The Moon of Gomrath (11 page)

She knew that whatever the danger was that Cadellin had feared, these cats were part of it: there was too much intelligence in their movements for them to be ordinary cats, and that was the least strange aspect of them.

So for a while, just as had happened earlier with Colin, Susan was herded through the wood. The cats did not touch her, but they walked close, and urged her to run: and this eagerness showed Susan her weapon against them.

She had been stumbling at nearly every step in the flat and broken moonlight, but it was a particularly violent twist of her ankle that threw her sideways, right off balance. She flung out a hand to break her fall – and the cats leapt away from the hand as though from a burning
coal. Susan crouched on her knees and looked at the circle of cats: it took some time for her to absorb this new fact consciously: she stretched out her wrist, and they fell back, spitting. They were afraid of the Mark. She stood up, and took the bracelet off her wrist, and gripped it so that it formed a band across her knuckles, then she stepped forward, swinging her hand in front of her in a slow arc. The cats gave way, though they snarled, and twisted their heads from side to side, and their eyes flashed hate.

Susan had no idea of where she was, but the best direction seemed to be back the way they had come. So slowly she turned about, and began to walk; and the cats let her pass, though they flanked her as closely as before. The difference was that the choice belonged to Susan.

Now it was a matter of fighting every step, because the cats did not give an inch willingly, and if Susan could have found the strength to hold out mentally against all that was concentrated on her, she would no doubt have been able to reach Fundindelve unharmed. But although the physical compulsion had gone, the malice ate into her will: and she was very frightened, and alone. The first swell of triumph had soon collapsed. Cadellin seemed much less unreasonable than she had judged him to be a short time ago.

Susan held out for perhaps half an hour, and in that time she had gained less than a mile – not long or far, but it was as much as she could stand. The strain was too great. Thrusting the Mark in front of her, she plunged forward, with no other aim beyond immediate escape from the pressure of those eyes. And, of course, she did not escape. The cats bounded after her, no longer milling round her, but streaming close, almost driving her, anywhere, it did not matter, as long as it was faster, and faster, blindly through the wood, waiting for their moment, and it came.

Susan was running so wildly that only luck kept her upright, but that could not save her when she came to the top of a rise and the ground ended under her feet. She fell little more than her own height on to a wide path, but she fell awkwardly and with the force of her running, and sprawled headlong. The Mark flew from her grip, and bowled across the sand towards the far edge of the path.

Susan scrambled after it, but she was too late. Below the path the hill fell steeply to the plain in a scree of pebbled sand and boulders, and already the bracelet was gathering speed down the slope. Susan looked over her shoulder, and did not pause. The cats were ten yards away, and there was something in them that told her that they
had forgotten their original purpose, and wanted only revenge. She leapt down the scree after her bracelet, so intent upon it that she ignored the pitch of the slope: and after a few steps her weight began to run away with her. Her legs scissored into strides, each one raking longer than the last, her feet as heavy as pendulums. She tried to lean backwards, but she could not control her body at all. And the Mark of Fohla drew away from her, travelling faster than she was, and increasing its speed, dancing over the stones: and then it hit a boulder, and sprang into the air, and at the peak of the bound it stopped, and hung, spinning, but did not fall.

At first the bracelet was a clean band of silver, catching the moon, but then it began to thicken raggedly into white fire like a Catherine wheel. The fire grew broader, and there was now no bracelet, but a disc of light with a round black centre that had been the space enclosed by the bracelet, and the disc grew until it filled all Susan's vision, and as the last rim of night disappeared it seemed that the edges of the fire came towards her and the black middle receded, though it did not diminish in size, so that instead of a disc it was now a whirling tunnel, and Susan was rushing helplessly into it.

