The Pale Tower
BEN 
The Pale Tower was a ruin of black stone rising from the earth into the sky like a broken tooth. It stood in the bend of a bay on an island that seemed to consist entirely of craggy rocks. About a mile of sea separated the Gray King’s fortress from the shore.
Ben stood above the bay, looking down at the waves. “I’m not a strong swimmer,” he admitted.
Gwil pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “According to Tegid’s map, there should be a causeway,” he said. “Perhaps we can’t see it right now because the tide is high. Let’s wait until it goes out; then we should be able to walk over.”
Ben glanced at Gwil. “The suspension of your spell ends tonight, doesn’t it?”
Gwil sighed and returned the map to his pocket. “Ah, it won’t be the first time I’ve been outside Fairy Hill past curfew. It’ll be fine.”
Ben could feel doubt gripping his stomach like a cold fist, but Gwil smiled.
“What do you say we find a sheltered spot and have a bite to eat?” Gwil asked.
As dusk fell, they were sitting on the beach, protected from the wind by the surrounding slopes. Bramble and honeysuckle grew above their heads, while gray pebbles stretched down to the sea in front of them. The water came and went in soft waves over the flat stones.
Tegid had packed plenty of provisions, and eating was more than welcome. Ben chewed on a piece of dried apple and looked out toward the Pale Tower. The black castle stood out even more distinctly now against the pink evening sky.
“If there’s a guard up there, he’ll be able to see us, won’t he?” he asked. The rune-carved broomstick was lying at Gwil’s side, and the chair leg was sticking out of Ben’s backpack. He still had a hard time believing that their “weapons” would be of any use.
“The castle in our world is deserted,” answered Gwil. “Only once we open the World Door will we enter the Borderlands.”
“So the castle on the other side of the door isn’t deserted?”
“It wasn’t as long as Arawn was sleeping there. But now he’s awake. He has long since left the fortress behind to search for an open door.” He put his half-eaten roll back into his food bag. “Are you full?”
Ben nodded. Gwil stowed what was left of their provisions in his backpack, then stretched himself out on the pebbles, stuffed his cap under his head like a pillow, and closed his eyes. After a few seconds, he placed his left hand over the mark on his right wrist.
As quietly as he could, Ben reached into Portia’s backpack, checked that the ember pebbles were still in their place, and pulled out the travel diary and a pen. Then he leaned back against the slope, rested the diary on his thighs, and began sketching the Pale Tower. The reassuring weight of a pen in his hand was always comforting when he was afraid.
“You draw?”
Ben looked up in surprise. Gwil was still lying down, but his eyes were open and fixed on Ben.
Ben shrugged. “Sometimes.”
Gwil sat up. “May I see?”
Ben hesitated for a moment, but then handed Gwil the notebook. The salamander looked at the sketch of the Pale Tower and nodded approvingly.
“This is very good,” he said as he flicked through the pages.
Ben knew what Gwil was going to find, but he didn’t dare ask him to give the diary back. He had drawn a few sketches while they were at World’s End: a seagull in flight, Tegid carrying a stack of books, and the moon-moth fluttering between the shelves….
Ben felt his face burning. He waited for Gwil to scold him for having spent his time doodling rather than poring over books.
Instead Gwil smiled. “You have a gift,” he said.
Ben’s cheeks burned all the more at these words, but he also felt as if a ray of sunlight had burst through the clouds to hit him in the chest. He plucked up his courage and said, “There’s a drawing of you on the next page, actually.”
Gwil turned the page, and his smile grew broader. “Very good indeed. Perhaps you should stay in this world and become my apprentice.”
That made Ben smile in return. “My mum’s waiting for me,” he said. But just for a moment he imagined what it would be like to stay with Gwil in this world. A scribe’s apprentice. What would he learn? How to make ink? How to write runes and make them come alive?
“Of course, you have to go back,” Gwil said hurriedly. “No one should take a child away from their parents.”
“It’s just Mum. My dad died last year.” Ben had no idea why he was telling Gwil this. Normally he avoided drawing attention to his dad. Or to the empty space where his dad had once been.
Gwil looked at Ben thoughtfully, then handed the diary back with a solemn nod. “I am very sorry to hear that.”
