Part 15 (1/2)

Roland stood.

”What choice do I have?” he said. ”I must discover what happened to Raphael. I have not come all this way to sit on the ground and stare at walls and thorns.”

He placed his s.h.i.+eld upon his left arm. He did not look frightened. In fact, he looked happier to David than he had been at any point since they had met. He had traveled from his own land to find an answer to his friend's disappearance, tormented by what might have befallen him. Whatever now happened within the fortress walls, and whether he lived or died as a result, he would at last discover the truth about the end of Raphael's journey.

”Stay here, and keep the fire burning,” said Roland. ”If I have not returned by daybreak, take Scylla and ride as fast as you can from this place. Scylla is as much your horse now as mine, for I think she loves you just as she loves me. Remain on the road, and it will lead you eventually to the castle of the king.”

He smiled down upon David. ”It has been an honor to travel these roads with you. If we do not see each other again, I hope that you find your home and the answers you seek.”

They shook hands. David did not shed a tear. He wanted to be as brave as he thought Roland to be. It was only later that he wondered if Roland was truly brave. He knew that Roland believed Raphael was dead, and that he wanted revenge upon whomever had killed him. But he also felt, as Roland walked toward the waiting fortress, that part of the knight did not want to live without Raphael, and that death, for him, would be preferable to a life alone.

David accompanied Roland to the gates. As they approached, Roland gazed up at the waiting thorns in apprehension, as though he feared they would close upon him as soon as he was within their reach. But they did not move, and Roland pa.s.sed through the gap without incident. He stepped over the armor of the knight and pushed open the door of the tower. He looked back at David, raised his sword in a final farewell, and walked into the shadows. The creepers on the gates twisted, and the thorns extended, restoring the barrier across the entrance to the courtyard, and then all was still once more.

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The Crooked Man watched what had transpired from his perch on the topmost branch of the tallest tree in the forest. The presences that dwelled within the tree trunks did not trouble him, for they were more scared of the Crooked Man than of almost any other being that dwelled in this land. The thing in the fortress was ancient and cruel, but the Crooked Man was older and crueler still. He stared down upon the boy seated by the fire, Scylla standing close by him, untethered, for she was a brave, intelligent horse and would not easily take fright or abandon her rider. The Crooked Man was tempted to approach David once again and ask him for the child's name, but he thought better of it. A night alone at the edge of the forest, facing the Fortress of Thorns and watched over by the heads of dead knights, would make him more willing to bargain with the Crooked Man come morning.

For the Crooked Man knew that the knight Roland would never come out of the fortress alive, and David was, once more, alone in the world.

Time pa.s.sed slowly for David. He fed the fire with sticks and waited for Roland to return. Sometimes, he felt Scylla nuzzle his neck gently, reminding him that she was close. He was glad of the horse's presence. Her strength and her loyalty were rea.s.suring to him.

But tiredness began to overcome him, and his mind played tricks upon him. He would fall asleep for a second or two and instantly begin to dream. He glimpsed flashes of home, and incidents from the last few days replayed themselves in his mind, their stories overlapping as wolves and dwarfs and the young of the Beast all became part of the same tale. He heard the voice of his mother crying out for him, as she sometimes had when the pain had grown too great for her in her last days, and then her face was replaced by Rose's, just as his place in his father's affections had been taken by Georgie.

But was that true? He realized suddenly that he missed Georgie, and the feeling was so surprising to him that he almost awoke. He remembered the way the baby would smile at him, or grasp his finger in his chubby fist. True, he was noisy and smelly and demanding, but all babies were like that. It wasn't Georgie's fault, not really.

Then the image of Georgie faded, and David saw Roland, sword in hand, advancing down a long, dark hallway. He was inside the tower, but the tower itself was a kind of illusion, and hidden within it were a great many rooms and corridors, each one containing traps for the unwary. Roland entered a large circular chamber, and in his dream David saw Roland's eyes widen in disbelief, and the walls ran red as something in the shadows called David's name...

