The Moon of Gomrath (10 page)

“I can't stay cooped up here!” said Susan. “I've got to get out and find Colin!”

Albanac passed his hand over his face. He looked exhausted.

“There is nothing we can do now, Susan. We may need all our strength later, so try to sleep. I know that I
am spent.”

“But I've got to get out!”

“And how long is it since you were eating your heart away to get in?” said Albanac. “If you cannot sleep, then sit here, and talk.”

Susan flung herself on to the bed of skins, and for some minutes was too choked with frustration to talk. But there were so many questions in her mind that this could not last.

“Albanac, who is the Hunter? And what did we do?”

“He is part of the Old Magic,” said Albanac. “And though Cadellin may not agree, I think that what you did was not brought about by chance. The Old Magic has been woken, and it has moved in you, and I think it led you to the Beacon.

“In the time before the Old Magic was made to sleep, it was strongest on this night, the Eve of Gomrath, one of the four nights of the year when Time and Forever mingle. And wendfire was lit at the Goloring, which is now the Beacon, to bring the Einheriar from the mounds and the Hunter from Shining Tor. For the Old Magic is moon magic and sun magic, and it is blood magic, also, and there lie the Hunter's power and his need. He is from a cruel day of the world. Men have changed since they honoured him.”

“You keep saying the Old Magic has been woken,” said Susan, “but if it's as strong as this, how did it ever come to die out?”

“That is the work of Cadellin,” said Albanac. “To wizards, and their High Magic of thoughts and spells, the Old Magic was a hindrance, a power without shape or order: so they tried to destroy it. But it would not be destroyed: it would only sleep. And at this season called Gomrath, which lasts for seven nights, it sleeps but lightly.”

“So there's nothing bad about it at all,” said Susan. “It just got in the way.”

“Yes. You may even say the wizards acted without right. But then, as ages pass, the world changes; so it is true that the Old Magic is wrong for these times. It does not fit the present scale of good and ill.”

“But it's more natural than all these spells,” said Susan. “I think I understand it better than anything here.”

Albanac looked up. “You would say that. For it is woman's magic, too, and the more I see, the more I know that the Mark of Fohla is part of it.”

“What does the Hunter do? What's he for?”

“Do? He
is
, Susan: that is enough. There you see the difference between the Old and the High. The High Magic was made with a reason; the Old Magic is a part of things. It is not
for
any purpose.”

Susan could feel the truth of what Albanac had said, although she could not understand it. She thought again of Colin. If only she had stopped when she heard him shout. Pelis the False.

“Albanac?”

“Mm?”

She rolled over to look. Albanac was sitting with his head resting on his arms.

“Nothing; it's all right.”

Susan listened as Albanac's breathing grew deeper. He was asleep.

And there's nobody else here, she thought. That tunnel goes straight to the Holywell. What was it? Emalagra?

She moved quietly round the table, and tested every step until she reached the wall behind the well. She laid her hand on the long crack in the rock, and spoke the word of power.

The grinding of the rock echoed down the tunnel, and Susan forced herself through the opening as soon as it was wide enough to take her shoulder. Then she ran.

Uthecar and Atlendor sat in the moonlight on the wooden bench on Castle Rock, an outcrop that stood from the trees high above the plain.

“He is not in the wood,” said Uthecar. “And from
here the world is wide.”

“If he is not in the wood,” said Atlendor, “think you he may be under it?”

“Is it that the lios-alfar have cunning?” said Uthecar. “For that is just what Pelis the False would be about! He knows we shall search, and far. Where better to hide than where he was last seen? There are places close on Saddlebole beyond the iron gates; quickly!”

They sped through the woods, past the Holywell, past the spot where Colin and the dwarf had vanished, past the iron gates, to a hollow above a dark slope of beeches. Here there were many recesses, and caves, and cramped tunnels into the rock. Atlendor drew his sword, and approached one of the tunnels. It was so blocked at the entrance that even he would have to worm his way in.

“Nay,” said Uthecar, “you have not the eyes for it! If he is here, cold death is your destiny.”

“But I have the nose for it,” said Atlendor. “The cave that holds a dwarf is not to be mistaken.”