To his surprise, Ben realized that Gwil’s sympathy didn’t bother him. And he was even more surprised by how good it felt to confide in him. He remembered the funeral, all those people in their black suits and dresses, asking him how he was holding up, the concern on their faces…. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he had gone and sat at the top of the stairs, then watched from above as the mourners came and went from his home. And all the while, he had felt the closed bedroom door behind him. He was afraid to go in there, knowing that his dad would never sit on the edge of his bed and read to him again. He knew it, but a part of him just didn’t want to believe it.
The truth was, he still didn’t want to believe it.
Ben took the pen and looked out to sea at the castle again. A fortress that existed in two worlds at the same time. No, in three: Faerie, the Borderlands, and—if Tegid was right—the Underworld, Annwn. Ben drew the castle’s broken tower and filled the outline with dark blue shadows. He thought of the Book of Return, and of Orpheus, who had tried to bring his wife back from the Underworld. Don’t think about it, he told himself. But as he drew, he kept seeing the black door leading to the Underworld.
Tegid said he had never heard a story of anyone being successfully rescued from the Underworld. But did that really mean it was impossible to come back from Annwn?
The tide began to fall in the early morning, exposing the causeway. A walled walkway led from the beach to the island, where it ended at the foot of a flight of steps cut into the rock. From there it was just a short climb to the fortress wall.
Rain clouds were gathering overhead as Gwil and Ben entered the courtyard of the ruined fortress. The wall behind them was half-collapsed, and the ground was strewn with rubble from the collapsing turrets. Only the keep stood unscathed at the center of the castle.
Ben stared up at its dark walls. In the middle of the keep was a closed door. He could sense immediately that it was a World Door. Perhaps his senses were sharpened, now that he had crossed two world borders. Whatever the reason, the door had a magnetic pull on him.
Gwil stared long and hard at the door before setting down his backpack to find all that they would need for the key spell.
“Ready?” he asked when he had done so. Ben nodded.
They squatted down, and Gwil set a wooden bowl on the ground between them. It was carved all over with runes, as was the little knife that Gwil handed to Ben.
Ben, who had memorized Merron’s instructions, took the knife, scraped a bit of soil from between the cobblestones at his feet, and dropped it into the bowl. Gwil took the knife back, shaved a few slivers of wood from the door, and dropped them on top of the soil. Then he cleaned the blade with some of Tegid’s honey brandy before pricking his and Ben’s thumbs, and finally letting a drop of blood from each fall into the bowl too.
Gwil whispered the rune spell, as if hoping that this way, no one in this world or any other would notice what they were up to. As he spoke, the runes on the inside of the bowl began to glow, and the mixture of soil, wood shavings, and blood started to spin and soon formed a vortex. The little whirlpool turned faster and faster, whispering like the sea wind blowing over a beach.
A faint tremor passed through the door, making the old wood groan and creak. A gust of wind ripped through the ruined castle. Gwil shuddered but carried on speaking the rune spell. Ben felt as if he could hear each of the elements in the bowl. There was another gust of wind—and then silence.
Ben leaned forward.
“It worked!” Gwil said, clearly stunned. He was right. At the bottom of the bowl lay a key, moist and glistening, as if it had been washed up by the sea. Ben’s heart was thumping in his chest as he took the key, got to his feet, and with a trembling hand pushed it into the lock of the World Door. He held his breath as he turned the key—and then heard the lock click open.
The World Door swung open, and Ben was hit by a wave of musty air. He was about to pass through the doorway when Gwil grabbed his shoulder.
“I’ll go first.” Fear was written all over Gwil’s face. Nevertheless, he clutched his broomstick and went ahead through the door. Ben clenched his fist around the key and took a firm grip on his chair leg before following Gwil across the border between the worlds.
In the Borderlands the castle was as much of a ruin as it was in Faerie. The entrance hall beyond the door was bare and deserted. The torch holders on the walls were empty, and the flagstone floor was riddled with cracks and potholes where the rainwater had been pooling for what must have been ages.
Three paths led out of the hall. A passageway was in the left corner of the room, while a staircase led upward from an archway opposite the World Door. The third way out was through a gaping hole in the floor, beneath which a flight of stairs descended into the darkness.
Gwil stood with his broomstick raised, as if expecting a horde of Gray Riders to storm into the hall at any moment. Ben hurried to his side and waited, holding his breath in anticipation, but when a few seconds had passed without any attack, he let out a sigh of relief.
Gwil lowered the broomstick. “We’d better lock that door,” he said.
Ben nodded and turned around before recoiling, aghast.
