The Tower and the Emerald

by Moyra Caldecott

  Idoc smiled and held out his hand to her. ‘Come. It is my latest acquisition. Look at it closely. Is it not beautiful?’

  She did not take his hand, though it looked so like Caradawc’s she found it difficult to resist. But she stepped nearer the tapestry, and Idoc held up a lamp so that she could see it more clearly.

  It was a finely stitched representation of a forest, with a hunting party in the foreground. The lords and ladies were dressed in richly embroidered clothes, their steeds expensively caparisoned. Every detail of the forest, the leaves on the trees, oak and ash, hornbeam and hazel, the markings on the bark, and the flowers underfoot . . . delicate white asphodel, violets and celandine, wood anemone and arum, broad buckler fern unrolling its thick brown tendrils, even the tiny stag-horn mosses and the silver-grey lichens . . . Viviane had never seen such a detailed record of a forest in tapestry. Something caught her eye in the thicket off to the left, and she saw that it was a hart. She put her hand to her mouth with a gasp. The hunting party was Caradawc’s; the young woman breaking away from the party to follow the hart was herself.

  ‘I thought you would appreciate it,’ said Idoc close behind her. ‘It is a wedding gift.’

  She felt a touch on her hand and looked down at once. Deftly and neatly he had removed the amethyst from her grasp. She reached for it at once.

  ‘Thank you, my dear love,’ he said. ‘I see you have brought a gift for me.’ And he moved it quickly out of her reach.

  ‘No!’ she cried. ‘No!’ She tried to seize it back, but he laughed and held it above his head. To take it she would have to come right up against his body and she knew that if she did, she as well as Caradawc would be lost for ever. The monstrous being that overshadowed Idoc was no longer visible to her, though she was still very well aware of his presence. The figure of Caradawc stood before her, but from his eyes Idoc’s soul looked out.

  She had a sudden inspiration. ‘Yes,’ she said, withdrawing her hand. ‘It is a gift – but I wanted to give it to you in a special way. I wanted you to use it to see something.’ She picked up the sheet of obsidian from his table and held it before him. ‘Hold the crystal in front of you,’ she said, ‘and look in the mirror.’

  ‘I’ll see nothing there but my love for you,’ he was smiling into her eyes, and, for a moment, she could have believed he spoke the truth.

  She touched the green girdle at her waist. ‘Hold on! Hold on,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Hold to this lifeline. Be not seduced by words, by ancient feelings, by dreams of what might have been . . .’

  ‘Look in the mirror,’ she urged him, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘You will see something even you have never seen before. It is my gift because I loved you once . . . because I still . . .’

  She broke off, for he seemed to be engaged in a terrible struggle with himself . . . his skin flushing dark red and then, as though suddenly drained of blood, becoming deathly pale . . . his eyes were changing, Caradawc’s sea-blue becoming almost black. She heard the sound of a rushing wind and small objects in the closed chamber began to fly about. The flames of the lamps and candles guttered and sputtered; heavy jars fell to the floor.

  She could see all the veins and muscles in Idoc’s neck and face stand out as though he were undergoing great physical strain in trying to turn his head towards the mirror. Her own arm was being mysteriously pressurized to drop it. With every ounce of strength in her body, and calling on Caradawc’s soul and all the powers of Light to help, she strove to hold on and to bring it nearer to Idoc’s eyes. She knew now that she was doing the right thing. The being that had taken over Idoc did not want him to see himself through the power of the amethyst.

  She summoned all the love she had felt for him in those ancient times when he was young . . . She called up the image of him as he had once been, before he began to invoke dark spirits . . . She visualized Caradawc and Gerin and Rheged and Cai and herself in their ancient forms, holding hands and circling him – chanting not the fatal binding spell, but what they should have chanted in the first place: the releasing spell, the spell of exorcism . . .

  For a split second Idoc saw through the amethyst to the dark obsidian mirror.

  He saw himself and he saw that of which he had become the prisoner.

  In that instant the room was rent by lightning.