David awoke abruptly. He was still by the fire, but the flames had almost died out. Roland had not returned. David got up and walked toward the gates. Scylla whinnied nervously as he moved away, but she remained by the fire. David stood before the gates, then reached out and touched his finger warily to one of the thorns. Immediately, the creepers retreated, the thorns retracted, and an opening in the barrier was revealed. David looked back at Scylla and the dying embers of the fire. I should go now, he thought. I should not even wait for the dawn. Scylla will take me to the king, and he will tell me what I should do.

But still he lingered before the gates. Despite what Roland had told him to do if he did not return, David did not want to abandon his friend. And as he stood facing the thorns, uncertain of how to proceed, he heard a voice calling to him.

”David,” it whispered. ”Come to me, please come to me.”

It was his mother's voice.

”This is the place to which I was brought,” the voice continued. ”When the sickness took me I fell asleep, and I pa.s.sed from our world to this one. Now she watches over me. I cannot awake, and I cannot escape. Help me, David. If you love me, please help me...”

”Mum,” said David. ”I'm afraid.”

”You've come so far, and you've been so brave,” said the voice. ”I've been watching you in my dreams. I'm so proud of you, David. Just a few steps further. Just a little more courage, that's all I ask.”

David reached into his pack and found the claw of the Beast. He gripped it tightly in his hand before slipping it into his pocket and thought of Fletcher's words. He had been brave once, and he could be brave again for his mother. The Crooked Man, still watching from the trees, realized what was happening and began to move. He leaped from his perch, descending from branch to branch and landing like a cat upon the ground, but he was too late. David had pa.s.sed into the fortress, and the barrier of thorns had closed behind him.

The Crooked Man howled with rage, but David, already lost to the fortress, did not hear him.

XXV.

Of the Enchantress and What Became of Raphael and Roland

THE COURTYARD was cobbled with black and white stones stained by droppings from the carrion birds that hovered above the fortress by day. Carved stairs led up to the battlements; racks of weapons stood beside them, but the spears, swords, and s.h.i.+elds were rusted and useless. Some of the weaponry had fantastic designs, intricate spirals and delicate interwoven chains of silver and bronze that were echoed on the hilts of the swords and the faces of the s.h.i.+elds. David could not equate the beauty of the craftsmans.h.i.+p with the sinister place that now held them. It suggested that the castle had not always been as it now was. It had been taken over by a malevolent ent.i.ty, a cuckoo that had turned it into a spiked, creepered nest, and its original inhabitants had either died or fled when it came.

Now that he was inside, David could see signs of damage: hollow pits, mostly, where the walls and courtyard had absorbed the force of cannon fire. It was clear that the castle was very old, yet the fallen trees surrounding it suggested that what Roland had heard and what Fletcher claimed to have seen, however strange, was in fact the case. The castle could move through the air, traveling to new locations with the cycles of the moon.

Beneath the walls were stables, but they were empty of hay and bore no trace of the healthy animal smells such places built up over time. Instead there were only the bones of horses left to starve after the deaths of their masters, and the lingering stench from within was a reminder of their slow decay. Across from them, and at either side of the central tower, were what might once have been guards' quarters and kitchens. Carefully, David peered through the windows of each, but both were entirely devoid of life. There were bare bunks in the guards' building and cold, empty ovens in the kitchens. Plates and mugs lay upon the tables, as though a meal had been disturbed and those who were eating had never been given the chance to return to their food.

David walked to the door of the tower. The body of the knight lay at his feet, a sword still gripped in his great hand. The sword had not rusted, and the knight's armor still shone. In addition, he wore a sprig of some white flower tucked into a hole in his shoulder armor. It had not yet withered fully, so David guessed that his body had not been lying there for very long. There was no blood on his neck or on the ground around him. David did not know a great deal about the mechanics of cutting off a man's head, but he imagined that there would be some blood at least. He wondered who the knight was and whether he, like Roland, bore some device on his breastplate to identify him. The huge knight was lying chest down, and David wasn't sure that he would be able to turn him over. Still, he decided that the ident.i.ty of the dead knight should not remain unknown, just in case he found a way to tell anyone of what had happened to him.

