The Third Door

5 - Voices

No unseen force dragged Rye through the third Door as it had when the other two Doors opened for him. This time, his own feet carried him forward, and it was only when the wooden Door swung silently shut behind them that he realised it had led them into the dark.

He stood rigid in echoing dimness. He could hear the hollow gurgle of running water. He breathed in musty air tainted with the faint, sweet reek of death. He heard Sonia draw a sharp breath, heard Dirk mutter a curse, felt Sholto’s hand tighten on his shoulder. The blood was pounding in his ears. What was this place that felt and smelled like a tomb?

His stomach tightened as he realised that his urge to go through the third Door had been so strong that it had driven everything else from his mind. He had forgotten to pull the hood of concealment over his head. He had forgotten to check that the armour shell was still fastened to his little finger. He had forgotten to make sure that the bag of charms was safe around his neck, and that he had not lost the bell tree stick.

Even as his hand flew to his belt he thought it strange that he was checking the least important thing first. What would it matter if the stick was lost? As a weapon it was next to useless. Yet exquisite relief flooded through him as he found the stick was still with him, smooth, sturdy and familiar. He gripped it, feeling his mind steady and his breathing slow.

His eyes were adjusting, too. It was not quite as dark as he had first thought. He could make out the shapes of his companions. He could see the dense shadow of rock on either side of them. He could see that the wall ahead was lighter than the rest.

He dipped his fingers into the brown bag. As he touched the light crystal the bag lit up like a lantern, and even before he had drawn the crystal out his companions were sighing in relief.

They were not in a tomb but in a narrow cave, its mouth masked by a thick curtain of vine.

Dirk reached the vine curtain in three strides, and began tearing it away. Sonia and Rye were close behind him.

‘Take care!’ Sholto warned.

But already there was a large hole in the barrier, and as far as Rye could see nothing was lurking on the other side.

The vine was thick and its stems were tough, but soon its ruins lay in a heap on the floor of the cave, and the four companions were stumbling into a magical world of soft light and damp, tangy air.

Gigantic trees rose before them. Rain-wet vine studded with purple flowers clothed the mighty trunks and hung in great swags from the trees’ lower branches. Running water sang and gurgled on every side. Mist rose from the forest floor and drifted up to the dripping green canopy that hid the sky.

‘The Fell Zone,’ Sonia whispered.

Rye looked quickly around. Rain-spangled spider webs sparkled here and there, but there were none of the sagging, stringy nets of the Fell dragons. It was deliciously cool compared to the stuffiness of the cave and the stale warmth of the Keep. The flowery vine veils, gleaming with damp and wreathed in mist, were beautiful. But the odour of death still drifted in the air, and no birds sang.

‘I remember this,’ Sholto said quietly. ‘In the part where I was it was very dim because great mats of vine stretched from tree to tree, blocking all the light from above. But I remember vast trunks like these, caves like the one behind us, giant rocks, some hollow and some solid. And—yes!’

He spun round.

Rye turned to see what he was looking at. Behind them, rock sloped steeply upward, striped with twisting rivulets of water and dotted here and there with bushes and trees. The cave gaped at its base, still thickly fringed with vine.

‘I formed the theory that Weld was actually inside a hollow mountain-top—inside the crater of a dead volcano!’ Sholto exclaimed. ‘I remember writing about it! Ah, if only my notebook had not been destroyed!’

He was speaking much faster than usual. There was warm colour in his face and a light in his eyes that Rye had not seen for a very long time.

‘If I am right, the Wall began as a simple shell of natural rock,’ Sholto went on, striding back to the cave and squatting to examine it. ‘The first settlers began coating the rock with bricks on the inside—to seal holes and cracks at first, no doubt, then to strengthen thin patches, and then—well, if our Warden’s ancestors were anything like him, perhaps just to make Weld look tidy!’

Dirk was shaking his head in amazement, but Rye was finding it harder and harder to concentrate. Something had begun pushing at the edges of his mind. A feeling of dread was growing within him. He found that he had crossed his fingers and his wrists and slowly uncrossed them. Simple charms would not protect him here.

