The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (20 page)

The words were barely out of his mouth when a thin cry, like the plaintive voice of a night bird, yet cold and pitiless as the fangs of mountains, came from behind them.

“Run! It has found our trail!”

They had crossed the path where Fenodyree had turned back, and were forcing a way between the bushes when the mara called a second time, and now it was near.

“Steady!” cried Gowther. “We munner get separated in here!”

The thicket was not impenetrable, but it was close enough to make it difficult for five people to move quickly through it together. The snow was no longer falling: it was almost night.

Again the voice.

“Stay!” cried Durathror.

They had all heard: it was not an echo. It was an answering call – from the front!

Immediately there came another from the right, and the sound of snapping branches and rustling undergrowth. Hemmed in on three sides, they were, for the moment, spared the anguish of decision. They swung left. The voices were continuous now.

Durathror ran ahead of the rest. Susan was nearest to him, trying to keep in his wake, and as they came to a thick screen of brush, Durathror put up his arms to shield his eyes, and forced his way through. Susan's dive after him was halted by a stifled cry from Durathror, followed by a splash.

“What's happened?”

“Where are we?”

“What is it?”

“Are you all right?”

Susan put her head through the gap – and looked out across an apparently limitless sheet of water. In the gathering darkness she could not see any land. Beneath her, to his waist in the water, Durathror struggled to climb back through the weeds and dead vegetation to the land. By this time the others had all reached the spot.

“
Redesmere
!” said Gowther savagely. “I should have thowt of that one!”

“Back!” spluttered Durathror.

“But we conner!”

“We have no choice,” said Fenodyree, “and very little time. We may pass through the net: we may.”

Without a word Colin turned, and the rest hurried after.

“Colin, wait! Let me lead you!” Fenodyree called softly.

“All right …oh!”

“
Colin
!!”

“Stop, everybody!” cried Colin. “There's water here, too!”

“
What
? Theer conner be! Here, wait on a minute!”

Gowther turned off left, and plunged into the bushes: ten seconds later he was back, only to vanish in the opposite direction without speaking. When he reappeared he was walking very slowly.

“I dunner ask onybody to believe this,” he said, “but we're on an island.”

“A
nd it inner very big, either,” said Gowther.

“But … but … it
can't
be an island!” said Susan.

“I know it conner: but it is.”

“It's not
possible
!” said Colin.

“That's reet.”

“But …”

Laughter broke in on their bewilderment, and they were aware of the dwarfs sitting in the snow, each with his back against a tree, at ease, and openly amused.

“It is in truth an island,” said Durathror. “And, by the blade of Osla! I did not look to such a fair ending to this day's work.”

“Hush!” said Fenodyree. “And lie low awhile.”

On the nearer shore, fifty yards away, three mara were casting about to pick up the vanished scent. They wailed, and whooped, and peered at the ground, uprooting bushes and bending trees.

Gowther pressed himself further into the snow: he was exposed, and obvious: it would not be long before the mara
would put two and two together, and wade out to the island, and then …

Having flattened everything for yards around, the three shapes stood on the lake side, facing out across the water.

This is it, thought Susan. How far can I swim in these clothes? But the mara did not move: their bodies merged into the racing shadows. All was quiet. And then they turned, and disappeared into the wood: the whooping broke out again, and continued until all sounds were lost in the distance.

Gowther stood up, and shook the snow out of his clothes.

“They must be pretty dim!” said Colin. “Why didn't they find us? Anyone with half an eye could have guessed where we were: our footprints must have ended at the water.”

“But the mara have not half a
mind,”
said Fenodyree. “Our tracks were all they had to follow, and when they ended the trail was lost. Nothing was moving on the lake, there were no tracks, therefore there was nothing to find: so their minds work. They will wander now until dawn, and let us hope there are few men abroad this night.”

“Yes, but they knew we were somewhere close,” said Susan. “Why didn't they try this island?”