David knelt down and took a deep breath, then pushed hard against the armor. To his surprise, the knight's remains moved quite easily. True, the armor was heavy, but not as heavy as it should have been with the body of a man inside it. Once he had managed to turn the knight over, David could see the sign of an eagle on his breastplate, a snake writhing in its talons. He rapped upon the armor with the knuckles of his right hand. The sound echoed within; it was like tapping on an empty can. It seemed that the suit of armor was empty.

But, no, that was not the case, for David both heard and felt something move as he rolled the armor, and when he examined the hole at the top, where the head had been separated from the body, he saw bone and skin within. The top of the spinal column was white where the head had been severed from the body, but even here there was no blood. Somehow, the knight's remains had been reduced to a husk inside the armor, rotting away to almost nothing so quickly that the flower he'd worn, perhaps for luck, had not yet had time to die.

David considered fleeing the fortress, but he knew that even if he tried to do so, the thorns would not part for him. This was a place to be entered but not to be left, and despite his doubts, he had heard, once again, his mother's voice calling to him. If she was truly here, then he could not abandon her now.

David stepped over the fallen knight and entered the tower. A set of stone stairs wound upward in a spiral. He listened intently but could hear no sound from above. He wanted to call his mother's name, or to cry out for Roland, but he was afraid of alerting the presence in the tower to his approach. Perhaps, though, whatever waited in the tower already knew that he was in the fortress and had parted the thorns to enable him to pa.s.s through. Still, it seemed wiser to be quiet than to be noisy, and so he did not speak. He recalled the figure that had pa.s.sed across the lighted window, and the tale of the enchantress who kept a woman in thrall, dooming her to an eternal, ageless sleep in a chamber of treasures unless she could be awakened by a kiss. Could that woman be his mother? The answer lay above.

He drew his sword and started to climb. There were small, narrow windows every ten steps, and these allowed a little light to filter into the tower, enabling David to see where he was going. He counted a dozen such windows before he reached the stone floor at the top of the tower. A hallway stretched before him, with open doorways on either side. From outside, the tower appeared to be twenty or thirty feet wide, but the corridor in front of him was so long that the end of it was lost in shadow. It must have been hundreds of feet in length, lit by flaming torches set into the walls, yet somehow it was contained within a tower only a fraction of that size.

David walked slowly down the hallway, glancing into each room as he did so. Some were bedrooms, opulently furnished with enormous beds and velvet drapes. Others contained couches and chairs. One housed a grand piano and nothing else. The walls of another were decorated with hundreds of similar versions of one painting: a picture of two male children, identical twins, with a painting of themselves in the background that was an exact replica of the picture they occupied, so that they stared out at infinite versions of themselves.

Halfway down the hall was a vast dining room, dominated by a huge oak table with one hundred chairs around it. Candles were lit along its length, and their light shone upon a great feast: there were roast turkeys and geese and ducks, and a huge pig with an apple in its mouth as the centerpiece. There were platters of fish and cold meats, and vegetables steamed in big pots. It all smelled so wonderful that David was drawn into the room, unable to resist the urgings of his growling stomach. Someone had started carving one of the turkeys, for its leg had been removed and slivers of white meat had been cut from its breast and now lay, tender and moist, upon a plate. David picked up one of the pieces and was about to take a great bite from it when he saw an insect crawling across the table. It was a large red ant, and it was making its way toward a fragment of skin that had fallen from the turkey. It clasped the crisp, brown morsel in its jaws and prepared to carry it away, but suddenly it seemed to totter on its feet, as though its burden was heavier than it had expected. It dropped the skin, wobbled a little more, then ceased moving entirely. David poked at it with his finger, but the insect did not respond. It was dead.

