The Ragwitch (20 page)

Thirty minutes later they were knocking on the wooden walls with surprising energy, and once again, Paul was calling out, “Hello, Mister Tanboule! It’s me, Paul! Can I come in? I mean, can we come in?”

T
HE LAST PART
of that long night passed in what seemed like a few minutes to Paul. He had a hazy recollection of Tanboule’s bewhiskered face peering over the side at him, and his cry of, “Come to help with the potato harvest? How kind!” And then a sort of cargo door opening in the side, a plank being let down, and all of them—boys, horse, donkey and hare—trooping up into the cosy, orange-lit interior. After that, everything had fallen into blackness.

When he awoke, Paul found himself comfortably undressed, warm and beautifully dry. He lay beneath a great weight of silky furs that felt so nice he had to wiggle his toes for several minutes just to enjoy the feeling. Then the well-remembered smell of bacon and cabbage cooking summoned him from under the covers and into his clothes (leaving
the buff coat and helmet thankfully aside)—which were also dry, and basically cleansed of mud. Not as much as his mother would have thought sufficient, but plenty enough for Paul.

He quickly finished dressing, splashed some water from a nearby bowl on his face, wiped his hands on one of the furs, and climbed up the nearest ladder onto the main deck.

As he expected, Quigin and Tanboule were tucking into great piles of cabbage and bacon and thick slices of bread, with mugs of Tanboule’s strange tea. They looked up as Paul emerged, and Tanboule gestured with his fork at a loaded plate sitting on the edge of one of the stoves, and then, more urgently, at a cloth to pick it up with.

Neither he nor Quigin spoke, and Paul felt curiously quiet too. It wasn’t until all three of them had finished seconds, and Paul thirds, that Tanboule spoke.

“Well, you seem to have made a tale of your own,” he said, fixing Paul with his steady gaze. “Do you think my advice was worth all those cabbages?”

“Umm…yes,” said Paul. “So far. I still haven’t met the Earth Lady though. And I haven’t really done anything for Julia…I don’t even know if she’s still all right…”

“Hmmm,” replied Tanboule mysteriously. He took a gulp of tea, then said (rather smugly), “But I do…she is fighting the Ragwitch too…in a different way.”

“What!” exclaimed Paul, suddenly choking on his tea. “How do you know?”

Tanboule waited for Paul to stop choking, then tapped the side of his long nose with a finger. “The stars see everything, and look deep into everyone below them. One of them saw your sister within Her, and whispered it into the sky. I was listening.”

“Oh,” said Paul, who wasn’t quite sure he understood. “Then she’s still O.K.?”

Tanboule looked blank for a second, then he smiled, and said, “From what little I know, she still exists. More than that, I cannot say.”

Paul sat silent, thinking about Julia, and the hideous creature he had seen on the ridge at Reddow Cairn. Somehow, Julia was inside that awful thing…the Ragwitch. But even if he could find the Earth Lady, and gain her help, what was he supposed to do then? Really, he thought mournfully, if was just lucky that I thought of using the Breath and the Blood at the battle—they hadn’t helped Julia, or really harmed the Ragwitch or anything, just slowed Her and Her army a little, so they could get away.

Tanboule looked at his troubled frown, and pushed another piece of bread over. Paul picked it up absently, ate a mouthful, swallowed, and said, “I don’t know what to do! Where do I go now?”

“Are you asking me?” asked Tanboule, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his stomach. “Because if you are, it’s a tricky question. Difficult. Worth…”

“Do I get some credit for the extra cabbages I planted last time?” interrupted Paul anxiously, as he thought he saw what Tanboule had in mind.

“Worth the harvesting,” continued Tanboule, “of at least a third of my potato field. Quigin can do the other third.”

“But I haven’t asked you anything!” exclaimed Quigin, looking up from his contemplation of a spider.

“No,” said Tanboule. “But I am sure you will. Perhaps, for example, you may ask why that particular spider is called a Black Widow.”

“I know that,” said Paul, before Quigin could ask. “It’s because they’re black and they eat their husbands.”

“Ridiculous!” snorted Tanboule. “They do nothing of the sort. They spin small shawls of black spider-silk across their bodies, thus resembling widows. Look—that one is weaving a shawl now!”

Both Paul and Quigin looked, but the spider scuttled into a crack in the floorboards before they could really see. When they looked up, Tanboule was clearing away the plates.

