the house - or a quest for something else.

 

Before long they noticed that snow was falling again. Gently but inexorably the flakes came fluttering down, without once faltering. The footprints of Mr Mitothin, out on the path from door to drive, were soon covered over as if they had never been there. The dogs, Raq and Ci, who had asked to go out before the snow began, came humbly scratching at the back door again.

 

'I'm all for a white Christmas now and then,' said Max, staring morosely out, 'but this is ridiculous.'

 

'Extraordinary,' said his father, looking out over his shoulder. 'I've never known it like this at Christmas, in my lifetime. If much more comes down today, there'll be real transport problems all over the South of England.'

 

'That's what I was thinking,' said Max. 'I'm supposed to be going to Southampton the day after tomorrow to stay with Deb.'

 

'Oh, woe, woe,' said James, clutching his chest.

 

Max looked at him.

 

'Happy Christmas, Max,' James said.

 

Paul came clomping into the living-room in boots, buttoning his overcoat. 'Snow or no snow, I'm off ringing. They ol' bells up in thiccy tower don' wait for no one. Any of you heathen mob coming to church this morning?'

 

'The nightingales will be along,' Max said, looking at Will and James, who between them constituted about one-third of the church choir. 'That should do you, don't you think?'

 

'If you were to perform your seasonal good deed,' said Gwen, passing, 'with some useful task like peeling the potatoes, then perhaps Mum could go. She does like to, when she can.'

 

The small muffled group which set out eventually into the thickening snow consisted of Paul, James, Will, Mrs Stanton and Mary, who was, James said unkindly but with truth, probably more interested in avoiding housework than in making her devotions. They plodded up the road, the snowflakes coming down harder now and beginning to sting their cheeks. Paul had gone ahead to join the other ringers, and soon the tumbling notes of the six sweet old bells that hung in the small square tower began chiming through the grey whirling world around them, brightening it back into Christmas. Will's spirits rose a little at the sound, but not much; the heavy persistence of the new snow troubled him. He could not shake of the creeping suspicion that it was being sent as a forerunner of something else, by the Dark. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his sheepskin jacket, and the fingertips of one hand found themselves curling round a rook's feather, forgotten since the dreadful night of Midwinter's Eve, before his birthday.

 

In the snowy road, four or five cars stood outside the church; there were more, usually, on Christmas morning, but few villagers outside walking range had chosen to brave this swirling white fog. Will watched the fat white flakes lie determined and unmelting on his jacket sleeve; it was very cold. Even inside the little church, the snowflakes obstinately remained, and took a long time to melt. He went with James and the handful of other choristers to struggle into surplices in the narrow vestry corridor, and then, as the bells merged into the beginning of the service, to make their procession down the aisle and up into the little gallery at the back of the small square nave. You could see everyone from there, and it was clear that the church of St James the Less was not Christmas crammed this year, but half full.

 

The order of Morning Prayer, as were in this Church of England, by the Authority of Parliament, in the Second Year of the Reign of King Edward the Sixth, made its noble way through the Christmas pattern, led by the Rector's unashamedly theatrical bass-baritone.

 

'O ye Frost and Cold, bless ye the Lord, praise Him, and magnify Him for ever,' said Will, reflecting that Mr Beaumont had shown a certain wry humour in choosing the canticle.

 

'O ye Ice and Snow, bless ye the Lord, praise Him, and magnify Him for ever.'

 

Suddenly he found himself shivering, but not from the words, nor from any sense of cold. His head swam; he clutched for a moment at the edge of the gallery. The music seemed to become for a brief flash hideously discordant, jarring at his ears. Then it faded into itself again and was as before, leaving Will shaken and chilled.

 

'O ye Light and Darkness,' sang James, staring at him - 'are you all right? Sit down - and magnify Him forever.'

 

But Will shook his head impatiently, and for the rest of the service he sturdily stood, sang, sat, or knelt, and convinced himself that there had been nothing at all wrong except a vague feeling of faintness, brought on by what his elders liked to call 'over-excitement'. And then the strange sense of wrongness, of discordance, came again.

 

It was only once more, at the very end of the service. Mr Beaumont was booming out the prayer of St Chrysostom: '... who dost promise, that when two or three are gathered together in thy name thou wilt grant their requests ...' Noise broke suddenly into Will's mind, a shrieking and dreadful howling in place of the familiar cadences. He had heard it before. It was the sound of the besieging Dark, which he had heard outside the Manor Hall where he had sat with Merriman and the Lady, in some century unknown. But in a church? said Will the Anglican choirboy, incredulous: surely you can't feel it inside a church? Ah, said Will the Old One unhappily, any church of any religion is vulnerable to their attack, for places like this are where men give thought to matters of the Light and the Dark. He hunched his head down between his shoulders as the noise beat at him - and then it vanished again, and the Rector's voice was ringing out alone, as before.

 

Will glanced quickly around him, but it was clear nobody else had noticed anything wrong. Through the folds of his white surplice he gripped the three Signs on his belt, but there was neither warmth nor cold under his fingers. To the warning power of the Signs, he guessed, a church was a kind of no man's land; since no harm could actually enter its walls, no warning against harm should be necessary. Yet if the harm were hovering just outside ...

 

The service was over now, everyone roaring out 'O Come, All Ye Faithful' in happy Christmas fervour, as the choir made their way down from the gallery and up to the altar. Then Mr Beaumont's blessing went rolling out over the heads of the congregation: '... the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost ...' But the words could not bring Will peace, for he knew that something was wrong, something looming out of the Dark, something waiting, out there, and that when it came to the point he must meet it alone, unstrengthened.

 

He watched everyone file beaming out of the church, smiling and nodding to each other as they gripped their umbrellas and turned up their collars against the swirling snow. He saw jolly Mr Hutton, the retired director, twirling his car keys, enveloping tiny Miss Bell, their old teacher, in the warm offer of a ride home; and behind him jolly Mrs Hutton, a galleon in full furry sail, doing the same with limp Mrs Pettigrew, the postmistress. Assorted village children scampered out of the door, escaping their best-hatted mothers, rushing to snowballs and Christmas turkey. Lugubrious Mrs Horniman stumped out next to Mrs Stanton and Mary, busily foretelling doom. Will saw Mary, trying not to giggle, fall back to join Mrs Dawson and her married daughter, with the five-year-old grandson prancing gaily in gleaming new cowboy boots.

 

The choir, coated and muffled, began to leave too, with cries of 'Happy Christmas!' and see you on Sunday, Vicar!' to Mr Beaumont, who would be giving only this service here today and the rest in his other parishes. The rector, talking music with Paul, smiled and waved vaguely. The church began to empty, as Will waited for his brother. He could feel his neck prickling, as though with the electricity that hangs strongly oppressive in the air before a giant storm. He could feel it everywhere, the air inside the church was charged with it. The rector, still chatting, reached out an absentminded hand and turned of the lights inside the church, leaving it in a cold grey murk, brighter only beside the door where the whiteness of the snow reflected in. And Will, seeing some figures move towards the door out of the shadows, realised that the church was not empty after all. Down there by the little twelfth-century font, he saw Farmer Dawson, Old George, and Old George's son John, the smith, with his silent wife. The Old Ones of the Circle were waiting for him, to support him against whatever lurked outside. Will felt weak for a moment as relief washed over him in a great warm wave.

 

'All ready, Will?' said the rector genially, pulling on his overcoat. He went on, still preoccupied, to Paul, 'Of course, I do agree the double concerto is one of the best. I only wish he'd record the unaccompanied Bach suites. Heard him do them in a church in Edinburgh once, at the Festival - marvellous - '

 

Paul, sharper-eyed, said, 'Is anything wrong, Will?'

 

'No,' Will said. 'That is - no.' He was trying desperately to think of some way of getting the two of them outside the church before he came near the door himself. Before - before whatever might happen did happen. By the church door he could see the Old Ones move slowly into a tight group, supporting one another. He could feel the force now very strong, very close, all around, the air was thick with it, outside the church was destruction and chaos, the heart of the Dark, and he could think of nothing that he could do to turn it aside. Then as the rector and Paul turned to walk through the nave, he saw both of them pause in the same instant, and their heads go up like the heads of wild deer on the alert. It was too late now; the voice of the Dark was so loud that even humans could sense its power.

