The Dark Is Rising (The Dark Is Rising, #2)

by Susan Cooper

“The Walker is abroad,” he said again. “And this night will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining.”

Expect nothing and fear nothing, here or anywhere.

Any great gift or power or talent is a burden, and this more than any, and you will often long to be free of it. But there is nothing to be done. If you were born with the gift, then you must serve it, and nothing in this world or out of it may stand in the way of that service, because that is why you were born and that is the Law.

“For the Dark, the Dark is rising. The Walker is abroad, the Rider is riding; they have woken, the Dark is rising. And the last of the Circle is come to claim his own, and the circles must now all be joined. The white horse must go to the Hunter, and the river take the valley; there must be fire on the mountain, fire under the stone, fire over the sea. Fire to burn away the Dark, for the Dark, the Dark is rising!”

“But it must not be fear,” she said. “Remember that, Will. You will be frightened, often, but never fear them. The powers of the Dark can do many things, but they cannot destroy. They cannot kill those of the Light. Not unless they gain a final dominion over the whole earth. And it is the task of the Old Ones—your task and ours—to prevent that. So do not let them put you into fear or despair.”

They seized you, through your impatience and your hope. They love to twist good emotion to accomplish ill.”

water was the one element that could in some measure defy all magic; for moving water would tolerate no magic whether for evil or good, but would wash it away as if it had never been made.

“The Dark is rising, Old One, and this time we do not propose that anything shall hinder its way. This is the time for our rising, and these next twelve months shall see us established at last. Tell your masters that. Tell them that nothing shall stop us. Tell them, all the Things of Power that they hope to possess we shall take from them, the grail and the harp and the Signs. We shall break your Circle before it can ever be joined. And none shall stop the Dark from rising!”

It was not from malice that the Light and the servants of the Light would ever hound the Dark, but from the nature of things.