‘For your legs, maybe,’ he replied, sourly, setting aside his musings. ‘But I thought I told you to stay behind,’ he said.
‘You did,’ Farnor admitted. ‘But there’s no point me keeping watch if you can’t hear me shouting, is there?’
Gryss raised his eyebrows significantly at this at-tempt to hold what he regarded as an indefensible position.
‘Anyway, I’m here now,’ Farnor went on. ‘Let’s go inside.’
‘I’ll go inside, young man,’ Gryss said firmly. ‘You can do as you’re told for once, and wait out here with the horse.’ He gave Farnor a look that forbade any defiance then swung down gracelessly from the horse, which skittered slightly as he jostled against it to recover his balance. Farnor took the bridle and murmured softly to the horse.
Gryss gave a terse grunt of thanks and marched over to the wicket door.
The damage that had been done to the lock when Nilsson and his men had first arrived had been crudely repaired. Gryss smiled to himself. Unused to locked doors, it occurred to him only now that all the heart-searching about coming here might well have been pointless. Was it likely, after all, he reflected, that such people as these would have left the place unlocked?
Tentatively he pushed it. To his surprise, it swung open easily.
Farnor, holding the horse and strolling slowly after him, watched his cautious approach. As the door opened and a small part of the courtyard, beyond the dark shade under the archway, came into view it seemed to him that there was something unreal about it; unnatural, even. Without knowing why, he stepped forward urgently.
‘Gryss, don’t go in!’ he shouted.
But it was too late. Gryss, after leaning in and look-ing round for any signs of life, had, almost incongruously, tiptoed in.
Immediately, the door slammed shut. The sound filled Farnor’s head like the tolling of a great bell. He clapped his hands to his ears.
The horse whinnied and reared, tearing itself free from Farnor’s loose grip. It galloped away, but Farnor did not notice. He was running towards the wicket door, drawn on desperately by the sounds which were beginning to emanate from behind it.
Then the sound of a roaring wind began to fill the air, rising and falling like some demented creature. And through it came the sound of powerful blows being struck: echoing, booming sounds, as if a giant smith were forging a huge shield. And, threading through the whole, a high-pitched shrieking.
Farnor felt his legs – his whole being – become leaden as he forced himself forward. It seemed as though the gate were at the end of a long tunnel and that it retreated from him as fast as he ran towards it.
‘No!’ he heard himself shouting distantly, partly in fear, partly in denial.
Faint though it was, the cry shattered the strange, disorientating illusion and he found himself standing before the wicket. He hammered on it frantically. The sound of his blows swelled and rose to mingle with the pounding din coming from within. Farnor felt as though he was trapped in the middle of a grotesque quarrel between two demented drummers. And still the sound of the roaring wind overtopped all with the shrill shrieking weaving in and out of the tumult.
Farnor struck three double-handed blows on the gate shouting, ‘Gryss, Gryss!’
Then, a spark of reason shone through his frenzy. He mustn’t panic, he must think. He ran his hands over the smooth, planed surface of the wicket. He tried to remember what kind of a lock it had. Surely it couldn’t have locked itself? But he could not remember clearly; too many thoughts were cascading through his mind. What was happening to Gryss? What would his father say about his neglect in allowing the old man to enter the castle alone? What would Nilsson do if he returned to find Gryss locked in there? What was that fearful noise…?
He stepped back from the gate with a view to charg-ing it.
As he did so, however, it seemed to him that the wicket was different from the gate which surrounded it. Just as the courtyard had seemed to be in another place when he had briefly glimpsed it before, so too, now, did the wicket.
It was itself, here and now, but it was also something else. Or something had been added to it. Some strange influence pouring through from elsewhere.
And it was no benign influence. It was a terrible harm. A terrible rending of reality. A terrible wound.
Farnor’s whole body shivered with fear at this un-wanted awareness. And, as if the shivering were a birth tremor, he felt something inside him awaken and cry out against this horror; something that he knew nothing of except that it could somehow staunch the wound, stem the flow that was bringing this harm.
No! this inner resolve cried.
No!
Farnor felt as though he had been suddenly jerked wide awake from a twilight doze.
He ran forward and hurled his shoulder against the door.
The wicket door burst open as he struck it and he tumbled headlong out of the sunlight and into the shade of the archway.
He rolled over and clambered frantically to his feet as if expecting to be assailed.
Still he could feel the mysterious resolve inside him setting itself against the harm that was now flowing all around.
He paid it no heed however, for, turning towards the gate, he saw Gryss staggering backwards as if he had been suddenly released from some great pressure. He seized the old man’s arm.
At the same time he realized that the noise… the harm… had weakened…
No, not weakened…
It had… moved away, as if no longer able to reach through…
Farnor turned again and looked across the court-yard. There was nothing untoward to be seen, but the sense that he had had of the yard being both there and yet, at the same time, somewhere else, was still with him though now this duality had a quality of hesitancy about it; a quality of uncertainty – like something unexpect-edly abandoned by a hitherto faithful ally.
Yet it was still there. And it was recovering from whatever had happened to it – gathering momentum. Whirls of dust were beginning to rise and scurry across the finely jointed stone slabs of the yard.
A breath of wind blew in Farnor’s face. He drew back involuntarily. It had a repellent quality to it, full of inquiry like the touch of a probing hand. Then, as if a signal had been received, the noise began to gather again. Abruptly, the dancing dust devils were scattered into a fine, stinging cloud by a powerful gust. It swirled low and shifted around the courtyard then hurled itself directly at Farnor.
He staggered under the impact. A hastily raised hand protected his eyes, but grit blew into his partly open mouth.
As he turned his face from the impact, he saw that the wicket door was starting to close.
The noise grew louder, triumphant.
Farnor tightened his grip on Gryss and unceremo-niously dragged him towards the closing wicket.
He was too slow, however. Gryss staggered, and as Farnor yanked him upright with one hand the wind gusted behind the wicket and slammed it shut, trapping Farnor’s upper arm as he lunged forward.
He cried out in pain at the impact, and then in fear as the wind began to pound into him, pressing him cruelly against the gate and pressing the wicket tighter and tighter against his arm.
Tears filled his eyes, so intense was the pain.
He tried to pull himself free, but then something struck him and he heard, ‘Push, Farnor!’ through the pain. ‘Push! Or you’ll lose your hand, and it’ll have us.
Vaguely he became aware of Gryss’s old hands grip-ping the edge of the wicket and trying to pull it open.