“Washing up later,” he declared. “For we have a great number of potatoes to dig up. And you must tell me more of your story since you left, Paul. I have heard a whisper of it from the stars, a little detail from Quigin, a little more from that redoubtable hare, but I need to know more. Then, I shall try and give you some first-rate advice.”

“Good,” said Paul, then realizing he sounded
ungrateful, “I mean, thanks.”

“Anything to get the potatoes in,” answered Tanboule. “And if not you, it would be some foolish knight asking questions about love, and not liking the answers anyway.”

“I thought…” said Paul, thinking of Aleyne, “that those sort of people never got an answer from the Wise…they just ran…oh…into bees or something.”

“That’s an answer, isn’t it?” replied Tanboule, as he opened the hatch above, and let down the rope ladder.

“What more could they want than that?” he continued, his voice fading as he climbed out and down the ladder. “Bee-stings are very educational.”

Quigin looked at Paul, and said, “I’m glad we get to dig potatoes for our answer. I like bees, but I hate getting stung.”

“Mmmm…” said Paul, thinking back to his long afternoon of cabbage planting. “But at least that wouldn’t take long, or be hard work.”

“Recovering might take…” Quigin started to say, as he climbed out after Tanboule. Then his voice changed, and he fairly leapt out of the hatch, exclaiming, “There’s a black-shouldered kite! Maybe I met it at the Wind Moot…I must…”

Paul smiled as his friend’s foot caught in the hatch for a moment in his haste to get outside. Then his smile faded, as he thought what else might be in the sky, besides black-shouldered kites.
Even on the mountain of the Wise, Paul knew he wasn’t safe.

The man tried to move his head again, but the two Gwarulch that held him forced his eyes back to the Ragwitch, snorting angrily. One made a move to bite at the man’s face, but the merest flicker of Her finger stopped the creature in mid-motion, and its jaw snapped shut with an unpleasant, bony click.

Julia felt a shudder in her mind go nowhere, and almost cried out at the frustration of being able to feel, but not do anything. Even moving the Ragwitch’s foul body would be an improvement over the endless, unceasing senses that poured into Julia, without her being able to react.

“Where are the King and his army going?” hissed the Ragwitch, lowering Her bloated head so Her shark-toothed mouth loomed inches above the man’s head.

“I…I…I don’t know,” croaked the man, his eyes staring in fear. “I’m only a farmer normally…”

The Ragwitch said nothing, but lowered Her head still more, so Her eyes were staring into the man’s, his terrified face filling Her entire field of vision. Julia felt scared too, as she felt dark currents moving within the Ragwitch’s mind, forces meshing and joining, obedient to Her will.

Then She touched the man with one puffy finger, and whispered, “But you will tell Me…Rornal.”

As She spoke his name, Julia felt something flow out of Her, and into the man. His body stiffened, the muscles and veins in his neck stood out like pipes, and his eyes filmed over with a ghastly wash of red. The Gwarulch on either side of him snickered, and let go—but he didn’t try to escape. He just stood there, the small muscles in his arms and legs twitching uncontrollably. Julia felt sick, and wished she didn’t have to look—even though she’d seen it before, for the Ragwitch had Glazed many people now.

The Ragwitch watched silently, drawing back up to Her full height, even as the man before Her seemed to be remolded, first arching back, and then bending forward into a bestial crouch. His head rolled to one side, and he looked at the Ragwitch with tongue lolling, and eyes devoid of all humanity.

“Now,” She said. “Where are the King and his army going?”

The man’s mouth opened wider, and he dribbled a little, before saying, “We…m…m…m…arch…to…Alnwere.”

He almost didn’t get the last word out, for his eyes suddenly cleared and his left hand plucked at the air in front of him, as if he were trying to grasp somebody’s hand. His fingers closed on the empty air, and he toppled forward, crashing to the ground at the Ragwitch’s feet.

Julia felt surprise ripple through the Ragwitch, and almost a faint hint of fear. Then, Her thoughts
burst in upon the girl, sticking into her like many sharp pins.

“How did he find such strength? He held out his hand towards Me—yet should not—he could not…how have you helped him? Who…”

Suddenly the thoughts withdrew, and Julia felt a surge of relief as the pain subsided. Then, like the faint caress of a cat sliding around an ankle, she felt something touch her mind—and Anhyvar’s whisper came to her:

“I tried to secretly help the man, but She has looked into Herself, and found that I am free. Brace yourself for Her attack—and remember, you will soon be with us.”

