Steel Magic (3 page)

As she caught up with Greg she asked, “Where are we, Greg? How did all these trees and a river get on a small island?”

He looked puzzled too. “I don't know. I don't think we're on the island any more, Sara.” He took the basket from her and clasped her arm above the elbow with his other hand. “Come on. You'll see what I mean when you get there.”

They trotted in and out among the trees, which then grew farther and farther apart, and there was a lot of green-gold sunlight in the open spaces with grass and little plants.

“Butterflies! I've never seen so many butterflies!” Sara dragged back against her brother's pull. What she had first thought were flowers rose on brilliant wings to fly away.

“Yes.” Greg walked more slowly. “A lot of birds here, too. You ought to see them down by the river. There was a heron fishing and we watched him catch a frog.” He made a stabbing motion with two fingers held tightly together. “He used his bill just like that. This is a grand place.”

They walked down a gentle slope to where a bar of gravel ran out into a shallow stream. Eric sprawled there, grabbing beneath the surface of the water. He sat up, his face red with his efforts, as they joined him.

“Fish,” he explained. “All over the place. Just look at them!”

Shoals of minnows were thick along the edges of the bar,
while water bugs skated on the surface and a dragonfly spun back and forth.

“I saw a fox in the woods,” Sara reported. “He sat and looked at me and wasn't afraid at all. But where are we?”

Eric rolled over on his back, looking up into the blue of the cloudless sky, still dabbing one hand in the river.

“I don't care. This is a keen place, better than any old park—or any old scout camp either,” he added for Greg's benefit. “And now I'm hungry. Let's see what's in that basket we've been hauling around all morning.”

They moved into the shade of a stand of willows where the slightest breeze set the narrow leaves to fluttering. Sara unpacked the basket. It was Greg who pointed out that she was counting wrong.

“Hey—there's only three of us. Why put out everything for four?”

Yes, she had put out all four of the plastic plates, set a cup beside each, and had been dividing up the sandwiches. Greg had the red plate, Eric the yellow, the blue was for her. Why had she set out the green one also? Yet for some reason she was sure that it would be needed. “We may have a guest,” she said.

“What do you mean? There's no one here but us.” Eric laughed at her.

Sara sat back on her heels. “All right, Mr. Smarty,” she snapped. “Suppose you tell me where we really are, if you know so much! This is no little island in the lake, you can't make me believe that! How do you know there's no one else here?”

Eric stopped laughing. He looked uncertainly from his sister to Greg. Then all three of them glanced back at the shadowy wood through which they had come. Greg drew a deep breath and Sara spoke again:

“And how are we going to get back? Has either of you big smart boys thought of that?” She reached for the basket as if touching that would link her with the real world again.

Greg frowned at the river. “We can get back to where we came from,” he said. “I blazed trees between here and there with my scout knife.” Sara was surprised and then proud of him. Greg had been clever to think of that. And, knowing that they had that tie with the castle wall and its door, she felt more at ease. But now she gathered up a sandwich from each plate and returned them to the basket. If Greg could think ahead, so could she.

“Hey!” Eric's protest was quick and sharp. “Why are you putting those away? I'm hungry!”

“You might be hungrier,” she countered, “if we don't get back in time for supper.”

Greg was unscrewing the top of the Thermos when he suddenly got to his feet, looking at a point behind Sara. The expression on his face made Sara turn and stopped Eric in mid-chew.

As silently as the fox had appeared back in the forest, so now did another being come into view. And, while Sara had accepted the fox as a proper native of the woods, none of the Lowrys had ever seen a man quite like this one.

He was young, Sara thought, but a lot older than Greg. And he had a nice face, even a handsome one, though it wore
a tired, sad look. His brown hair, which had red lights in it under the sun's touch, was long, the side locks almost touching his shoulders, the front part cut off in thick straight bangs above his black eyebrows.

