Mr. Darcy Vampyre (27 page)

Darcy's face brightened.

‘Then I will fetch it,' he said energetically. ‘It will not take me long.'

‘It took us hours to get here,' Elizabeth pointed out.

Darcy smiled, his eyes bright in the torchlight. ‘But I am a vampyre,' he said.

There was a sudden brief stirring of wind and then, quicker than she would have thought possible, he was gone, a black and fluid form disappearing rapidly from view.

She could hardly take in what had happened and she sat down, her legs feeling suddenly weak. It was a day of marvels, fearful and terrible, yet wonderful and strange.

Nicolei resumed his seat next to her on one of the fallen columns, and Georgio sat on the other one, looking down at the floor silently. As Elizabeth recovered her composure, she found herself wanting to ask him what had happened, but she could not bring herself to speak of it. His colour had returned but when one of the torches sputtered and he lit a new torch from the old, his hands were still shaking.

Nicolei too had fallen silent and appeared to be lost in thought.

Elizabeth prepared herself for a long wait, but before she thought there was any hope of Darcy returning, there was a beating of wings and a rushing of air and he stood once more before them. She saw that he was holding, in his left hand, Lady Catherine's black veil.

‘You found it!' she said. ‘I was afraid it might have blown away.'

‘No, it was just where you said it would be,' he said with a warm smile. Then his face became serious. ‘And now we must see what it will do.'

He walked past the statue of Apollo and then passed between two of the fluted columns until he stood by the wall. The torches could not illuminate the ceiling—only a small portion of the wall around the basin—and the light flickered constantly. He looked at the flowing script for a moment before placing the veil inside. It lay there, slight and insubstantial, nothing more than a shadow in the hollow bowl.

Elizabeth watched it. But as nothing happened, she began to feel a fall in her spirits. It had done nothing. Nor had she, in her heart of hearts, expected it to.

And then, slowly, with a grating noise, the stone wall in front of them began to move. It swung smoothly open and Elizabeth found herself looking across a balcony of rock and into another, much larger cavern, a vast chamber hewn out of the living stone, set some twenty feet below them.

Darcy took the torch in one hand and Elizabeth in the other, and together they moved forward, going through the massive door and standing on the natural stone balcony, which ran around the circumference of the cavern.

Elizabeth looked down. At first she thought there were columns stretching from the ground far below them to the roof high above, but then she saw that they were not columns; they were trees, and their branches were supporting the roof.

‘A petrified forest,' said Darcy.

Elizabeth looked at the petrified trees in awe, wondering how and when they had turned to stone. Some were exactly as they had been when they were growing, with thick branches supporting thinner branches and ending in twigs, the whole of them carrying petrified leaves that glistened with streaks of copper and green. Some had fallen and lay as stone logs across the forest floor. In between them were petrified ferns. The whole thing had an uncanny appearance, lit by an unnatural light, a bluish purple glow.

Hand in hand, Elizabeth and Darcy began to go down the broad flight of shallow steps that led to the forest floor. Nicolei, who, with the aid of his son, was following them very slowly down the steps, said breathlessly, ‘It is magnificent.'

‘The trees are glowing,' said Elizabeth. She listened intently. ‘And humming.'

‘You're right,' said Darcy, standing still to listen.

Without the sound of their footsteps the hum could be heard more clearly, like the low buzzing of far-off bees.

Elizabeth and Darcy resumed their descent and came at last to the foot of the steps where they stood for a moment looking about them. Now that they were closer, they could see that some of the trees had been carved into strange creatures, neither man nor beast, startling relics of a long forgotten time. And yet the carvings were beautiful in their own way. They stood proudly in the centre of small, randomly spaced clearings or peered out from behind groups of trees, some hesitant, some mischievous, and some bizarre yet glorious to behold.

Elizabeth and Darcy began to move forward, picking their way carefully across the forest floor, stepping over fallen logs, and threading their way between stone ferns. By a strange trick of the light, it appeared as though purple and blue sunbeams were falling through the canopy above them and onto the forest floor, though no light entered the cavern from any opening. It seemed to be an effect of the torchlight reflecting from the minerals in the trees and walls.

