Silver on the Tree (24 page)

Bran was standing very still, staring at him in the mirror without a word.

“Remember the Lady's words, as you have done.” There was trust in Merriman's reflected face. “Go on now, and take care to remember other things you have been told, there in the Lost Land. You can do no more than your best. And remember one thing from me, Will—you may trust Gwion with your lives. As once long ago I trusted him with mine.” An affectionate warmth deepened in his voice. He gave Will one last hard look. “The Light will carry you, once you return with the sword. Go well, Old One,” he said.

Then he was gone.

Will turned aside from the mirror, letting out a long breath.

Bran said in a whisper, “Was he here? Has he gone?”

“Yes.”

“Why couldn't I see him? Where was he?”

“In the mirror.”

“In the
mirror!”
Bran looked at it fearfully. Glancing down, he found the bag of nuts forgotten in his hands, and thrust it at Will. “Here. Eat. What did Merriman say?”

Suddenly hungry, Will stuffed his mouth with hazelnuts. “That it's certain he can't come to the Lost Land,” he said, muffled. “That we have to go on alone. To remember things we've been told—like that, he must mean.” He pointed to the writing over the cottage door. “And—that we can trust Gwion.”

“We knew that already,” Bran said.

“Yes.” Will thought of the lean figure with the strong grey-bearded face and the brilliant smile. “I wonder who Gwion is? And what he is….”

“He is a maker,” Bran said unexpectedly.”

Will paused in his chewing. “A what?”

“He is a bard, I would bet. He has the callouses from the harp on his fingertips. But mostly it was the way he spoke of the makers, of all kinds, when he was telling us the king's story. With love….”

“And he and Merriman must have gone through great danger together, once…. Well, I suppose we shall find out sometime. Here—” Will handed over the bag of nuts. “You have the rest. They
are
good. Did you say there were apples?”

“One each.” Bran passed one over, and began rolling up the saddlebag.

Will went to the doorway, biting into his apple; it was small, hard and yellow, but astonishingly sweet and juicy. The heap of white bones lay dead and bleached in the sunlight; he tried not to look at it, but raised his gaze out to the Country.

“Bran! See how close we are!”

The sun was high in a blue sky flecked with puffy white clouds. Out over the rough pastureland, perhaps a mile away, a glittering tower rose from a clump of tall trees; the
sunlight struck from it so brightly that its brilliance dazzled them.

Bran came out. They stood looking at the Castle for a long moment. Beyond it, the Lost Land ended in the flat shimmering horizon of the blue sea. Will turned from it for a last look at the low, spreading hawthorn tree that grew from the roof of the little house. He stared. The tree that had been covered in milky white blossoms, the enchanted snowstorm to destroy the
Mari Llwyd,
was thick now with bright red berries, clustering along the branches, brilliant as flame.

Bran shook his head in wonder. Both he and Will wordlessly touched the sturdy stone wall of the cottage, in an instinctive grateful farewell. Then they set out on foot across the tussocky grass of the pasture, towards the glittering pointing tower.

And when they looked back once more at the little shielding house with the tree growing from its roof, they saw no house there at all, but only a thicket of clustering hawthorn bushes, red-berried, growing in the open field.

Though they tried, they never found the road again. There was no sign anywhere of the golden horses; panic had taken them far away. So Will and Bran turned their faces towards the shining tower and tramped over the rough reedy grass of the pastureland, through clumps of gorse on the firm ground and soggy patches of marsh on lower land where the water still lay. All the Lost Land was low: a coastal plain, with the sweep of Cardigan Bay at their left hand and the mountains rising hazily purple-brown far inland, to the right. Somewhere ahead, Will realized, the River Dyfi must run, towards a mouth considerably further out to sea than the one he had known before. It was as though all the coast of their own time had been given an extra half-mile stretch on its seaward side.

“Or rather,” he said aloud, “given back the land it lost.”

Bran looked at him with a half-smile of understanding. “Except that it hasn't been lost yet, has it?” he said. “Because we've gone back in time.”

Will said pensively, “Have we?”

“Well of course we have!” Bran stared at him.

