The Third Door

21 - The Three Brothers

The water began to swirl in broad circles as if Rye had stirred it. It swirled as if it was rushing down a drain, round and round till it made a funnel that reached down into the pool’s depths. Around the edges of the funnel the water was churned into foam. But deep in the centre there was a still, round space where terrible pictures flickered.

The two older sorcerer brothers were duelling in a great room where the dead body of an old man lay in state. Their shadows leaped wildly on the walls as killing spells flashed fire and the flames of the tall candles around the bier bent and flared.

Rye’s heart was beating so fast that he could hardly breathe. He pressed the hand that held the light crystal to his chest. The ruined book beneath his shirt seemed to warm. And suddenly words floated into his mind—words he had never read, but which now came to him as if he could see them before his eyes.

When Chieftain Perry died, it was understood that Annoltis, his eldest son, would take his place as leader, for Annoltis was dearly loved by the people. But Malverlain, the second son, was bitterly jealous. He believed that his great knowledge of dark sorcery gave him the right to rule, and cursed the fools who preferred his brother to him. In his rage he attacked Annoltis, intending murder.

Annoltis. Malverlain. Those names … Rye’s scalp crawled. Beside him, Sonia had become unnaturally still. He could not have shielded his mind even if he had wanted to, and he knew she was sharing his visions, seeing the names through him.

He saw the eldest brother beaten back. He saw the savage triumph on the face of the sorcerer Malverlain change to shock as a shadow moved to the staggering Annoltis’s side. Again words shone in his mind.

But Malverlain had forgotten that he did not have one brother only, but two. He had forgotten Eldannen, the youngest, whose quiet ways masked a power that was very great. Eldannen’s bond with the Fellan was as strong as Malverlain’s own secret dread of them, and the Fellan had taught him well. When Eldannen joined Annoltis in battle, Malverlain was lost.

Eldannen. His mind whirling in confusion, Rye saw Malverlain fleeing into exile in a boat with a grey sail marked in red. He saw the eldest brother and the youngest standing on the shore, holding the banishing spell between them. He saw the people creeping out of hiding, rejoicing because they had been saved and their beloved Annoltis was triumphant.

Faster the water spun, and faster. Deep within the frame of foam, pictures of the past flashed by, years passing in the blink of an eye. Annoltis ruled as chieftain, Eldannen by his side. The brothers grew older and older, living, like their mother’s people, far beyond the normal span of human years.

Then Annoltis began to weaken, and as he weakened he changed. His orders became shriller and more impatient. He began spending his time alone, studying ancient books. His fiery hair had grown scant and white and his broad shoulders were bowed with age. But as he mumbled over the old texts, his eyes still burned with a will to live that was even fiercer than before.

And at last there came a time when he scurried down dark stone steps, clutching something that glimmered under his cloak. Torches burst into flaming life as he crept along a passageway carved with the images of beasts, to a cavity where an iron statue of a sea serpent swallowing its own tail seemed to squirm like a live thing.

Annoltis raised his mottled hand. With a grating sound the statue slid out of the cavity, revealing a blank wall thick with spider web. Another gesture, and the outline of a small door appeared in the grimy stones. The door swung open. With a cackle, Annoltis drew a gold casket from beneath his cloak.

Watching feverishly, Rye caught his breath.

‘Why are you hiding the charm down here, brother? Surely it was safer where it was, with you?’

Rye could hear the words as clearly as he could see the figure that had appeared beside Annoltis in the passageway. They were not words from the book, he was sure of it. The author of the book had not known where the casket had been hidden.

Suddenly, it seemed, Rye was hearing the past as well as seeing it. And that had to mean that what was to come was of vital importance. He leaned forward, straining his ears, narrowing his stinging eyes.

Annoltis spun round, scowling, to face Eldannen. Eldannen’s beard was grey, but the years had dealt more kindly with him than they had with his brother, for there was nothing grasping or secret in his face.

‘I no longer care to have the charm by me,’ snapped Annoltis. ‘It disturbs my work.’

‘That is because your “work” is taking you into evil places,’ Eldannen replied gravely. ‘The charm disturbs you because dark magic is corrupting you, as long ago it corrupted our brother Malverlain.’

An expression like horror flickered across the chieftain’s face. Then conceit settled back over his features like a mask and the moment had passed.

‘You have never understood the needs and burdens of leadership, Eldannen,’ he rasped. ‘You have always wanted the world to be better and kinder than it can ever be.’ A nerve twitched in his withered cheek. ‘It comes from being the youngest and our mother’s darling, no doubt. Her Fellan dreams infected you in the cradle.’

