The Girl and the Guardian

Chapter Thirty-two

  The Crystal Lotus

  In the bright morning, the children awoke to the sound of firewood being chopped, and the cheerful chanting of Tímathian boys, and further off the sweet sound of the singing of the Tímathian maidens. But Shelley had a niggly feeling in the back of her mind; something from last night troubled her. Then she remembered. She had had a dream, in which Hillgard had come, crowned with a copper crown, brandishing a great sword. His eyes had stared darkly, and he barred their way off the mountain. The boys had come with drawn swords, and ordered them to swear allegiance to the Tower of the Keeper. And from the top of the mountain had come lightnings and then a great flash as if the lightning had been harnessed and focussed into a deadly beam. Its searing light had exploded in her eyes, and she had woken, heart pounding, her forehead prickling as if a magnetic finger had touched it. Outside the cottage, the thunderstorm was still rumbling in the distance, though the rain had stopped. ‘It’s just the lightning,’ she had told herself, and she had gone back to sleep. But now she wondered uneasily about Hillgard.

  They all ate outside, after a prayer to the Concept, standing and facing east over the bright lands of the Guardians, over which the golden sun was climbing. ‘It’s about eight o’clock,’ thought Shelley, yawning. ‘Not that it matters, when there are no watches and no buses to catch! And no school!’ She felt a giddy rush of freedom at the thought. Why had she thought it was so necessary to go to school to learn anything? There on the mountain it seemed so easy to learn whatever one needed or wanted to, without all that fuss and boredom. ‘Earth teachers try to force-feed you secondhand, mouldy old stuff, and then make you regurgitate it!’ she thought, yawning.

  Rilke and Worriette were in high spirits too. The air tingled with vitality after last night’s electrical storm. Some of the children, including Kernan, had already gone down the bushclad slopes, on patrol. The rest were to go to lessons under their mentors, older students, young men and women of eighteen or so, who had come through a portal from the Guardian World years before and had already been trained by Hillgard. Now they were giving the Guardian training to the younger ones. It was very intense, nothing like school as Shelley had known it. For these children it was a matter of life and death.

  She and Rilke sat in on one group and began to hear something of the teaching. But Korman came to her and said, ‘We have been invited to the summit. Hillgard has agreed to test the power of the Lady. He wishes for you to sit in the seat of the Crystal Lotus, and ask for a vision or a sign.’

  ‘What?’ said Shelley. ‘I’ve never… I mean…’

  ‘You have felt the power of the Zagonamara. It is that same power in which the Lady lives and is one with. You have walked in Faery.’

  ‘I guess I can try. Will you sit in the crystal sphere too?’

  ‘Perhaps. But I feel that you are the key to this impasse. My brother is stubborn, but perhaps you have been sent at this time to enlighten him.’

  ‘He has a lot in common with you, Korman, something noble that makes me want to follow him into battle or anywhere he leads. But there’s also something weird about him, too. Dangerous – dark, even.’

  ‘Yes, he stands upon a knife-edge. He is perilously close to the darkness which he hates. Being consumed by hatred for the dark, he is in danger of being engulfed by it. My brother… he needs the love of the Mother of all, with whom even the dark is blessed.’ Shelley saw a tear in Korman’s eye, the first since she had known him.

  ‘All right, I’ll go,’ she said. Korman sighed with relief.

  They left Rilke with the class, and were escorted by one of the older boys up the long dark stairs again.

  Hillgard was waiting at the summit. He looked haggard and uneasy. He wore a burnished copper crown, just like the one in Shelley’s dream. A shiver went up her back when she saw it. He was pacing the pavement by the pond in the fresh morning air, looking out over the wall at the blue sky.

  ‘Good morning, I trust you slept well?’ he said to Shelley, addressing her directly for the first time. His bright blue eyes were fixed on hers.

  ‘Yes, thank you. They looked after me very well,’ she replied, a little stiffly. Something about him put her on her guard. ‘He’s really a chauvinist,’ she thought. ‘They’re always extra polite to women.’

  ‘Well, we are here because you two believe in the old myths about the Zagonamara and the Lady of Aeden, the so-called Venus of Kor-Edartha, or Mary, or the Lady of the Lake, and I believe there is nothing down there but the clay beneath our feet, which the sun may dry up and the wind may blow away.’

  ‘And yet out of the dust may spring a flower,’ said Korman.

