Silver on the Tree (33 page)

“But,” the Rider said, “and mark this, John Rowlands—but, not to a
time
of her asking.”

Will felt a coldness creeping into his mind: a dreadful misgiving, like a tiny crack that grows in a great secure dike holding back the sea. Merriman's robe rustled, beside him.

The Rider's voice was quiet and confident. “She came to
the mountains of Gwynedd, with her child, without thought of the time to which she came. And a man of the twentieth century, called Owen Davies, fell in love with her, and took her and reared her child as his own when she vanished away again. But that century was not of her choosing. She went where the Lord of the Light took her, she did not care. But the Light had great care.”

Suddenly his voice rose, and became harsh and accusing. “The Light chose, and made sure that Bran ap Arthur, Bran pen Dragon, came to this time to grow into the right place at the right moment for the working of the quest of the Light. Thus all the old prophecies have been fulfilled only by their manipulation of Time. And that is a twisting of the terms of the High Magic, and so we claim that the boy Bran, who is here only through the craft of the Light, should go back to the time in which he belongs.”

John Rowlands said thoughtfully, “Send him back more than a thousand years? And what language were men speaking here then?”

“Latin,” Will said.

“He has very little Latin,” John Rowlands said, looking out at the dark mist beyond the river.

“You are frivolous,” the voice out of the darkness said, curtly. “He may be taken out of Time merely, as he is now, so long as he plays no part in this present matter.”

“Not frivolous,” John Rowlands said, softly still. “I am simply wondering how a boy can be said to belong to a time whose language he does not even speak. Just wondering, sir, in order to judge.”

Merriman said, without moving from his place at the stern of the boat, “Belonging. That is the answer to this challenge. Whether it was the boy's mother or the Light who chose the time into which he came to grow up, or whether the choice was random, nevertheless he has attached himself to that time. He has bound himself by love to those with whom he has lived there, most particularly Owen Davies his adopted father, and Davies' friend—John Rowlands.”

“Yes,” Rowlands said, looking up in the same swift anxiety as before to the strange cage of misty light in which, dimly, they could see Bran held motionless.

“Such loving bonds,” Merriman said, “are outside the control even of the High Magic, for they are the strongest thing on all this earth.”

But then out of the darkness beside them, over the still water, from no direction that they could tell, a frightened voice cried urgently, “John! John!”

John Rowlands' head jerked upright, wary and yet longing.

“That's Mrs. Rowlands!” Jane whispered.

“Where is she?” Barney swung all round, for the voice had seemed to come out of the air.

“There!” Simon was pointing. His voice trailed away. “There….”

They could see only her face, dimly lighted in the churning darkness beside the boat, and her hands, out-stretched. She was gazing imploringly at John Rowlands, and her voice was the soft warm voice they had known in the beginning, and it was full of fear.

“John, help me, help—I have no hand in all these things, I am possessed. There is a mind of the Dark that comes into my own, and then … I say things, and I do things, and I do not know what they are…. John, we too have loving bonds of our own.
Shoni bach,
you must help, they say they will let me go free if you will help them!”

“Help … them?” John Rowlands seemed to speak with difficulty; his voice sounded slow and rusty.

“Set right the balance,” the Black Rider said curtly. “Give us the proper decision, that the Light is not entitled to the help of the boy Bran. And we will leave the mind of your wife Blodwen Rowlands, and give her back to you.”

“Oh please, John?” Mrs. Rowlands reached out her arms to him, and the appeal in her voice was so poignant that Jane, listening, could hardly bear to keep still. The things she had learned about Blodwen Rowlands vanished totally
from her mind; she could hear only the unhappiness and yearning of one human being cut off from another.

“Possession.” There was the same odd creaking quality in John Rowlands' voice, as if he were forcing the words out. “It is like the possession by demons, you mean, that they used to speak of in the old days?”

The Black Rider gave a low bubbling laugh, a cold sound.

Blodwen Rowlands said eagerly, “Yes, yes, it is the same. It is the Dark taking over my mind and making me into something else while it is there. Oh John
cariad,
say what they want, so that we can go home to the cottage and be as happy again as we have been all these years. This is all a terrible dream—I want to go home.”