 

Paul staggered, as if someone had pushed him in the chest, and grabbed a pew for support. 'What is that?' he said huskily. 'Rector? What on earth is it?'

 

Mr Beaumont had turned very white. There was a glistening of sweat on his forehead, though the church was very cold again now. 'Nothing on earth, I think, perhaps,' he said. 'God forgive me.' And he stumbled a few paces nearer the church door, like a man struggling through waves in the sea, and leaning forward slightly made a sweeping sign of the Cross. He stammered out, 'Defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in thy defence, may not fear the power of any adversaries . ..'

 

Farmer Dawson said very quietly but clearly from the group beside the door, 'No, Rector.'

 

The rector seemed not to hear him. His eyes were wide, staring out at the snow; he stood transfixed, he shook like a man with fever, the sweat came running down his cheeks. He managed to half-raise one arm and point behind him: '... vestry ...' he gasped out. '... book, on table ... exorcize ...'

 

'Poor brave fellow,' said John Smith in the Old Speech. 'This battle is not for his fighting. He is bound to think so, of course, being in his church.'

 

'Be easy, Reverend,' said his wife in English; her voice was soft and gentle, strongly of the country. The rector stared at her like a frightened animal, but by now all his powers of speech and movement had been taken away.

 

Frank Dawson said: 'Come here, Will.'

 

Pushing against the Dark, Will came forward slowly; he touched Paul on the shoulder as he passed, looking into puzzled eyes in a face as twisted and helpless as the rector's, and said softly: 'Don't worry. It'll be all right soon.'

 

Each of the Old Ones touched him gently as he came into the group, as if joining him to them, and Farmer Dawson took him by the shoulder. He said, 'We must do something to protect those two, Will, or their minds will bend. They cannot stand the pressure, the Dark will send them mad. You have the power, and the rest of us do not.'

 

It was Will's first intimation that he could do anything another Old One could not, but there was no time for wonder; with the Gift of Gramarye, he closed of the minds of his brother and the rector behind a barrier that no power of any kind could break through. It was a perilous undertaking, since he the maker was the only one who could remove the barrier, and if anything were to happen to him the two protected ones would be left like vegetables, incapable of any communication, forever. But the risk had to be taken; there was nothing else to be done. Their eyes closed gently as if they had gone quietly to sleep; they stood very still. After a moment their eyes opened again, but were tranquil and empty, unaware.

 

'All right,' said Farmer Dawson. 'Now.'

 

The Old Ones stood in the doorway of the church, their arms linked together. None spoke a word to another. Wild noise and turbulence rose outside; the light darkened, the wind howled and whined, the snow whirled in and whipped their faces with white chips of ice. And suddenly the rooks were in the snow, hundreds of them, black flurries of malevolence, cawing and croaking, diving down at the porch in shrieking attack and then swooping up, away. They could not come close enough to claw and tear; it was as if an invisible wall made them fall back within inches of their targets. But that would be only for as long as the Old Ones' strength could hold. In a wild storm of black and white the Dark attacked, beating at their minds as at their bodies, and above all driving hard at the Sign-Seeker, Will. And Will knew that if he had been on his own his mind, for all its gifts of protection, would have collapsed. It was the strength of the Circle of the Old Ones that held him fast now.

 

But for the second time in his life, even the Circle could do no more than hold the power of the Dark at bay. Even together, the Old Ones could not drive it back. And there was no Lady now to bring aid of a greater kind. Will realised once more, helplessly, that to be an Old One was to be very old before the proper time, for the fear he began to feel now was worse than the blind terror he had known in his attic bed, worse than the fear the Dark had put into him in the great hall. This time, his fear was adult, made of experience and imagination and care for others, and it was the worst of all. In the moment that he knew this, he knew too that he, Will, was the only means by which his own fear could be overcome, and thus the Circle fortified and the Dark driven away. Who are you? he asked himself - and answered: you are the Sign-Seeker. You have three of the Signs, half the circle of Things of Power. Use them.

 

The sweat was standing on his own forehead now as it had done on the rector's - though now the rector and Paul stood in smiling peace, oblivious, outside everything that was going on. Will could see the strain on the faces of the others, Farmer Dawson most of all. Slowly he moved his hands inwards, bringing the hands each held closer to one another; John Smith's left hand nearer to Farmer Dawson's right. And when they were close enough, he joined his neighbours' hands, shutting himself out. For a panicking moment he clutched them again, as if he were tightening a knot. Then he let go, and stood alone.

 

Unprotected now by the Circle, though sheltered behind it, he swayed under the impact of the raging ill-will outside the church. Then moving very deliberately, he unclasped his belt with its three precious burdens and draped it over his arm; took from his pocket the rook's feather, and wove it into the centre Sign: the bronze quartered circle. Then he took the belt in both his hands, holding it up before him, and moved slowly round until he stood alone in the church porch, facing the howling, rook-screaming, icy dark beyond. He had never felt so lonely before. He did nothing, he thought nothing. He stood there, and let the Signs work for themselves. And suddenly, there was silence.

 

The flapping birds were gone. No wind howled. The dreadful, mad humming that had filled the air and the mind was vanished altogether. Every nerve and muscle in Will's body went limp as the tension disappeared. Outside, the snow still quietly fell, but the flakes were smaller now. The Old Ones looked at one another and laughed.

 

'The full circle will do the real job,' said Old George, 'but half a circle can do a lot, eh, young Will?'

 

Will looked down at the Signs in his hand, and shook his head in wonder.

 

Farmer Dawson said softly, 'In all my days since the grail disappeared, that's the first time I've seen anything but the mind of one of the great ones drive back the Dark. Things, this time. They did it alone, for all our willing. We have Things of Power again. It has been a long, long time.'

 

Will was still looking at the Signs, staring, as if they held his eyes for some purpose. 'Wait,' he said abstractedly. 'Don't move. Stay still for a moment.'

 

They paused, startled. The smith said, 'Is there trouble?' 'Look at the Signs,' Will said. 'Something's happening to them. They're - they're glowing.'

 

He turned slowly, still holding the belt with the three Signs as before, until his body was blocking the grey light from the door and his hands were in the gloom of the church; and the Signs grew brighter and brighter, each of them glowing with a strange, inward light.

 

The Old Ones stared. 'Is it the power of driving back the Dark?' said John Smith's wife in her soft lilt. 'Is it something in them that was sleeping, and begins to wake now?'

 

Will was trying vainly to sense what the Signs were telling him. 'I think it's a message, it means something. But I can't get through ...'

 

The light poured out of the three Signs, filling their half of the dark little church with brilliance; it was a light like sunlight, warm and strong. Nervously, Will reached out a finger to touch the nearest circle, the Sign of Iron, but it was neither hot nor cold.

 

Farmer Dawson said suddenly, 'Look up there!'

 

His arm was out, pointing up the nave, towards the altar. In the instant they turned, they saw what he had seen: another light, blazing from the wall, just as beside them the light blazed from the Signs. It shone out like the beam from a great torch.

 

And Will understood. He said happily, 'So that's why.'

 

He walked up towards the second patch of brilliance, carrying the belt and the Signs so that the shadows on the pews and on the beams of the roof moved with him as he went. As the two lights grew closer and closer together each seemed to grow brighter still. With Frank Dawson's tall, heavy form looming behind him, Will paused in the middle of the shaft of brilliance reaching out from the wall. It looked as if a slit window were letting light through from some unimaginably bright room beyond. He saw that the light was coming from something very small, as long as one of his fingers, lying on its side.

 

He said with certainty to Mr Dawson: 'I must take it quickly, you know, while the light still shines from it. If the light is not shining, it can't be found at all.' And putting the belt with the Sign of Iron and the Sign of Bronze and the Sign of Wood into Frank Dawson's hands, he went forward to the light-cleft wall and reached into the small source of the enchanted beam.