  ‘And will the Lady heal your withered sword arm, Korman?’ asked Hillgard, bitterly.

  ‘Let’s not argue any more,’ said Shelley. ‘That won’t settle it, not if you can’t feel the power of the Lady, her love and the power that comes from below our feet, not just from the sky above. I’ve been learning about it, and I love it. It’s like… like coming home. Like the safety of a mother. Why are you so afraid of it, Hillgard?’

  The old warrior looked troubled, and turned away. She thought she saw tears in his eyes. ‘Surely not,’ she thought.

  ‘I had no mother…’ he muttered fiercely, as if to himself. Then he turned and spoke to her again. ‘Well, let us get this over with. Step up into the ancient crystal, the greatest piece of lightcrystal on Aeden. It was mined, they say, from the deepest depths of Baz Apédnapath, soon after the cataclysm which formed that place. It is said to be the very Eye of the Zagonamara, the place of union of the Sky Father and the Earth Mother! Though I never found it to be so.’

  ‘That is because you never opened to it. The Mother does not impose herself upon those who think they have no need of her and look only to the sky,’ she heard Korman reply as she rowed across the lotus pond and ascended the steps that wound around the pillar on the back of the dragons. The air seemed to sing with a transcendent cosmic power, while the rock beneath her feet hummed with the power of the immanent Goddess.

  ‘Touch the crystal, and it will open,’ called Hillgard. She reached out, feeling a fear as of high-voltage electricity, like when she once reached out and touched the charged sphere of a Van De Graaf generator in the physics department at school, and the sparks jumped to her hand, and her hair had all stood on end with the static electricity.

  ‘Call to the Lady, clear your mind, and open your heart,’ said Korman. ‘Let her speak to you.’

  The sphere glowed brightly, then opened like a flower as she touched its cool smooth surface.

  ‘It never glowed like that for me!’ exclaimed Hillgard, and Korman looked at him meaningfully.

  ‘A cosmic egg, or is it an incubator?’ thought Shelley as she stepped inside. The petals closed and she sat down in the crystal seat sculpted into the floor. She was floating in an indeterminate pearly light coming from the crystal which now enveloped her. She bathed in the light as the sphere gently turned at her slightest movement.

  The energy within and around her grew until she felt weightless. She lost all sense of up or down, and the world was one unified thing, earth and sky fused in a primeval light, shot with rainbow hues. She lay back and calmed her mind. Huge visions began to unfold before her, infused with immense surges of feeling, as if she were the God and the Goddess, and all petty consciousness was swallowed up in great heroic feelings of love and joy and longing for the fulfilment and blessing of all creatures in their rightful dwellings. She wept for joy so intense she gasped for air, then wept again in sorrow equally intense, at the things that she saw.

  Outside, the sky had darkened, and a thundercloud was forming over the mountain. The two Guardian brothers were dwarfed by its towering immensity. The dense white mist of it engulfed the summit. The wind whipped this way and that, restlessly. The sphere was invisible in the mist except for an eerie glow.

  Without warning, a bolt of lightning split the air, searing blue-white, branching to str
ike the spikes of the summit crown. The brothers’ robes and beards crackled with blue fire. Then a drenching rain lashed them. Then the mists parted. The sphere opened, and Shelley rose out of it. Her clothing glowed white against the dark stormclouds, and her face shone. But she was stern as she cried out over the rising wind, ‘This is the message from the Lady: the sign you sought, Hillgard, it is coming! You have denied the power of the Zagonamara, and from the Darkness your enemy is coming! They are almost upon you. Look!’

  She pointed in the direction of the Canyon. Hillgard and Korman sprang up the stairs onto the wall, and looked down through the stinging rain. The mist had gone. On the Pilgrim Path far below was a dark army, advancing toward the mountain like a line of black ants, dragging with them siege-engines and a deathwagon. There were many banners flying in the wind, and Hillgard cried out when he saw the device they bore. ‘The spinning scythes! The Aghmaath are coming!’ He turned to Shelley, who had joined them and was looking down also. ‘My heart is struck with fear, though I long expected an attack, and even, in my folly, welcomed it. I now doubt all that I believed before. Tell me, what did you see in there? Did she speak to you? Did you see Her, Shelley? Did she say anything about… about me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Shelley, her eyes shining. ‘I saw the Lady, and she gave me a message for you, Hillgard. “Even now,” she says, “Turn back from your hatred and let in the love, and the light you have always followed will guide you, even in your darkest hour. For he whom you saw in the high place was not the Keeper, but a deception of Rakmad, ruler of the Aghmaath on Aeden. He sends for you, to claim what is his. For it was he who incited you to build these engines of war and destruction. Then he will march to the east, where your secret silver mines are not hidden from him as you thought. He has read your innermost thoughts, and knows all your strategies.” ’

  Hillgard turned white, and said to Shelley, ‘Young lady, I fear your words more than the thorny spears of the Aghmaath! You cannot have known all these things… the Lady indeed speaks through you. Woe is me!’

