The Third Door

25 - The Wall

Rye and Sonia found the Fellan waiting for them in the clearing where Dann’s Mirror glimmered in the soft green light. Little needed to be said. The Fellan had understood their danger the moment they realised that Rye had been through Dann’s silver Door and seen the Lord of Shadows in Dorne’s future. Before that, they had thought only that the humans with whom they shared their island were breaking the treaty to gain more land. It had not occurred to them that the invaders could actually be seeking to destroy them.

‘Eldannen told our sister Edelle and the others who have gone before us that Annoltis was lying to his people,’ said one. ‘Those words were passed down to us, but we thought little of them. We have been the guardians of Dorne since time began. That knowledge lives in every tree, every blade of grass, every grain of earth and sand. How could the humans here have forgotten it? It is in the very air they breathe.’

‘Humans are not like Fellan,’ said Sonia.

‘So it seems. Never will we understand them.’

Rye hesitated. ‘I think, perhaps, you used to understand them better than you do now,’ he said awkwardly. ‘For a long time you have lived apart. Perhaps there is some knowledge that you, too, have forgotten.’

The Fellan regarded him gravely. He feared he had offended them, but it seemed they were only thinking, for after a moment he felt their answer, like cool, soft wings brushing his mind.

Perhaps …

‘There is still something we need to do,’ Sonia burst out, seizing the moment. ‘You know what it is. Will you allow it?’

As one, the Fellan smiled, and it was like the sun breaking through cloud.

‘We will do more than that, little sister,’ a tall female said. ‘For the sake of our friend and kinsman Eldannen, we will rejoice.’

Afterwards, the story of the breaking of the Wall of Weld would become legend, and the five who caused it would be called heroes. At the time, the citizens of Weld who heard a blast like a thousand thunderclaps and felt the earth tremble beneath their feet were sure their last hour had come. And those who saw Rye, Sonia, Dirk, Sholto and Jett appear out of thin air beside the Keep, who screamed in terror as under Dirk’s direction Jett and Rye began attacking the base of the Wall with metal spikes and huge barbarian hammers, cursed the five as traitors.

No one could get near them to stop them. Some power prevented it. Then the first bricks fell in a shower, revealing a yawning hole, and the watchers’ terror became horror, shock and disbelief as they saw huge, pale skimmers crawling sluggishly in the cavity, flapping blindly away from the light.

The Wall that had looked so strong, on which they had all depended and for which they had sacrificed so much, was hollow. Beneath its smooth surface, all that remained of a thousand years of building was a dark honeycomb of passages and chambers, infested with the beasts that preyed on them.

‘My theory is that the skimmers’ first ancestors were small, harmless creatures called clinks,’ the dark brother Sholto was heard to call to Tallus the healer, who was watching the scene with interest. ‘Long ago they tunnelled up through the natural rock outside, came upon softer bricks, darkness, warmth and rats and mice—a good source of food. They bred unchecked for centuries, each new generation bigger and hungrier for warm flesh than the one before …’

‘And of course the more we thickened the Wall, the larger the colony could grow!’ Tallus shouted, rubbing his hands and gazing at the ruined section of Wall in fascination. ‘Rat numbers dwindling rapidly. Larger prey needed. Creatures start venturing out of the Wall to hunt. Those with the strongest wings feed better than the rest, so produce more young … Certainly! Understood! But jell, my boy! What is this you say about jell?’

It seemed that the Warden’s order that jell should be tidied away by being built into the Wall’s ever-thickening base had caused the colony of creatures in the cavity to adapt to change very quickly. In a matter of years after the first jell went into the Wall, ferocious, strong-winged skimmers in large numbers were scrambling out into the Fell Zone night and flying over the Wall to feed.

‘And why should they have looked any further?’ Sholto drawled. ‘For them, Weld was nothing but a giant feeding bowl.’