 

The glowing thing came out of the wall easily from a break in the stucco where the Chiltern flints of the wall showed through. It lay on his palm: a circle, quartered by a cross. It had not been cut into that shape. Even through the light in it, Will could see the smooth roundness of the sides that told him this was a natural flint, grown in the Chiltern chalk fifteen million years ago.

 

'The Sign of Stone,' Farmer Dawson said. His voice was gentle and reverent, his dark eyes unreadable. 'We have the fourth Sign, Will.'

 

Together they walked back to join the others, carrying the bright Things of Power. The three Old Ones watched, in silence. Paul and the Rector now sat tranquil in a pew as if sleeping. Will stood with his fellows and took the belt, and threaded on the Sign of Stone to stand there next to the other three. He had to squint through half-closed eyes to keep the brightness from blinding him. Then when the fourth Sign was in position next to the rest, all the light in them died. They were dark and quiet as they had been before, and the Sign of Stone showed itself as a smooth and beautiful thing with the grey-white surface of an undamaged flint.

 

The black rook's feather was still woven into the Sign of Bronze. Will took it out. He did not need it now.

 

When the light went out of the Signs, Paul and the rector stirred. They opened their eyes, startled to find themselves sitting in a pew when a moment ago - it seemed to them - they had been standing. Paul jumped up instinctively, his head turning, questing. 'It's gone!' he said. He looked at Will, and a peculiar expression of puzzlement and wonder and awe came over his face. His eyes travelled down to the belt in Will's hands. 'What happened?' he said.

 

The rector stood up, his smooth, plump face creased in an effort to make sense of the incomprehensible. 'Certainly it has gone,' he said, looking slowly round the church. 'Whatever - influence it was. The Lord be praised.' He too looked at the Signs on Will's belt, and he glanced up again, smiling suddenly, an almost childish smile of relief and delight. 'That did the work, didn't it? The cross. Not of the church, but a Christian cross, nonetheless.'

 

'Very old, them crosses are, rector,' said Old George unexpectedly, firm and clear. 'Made a long time before Christianity. Long before Christ.'

 

The rector beamed at him. 'But not before God,' he said simply.

 

The Old Ones looked at him. There was no answer that would not have offended him, so no one tried to give one. Except, after a moment, Will.

 

'There's not really any before and after, is there?' he said. 'Everything that matters is outside Time. And comes from there and can go there.'

 

Mr Beaumont turned to him in surprise. 'You mean infinity, of course, my boy.'

 

'Not altogether,' said the Old One that was Will. 'I mean the part of all of us, and of all the things we think and believe, that has nothing to do with yesterday or today or tomorrow because it belongs at a different kind of level. Yesterday is still there, on that level. Tomorrow is there too. You can visit either of them. And all Gods are there, and all the things they have ever stood for. And,' he added sadly, 'the opposite, too.'

 

'Will,' said the rector, staring at him, 'I am not sure whether you should be exorcised or ordained. You and I must have some long talks, very soon.'

 

'Yes, we must,' Will said equably. He buckled on his belt, heavy with its precious burden. He was thinking hard and quickly as he did so, and the chief image before his mind was not Mr Beaumont's disturbed theological assumptions, but Paul's face. He had seen his brother looking at him with a kind of fearful remoteness that bit into him with the pain of a whiplash. It was more than he could stand. His two worlds must not meet so closely. He raised his head, gathering all his powers, spread straight the fingers of both hands and pointed one hand at each of them.

 

'You will forget,' he said softly in the Old Speech. 'Forget. Forget.'

 

' - in a church in Edinburgh once, marvellous,' the rector said to Paul, reaching to do up the top button of his overcoat. 'The Sarabande in the fifth suite literally had me in tears. He's the greatest cellist in the world, without a doubt.'

 

'Oh yes,' said Paul. 'Oh yes, he is.' He hunched his shoulders inside his own coat. 'Has Mum gone ahead, Will? Hey, Mr Dawson, hallo, happy Christmas!' And he beamed and nodded at the rest, as they all turned towards the church porch and the scattered flakes of drifting snow.

 

'Happy Christmas, Paul, Mr Beaumont,' said Farmer Dawson gravely. 'A nice service, sir, very nice.'

 

'Ah, seasonal warmth, Frank,' said the rector. 'A wonderful season too. Nothing can interfere with our Christmas services, not even all this snow.'

 

Laughing and chatting, they went out into the white world, where the snow lay mounded over the invisible tomb- stones and the white fields stretched down to the freezing Thames. There was no sound anywhere, no disturbance, only the occasional murmur of a car passing on the distant Bath Road. The rector turned aside to find his motor-bike. The rest of them went on, in a cheerful straggle, to take their respective paths home.

 

Two black rooks were perched on the lych-gate as Will and Paul drew close; they rose into the air slowly, half-hopping, dark incongruous shapes against the white snow. One of them passed close to Will's feet and dropped something there, giving a deprecatory croak as he passed. Will picked it up; it was a glossy horse-chestnut from the rooks' wood, as fresh as if it had ripened only yesterday. He and James always collected such nuts from the wood in early autumn for their school games of conkers, but he had never seen one as large and round as this.

 

'There, now,' said Paul, amused. 'You have a friend. Bringing you an extra Christmas present.'

 

'A peace offering, perhaps,' said Frank Dawson behind them with no trace of expression in his deep Buckinghamshire voice. 'And then again, perhaps not. Happy Christmas, lads. Enjoy your dinner.' And the Old Ones were gone, up the road.

 

Will picked up the conker. 'Well I never,' he said. They closed the church gate, knocking a shower of snow from its flat iron bars. Round the corner came the coughing roars of a motor-cycle as the rector tried to kick his steed into life. Then, a few feet ahead of them on the trampled snow, the rook flew down again. It walked backwards and forwards irresolutely and looked at Will.

 

'Caark,' it said, very gently, for a rook. 'Caaark, caark, caark.' Then it walked a few paces forward to the churchyard fence, jumped down again into the churchyard, and walked back a few paces as before. The invitation could hardly have been more obvious. 'Caark,' said the rook again, louder. The ears of an Old One know that birds do not speak with the precision of words; instead they communicate emotion. There are many kinds and degrees of emotion, and there are many kinds of expression even in the language of a bird. But although Will could tell that the rook was obviously asking him to come and look at something, he could not tell whether or not the bird was being used by the Dark.

 

He paused, thinking of what the rooks had done; then he fingered the shiny brown chestnut in his hand. 'All right, bird,' he said. 'One quick look.'

 

He went back through the gate, and the rook, croaking like an old swinging door, walked clumsily ahead of him up the church path and round the corner. Paul watched, grinning. Then he saw Will suddenly stiffen as he reached the corner; vanish for a moment, and then reappear.

 

'Paul! Come quick! There's a man in the snow!'

 

Paul called the rector, who had just begun pushing his cycle up the road to start it there, and together they came running. Will was bending over a hunched figure, lying in the angle between the church wall and the tower; there was no movement, and the snow had already covered the man's clothes half an inch thick with its cold, feathery flakes. Mr Beaumont moved Will gently aside and knelt, turning the man's head and feeling for a pulse.

 

'He's alive, thank God, but very cold. The pulse isn't very good. He must have been here long enough for most men to die of exposure - look at the snow! Let's get him inside.'

 

'In the church?'

 

'Well, of course.'

 

'Let's take him to our house,' Paul said impulsively. 'It's only just round the corner, after all. It's warm, and a lot better, at any rate until an ambulance or something can come.'

 

'A wonderful idea,' said Mr Beaumont warmly. 'Your good mother is a Samaritan, I know. Just until Dr Armstrong can be called ... we certainly can't leave the poor fellow here. I don't think there's a broken bone. Heart trouble, probably.' He tucked his heavy cycle gloves under the man's head to keep it from the snow, and Will saw the face for the first time.

 

He said in alarm, 'It's the Walker!'

 

They turned to him. 'Who?'

 

'An old tramp who hangs around ... Paul, we can't take him home. Can't we get him to Dr Armstrong's surgery?'

 

'In this?' Paul waved a hand at the darkening sky; the snow was whirling round them, thicker again, and the wind was higher.