John Rowlands' fists clenched tight as the plaintive musical voice rose in appeal; he gazed at his wife's face long and closely. Turning, uncertain, he looked up at Merriman and Will, and last of all at the high remote form of the Lady, but each one of them looked back at him expressionless, without any sign of threat or appeal or advice. John Rowlands looked again at Blodwen—and suddenly Jane felt a hollow feeling of shock at the pit of her stomach, for the look that she saw on his face now was like a sad farewell for something that is forever gone.

His voice was low and gentle, and they could barely hear it over the soft whimpering of the breeze on the riverbank.

“I do not believe any power can possess the mind of a man or woman, Blod—or whatever your name should really be. I believe in God-given free will, you see. I think nothing is forced on us, except by other people like ourselves. I think our choices are our own. And you are not possessed therefore, you must be allied to the Dark because you have chosen to be—terrible though that is for me to believe after all these long years. Either that, or you are not human, wholly a creature of the Dark, a different creature whom I have never really known.”

The soft deep voice hung over the misty river, and for a moment there was no sound or movement anywhere, from
the indistinct flotilla of the Light or the teeming black emptiness of the Dark. Blodwen Rowlands' glimmering face was there still, and the towering figure of the Rider.

John Rowlands' deep whisper went on, as if he were speaking his thoughts to himself. “And as to Bran, that is a matter of a boy whose choice at first was not his own, but who has lived his own life since then. Which is all that you can say of most of us, in the end. He has indeed made loving bonds for himself, with his father—adopted father, if you like. And with me, and with the others who have watched him grow up on Clwyd Farm. Though not with my wife, as I had thought.” His voice husked to nothing, and he swallowed and was silent for a moment.

Jane was watching Blodwen Rowlands' face; she saw it begin gradually to harden. The longing dropped away like a mask, leaving indifference and a cold rage.

“If I am to judge,” John Rowlands said, “then I judge that Bran Davies belongs to the time in which both he and I live our lives. And that since he is not separate, as I am, but has thrown in his lot with the Light and risked much for them—then there is no reason why he should not be free to help their cause. As … others … are free to help the Dark if they choose.”

He looked up at the Lady. “There's my judgment, then.” His voice seemed deliberately rough and rural, as if he were trying to isolate himself.

The Lady said clearly, “The High Magic confirms it, and thanks you, John Rowlands. And the Light accepts that this is the law.”

She turned a little towards the bank of the river, to the churning darkness behind the mist; the brightness seemed to grow around her, and her voice rose. “And the Dark, Rider?”

The wind was rising, tugging at her long blue robe; somewhere far off, faint thunder rolled.

The Black Rider said in quiet fury, “It is the law.” He came a little way out of his dark refuge, and put back his
257hood, and his blue eyes glinted in the scarred face. “You are a fool, John Rowlands! To choose to destroy your home, for the sake of a nameless cause—”

“For the sake of a boy's life,” John Rowlands said.

“He was always a fool, always!” Blodwen Rowlands' voice came out of the darkness, strident, stronger than before; it was again the voice of the White Rider, and suddenly, listening, Will knew that he had always heard the likeness of the two but never thought to add them together, and he saw from Jane's face that she had in her mind the same fearful parallel.

The thunder rumbled again, closer.

“A soft one,
yn ffwl mawr!”
Blodwen Rowlands cried. “A shepherd and a harp-player! Fool! Fool!” And her voice rose high into the whine of the rising wind and was carried away into the darkening sky. All around them the mist was darkening now, and the sky above was solid with clouds so dark a grey as to be nearly black.

But the Lady raised her arm and pointed the five fingers of her hand at Bran, where he stood motionless in his cage of bright mist. There was a hint of music in Will's ears, though he did not know if anyone else heard, and then Bran was standing there clear, with the sword Eirias in his hand, and the blade of the sword was flaming with cold blue light.

Bran raised Eirias in the air like a brand. Swelling behind him and all around, Will felt the company of the Light advancing, driving on, and he saw that their boat was moving again, the water lapping past the bow, choppier now, with small waves raised by the rising wind. He knew that the other vessels of their shadowy fleet were moving too. But at the same time the sky was growing darker, darker yet, filled with great billowing clouds.