They found themselves in a clearing in the centre of the forest, without ever having meant to arrive there, as though they had been led there by uncanny paths. In the centre of the clearing stood a broken trunk, and on top of it, illuminated by one of the weird and marvellous beams of purple light, was a stone tablet. They looked down at the tablet and saw that, etched across it, there were strange runes.

‘I have seen this kind of writing before, in the Count's library,' said Darcy, holding the torch closer, the better to see it.

‘Can you read what it says?' asked Elizabeth.

‘Yes, I can, enough to understand the words at least. But I do not understand what they mean. They say something about falling… something will fall…'

As if in answer to his words there was a groaning and then a grating noise behind them. Elizabeth turned, just as a huge slab dropped from the ceiling, guided by mighty channels in the wall, until it completely covered the door. The earth beneath them shifted, disturbed by the impact, and small cracks began to appear in the forest floor. The statues rocked slowly backwards and forwards on their plinths, and Elizabeth held her breath, but gradually the earth began to settle, and after a sigh and a groan, it was still. With a last rattle the statues too came to rest.

Nicolei had not been so lucky. He was still on the steps, but he had been toppled from his feet. Darcy started to move towards him in concern but Nicolei called out to him in a quavery voice, reassuring them that he was not hurt.

‘Go on!' he called to Darcy, as Georgio helped him to his feet. ‘You must finish what you have started. It is the only way.'

Darcy nodded then turned his attention back to the tablet.

‘This word is
break
…' he said.

There was another rumble from below and the earth shifted again, the small cracks widening and new cracks appearing. Something hit Elizabeth on the shoulder, and looking up, she saw that the movement of the earth had caused cracks to appear in the cavern roof too, and that small pieces of rock were falling.

‘Hurry,' she said to Darcy.

‘All will be bright,' said Darcy, reading, ‘if… if… choices…'

The ground rolled and Elizabeth was thrown forward. Darcy caught her and righted her, but there was no one to catch the statues which rocked with greater force, back and forth like giant pendulums, whilst large stones hailed down from above. More alarmingly, a tongue of flame darted up from one of the cracks and was followed by smaller flames from surrounding fissures.

Darcy and Elizabeth glanced at each other and then Darcy read, ‘…have no fright… no fear… starting to crumble… falling, breaking, destroying…'

The rumbling, which had been low and throaty, now broke forth into a roar as giant spurs of rock thrust their way up through the fissures, toppling the statues and sending them crashing to the ground, where they broke into petrified pieces, sending a cloud of dust whirling upwards into the flame-filled air.

There was a sickening cracking sound, and looking round as one, Elizabeth and Darcy saw that a giant chasm had opened halfway up the flight of stairs, cutting them off from the door. Nicolei, still supported by Georgio, was a small, frail figure on the other side.

‘We cannot go back now, even if we wanted to,' said Elizabeth.

Darcy held the torch higher and moved a few steps to the side, the better to see the inscription.

‘Hold on…' he read, as the roaring grew louder, drowning out the forest's hum, ‘…hold on to the truth… no, hold on to that which is true.'

There was a great splintering sound and a deep fissure opened between Darcy and Elizabeth, widening with frightening speed until they were separated by a sea of molten lava, and another appeared, and then another, separating him from the tablet.

‘The inscription!' cried Elizabeth.

‘It's finished,' shouted Darcy, above the noise of the flame. ‘That is all it said.'

‘Then do as it says,' called Nicolei. ‘Hold on to that which is true. It is the tablet, Old One. The tablet is true.'

Darcy looked at the tablet. But as he was about to spring across the vast lava-filled chasm, he experienced a moment of calm, and whilst the tempest raged all around, a voice spoke in the quiet of his soul.

‘No,' he said, ‘It's Elizabeth. Elizabeth is true.'