 

'But we can't take him with us! Not the Walker He'll bring back the - ' He stopped suddenly, half-way through a yelp. 'Oh,' he said helplessly. 'Of course, you can't remember, can you?'

 

'Don't worry, Will, your mother won't mind - a poor man in extremis - ' Mr Beaumont was bustling now. He and Paul carried the Walker to the gate, like a muffled heap of ancient clothes. He managed finally to start the motor-cycle, and they propped the inert shape on it somehow; then half riding, half pushing, the strange little group made its way to the Stantons' house.

 

Will glanced behind him once or twice, but the rook was nowhere to be seen.

 

'Well, well,' said Max fastidiously, as he came down into the dining-room. 'Now I've really met a dirty old man.'

 

'He smelled,' Barbara said.

 

'You're telling me. Dad and I gave him a bath. My Lord, you should have seen him. Well, no, you shouldn't. Put you off your Christmas dinner. Anyway, he's as clean as a new- born babe now. Dad even washed his hair and his beard. And Mum's burning his horrible old clothes, when she's made sure there's nothing valuable in them.'

 

'Not much danger of that, I should think,' said Gwen, on her way in from the kitchen. 'Here, move your arm, this dish is hot.'

 

'We should lock up all the silver,' said James.

 

'What silver?' said Mary witheringly.

 

'Well, Mum's jewellery then. And the Christmas presents. Tramps always steal things.'

 

'This one won't be stealing much for a time,' said Mr Stanton, coming to his place at the head of the table with a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. 'He's ill. And fast asleep now, snoring like a camel.'

 

'Have you ever heard a camel snore?' said Mary.

 

'Yes,' said her father. 'And ridden one. So there. When's the doctor coming, Max? Pity to interrupt his dinner, poor man.'

 

'We didn't,' said Max. 'He's out delivering a baby, and they don't know when he'll be back. The woman was expecting twins.'

 

'Oh, Lord.'

 

'Well, the old boy must be all right if he's asleep. Just needs rest, I expect. Though I must say he seemed a bit delirious, all that weird talk coming out.'

 

Gwen and Barbara brought in more dishes of vegetables. In the kitchen their mother was making impressive clattering noises with the oven. 'What weird talk?' said Will.

 

'Goodness knows,' said Robin. 'It was when we first took him up. Sounded like a language unknown to human ear. Maybe he comes from Mars.'

 

'I only wish he did,' Will said. 'Then we could send him back.'

 

But a shout of approval had greeted his mother, beaming over the glossy brown turkey, and nobody heard him. They turned on the radio in the kitchen while they were doing the washing-up.

 

'Heavy snow is falling again over the South and West of England,' said the impersonal voice. 'The blizzard which has been raging for twelve hours in the North Sea is still  immobilising all shipping on the South-east coasts. The London docks closed down this morning, due to power failures and transport difficulties caused by heavy snow and temperatures approaching zero. Snowdrifts blocking roads have isolated villages in many remote areas, and British Rail is fighting numerous electrical failures and minor derailments caused by the snow. A spokesman said this morning that the public is advised not to travel by rail except in cases of emergency.'

 

There was a sound of rustling paper. The voice went on: 'The freak storms which have intermittently raged over the South of England for the last few days are not expected to diminish until after the Christmas holiday, the Meteorological Office said this morning. Fuel shortages have worsened in the South-east, and householders have been asked not to use any form of electrical heating between the hours of nine a.m. and midday, or three and six p.m.'

 

'Poor old Max,' Gwen said. 'No trains. Perhaps he can hitch-hike.'

 

'Listen, listen!'

 

'A spokesman for the Automobile Association said today that road travel was at present extremely inadvisable on all roads except major motorways. He added that motorists stranded in heavy snowstorms should if possible remain with their vehicles until the snow stops. Unless a driver is quite certain of his location and knows he can reach help within ten minutes, the spokesman said, he should on no account leave his car.'

 

The voice went on, among exclamations and whistles, but Will turned away; he had heard enough. These storms could not be broken by the Old Ones without the power of the full circle of Signs - and by sending the storms, the Dark hoped to stop him from completing the circle. He was trapped; the Dark was spreading its shadow not only over his quest but over the ordinary world too. From the moment the Rider had invaded his cosy Christmas that morning, Will had watched the dangers grow; but he had not anticipated this wider threat. For days now, he had been too much caught up in his own perils to notice those of the outside world. But so many people were threatened now by the snow and cold: the very young, the very old, the weak, the ill ... The Walker won't have a doctor tonight, that's certain, he thought. It's a good job he isn't dying ...

 

The Walker. Why was he here? There had to be some meaning behind it. Perhaps he had simply been hovering for his own reasons, and been blasted by the attack of the Dark on the church. But if so, why had the rook, an agent of the Dark, brought Will to save him from freezing to death? Who was the Walker, anyway? Why could all the powers of Gramarye tell him nothing about the old man at all?

 

There were carols on the radio again. Will thought bitterly: Happy Christmas, world.

 

His father, passing, slapped him on the back. 'Cheer up, Will. It's bound to stop tonight, you'll be tobogganing tomorrow. Come on, time to open the rest of the presents. If we keep Mary waiting any longer she'll explode.'

 

Will went to join his cheerful, noisy family. Back in the cosy, brilliant cave of the long room with the fire and the glowing tree, it was untouched Christmas for a while, just as it had always been. And his mother and father and Max had joined to give him a new bicycle, with racing handlebars and eleven gear-speeds.

 

Will was never quite sure whether what happened that night was a dream.

 

In the darkest part of the night, the small chill hours that are the first of the next day, he woke, and Merriman was there. He stood towering beside the bed in a faint light that seemed to come from within his own form; his face was shadowed, inscrutable.

 

'Wake up, Will. Wake up. There is a ceremony we must attend.'

 

In an instant Will was standing; he found that he was fully dressed, with the Signs on their belt round his waist. He went with Merriman to the window. It was mounded to half its height with snow, and still the flakes were quietly falling. He said, suddenly desolate, 'Isn't there anything we can do to stop it? They're freezing half the country, Merriman; people will be dying.'

 

Merriman shook his white-maned head slowly, heavily. 'The Dark has its strongest power of all rising between now and the Twelfth Day. This is their preparing. Theirs is a cold strength, the winter feeds it. They mean to break the Circle forever, before it is too late for them. We shall all face a hard test soon. But not all things go according to their will. Much magic still flows untapped, along the Old Ones' Ways. And we may find more hope in a moment. Come.'

 

The window ahead of them flew open, outwards, scattering all the snow. A faint luminous path like a broad ribbon lay ahead, stretching into the snow-flecked air; looking down, Will could see through it, see the snow-mounded outlines of roofs and fences and trees below. Yet the path was substantial too. In one stride Merriman had reached it through the window and was sweeping away at great speed with an eerie gliding movement, vanishing into the night. Will leapt after him, and the strange path swept him too off through the night, with no feeling either of speed or cold. The night around him was black and thick; nothing was to be seen except the glimmer of the Old Ones' airy way. And then all at once they were in some bubble of Time, hovering, tilted on the wind as Will had learned from his eagle of the Book of Gramarye.

 

'Watch,' Merriman said, and his cloak swirled round Will as if in protection.

 

Will saw in the dark sky, or in his own mind, a group of great trees, leafless, towering over a leafless hedge, wintry but without snow. He heard a strange, thin music, a high piping accompanied by the small constant thump of a drum, playing over and over again a single melancholy tune. And out of the deep dark and into the ghostly grove of trees a procession came.

 

It was a procession of boys, in clothes of some time long past, tunics and rough leggings; they had hair to their shoulders and bag-like caps of a shape he had never seen before. They were older than he: about fifteen, he guessed. They had the half-solemn expressions of players in a game of charades, mingling earnest purpose with a bubbling sense of fun. At the front came boys with sticks and bundles of birch twigs; at the back were the players of pipe and drum. Between these, six boys carried a kind of platform made of reeds and branches woven together, with a bunch of holly at each corner. It was like a stretcher, Will thought, except that they were holding it at shoulder height. He thought at first that it was no more than that, and empty; then he saw that it supported something. Something very small. On a cushion of ivy leaves in the centre of the woven bier lay the body of a minute bird: a dusty-brown bird, neat-billed. It was a wren.