David dropped his piece of turkey on the table and quickly wiped his fingers clean. Now that he looked more closely, he could see that the table was littered with the remains of dead insects. The corpses of flies and beetles and ants dotted the wood and the plates, all poisoned by whatever was contained in the food. David backed away from the table and returned to the hallway, his appet.i.te entirely gone.

But if the dining room disgusted him, the next room into which he looked was more troubling still. It was his bedroom in Rose's house, perfectly re-created down to the books upon the shelves, although neater than David's room had ever been. The bed was made, but the pillows and sheets were slightly yellowed and covered in a thin layer of dust. There was dust on the shelves as well, and when David stepped inside, he left footprints on the floor. Ahead of him was the window facing onto the garden. It was open, and noises could be heard from outside, the sounds of laughter and singing. He walked over to the gla.s.s and looked out. In the garden below, three people were dancing in a circle: David's father, Rose, and a boy whom David did not recognize but whom he knew instantly to be Georgie. Georgie was older now, perhaps four or five, but still a chubby child. He was smiling widely as his parents danced with him, his father holding his right hand and Rose his left, the sun s.h.i.+ning down upon them from a perfect blue sky.

”Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,” they sang to him, ”kissed the girls and made them cry!”

And Georgie laughed with joy as bees buzzed and birds sang.

”They have forgotten you,” said the voice of David's mother. ”This was once your room, but n.o.body comes in here now. Your father did, in the beginning, but then he resigned himself to the fact that you were gone and found pleasure instead in his other child and his new wife. She is pregnant again, although she does not yet know it. There will be a sister for Georgie, and then your father will have two children once more and there will be no need for memories of you.”

The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, from within David and from the hallway outside, from the floor beneath his feet and the ceiling above his head, from the stones in the walls and the books on the shelves. For a moment, David even saw her reflected in the gla.s.s of the window, a faded vision of his mother standing behind him and looking over his shoulder. When he turned around, there was n.o.body there, but still her reflection remained in the gla.s.s.

”It does not have to be that way,” said his mother's voice. The lips of the image in the gla.s.s moved, but they appeared to be saying other words, for their motions did not quite match the words that David heard. ”Remain brave and strong for just a little longer. Find me here, and we can have our old life back again. Rose and Georgie will be gone, and you and I will take their places.”

Now the voices from the garden below had changed. They were no longer singing and laughing. When he looked down, David saw his father mowing the lawn and his mother clipping a rosebush with a pair of pruning shears, carefully beheading each branch and tossing the red flowers into a basket at her feet. And seated on a bench between them, reading a book, was David.

”You see? Do you see how it can be? Now come, we have been apart too long. It is time that we were together again. But be careful: she will be watching and waiting. When you see me, do not look left or right, but keep your eyes only on my face and everything will be well.”

The image disappeared from the gla.s.s, and the figures vanished from the garden below. A cold wind arose, raising dust ghosts in the room, obscuring everything within. The dust made David cough, and his eyes watered. He backed out of the room and bent over in the hallway, hacking and spitting.

A noise came from nearby: the sound of a door slamming and locking from inside. He spun around, and a second door slammed and locked, then another. The door to every room that he had pa.s.sed was shutting firmly. Now his bedroom door was suddenly shut in his face, and all of the doors ahead of him began to close as well. Only the torches on the walls lit his way, and suddenly they too began to be extinguished, starting with those nearest the stairs. There was now total darkness behind him, and it was advancing quickly. Soon, the entire hallway would be drowned in blackness.

David ran, trying desperately to stay ahead of the approaching shadows, his ears ringing with the sound of slamming doors. He was moving as quickly as he could, his feet slapping upon the hard stone floor, but the lights were dying faster than he could run. He saw the torches just behind him die, then the ones at either side, and finally those ahead fizzled out. He kept running, hoping that somehow he could catch up with them, that he would not be left alone in the dark. Then the last torches faded, and the darkness was complete.

”No!” shouted David. ”Mum! Roland! I can't see. Help me!”