  He turned to look out over the Canyon and the mountains far beyond the High Pass where Lake Avalon lay like a hidden jewel.

  ‘So, Lady of Avalon,’ he cried, ‘I have been deceived! How blind I have been! But you tried to speak to me. And I would not listen.’ He bowed his head as if to weep. But then he set his jaw and stood upright, saying, ‘I am afraid for my men, but more so for myself, I who led them to this end. Still we must defend ourselves as best we can! Tell the Lady she has my word as a Guardian: when I am able I will send word to the priestesses and the monks of the lake, that they are welcome back to this sacred place, if it is not taken by the enemy.’

  But the stormcrows were circling the mountain, cawing, as if in mockery of his eleventh-hour conversion.

  Before three hours had past, long before the makeshift defence was ready, the enemy arrived. Outside the gates, the tall, dark figure of Hithrax stepped forward.

  ‘Open, in the name of the Void,’ he cried in a terrible voice, ‘Rakmad claims what is his.’ The silver-helmeted boys guarding the gate trembled as they gripped their swords, but returned defiant words. Then the command was given, and the Edarthan boy Gareth came forward, dressed all in black, leading a band of huge men dragging a siege engine, a ram they had made from one of the black standing stones which they had uprooted from the sacred path. It swung by thick ropes from a lashed framework of oak branches running on wheels of solid oak planks cut into circles. Gareth gave the order, and the ram swung, crashing with sickening force against the gates.

  Far above on the crown of the mountain, Korman was saying farewell to his brother. ‘For Rakmad will have read your mind and will know through you that the Kortana, or a child who may be the Kortana, is here. Shelley will be hunted, and whether the siege lasts a day or a year, she will not escape in the end. Then our greatest hope will be gone.’

  ‘I wanted to keep you here, Korman,’ Hillgard confessed sadly. ‘With or without your consent. Now I see that Rakmad was putting even that thought into my mind. For, though I wear a silver cap by day or night, I take it off to sit in the crystal sphere, since I found that the messages of the Keeper – or he whom I thought to be the Keeper – did not come clearly if I wore it.’

  ‘Never take it off again, my brother! And seek the wisdom of the Lady, no matter what may befall you. Remember her message to you through Shelley! She will be with you always.’

  ‘Now I must go to the defence of my fortress, though my heart warns me that I go to my death,’ said Hillgard. ‘Remember the secret way I told you. Go with the Mother and Father of us all! And may we meet again to sort out our theologies!’

  ‘May we all soon meet the Lady, the divine Mother of Aeden,’ said Korman. Then Hillgard entrusted to his brother a small key and a little square box, thin but heavy, carved with the sign of the Ürpax Pharoï, the Order of the Makers: the tree and rainbow (representing Aeden) inside an eight-pointed star, with the emblems of the eight other worlds inscribed in the eight points. ‘These are the greatest treasures of Baldrock. Keep them safe. The key unlocks the secret topmost vault of this fortress, hidden from sight by mindwebs until the key is brought to the keyhole. In that vault I found, among other things, the box you have in your hand. Use what is within only if you have great need, for it is perilous – I know this from personal experience. Now, Korman, the children will show you the secret tunnel out of this mountain. Take those you can with you, and save them if you can.’ Korman wanted to know more, and was appalled at the thought of leaving his new-found brother, but the sounds of dreadful battle grew loud. They could not delay a second longer.

  So Hillgard and Korman embraced and parted, and Hillgard hastened to the defence of Baldrock. As he ran he called to Korman, ‘Defend the Kortana, and bring her safely to Ürak Tara! Nothing else matters now! I’ll keep these devils at bay!’