The bag of powers hanging around his neck seemed to warm against his skin. He gripped it and fought the dread down.

‘This must be the Fell Zone, Rye,’ Sonia said in a low voice. ‘It can be nothing else! But it is so different from the part we saw beyond the golden Door!’

Dirk shrugged. ‘The Fell Zone fills the whole of Dorne’s centre, Sonia. It is so deep that Weld has been hidden in its heart for a thousand years. You cannot expect it all to look the same.’

‘But this place does not just look different,’ Sonia said, biting her lip. ‘It feels different. It feels … angry.’

Rye shivered. Sonia was right. The rage in the forest was like a living thing.

And then the whispering began, hissing in his ears, mingling with the sound of dripping leaves and running water.

Leave this place, Rye of Weld!

Fellan! There were Fellan here, watching and listening. They were the source of the anger that was weighing him down.

The nine powers are of no use to you here. Go!

The hissing voices were strange to him. These watchers were not the Fellan who had given him the bag of powers. But they knew of him—knew his name! And it seemed to Rye that their anger could mean only one thing. These Fellan must have learned or sensed that he had caused the tyrant Olt’s death and opened the way to the Lord of Shadows.

Begone, Rye of Weld!

Sweat sprang out on Rye’s forehead. ‘We are not wanted here,’ he heard himself say, and he saw Sonia nod.

Dirk looked at them keenly. Once he might have scoffed and told them to stop imagining things. He knew better now.

‘Then we had better leave while we can,’ he said grimly. ‘We—’ He broke off, staring at Sholto.

Sholto was crouched at one side of the cave entrance, carefully pushing loops of vine aside with a thick strip of bark. He had found the source of the smell. Entangled in the vine was the dead body of a skimmer.

‘I remember this!’ Sholto said, glancing up at his companions before turning his attention back to his grisly find. ‘I remember finding dead skimmers. I remember examining them!’

He prodded one of the skimmer’s wings, which was twisted and broken, then uncovered the head.

‘Pale eyes,’ he said, with a sigh of relief. ‘Not one of the Master’s new breed, then. No doubt this specimen had stayed out too long and was blinded by the sun. It crashed against the rock face, slid down and was entangled in the vine.’

Go! Go! Leave our place!

The whispering in Rye’s mind was so loud now that he felt his head must burst. He had begun to shiver. His legs ached with the urge to run.

‘Perhaps it is from this part of Dorne, not from the Harbour, that the beasts are being sent to Weld!’ he heard Sonia exclaim. ‘Perhaps the Master has another stronghold somewhere here! That would explain last night’s attack.’

‘I have been thinking the same thing,’ Sholto agreed. ‘The workers at the Harbour are not aware that any other base exists, but they are isolated and know only what they are told.’

‘Then what are we waiting for?’ Dirk snapped. ‘If there is another base, let us get out of these cursed trees and find it!’

With shaking hands, Rye pulled the hood over his head. As his companions gathered around him and he took the feather from the brown bag, the voices in his mind swelled to a triumphant clamour. He gritted his teeth and tried to ignore them. He told himself that the Fellan had not won. They were not driving him away. He was leaving the Fell Zone because he wished it.

But as he rose with his companions through the misty air, and the whispers slowly faded from his mind, the relief was so intense that he felt dizzy. Only then did he admit to himself how much his resistance to the Fellan had cost him. Only then did he wonder if he could have stood against their will for much longer.

And only then did he wonder, with a prickle of fear, what would have happened if the Fellan had lost patience and decided to rid their forest of the unwelcome visitors by doing more than simply sending them away.

Before the companions reached the treetops the sun came out, transforming the mist into a shining golden haze. It became very difficult to see anything at all, but once they were above the muffling trees they did not need their sight to tell them which way to go. They could hear sounds coming from below, not very far away.

