The Spellcoats (25 page)

“That's no reason to give up common politeness!” said the King. “Move!”

We took to the boats and packed and folded our things as we rowed. My loom was nearly left on the bank. I asked Jay to make them load it, but he walked away. Tanamil carried it to the boat. Nobody noticed in the confusion.

Since then we have traveled as fast as oars and sails and men dragging on the bank could take us. We traveled till light was gone. As summer is here, that is many long hours. And when we landed, they were tired and cross and would not unload my loom.

The River is shallower after the marshes, and more winding. It is crowded with willows for a day's journey. In one place a willow had fallen in the floods and lay, still living, across the River.

“Oh, curse this River!” the King said. “He seems to be doing his best to thwart me!”

Our boat was alongside his. Unkingly though it is, I think our King is frightened. I told him the One would not like to hear him speak like that.

“Then tell him to behave more like a benefactor,” the King said. “Are you sure he really wants us to go this way?” He looked at me almost pleadingly. Hern looked at me, too. Hern does not understand why Duck and I are so set on going by water.

I told the King I was sure. “Why am I so sure?” I asked Tanamil, while the bodyguard was busy shoving at the willow to squeeze us underneath.

“Your father's people bound us,” Tanamil answered out of a mass of pointed willow leaves. “Your father's people know how to unbind us.” Why do the Undying never tell you straight? I long to ask Mother a few more cunning questions, but I am not allowed to talk to her when Tanamil is there, and he never leaves us.

The willows stopped after a day. The River, no longer eye green but clear gray, hurried toward us down a valley of green banks. We saw white birch trunks above us and green bracken. Beyond that there were mountains. Some have a dazzle on their peaks which hurts your eyes. One of the bodyguards told me it is snow. It is no good asking Tanamil anything anymore. He is too taken up with Robin. Duck has gone to join Hern in the King's boat. He says all this love suffocates him.

In places where the valley was wider there were humped bridges over the water and houses nearby, built of stone. We found most of them empty. But yesterday the King said, “Ah, people! We shall have our wedding now.” Robin looked piteous.

But the people all ran away up the hillside among the bracken. Jay stood up and shouted to the headman that the King needed him.

“Heathen!” the headman shouted as he scrambled upward. He pointed down the River. “Heathen! Run!”

There were no Heathens. We could see some miles down the valley there, and there was no one. Tanamil smiled. I think it was his doing. I see I have wronged him, saying he was soft. He is not powerless to work indirectly against the King, and he does. But he is mad if he thinks he can delay the King's wedding until I have this coat finished. It is barely half done.

However, the King was in a great panic. He said we must put off the wedding and hurry on. So we have come, at a furious speed, to this place. We have only halted here because of a great downpour of rain. The green hills around us were shaded white with it, and large hailstones fell. It was too fierce even for the King's hurry. We went blindly into a wider valley, where the River runs as a small tossing lake, and there we dimly saw a group of trees. The King angrily ordered us to take shelter there. Under the trees there is an old barn or boathouse, built of big gray stones. Here we all wait, while the King paces impatiently up and down and the rain pelts dimples into the water.

They would not at first bring my loom in. Jay, who used to help me in such things, is not my friend anymore. I had to make Hern ask the King. I am sad about Jay. I have wronged him, too. It was not the One he wanted. It was Robin. I do not know why I am so unready to believe that people can love Robin. I have seen Jay look at her just as Tanamil does. And now Jay will not forgive me.

The King could not understand why I should want my loom. “Why, in the name of the golden gentleman, fluffyhead, do you need to keep on weaving coats?” he said.

“I have to make one for Robin, too,” I lied. “We always do that in Shelling.”

So my loom was carried in, wet as it was, and set up in the doorway. I am sprinkled with rain as I send the shuttles back and forth, but I do not mind that.

“It's all wet, wool and all,” the King pointed out.

“The way we prepare and spin our yarn,” I said, “that does not matter.”

