Drowned Ammet (34 page)

A gray-white horse had stopped further down the dell and a tall man with flying light hair was dismounting from it. Mitt hastily brushed his wet face with his arm and backed against the short stone pillar. The man was Old Ammet. He came toward Mitt, smiling a little, with his long light hair blowing and swirling about his head and shoulders as if the wind were blowing half a gale in the dell. But there was no wind at all. He had a straight, grave way of looking, which reminded Mitt a little of Hobin, though his face was nothing like Hobin's. It was like no face Mitt had ever seen. One moment Mitt thought Old Ammet was a grand old man, and the next he seemed a handsome young one. And as Mitt saw these strange changes in Old Ammet, he was more frightened than he had ever been of any nightmare. With every step Old Ammet advanced, Mitt felt another wave of fear, until he was as terrified as he had been that time in Holand when he pretended to play marbles—right up to the moment when Old Ammet spoke to him. Then it all seemed perfectly natural.

“I was needing to speak with you, Alhammitt,” Old Ammet said. His voice reminded Mitt of Siriol's, though it was also quite, quite different. “I have to ask you a question.”

“You could have talked to me anytime,” Mitt said, feeling a little resentful. “Why does it have to be now, when I'm all to pieces?”

Old Ammet's young face laughed, and his old face answered. “Because there was no doubt till now what you would do.”

“What I want to do is get out of this place and go North,” Mitt said. “What's so doubtful about that?”

“Nothing,” agreed Old Ammet, out of his grave old face. “The men of the Islands will help you go North.” Then his face blazed young and glad and eager, and he said, “It is also quite certain that you will come back.”

“How did you know that?” Mitt asked. He knew it was true. He would have to come back to the Holy Islands. “When do I come?”

“That is for you to say,” said Old Ammet, young and old at once. “And when you do, it is laid down that we shall deliver these Islands into your keeping. My question to you is: Will you take them as a friend or as an enemy?”

“As an enemy to
you
, you mean?” Mitt asked, highly perplexed by this question.

Again Old Ammet's young face laughed. “We are not the stuff of enemies or friends, Alhammitt. Shall I ask this way: Will you come as a conqueror or in peace?”

“How should
I
know?” Mitt said. “What do you mean coming and asking me questions like that? What do you mean coming and pushing me around? It's my belief you've been pushing me around all the time, you and Libby Beer, and I don't like people pushing me around!”

“Nobody has pushed you around,” said Old Ammet. He looked as old as the Islands. “You chose your own course, and we helped you, as we were bound to do. We shall help you again. All I needed to know was what manner of help we must give you in times to come.” And as if Mitt had already told him the answer to that, Old Ammet turned away and went to his horse. The corn color of his clothes and hair caught the sun and seemed to melt into it.

“Hey, wait!” said Mitt. He felt very resentful and very disappointed in Old Ammet. He had expected more from him somehow. “Well, what am I supposed to say? You might give me a bit of help over that, at least!” he said, hurrying after the melting, hazy figure. Old Ammet turned round, melting back to a young man, and Mitt found he had to stop. “Can't you give the Holy Islands to someone else? I don't deserve to get them,” he said.

Old Ammet shook his blowing hair and smiled regretfully. “I'm not anyone's judge.”

“But you could be,” said Mitt.

“What good would that do?” said Old Ammet. “What is your answer?”

Mitt was glad to find that he had not, after all, yet answered Old Ammet's question. He thought about it. The first thing he wanted to do was to ask Old Ammet to come back in an hour or so, to give him time to think. But Old Ammet stood there, old and patient beside the tall gray horse, and the horse cropped the cool green turf with drops of bright water falling gently from its mane, as if, for both of them, there was all the time in the world.

“I'm bad at thinking without talking,” said Mitt. “I'm like Al that way. We both love to talk.”

“Then why not talk?” suggested Old Ammet.

But Mitt did not talk because it suddenly came to him that he had it in him to be far worse than Al. Mitt, if he wanted, really could become the person out of his recent daydream and go round the country putting people like Navis to death. Al did what he did for himself alone. Mitt would be doing it against people. Mitt looked up at Old Ammet and caught his face as it changed to young. He looked as splendid as Mitt's daydream. Yet beyond Old Ammet was the opening of the dell, and there lay the Holy Islands spread out between the evening sea and the sky. And Mitt knew he did not want to come back to them hunting people from island to island and putting them to death. It just did not fit. But if he came back as an enemy, he would. He had Old Ammet's word for it that he would come back. And it would be like destroying his own early daydreams.

He looked up at Old Ammet's face and caught it between young and old. “It'll have to be friends,” he said.

Old Ammet, turned to old now, simply nodded gravely. It was no more than Mitt expected, but he was disappointed all the same. He had hoped Old Ammet would praise him, or at least reward him, for his decision. He was a very puzzling being, and, Mitt suspected, a very powerful one, too.

“What's your name?” he said. “It isn't really Old Ammet, is it?”

“Once,” said Old Ammet, “it used to be the same as yours. But people have forgotten.”

Mitt thought he had known that. Old Ammet and Alhammitt did not sound so very different. “And Libby Beer,” he asked. “That's a silly sort of name.”

