The Raven’s Knot

‘A few feet beyond this spot lies one of their tunnels. A brash and noisome worm-boring, a filthy conduit to ferry people from one place to another like so many cattle. Perilously near did their excavations come to finding us. Now, when the carriages hurtle through that blind, squalid hole, this stairway shakes as though Woden himself had returned with his armies to do battle one last time.’

Miss Ursula’s voice choked a little when she said this. Edie looked up at her in surprise but the elderly woman recovered quickly.

‘It is most inconvenient,’ her normal clipped tones added. ‘Thus far they have not discovered us, yet a day may come perhaps when these steps are finally unearthed by their over-zealous probing. What hope then for the unhappy world? If man were to know of the terrors which wait to seize control of his domain he would undoubtedly destroy it himself in his madness. That is what we must save them from, Edith. They must never know of us and our guardianship.’

Her doom-laden words hung on the cold air as she turned to proceed.

‘Still,’ she commented dryly, ‘at least at this hour of the night there are no engines to rumble by and impede our progress.’

Further down they travelled, until Edie lost all sense of time and could not begin to measure the distance they had come. Eventually the motion of her descent, joined with the dancing flame, caused her to imagine that she was following a glimmering ember down the throat of a gigantic, slumbering dragon. Down towards its belly she was marching, to bake and broil in the scarlet heats of its rib-encased furnace. A delighted grin split the fey girl’s face.

‘Pay extra heed here,’ Miss Ursula cautioned abruptly, her voice cutting through the child’s imaginings. ‘The steps are about to end.’

As she spoke, the echo altered dramatically, soaring high into a much greater space and Edie found herself standing at the foot of the immense stairway by the mouth of a large, vaulted chamber carved out of solid rock.

Miss Ursula strode inside and Edie saw that the curved walls of the cave were decorated with primitive paintings of figures and animals.

‘Stay by my side, Edith,’ Miss Ursula told her. ‘This is but the first in a series of chambers and catacombs, do not let your inquisitiveness permit you to stray. It might take days before you were found.’

Edie toyed with the exciting notion of wandering around in the complete subterranean darkness but was too anxious to see where she was being led to contemplate the idea for long.

Into a second cavern they went and again the echoes altered, for here great drapes of black cloth hung from the ceiling, soaking up the sound of their footsteps.

‘Gold and silver were those tapestries once,’ Miss Ursula commented, not bothering to glance at them. ‘Very grand we were back then. Several of the chambers were completely gilded from top to bottom, there were shimmering pathways of precious stones and crystal fountains used to fill the air with a sweet tinkling music. There was even a garden down here lit with diamond lanterns and replete with fragrant flowers and fruit trees, in which tame birds sang for our delight.’

The elderly woman pursed her lips contemptuously as she proceeded to guide Edie through the maze of tunnels and caves.

‘However,’ she resumed, ‘the passage of time eventually stripped the pleasure of those decorous diversions from our eyes. Weary of them at last, we allowed the hangings to rot with mould, the jewels we gave back to the earth and the garden was neglected until the bird song ceased. For us there was only one great treasure and we ministered to it daily. Now, Edith, we are here at last.’

They had come to a large gateway which was wrought and hammered from some tarnished yellow metal. Raised in relief across its surface was the stylised image of a great tree nourished by three long roots and Miss Ursula bowed her head respectfully as she reached out her hand to touch it with her fingertips.

‘Behind this barrier is a most hallowed thing,’ she murmured with reverence. ‘Throughout the lonely ages my sisters and I have served it with consummate devotion and now you too shall share the burden. Behold, Edith – the Chamber of Nirinel.’

Swiftly and in silence, the gate opened and suddenly the darkness was banished. A golden, crackling light blazed before them and Edie screwed up her face to shield her eyes from the unexpected, dazzling glare.

Through the entrance Miss Ursula strode, her figure dissolving into the blinding glow until finally the child’s sight adjusted. She stared at the spectacle before her in disbelief and wonder.

The Chamber of Nirinel was far greater than any of the caves they had passed through. Immense and cavernous was its size and Edie stumbled forward to be a part of this awesome vision, in case it was abruptly snatched away from her goggling eyes. Into the light she went, absorbing every detail of the scene before her.

Fixed to the vast, encircling walls a hundred torches burned, casting their splendour over the richly carved rock where, between the graven pillars and sculpted leaf patterns, countless stone faces flickered and glowed. All manner of creatures were depicted there and the untutored Edie Dorkins could only recognise a fraction of them.