 

Merriman's voice said softly over his head, out of the darkness: 'It is the Hunting of the Wren, performed every year since men can remember, at the solstice. But this is a particular year, and we may see more, if all is well. Hope in your heart, Will, that we may see more.'

 

And as the boys and their sad music moved on through the sky-trees and yet did not seem to pass, Will saw with a catch in his breath that instead of the little bird, there was growing the dim shape of a different form on the bier. Merriman's hand clutched at his shoulder like a steel clamp, though the big man made no sound. Lying on the bed of ivy between the four holly tufts now was no longer a tiny bird, but a small, fine-boned woman, very old, delicate as a bird, robed in blue. The hands were folded on the chest, and on one finger glimmered a ring with a huge rose-coloured stone. In the same instant Will saw the face, and knew that it was the Lady. He cried out in pain, 'But you said she wasn't dead!'

 

'No more she is,' Merriman said.

 

The boys walked to their music, the bier with the silent form lying there came close, and then moved away, vanishing with the procession into the night, and the piping sad tune and the drumbeats dwindled after it. But on the very edge of disappearance, the three boys who had been playing paused, put down their instruments, and turned to stand gazing without expression at Will.

 

One of them said: 'Will Stanton, beware the snow!'

 

The second said: 'The Lady will return, but the Dark is rising.'

 

The third, in a quick sing-song tone, chanted something that Will recognised as soon as it began:

 

'When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;

Three from the circle, three from the track.

Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;

Five will return, and one go alone.'

 

But the boy did not end there, as Merriman had done. He went on*

 

'Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long;

Wood from the burning, stone out of song;

Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw;

Six signs the circle, and the grail gone before.'

 

Then a great wind came up out of nowhere, and in a flurry of snowflakes and darkness the boys were gone, whirled away, and Will too felt himself whirling backwards, back through Time, back along the shining way of the Old Ones. The snow lashed at his face. The night was in his eyes, stinging. Out of the darkness he heard Merriman calling to him, urgently, but with a new hope and resonance in his deep voice: 'Danger rises with the snow, Will - be wary of the snow. Follow the Signs, beware the snow . . .'

 

And Will was back in his room, back in his bed, falling into sleep with the one ominous word ringing in his head like the chiming of the deepest church bell over the mounting snow. 'Beware...beware...'

 

 

 

Part Three: The Testing

The Coming of the Cold

 

The next day the snow still fell, all day. And the next day too.

 

'I do wish it would stop,' said Mary unhappily, gazing at the blind white windows. 'It's horrible the way it just goes on and on - I hate it.'

 

'Don't be stupid,' said James. 'It's just a very long storm. No need to get hysterical.'

 

'This is different. It's creepy.'

 

'Rubbish. It's just a lot of snow.'

 

'Nobody's ever seen so much snow before. Look how high it is - you couldn't get out of the back door if we hadn't been clearing it since it started to fall. We're going to be buried, that's what. It's pushing at us - it's even broken a window in the kitchen, did you know that?'

 

Will said sharply, 'What?'

 

'The little window at the back, near the stove. Gwennie came down this morning and the kitchen was cold as ice, with snow and bits of glass all over that corner. The snow had pushed the window in, the weight of it.'

 

James sighed loudly. 'Weight isn't pushing. The snow gets blown into a drift at that side of the house, that's all.'

 

'I don't care what you say, it's horrible. As if the snow was trying to get in.' She sounded close to tears.

 

'Let's go and see if the Wa - the old tramp's woken up yet,' Will said. It was time to stop Mary before she came too near the truth. How many other people in the country were being made as frightened as this by the snow? He thought fiercely of the Dark, and longed to know what to do.

 

The Walker had slept through the previous day, hardy stirring except for occasional meaningless mutterings, and once or twice a small hoarse shout. Will and Mary went up to his room now carrying a tray, with cereal and toast and milk and marmalade. 'Good morning!' Will said loudly and brightly as they went in. 'Would you like some breakfast?'

 

The Walker opened a slit of an eye and peered at them through his shaggy grey hair, longer and wilder than ever now that it was clean. Will held out the tray towards him.

 

'Faugh!' the Walker croaked. It was a noise like spitting. Mary said, 'Well!'

 

'D'you want something else instead, then?' said Will. 'Or are you just not hungry?'

 

'Honey,' the Walker said.

 

'Honey?'

 

'Honey and bread. Honey and bread. Honey and - '

 

'All right,' Will said. They took the tray away.

 

'He doesn't even say please,' Mary said. 'He's a nasty old man. I'm not going near him any more.'

 

'Suit yourself,' Will said. Left alone, he found the tail-end of a jar of honey in the back of the larder, rather crystalline round the edges, and spread it lavishly on three hunks of bread. He took this with a glass of milk up to the Walker, who sat up greedily in bed and wolfed the lot. When eating, he was not a pretty sight.

 

'Good,' he said. He tried to wipe some honey of his beard and licked the back of his hand, peeping at Will. 'Still snowing? Still coming down, is it?'

 

'What were you doing out in the snow?'

 

'Nothing,' the Walker said sullenly. 'Don't remember.' His eyes narrowed craftily, and he gestured at his forehead and said in a plaintive whine, 'Hit my head.'

 

'D'you remember where we found you?'

 

'No.'

 

'Do you remember who I am?'

 

Very promptly he shook his head. 'No.'

 

Will said softly again, this time in the Old Speech, 'Do you remember who I am?'

 

The Walker's shaggy face was expressionless. Will began to think that perhaps he really had lost his memory. He leaned over the bed to pick up the tray with its empty plate and glass, and suddenly the Walker let out a shrill scream and flinched away from him, cowering down at the far side of the bed. 'No!' he screeched. 'No! Get away! Take them away!'

 

Eyes wide and terrified, he was staring at Will in loathing. For a moment Will was baffled; then he realised that his sweater had lifted as he reached out his arm, and the Walker had seen the four Signs on his belt.

 

'Take them away!' the old man howled. 'They burn! Get them out!'

 

So much for lost memory, Will thought. He heard concerned feet running up the stairs, and went out of the room. Why should the Walker be terrified by the Great Signs, when he had carried one of them himself for so long?

 

 

His parents were grave. The news on the radio grew worse and worse as the cold gripped the country and one restriction followed another. In all records of temperature Britain had never been so cold; rivers that had never frozen before stood as solid ice, and every port on the entire coast was iced in. People could do little more than wait for the snow to stop; but still the snow fell.

 

They led a restless, enclosed life - 'like cavemen in winter', said Mr Stanton - and went to bed early to save fires and fuel. New Year's Day came and went and was scarcely noticed.

 

The Walker lay in bed fidgeting and muttering and refused to eat anything but bread and milk, which by now was tinned milk, watered down. Mrs Stanton said kindly that he was regaining his strength, poor man. Will kept away. He was growing increasingly desperate as the cold tightened and the snow floated down and down; he felt that if he did not get out of the house soon he would find the Dark had boxed him up forever. His mother gave him an escape, in the end. She ran out of flour, sugar, and tinned milk.

 

'I know nobody's supposed to leave the house except in dire emergency,' she said anxiously, 'but really this counts as one. We do need things to eat.'

 

It took the boys two hours to shovel a way through the snow in their own garden to the road, where a kind of roofless tunnel, the width of one snowplough, had been kept clear. Mr Stanton had announced that only he and Robin would go to the village, but throughout the two hours Will, panting and digging, begged to be allowed to go too, and by the end his father's resistance was so much lowered that he agreed.