  But the attack had come too soon, before Hillgard’s defences were complete. He had been deceived by Rakmad (posing as the Keeper) into thinking he had many more months to prepare before any siege. The gates soon fell to the battering ram of the boy Gareth, and many Tímathian boys were captured, stripped of their silver helmets and thrown into the Death Wagon. Then Gareth laughed, and set up his crossbows in a row and torched their arrows, and they shot flaming up the mountainside and rained down onto the roofs of the village of Hope. Soon there was fire all along the mountainside as the cottages burned and even the stones cracked with the heat of the burning.

  Hillgard cried out, ‘Let them burn! We must hold the stairs!’ He rallied the older children to him, and sent the youngest ones and the injured into the caves in the side of the mountain. The girls, deadly archers, shot a hail of arrows at the advancing enemy, while the boys, led by Kernan, took the large rocks which had been gathered in piles at the brink, and hurled them down.

  For a time it seemed they would fend off the attack. But the enemy had cunning shields of leather, designed by Gareth, and they held them over their heads while they advanced up the steep stairs and the arrows stuck in them without effect. Many of the former Seekers of Truth from Baz Apédnapath were among them, now endarkened and following the voice of Hithrax which echoed in their heads, maddening them to reckless deeds, uncaring whether they lived or died. Many fell off the stairs to their deaths without a cry, as the rocks hurtled down upon them, but still the others climbed.

  There came a point when the first of the attackers were almost at the top. Then they took cruel bows of thornwood and from behind their leather shields shot deadly bolts into the faces of the children who still stood at the edge. Some of them fell, pierced with arrows. The rest began to fall back in a daze of fear and horror as Hithrax’s mindbolts overcame them.

  Seeing his loyal followers so decimated, Hillgard wept, and sounded the retreat on his great silver horn. Soon all the surviving defenders, those who were not killed by fire or arrows, had gone into the caves, some dragged in a daze by their friends, some wounded terribly.
Then Hillgard ran out alone to the edge of the cliff, swinging his broadsword, cutting down those who dared to set foot on the top. The corpses piled up around him, or fell back over the cliff. But still they came, faster and faster, or so it seemed to him as he felt his strength waning. The sweat blinded his eyes, the corpses and dying enemies encumbered his feet. At last he knew that it was hopeless: these attackers knew no fear, but attacked like soldier ants, possessed, welcoming death.

  Korman, who had found the children and gathered them at the entrance to the escape tunnel, had heard his brother’s silver horn blowing just as they were about to open the door and go down the tunnel. ‘Hillgard!’ he muttered. He looked at Shelley, and gripped the hilt of Arcratíne. He stood a moment in agony of mind. ‘Go back and help him! We’ll wait!’ said Shelley.

  Korman shook his head, but the horn blew again, and he cried, ‘If I do not return in half an hour, flee down the tunnel. The Lady have mercy!’

  So it was that Korman, risking all for his brother, came out onto the shoulder of the mountain again and saw Hillgard alone at the brink, fighting the never-ending line of besiegers as they came up the stairs. He rushed to his brother’s side and took up a broadsword from one of the slain. ‘Go back, save Shelley!’ cried Hillgard, but Korman would not, and together they fought the possessed soldiers of the Void, until there was a wall of corpses about them. But Korman saw that his brother was already deadly tired, and was stumbling, and the half-hour was almost up. Then the first of the Aghmaath came up the stairs, and mindbolts came from their blazing eyes.

  ‘Back to the caves!’ Korman cried. Hillgard stood for a second, chest heaving, staring at his brother. Then he turned, and staggered towards the caves. Korman followed, defending his brother from the pursuing Thornmen, who now screeched like eagles, bloodlust in their staring eyes.

  Soon the dark army was all about the shoulders of the mountain, surging through the Village of Hope, torching the remaining cottages and seeking a way into the caves. Then Hithrax himself came up the stairs, three at a time, and all his soldiers bowed before him. Even those who were wounded and dying struggled to their feet, zombie-like, to bow before him.

  Seeing that all was lost, Hillgard had one more thing he planned to do before they captured him… First, he hugged Korman goodbye. ‘Well fought, little brother!’ he said, ‘Now rescue Shelley, for the love of Aeden!’

  ‘Come with us!’ said Korman.

  But Hillgard was already staggering back up the tunnel to the summit.

  ‘I will have my revenge on Rakmad!’ he cried, and disappeared into the darkness. Korman, cursing his brother’s pride, ran back down the tunnel that led to the secret exit where Shelley and the children waited.