  For the most rare and powerful energy of all had been released: the energy of the living being seeing truthfully into its own nature.

  The amethyst crystal turned to dust in his hand – as did the fragment of mirror in Viviane’s. In that moment of tremendous revelation, Viviane knew that Caradawc’s soul had returned where it belonged – and Idoc was a bodiless shade once more – no longer sustained by a being of hate but cringing in a corner like a creature that had lived all its life in a dark cave and was suddenly exposed to the full light of the sun . . .

  Around them raged the lightning of a supernatural storm. Thunder whipped and roared. The tower swayed in a wind that no earthly conditions had ever engendered.

  Stone by stone it cracked and crumbled, sliding slowly down the hill, the dry dust of centuries rising in a column of cloud that reached high into the sky and then mushroomed out over the whole land . . . a fearsome sound rolling and rumbling around the hills, penetrating to the furthest valleys . . .

  At the heart of its vast shadow Idoc’s wax discs, bronze table, chair, charts and flasks, noisome liquids and infernal instruments shattered and splintered, slid and slithered and fell – and with them Caradawc and Viviane spiralled and turned in the dust . . .

  Chapter 12

  The rebuilding of the tower

  When Viviane regained consciousness she discovered that she was miraculously unhurt. All around her the dust of the dark tower had finally settled, and there was nothing left of it but jagged piles of rock. The storm had subsided and the moon was sailing large and magical above her, filling the landscape with light. Even in her bemused state she wondered that moonlight could be quite so bright. She turned her head to look for Caradawc and saw instead a sight so beautiful her heart almost stopped beating with the sheer pleasure of it. The Green Lady stood there, and behind her hovered three shining beings. She could feel their caring and their love as though it were the warmth of sunlight on her skin. The light that shone from them was so subtle, so full of the hint of colour and yet not coloured, that it reminded her of mother-of-pearl. Their forms and features were each different and individual – yet later, when she tried to describe them, she could not find the words. She remembered nothing of them but the light and the feeling they gave her of being loved and protected . . . the feeling that they were pleased with her . . . that she had done well.

  The Green Lady stepped forward, and as her long mantle brushed the dark stones of the fallen tower, mosses and small plants seemed to grow up around them, fern fronds uncurled out of cracks. She reached down and gently helped Viviane to her feet.

  ‘Caradawc?’ Viviane murmured, looking anxiously around her.

  The Lady smiled.

  ‘Those you love are safe – for the moment. But we cannot stay here.’

  Caradawc groaned at that moment and Viviane clambered over the rocks to him and gathered him in her arms, his head falling back against her shoulder, unconscious. She looked up in distress.

  ‘He will live,’ the Lady said softly. ‘He has been through a great strain . . . He is weak now and you must help him.’

  ‘And Idoc?’

  ‘He too must be in your care for a while. He has lost his strength, his confidence . . . and he will fall into despair and try to abandon the Great Journey. If he does so he will be lost in the outer darkness as he intended Caradawc to be. Your love and courage could sustain him until he is ready again to start the upward journey by himself. But can you do this – after what you have suffered through him?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said haltingly. ‘After all, it was not Idoc himself – but that . . . that . . .’

  ‘That being of darkness
you saw was indeed the true enemy, but he would have had no power had Idoc not permitted it – had Idoc not given up his own will to his.’

  ‘Was he destroyed with the tower?’ She shuddered.

  ‘Ah, no – if only it were that simple! He is not mortal. He has been driven off for a while by the strength Idoc found in that moment of truth, but he will be back. He will not leave Idoc alone until he has what he wants, or until Idoc is too strong for him. The forces of darkness do not easily give up their willing human vehicles. If you choose to protect and care for Idoc through this dangerous time, you yourself will be in great danger. But no one demands this of you. It must be your own choice.’