He leapt to the opposite chasm and held on to her as the ground heaved and the mighty trees collapsed and roof began to fall. Huge pieces of stone rained down on them, and he cradled Elizabeth protectively to his chest, sheltering her head with his hands.

The ground was seething all around, a boiling mass of garish red, and a fierce wind sprang up with a wild roar, buffeting them and battering them, threatening to whip them from their island and cast them into the lava. Elizabeth clung to Darcy and he to her.

And then the waters appeared. Up from the newly made crevices they spurted, drawn from the deepest reaches of the earth, as an icy river started to rise.

Elizabeth watched in horrified fascination, torn between despair and hope as fire and water waged battle before her. The fire boiled the water into steam, but still the water rose, consuming the fires in a great hissing rasp.

‘It's going to be all right,' she said with wild hope as she saw the flames flicker and die.

But her hope was short-lived. As the fires died all around them, the waters kept on rising, creeping over the island of rock on which they stood with arms entwined and bodies pressed close together. It was over their feet, then over their knees, a blood-warm sea, rising quickly until she and Darcy were thigh deep in water.

‘It was the tablet,' cried Nicolei sorrowfully, his voice barely audible above the tumult of cracking earth and sizzling fire and roaring wind. ‘You should have held on to the tablet, Old One. The tablet was true.'

Elizabeth looked up into Darcy's eyes.

‘I shouldn't have let you come,' he said, turning all his attention to her and taking her face in his hands. ‘I should never have allowed it.'

‘It was not your fault; it was mine,' she said. ‘I should have stayed behind. You tried to make me listen. I should not have gone against the portent.'

‘We could not have escaped it whatever we did, I see that now,' said Darcy. ‘I only wish that you could have been spared and that you did not have to die with me.'

‘You are immortal,' she said. ‘You will not die.'

‘I cannot die of old age, but even I can drown,' he said. ‘But you should not have had to share my fate. You should be at home now, in Meryton, safe.'

‘I don't regret anything,' she said as the waters swirled around her waist and rose with frightening speed to her shoulders. ‘I don't mind dying if I can die with you. Only kiss me and I will die happy.'

He turned up her face to his and kissed her fiercely, and she returned his kiss with passion as the waters swirled over their shoulders, and there amidst the noise and turmoil, they kissed and kissed again as they waited for the end.

But the end did not come. The waters started receding, going down slowly at first, retreating to their shoulders and then to their waist, then moving more rapidly, sinking to their knees, and then to their ankles before disappearing beneath the rocky floor as quickly as it had appeared. There was one final convulsion of the earth and a shower of rocks rained down from above, and then everything was silent. They stood amidst the dread and terrible wreckage, and yet miraculously the two of them were untouched.

Elizabeth lowered her hand from Darcy's neck and as she did so she was filled with a sense of awe.

‘Your puncture marks. The bites,' she said, running her fingers over the smooth skin of his neck. ‘They've gone. The water has washed them away.'

He lifted his hand to his neck and ran his fingers over the spot where they had been, then his eyes filled with profound wonderment.

‘What does it mean?' she asked.

‘I don't know. I hope—'

He was interrupted by Georgio's hail and looking round, they saw that Nicolei and Georgio were unharmed. The two men had climbed back up to the top of the steps and were standing by the door. Nicolei was leaning heavily on Georgio's arm.

‘Go on,' called Darcy across the chasm that separated them. ‘Don't wait for us. I will find a way out for Elizabeth and myself. Go back to the lodge, we will meet you again there.'

Georgio waved in acknowledgement and he and Nicolei disappeared through the door.

‘And now, we must find a way out,' said Darcy. They were surrounded by cracks and crevices and the way would not be easy. ‘I think, if we go this way,' he said, indicating a path that could be negotiated by small jumps over narrow cracks, ‘we can approach the door more nearly.'

Elizabeth, having come to the same conclusion, agreed.

They began to jump across the cracks, but they had crossed only two of them when the earth rocked again and Elizabeth was nearly thrown from her feet. She righted herself quickly, then put her hands to her ears as there was a terrible rumble, and to her astonishment, the side of the cavern started to slide away.