He looked at Robin, who had taken some of the wet yarn to spin for me. Then he frowned at me, in his quizzical way. “Fluffyhead,” he said, “it usually matters. Wool shrinks. Sometimes I suspect you of—Do the Heathen have lady mages? I think you may be one.”

“No, Majesty,” I said. “That I am not.”

“Then can you swear to me that you're not making all this pother of weaving on behalf of some other man?” he said.

My heart grew large and bumped a little, but I said, “This is for no mortal man, Majesty.”

Then he was satisfied in a dissatisfied way and went to the doorway to look at the rain. Hern sat with his back against the stones of the doorway and scowled out, too, beside my loom. We look out across a rocky, shivering sort of lake. Almost at my feet, rain popples among rushes. I keep looking up and out between rows because this is as near as I have ever been to real mountains. They ring us round, high green shoulders, higher brown shoulders, and headlike peaks which are blue and black and veiled in swimming clouds. Now that the rain is slackening, I can hear water rushing and shouting down all round. It is the sound of streams that run in every groove, some so distant that you see them as a white smear, like a snail's path; others I can see leap and spray.

“I don't see us going much farther by boat,” the King said, and turned away, more satisfied.

I think he is right. We shall have to leave the River. The River comes to the lake in a sort of cleft, between two high shoulders of brown hill, and I think it is a rushing torrent there. Up above the cleft, in the highest and blackest mountain, I can see a smear of white that must be our great River at its rising.

Hern has just noticed.

So much has happened since then, and so little time to weave it in.

As I was saying, Hern looked down at the rushes by our feet. “The tide's turned. Look at it running the other way.”

I leaned around my loom. The small blobs of foam and twigs that had gathered against the rushes were moving slowly past the bank, toward the rushing water where the River comes down the cleft. It seemed to me that Hern was right for a moment. “But the tide doesn't run up in Shelling,” I said.

We looked for Tanamil to ask him. He was leaning over Robin as she spun, over on the other side of the doorway. He did not notice us. Lovers!

“Jay!” Hern called. “Does the River have tides up here?”

Jay came and looked at the water. He ignored me. “No. Tides stop at the Red River. That must be an eddy. The waters run pretty swift out in the middle and force the edges backward. See?” The stump of his arm leaped as if to point.

In the middle of the lake we could see angry waters standing in peaks with the force of their running. I could not quite believe Jay. It was churning there, like the tides do.

And a churning came among the rushes at the doorway. It was all spouting whiteness there. Hern and I were soaked. In the midst of the whiteness Mother stood, with her head and shoulders out of the water, quite dry. She was angry.

“Tanamil!” she said.

Tanamil jumped and put out his hand as if he could push her away. “I can't speak to you,” he said guiltily.

“I
must
speak to you,” Mother said. “You were trusted to watch, Tanamil! Take your mind off Robin and attend. Kankredin is coming. He and his mages are halfway up the River already, rolling my waters up before them as they come.”

“But—” said Tanamil. “Without Gull?”

“Zwitt told them Gull is my son,” my mother said. “After that Kankredin guessed how he had been tricked. He'll take Hern or Robin instead. He knows where they've gone. Take that spellcoat back from the King, you fool, and show Tanaqui what to do with it at once!” My mother turned, in a surge of whiteness. A great white swan went beating off across the lake, making the air ring with its wide wings.

I think the King and his men had seen Mother as a swan all along, rearing and hissing at the water's edge. They called to one another to put an arrow in it, saying swans were good to eat, while Mother talked. As I recovered from the shock of what she said, I heard Jay saying, “If I had my other arm, that would never have got away!” I do not like Jay anymore.

Duck came to crouch between Hern and my loom. “Where is the coat?” he whispered.

“In the coffer in the King's boat,” Hern whispered back. “I'll create a distraction of some kind. Then you and Tanaqui go and get it.”

I looked over at Tanamil. He nodded urgently, but he held out his hands with the wrists together, to show he could do nothing himself.

“Be ready to go as soon as no one's watching you,” Hern whispered.

While we waited, I could hardly even pretend to weave.