  Viviane lowered her face to Caradawc’s and rested her forehead on his. If only they could go home now and live together as man and wife, forgetting Idoc and his problems. Surely they had done enough to atone for their bitter mistake so many centuries before. The choosing of the dark way had been Idoc’s own mistake. Let him atone for it! But then she remembered the cowering, whimpering shadow she had glimpsed before the tower fell, and she remembered the young Idoc she had loved before he had taken the wrong path. There would be no hope for him if he were left alone. He would either sink downwards in despair and become the least and most hopeless of beings, or he would allow the creature of darkness back and become a potent force for evil once again. With her, he might stand a chance of recovering his own will and his own dignity.

  Her love had not died. She could not leave him.

  Her tears fell on Caradawc’s pale cheek. She loved them both. What would her staying with Idoc mean to Caradawc?

  Sadly she lifted her face to the Lady.

  ‘I will help him,’ she said simply. ‘But must I be alone?’

  ‘You are never alone,’ she replied quietly, ‘but what you will be trying to do this time is one of the most difficult tasks on earth . . . to halt the force that drives a soul on the downward spiral, to turn that soul and start it on the upward spiral. You will have every dark being in the universe against you.’

  ‘How can I possibly . . .?’ Viviane began despairingly. The shining beings behind the Green Lady had disappeared and she felt it would not be long before she too was gone.

  ‘There is something that would be of great help to you,’ the beautiful Earth Spirit said. ‘And to me,’ she added in a thoughtful undertone. ‘But to find it will not be easy.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘It is an emerald. It was once fixed in the crown of the great archangel Lucifer, the Star of Morning, before he chose to rebel against the Most High and set up his own kingdom. It fell from his crown and without it he can never return; and without it his archangelic power can never be complete.’

  ‘An emerald like the ones we have here on earth?’ asked Viviane in astonishment.

  ‘No – but when you see it, you will see it as though it were an emerald of this earth.’

  ‘How can this emerald help me to save Idoc?’ Viviane asked wonderingly.

  ‘When Lucifer lost it, he lost the ability to see with the range and the clarity of an archangel. He took on the limitations of a much lower being. Whoever finds it would be able to see the whole pattern of creation in all its splendour. Whoever finds it would know truth directly.’

  There was something in the Lady’s eyes . . . a sadness . . . a longing.

  ‘Have you ever seen it?’ Viviane asked softly. The Green Lady held out her hand – slender and green as a leaf – and regarded it thoughtfully. ‘Once,’ she replied dreamily. ‘Once I wore it on my finger.’ Viviane waited almost without breathing for her to continue. ‘The earth was paradise in those days – all things in harmony . . .’ She fell silent, and a tear like an emerald itself appeared in her sad eye.

  ‘What happened?’ breathed Viviane.

  ‘I gave it as a gift to the one I loved,’ she murmured. ‘But he . . . he did not appreciate it. He exchanged it for a sword. All things became disordered then and out of harmony . . .’

  Viviane hardly dared ask the next question, but a feeling that she knew the answer was growing in her.

  ‘His name?’ she breathed,

  ‘Ny-ak,’ whispered the Lady. ‘Ny-ak who overshadows Idoc. Ny-ak who believes that he can rule the earth by denying everything that makes the earth live.’

  Viviane shivered. She had believed that what was happening to her and Idoc was important – but now she knew it was only a small part of a much greater drama.

  The Lady reached out her arms to Viviane, and her expression was full of love and tenderness, her voice like the sound of a spring in a deep green forest.

  ‘Child, those shining beings who were here have told me that the time may be right for the emerald to be found again – and that you may be the one to find it.’

  ‘May be?’

  ‘I know no more than that. Success in finding it depends on a delicate balance of many different energies. There can be no certainty.’

  ‘And the emerald – if I find it, how will I use it?’

  ‘When you find it, you will know,’ came the quiet answer.

  ‘Will it be more powerful than the crystals I have already had?’

  The Lady smiled as though this were a foolish question.

  Viviane swallowed hard. She was afraid.

  The Lady touched her gently on the head, and her fear was gone. Peace flowed through her like a silver stream.

  ‘Come,’ the Lady said softly, ‘gather up the two you love, and leave this place. It is not safe to remain here any longer.’