The ground vanished from under her feet, and she ran, still out of control, but the swinging weight had
gone from her legs. The tunnel spun about her, so that she felt she was running on the roof and on the walls as often as on the floor. She ran timelessly, but the black circle in front of her, which gathered the perspective to itself, and so appeared to mark the end of the tunnel, slowly began to increase in size, and the blackness was no longer even, but speckled with grey. The contrast grew with the circle, and colours started to emerge, and Susan was looking at trees, and water, and sunlight. Then the circle was bigger than the fire, and soon it was a complete picture fogged with silver at the edges, and that thinned like dawn mist, and Susan ran out of the tunnel on to grass. She stopped, breathless, and looked about her.

She realised at once where she was: she was standing on an island, thick with trees, in the middle of Redesmere, a stretch of water that lay four miles to the south of Alderley. But it was now day, and by the warmth of the air, and the glint of light on the water, the song of birds, and the green on the trees across the lake, it was summer, too.

Something nearly as strange had brought her to this island once before, and it was then that she had first put on the bracelet. Her heart lightened as she looked round for the person she knew she would find – Angharad
Goldenhand, the Lady of the Lake. And there was Angharad, standing among the trees, tall, slender, dressed in long robes, her hair the colour of gold, her skin white as the snow of one night, her cheeks smooth and even and red as foxgloves: and in her hand was Susan's bracelet.

A
ngharad smiled. “It is time for you to know more of your place in these things,” she said, and she fastened the bracelet on Susan's wrist. “Come with me.”

She took Susan by the hand, and they went through the trees to a clearing, and there they sat down. Susan felt the burden of loneliness slip from her as Angharad spoke, for Angharad knew all that had happened; there was no need for Susan to explain.

“Little of this is chance,” she said, “for good or evil, and on your shoulders it may all lie.”

“Mine?” said Susan. “But why me?”

“Firstly, all your danger rests with the Morrigan.”

“The Morrigan?”

“Yes: she is here, and revenge fills her heart. It will be long before she is restored to her old power, but even now she is a threat to the world, and all her will is turned against you. She has Colin at this moment, and will use him to destroy you, if she can. For the Mark of Fohla is a
protection against her, though it will not always be so.”

“But why
me?
Why do I matter?” said Susan. “I don't know anything about magic. Why can't you or Cadellin deal with her?”

“When you put on the Mark you put on a destiny,” said Angharad. “That is what Cadellin feared. And at this time through you alone can we work most surely. For, you see, this is moon magic, and we wear a part of it.” She held out her wrist, and Susan saw a white bracelet there. “Our power waxes, and wanes: mine is of the full moon, the Morrigan's is of the old. And the moon is old now, so she is strong.”

“Then how do I fit in?” said Susan.

“You are young, and your bracelet is the young moon's. Then you can be more than the Morrigan, if you have courage. I am able to put you on the road now, and help you guard against the Morrigan while the moon is old, but that is all. What do you say? Will you help?”

“Of course I will. I've no choice, really, have I?” said Susan. “
She'
ll still be after me, whatever happens, and Colin won't stand a chance.”

“That is so,” said Angharad. “Revenge was great in her, but now, if not before, she will know that you wear the Mark. The new moon is always her fear, and at this time above all, for it will be the moon of Gomrath, when
our magic was strongest in the world, and may be yet again.

“The Morrigan will try to destroy you before you take on the power. You must carry war to her now, and hold her. If you succeed, she may never be a threat to us. If you fail, she may grow beyond confining.

“Now take this.” Angharad gave Susan a leather belt. From it hung a small, curved horn, white as ivory, and the mouthpiece and the rim were of chased gold.

“She in her art will call on other power, and you will have little. So take this horn: it is the third best thing of price that was ever won, and is called Anghalac. Moriath gave it to Finn, and Finn to Camha, and Camha to me. Blow it if all else is lost, but only then. For once Anghalac sounds you may not know peace again, not in the sun's circle nor in the darkling of the world.

“Remember: only – if – all – else – is – lost –”

“I – shall – “ said Susan.