 

They wore scarves over their ears, heavy gloves, and three sweaters each under their coats. They took a torch. It was mid-morning, but the snow was coming down as relentlessly as ever, and nobody knew when they might get home. From the steep-sided cutting in the one road of the village, tiny uneven paths had been trodden and shovelled to the few shops and most of the central houses; they could see from the footprints that someone had brought horses out from Dawsons' Farm to help carve a way to the cottages of people like Miss Bell and Mrs Horniman, who could never have managed it for themselves. In the village store, Mrs Pettigrew's tiny dog was curled up in a twitching grey heap in one corner, looking limper and unhappier than ever; Mrs Pettigrew's fat son Fred, who helped run the store, had sprained his wrist by falling in the snow and had one arm in a sling, and Mrs Pettigrew was in a state. She twittered and dithered with nervousness, she dropped things, she hunted in quite the wrong places for sugar and flour and found neither of them, and in the end she sat down suddenly in a chair, like a puppet dropped from its strings, and burst into tears.

 

'Oh,' she sobbed, 'I'm so sorry, Mr Stanton, it's this terrible snow. I'm so frightened, I don't know . . . I have these dreams that we're cut off, and nobody knows where we are . . .'

 

'We already are cut off,' said her son lugubriously. 'Not a car's been through the village for a week. And no supplies, and everyone running out - there's no butter, and not even any tinned milk. And the flour won't last long; there's only five bags after this one.'

 

'And nobody with any fuel,' Mrs Pettigrew sniffed. 'And the little Randall baby sick with a fever and poor Mrs Randall without a piece of coal, and goodness knows how many more - '

 

The shop-bell twanged as the door opened, and in the automatic village habit, everyone turned to see who had come in. A very tall man in a voluminous black overcoat, almost a cloak, was taking of his broad-brimmed hat to show a mop of white hair; deep-shadowed eyes looked down at them over a fierce hooked nose.

 

'Good afternoon,' Merriman said.

 

'Hallo,' said Will, beaming, his world suddenly bright.

 

'Afternoon,' said Mrs Pettigrew, and blew her nose hard. She said, muffled by the handkerchief, 'Mr Stanton, do you know Mr Lyon? He's at the Manor.'

 

'How d'you do?' said Will's father.

 

'Butler to Miss Greythorne,' Merriman said, inclining his head respectfully. 'Until Mr Bates comes back from holiday. That is to say, when the snow stops. At present, of course, I can't get out, and Bates can't get in.'

 

'It'll never stop,' Mrs Pettigrew wailed, and she burst into tears again.

 

'Oh, Mum,' said fat Fred in disgust.

 

'I have some news for you, Mrs Pettigrew,' said Merriman in loud soothing tones. 'We have heard an announcement over the local radio - our telephone being dead, of course, like yours. There's to be a fuel and food drop in the Manor grounds, as the place most easily visible from the air in this snow. And Miss Greythorne is asking if everyone in the village would not like to move into the Manor, for the emergency. It will be crowded, of course, but warm. And comforting, perhaps. And Dr Armstrong will be there - he is already on his way, I believe.'

 

'That's ambitious,' Mr Stanton said reflectively. 'Almost feudal, you might say.'

 

Merriman's eyes narrowed slightly. 'But with no such intention.'

 

 

'Oh, no, I do see that.' Mrs Pettigrew's tears ceased. 'What a lovely idea, Mr Lyon! Oh dear, it would be such a relief to be with other people, especially at night.'

 

'I'm other people,' said Fred.

 

'Yes, dear, but - '

 

Fred said stolidly, 'I'll go and get some blankets. And pack some stuff from the shop.'

 

'That would be wise,' Merriman said. 'The radio says the storm will grow very much worse this evening. So the sooner everyone can gather, the better.'

 

'Would you like some help with telling people?' Robin began pulling up his collar again.

 

'Excellent. That would be excellent.'

 

'We'll all help,' said Mr Stanton.

 

Will had turned to look out of the window at the mention of the storm, but the snow floating down out of the solid grey sky seemed much as before. The windows were so misted that it was difficult to see out of them at all, but he caught a glimpse now of something moving outside. There was someone out there on the snow-road carved through Huntercombe Lane. He saw clearly only for a second, as the figure passed the end of the Pettigrews' path, but a second was all he needed to recognise the man sitting erect on the great black horse.

 

'The Rider has passed!' he said quickly and clearly in the Old Speech.

 

Merriman's head jerked round; then he collected himself and ostentatiously swept his hat on to his head. 'I shall be very grateful to have assistance.'

 

'What did you say, Will?' Robin, distracted, was staring at his brother.

 

'Oh, nothing.' Will went to the door, making a great fuss over buttoning his coat. 'Just thought I saw someone.'

 

'But you said something in some funny language.'

 

'Of course I didn't. I just said "Who's that out there?" Only it wasn't anyone anyway.'

 

Robin was still staring at him. 'You sounded just like that old tramp, when he was babbling when we first put him to bed ...' But he was not given to wasting time on surmise; he shook his practical head and dropped the subject. 'Oh well.'

 

Merriman managed to walk closely behind Will, as they were leaving the Pettigrews' to scatter and warn the rest of the villagers. He said softly in the Old Speech, 'Get the Walker to the Manor if you can. Quickly. Or he will stop you from getting out yourself. But you may have a little trouble with your father's pride.'

 

By the time the Stantons reached home, after their struggling tour of the village, Will had almost forgotten what Merriman had said about his father. He was too busy working out how they could get the Walker to the Manor without actually having to carry him. He remembered only when he heard Mr Stanton talking in the kitchen, as they pulled off their coats and delivered their supplies.

 

'. . . good of the old girl, having everyone in there. Of course they've got the space, and the fires, and those old walls are so thick they keep the cold out better than anyone's. Much the best thing for the people from the cottages - poor Miss Bell wouldn't have lasted long . . . Still, of course, we're all right here. Self-contained. No point in adding to the manorial load.'

 

'Oh, Dad,' Will said impulsively, 'don't you think we ought to go too?'

 

'I don't think so,' said his father, with the lazy assurance that Will should have known was harder to break than any fervour.

 

'But Mr Lyon said it would be much more dangerous later on, because of the storm getting worse.'

 

'I think I can make my own judgement of the weather, Will, without help from Miss Greythorne's butler,' said Mr Stanton amiably.

 

'Oh, wow,' said Max with cheerful rudeness. 'You rotten old snob, hark at you.'

 

'Come on, that's not what I meant.' His father threw a wet scarf at him. 'Inverted snobbery, more like. I simply don't see any good reason for our trooping off to partake of the bounty of the Lady of the Manor. We're perfectly all right here.'

 

'Quite right,' Mrs Stanton said briskly. 'Now out of the kitchen, all of you. I want to make some bread.'

 

The only hope, Will decided, was the Walker himself. He slipped away and went upstairs to the tiny spare room where the Walker lay in bed. 'I want to talk to you.'

 

The old man turned his head on the pillow. 'All right,' he said. He seemed muted and unhappy. Suddenly Will felt sorry for him.

 

'Are you better?' he said. 'I mean, are you actually ill now, or do you just feel weak?'

 

'I am not ill,' the Walker said listlessly. 'No more than usual.'

 

'Can you walk?'

 

'You want to throw me out in the snow, is that it?'

 

'Of course not,' Will said. 'Mum would never let you go of in this weather, and nor would I, not that I've got much say in it. I'm the very youngest in this family, you know that.'

 

'You are an Old One,' the Walker said, looking at him with dislike.

 

'Well, that's different.'

 

'It's not different at all. Just means there's no point talking about yourself to me as if you were just a little kid in a family. I know better.'

 

Will said, 'You were guardian of one of the Great Signs - I don't see why you should seem to hate us.'

 

'I did what I was made to do,' the old man said. 'You took me ... you picked me out ...' His brows creased, as though he were trying to remember something from a long time ago; then he grew vague again. 'I was made to.'

 

'Well, look, I don't want to make you do anything, but there's one thing we all have to do. The snow's getting so bad that everyone in the village is going to live at the Manor, like a kind of hostel, because it'll be safer and warmer.' He felt as he talked that the Walker might know what he was going to say already, but it was impossible to get inside the old man's mind; whenever he tried, he found himself floundering, as if he had broken into the stuffing of a cushion.

 

'The doctor will be there too,' he said. 'So if you were to let everyone feel you needed to be somewhere with a doctor, we could all go to the Manor.'

