Seaward (10 page)

On the far shore she saw the figure of a man, motionless, waiting.

She swung round. “Stonecutter's there! They've almost made a way for him. What—”

Westerly was hauling on a vertical metal wheel as tall as himself; she was certain it had not been there before. He grinned at her. Pausing for breath, he said, “There was always a trapdoor, in my dream—” and he hauled again at the wheel, and above their heads a section of the sky-painted ceiling swung down and a rope ladder fell into the room, dangling.

“Go on up,” Westerly said. He caught the ladder and held it taut. Nervously Cally took hold of the wooden rungs and began to climb, clutching tighter as the rope swayed.

Westerly called up after her, “Keep your head down, or they'll see.”

Cally hauled herself out through the opening. The rough stone bit at her hands. She was out on the top of the tower, on a broad expanse of mortared stone; high crenellated walls stretched all around her in a square, their tops alternately as high as her waist and higher than her head. Clear blue sky filled the high world, and the sun was hot; from below came the grinding and thudding of the stone People at their dogged advance.

Westerly came up after her, coiling the rope ladder, shutting the trapdoor. “Well, if no one can get into that room but me—”

The noise below suddenly stopped. They could hear nothing but the small whine of the wind round the walls. Looking down, pressed cautiously against the parapet, they saw Stonecutter crossing his living stone bridge to the island.

Westerly said, “Does he want to take you back?”

“I think he just wants to stop me.” Cally felt cold at the thought. “The woman he lives with—she gave me a message to carry. I think—he doesn't want the message to go.”

“Well,” Westerly said cheerfully, “he's out of luck. We're on our way down from here.”

“How?”

“I'll show you.”

They saw Stonecutter look up at the tower. Striding towards it, he disappeared into the trees.

Westerly swung his pack down from his shoulder and began rummaging inside. But Cally grabbed his arm.

“Look at the People!”

They saw the waters of the lake swirl and the grey causeway begin to disappear, as the giant stone figures, dark and shining wet now, came crowding up out of the lake on to the island. Like a tide they came, steadily advancing; as they reached the edge of the trees they divided, and moved off in a grey line in either direction. The tower shook with their tramping. The People lumbered on.

Westerly frowned. “What are they doing?”

“They'll make themselves into a wall, all round the island. To keep us inside. I've seen it before. And unless we can get to that boat before they do—”

“Hum,” Westerly said. He went on searching inside his pack.

Cally looked up anxiously at the sun. It was scarcely past its peak; there were hours yet before it would go down, and not the smallest cloud hung in the sky to cut off the light that kept the People alive. Stonecutter had plenty of time to spare. Nothing moved in the sky but a small hawk, high up, drifting to and fro.

If you are in great trouble ever,
Ryan had said,
call upon the birds of Rhiannon of the Roane.

“Oh birds of Rhiannon,” Cally said miserably, half to herself, “please come.”

Lazily the hawk drifted into a long curve, and flapped slowly away into the distance.

“What?” Westerly said, straightening up.

“Nothing.”

“Look.” He was holding out both hands to her. One held a small cloth bundle tied in knots at the top; the other hand was closed into a fist. “One of these will help us. Either one. Choose.”

Cally hesitated, and pointed to the fist. Westerly put the bundle carefully back into his pack, then opened his closed hand. On the palm lay a carved wooden dragon, no more than three inches long. The sunlight glinted on two tiny red gems set in for its eyes.

Cally reached out a tentative finger. But before she could touch it, there was a crash behind them on the roof, and they swung round.

Stonecutter was standing there.

He was a towering dark figure against the sun-washed sky. They could not see his face. He said softly, “Did you think you could keep me out? Did you think I had no power in this place? This is my tower, every stone of it. I built it for the Lady Taranis, long ago.” He kicked the trapdoor aside, and came towards them.