Then his clothes! He had on tight-fitting boots of soft brown leather with pointed toes, and he wore what looked like long stockings—tights, maybe—also brown. Over his shirt he had a sleeveless garment of the same green as the tree leaves, with a design embroidered in gold on the breast; it was drawn in tightly at the waist by a wide belt from which hung a sheathed dagger and a purse. In his hand was a long bow with which he was holding back the willow branches while he looked at the Lowrys in an astonishment that matched their own.

Sara got to her feet, brushing twigs and dust from her jeans.

“Please, sir—” she added the “sir” because somehow it seemed right and proper, just as if the stranger were the colonel back at the post “—will you have some lunch?”

The young man still looked bewildered. But the faint frown he had first worn was gone.

“Lunch?” He echoed the word inquiringly, giving the word a different accent.

Eric gulped down what was in his mouth and waved at the plates. “Food!”

“Yes,” Sara stooped for the green plate and held it out in invitation. “Do open the lemonade, Greg, before Eric chokes to death.” For that last bite appeared to have taken the wrong way down Eric's throat and he was coughing.

Suddenly the young man laughed and came forward. He leaned down to strike Eric between his shaking shoulders. The boy whooped and then swallowed, his eyes watering. Greg splashed lemonade into a cup and thrust it toward his brother.

“Greedy!” he accused. “Next time don't try to get half a sandwich in one bite.” He squatted down to fill the other three cups and pushed the green one toward the stranger.

Their guest took the cup, turning it around in his fingers as though he found the plastic substance strange. Then he sipped at the contents.

“A strange wine,” he commented. “It cools the throat well, but it seems to be squeezed of grapes grown in snow.”

“It isn't wine, sir,” Sara hastened to explain. “Just lemonade—the frozen kind. These are peanut butter,” she pointed to the sandwiches. “And that one is ham. Then there're hard-boiled eggs and pickles and some cookies—Mrs. Steiner does make good cookies.”

The young man regarded all the food on his plate in a puzzled manner and finally picked up the egg.

“Salt—” Greg pushed the shaker across.

Eric had stopped coughing, though he was still red in the face. Somehow he found breath enough to ask a question.

“Do you live around here, sir?”

“Live here? No, not this nigh to the boundary. You are not of this land?”

“We came through a gate in a wall,” Greg explained. “There was a castle—”

“A little castle on an island,” Sara broke in. “And in the
wall was this gate, all filled up with stones. The boys pulled those out so we could get through.”

He was giving her the same searching attention he had given the food. “The boys?” he repeated wonderingly, “but are you not all three boys?”

Sara looked from her brothers to herself. Their jeans did all look alike, so did their shirts. But her hair—no, her hair wasn't even as long as the young man's.

“I'm Sara Lowry, and I'm a girl,” she stated a bit primly, for the first time in her life annoyed at being considered one with Greg and Eric, a mistake she had hitherto always rather enjoyed. “That's my older brother, Greg.” She pointed with a total lack of good manners. “And this is Eric.”

The young man put his hand to his breast and bowed. It was a graceful gesture and did not in the least make Sara feel queer or foolish, but rather as if she were important and grown-up.

“And I am Huon, Warden of the West.” His forefinger traced the design pictured in gold thread on his green surcoat. Sara saw the scales of a coiled dragon with menacing foreclaws and wide-open jaws. “The Green Dragon—as Arthur is the Red Dragon of the East.”

Greg laid down the sandwich he had been about to unwrap. He stared very hard at Huon and there was a stubborn line to his lips—the way he looked when he thought someone was trying to make fun of him.

“You mean Arthur Pendragon. But that's a story—a fairy tale!

“Arthur Pendragon,” the young man nodded encouragingly.
“So you have heard of the Red Dragon, then? But not the green one?”

“Huon—there was Huon of the Horn.” To Sara's vast surprise Eric said that. “And I suppose Roland's back in there?” He pointed to the wood.

But now the young man shook his head and his smile vanished.

