The Fall (The Last Druid Trilogy Book 1)

by Glen L. Hall

  ‘It is time for you to go. The Grim-were has found your boat and will be here soon.’

  ‘But where are we? What is this place?’ It was Emily who had woken first from her dream.

  ‘A place that is not for meant for the living. Follow the stream and it will bring you back safely to the wood. In the uplands, the orchard will find you.’

  * * * * * *

  They walked for a while, each with their own thoughts. It was Sam who spoke first.

  ‘I think it’s safe to say that this has been an interesting walk in the woods.’

  Emily laughed. ‘I still don’t quite know what happened back there,’ she said softly, ‘but I feel invigorated somehow. Whether it was the old man or the water…’

  ‘I’m just glad he is on our side,’ Sam added. ‘It feels at long last that the Shadow has an equal.’

  They carried on following the stream, but it wasn’t long before it disappeared underneath a steep slope thick with trees.

  ‘What now?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Let’s go up.’

  When they had scrambled to the top, they realised they had climbed a hill that looked out over Birling Wood. The night sky was ablaze with starlight. To the north they could see the faint twinkle of Alnmouth, though to the south Amble harbour was nothing more than an obscure haze.

  ‘Where’s the orchard?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sam, but listen.’

  From east to west, the wood was beginning to stir, coming alive with sound and movement. Horses were neighing and gruff voices were drifting on the air. On the far slope, shadowy figures on horseback were emerging from the wood in long lines.

  ‘Quick, Emily, this way!’

  But it was too late. Figures on horseback were approaching from all sides. There were hundreds in number and not all were men. Most sat astride their horses without saddles and used only coarse-looking reins. These people were unmistakable.

  ‘Forest Reivers,’ Emily whispered.

  Then a voice was calling for them to be silent.

  A SHADOW ON THE WALL

  He had said his final farewell on the edge of the Jedburgh road. Now a cool wind soothed his scarred face as he walked across the darkening landscape. He had cleared his mind of all emotions and could feel the flow tingling through his fingers as the cards flashed from hand to hand. He was going south as Brennus and Jarl went east. He had to make the hunt last as long as possible to give them time to reach the Dead Water.

  He had resolved to seek out the Faerie who dwelt in the crags in the wildest parts of Hadrian’s Wall. He had kept this hidden from Brennus, for he wasn’t sure what his reception would be. She was one of the Three that Oscar had mentioned in his message to Sam, the three daughters of the Dagda. They had fought alongside the Keepers over a century ago, but the alliance had long been broken.

  Twilight flowed across the Northumberland landscape like sand falling through glass. He had been walking for near on ten hours, a slight figure trudging through field and valley. Stopping beside a line of trees, hidden from any watchful eyes in the sky, he took a long drink of water from a small flask. He leaned against the firm bark of an oak tree and looked around him.

  From his vantage point he could see the ridge he had just descended. Down below, Chollerford was falling into darkness. He had to decide whether to take the stone bridge that crossed directly into the village or the stepping stones that were all that remained of Chester Bridge, which crossed the river half a mile south in the crumbling remains of a Roman fort.

  He noticed the wind was now blowing from the north and he scented an autumn storm approaching from the borderlands. He was still alone, but this would change, for the Shadow would come. That was as inevitable as the changing seasons. Taking a deep breath, he moved out into the open.

  The years he had spent with the Forest Reivers had prepared him well. He had journeyed through their forest homes deep in the borders, places where none of the old ways were inked in on the maps. He had been Eagan Reign’s mentor, the one who had first introduced him to the ways of the Reivers, for Brennus had believed Eagan to be the one. The boy could feel the flow, could use it to his advantage, and was one of the few who could enter the Garden of Druids. Both he and Brennus had come to believe that the flow was in the boy’s blood, but it was a different skill Eagan possessed, one that he could barely control. Drust remembered the boy’s pain at being told that he could no longer live in the lights of the city, that he must retire to the woods and hills of Northumberland, away from questions and prying eyes, a place where his secret would go unnoticed.

  He climbed the last fence and could hear the river in the distance. To his left, there was just a suggestion of the arched splendour of the village bridge as the night drew in. He approached the fast-flowing river with caution. He had never crossed the stepping stones in darkness.

  He had used the land and a little of his magic to hide his passing, but he would stand little chance against the enemy in this place and without help. Whether that help would remember him was debatable. But there was a part of him that did not want this week to be his last.

  He stopped at the edge of the river, where he could feel the current moving swiftly below the surface. It was wide, for this was the Tyne surging down from the Northumberland hills and nothing would stop its journey to Tynemouth in the east. He stood there for a while listening to the water flowing, breathing deeply, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He could just make out the first stepping stone, no more than four feet away, thrusting its jagged peak out of the noisy river.

  His focus was suddenly pricked by a fluttering feeling that passed through and over him. He instinctively flattened himself against the ground, his hand going quickly to the long knife that was his weapon of choice. He kept his breathing slow and steady. The feeling returned. It was as if a giant dark light had passed over the field from one end to the other, sweeping across every nook and cranny.