Scowling, he thrust the casket into the hole in the wall. He watched the door seal itself, then stepped out into the passageway. At once the metal statue slid back into place, filling the cavity once more.

‘You are taking a fearful risk, Annoltis,’ Eldannen said in a low voice. ‘The charm must never be lost or forgotten. Our father’s treaty …’

‘The treaty will be kept wherever the charm may lie,’ Annoltis snapped. ‘I am chieftain. I will see to it.’

‘But what of the chieftains who come after you?’

Annoltis grinned. His shadowed face looked like a skull. ‘There will be no chieftains after me, brother,’ he whispered. ‘At last I have found a way. The blood of the young will preserve my life. The first Gifting will be on Midsummer Eve.’

Rye’s heart seemed to stop. He felt Sonia seize his hand.

‘The blood of the young,’ Eldannen repeated dully. ‘Oh, Olt, how could you, the best of men, have come to this?’

‘Shut your mouth!’ the tyrant shouted. ‘And do not call me what the people call me! We are brothers! You know my true name—use it!’

Eldannen’s eyes were bleak. ‘Annoltis,’ he said, ‘I cannot stand by while you do this evil thing.’

‘What?’ Olt stormed. ‘Am I to die while across the sea Malverlain lives on and grows in power every day? Am I to die and rot when I have found a way to prevent it?’

‘Your way is monstrous,’ said Eldannen.

For a long moment Olt stood struggling to calm himself, then he drew himself up. ‘It is necessary,’ he said stiffly. ‘My life is more important than other lives. Will you fight me over it?’

Eldannen shook his head. ‘You know I will never raise my hand against you, brother. But I must go.’

It seemed to Rye that Olt paled. But again the moment of weakness passed quickly and his face twisted into a sneer.

‘Indeed!’ he spat. ‘And what of the part-Fellan scum you insist on calling friends? Will you leave them to my tender mercies?’

‘No,’ Eldannen said quietly. ‘I will take them with me—all who wish to come. I have thought of this for a long time, Annoltis, even planned for it, but I have stayed by your side, telling myself that my influence must at last prevail with you. I see now that I was wrong. My followers and I will begin a new life, in a new place. And for the sake of the love that was once between us, brother, you will not prevent it.’

Annoltis rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, perhaps to hide the trembling of his lips. ‘I will not prevent it,’ he said sullenly. ‘But know this, Eldannen! If you leave me I will curse you as a traitor. I will make it a crime to utter your name. I will erase all mention of you from every book and document within my reach. It will be as if you had never been born!’

‘So be it,’ said Eldannen, and to Rye’s amazement there was pity as well as sadness in his voice. ‘But I give you a solemn warning in return. Your flatterers may tell you that Dorne needs you at any price, but the people will not agree. The people will rise against you, and destroy you.’

‘No, they will not!’ Annoltis shrieked. ‘They will not dare. Because I am going to make them believe that only my life stands between them and the revenge of Malverlain!’

Rye’s mind was like a raging whirlpool. He knew that Sonia was sharing his tumult, but he could not turn to her. He could not drag his eyes from the pictures in the water.

Eldannen was staring at his brother as if he could hardly believe what he had heard. ‘You … you would tell this lie, knowing how dangerous it could be?’

‘There is no danger!’ Olt cried. ‘Why should anyone find out the truth?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Unless you tell them—you, who learned our father’s secret by stealth!’

Abruptly he looked murderous.

‘Your secret is no secret among the Fellan,’ Eldannen said quietly. ‘To them it is a simple fact of life. If they had not lived hidden away for so long, everyone in Dorne would know it as well as I do.’

‘Perhaps,’ growled Olt. ‘As it is, I am safe.’

‘But Dorne is not,’ his brother murmured. ‘That is the danger I meant, Annoltis. What if you die at last, despite your vile plan? If you have not passed our father’s secret on, there will be no one left alive who knows that it is vital to guard the heart of Dorne. There will be no one who knows that the charmed circle protecting this island was never your doing, but is held in place by the Fellan!’

Guard the heart. The Fellan …

Rye swayed forward as a dizzying wave of heat swept through him. Sonia’s hand tightened on his, steadying him, pulling him back.

‘Leave here, Enemy!’ Olt howled at his brother. ‘Leave here now or you and your scurvy friends will not live to see another sunrise!’