Cally shrank back to the wall. Westerly jumped in front
of her, and his arm jerked sideways so that the tiny carving seemed to leap out of his hand and down to the stone floor at Stonecutter's feet. As it fell, in an instant too swift for their seeing the dragon was at once alive, growing, growing, filling the roof: a gleaming, sinuous winged body in loop after loop of armoured spiny scales. Clawed feet scraped needle-sharp against the stone; a magnificent huge-eyed head reared up, shining like bronze, agape with long glittering teeth. The winding body curved round Stonecutter; hissing, the dragon raised one sword-like talon to strike.

But Stonecutter laughed. Standing tall and unconcerned, he stretched out his hand and touched the gold-brown scales —and instantly the dragon turned to stone. All colour went from it, all movement, all life; grey-white and silent, it stood forever motionless up on the roof of the tower, sightless eyes gazing through Stonecutter: a great stone gargoyle caught out of life as swiftly as it had grown.

Stonecutter stepped out of its coils, and advanced on them. His white face was tight now with rage, the dark eyes fixed and blazing.

“What did she give you?” he said. His gaze was on Cally: cold, malevolent. “What did she tell you to take?”

“Nothing,” Cally said in a whisper.

He glared, unheeding. “She gave you a message. No one shall take a message from Rhiannon. I took her, and I keep her for ever.” He was close now, reaching for her.

“Run!” Westerly said fiercely, pushing Cally aside, and gasping in terror she dodged away along the wall out of Stonecutter's reach. As the man swung round Westerly darted in front of him, holding up his pack like a shield, daring him like a matador; but the sweat was cold on his face at the thought of the man's stone touch. One hand, one finger on them, and they would both be dead as the dragon. He thought in panic:
what can I do?—
and in a chill desperate instant he thought of his knife. His fingers found it, in the sheath clipped to the side of his pack.

Stonecutter leapt sideways, up onto the dead coils of the dragon. Westerly caught a glimpse of Cally's terrified face beyond, her long hair blown sideways by the wind, and he was possessed by a ferocious protective fury he had never expected to feel again. He flung himself after Stonecutter, holding his knife. Stonecutter jumped down from the dragon, reaching for Cally.

Cally twisted away, but tripped as she turned and went sprawling on the stone floor. With a triumphant shout the big man lunged forward, grasping at her arm—and his chest was against the tip of the knife Westerly was holding in both his hands. Westerly shut his eyes for a moment, and pushed.

He felt the man's weight against the hilt of his knife; he heard a snarl of rage. He saw Stonecutter's face close to his own, furious —but there was no fear in it, or pain.

“Fool!” Stonecutter spat out at him. “Taranis protects me!”—and he jerked himself violently backward from the knife Westerly still clutched. The blade emerged from his chest with no drop of blood, as if it had never pierced him. But in the same instant Stonecutter's face contorted suddenly, horribly. He screamed, flinging his arms wide—and Westerly saw that his backward lunge had impaled him from behind on the upraised sword-sharp claw of the dragon he had made stone.

Stonecutter shrieked, “Taranis! My Lady!” The sound ended in a dreadful gurgle, and bright blood came out of his mouth.

And there was music in the wind, and a swirl of blue brighter than the sky, and Taranis was there.

Westerly drew back. She stood shining and terrible, and her young-old face was even more beautiful than he had remembered. But she was facing Stonecutter with a cold implacable accusation in her eyes.

“Help—me!” Stonecutter gasped.

“No,” Taranis said. The small pitiless word made the hair prickle on Westerly's neck.

Stonecutter's voice was imploring, fading as he reached for breath. “You said—while I served you—I couldn't die. . . .”

“While you served me,” Taranis said. “Yes. But who serves me, keeps my laws. You have broken them. Your
death is of your making, Stonecutter. You came after this girl hoping, in your arrogance, to keep your precious Rhiannon for all time—but nothing is for all time. That is my law. You came here to take life—but only I may take life, in this my country. So you forfeit me your own.”