In the doorway stood a woman of night and shadow, her whole body wrapped from head to toe in a black veil, and a crown of spindly branches on her head. As if in slow motion, she lifted her head and sniffed, like a hound catching a scent.
Ben gave a stifled scream and stumbled backward into Gwil. The key slipped from his hand to the floor, and the woman hissed. It was the ugliest sound Ben had ever heard.
Gwil grabbed Ben’s shoulder and pulled him back. Stepping in front of him, he raised his staff again, holding it diagonally at chest level. Ben raised his own weapon with a trembling hand. He tried to speak the spell to activate the runes on the chair leg, but the words caught in his throat. Gwil succeeded, but the runes on his staff glowed only dimly.
The woman in black stared at them. Clouds of fog billowed up from beneath the hem of her dress before collapsing once more. She held out her hands, and the fog curled up to swirl about her fingers. As Ben and Gwil watched, the swirls of smoke grew thicker and thicker before transforming into three pale dogs with pointy ears and long snouts. No sooner had they taken shape than they moved forward, silently baring their teeth.
Gwil’s whole body was shaking, but he stood his ground. Ben ran a hand over his mouth, whispering the rune spell. Please, he begged. But the chair leg in his hand remained… a chair leg.
The dogs were moving closer.
They’re trying to surround us, Ben realized with horror. Gwil took a step back and turned his staff so he was holding it like a spear. The dimly glowing runes were flickering now, but at least it seemed as if that was keeping the dogs from attacking.
Ben glanced down at the key, now a foot away from him. “Gwil.”
“Down the stairs,” Gwil commanded.
Ben looked over at the hole in the floor. It was the closest way out, and yet it seemed like it was miles away. “Gwil,” he tried again. “The key!”
“The stairs!” Gwil spat.
The woman in black whispered something, and the dogs crouched and flattened their ears. Their eyes glowed menacingly.
“Now!” Gwil shouted, and as if on command, the dogs leapt forward. Gwil backed off, swinging his broomstick as he went. The runes lit up, burning bright white, and two of the dogs shied off to the side, but the third came straight on, and the next moment it was clutching the staff in its jaws.
“Run!” Gwil screamed. Then he dropped the staff, spun around—and fell.
“Gwil!” Ben’s blood froze. A tendril of fog had caught Gwil by the ankle and brought him down. Now three more tentacles had emerged from the haze to grope toward him. Without thinking, Ben grabbed his chair leg, leapt forward, fell onto his knees, and thrust the wooden staff into the tendril that was holding on to Gwil’s leg. As he did so, he called out the rune spell. This time the runes on his chair leg glowed brightly, and the fog tentacle disappeared in a puff.
Ben was gripping his staff so tightly that he could hear the wood splintering. He spoke the runes once more, but now in the sequence that stood for protection, and struck the flagstones with his chair leg. A flash of light pulsed from the staff to the ground, and for a brief moment, a pale blue ring glowed around Ben and Gwil, pushing the fog back like a force field.
“Ben!” Gwil staggered to his feet and put his arm round Ben’s shoulders. They looked on, dumbstruck, as the woman in black bent down and picked up the key. The dogs had returned to her side; two of them were looking up at her while the third watched Ben and Gwil with its gleaming eyes.
Ben’s mouth was bone dry, and his heartbeat was pounding in his ears. “Why aren’t they attacking us?”
“We don’t matter anymore,” said Gwil in a hollow voice.
More and more fog poured through the doorway. The ground disappeared beneath a white carpet, and shapes began to emerge from the murk—half-formed creatures and strange, ephemeral beasts, like demons in a steaming cauldron.
The woman stood in the midst of the maelstrom, drawing runes on the back of the World Door. The wood smoldered at the touch of her fingertips. Then she reached for the hunting horn at her hip. Gwil’s fingers dug into Ben’s shoulder.
“She’s calling the Gray King!”
Ben was transfixed, but Gwil pulled at his arm.
“Ben,” he urged. “Ben, to the staircase!”
Ben got to his feet. As soon as the chair leg left the ground, fog surged into the circle of protection.
Panic began to rise to his throat, but he let Gwil usher him through the hole in the floor. He turned around just in time to avoid falling down the steps. Gwil hobbled ahead, with Ben following him into the darkness. They had made it to the first landing when they heard the call of the horn above their heads. A long, high-pitched wailing sound.
“Sweet spirits!” That was as far as Gwil got before the castle was shaken by a thunderous crash.