Lisbeth of the Keep kitchens, who was weeping with joy in the arms of Crell, editor of The Lantern, shuddered at this, but the dark, keen-eyed young woman standing beside Tallus nodded calmly. She was a cool one, people said. Her name, it seemed, was Annocki. It was rumoured that she, Crell, Lisbeth and the beautiful, tawny-haired girl on Tallus’s other side had released the old healer from the locked room where the Warden had ordered him to be imprisoned.

But the Warden, at the back of the crowd, had not noticed Tallus, Crell, Lisbeth or the young women. His eyes were fixed on the ruined Wall, on the skimmers struggling into cover, on Rye and Sonia gliding hand in hand into the dark cavity, and moving towards the blinding light of the outside world, the skimmers’ galleries crumbling to dust before them.

As the two figures reached their goal, their red hair gleaming like fire in the sun, the Warden babbled charms and crossed his fingers and his wrists. As barbarian faces peered through the deep, dusty tunnel that now yawned between the outside rock wall and the inner skin of the Wall of Weld, he cried out, against all reason, that the lighting of the city against his orders had weakened the Wall.

The plumes of the Warden’s hat were drooping and stained with ink. His thin hair hung in limp strings over his sweating brow.

Appearing quickly by his side, Officer Jordan took his arm firmly, murmuring that the Warden was not well. The people tactfully looked aside as their leader was led away.

Then their eyes were caught by another sight. Rye and Sonia had returned to stand with Dirk, Jett and Sholto. The barbarian faces had vanished from the other side of the Wall. In their place was a dim circle. The barbarians had clamped something over the hole they had blasted in the rock. It looked like a huge tube or pipe, but what it was made of no one could imagine.

Dirk and his companions showed no surprise. With a slight bow, Dirk stepped aside. Sonia moved forward, her hair flying about her head like flame. Rye moved with her, holding her hand as if somehow the link would aid her.

‘Now Sonia will fill the Wall with smoke,’ Sholto called to Tallus, as casually as if he was discussing the weather. ‘It will take some time to fill the whole circle, but at last the smoke will drive all the skimmers out. Some may panic and fly straight out into the light, where they will die. Most, we hope, will escape into the feeder hose—and fly through it into the pipeline and at last into the sea.’

Tallus rubbed his hands. ‘Excellent, my boy!’ he was heard to respond. ‘Excellent! Now, about this substance the barbarians use to blast through solid rock. Most interesting! Do you think you could get me a sample?’

As the long day of fear and wonder ended, the citizens of Weld rejoiced.

The skimmers had gone. The barbarians had retreated in peace, taking their strange pipe with them. A great sheet of metal, the like of which the people of Weld had never seen, sealed the hole in the Wall by the Keep.

The celebration was more sedate than the riotous feast going on at the same time in Fell End, but it was no less heartfelt. Beneath the glare of the lanterns that now lit the night, Weld’s streets and squares were alive with music, talk and laughter.

But as the people rejoiced, the heroes of the hour sat in the shadowy Keep kitchen amid the remains of a very welcome meal and poured out their tale to Lisbeth, Annocki, Faene and Tallus, whose eyes grew wider with every word.

‘I cannot take it in!’ Annocki said, shaking her head. ‘There is too much to …’ She turned to Sholto. ‘The ships you and Rye saw waiting at the Harbour, beyond the Door that led to the future. Did they have anything to do with the daylight skimmers—slays— at all?’

Sholto exchanged glances with Sonia, Rye and Dirk. ‘We think they had everything to do with them,’ he said soberly. ‘We think they were the whole reason for the Harbour’s existence. In that future—’

‘The future that will now never happen,’ Lisbeth broke in, as if to reassure herself.

Dirk smiled at her. ‘That will now never happen, as you can see,’ he agreed, patting the rusty skimmer hook propped against his chair—the hook lost in Olt’s fortress, dug up by Carryl, and carried to Fell End to be part of the war against the Fellan. ‘In that future I found Father’s skimmer hook in the Saltings, and later it was broken—yet here it is, as whole as it ever was!’