“No. Roland fell at Roncesvalles long before my wardship here began. I wish we
did
have his like to back us now. But you have named me rightly, young sir. Once I was Huon of the Horn. Now I am Huon without the Horn, which is a bad thing. But still I am Warden of the West and so must inquire of you your business here. This gate through which you came—I do not understand,” he added as if to himself. “There has been no summoning on our part. That portal was made and then sealed when Ambrosius returned to us with the knowledge that our worlds had moved too far away in space and time for men to answer our calling. Yet you have come—” Now he was frowning again. “Can it be that here also the enemy meddles?”

“I wish somebody would explain,” Sara said in a small voice. More than ever she wanted to know where they were. It seemed that the young man understood, for now he spoke directly to her:

“This land“—his hand made a wide sweep—“once had four gates. That of the Bear in the north has long been lost to us, for the enemy has occupied the land where it exists for a wealth of years. That of the Lion in the south we have closed with a powerful spell so that it is safe. That of the Boar,
which lay in the east, has been forgotten so long that even Merlin Ambrosius cannot tell us where it was—or may still be. And that of the Fox here in the west. Some years ago Merlin reopened that, only to discover that there was no longer any way he could touch men's minds. Then did our fears grow—” Huon paused and sat looking down into his cup, not as if he saw the lemonade there, but other things, and unpleasant ones. “And the door was sealed—until you opened it.” He fell silent.

“I saw a fox there,” Sara did not quite know why she said that.

Huon smiled at her. “Yes, Rufus is a good sentinel. He marked your coming and summoned me. The creatures of the wood aid us gladly, since our lives move along the same paths.”

“But what is this country and who are the enemy?” Greg asked impatiently.

“The country has many names in your world—Avalon, Awanan, Atlantis—almost as many names as there were men to name it. Have you never heard of it before? Surely you must if you know also the tale of Arthur Pendragon!” He inclined his head courteously to Greg. “And of me, Huon, once of the Horn. For this is the land to which both Arthur and I were summoned. Or is that now forgot in the world of men?” He ended a little sadly.

Arthur Pendragon—that was King Arthur of the Round Table, Sara now remembered. But Huon—she did not know his story and wished she could ask Eric about him.

Greg was scowling not at Huon but at the ground between
his feet where he was digging holes with one of the spoons from the basket.

“It's completely cockeyed,” he muttered. “King Arthur is just a legend. The real Arthur, he was a British Roman who fought the Saxons. He never had a Round Table or any knights! Mr. Legard told us all about him in history last term. The rest of it—the Round Table and the knights—that was all made up in the Middle Ages, stories they told at feasts—like TV.”

Huon shook his head. “Story or not in your world, young sir, you are now truly in Avalon this day. Just as I am eating your food and drinking this strange but refreshing wine of yours. And Rufus passed you through the Gate of the Fox without challenge. Thus it is meant that you should come here.”

“
T
hat you have come through our gate without hurt or challenge,” Huon continued, “means that you have not been sent or called by them.” He held up his hand in a swift sign the children did not understand.

“Them?” Sara asked before biting into her sandwich. This talk about a gate was reassuring because they could go back the same way they had come through.

“The enemy,” Huon replied, “are those powers of darkness who war against all that is good and fair and right. Wizards of the Black, witches, warlocks, werewolves ghouls, ogres—the enemy has as many names as faces as Avalon itself—many bodies and disguises, some fair but mainly foul. They are shadows of the darkness who have long sought to overwhelm Avalon and then win to victory in other worlds, yours among them. Think of what you fear and hate the most, and that will be a part of the enemy and the Dark Powers.

“We lie in danger here, for by spells and treachery three talismans have been lost to us: Excalibur, Merlin's ring, and the horn—all within three days' time. And if we go into battle without them—ah, ah—” Huon shook his head “—we shall be as men fighting with weighty chains loaded upon arms and limbs.” Then abruptly he asked a question: “Do you have the privilege of cold iron?”

As they stared at him in bewilderment, he pointed to one of the basket knives. “Of what metal is this wrought?”

“Stainless steel,” Greg replied. “But what has that got to do with—?”

“Stainless steel,” Huon interrupted. “But you have no iron—cold iron—forged by a mortal in the world of mortals? Or do you have the need for silver also?”