  Hillgard had one last blow to strike. Reaching the summit he burst out into the daylight, strode across the glistening courtyard past the pond with its empty crystal sphere, and wheeled out the light-gun from its alcove. He flung the hood off it and trained it on the Tor Enyása. He prayed for the sun to come out. And immediately, as if in answer, the clouds were parted by a great wind from the east. The bright sun of Aeden blazed out, and its light was focussed by the mirrors, and trapped and purified by the great lightcrystal at its centre until it could be held no longer. A dazzling beam stabbed through the gulf of air between Baldrock and the five brooding peaks of the Tor Enyása. A circle of thorns on one peak flared in the fierce white light, then smoke began to pour off it and drift through the thorn thickets round about.

  Hithrax and his dark warriors, for the moment ignoring the children in the caves, had found the tunnel to the summit, and were coming up the stairs, Hithrax bringing up the rear. Hillgard heard their harsh cries, but kept firing until three of the peaks were wreathed in smoke. Then the sun went behind a cloud, and at that moment Hithrax’s dark warriors burst out of the tunnel into the courtyard of the summit, and fell on him from behind. Hands like pincers held him fast while they tore off his silver helmet and trampled it flat. A blackness came over him as Hithrax approached, a towering figure of doom, sending out a mindbolt of deadly anger, and the mirror of the light-gun swung up, unfocussed, its light extinguished.

  Meanwhile Korman had returned to the secret exit, where Rilke and Shelley had managed to gather more of the survivors, together with all the younger children of the village, and they went down the hidden passage, cobwebbed and damp, lit only by Korman’s staff. After a long stumbling descent, they emerged from a little stone doorway, well outside the walls, half a mile to the east in a little dell. The doorway was still protected by the powerful mindwebs of the ancient Tímathians who built the fortress of Baldrock, with the help of the Makers.

  But as the little band of refugees came out into the open, they were seen by Hithrax’s lookouts on the mountain, those with the eyes of eagles, specially bred for their task. Then the light-guns of Hillgard which he had made under the evil guidance of Rakmad were unlocked from their bunkers in the sides of the mountain, trundled out and trained on the fleeing group. Hillgard had decided not to use them unless all else failed, but by then there were no children left to man them. Now Hithrax and Gareth gloated over the find, and Gareth soon worked out how to use the optical engines.

  The sun was shining brightly now, and fell on one of the light-guns. Gareth stood at its controls, winding the wheels that focussed its light gathered by the huge silver mirrors like ships’ sails. The energy of pure light built up in the long crystals in front until they glowed and burst out in beams that seared the very air, sliced down into the dell and split rocks with white heat. The deadly beam swung nearer to the fleeing band of children. It was at their heels; the little boy at the rear cried out as the back of his robe burst into flames as he ran. He dropped the robe and ran like a rabbit. ‘Shelley, call on the Lady, walk into Faery!’ said Korman. Then Shelley called out to the children as they ran, ‘Follow us, children! We’re going into the realm of Faery NOW!’ She felt a strange certainty that they would, as if the Lady had spoken through her.

  And suddenly it seemed to their attackers on the mountainside that the whole band, starting with Shelley, with Korman at her side and Rilke hard on their heels, melted into a golden mist. They heard them laughing for joy; but they were gone. The gunners gaped, and squinted, and Gareth screamed at them, ‘Shoot! Keep firing! What are you waiting for?’

  But the refugees were gone. Shelley had led them all into Faery, and they walked in wonder in the spring of another age of Aeden, when the world was young, and the birds sang, and the Lady and her maidens danced with the elves in the green glades of the Valley of the Rainbow and the apple orchards of Avalon.

  In spite of the beauty all around them, Shelley wept, for the destruction of the village of Hope and the death of the valiant boys and girls. In her vision she had seen them die, and now it had happened. She was especially furious at the boy Gareth, the willing traitor. And she remembered what else she had seen, but had not had the heart to tell Korman: Hillgard, taken captive and cast into the Death Wagon, bound hand and foot, his beard shorn off, his robes stripped from him.

  ‘Is there no end to it?’ she wondered as they walked through the green meadows of Faery. ‘If only we could stay in this beautiful place always, and keep hidden from all the evil.’