“To it, then,” said Uthecar.

He stood back, his eye glinting savagely, and watched the elf's hips slide into the opening.

“It goes some way into the hill,” called Atlendor, “and there is not space to wield a sword. The air is foul, certain, but I doubt that he is here.”

Uthecar swore an oath, and turned away in rage. And as he did so, he had a glimpse of a snarling, fanged, red mouth, and eyes of green fire set in a broad head, with short ears bristling sideways from the flat top of the skull, and of white claws hooked at him, and all hurtling towards him through the air. Without thought his arms flew to protect his face, and then he was knocked spinning by a glancing blow. As he staggered to gain his balance, Uthecar saw that he was not the immediate object of the attack, for the furred shape was already halfway into the opening through which Atlendor had passed. There was not time to draw sword. Uthecar sprang forward, and just managed to get both hands to the short, bushy tail as the flanks disappeared.

It felt as though he was holding a half-released spring of irresistible power. Uthecar planted his legs on either side of the hole, and threw himself backwards. The hind feet lashed at him, but he avoided them, and by swinging from side to side he managed to keep them from winning fresh purchase in the ground. This just about made the struggle equal, but he knew that he could not hold out for long. And Atlendor's muffled, but critical, voice did not help. He was obviously unaware of what was happening.

“One-eyed Hornskin! Who blocks the hole?”

“If the rump-tail – should – break,” shouted Uthecar,
“your throat – will know that!”

Uthecar's shoulders felt as though they were being torn from his back, and the power to grip was leaving his wrists. There had been no reply from Atlendor.

Then the body kicked under him, and went limp, and before he could prepare himself, all resistance went, and he fell backwards, pulling a dead weight on top of him.

Uthecar picked himself up, and looked at the body at his feet. It was a wild-cat, well over three feet long, and it had been stabbed through the throat. Atlendor stood by the tunnel, wiping his sword on a handful of grass.

“A palug,” said Uthecar. “I am thinking that there is too much in these woods that has come from beyond Bannawg.”

Every time Colin stumbled, the sword jabbed in his ribs. The pace that the dwarf demanded was not easy to keep over such ground at night. Nor would the dwarf allow him to speak; an extra jab was the answer as soon as Colin opened his mouth.

They came to Stormy Point, and here the dwarf stopped, and whistled softly. A voice replied from across the rocks, and the sound of it made Colin's skin crawl; for it was cold, and deeply pitched, and hard to place, whether animal or not. Then at the edge of the trees
something moved, and began to come towards Colin and the dwarf. It was a wild-cat, and behind it were others. More and more they came from the trees, until the ground was so thick with them that it seemed to be covered with a rippling coat of hair.

The cats milled round Colin, and stared at him. He was surrounded by pale green stones of light. The dwarf sheathed his sword. A number of the cats grouped about Colin as an escort: they pressed close, but did not touch him. The remainder broke, and disappeared into the trees, spreading widely to kill pursuit.

From Stormy Point Colin ran until they were clear of the wood. He had no choice: or rather, he had, but the hissing that threatened behind him, and the eyes that were turned on him, every time his pace slackened, made him choose quickly. But once they were in the fields the dwarf relaxed to a walk, and the loping jog of the wildcats became a smooth carpet of movement.

All through the night they travelled eastwards under the waning moon. They went by Adders' Moss, past Withenlee and Harehill, to Tytherington, and then into the hills above Swanscoe, up and down across ridges that swelled like waves: by Kerridge and Lamaload, Nab End and Oldgate Nick, and down Hoo Moor above the Dale of Goyt: mile after mile of killing ground, bare of all trees
and broken only by gritstone walls. And then, deep at the bottom of the moor, they came to a small, round hill on which rhododendron bushes grew thickly; and about the hill curved a track.

They followed the track into the rhododendrons; far below on their right a stream sounded. Above the track were what looked like the remains of terracing, overgrown, forgotten. Colin, whose angry fear had long been smothered by exhaustion, grew increasingly more uneasy: there was something here, in this rank garden set in the hills, that was not good.