The water at the pool’s edge swirled and foamed. The pictures in the centre began to move faster, faster. And now Rye was seeing things that made no sense, things that defied reason.

Eldannen was fleeing the dark city, a bright light held high before him and a long string of people gliding behind him, hand in hand …

Eldannen was moving through low hills, and the line behind him was a little longer. The sky above was faintly tinged with the pink of sunrise. He lifted his hand, pulled a hood over his head, and he and his followers vanished …

Eldannen and his people, visible once more, were threading their way through enormous trees, climbing towards a cave that yawned in the rock of a mountaintop. Shadowy green figures flitted around them, and the beasts of the forest stayed away …

Eldannen was entering the cave and passing through it to a heavy wooden door bound with brass. He was tapping a smooth stick on the door and the door was swinging open. He was standing back as his followers passed through the doorway two by two. And at last he was raising his hand in farewell to the Fellan and passing through himself, the door swinging shut behind him.

Rye gaped, his mind reeling.

Olt’s youngest brother, friend of the Fellan, had led his followers not to the east, but to Weld. Olt’s brother Eldannen, who had fled into exile just before the first Gifting, had been the Sorcerer Dann.

But Rye and Sonia had arrived in Oltan just before the second Gifting, only seven years later. And by then Weld had existed for centuries.

Or so its people believed.

Rye shuddered all over. He wanted to pull the bell tree stick out of the water, turn his face away from the pool, but he could not move. He felt Sonia lose her way, lose her connection with him. And then the pictures were flashing through his burning eyes to his numbed brain so fast that he could do nothing but stare, clinging helplessly to Sonia’s cold hand while above the clearing the sky lightened and the stars began to fade.

When he came to himself he was lying on the moss with no memory of falling away from the pool. He thought back to the pictures he had seen in the water and his mind recoiled. No. He could not think about them yet. Not yet.

Sonia was slumped beside him and the bell tree stick was drying in his hand. The light crystal was still clutched in his other hand, but the armour shell had slipped from his finger. Numbly he pushed it back into place.

He turned his head and saw Farr sitting with his back to a tree fern, head bowed. So Farr had kept faith. He had waited through the long night till at last he had fallen asleep.

There was a faint sound high above. Rye looked up and his stomach lurched. The patch of sky glimmering between the feathery tips of the giant ferns was dark with skimmers. The skimmers were returning from their hunt, hastening to their nest in the Fell Zone, fleeing the rising sun.

The skimmers. Here, at least, was something Rye could understand. Here was something real to cling to, the reason he, Sonia, Dirk and Sholto had left Weld in the first place.

The main part of the skimmer swarm had already passed overhead. Only a few ragged shapes now flapped across the lightening sky. There was no time to lose.

Rye scrambled up. He thrust the stick in his belt, pushed the light crystal into his pocket and took out the feather. Up! he thought. And then he was rising slowly past the shaggy brown trunks of the vast ferns, rising through the lacy fronds that nodded against the green-grey sky, rising high above the crowns of the mighty trees beyond …

And he was watching the skimmers going to roost. He was staring at something he had to fight to believe. His heart was hammering in his chest. His throat was closing …

And then the beasts were gone, hidden, safe for another day. The blinding rays of the rising sun were streaking across the sky. And with the sun came a sudden, shocking burst of sound from the forest edge—barked orders, the clatter of falling metal, the thud of booted feet and a low, dangerous roar that raised the hairs on the back of Rye’s neck.

He faltered in the air, lost height, managed to steady himself only by a huge effort of will. His eyes dazzled and streaming, he looked down, towards Fell End. Beneath the high arch of the pipeline, two long sections of the metal fence had been flattened. Helmeted figures, clad from head to foot in gleaming white, were tramping over the metal sheets, their clumsy weapons roaring as they blasted the undergrowth ahead with flame. Brown smoke billowed upwards, tainting the clear morning air.

We are betrayed …

The Fellan voices came to Rye like the wail of the wind. His heart in his mouth, he plummeted down, down into the clearing where the giant ferns were thrashing as if beaten by a gale.

Sonia was standing by the pool, staring at Farr, who had risen to his feet. In her hand was the disc, the token of the treaty, glowing so brightly that her skin seemed drenched with green.

‘Farr!’ Rye bellowed. ‘Stop them! Stop—’

A distant chorus of shouts rose from below. The whole forest seemed to shudder. And Sonia screamed as the disc of the treaty shattered, and its fragments, fine as glittering dust, wafted away in air that shimmered with Fellan pain and rage.