Music. Singing. The roar of voices. The occasional whinny of a horse. There were people, many people, somewhere near.

‘Our search will not be long, it seems,’ Dirk muttered. ‘Who else but the Master would place a settlement so close to the Fell Zone?’

‘I never heard music played at the Harbour,’ Sholto said dubiously.

Dirk grimaced. ‘They are celebrating the attack on the Keep last night, perhaps.’

Rye turned towards the sound, and as he and his companions began to glide rapidly through the shining mist he felt a small stab of triumph. The Fellan below might resent his possession of the bag of powers but they could not stop him using it. He had found it very hard to control the power of the feather at first. Now he had mastered it, as he had learned to master all the other powers at his command.

No, he thought suddenly. Not all. The sweet that smells of honey is still a mystery. And I still do not know what the ninth power is—or even if there is a ninth power! For all I know, the ninth power was lost or stolen from the bag long ago.

‘Rye!’ Sonia’s warning whisper jolted Rye out of his thoughts. He realised that he had lost height. His feet were brushing the topmost leaves of the trees. He put the Fellan and the powers out of his mind, focused again on the sounds ahead, and sped on.

‘Curse this mist!’ Dirk complained, leaning dangerously forward and peering down. ‘I cannot see a thing!’

But in a very few minutes the companions had reached the end of the trees, and as they flew lower they began to catch glimpses of the bushes and rocks that marked the forest’s fringe.

Then, abruptly, a tall, dark barrier was looming out of the mist in front of them. With Sonia’s cry of alarm ringing in his mind and his brothers’ yells loud in his ears, Rye managed to soar steeply upward just in time to skim over what seemed to be a fence made of great sheets of metal.

How he had done it he did not know. In another moment they would have crashed into the barrier as fatally as a sun-blinded skimmer slamming into a rock face. His heart thudding wildly at the narrow escape, Rye took a moment to realise that the voices and music had suddenly become very much louder.

‘By the Wall, look at that!’ he heard Dirk breathe, and at last glanced down.

Beyond the fence there was a small lake bobbing with ducks. From the lake, a narrow river confined between banks of stone flowed peacefully between clumps of trees. A paved road kept company with the river, and beside the road a huge pipeline was being built, its bulky stone supports marching all the way to the distant hills.

But close, very close, just where the river began, sprawled a rough, untidy town that throbbed with life.

People in bright, festive clothes thronged the town’s muddy streets, which were lined with very simple stone and metal dwellings. In the large central square, more people sat at long tables beneath striped awnings, eating, drinking, singing and pounding the tabletops in time to the rollicking tune being played by a nearby band of fiddlers. Others were dancing, stamping on the bare ground, careless of the mud the rain had left behind. Stalls choked the narrow side streets. Everywhere there were peddlers shouting their wares while busily selling sugared apples on sticks, dolls, jewellery and embroidered shawls to eager customers.

The people were of every kind, every colour, every size and shape. There were small people like the tribe from Nanny’s Pride farm and like FitzFee, who had saved Rye from a bloodhog beyond the golden Door. There were tall people like the fishing folk of Oltan and the scourers of the Den. A few soldiers in blue uniforms mingled with the crowd, but there were no grey guards, no slave-hunters—no sign of the Master at all.

Invisible beneath the protection of Rye’s hood, the companions landed beside the river amid a clutter of upturned canoes. Behind the barrier fence, the Fell Zone trees rose high, dark and secret, concealing the rocky summit where the companions had begun their flight.

‘Where in Weld are we?’ Dirk whispered.

Sonia pointed to a banner that had been strung between two trees facing a sturdy wooden jetty.

‘Fell End?’ Dirk shook his head in puzzlement. ‘I have never heard of it! In Fleet and Oltan I was told there were no other towns in Dorne—except for the exiles’ camp in the east. Who are these people?’

Sholto raised an eyebrow. ‘And who, I wonder, is Chieftain Farr?’

‘I think,’ said Rye, staring downriver, ‘we are about to find that out.’