The track divided, and the cats drove Colin to the left-hand fork. It ran level for a few yards, and then made a sharp bend, and as he rounded this, Colin stopped, in spite of the cats.

Before him, on a terraced lawn, was a house, big, ugly, heavy, built of stone. The moon shone palely on it, yet the light that came from the round-arched windows and the open door seemed to be moonlight, also.

“We are home,” said the dwarf. It was the first time that he had spoken for several hours.

The cats moved forward, and at that instant a cloud slid over the moon. “Stay!” cried the dwarf.

But Colin had pulled up short of his own accord. For as the moon disappeared, the light inside the house
faded. Now the house lay barely visible against the hill behind it, yet what was to be seen made Colin stare. It could have been a trick of the darkness, but somehow the building had lost its form, had slumped. Surely that was the sky through one of the windows: he could see a star. And then the cloud passed, and the moon shone on the house, and the windows threw light on to the grass.

The dwarf drew his sword. “Now run,” he said, and he pushed Colin towards the house. The cats surged forward, bearing him with them through the door.

Colin found himself in an entrance hall, cold in the shadowless light. In front of him was a wide stone staircase, and from the top of the staircase a harsh voice spoke.

“Welcome. Our teeth have long rusted seeking
your
flesh!”

Colin recognised the voice. He did not have to look at the woman who was coming down the stairs to know that she was the Morrigan.

She was heavily built, her head was broad, and it squatted on her shoulders, and her mouth was wide, and as cruel as her eyes. She wore a robe so deeply blue that it was black, and it was tied with a scarlet cord. The cats made way for her, and fawned after her as she moved across the floor towards Colin.

“No. We are so far in your debt that nothing of you shall escape from the place into which you have come, save what birds will take away in their claws.”

She put out a hand to fondle one of the cats, and Colin saw that she wore a bracelet. In design it was identical with Susan's, but its colours were reversed: the characters here were a pallid silver, and the bracelet itself was black.

U
thecar and Atlendor sat in the wizard's cave and cleaned their wounds. “It is not I that will be going out again this night,” said the dwarf. “If Susan has stepped through the gates then if we found anything of her it would not be worth the finding. There is a palug in every tree! We had to kill a score to win from Saddlebole to the gates.”

Both he and the elf were gashed with deep wounds, and their clothes were in strips.

“She has the Mark: that may keep her,” said Albanac. “I must go to look for her.”

“But
you
have not the Mark,” said Uthecar. “If Susan has lived until now, she will have shown herself unneedful of us. If you must seek, then wait until day. Ride now, and palug teeth will meet in your neck.”

The noise of the opening rock had made Susan lose her nerve. She thought Albanac would be only seconds
behind her, and with no idea of where she should look for Colin, she ran blindly, taking no notice of way or distance. Somewhere in the wood she stopped for breath. All the while, urgency had pounced on her back, and every step had seemed to be made a fraction of a second and an inch ahead of a seizing hand. Now she stopped, and the air quietened round her and lost its pursuit: she could almost hear it rustling to a halt about her. But this was not imagination: there
had
been a quick dying of movement into silence, and now Susan felt that the night was bearing down on one point, and that point was herself.

She tried to reason, but that was useless, since all reasoning could tell her was that she had no chance of finding Colin. And the concentration in the air throbbed like plucked strings. Susan stared so hard all around her that the blackness seemed to be spotted with light – pale flecks of green; and then she noticed that, instead of swimming in rainbow patterns, as such lights do when the eyes strain against darkness, these lights did not change colour, but were grouped close to the ground, motionless,
in pairs.
They were eyes. She was surrounded by a field of green, unwinking, hard eyes – every one fixed on her.

The cats closed in. Now Susan could see them as
individuals: there were two or three dozen of them, and they walked stiff-legged and bristling. Susan was too frightened to move, even as they approached, until one of the cats hissed, and lunged at her with its claws. Before she had time to realise that the blow would not have touched her, Susan jumped in the opposite direction, and here the cats gave way and made a green passage for her, and their intention was plain. She found that she could move freely where they wished her to go, but if she veered from that line, or tried to stop, claws were unsheathed.