‘We think that when Dorne was invaded and Weld was destroyed, skimmers were found in the Wall,’ Sonia said, far less interested in skimmer hooks than in the story. ‘And the Master, the Lord of Shadows, saw that he could use them as a weapon to conquer a land he dearly wanted—a place west of Dorne, across the Sea of Serpents. In Olt’s time it was called the Land of Dragons, but now it is called Deltora, according to Chieftain Farr.’

‘My people—the people of Fleet—went there to escape from Olt,’ Faene put in. ‘Chieftain Farr told Dirk that their descendants live there still, in a city named D’Or …’ She had begun bravely, but at the end her voice trembled and Dirk bent to her, murmuring comfort.

‘Twice Deltora has repelled the Lord of Shadows by a magic more powerful than his own,’ Rye said. ‘We think—we cannot be certain, but we think—that when he discovered the skimmers, he realised that here were natural beasts he could use to do what sorcery, or creatures of sorcery, could not. He set about breeding skimmers that could attack winter and summer, day and night. No people could survive such an onslaught.’

‘And if we are right, the ships waiting at the Harbour were to be used to transport skimmers, as Jett said,’ Sonia added. ‘Jett was just wrong about the destination. The daylight skimmers were to be carried to Deltora, so that they could bring it to its knees.’

‘Ha!’ cried Tallus, slapping the table and making everyone jump. ‘So much for Weld being the centre of things! Why, if what you say is true, we were only ever a detail in a far larger plan!’

‘And there is comfort in that, in my opinion,’ Sholto drawled, smothering a yawn. ‘I am tired of great matters. What I need now is sleep.’

Rye, Sonia and Dirk found they agreed and soon, despite Tallus’s complaints, Lisbeth made sure that they had their wish. So as Weld rejoiced, they slept. And despite the noise beating through their open windows, despite the narrowness of their stretcher beds and the stuffy warmth of the Keep, despite the memories, hopes and plans crowding their minds, they slept without dreams.

The waking bell did not ring the next morning, yet the Wall still swarmed with workers at the usual time. Most were heavy-eyed, but not a single man was missing. There was much to do.

When Rye, Dirk and Sholto sat down to breakfast in the Keep kitchen, Crell and Jett were already at the table, chatting like old friends. Like the three brothers, they were both freshly bathed and dressed in the best clean clothes Lisbeth had been able to find for them. Grinning broadly, Crell passed Dirk the latest edition of The Lantern.

‘I rushed it into print overnight,’ he said. ‘I have not had a wink of sleep. ‘The front page will be old news to you, but look at the back!’

‘The Wall is coming down!’ Dirk exclaimed, scanning the smudgy print. ‘The layers of bricks put up since Dann’s time, in any case. The foremen have all agreed. They plan to take the Wall right back to the original rock and use the rubble to fill the trench!’

‘What a great project it will be!’ Jett said with satisfaction, slathering a roll with honey. ‘And just think of the extra space for housing when the work is done!’

‘And what of the jell stored in the base?’ Sholto enquired with his mouth full.

‘We have been discussing that,’ Crell said eagerly. ‘Jett’s idea is that as the jell is taken out, little by little, it can be used for trade with the barbarians. He says they know its value, and have many goods we need.’

‘It will mean cutting a gateway in the rock large enough for a cart to pass through, of course,’ Jett put in. ‘But yesterday’s blast has done half of that work for us. And as I was telling Crell just now, I am sure Keelin—Rye, I mean—can persuade the Fellan to allow us to keep the track to the river open. They owe him a favour.’

As Dirk nodded enthusiastically, Sholto raised an eyebrow, and Rye smiled at this proof of how quickly humans, as well as skimmers, adapted to new conditions, Officer Jordan came into the kitchen. Lisbeth, looking anxious, was close behind him.

‘The Warden is in the waiting room,’ Jordan rumbled, pulling at his moustache. ‘He wishes to see you—all of you—as soon as possible.’