  But grace was given only for their hour of need, and soon the normal level of thought, which constructs the reality we take for granted, reasserted itself in their minds. One by one the children dropped out of Faery back into the ordinary waking world, ‘Reality’ as it is called.

  Korman, who had walked with Shelley in wonder, grieved. ‘It is as a dream taken away by waking, at the very moment when we think it is ours forever! But thanks to the Lady for you, Shelley. I thought we were all going to be roasted by that infernal device!’

  ‘No, they would have left one person: me. They want me alive; I can feel it. They’re tugging at my mind all the time, from the Tor Enyása, calling me to give in and join them.’

  Korman looked at her. ‘You ar
e right. They want you alive, to lead them to the Arcra-Nama. They must never have you! Oh, where are the Tidak, who would protect you better than I, Korman of the withered arm! And if only my brother had come with us!’

  Shelley knew she had to tell Korman.

  ‘Hillgard has been taken by the enemy. He went back up to the summit to fire at the Tor Enyása to kill Rakmad, and he was taken prisoner. I saw it in my vision, and now I know it has already happened.’

  Korman looked at her in shock, and his hand went to his swordhilt. The band of children stopped as he stood rooted to the spot.

  ‘So soon? Is it possible? My brother! I must go back and rescue him! Arcratíne glowed as he began to draw it with his strong left hand, while his right hand clenched and unclenched.

  Hethür, Krithür, Shaktha!

  he chanted. Shelley felt a sense of doom, but just as it had happened at Thorngate, she could not bring herself to speak in time.

  Then Korman re-sheathed the weapon. He was breathing hard and trembling. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘My duty is clear: to deliver you, Shelley, to Ürak Tara, though all others I love fall around me. We must go on now: the enemy will be tracking us as we speak! Onward to Ürak Tara!’

  And the children took up the words: ‘Yes, onward to Ürak Tara, where we will be safe! And death to the Aghmaath!’

  Shelley thought of the Earth story where the refugee children sing:

  This old man, he played one

  He played knick knack on my drum

  With a knick-knack paddy-whack, give a dog a bone

  This old man came rolling home

  And she taught that song to the children as they stumbled on through the rest of that day.

  But Korman knew they could not all make it to Ürak Tara, on the other side of Aeden, beyond the Valley of Thorns, with the Trackers of Hithrax after them. So he led them south, towards a land of Guardian enclosures, including Lakeview, the enclosure that Elgar and Lilly had intended to reach.

  ‘There should be an old Guardian enclosure somewhere in this land, to the east of the Eel Hills, where the children will be safe, while we go on in haste,’ he told Shelley.

  ‘What’s an enclosure, exactly?’ Shelley asked, not happy to hear about ‘going on’ – or about the mention of Eels – but not wanting to show it.

  ‘It was a fortified farm like the Templars’ Enclosures on your world, kept by the Guardians in days long ago. Hillgard told me his people have restored several enclosures on the southern reaches of these hills. They are walled with strong stone, with a granary and tower of defence and stables.’

  ‘And warm beds?’

  ‘For the children, yes. Alas, not for us. We must press on. It is you and me they are most eager to catch. Wherever we linger, they will attack with all their force. We cannot withstand a siege for long, even in a Guardian enclosure, so we must not stay.’

  At nightfall they came to the Guardian enclosure. It had been deserted for many years, but now a light twinkled from a narrow window inside the gate tower. Korman knocked on the rusty but still strong gate, and told the gatekeeper (a little old man with white hair, armed with a large sword) who they were. ‘We come as refugees from the fall of Baldrock,’ he said, and the gatekeeper let them in. His eyes were full of fear and concern at the sight of the bedraggled and exhausted children.

  ‘How will we feed ’em all?’ he muttered to himself as he led them up a flagstoned path towards a long, low stone farmhouse with gardens on either side. Shelley noticed beehives and a well with a bucket and rope on a windlass. ‘Just like in a picture in a fairy tale,’ she thought.

  Curtains were pushed aside and warm yellow candlelight shone out. Then the door of the farmhouse opened, and to their surprise and joy, Elgar and Lilly came down the path to greet them. Korman embraced Elgar and said, ‘Baldrock has fallen, and Hillgard has been taken by the enemy.’ Now that the flight was over, he wept openly for his brother as Elgar comforted him.

  Lilly welcomed the children in, and Elgar let her tell their story (if she promised to be brief). She told how they had led the Trackers astray for a while, before losing them in the stony hills and sand dunes of the eastern coast. Then they had met some of the boy Tímathians, and been taken to Hillgard at Baldrock.