Young Ammet smiled at Mitt, dazzling him by the heave and billow of his bright hair and the brightness on his clothes. “You can learn how to call both of us now you've decided. Go on up to our house and take what help you can from there. Remember to ask for our names.” He pointed to the end of the dell. Mitt saw the path went on there, up into the rocks. While he was looking, Mitt had a feeling Old Ammet walked dazzling out of the dell, leading the horse, into the sky. But he was not sure. He was only sure he was gone.

“Well, I've met him at last,” Mitt said, and he was wonderfully pleased now as he went on up the path.

It was not far, a short, steep climb through the rocks. Then Mitt came to the very top of Holy Island, into a strong breeze, and found a little gray building which looked as old as the island. Standing in front of it was an old, old island man with long white hair and a wrinkled brown face.

“Hey!” said Mitt, remembering that Jenro had said there was no mortal soul on the island.

“You've had a hard climb,” the old man said in a gentle island voice. “Come and seat yourself on the bench here and be breathing.”

“Thanks,” said Mitt. “But I got to ask for their names first. That's what I come for.”

“Sit down first. That will be needing a quiet mind,” said the old man, pointing to a stone bench outside the house. Mitt went over and, a little impatiently, sat down. The old man sat creakingly beside him. “Will you eat?” he said.

“Well, I—Yes—Thanks!” said Mitt. The old man was suddenly passing him a large bunch of grapes and a flat loaf plaited like an ear of wheat, and Mitt had no idea where he got them from. “How about you?” he said politely.

“I am well, thank you,” said the old man.

Mitt supposed that meant he was not hungry. He was very hungry himself. The loaf was better even than the bread they had that morning, and the grapes were sour-sweet, cold and juicy. He ate every scrap. “How about those names?” he said, munching.

“The names of the Earth Shaker and She Who Raised the Islands are strong things,” said the old man, “even the least of them. Spoken aloud by the voice, they are too strong, unless the speaker has right in the heart of him. And I must tell you that the names of the Earth Shaker are cruel even then, as they are strongest. He who learns these names must never say them aloud, even sleeping, unless he wishes something perilous to follow. Will you still learn those names?”

Mitt was not sure. He did not like the idea that he might say something perilous in his sleep. He was about to tell the old man to forget he asked when he realized that Old Ammet had indeed rewarded him for his decision, and this was to be the reward. Frightening though it was, Mitt saw he would have to take it, or he would be going back on his decision. And when he thought of himself conquering and killing among the people of the Holy Islands, he knew his decision was right. “Yes, please,” he said.

“And who was it sent you?” asked the old man.

Mitt answered without hesitation. “The Earth Shaker.”

“Then I will be showing you,” said the priest, “if you have taken enough of their gifts.” He stood up as creakingly as he had sat down. Mitt brushed the crumbs off his suit and got up, too. “Can you read?” asked the old priest.

“Just about,” Mitt conceded.

The old man walked to the door of the house, but he did not go in. He signed to Mitt to go inside. “Look under them in the sun,” he said. “And do not speak what you read until you have true need.”

Mitt had to duck his head to get into the house. When he was inside, he was surprised to find it was not dark, as he had expected, but light and warm and quiet. The late sun was streaming in through windows placed curiously low down, nearly at the floor. The red-gold light fell on the end wall, on two hollows in the stonework. In one hollow stood Libby Beer, and in the other Old Ammet. They were not as grapes and corn, but as queer old statues of themselves as Mitt had just seen them. Mitt knew that whoever had made those statues had seen them, too. Libby Beer was carved smiling as she had smiled at Mitt, and Old Ammet was miraculously both old and young at once. Mitt wished he knew how to carve like that.

Look under them in the sun, the old man had said. Mitt took his eyes reluctantly off the statues and looked at the wall under the hollows. There was a mass of cracks there, as if something had hit the wall and all but smashed it. But as Mitt looked, he found that the sun was lighting some of the cracks and not others and that the lighted parts were forming letters. The letters fell together to form words, two words under each figure, and the words were names.

Mitt had always thought he could not read without saying what he read aloud. But he dared not do that now. It was one of the hardest things he had done, spelling out those words in his head. Three of them were such strange names, too, that he was not sure how to say them. Only one—the one immediately under the hollow where Old Ammet stood—was not so strange. It was almost Ynen, or like Ynen with an extra
Yn
to it. From this, Mitt gathered, though he could not say how, that the top name in each pair was the lesser name and went with the usual figures of Old Ammet and Libby Beer, made of corn and berries, and that the names below were the strong ones and went with Old Ammet and Libby Beer as they really were. After that he found them a little easier to remember. Even so, he walked to the door with his eyes up and his mouth moving, remembering hard.

“Will you let them stay easy? They will stay in you,” the old priest said kindly, seeing his trouble.

Mitt blinked at him. “They will? They seem to get away every time I stop thinking about them.”

“You will be saying them when you should not if you will not leave them lie,” said the old man. “Now what you must be doing is going down that way.” He pointed to the rocks on the landward side of the low gray house.

“But how can I get off the island that way?” Mitt said.

“The Earth Shaker will show you,” said the priest.

Mitt shrugged and looked over at the green hump of the nearest island, a good half mile away. Still, where the old man pointed, there looked to be an easy way down. Mitt turned back to thank him, and he was gone. Mitt knew he had not had time to hobble off anywhere. He was simply not there anymore. Mitt could feel that the space by the house was empty somehow.

“And he felt like a real one, too,” Mitt said. “I wonder who he was.”

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