“I suppose so. Back, forward, forward, back.” Will's mind was drifting. He looked out to a sweep of yellow irises among the reeds of a boggy area they had been carefully skirting. “Pretty, aren't they? Just like on the farm, near the river.”

“We must be getting near a river ourselves,” Bran said, eying him a little uncertainly. “Very wet, it is. I'm parched.”

“Listen!” Will said. “Can you hear running water?”

“Won't be any good to us even if it is—probably brackish,” Bran said, but he cocked his head to listen. Then he nodded. “Yes. Up ahead. Past those trees.”

They went on. The bright tower loomed higher now, though almost obscured by trees. They could see that it was topped by a banded dome of crystal and gold, exactly like the dome of the king's palace in the city. There was even an identical golden arrow at the very top, pointing out at the sea.

Then they were among a group of scrubby willow trees, with the sound of water growing, growing, and suddenly they came upon a reed-fringed stream, moving curiously fast for water on such flat land. Curving round to meet them, it seemed to flow from the direction of the City out to join the River Dyfi on its way to the sea. The water looked clear and cool.

“I'm
thirsty!”
Bran said. “Cross your fingers.” He dipped one hand in the water and tasted; then made a horrible face.

Will groaned in disappointment. “Salt?”

“No,” Bran said expressionless. “It's perfectly good.” He dodged Will's grinning lunge and they both stretched out on the grassy riverbank and drank thirstily, splashing their hot faces until their hair was wet and dripping. In a gentle patch of water on the lee side of a rock Will caught sight of Bran's reflection, and was held by it. Only the glint of the tawny eyes was properly like Bran, for the reflected face was darkened by shade and the wet hair seemed streaked dark and light. Yet somehow Will felt a strange flash of recognition of the whole changed image. He said sharply, “I've seen you look like that before, somewhere.”

“Of course you've seen me before,” Bran said lazily. He put down his head and blew bubbles into the water, breaking the reflection. The water rippled into a hundred different surfaces, glinting, whirling; there seemed all at once a great deal of white in the pattern. Some small warning note rang in Will's mind. He rolled over, and saw against the sky,
standing over them, the hooded White Rider on his white horse.

Bran brought his head out of the water, spluttering, pulling a green strand of weed from his mouth. He rubbed the water from his eyes, looked up—and was suddenly very still.

The White Rider looked down at Will with bright eyes set in a dim white face shadowed by the hood. “Where is your master, Old One?” The voice was soft and sibilant and puzzlingly familiar, though they knew they had not heard it before.

Will said shortly, “He is not here. As you know.”

The White Rider's smile glinted. “And he told you no doubt that something had prevented him from coming, and you were simple enough to believe him. The lord Merriman is more shrewd than you, Old One. He knows the danger that is here, and takes care not to be exposed to it.”

Will lay back deliberately on his elbows. “And you are more than simple, if you think to afflict me with such talk. The Dark must be in a sad way, to use the tricks of idiots.”

The White Rider's back straightened; he seemed indefinably more dangerous than before. “Go back,” said the soft hissing voice coldly. “Go back, while you still can.”

“You cannot make us go,” Will said.

“No,” said the White Rider. “But we can make you wish you had never come. Especially …” his gleaming eyes flickered towards Bran … especially the white-haired boy.”

Will said softly, “You know who he is, Rider. He has a right to a name.”

“He is not yet in his power,” the White Rider said, “and until then he is nothing. And therefore he will be nothing forever, no more than a child of your century, for without your master you have no hope of gaining the sword. Go back, Old One, go back!” The soft voice rose to a nasal, ringing demand, and the white horse shifted uneasily. “Go back,” the Rider said, “and we will give you safe passage out of the Lost Land to your own time.”

The horse shifted again. Exclaiming in irritation, the
White Rider gave rein and wheeled it round in a wide circle to calm its restlessness.

“Look!” Bran whispered. He was staring at the ground.

Will looked down. Under the high fierce sun, his shadow and Bran's lay short and stumpy together on the uneven grass; but as the White Rider and his horse curved back towards them, the grass beneath the four hooves lay bright and unshaded.