  ‘And he entrusted this deserted Enclosure to us, to restore and farm with the help of some lovely young Tímathians, since he told us that Lakeview was all ruined and was no task for the likes of us all on our own. We named it Seaview. Lakeview, Seaview, see?’ she said in conclusion. ‘There, was that brief enough for you, dear?’

  Elgar paused to consider, then nodded. ‘Except it wasn’t “we” who named it that; it was you.’

  They all laughed at the old couple. Then Korman quickly told Elgar all that had happened since they had left Pebblebrook. Elgar praised their bravery, but bowed his head when Korman described the fall of Baldrock.

  ‘I thought it was too good to be true when we came upon the Guardian stronghold and heard Hillgard’s boasts. I never trusted that mountain, what with the Monks of the Bottomless Canyon going there and all. But tell me now, Lord Korman, is there any way to strike back at the enemy, perhaps to intercept the Deathwagon as it bears Lord Hillgard away…west?’ He shuddered as he said the word.

  ‘There is no strength of arms left in his lands that could be mustered in time,’ replied Korman. ‘The Death Wagon will be heavily protected by Hithrax’s elite warriors, and even now will be winding up the road to the Tor Enyása. From there the road descends through impenetrable thorn forests into the terrible Valley of Thorns, and thence to the Dark Labyrinth. We cannot rescue Hillgard by force.’

  ‘So the Guardians have failed again,’ said Elgar, bowing his head.

  ‘You and I are Guardians, and while we hold true they have not failed completely,’ replied Korman. ‘But now I fear the Trackers will find you, if we stay here. You were our decoy once, Elgar. Now we will be yours. I will take Shelley and go with all haste, this very night. I give you Rilke, now a seasoned traveller and soon to be a stout warrior! He has learned not to draw his sword – or anybody else’s – in haste. Perhaps now he is ready to learn swordplay from you!’

  ‘I am no Guardian,’ Elgar protested. ‘Only an old man who is a friend of one. I cannot teach…’

  ‘Did I not give you the Guardian talisman? You are as much a Guardian as I am, now.’

  But Rilke had overheard Korman talking about going on without him, and now he too protested. ‘You can’t leave me here! You might need me and Worriette! We want to come! Please?’

  He looked up at Korman pleadingly, and Worriette mimicked him. Korman smiled down at them, but he was adamant. He got down on one knee, and looked Rilke in the eye.

  ‘You must be brave, and follow wisdom. Now is the hour for desperate flight, for all our sakes, and you will be much safer with your kinsfolk, Elgar and Lilly. You can help them look after these other children. Shelley and I must cross the Valley of Thorns alone.’

  Rilke saw it was no use.

  ‘If… if you come across my parents there – if they’ve been taken… you will rescue them, won’t you?’ he said in a small voice, and burst into tears.

  ‘We will do what we can,’ said Korman. The little wurrier leapt into Shelley’s arms shivering, as if she knew they were parting. Then, after a quick meal, Shelley and Korman took their leave and went out into the night. Just before they stepped through the gateway, Rilke came running and pressed something into her hand.

  ‘This is for you. It’s a present for my best friend in all the world.’ It sparkled like blue ice in the moonlight. It was the diamond Goldheart had given him.

  ‘Thank you,’ she managed to whisper through her tears. She rummaged in her pack and gave Rilke back the little quartz stone he had put in her birthday cake the first night they had met, so long ago it seemed. She thought of her old home on Earth, and realised that she would be rich now, with that one big diamond, if she ever went back. Mark would be so enviou
s… But the nostalgia made her heart ache even more and she let out a sob before wrenching herself back to the present and hugging Rilke goodbye.

  As they went out into the Pale Moonlit wilderness, Shelley was tired and her eyes stung from the tears, but she felt excited. This was the beginning of a whole new adventure, and she now had a confidence she had never dreamt of having. She had spoken with the Lady in the Crystal Sphere, and felt the oneness of all things, high and low, Earth and Sky. Also, she knew that they were finally going into the land where the unicorns lived, and it sent a shiver down her spine.

  As they fled south, Korman deliberately took off his silver helmet, and Rakmad perceived him, and knew where he was. Then Korman put the helmet back on, and a silver mist hid him again from the Mindscouts.