  He didn’t allow whatever was searching a third attempt, but rolled upright and without a second thought leaped for the broken stone, scrambling to stay in the centre of it as all around him the river swept past, throwing up icy spray.

  He could see the second stepping stone now and realised it was slightly lower in the water. He would have to be careful not slip or he would be in the river in an instant.

  The dark light from the field swept across him like the gentle breeze from a hundred butterflies circling around him, a fine spider’s web caught in the wind. He felt himself trying to wipe it from his face. But no sooner had the feeling disappeared than a second crept across him and he knew the Shadow had found him.

  He held onto the stepping stone in the darkness, looking back towards the shallow bank, whilst every now and again the fast-flowing water spilled over the stone, spraying water into the air. He couldn’t help but smile at his predicament. Had he really expected to outpace such an enemy? An enemy that had easily swept him aside in Oxford? He and Brennus had only survived that night because they hadn’t been the prey, but that had now changed.

  As he leaped, his feet slipped ever so slightly and he landed heavily on the second stepping stone, but his strength allowed him to balance on its rough surface even whilst his eyes searched for movement on the far bank. He had hoped to at least have reached the wall before revealing himself, but as he clung to the wet stone, he brought the flow to his hands, weaving a thin veil between himself and whatever was hunting him.

  Instantly something shuddered against it, sending sparks sizzling into the fast-flowing waters and nearly making him lose his footing. In that second, balancing on the hard stone whilst trying to resurrect his shattered spell, he wondered again how Sam had stood against the Shadow at Magdalen.

  He didn’t linger on such thoughts, but threw himself into the darkness and the thick mist that now covered him from head to foot. His timing was perfect as he leaped to the t
hird, fourth and then fifth stepping stones whilst his hands tingled and burned as they found a way to make him invisible. He stood there in the night like a shadow himself, perhaps the most powerful since Oscar, for no one could speak to the flow like him. It was he who had driven back the crow-men in the reading room. But recently, he had been amazed by Sam. He’d never seen the flow so powerful in one so young.

  When he’d first met Sam at Magdalen, it was clear he was his father’s son. It wasn’t just his flaming red hair, blue eyes and physical size that gave it away, it was something far more subtle – a slight dance of light that played around his hands, an ability to see things. He had seemed unaware of it, but then Brennus had related how the flow had presented itself to him as a blend of colours and the voices of the Magdalen choir the afternoon before Oscar had appeared to him.

  They had been at a complete loss as to how the Shadow had let him live that night, first beneath the Fellows’ House and then before the gates of Magdalen. None of it made any sense, and when the first wave of relief had dissipated, the searching questions had started.

  He believed Sam would go on to be far more powerful than any of those who had been sent to teach and protect him. If only he could reach the Faerie tonight, perhaps they could face this enemy together and he could live long enough to see Sam come to maturity.

  He was breathing heavily now as he landed on the sixth stepping stone and scrambled for footing on its ragged surface. He was still regaining his feet when the blast shattered his spell into a thousand tiny flares that hissed as they hit the dark waters.

  The force took him by surprise. Shaking the dizziness from his head, he peered back across the stepping stones. He was visible now, but the Shadow was no longer pursuing him in the physical world, it was searching for his connection beneath its surface.

  He leaped for the last stone and fell hard against its sharp sides, clinging to it as the cold waters of the Tyne whipped through his legs, threatening to sweep him away. Wet and half-stunned, he dragged himself onto the stone’s slippery surface. Then the next shuddering vibration knocked him clean into the fast-flowing waters.

  For a moment panic gripped him as the current dragged him beneath the surface and the river tried to swallow him whole. But then he was breaking the surface, gasping, choking, holding onto the long reeds that lined the riverbank and pulling himself slowly towards the shallow embankment.

  He hauled himself onto the muddy bank, but there was no time to rest. He felt the shock pounding him through him, but still he managed to call softly to a flow that had never been part of the river. He wasn’t prepared to be found just yet. He wanted one more night of freedom.

  He had emerged from the river no more than thirty feet from the stepping stones, and although night had descended on Chollerford, the enemy was physically distant. He took a deep breath and shivered in his wet clothes. He still had some time.

  As he ran from the edge of the river towards the remains of Chesters Fort, the heavens were gleaming with an infinite dance of stars. Briefly, he wondered whether he would ever see them again. He came to the Roman ruins, a place of haunting stone walls, their history now lost in time’s endless arrow, and passed ghostlike amongst the ancient remnants, his hands now flashing white.

  It was no accident he was travelling through this place. Long after the Romans had departed, a great battle had been fought here between a Northumbrian army led by Oswald of Bernicia and an army from Wales. It was well known to the Keepers that that had not in fact been a Welsh army, but something far more sinister. The Northumbrians had been joined by Forest Reivers and there had been others amongst their ranks whose names were better left unspoken. The battle had raged for several days along the line of the wall and it would be here that he would join it, for the murmur of the fallen would make it difficult for the Shadow to see through the flow.

