Colin didn't forgive Darach for calling him a child in front of the other two. It had hurt his pride, and he couldn't forget it. The next few days were therefore extremely difficult ones. Colin was almost always broody and silent, and Darach rather quick-tempered. The children wandered in the forest as far as its edge, which was the invisible boundary Darach had set. From the trees' edge they could see other cottages, roads and fields of corn, even rough fortifications in the distant hill-tops. They only went once to the eastern edge of the forest, where the cloud still towered over the mountain-tops, seething and threatening.
Their favourite spot was a small glade on the western edge, for from there, on a clear day, they could just glimpse the sea, glinting far off.
"What would happen if we went down there?" mused Graham one afternoon, as they sat in the shade of the trees, gazing out towards the sea.
"Darach said there's danger down there," said Gwen.
"Danger he won't tell us about," said Colin, remembering the insult. "Danger which probably doesn't even exist."
"Why should he warn us against it then?" asked Gwen
"I don't know," said Colin. "Maybe he's nuts. I mean, he could be, couldn't he? Living here on his own writing his book. We might never move from here if we go on listening to him."
"I thought that," said Graham.
"We're prisoners in this infernal place - just because he says so."
"He said he'd explain, when the time came," said Gwen.
"When we're as old and crabby as him you mean?"
Everyone fell silent for a moment, then Colin said, "Graham?"
"Hmm?"
"You know when you said you'd seen the cloud before?" Silence.
"You remember?"
"Yes."
"What did you see?"
"Blackness. A sort of pit. I can't remember much more. There was a tower, I think, shining."
"What else?"
"Don't push me. I can't remember. It's all confused. I'm sorry Colin, I've tried to remember, often. But I can't."
"Do you think Darach knows?" asked Gwen. "About what's in the cloud?"
"About everything."
"I don't think he knows everything, no," said Graham. "He says he's got a job to do. Keeping us here."
"Well I'm fed up with him and his job. I want to go down there," said Colin.
"Maybe if we asked him -" began Gwen.
"You know what he'd say," said Colin.
"He's right, Gwen. If we ask him he's sure to say no," said Graham.
"Let's go now," said Colin suddenly. "What can he do to stop us? He hasn't got any right."
"Yes," said Graham enthusiastically. "Why not? We won't go far. Just a little way. We might meet some people."
Gwen wasn't sure. Then she looked out from the shadowy forest over the sunlit hills to the sea.
"All right," she said. "It can't do any harm."
They made their way down the hill and came to a winding track that led down into the valley, which they followed. The sun was warm, and the breeze was gentle. In the fields to either side of the track, or upon the hillsides, they saw people working, the brown men naked to the waist, sweating and laughing, the women with jugs of ale to slake the workmen's thirst. In the yard in front of the cottages, wimpled women scattered grain to hens, or shooed pigs, shouting in high voices. The children's dirty jeans and pullovers weren't at all out of key with the rough clothes the farmers were wearing. They could have been taken for local kids with ease.
Once they were across the valley and Darach's forest was well behind them, they began to take full advantage of their newfound freedom. They made a great deal of noise scrambling up the flowered banks to either side of the road and swooping down them. They stopped to talk with an old man who was half-lying in the shadow of tree at the roadside, with his dog beside him, who showed them the quickest way to get to the other side of the valley. Very soon they were climbing the hills beyond which, far off, lay the sea. And it was here they found the field.
When they first came upon the field they could hardly believe it was real. It was a meadow entirely carpeted with buttercups – thousands and thousands of long-stalked buttercups, knee-height, like a yellow sea with the sun on it, shining.
"Look at them!" exclaimed Graham.
"Beautiful," said Gwen.
"That's quite a lot of buttercups."
"You're telling me."
"C'mon," yelled Graham. "Last one there's –"
He never finished his challenge. A moment later they were all scrambling over or through the gate into the field. It was a wonderful feeling, running through the flowers, as if you were floating in a yellow mist. They picked handfuls of flowers to right and left and made chains of them, wearing mock-gold crowns and bracelets for them all.
From the shifting blue shadows of a beech-copse that grew at the edge of the field, unnoticed by the three children, a man sat quite still upon a black horse, watching them, and fingering his sword. Beneath his black helm his face was a face no longer, and in his chest his heart was ice. He was only one of many, sent out to locate the candle-finder and his companions, and once they had been located, to dispose of them. Now the quarry was found, the light that was threatening could be quenched.