Julia braced herself with the mental equivalent of a long, deep breath, just as She felt the Ragwitch’s thoughts returning in a dark, overwhelming tide. But this was no mere test, or cruel playfulness, but a full-scale attack, determined to totally absorb the personality that was Julia.

The first harsh tendrils of Her thought grasped her like an electric shock, and Julia gave a despairing cry as she felt them tear something away, some part of herself. And then more cold tendrils fastened on her, each ripping away something of her essence, stripping Julia of her personality and her will.

Julia fought back with everything good she could remember—everything solid and real and happy—but more and more tendrils came and snatched pieces of her mind, and the memories became
black holes she couldn’t think around, and there were more and more tendrils, colder and blacker, and more and more holes…

In seconds, all that was left of Julia panicked, her defenses collapsed, and she surrendered herself to destruction, as the Ragwitch split her personality into a million fragments, and prepared to digest them into Her central mind.

Tanboule’s potato patch was (to Paul’s relief) much smaller than expected. A mere twenty meters square, it lay down the slope of the lesser peak, a strip of dark brown earth, devoid of heather and shale.

Quigin looked at the patch, and whispered to Paul, “Bet there’s no potatoes. You couldn’t grow them there.”

Paul looked at Tanboule’s tall figure striding down the mountainside, his arms stretched out like a gawky albatross, and shook his head. He knew that if Tanboule said potatoes, then there would be potatoes.

There were, of course. Hundreds of them, thought Paul gloomily, as he filled yet another sack and dragged it to the edge of the field. Hathin the donkey looked at the sacks, and then at Paul, as if he was hoping Paul would reject his suspicion about who would end up carrying them.

Paul got a new sack from a pile in one corner, and paused to look at Tanboule and Quigin, all
hunched over and digging in other quarters of the field. At least it’s stopped raining, he thought, looking at the clear blue sky. It was sunny too, and Paul stretched towards the sun, enjoying the heat of it on his face, and the creaking and popping as his backbone straightened out.

He was at full stretch, staring at the sky, when a slight hint of movement touched the corner of his vision somewhere higher up the peak.

Instantly, he was crouching again, and looking up the mountain. Sure enough, there was something moving, something slinking over the crest on all fours. Paul felt his mouth suddenly dry up, and his heart began its now almost familiar beat of fear.

“Gwarulch,” said a voice by Paul’s ear, and he turned his head to see Tanboule next to him, peering through a long, leather-cased telescope. He shut it with a flick of his wrist, and said with a sniff, “A smaller, slinking sort. A scout for more, no doubt.”

Paul gulped, and looked nervously around, then back at Tanboule’s kindly face, and his mouth opened and shut without getting out any words. Tanboule raised one eyebrow, but said nothing. Paul watched, aghast, as he walked back to his quarter, and bent over the potatoes again.

“What are you doing?” he exclaimed. “We have to escape!”

Tanboule looked back at him, and nodded sagely.
“Of course, Paul, of course. But everything in due time. We have to get the potatoes out first.”

“But…” Paul began, but Tanboule wasn’t listening. Neither was Quigin, Paul noticed. He just kept grubbing up the potatoes. Even Leasel looked away when Paul cast a beseeching glance at her.

Paul looked back up the mountain again, and saw the Gwarulch creeping back up. Reporting to the others, he thought, and memories of Donbreye suddenly flashed into his head—of that first chilling howl, and then the awful rush of the creatures onto the harborside. Or the battle of Reddow Cairn, with thousands of Gwarulch spilling over the ridge…

Paul shivered, picked up his trowel, and started digging frantically for potatoes. In a few minutes, he was working in a near frenzy, pulling potatoes out of the ground at twice the speed of Quigin or Tanboule.

“You could hurry up,” he said to them in a sulky, half-crying voice. “It’s me they want, and if you have to get the potatoes in before we can run away, you could…you could…”

Savagely, he thrust his trowel into the ground, only to be met by a cry of annoyance—from somewhere, underground. Paul let go of the trowel, and the earth split around it, clods scattering and loose earth blowing away like sand. Then a hand reached out of the hole, a brown wrinkled hand, with the texture of willow bark, and long thin fingers like
roots. The hand felt to the left and right, snaked forward, and grabbed Paul’s ankle.

He screamed and fell backwards, kicking and straining, trying to loosen the grip of whatever held him. But it wouldn’t let go, and another hand burst from the hole and gripped Paul even more tightly than the first.