The Spellcoats (27 page)

Nothing happened.

“We haven't got it right!” I said. “What shall we do? We've got to do something before Kankredin gets here!”

“Wait,” said Gull. “Feel.”

There was warmth growing in the cave. Almost as Gull spoke, it grew from dead chill to the heat of a body. Gull and I both sweated, in big drops, as if we were part of the walls of the cave. Steam gathered about us.

But that was all. We stood and waited in the heat, but nothing else happened. The small golden figure still stood swamped by my rugcoat. The green-yellow light was unchanged, except by the haze of steam.

“What shall we do?” I said.

“You've done something,” Gull said thoughtfully. “It's never been warm here before. But I don't think that's enough. There's something else we have to do, I think—and I simply don't know what.”

We stood again, and still there was nothing. At last, I could bear it no longer and cried out. “Grandfather!” I cried. “Grandfather, show me what to do!”

There was a green sliding in the cave. I could not see the rocks or the One in my rugcoat, but I could see Gull. He was bent and pallid and out of shape, like a person swimming underwater. Then I could not see him. I was in a still white place, with water roaring and rushing nearby. The sliding came again. This time a chilly wind came with it. I shivered, but I was glad of it after the heat of the cave. After that I was out on a cold hillside in the light of a golden evening. The first things I saw were heavy rain clouds, swimming away to the west in a green sky and limned with a dazzle of gold. Green turf sloped sharply from my feet. Somewhere to my right, water poured shouting downward, tolling an echo like a bell. And beside me more water ran and spread on the turf from steep rocks behind, which were smoking like a fire.

I felt heavy tears dragging in my nose and eyes, but I stopped them. “My grandfather,” I said, “has turned me out. I call that ungrateful.” Then I looked at my hands, thinking I was carrying my rugcoat again. I was not. My hands were gripped on a bobbin wound with a dark yarn that glistered faintly. And I could feel that the heavy weight of the One was missing from my shirt.

I felt desolate. I knew how Robin felt that morning we woke and found Tanamil had left us. I knew how Hern has felt, knowing he had failed. But neither of them had just lost Gull for a second time. I walked with my strange bobbin across the soaked and steaming grass, not caring or noticing that my clothes were dry where they should have been wet, and barely grateful for the cold wind on my face. I told myself I was going to look down at the thundering water I could hear.

I believed I could throw myself down it, but I had to stop before I came to the brink of the turf. It was too high and too steep. The green country and the purple hills spread like the whole world below and seemed to wheel sickeningly. Almost at my feet was the beginning of our River. It poured in a white cataract from my turfy shelf to somewhere far, far below. It roared as it fell, and everything beneath it was lost in floating smokes and small drifting rainbows. Beyond, and away below, I thought I could see the lake where we had sheltered from the rain, as a bright lozenge laid in the wheeling steepness. I had to take my eyes away and fix them on my tall black shadow, lying nearby across the turf.

“What did I do wrong?” I said. I have been so proud and so sure of myself, ever since understanding came to me in the old mill, and now I saw I had prevented myself understanding truly by being so proud of my own cleverness. “But what about Kankredin?” I said. I tried to look out into the country below, to see if Kankredin was to be seen, but my eyes blurred. It was all green and blue and dizzying.

I looked at my shadow on the turf. There was another shadow stretched out beside mine, longer and large-nosed. I could not move.

“Grandfather?” I said.

His voice is like the sound behind the sound of the waterfall. “Thank you, Granddaughter,” he said. “You have been a great help to me. You took Kankredin's hands from my throat.”

“Then what didn't I do?” I said.

His answer came after a pause. He sounded sad. “Nobody asked you to do anything—beyond what your family has always done. And I was not very kind to your mother, after all.”

“I know,” I said. “But Closti—my father—wasn't in the least like Cenblith, you know. You might have forgiven her.”

He paused again before answering sadly and hesitantly, “I am very devious, Granddaughter. You—you would not be here now if I had.”

It came to me that my grandfather was not only bound and sad, and weighted with shame and loneliness, but even uncertain how to talk to an ordinary person like me. I had not thought it was possible to love him until then. I wanted to turn round and look at him, but I did not dare. I looked at his shadow and said, “Grandfather, tell me what I have to do to unbind you. I want to. It's got nothing to do with Kankredin or Mother or even Gull. It's for
you
.”

Again the pause. “That makes me … grateful,” he said. “If you mean that, Tanaqui, perhaps you could think of the end of your first coat, where you speak of Kankredin. In what manner did you weave that?”