Duck, however, jerked a handful of rushes from the water and wove them idly into a small mat. He looked bored to tears.

We did not wait long. The King noticed how pale Robin had gone. She had dropped the spindle when she saw Mother and sat staring straight ahead, twisting her hands together. I could see her mouth saying, “Oh no! Oh Mother!” I think she thought it was her fault that Tanamil had neglected his duty. She would not speak to Tanamil when he bent and whispered to her.

“Cheer up, pretty one!” the King said. He came and pinched Robin's cheek. “It was only a swan,” he said. “You sweet, timid creature! I really am quite fond of you, you know.”

“In that case,” Hern said, jumping to his feet, “why don't you get on and marry her?” He marched round my loom, denouncing the King. “You talk about it enough, but you don't do it! What are people going to think? I can't have my sister gossiped about!”

He said a great deal more. Hern can be very eloquent when he chooses. I wish I could have stayed to hear it and to watch the King's face. It was the first time I have seen our King entirely without a smile. But by the time I had slipped round my loom and among the rushes outside, the King had recovered enough to wrench the smile back onto his face. “My dear boy,” he said. “My dear boy!” Each time he said it, Hern thundered louder and harsher.

“Robin's name has been sullied!” he was shouting as Duck and I hurried among the trees. Tanamil was in front of us, beckoning. “My family's name is mud!” Hern roared, and we could not help giggling.

“I hope the King won't take Hern too seriously,” Duck said as Tanamil slipped down into the King's boat. It did not so much as dip as Tanamil went aboard it, but it plunged for Duck and me.

“The box is locked,” said Tanamil. He stood by the King's beautiful carved chest, looking helpless.

Duck laughed and cracked his thumbs. He has double-jointed thumbs. He holds them upright and they hop about, looking as beastly as Jay's stump. He did it now, and the carved lid of the King's coffer hopped in sympathy. I took hold of the lid, and it lifted, pouring rainwater over my feet. “How did you learn to do that?” I said.

“Tanamil taught me,” said Duck. Tanamil was out on the bank again. He laughed.

My coat was folded on top of golden things. As I snatched it up and bundled it into my arms, I saw enough plates and goblets encrusted with red and blue stones to have bought our whole country. I turned to follow Tanamil.

Jay landed heavily in the end of the boat as I turned. I saw from his face that he disliked me even more than I knew. He looked at me as Zwitt did. “You thieving fiend's child!” he said. “Your brothers are just as bad. What are you all playing at now?”

“Nothing,” I said. “The King has to be married in this coat. I'm getting it for him.”

“Liar!” said Jay. “Heathen liar! You may fool the King, but you're not fooling me anymore. Give us that coat. And you can hand over your golden statue while you're at it!” I do not know how Jay knew I was carrying the One in the front of my shirt. He must have been watching me for days.

“Into the River,” Tanamil said to me from the bank. I glanced at him and saw he had his pipes to his mouth. I tried to plunge sideways over the side of the boat. Jay's one hand fastened itself into the spellcoat and jerked me back.

“No, you don't!” he said. “You're coming to the King.”

I did not care that Jay has only one arm. I bit the hand that held the coat, and I thrust at him in the way Tanamil taught me. We both went over into the water in a spout of splashes. It was bitterly cold. Jay howled and struggled. I had not known he could not swim.

“Duck!” I yelled. “Rescue Jay!”

At that moment Tanamil's pipes sounded. It was a breathy scream, like seagulls, and a crying, like an old woman at a funeral. I felt as if I had been taken out of my head and put somewhere strange and terrible. There was a long streak of light and, in that streak, smooth sliding. Then Tanamil and I were standing by the lake, surrounded by mountains as before, but everything was calm and empty, with a whiteness to it. There were no boats tied to the trees, and the trees stood as if in fog. Yet I could clearly hear a great splashing and large tricklings. Out of nowhere Duck said, “You're all right, you fool! Put a leg over the side. It's your own fault for making Tanaqui bite you.”