  Viviane looked down at Caradawc, about to protest that she could not possibly bear his weight alone, and found to her delight that he was regaining consciousness.

  ‘Can you stand? Do you feel all right?’ She helped him up and he managed to stand, leaning heavily on her. He gazed around in awe at the piles of tumbled rock, the remnants of the shattered tower. The Green Lady was no longer visible, but the faithful Hunydd was cropping grass not far away, as though nothing untoward had happened.

  ‘We must first find Idoc – then we must leave,’ she said. ‘Can you stand alone?’

  ‘Idoc must surely have been destroyed . . .’

  ‘No – and we must take him with us.’

  ‘Why, in God’s name, should we do that?’

  ‘It’s a long story, and I’ll tell you when we’ve time. But meanwhile trust me – we have to find him.’

  Caradawc looked around helplessly at the debris. ‘He could be anywhere under there!’

  She stood still and tried to remember something she had once known, long ago, which she had almost lost. Gradually . . . faintly . . . it came back to her. She remembered that the vibration of the sound of any name on the ‘conscious’ plane could be used in a calling-spell if you could match it with the correct vibrations from the ‘super-conscious’ plane. On that plane there are no barriers to the flow of thought from one being to another.

  Tentatively at first, then gaining in confidence, she chanted the spell that contained Idoc’s name . . .

  Hunydd lifted her head and listened. Caradawc frowned, wondering if he should trust her, knowing how she had once loved Idoc.

  There was a strange stillness as though every living creature had paused in what it was doing and was listening . . . The spider, the tiny ant, the brown and fibrous roots of grass and bush . . . everything . . . even the crystals in the rocks . . .

  Idoc heard it too, and rose groaning from the dark and dusty cleft in which he had been lying. He was hardly recognizable to them. There was something of the form and features he had possessed when they had both known him in those ancient days, but now so shrivelled, so twisted, so hunched and cowering, that he appeared to be half their size. He covered his head as though he expected a blow.

  Viviane went over to him and held out her hand.

  ‘Come,’ she said quietly.

  * * * *

  For Olwen the night was a restless one. The storm threatened but never quite broke. She lay on the
straw in the barn loft and stared into the darkness. At one time they all sat up, startled, as the silence of the oppressive night was shattered by a violent and unusual sound which set the horses to pulling at their tethers, and the cows to lowing and jostling against the barn doors. But as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come, it passed, and the animals and humans settled down again. She could hear Cai and Elined murmuring to each other, and then the rhythmic creak of the loft joists as they made love. She turned her face to the wall, very much aware that Gerin was lying not far from her.

  At last, exhausted and with tears against her cheek, she fell into an uneasy sleep.

  Just before dawn she woke suddenly, her heart pounding, wondering where she was. She was cold and uncomfortable, and the arm she had been lying on was numb. She felt that she was being watched and sat up to look around.

  The patch of sky seen through the square window at the end of the loft was no longer as dark as before. Were the others awake too? She peered into the darkness and could just make out Gerin’s shoulder, but his breathing was deep and there was no sign of his waking. The others were deeper into the loft, where it was too dark to see, and there was no sound or movement from any of them. No, she felt very strongly that there was someone else present.

  She thought of calling out, asking whoever it was to reveal themselves. Then she noticed a kind of glow hovering by the main beam that held up the roof. She peered intently as it began to take on shape. Was she imagining it or could she dimly make out three forms? The glow intensified and at the centre of it she could now quite clearly see the figures of three young women. There was something unearthly about them, their skin pearl-white, their features identical. On each head was a crown: one of silver, one of gold, and one of leaves and flowers.

  They reached out their hands to her, the fine, almost transparent silver fabric of their robes falling from their outstretched arms like the water of a waterfall. As they opened their mouths to speak, she leant forward eagerly to catch what they were about to say. But suddenly the barn door below them crashed open, and the farmer’s harsh voice shouted that it was time for them to be up and about their business. The herdboy was with him and began to whistle out the cows.