“Ah, but they did not
know
: they have never seen us. All they have seen are tracks that end in water. For the mara that
is no puzzle; their minds look no further than their eyes, and I think that to their eyes this island is hidden.”

“Is it now?” said Gowther heavily. “You dunner surprise me in the least! Happen you con also tell us how we come to be here without wetting our feet,
and
how we're going to get back to land again!”

“I do not doubt that we shall walk from here at sunrise,” said Fenodyree, “and, meanwhile, sleep safely and well.

“This is the Isle of Angharad Goldenhand, the Lady of the Lake, and it is one of the Two Floating Islands of Logris. It was lodged against the shore when Angharad guided our feet hither. Here no evil will threaten us. For one night we may lie at peace, and the Lady will watch over us.”

“Very comforting!” said Gowther. Melting snow was sliding down the inside of his collar, and he was tired. “But wheer is this ‘lady' of thine? I conner see owt but snow and trees, and I doubt
they
wunner make a warm bed!”

“She is there, though we do not see her, and we are under her protection. Now we must eat a little, and sleep.”

A hunk of dry bread, and a mouthful of cheese, washed down with snow, made their supper. Hungry, damp, cold, and thirsty beyond measure, Susan curled up between the roots of a tree. Her ground-sheet was more of an affliction than a comfort. A long night of misery stretched ahead: sleep would
never come. But come it did, and surprisingly quickly. A warm languor crept through her limbs: her brain told her to resist, but she could not. “This is how you freeze to death.” “Well, there's nothing to be done about it now. And it's the … first … time I've been … warm … for years … years …” The snow against her cheek was a pillow of swan's-down. The scufflings of Gowther and Colin in their exhaustion and discomfort were carried far away beyond her reach. Susan slept.

It was a curious dream. Much of it seemed to be no more than a mixture of all her waking thoughts and wishes, timeless, disjointed, as difficult to hold as an image in rippling water. And then, for long periods, the people, and voices, and episodes of her dancing brain would fall into place, and become so vivid, so concrete, that there was nothing of dreaming about them. But always, after a while, the pattern would break. It was a painting in which the brush strokes became detached from the canvas, and drifted away as isolated scraps of colour, only to regroup themselves to show the scene advanced a little in time. But this was the main thread of Susan's dream.

She was sitting cross-legged with Colin, Gowther, and the dwarfs under the trees of the island. Before them were golden dishes piled high with meats, and spices, fruits, and cool, green
cresses. Redesmere flashed blue in the light of high summer. Stromkarls were laughing and playing in the water, others listened to the music of the voice of Angharad Goldenhand. She sat between the children, dressed in a robe of white linen. She was tall, and slender, and fair; her long, plaited hair like red gold; and on her brow a band of gold.

It seemed that nothing of their adventures were unknown to her, and she had much to tell. The lios-alfar of the west, said Angharad, grew fewer every year. Only beyond Minith Bannawg did they hold court in great numbers; and when they had heard rumour of the capture of Firefrost by Grimnir and the Morrigan, the elf-lord Atlendor son of Naf had come south to find what truth there was in the tale. He was ill of the smoke sickness when he reached the island, and Angharad nursed him to health. Then, when the stromkarl came from Goldenstone the previous evening, Atlendor decided to go back to his people, since news of Firefrost was good and there was need of him in Prydein. He had set out that morning, in haste to be clear of the sullied air, and he dared not stay for words when he put an end to the spies in Radnor Wood.

The dream ran on in a world of sunlit laugher, and stromkarls brought Fenodyree and the children cloaks of red muspel hair, woven from the beards of giants, and lined with white satyrs' wool; and there were four cloaks sewn together to cover Gowther's broad shoulders.

“And for you,” said Angharad Goldenhand, “for whom the danger is most real, take this bracelet of mine. It will guard you on your journey, and when the other is with Cadellin Silverbrow, think of this as fair exchange: it has many virtues.”