Edie gurgled in amusement and hugged herself as the dancing flames made this chiselled bestiary appear to peep down at her with curious stares – even the monstrous serpents seemed to be astonished at her arrival.

‘And why shouldn’t they?’ Miss Ursula’s voice broke in, reading her thoughts. ‘The poor brutes have had an eternity of looking at me.’

Edie laughed, then curtseyed to the silent, stone audience, craning her head back to see just how high the carvings reached up the walls.

It was then that she saw it, the titanic presence which dominated that cathedral-like place. Her mouth fell open at the sight and the giggles died in her throat.

From the moment she had entered the chamber, Edie had been aware of a great shadow which towered over the cavern but not till now did she realise its nature and she froze with shock.

Rising from the bare earthen floor and rearing in a massive arc into the dark heights above, where not even the radiance of so many bright torches could reach, was what appeared to be the trunk of a gigantic tree.

Up into the impenetrable gloom its colossal girth soared, vanishing into the utter blackness of the chamber’s immeasurable height where it straddled the entire length of the cavern before plunging downwards once more, to drive through the furthest wall.

So monumental were its proportions that Edie could only shake her head, yet she noticed that no branches grew from that mighty tree. Only gnarled, knotted bulges protruded from the blighted, blackened bark, like clusters of ulcerous decay, and in places the wood had split to form festering and diseased wounds.

Slowly, Edie rose from her crouching curtsey. That withered giant was the source of the deliciously sickly scent and she took a great lungful before tossing her head and considering the forlorn marvel more closely.

‘What killed it?’ she asked bluntly.

Miss Ursula put her arm about the girl’s shoulders.

‘You are mistaken, Edith,’ she said softly. ‘Nirinel is not dead – not yet. A trickle of sap still oozes deep within the core of its being and, while it does, so there is hope.’

Leaping forward, Edie ran over the mossy soil until the gargantuan arch of putrefying bark loomed far above her. Shouting gleefully, she began to twirl and dance with joy.

‘The tree’s alive,’ her high voice rang within the cavern. ‘It lives, it lives!’

‘Again, I must correct you,’ Miss Ursula told her. ‘This is no tree. It is but the last remaining root of the mother of all forests. We are in the presence of the last vestige of the legendary World Tree – Yggdrasill, which flourished in the dawn of time and from which all things of worth and merit sprang.’

The child ceased her dancing and stared up at the immense, rearing shadow.

‘This is a sacred site,’ Miss Ursula breathed. ‘But come, Edith, I will explain.’

Where the massive root thrust up out of the ground, a circular dais of stone jutted from the floor. Upon this wide ring, which was covered in a growth of dry moss and rotting lichen, the elderly woman sat and patted the space at her side for the girl to join her.

‘I shall not begin at the beginning of things,’ she said. ‘For that time was filled with darkness. My tale commences when Yggdrasill first bloomed and the early rays of the new sun smiled upon its leaves.

‘In that glorious dawn, the World Tree flourished and it was the fairest and most wondrous sight that ever was, or shall ever be. In appearance it was like a tremendous and majestic ash, but many miles was the circumference of its trunk; its three main roots stretched about the globe and its branches seemed to hold heaven aloft. Like a living mountain it rose above the landscape but its great magnitude cast no despairing shade upon the ground below, for Yggdrasill’s foliage shone with an emerald light and in its cradling boughs the first ancestors of mankind were nurtured.’

Edie gazed up at the vast root, vainly trying to imagine the unbounded size of Yggdrasill.

‘The first civilisation was founded about the eastern side of the World Tree,’ Miss Ursula continued, ‘and Askar was it named. In that early time there was no sickness and its people knew no death. All were content and Askar flourished and thrived.’

Miss Webster’s voice trailed off as she stared into the flames of the torches.

‘Was you there then?’ Edie asked. ‘Is that where you’re from?’

The elderly woman smiled gravely. ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘My sisters and I were born in that silvan shade.

‘Yet there were other beings who roamed the globe,’ she continued, shivering slightly. ‘Before the first blossom opened upon Yggdrasill, unclean voices bellowed and resounded in the barren wastes of the ice-locked north.’

Edie grinned and leaned forward, eager to learn more. ‘Was they monsters?’ she demanded. ‘Is that where Belial came crawling out?’

‘No,’ came the patient reply. ‘Belial was much, much later and compared to them his evil deeds are like those of a mischievous schoolboy. Although he will one day pour fire upon the world – they shall come after. They were here before and they will be here at the utmost end.’

Relishing every word, Edie squirmed and rested her dirty chin upon her hands. ‘Who are they then?’ she urged.