Emily Rodda - The Third Door

He knelt by the pool, drew the disc from his pocket and held it high. As the disc’s surface rippled, the water rippled too.

‘What must I do?’ he asked quietly.

Instantly, the ripples in the pool formed themselves into words.

‘What does it mean?’ Sonia whispered. ‘Whose heart must we guard?’

Rye swallowed. ‘I think … this is the heart,’ he said. ‘The heart of Dorne. The Fell Zone.’

He looked over his shoulder. Farr was a dark shadow at the edge of the clearing. The chieftain was watching, no doubt, but he would not be able to see the words in the pool from where he stood.

And even if Farr could see them, they would not change his mind. To Farr, they would be nothing but an attempt by the Fellan to avoid attack without making any promises.

And perhaps that was all they were. Perhaps the feeling of rightness Rye had felt as he looked down into the pool was just another Fellan trick.

Rye turned back to the pool, disappointment sour in his stomach. The words had faded away. The water was mirror smooth again, and all he could see in it was the dim, mysterious reflection of his own face.

The floating image seemed to mock him. He could not bear it. On impulse he swept the bell tree stick through it, and with fierce satisfaction saw it vanish as the surface of the pool shivered into a thousand broken ripples.

The Sign. At last …

The words of the Fellan hissed in his mind like a gust of cool, tingling breath.

Then his heart gave a great thud. Pictures were forming in the broken water—the ghostly, moving images of three young men with flaming red hair.

The first man was tall, handsome and broad-shouldered. The second was slighter, with secretive eyes and a proud tilt to his head. The third, clearly the youngest, looked eager and loving.

Rye knew who they were. He knew it without a doubt. They were the three sorcerer brothers whose tale was told in the ancient book he carried beneath his shirt. Why had their images come here, to him?

The pictures in the water grew sharper. And now Rye could see every fold of the men’s rich cloaks, and every line on the three faces that were so alike and yet so different. He could see that the two older brothers were arguing violently, while the youngest stood silently by. And then, as he watched, the youngest slowly turned, raised a hand beseechingly and looked directly at him.

In panic Rye snatched the stick from the water. Instantly the pictures vanished.

Rye, what is happening?

Rye glanced at Sonia, met her frightened eyes. He realised that she had glimpsed the images in his mind but had seen nothing in the pool—nothing but ripples.

‘Pictures—in the water,’ he managed to say. ‘The three brothers.’

As he spoke, he shivered, remembering the gaze of the youngest brother. And yet … why was he afraid? There had been nothing unfriendly in those steady eyes, nothing threatening in that raised hand. There had only been appeal—mute, urgent appeal.

Plainly something was wanted of him. There was something he had to see—something he had to know.

He looked at the stick hanging, dripping, in his hand. Between the finger and thumb of the same hand he held the disc, the charm he had hoped would save them all.

But the charm had not called the images into the water. The stick had done that—the bell tree stick, so smooth, fitting his hand so well. He had carried it from home, carried it all this way. It had not been much of a weapon. But he had kept it with him anyway, and now he knew why.

We were given three signs by which we would know the one we awaited, the Fellan Edelle had said, when she had given him the bag of powers.

Three signs. The third and last had been that Rye could drink from the pool called Dann’s Mirror. But what of the other two? Rye had been so sure Edelle was mistaken, and the magic she was giving him was intended for someone else, that he had not bothered to think about what they might have been.

Now he did. And now, remembering some of the other things the Fellan beyond the golden Door had said, he felt he knew.

The first sign had been that he had brought magic with him—Sonia, in whose veins the blood of the Fellan ran so strongly. And the second had been that he carried a stick from a bell tree—the rare little tree that the Sorcerer Dann had loved and used as his emblem.

The stick was a symbol, and by it the Fellan had known him. The serpents of Oltan had known him by it, too, when he had held it high on the rock of sacrifice, the magic scale glimmering in the palm of his other hand. The beast at Fell End had recoiled from it. The gold and silver Doors had known it, and at its touch had opened to let him back into Weld.

‘Here,’ Rye said, thrusting the disc at Sonia. She took it in surprise but very gladly, her eyes lighting up as if reflecting the charm’s magic gleam. In her hand it shone more brilliantly than ever, its surface changing rapidly from blue to green, green to blue, and if it was burning her fingers she made no sign of it.

And Rye took a firmer grip on the bell tree stick and plunged it again into the pool.

21 - The Three Brothers

The water began to swirl in broad circles as if Rye had stirred it. It swirled as if it was rushing down a drain, round and round till it made a funnel that reached down into the pool’s depths. Around the edges of the funnel the water was churned into foam. But deep in the centre there was a still, round space where terrible pictures flickered.

The two older sorcerer brothers were duelling in a great room where the dead body of an old man lay in state. Their shadows leaped wildly on the walls as killing spells flashed fire and the flames of the tall candles around the bier bent and flared.

Rye’s heart was beating so fast that he could hardly breathe. He pressed the hand that held the light crystal to his chest. The ruined book beneath his shirt seemed to warm. And suddenly words floated into his mind—words he had never read, but which now came to him as if he could see them before his eyes.

When Chieftain Perry died, it was understood that Annoltis, his eldest son, would take his place as leader, for Annoltis was dearly loved by the people. But Malverlain, the second son, was bitterly jealous. He believed that his great knowledge of dark sorcery gave him the right to rule, and cursed the fools who preferred his brother to him. In his rage he attacked Annoltis, intending murder.

Annoltis. Malverlain. Those names … Rye’s scalp crawled. Beside him, Sonia had become unnaturally still. He could not have shielded his mind even if he had wanted to, and he knew she was sharing his visions, seeing the names through him.

He saw the eldest brother beaten back. He saw the savage triumph on the face of the sorcerer Malverlain change to shock as a shadow moved to the staggering Annoltis’s side. Again words shone in his mind.

But Malverlain had forgotten that he did not have one brother only, but two. He had forgotten Eldannen, the youngest, whose quiet ways masked a power that was very great. Eldannen’s bond with the Fellan was as strong as Malverlain’s own secret dread of them, and the Fellan had taught him well. When Eldannen joined Annoltis in battle, Malverlain was lost.

Eldannen. His mind whirling in confusion, Rye saw Malverlain fleeing into exile in a boat with a grey sail marked in red. He saw the eldest brother and the youngest standing on the shore, holding the banishing spell between them. He saw the people creeping out of hiding, rejoicing because they had been saved and their beloved Annoltis was triumphant.