“Ah yes,” Will said softly. “The Dark casts no shadow.”

The White Rider said, clear and confident, “You will go back.”

Will stood up. “We will not go back, Rider. We have come for the sword.”

“The sword is neither for us nor for you. We shall let you go, in safety, and the sword will stay with its maker.”

“Its maker made it for the Light,” Will said, “and when we come for it, he will give it to us. And we shall then indeed go away in safety, my lord, whether the Dark allows it or not.”

The lord in the white cloak looked down at him, his womanish mouth relaxed into a strange, unnerving sneer of relief. “If that is what you expect from the Land,” he said, “then you are such fools that we have nothing to fear from you.”

And without another word, he turned his horse's head and trotted away beside the curving river, out of sight behind the trees.

There was a silence. The water murmured.

Bran scrambled to his feet, looking uneasily after the Rider. “What did he mean?”

“I don't know. But I didn't like it.” Will shivered suddenly. “The Dark is all around us. Can you feel it?”

“A little,” Bran said. “Not really, not the way you do. I feel just … this is a
sad
place.”

“Home of a sad king.” Will looked around. “Should we follow the river?”

“Looks like it.” They could see the dome and the golden
pointing arrow of the Castle reaching up out of the trees, past the curve round which the river disappeared.

The riverbank was grassy; there was no path, but no trees or bushes grew out to impede their way. The river itself remained narrow, perhaps twenty feet across, but its bed between the coarse grass of the banks grew broader and broader, a shining expanse of sand. It was clear golden sand now, without the murkiness of mud.

“Tide's low,” Bran said, seeing Will look at it. “Like the Dyfi. That sand'll be covered when the tide starts coming in, and the river will grow twice its size. It's beginning to, already. Look.”

He pointed; Will saw the water eddying in the river, as the direction of its flow began to change. The main stream in the centre still flowed out to the sea, but at either side the tidal flow from the sea came creeping in.

“Couldn't drink from it now,” Bran said. “Too salt.”

The river broadened as they walked further, and the incoming tide grew more powerful; on the further bank the trees were smaller and more sparse. They had an occasional glimpse of the broad estuary beyond the scrub and pasture, and the mountains rising far back. Then all at once they saw a square brown sail, and foaming towards them on the tidal current came a boat. Its sail bellied out at right angles to the mast between two sturdy wooden yards; almost at once these clattered to the deck, and the sail came down.

The boat swung towards the bank beside them. Will peered in astonishment at the figure furling the sail.

“It's Gwion!”

Gwion, lean and black-clad, leapt up nimbly into the bow with a line, and jumped ashore as the boat nudged the bank. He glanced at Will and Bran, his familiar smile breaking above the neat grey beard; then called something in Welsh over his shoulder to the boat. A chunky man with black hair and a red-brown face stood there at the long tiller behind the single stubby mast; it was a broad-beamed boat, not unlike
a ship's lifeboat. The man called back to Gwion. Will looked enquiringly at Bran.

“About mooring the boat,” Bran said. “And catching the tide, though I—
tafla 'r rhaff yna i mi,”
he said suddenly to Gwion, reaching for a second line thrown from the boat, and together they moored her fore and aft to a pair of trees, swaying in the river as the tide washed by.

“Well done to be here safe,” Gwion said, a hand pressing each on the shoulder. “Now then, come on.” He set off at once along the riverbank, at a smart pace.

Will followed; he felt as though a great knot of tension had been loosed between his shoulder blades.

“Explain, explain,” said Bran, lengthening his stride to keep up. “How did you get here? Why the boat? How did you know where to find us, and when?”

Gwion smiled at him. “When you are in your full power, Bran Davies of Clwyd, you will be confident as Will here and not bother to ask such questions. I am simply here, because you will need me. And thus I break the law of the Lost Land, which is to have no dealing with either Light or Dark when they are in conflict. As I shall go on breaking that law, I have no doubt, until the tail-end of Time. Gently, now….” His voice dropped and he slowed his pace, stretching both arms sideways to hold them back.