She took from her arm a band of white metal, and fastened it about Susan's left wrist.

“May the Sleepers lie safe in Fundindelve.”

“Thank … thank you.”

Susan was overwhelmed a little by such generosity; normally it would have embarrassed her, but she could not be embarrassed in the warmth of Angharad's smile.

The picture dissolved once more, but those golden eyes, full of sunlight, remained steadfast through the wheeling colours of her dream.

“Thank you,” said Susan.

The golden eyes faded.

“Thank you. Thank you!”

Her voice sounded loudly in her head; the kaleidoscope receded into a blank screen of consciousness, against which her words fell with a peculiar lack of resonance. Susan knew she was almost awake: awake to a world of snow, and hunger, and weariness, and great peril. Desperately she tried to force her way back into sleep, to make that reality, but the wall was too strong. One by one her senses returned. She felt air cutting into her lungs like blades of ice, and when a drifting
snowflake landed gently on her cheek she groaned, and thrust her head into the crook of her elbow. Instantly Susan forced her eyes open, and strained to bring them into focus; but the remains of sleep were heavy upon her, and it was a full quarter of a minute before she knew beyond doubt that her cheek had not lied.

Susan was wrapped in a cloak of bronze-red hair, lined with a fleece of curls.

There was something enclosing her wrist, something that had not been there earlier. She worked her arm free of the cloak to see what it was. A silver bracelet.

The others were awake now. Colin and Gowther fingered their cloaks as though in a stupor. A waning moon shone in a clear sky of frost.

“But it was a
dream
…!!”

“… and the stromkarls …”

“It conner have happened …”

“Did you see …?”

“So did I!”

“It was summer, too!”

“… and all that food.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No!”

“Theer's only our footprints in the snow, and all.”

“But these cloaks …”

“And what about this?” said Susan.

“Ay, that is a precious gift,” said Durathror.

They had forgotten the dwarfs, in their astonishment.

“Oh,
hallo
!” said Gowther. “I'm glad as somebody here knows what they're about! Witches, boggarts, and green freetings I've had to take in one day, and after that I conner feel inclined to argue with owt you say, but now that we're getting to the stage wheer I dunner know whether I'm sleeping or waking, I begin to wonder if I'm dreaming the whole lot!”

“Dreams, glamour, they are not easy to tell apart,” said Fenodyree, “and men have ever thought dreams are not reality. The Lady of the Lake is a skilled weaver of enchantment. She knew that without help we could not have survived the night. Now, with muspel cloaks upon our backs, we need not fear the cold of fimbulwinter, even though the ice-giants themselves came south. And
that
gift may be more than all.”

He pointed to the bracelet. It had an air of great age. Along the outer face it was lightly incised, and inlaid with black enamel, much of which was missing. One half was a plain, coiling, leaf design, flanked by two oblongs of a diamond lattice pattern, with four spots within each diamond. On the other half, between two more oblongs, was an inscription in heavy, square lettering that was unknown to Susan.

“Yes, but in what way is it valuable?”

“I cannot tell you. But Angharad would not wear it for ornament alone.”

“She might have told me what it was for, though.”

“Perhaps it would not do for you to learn all its secrets at a time: sudden power is an evil, dangerous thing for any hands. Wear this always, guard it as you would the stone, and I know it will not fail you in need. And, above all, let it remind you of one who gave shelter and aid to those whose downfall would lift a weight of sorrow from her heart.”

“What do you mean?” said Colin. “I don't understand. She's on our side, isn't she?”

“Ay, but you must know this: Angharad Goldenhand is wife to one who sleeps in Fundindelve; a great captain. A week had they been married when the king summoned his knights to go under the earth. Seven days of happiness to last her down the years. Do you see now how generous she has been? We are rescued, fed, and clothed, and are going on our way the better equipped for our task, yet if we succeed, Angharad Goldenhand may not greet her lord for many a hundred years to come.”