 

'You mean you aren't going otherwise?' The Walker squinted suspiciously at him.

 

'My father won't let us. But we have to, it's safer - '

 

'I won't go either,' the Walker said. He turned his head away. 'Go away. Leave me be.'

 

Will said softly, warningly, in the Old Speech, 'The Dark will come for you.'

 

There was a pause. Then very slowly the Walker turned his shaggy grey head back again, and Will flinched in horror as he saw the face. For just a moment, its history was naked upon it. There were bottomless depths of pain and terror in the eyes, the lines of black experience were carved clear and terrible; this man had known somewhere such a fearful dread and anguish that nothing could really ever touch him again. His eyes were wide for the first time, stretched open, with his knowledge of horror looking out.

 

The Walker said emptily, 'The Dark has already come for me.'

 

Will took a deep breath. 'But now the circle of the Light comes,' he said. He pulled of the belt with the Signs and held it before the Walker. The old man flinched away, screwing up his face, whimpering like a frightened animal; Will felt sickened, but there was no help for it. He brought the Signs closer and closer to the twisted old face, until, like a piece of breaking wire, the Walker's self-control snapped. He shrieked and began to babble and thrash about, screaming for help. Will ran outside and called for his father, and half the family came running.

 

'I think he's having some sort of fit. Awful. Shouldn't we get him to Dr Armstrong at the Manor, Dad?'

 

Mr Stanton said doubtfully, 'We could get the doctor to come here, perhaps.'

 

'But he might very well be better off there,' said Mrs Stanton, staring at the Walker in concern. 'The old man, I mean. With the doctor able to watch him - and more comfort and food. Really, this is alarming, Roger. I don't know what to do for him here.'

 

Will's father gave in. They left the Walker still tossing and raving, with Max near by in case of accidents, and went to turn the big family toboggan into a mobile stretcher. Only one thing nagged in Will's mind. It had to be his imagining, but in the moment when the Walker had cracked at the sight of the Great Signs, and become a mad old man once more, he had thought he saw a flash of triumph in the flickering eyes.

 

 

The sky hung grey and heavy, waiting to snow, as they left for the Manor with the Walker. Mr Stanton took the twins with him, and Will. His wife watched them go

with unfamiliar nervousness. 'I hope it really is over. D'you really think Will should go?'

 

'Comes in handy to have someone light sometimes, in this snow,' said his father, over Will's splutter. 'He'll be all right.'

 

'You aren't going to stay there, are you?'

 

'Of course not. The only point of the exercise is to deliver the old man to the doctor. Come on, Alice, this isn't like you. There's no danger, you know.'

 

'I suppose not,' Mrs Stanton said,

 

They set off, heaving the toboggan, with the Walker strapped to it so trussed in blankets that he was invisible, a thick human sausage. Will left last; Gwen handed him the torches and a flask. 'I must say I'm not sorry to see your discovery go,' she said. 'He frightens me. More like an animal than an old man.'

 

It seemed a long while before they reached the Manor gates. The drive had been cleared, and trodden down by many feet, and two bright pressure-lamps hung by the great door, lighting the front of the house. Snow was falling again, and the wind beginning to blow chill round their faces. Before Robin's outstretched hand reached the doorbell, Merriman was opening the door. He looked first for Will, though no one else noticed the urgent flicker of his eyes. 'Welcome,' he said.

 

'Evening,' Roger Stanton said. 'Shan't stay. We're fine at the house. But there's an old chap here who's ill, and he needs a doctor. All things considered, it seemed better to bring him here, rather than have Dr Armstrong going to and fro. So we hopped out before the storm broke.'

 

'It is rising already,' Merriman said, gazing out. Then he stooped and helped the twins carry the Walker's motionless swaddled form into the house. At the threshold the bundle of blankets jerked convulsively, and the Walker could be heard muffled through his covers shouting, 'No! No! No!'

 

'The doctor, please,' said Merriman to a woman standing near by, and she scurried away. The great empty hall where they had sung their carols was filled with people now, warm and bustling, unrecognisable.

 

Dr Armstrong appeared, nodding briskly all round; he was a small bustling man with a monkish fringe of grey hair circling his bald head. The Stantons, like all Huntercombe, knew him well; he had cured every ailment in the family for more years than Will had been alive. He peered at the Walker, now twisting and moaning in protest. 'What's this, eh?'

 

'Shock, perhaps?' said Merriman.

 

'He really behaves very oddly,' Mr Stanton said. 'He was found unconscious in the snow some days ago, and we thought he was recovering, but now - '

 

The big front door slammed itself shut in the rising wind, and the Walker screamed. 'Hum,' said the doctor, and beckoned two large young helpers to carry him of to some inner room. 'Leave him to me,' he said cheerfully. 'So far, we've got one broken leg and two sprained ankles. He'll provide variety.'

 

He trotted off after his patient. Will's father turned to peer out of a darkening window. 'My wife will start worrying,' he said. 'We must go.'

 

Merriman said gently, 'If you go now, I think you will leave but not arrive. Probably in a little while - '

 

'The Dark is rising, you see,' Will said.

 

His father looked at him with a half-smile. 'You're very poetic all of a sudden. All right, we'll wait just a bit. I could do with a breather, to tell the truth. Better say hallo to Miss Greythorne in the meantime. Where is she, Lyon?'

 

Merriman, the deferential butler, led the way into the crowd. It was the oddest gathering Will had ever seen. Suddenly half the village was living in close intimacy, a tiny colony of beds and suitcases and blankets. People hailed them from small nests scattered all round the huge room: a bed or a mattress tucked into a corner or fenced in by a chair or two. Miss Bell waved gaily from a sofa. It was like an untidy hotel with everyone camping in the foyer. Miss Greythorne was sitting stiff and upright in her wheelchair beside the fire, reading The Phoenix and the Carpet to a speechless group of village children. Like everyone else in the room, she looked uncommonly bright and cheerful.

 

'Funny,' Will said, as they picked their way through. 'Things are absolutely awful, and yet people look much happier than usual. Look at them all. Bubbling.'

 

'They are English,' Merriman said.

 

'Quite right,' said Will's father. 'Splendid in adversity, tedious when safe. Never content, in fact. We're an odd lot. You're not English, are you?' he said suddenly to Merriman, and Will was astonished to hear a slightly hostile note in his voice.

 

'A mongrel,' Merriman said blandly. 'It's a long story.' His deep-set eyes glittered down at Mr Stanton, and then Miss Greythorne caught sight of them all.

 

'Ah, there you are! Evenin', Mr Stanton, boys, how are you? What d'you think of this, eh? Isn't it a lark?' As she put down the book, the circle of children parted to admit the newcomers, and the twins and their father were absorbed into talk.

 

Merriman said softly to Will, in the Old Speech, 'Look into the fire, for the length of time that it takes you to trace the shape of each of the Great Signs with your right hand. Look

into the fire. Make it your friend. Do not move your eyes for all that time.'

 

Wondering, Will moved forward as if to warm himself, and did as he was told. Staring at the leaping flames of the enormous log fire in the hearth, he ran his fingers gently over the Sign of Iron, the Sign of Bronze, the Sign of Wood, the Sign of Stone. He spoke to the fire, not as he had done long ago, when challenged to put it out, but as an Old One, out of Gramarye. He spoke to it of the red fire in the king's hall, of the blue fire dancing over the marshes, of the yellow fire lighted on the beacon hills for Beltane and Hallowe'en; of wildfire and need-fire and the cold fire of the sea; of the sun and of the stars. The flames leaped. His fingers reached the end of their journey round the last Sign. He looked up. He looked, and he saw . . . ... he saw, not the genial muddle of collected villagers in a tall, panelled modern room, lit by electric standard lamps, but the great candle-shadowed stone hall, with its tapestry hangings and high vaulted roof, that he had seen once before, a world ago. He looked up from the log fire that was the same fire, but blazing now in a different hearth, and he saw as before, out of the past, the two heavy carved chairs, one on either side of the fireplace. In the chair on the right sat Merriman, cloaked, and in the chair on the left sat a figure whom he had last seen, not a day before, lying on a bier as if dead. He bent quickly and knelt at the old lady's feet. 'Madam,' he said.