Stonecutter's eyes were bright, staring; they flickered from Taranis to Westerly, and then past him. A grimace like a smile twisted his agonised face; he said, forcing the words out: “And . . . one . . . other.” Then his head fell sideways, and the dead weight of his body pulled him down from the stone claw that had held him, and he fell to the ground. Westerly turned away from the terrible wound in his back, gagging.

He saw Cally, lying still. Stonecutter's last words echoed in his head, and a cold. fear came with them. Slowly, he reached out and touched Cally's arm.

She was stone.

Westerly cried out, flinching back as if someone had struck him. He spun round beseechingly to Taranis. “Please—please—”

She looked at him without expression. “He touched her,” she said.

Westerly said, frantic, “But you can bring her back!”

Taranis said calmly, “No. The power dies with him. He is dead.”

She stood beside the walled edge of the tower, her blue
robe shifting in the wind. The sunlight glimmered in her white-blonde hair. She was looking at him closely now, holding his gaze. “I had thought to have two of you with me,” she said, “but one will do. This is a lonely country, Westerly, peopled by memories and shades. I starve for company. When travellers cross my borders, I do not like them to leave again. I chose that you should stay. . . . So the rooms were made ready for you and the girl, in this tower of dreams —built for me by that cold fool there.” She poked an indifferent foot at Stonecutter's body.

Westerly winced. She looked at him in surprise. “The sight is familiar enough in your world, surely? But if it troubles you. . . .”

Casually she raised a hand towards the dead man and flicked one finger upward. Stonecutter rose to his feet as if pulled by an invisible string, and the bloody wound was gone from his back.

Westerly gasped.

“Oh,” she said lightly, “that is not him. He is gone. Can you not tell?”

Stonecutter's face was blank, the eyes expressionless.

“Go on your way,” the Lady Taranis said to him. “Take the boat that is at the bottom of the tower. It will not be needed now.” She smiled gaily at Westerly.

Silently Stonecutter disappeared into the tower, the way he had come.

Taranis said, still smiling, “I will make you a bargain, Westerly. Your Cally may walk and talk again—if you stay here. Give up your quest. Stay with me.”

“No!” Westerly said. Then he paused. “You mean you'd really bring her back? Or would she be like him—like a zombie?”

“Zombies are undemanding company,” Taranis said sweetly. “And you will have the tower and the island, your own city with its own wall.” She glanced down over the edge of the tower at the still grey line of the People, then back at him. “And I shall come and see you, and we shall play chess.”

Westerly said fiercely, “No!”

Her smile faded. “Very well then,” she said coldly. “Leave your little stone friend, and leave my country—if you can.”

She turned away from him, and her blue robe swirled like the slant of a breaking wave, and she was gone.

W
esterly stood alone on the top of the tower, under the empty sky. The wind whined softly round the stone turrets. Miserably he looked at the figure that had been Cally, but he could not make himself go near. The one touch of his hand on the cold stone of her arm had been so terrible that he could not bear the thought of feeling it again. There was a numbness in his throat, and his eyes prickled; he felt swallowed up by loneliness, and an overwhelming sense of loss.

He pushed his knife back into its sheath. Lying at the top of his pack was the cloth-wrapped bundle Lugan had given him. Westerly picked it up; there was no other way to try, now. He reached for the first knot in the cloth.

But a flicker of shadow fell on his hand for a moment, and then another, and through the breathing of the wind he heard another sound: a whirring, murmuring chorus that grew steadily louder. He looked up. Something was coming from the sky, dappling the sun; dazzled, he raised
a hand to shelter his eyes. And he saw them, coming toward the tower from all directions, wheeling down out of the empty air, spiralling up from the trees: a great cloud of birds, of all sizes and shapes and kinds, approaching. They darted and fluttered and soared, calling to one another; he heard the bubbling song of skylarks, the plaintive cries of gulls, the harshness of crows, the honking of geese.