The magic was ending. The island swung away from her into sleep. Angharad's last words came out of a distance, and echoed in her head: she could not stay awake: her mind sank into darkness beyond the reach of dreams…

Susan listened to the water for a long time before she opened her eyes. Its sound brought her gently awake, and then she turned on to her back, and looked at the stars. She was on the bank of a river, which ran along the bottom of the valley among high and barren hills. Yet close by her was a stone gateway, and beyond it a drive led into a coomb of trees.

There was a road by the water, but Susan was drawn to the coomb. Road, valley, and sky were lifeless, but the gate was odd beyond the fact of its being there at all. She examined it closely: it was of iron, chained, and padlocked, and all were sharp with rust.

Susan climbed over the gate, and began to walk up the drive. On her left a stream went down to the river, and after a few yards rhododendron bushes closed in. The drive was straight, and had once been broad, but the rhododendrons had run wild in neglect, and the drive was now a thread of sand that picked up faintly the yellow of the lopsided moon.

The water gurgled behind the bushes, and was the only sound, and that deepened as the pathway rose above the trench that the stream had cut through the rock; and everywhere the rhododendrons suffocated the valley. Their mass hung over Susan like a threat: she felt that all those millions of leaves, each acrid, leathery, breathing,
alive, were piled into one green-celled body, that together they had an awareness that was animal. This may have been only imagination, but the effect on her was that every sense became sharpened, and she moved as delicately as a wild creature, avoiding twigs and loose stones almost unconsciously, never doubting that she was near to Colin.

Twice the path crossed the stream, and here there were stone bridges with crumbling parapets. The second of these bridges was almost half a mile up the drive from the gate, and by this time Susan had reached a fine pitch of awareness. Her eyes used every mote of light, and she could see all that was on the path, and as much of the borders as the rhododendrons allowed. The second bridge stood at a fork in the valley: in the fork was a bush-covered hill, and the stream and a tributary flowed on either side of it, becoming one at the bridge. The path continued up the left-hand arm of the valley, and standing close to the bridge, in the shadow of the rhododendrons, unmoving, was what looked like a man.

He held a spear and a small, round shield. The light caught the dome of his head, and touched his chest and shoulders, but the rest of him was in shadow: and he was so still that Susan could not be sure that he was not a piece of eccentric statuary.

Susan watched him, or it, for several minutes, and not once was there a tremor of life to help her make up her mind. There was no question of turning back: she knew that she must go on at all cost, and that the risk was too great to chance walking past the figure at the bridge.

There was no point in trying to force a way through the bushes: the only alternative was the stream, which at this spot was not far below the path. Susan moved back until she was out of sight of the bridge, and then she lowered herself down the bank and into the water.

The stream was quite shallow, but very rocky, and sometimes there were pools into which Susan fell waist-deep. She could not walk silently, but the rattle of the water over the boulders covered any noise Susan made, and she kept close against the bank, where the shadows were thick. The bridge itself was the worst part. It was low, and the air stank of slime, and Susan fell against things that moved away from her in the darkness.

Once clear of the bridge, she found that the banks grew higher and steeper, but she continued for another hundred yards or so before daring to leave the water. The bank here was nearly vertical, and consisted of wet leaf-mould and earth. Eight or nine times Susan clawed her way up to within feet of the broken terrace-work that supported the path, only to fall back in the wake of a
land-slide. But at last she got her shoulders on to the path, and managed to pull herself up.

The drive was now its original width, and a few yards further on, a branch curled away to the right. Susan paused, wondering whether to continue uphill, but she decided to explore the branch at least as far as the bend.

She moved as quietly as ever, but all her wariness could not stop the gasp that came from her when she saw what was beyond the turn of the bend.

The path bordered a terraced lawn, approached by steps, and on the lawn was a mansion of stone, built in the heavy Italian style of the last century. All the windows glowed with a light that was stronger than the moon, but of the same quality, and lifeless.