 

She touched his hair gently. 'Will.'

 

'I am sorry for breaking the circle, that first time,' he said. 'Are you - well - now?'

 

'Everything is well,' she said in her soft clear voice. 'And will be, if we can win the last battle for the Signs.'

 

'What must I do?'

 

'Break the power of the cold. Stop the snow and cold and frost. Release this country from the hold of the Dark. All with the next of the circle, the Sign of Fire.'

 

Will looked at her helplessly. 'But I haven't got it. I don't know how.'

 

'One sign of fire you have with you already. The other waits. In its winning, you will break the cold. But before that, our own circle of flame must be completed, that is an echo of the Sign, and to do that you must take power away from the Dark.' She pointed to the great wrought-iron ring of candle-sockets on the table, the circle quartered by a cross. As she raised her arm, the light glinted on the rose ring on her hand. The outer ring of candles was complete, twelve white columns burning exactly as they had when Will was last in the hall. But the cross-arms still stood empty-socketed; nine holes gaped.

 

Will stared at them unhappily. This part of his quest left him in despair. Nine great enchanted candles, to come out of nowhere. Power to be seized from the Dark. A Sign that he had already, without knowing it. Another that he must find without knowing where or how.

 

'Have courage,' the old lady said. Her voice was faint and tired; when Will looked at her, he saw that she herself seemed faint in outline, as if she were no more than a shadow. He reached out his hand in concern, but she drew back her arm. 'Not yet ... There is another kind of work to be done yet, too ... You see how the candles burn, Will.' Her voice dwindled, then rallied. 'They will show you.'

 

Will looked at the brilliant candle flames; the tall ring of light held his eyes. As he looked, he felt a strange jolting sensation, as if the whole world had shuddered. He looked up, and he saw ... ... and he saw, when he raised his eyes, that he was back in the manor of Miss Greythorne's time, Will Stanton's time, with the panelled walls and the  murmur of many voices, and one voice speaking in his ear. It was Dr Armstrong.

 

'. . . asking for you,' he was saying. Mr Stanton was standing beside him. The doctor paused and looked oddly at Will. 'Are you all right, young man?'

 

'Yes - yes, I'm fine. Sorry. What was it you said?'

 

'I was saying that your old tramp friend is asking for you. "The seventh son", he lyrically puts it, though how he knew that I can't say.'

 

'I am though, aren't I?' Will said. 'I didn't know till the other day about the little brother who died. Tom.'

 

Dr Armstrong's eyes went a long way away for a moment.

 

'Tom,' he said. 'The first baby. I remember. That's a while ago.' His gaze came back. 'Yes, you are. So's your father, for that matter.'

 

Will's head jerked round, and he saw his father grin. 'You were a seventh son, Dad?'

 

'Certainly,' Roger Stanton said, his round pink face reminiscent. 'Half the family was killed in the last war, but there were twelve of us once. You knew that, didn't you? Proper tribe, it was. Your mother loved it, being an only child herself. I dare say that's why she had all you lot. Appalling, in this over-populated age. Yes, you're the seventh son of a seventh son - we used to joke about it when you were a baby. But not later on, in case you got ideas about having second sight, or whatever it is they say.'

 

'Ha, ha,' said Will with some effort. 'Did you find out what's wrong with the old tramp, Dr Armstrong?'

 

'To tell you the truth he has me rather confused,' the doctor said. 'He should have a sedative in his disturbed state, but he's got the lowest pulse rate and blood pressure I've ever come across in my life, so I don't know ... There's nothing physically wrong with him, so far as I can tell. Probably he's just feeble-minded, like so many of these old wanderers - not that you see many of them nowadays. They've nearly disappeared. Anyway, he keeps shouting to see you, Will, so if you can put up with it I'll take you in for a moment. He's harmless enough.'

 

The Walker was making a lot of noise. He stopped when he saw Will, and his eyes narrowed. His mood had clearly changed; he was confident again, the lined, triangular face bright. He looked over Will's shoulder at Mr Stanton and the doctor. 'Go away,' he said.

 

'Hum,' said Dr Armstrong, but he drew Will's father with him nearer the door, within sight but out of earshot. In the small cloakroom that was serving as sick-bay, one other casualty - the broken leg - lay in bed, but he appeared to be asleep.

 

'You can't keep me here,' the Walker hissed. 'The Rider will come for me.'

 

'You were scared stiff of the Rider once,' Will said. 'I saw you. Have you forgotten that too?'

 

'I forget nothing,' the Walker said scornfully. 'That fear is gone. It went when the Sign left me. Let me go, let me get out to my people.' A curious stiff formality seemed to be coming into his speech.

 

'Your people didn't mind leaving you to die in the snow,' Will said. 'Anyway I'm not keeping you here. I just had you brought to the doctor. You can hardly expect him to let you go out in the middle of a storm.'

 

'Then the Rider will come,' the old man said. His eyes glittered, and he raised his voice so that he was shrieking to everyone in the room. 'The Rider will come! The Rider will come!'

 

Will left him, as his father and the doctor came rapidly towards the bed.

 

'What on earth was all that about?' said Mr Stanton. The Walker, with the doctor bending over him, had fallen back and lapsed into angry mumbling again.

 

'Goodness knows,' said Will. 'He was just talking nonsense. I think Dr Armstrong's right, he's a bit cracked.' He  looked all round the room, but saw no sign of Merriman. 'What's happened to Mr Lyon?'

 

'He's somewhere,' his father said vaguely. 'Find the twins, would you, Will? I'll go and see if the storm's dropped enough to let us out yet.'

 

Will stood in the bustling hall, as people came and went with blankets and pillows, cups of tea, sandwiches from the kitchen, empty plates going back again. He felt odd, detached, as though he were suspended in the middle of this preoccupied world and yet not part of it. He looked at the great hearth. Even the roar of the flames could not drown out the howling wind outside, and the lash of icy snow against the window-panes.

 

The flames leapt, holding Will's eyes. From somewhere outside Time, Merriman said into his mind: 'Take care. It is true. The Rider will come for him. That is why I had you bring him here, to a place strengthened by Time. The Rider would have come to your own house otherwise, and all that comes with the Rider too...'

 

'Will!' Miss Greythorne's imperious contralto came ringing. 'Come over here!' And Will looked back into the present, and went to her. He saw Robin beside her chair, and Paul approaching with a long flat box of a familiar shape in his hands.

 

'We thought we'd have a kind of concert until the wind drops,' said Miss Greythorne briskly. 'Everyone doin' a little bit. Everyone who fancies the idea, that is. A cailey, or whatever the Scots call 'em.'

 

Will looked at the happy gleam in his brother's eye. 'And Paul's going to play that old flute of yours that he likes so much.'

 

'In due course,' Paul said. 'And you're going to sing.'

 

'All right.' Will looked at Robin.

 

'I,' said Robin, 'am going to lead the applause. There'll be a lot of that - we appear to be a madly talented village. Miss Bell will recite a poem, three boys from the Dorney end have a folk group - two of them even brought their guitars.

 

Old Mr Dewhurst will do a monologue, just try and stop him. Somebody's little daughter wants to dance. There's no end to it.'

 

'I thought, Will,' said Miss Greythorne, 'that perhaps you would begin. If you were just to start singing, you know, anything you like, then gradually people would stop to listen until there'd be a complete hush - much better than me ringin' a bell or something and saying, "We will all now have a concert", don't you agree?'

 

'I suppose so, yes,' said Will, though nothing could have been further from his mind at that moment than the idea of making peaceful music. He thought briefly, and into his mind came a melancholy little song that the school music master had transposed for his voice just the term before, as an experiment. Feeling rather a show-off, Will opened his mouth where he stood, and began to sing.

 

'White in the moon the long road lies,

The moon stands blank above;

White in the moon the long road lies

That leads me from my love.

 

Still hangs the edge without a gust,

Still, still the shadows stay: .

My feet upon the moonlit dust

Pursue the ceaseless way.'