My spirits steadily sank. The forest was becoming more and more hostile as my weariness grew and the darkness deepened. I was forced to sit and rest briefly on a tree stump. I lit a match and looked at my watch. It was eight o’clock. I had been walking for a whole hour.
When I looked at my watch again it was eight-thirty; the next time it was nine. I sat down, then stood up again. I pushed on stubbornly and miserably, and always it seemed to be through the same bit of forest.
At last I caught a glimmer of light, and hastened towards it. Ahead of me lay a sort of luminous clearing. As I drew closer I realised it was a lake reflecting the moonlight. The trees dipping their branches in the water conveyed an inexpressible grief, and the little reeds endlessly sighed.
It was Llyn-Coled — or its twin.
I recalled what Cynthia had said: the five hundred Welsh soldiers thrown into the lake in the days of Llewellyn ap Griffith; the waters grieving all night in Welsh. And yes, the reeds were whining, whimpering, sighing in the wind, so human-like …
The old woman was still sitting by the shore, spinning, spinning her net, as if she were Fate itself; from time to time she threw a pebble in the water. It did not occur to me to ask her the way. In fact, the very thought that she might see me filled me with horror. I turned and retreated back into the woods.
Weariness and hunger infused my thoughts with a mild delirium, tinged with nausea. I was no longer walking: I was fleeing.
I was in the Celtic Forest, where every improbability becomes possible. Every ten minutes held a new terror. A bush would take on the precise appearance of an old hag, a rock became a crouching giant: worst of all were the ink-black brooks, the hollow trees and the sudden, loud flurry of owls taking flight.
It was now eleven o’clock, and I was wandering over a plateau. Here at least there were no woods: no trees, no owls, only moonlight. There was no Birnam Wood to come to Dunsinane, but little piles of stone scattered about as though the very bones of the earth were thrusting up beneath its skin. Ahead, to one side, stood a much larger pile, perhaps a Celtic burial site, I guessed, from pictures I had seen.
Approaching nearer I realised, with a sort of half-pleasure, that it was a building. The pleasure was qualified because, on a remote upland like this, I could imagine that the old peasant couple dwelling there might not be very friendly. I did my best not to think of any of the many phantom possibilities, and resolved to be brave.
I had now reached it. It couldn’t really be termed a house; it was rather an immense cube. I could see neither windows nor a door. I found none on the next side, or indeed on the third. When I had gone all the way round and ascertained that there were none at all, I was filled with an unspeakable terror. Nothing is more frightening than the completely inexplicable.
I was desperate to get away. Even the trees were better than this man-made enigma. But — I can’t say whether through sheer fatigue or my overexcited imagination — I stood rooted to the spot, as paralysed as a man in a dream. I just stared, hypnotised, at the whitewashed wall.
Then the wall moved. With infinite slowness, it slid to one side. Behind it was utter darkness. Out of this darkness stepped a man, very tall, dressed in black from head to foot, with only his hair and ruff-collar glinting white. I uttered a terrible scream.
Tiny circles were spinning before my eyes, like little flashes of lightning; they grew in size, turning lilac-coloured and carmine; then one small spot became larger, larger, and unbearably bright.
I was enclosed by four walls. It was pitch-black, and only by groping about could I establish that I was incarcerated. The silence was so deep it was almost tangible.
I wondered: how could I be sure I wasn’t dead? I lay down on the stone floor and sank into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
My memories of what followed are extremely confused. Even in normal circumstances my dreams tend to be vivid, and I sometimes mistake them for things that have actually happened. Already during this strange adventure I had totally lost my sense of reality. As I don’t wish to distort or exaggerate I shall need to exercise extreme caution when narrating what occurred next.
My exhaustion and unbearable mental stress were intensified by the fact that, as I always do, I had caught a cold in the endless rain and was slightly feverish. My inner censor was working only fitfully, and every fevered vision took on the solidity of fact.
For instance, it seemed to be entirely real that from time to time I would eat and drink, though I do not ever remember feeling hunger or thirst. What I ate, and how I came by it, have quite escaped my memory.
Quite understandably, I have no sense of how long my ghostly imprisonment lasted. My watch had stopped. The place in which I was incarcerated had no windows, so I was unaware of changing night and day. My periodic recurrences of sleep were no guide either. I dozed in patches, lay in a half-dream or felt superhumanly alert. There must have been hours which I experienced as minutes, and minutes which felt like hours. It is of course well known that fever alters our sense of the passing of time.
When I think of that episode, my most lasting memory is also the first, that of a certain smelclass="underline" the smell of some kind of smoke that pervaded the entire building. It was not unlike incense, but more bitter, and prone to induce giddiness. I know that all sorts of herbs are burnt in magic rituals, and this particular blend must have been one used for liturgical censing. I believe it was one of those I had read about in occult tomes — verbena, myrrh, carib grass or ambergris, perhaps — but I really don’t know: I had only read about them and could in no way identify any by name. However it was the same smell that had enveloped me when the midnight rider galloped past, on the road from Corwen.
… A strange, greenish light filled the room and a tiny figure swayed and tottered before me. It is difficult to describe what it was like — rather as I always imagined gnomes to be. It wore a kind of miner’s outfit, with something like a pilot’s cap on its head, which only intensified the clever, malevolent, thoroughly unpleasant look on its face. The most real thing about it — or him — was the screeching voice.
But even then I realised my visitor was not flesh and blood, because — this was really grotesque — his size changed constantly, flaring up and dying down, like a flame. Occasionally he flapped his wings and crowed, and sometimes he had no wings at all.
“Greetings, Benjamin Avravanel. I shall bring your robes at once.”
“There must be some mistake,” I said. “I’ve never been called Avravanel. And I don’t recall ordering any robes.”
“It’s no matter,” the gnome retorted, and crowed shrilly, which by now seemed entirely natural.
He was sitting on a high stool, which hadn’t been there before, and he was flickering — steadily and continuously flickering.
“Honour and glory to the Great Adept,” he declared.
“As you say,” I answered, not wishing to offend. “Honour and glory.”
“The Great Adept is preparing to complete the Great Work. It is the Will of the Stars, the Stars, the Stars … ”
Strangely enough, I could see everything as he described it. One moment the stars were revolving in the sky, and the next they had suddenly, and significantly, stopped.
“The Great Adept requires an assistant,” the gnome continued. “He has chosen you for this task, Benjamin Avravanel, Scholar.”