Three children. What were they? Three strokes of his huge sword, and the danger was passed.
The young boy had seen him. The horseman flinched.
Graham was standing in the buttercups with flowers in his hair, his eyes now glued to the rider. A deep and growing horror chilled him, as he recognised the shape of the horseman, and saw the bellowing horn that hung at the rider's belt.
"Col–" he said quietly.
"What?"
"There's somebody over there. In those trees."
Colin was sitting in the buttercups, laughing. When he heard the frightened tone of Graham's voice he slowly got up.
"Where?"
"Over there. It's – it's one of the horsemen."
Before Colin could do anything, Gwen, who hadn't been listening to what the boys were saying, but who had also seen the rider, walked across to him.
"Hello," she said simply, planting herself within easy sword's-length of the horseman.
"Gwen – Gwen – don't..." Graham murmured.
"Come here, Gwen," said Colin.
She took no notice.
"Isn't it a beautiful horse," she said delightedly. "You have a very beautiful horse."
The rider said nothing, but sat watching the girl through the eye-slots in his blank helmet. She came even nearer.
"May I stroke him?" she asked.
His gauntleted fist moved to his sword-hilt.
It would be so easy to cut them down where they stood. A single stroke for each.
"It's such a lovely horse. Has it got a name?"
Colin and Graham stood amongst the buttercups as if as deep-rooted as the flowers themselves. Something – fear, perhaps, or the horseman's stare – prevented them from putting one foot in front of the other. The moments passed like hours. Every action seemed to be happening in slow motion.
The horseman began to draw his sword. Dull iron reflected a sunlit field as he pulled it from its scabbard. Gwen didn't notice.
Slowly, slowly, she extended a flower-wreathed arm to stroke the horse. As she did so the horse tossed its head, showing the whites of its eyes. The sword slid from its scabbard, ringing, as the rider fought to quieten his mount.
The flowers were everywhere. They shone in the sunlight, the horrid sunlight, in the girl's hair, in her hands, in her eyes. They suffocated him with their beauty and brightness.
The horseman shrieked! The sound made the hills ring. A sound of unearthly evil. The rider bore down on Gwen, his huge sword raised. But the black horse was seized by uncontrollable panic and reared before the blow could fall.
Gwen staggered back into the beech copse, out of harm's way. By now the rider was in the sunlight, fighting to control his maddened horse, swinging his sword wildly at the boys' heads.
Weaponless, they threw the flowers.
The buttercups seemed to hang in the air, like fragments of the sun. The horse reared again.
The iron-black hooves rose and fell and rose again.
The rider cried out again, but this time it was not a battle cry that left his lips. He was tossed from the saddle by the rearing horse, and fell into the sun-lit buttercups. The terrified horse galloped off, leaving its master groping like a blind man for his sword.
His helm had been thrown off him as he fell, and the boys could see a mane of long black hair that fell across his face and his shoulders. He knelt in the flowers, one hand over his face, the other groping for his sword, making strange whimpering noises as he did so.
Then he shuddered, his noises ceased abruptly. Still clutching his face, he made one final effort to support himself, but his arms buckled beneath him, and he collapsed, facedown, into the flowers.
The moments passed by. He didn't move. "Gwen, are you all right?" murmured Colin.
"Yes – yes –" she replied from the trees, half-weeping.
"The horsemen-" said Graham. "The horsemen who were after the candle. This is one of them."
"We should have listened to Darach," sobbed Gwen.
"Will they find us now?" asked Graham suddenly. "Will they, Col?"
"How should I know?" He stared at the crumpled figure in the flowers.
"What shall we do, Col?"
"Go back to Darach. Come on!"
Colin backed away, taking Gwen's hand, still watching the rider, as if at any moment he might rise up and attack them again.
"What about him?" said Graham, who looked at the horseman as well.
"Leave him."
"Is he dead?"
"I don't know. I don't think he's a man, so maybe he isn't. Maybe things like that don't die."
They climbed the gate slowly, still watching the horsemen and then, once they were out of the field, ran off as fast as they could.
In the meadow behind them, the buttercups swayed in the warm breeze, and the creature with the black mane lay in their midst like a drowned man upon the face of the sea.