At its touch, wild shadows from the plundered fur-niture danced desperately about the walls of the room as if, empowered by the spirits of their erstwhile owners, they were attempting to flee this terrible place.
Marna watched in fearful fascination. It must have been something like this that Gryss and the others had been shown on the day of Farnor’s disappearance. She clung to such calmness as she could, but she was becoming increasingly uncertain about the outcome of this frightening demonstration.
Then the flame drew near to her, stopping scarcely an arm’s length away from her. She could feel the heat of it, and she cringed away, only to find the wall at her back. Rannick turned towards her but the flame was too bright for her to see his face, and she saw only the reflections of the flame in his eyes, gleaming out of his dark silhouette.
‘Touch it, touch it,’ he said, a strange, expectant tension in his voice.
She looked into the two bright lights that were his eyes. ‘Touch it,’ he repeated, adding softly, ‘Trust me, Marna. Trust me.’
She had no choice, she knew. Holding her breath, and tensed to jerk her hand back on the instant, she reached out hesitantly.
Her fingers curled into a loose fist involuntarily.
‘Go on. Go on.’ Rannick’s encouragement was ur-gent.
In the jagged silence of the room, she heard the flame fluttering and hissing. It was like the gloating breath of some primitive animal. A faint but bitingly acrid smell struck at the back of her throat, and for an instant a sense of the dreadful unnaturalness of Rannick’s creation almost overwhelmed her. She fought the sensation back and somehow pushed her hand nearer to the flickering flame.
‘Yes,’ Rannick whispered, drawing out the word to mingle with the sound of the flame. ‘Touch it.’
Gritting her teeth, Marna willed her fingers to open. Her hand flinched back as it neared the flame, but, fearful of Rannick’s response, she forced it forward.
Abruptly, although she did not see it move, the flame was around her hand. Frantically, she tried to jerk it back, but it would not respond. Her throat would not form the scream ringing inside her as she stared in horror at her hand, pale and distant, and shimmering with cascades of light that flowed round and round it before tumbling away into some unknown place.
Yet even though she could still feel the heat of the flame on her face she realized that there was no burning. Instead there was a sensation that she could hardly describe. It was as if her hand were somewhere else, somewhere different in every way from where she was, not only to this flickering circular room, but to the whole castle, the whole valley, everything. Again, the unnaturalness of what was happening rose like gorge inside her, threatening to disorientate her completely.
‘Aah!’ Rannick’s rapturous sigh saved her teetering awareness and she tore her eyes away from her transfigured hand to look at the shadowy form of her captor. ‘I knew you could,’ he said, before she could speak. ‘I knew you’d understand.’
‘What have you done, Rannick?’ Her throat throbbed with the pain of speaking, it was so taut and parched.
‘See…’ was the reply.
Marna turned again to her hand. Abruptly the flame shrank, and the room filled with a soft, high-pitched whistling that to Marna seemed, like her hand, to be in some other place.
Then there was only her hand, the flame flickering about it as though it were a many-jewelled glove caught in a great blaze of light. She moved and flexed her hand, fascination gradually replacing her terror. Unlike a glove however, the flame was caressing her hand gently and rhythmically, just as Rannick had done to her shoulder.
And again she was at once repelled and attracted.
Slowly the flame continued to shrink, until there was only a dazzlingly bright ring about her third finger. It was achingly beautiful and, without thinking, she reached out to touch it with her other hand. Before she reached it, however, the ring floated from her finger and moved towards Rannick.
As his outstretched hand closed about it, the bright circle sent out shafts of white light between his fingers to divide the gloomy darkness of the room. Then, as if further escape were impossible, it seemed to spread through his entire body so that, for a brief instant, he stood like some eerie, translucent, inner-lit statue, with an almost unbearable brightness shining from his eyes and his slightly opened mouth.
Then it was gone, and an empty silence hung in the room.
‘There is no limit to what can be now,’ Rannick said very softly. ‘And you will share it with me, Marna. We shall rule all.’ His voice became urgent and earnest. ‘Marna, we can do such things together. We will do such things.’
Do as he tells you!
Never!
Her eyes adjusting to the gloom, Marna saw his hands rising to take hold of her again. Desperately she seized his wrists. ‘You must give me more time, Rannick,’ she said breathlessly, reverting to her earlier plea. ‘I’m more bewildered than ever now. Everything’s happened so quickly. Only a few minutes ago I couldn’t even have imagined what I’ve just seen. Now I’m just…’ She stopped, her head drooping.
‘The merest toy,’ Rannick interjected quickly. ‘I can do countless such tricks. But my true power lies far far beyond such trifles as that.’
Inspiration coming to her, Marna nodded, and shook his arms insistently both to acknowledge this boast and to press home her own concerns. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But with this… power… that you have, you can choose your own time for everything you want to do. No one can tell you when this must be, or that must be. You are total master of events. You’ve grown used to all this over months – years, for all I know. You can surely allow me a little time to…’ She smiled self-deprecatingly. ‘… to get my breath back.’
For a moment, she felt that she was standing next to the old Rannick, the much-despised Rannick for whom she had felt sorry and in whom she thought she had seen glimpses of a nobler nature. There was a tense silence. She released his wrists.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Rannick replied eventually, though there was an uneasy tension in his voice.
Marna drove her fingernails into her palms sav-agely, to prevent her sudden elation from reaching her eyes.
The familiar Rannick vanished, to be replaced by this alien figure clothed in his form, who had brought such horror to the valley. ‘Tell Nilsson to take you home,’ he said, as if he had suddenly lost interest. ‘I’ll send him for you tomorrow evening. Be ready then.’
He laid his hand on her cheek affectionately. The interest had returned in full measure. ‘Tomorrow will be a rare night, Marna. A rare night.’ He bent forward and kissed her on the mouth.
His lips were unexpectedly soft and their touch gentle…
As he drew further away from Uldaneth and deeper into the trees, Farnor’s darker preoccupations began to hold sway over him again. Increasingly, his anger at the futility of this whole journey was held in check only by his desire to discover more about the power that he apparently possessed. Despite this however, the aura of his surroundings began to impinge on him. The trees were larger than any he had ever seen before: massive in girth and stretching up into a canopy higher by far than he would have believed possible. And although he could see little of the sky, yet the place was remarkably light.
Such part of him as whispered in awe in the pres-ence of such magnificence however, was the merest sigh amid the turbulence of his feelings.
After a while, he stopped and took out his lodespur. ‘Which way do you want me to go?’ he asked sourly.
The silence which had hovered about him for so much of his journey changed in texture. He knew that they were close about him again, though this time the silent presence was different. It was as though some deep bass note were sounding, far below anything that could be heard. It seemed to resonate through his entire body.
‘We do not understand, Far-nor,’ a voice replied. It was at once similar and very different from the voice that had spoken to him before.