The wind gusted suddenly higher; he saw the Lady's robe swirl round her slender form and Merriman's dark cloak billow out like a spinnaker over the bow. And then for an instant all light was blotted out around them, as with a roar the whirling tornado of the Dark rose into the sky, travelling
over and before them, circling the horizon to collect its final strength.

Only one streak of light still glowed. Standing in the bow of their boat, Bran swept the crystal sword before him in a blue line cutting the air, and the dark mist parted in a ragged, widening gap. They saw green fields rising before them, and suddenly they were all standing on a smooth green slope, on grass, with the river no more than a distant murmur in their ears.

“Stay close, all Six,” Merriman said. He led them up the grassy slope. The chain of Signs rang musically round Will's neck. He could feel the myriad shadowy forms of the Circle all about them, shielding them, pressing them on. John Rowlands moved beside the Lady, blank-faced, as if in a trance. Thunder growled overhead.

Then the last of the mist blew away, and in the dim light beneath the lowering sky they saw a line of trees before them, a wood of beech trees capping a round chalk hill—and, gradually appearing on the slope in front of the wood, a single huge tree. It took shape under their eyes, a shadowy outline becoming steadily more solid and real; it rose and filled out and its broad leaves rustled and tossed in the wind. Its trunk was as thick as ten men, its branches spread wide as a house. It was an oak tree, more vast and ancient than any tree they had ever seen.

Overhead, lightning ripped one of the dark clouds, and the thunder came thumping at them like a huge fist.

Barney said, whispering, “Silver on the tree … ?”

Bran pointed Eirias up into the tree, in a sweeping triumphant gesture. “See, where the first branch divides—there!”

And through the swaying branches they could see the mistletoe, the strange invading clump of a different green than the green of the oak: the twining stems and the small leaves, growing upon the tree, glimmering a little with a light of their own. Will gazed at the plant and seemed to see it changing, flickering; he blinked in vain to make out something in the middle of the clump.

Merriman's dark cloak blew round him in the rising wind. “There will be one spray of blossoms only,” he said, his deep voice rough with strain. “And we shall see each bud break, and when every small bright flower on that spray is in bloom, only then do we cut the spray. Then, and not before and not afterwards, but only in that one moment, does the great spell have force. And in that moment too, he who cuts the mistletoe must be kept from attack by the Six, each with one of the Signs.”

He turned his deep-shadowed eyes on Will, and Will reached to his neck to take off the gold-linked circle of the Signs.

But before he could touch them, white lightning suddenly flashed far closer than before from the dark cloud-base overhead. Will saw Merriman's tall form stiffen, facing the great tree. He too turned, seeking the mistletoe, and saw all at once that a glint of light fierce as fire came from the middle of the strange green clump. The moment was coming; the first bud on the spray of the mistletoe flowers had broken into bloom.

And with it, the Dark came rising.

Will had never, by any enchantment, known what it would be like. Long afterwards, he thought that it must have been like what happens to a mind that goes instantly and totally mad. And worse, for here the world went mad. Like a soundless explosion the immense force of the Dark's power rocked everything round him, rocked his senses; he staggered, reaching blindly for support that was not there. The appearances of things ran wild; black seemed white, green seemed red; all flickering and throbbing as if the sun had swallowed the earth. A great scarlet tree loomed over him against a sky of livid white; the others of the Six, flashing in and out of sight, were like negative images, blurred forms with black teeth and empty white eyes. The endless dull roar of thunder filled his ears and his mind; he felt sick
and ill, cold and hot at once, his eyes closing to slits, a constriction growing in his throat.

Unable to move any limb, he saw through leaden eyelids that Simon and Jane and Barney had collapsed to the ground; moving with tremendous effort, as if held down by weights, they struggled in vain to get up. Darkness loomed over them; slowly turning his heavy head, Will saw in sick horror that half the sky, half the world, behind him was filled with the whirling black tornado of the Dark, spinning between cloud and earth, more vast than his senses could comprehend. He saw Bran, staggering, holding up a blue streak of flame as if for support. Bright blue, he thought, I've never seen a brighter blue, except the Lady's eyes.
The Lady, where is the Lady?
And he could not move to look for her, but crumpled to his knees while the world wove to and fro in his spinning gaze. It was only by simple accident that his feeble hand hit the circle of Signs hanging from his neck.