“In the expressive way Tanamil taught me,” I said.

“Then,” he said, “think on to the second coat now in your loom. You tell of meeting with your King and what he told you of me. Do you use the same weave there?”

“Yes,” I said. I had been in such awe of our King then. And I saw the coat clearly in my mind as I stood there, and my expressive weaving of the King going right across from selvage to selvage. “Of course!” I said. “You were bound twice! By Kankredin and by Cenblith.” Then I did nearly turn round to look at him, but again I did not dare.

“It was my own fault,” said my grandfather. He spoke musingly, as if he spoke to himself. This is how he must have spoken alone, for many centuries. “I can't ask anyone to unbind us because it was my fault. The first time I was a fool. The second time I was a fool, thinking that I was about to be rid of the first bond in time to welcome my people back. I let Kankredin take me unawares. I knew Kankredin. He has inherited my gifts, but it was too late when I saw that he has put them to the worst possible use.”

“Kankredin? Is Kankredin of the Undying?” I said. I could not help interrupting.

“He descends from me,” said my grandfather. “All the people you call Heathen descend from me. They went from here, and now they have come back. Kankredin is like you—two lines meet in him—but he has misused his inheritance, and now he wants to take my place.”

“Can you stop him?” I said. By this time I was shaken with the urge to look round and see my grandfather, but I could not do it.

“I can stop him if I am unbound,” said my grandfather. “That I promise you.”

I could not resist turning round. I was so frightened of looking that I slithered down on to my knees with the bobbin clutched to my chest. I think I gave a whimper of panic. But I turned round.

Kars Adon was standing there, casting a long shadow on the turf beside the blob of mine. He smiled awkwardly at me. There was nobody else there. “You mustn't be frightened,” Kars Adon said. “I made them keep out of sight. I was afraid you might go over the edge if we all came.”

6

I do not know if it had been the shadow of Kars Adon all along, but I think not. I do know this, however: At the bottom of my mind I must have been thinking of Kars Adon as much as Hern had. I was so glad to see him standing there alive that I burst into tears and took hold of his hand; it was cold, and all knuckles, as I remembered from before.

Kars Adon, being such a stiff, polite person, was naturally hugely embarrassed. He twisted his hand out of mine and stepped back. “Please don't cry,” he said. Then he thought he had been too chilling, and he said, “I am very pleased to see you up here. We wondered what you were doing.”

“Didn't you see the One?” I said. “I was talking to my grandfather.”

Kars Adon looked at me with an oddness he was almost too polite to show. “There was no one here,” he said. “Who did you think it was?”

“He's called Adon, like you,” I said, “and Amil and—”

“Hush!” said Kars Adon. He was very awed. “You mean our Grand Father was here?”

I nodded. I was crying again, to think the One had gone away without my seeing him.

“Then is that why the water coming out of the hill is suddenly smoking like this?” Kars Adon asked.

“Doesn't it usually smoke?” I said, sniffing busily.

“Not while we've been here,” he said.

I was cheered by this. “Then it shows I've done something,” I said, and my crying stopped.

“If you feel better,” Kars Adon said, “I think you should come with us. We are having to move from here. Kankredin is coming up the River, they say, in a great wall of water. As he hasn't sent word to me, I'm assuming he's my enemy, too, now.”

“He is,” I said. “He wants to be King himself.”

Kars Adon twisted his mouth at that. “Thank you. I should have seen that. I could have seen that even when my father was alive, now that I think.” He fidgeted a moment with the hem of his cloak, and then he said, “I owe your family a great debt. If it had not been for your brother, I would still be crouching like a mouse in the hem of Kankredin's gown, dreaming of—of glories … and risking getting trodden on. Hern made me see how ridiculous that was.”

Hern would be glad of that, I thought.

“You'd better come to our camp,” said Kars Adon. “I can show you some gratitude now, at least.”

“Oh, but I can't!” I said. “My weaving's down in our King's camp, and I have to get it and finish it before Kankredin gets here. You wouldn't believe how important that is!” I took a look over the edge of the turf, down to the tiny slip of the lake below, but I had to snatch my eyes away.

“Is your King down there?” Kars Adon asked, suddenly very eager. I thought he had not noticed my talk of weaving at all, but I found later that I was wrong.

“Yes,” I said. “We got to the lake down there this afternoon.”

Kars Adon was delighted. “Then that alters everything,” he said. “We stay here. I shall send someone down to talk to your King, and they can ask for your weaving then. I think Hern would say that was the right thing to do. You come with me.”