  As he emerged from the crumbling fort, cold and tired, directly ahead was Walwick Hall, with its magnificent circular lawns and watchful turrets. He would have liked to have spent the night there, perhaps taken a stroll through the walled garden that reminded him of the Fellows’ Garden where he had spent so much of the summer, but there would be no peace tonight, only the dance of the hunter and hunted.

  Across the scented lawns he ran. The main house was in darkness, save for the odd light here and there and the red stone of the walled garden glowing from behind a line of horse chestnuts. He passed through a long archway of wisteria and was showered by the purple rain of a thousand floating petals that popped and fizzed beneath his feet in an autumn chorus.

  He emerged on the far side of the gardens through a small grove that opened back out onto the Northumberland night. Not more than a hundred feet away was Hadrian’s Wall, not looking like a wall here but a mound of earth. Many books had been written about the wall originally being built to keep out the barbarians in the north and Drust had often wondered whether those barbarians had ever truly originated in Scotland. He knew the wall was eighty miles from sea to sea and in its day there had been fortlets or milecastles all along it. In the darkness he could feel its presence and he shivered at its scale and age.

  He followed a line of trees that initially concealed nothing more than the slight indentation in the ground where this part of the wall had once stood. It had long been removed, but to the west, the wall still stood on a steep set of ridges. It was here he would seek out the old man’s daughter, on the edge of the fort known as the Vercovicium, the place of good fighters, Housesteads as it was called in English. It was said she had chosen to live there in isolation from the world.

  To the north the sky had gone black, its flickering stars obscured by dark clouds. The wind was rising and it wasn’t long before the first raindrops were beginning to fall.

  Drust was leaving the shimmering lights of Chollerford and Walwick behind. Ahead, the vast Northumberland landscape opened up on either side of him and for a brief moment he felt alone and naked in the darkness.

  He took little comfort from the scarred earth where the wall had once stood. The wall had been built atop a leyline and its force was distant, but aware of him running through the gully’s centre, and uneasy voices were softly calling his name through the wind and rain.

  He was moving west into a barren vista where the dark sky blended with the rolling hills of Simonburn. The rain was falling harder and harder and he was still wet from the river. As the first signs of the wall made themselves known, he shook his dark curls out of his eyes, wrapped his arms around himself and quickened his pace.

  He had been walking for a couple of hours when the wall turned sharply west and he knew that he had reached Limestone Corner. He couldn’t be more than ten miles from his destination. The wall had crept up through the ground without him noticing and was standing silently in the night, and he was thankful that he could walk through a thin copse of trees that shielded him from the gathering storm.

  He was tired and his already wet clothing was giving him little protection against the driving rain by the time he at last came to the place that he knew was the beginning of the end. No more than half a mile away was the ruined fort at Carrawburgh, though it was lost at the moment in the swirling rain. It was here that he would no longer fight to keep the Shadow from finding his resonance in the flow.

  He stood under a large ash tree, wiping the stinging rain from his eyes, and for a moment he couldn’t help but think about Brennus and all he had worked for.

  Standing there, he could feel his fear trying to unlock his resolve. If the Faerie would not help, he would fall as all men feared – alone and afraid.

  He took a deep breath and left the shelter of the tree. The wind was whipping the rain into long sheets in the pitch-black night. The icy droplets, driven down from the north, were filled with an electric charge he could not identify.

  It took him a while before he found what he was looking for. At last he stood beside what had once
been a temple to the water goddess Coventina.

  There he turned and faced the way he’d come, buffeted by the squall and unable to hear himself think above the raging wind. He clasped his hands together and started gently humming, feeling the flow swelling up, amplified by his position alongside the temple. It wasn’t long before the Otherland opened up to him and time dropped away and mattered no more. He stood with his hands burning bright and the storm’s fury crashing down all around him, then dropped to one knee, his body drained by the exertion, and waited for an answer.

  There was no time passing, only the entangled now of the between places. There were others in this place whose presence he could feel. Far to the north a great light flickered, whilst to the west there was the realisation that no storm could stop him from arriving here. Then everything was shut out as cold terror answered his call. It came like the call of a blue whale beneath the seas, a long mournful sound vibrating through the Otherland.

  Drust fell forward, feeling blood running from his nose, and found himself on all fours back in the tempest. The Shadow was close. It had crossed the river.

  He sat back on his ankles, blood running down his face. Strength was refusing to return to his body, but he staggered dizzily to his feet and began moving forward, step by step, the cold rain waking him from his stupor.

  He found the wall again, bent his head into the wind and went on as quickly as his legs would carry him. Two miles and he would be through Sewingshields and onto the crags themselves. He would have to navigate the Knag Burn Gate, but just beyond it he would make his stand, with or without help.

  He had staunched the blood from his nose, but the front of his jacket had turned red, the biting wind was buried deep within him and he could feel himself shaking. He didn’t turn around again, for he would know when the enemy was close by, but kept to the wall, trying to quicken his pace but stumbling every now and then, for there were hidden ditches.