The Changes Trilogy (49 page)

When they woke in the morning the weatherman was gone, and so was the roan, and so was Geoffrey's purse.

Chapter 8

THE TOWER

He had left the piebald horse and Maddox. Also a square of red cloth containing some bread and mutton and a letter.

Dear Colleague,

I know you will understand when I tell you that I have changed my mind. I am not really (as you so evidently are) the stuff of which high adventures are made. So, learning that there was a decent billet for a weathermonger of my abilities at Weymouth, I realized that it ill became me to deprive you of a share in the honor and glory (if any). You have but twenty miles to go, while I have half a country. I was sure (and therefore decided that it was kindest not to wake you) that you would, in the circumstances, have pressed upon me a loan which it would have been embarrassing to refuse. If the burghers of Weymouth are as free with their money as your sister implies, I shall be in a position to repay you next time you pass that way, when no doubt we shall have much to talk about.

Meanwhile I remain

your devoted admirer

C
YRIL
C
AMPERDOWN
(not, of course, my real name) P.S. You should be able to sell the piebald for two sovereigns (ask three) provided you don't let the purchaser inspect his left hind foot. Maddox might be edible, stewed very slowly for several hours.

Sally said, “He never liked poor Maddox, not since he bit him.”

Geoffrey said, “What are we going to do?”

“What he says, I think, except for eating Maddox. If it's really only twenty miles, we could sell your horse and take turns to ride Maddox, and we ought to be there for supper.”

“And what then?”

“Oh, Jeff, I don't think that's a very sensible question. Absolutely anything might happen, so there's no point in thinking about it, like you said last night. I think we've done jolly well to get as far as we have done, honestly.”

“I expect you're right.”

He felt muddled by the weatherman's treachery—sorry that somebody he'd liked and who'd been helpful should turn out such a stinker; glad to be on their own again. They ate the bread and mutton and decided on a story—Sally couldn't cope with Geoffrey remaining officially dumb. It seemed easiest to stick to the weatherman's basic lie, simply adding that they'd been sent ahead but had missed their master on the road and had to sell the piebald to get home.

This worked surprisingly well. The first farm they tried didn't want another horse, but gave them each a mug of milk for nothing. The second was full of squalling dogs so they gave it a miss. But at the third the farmer seemed interested. Geoffrey held the piebald and Sally kept Maddox as close to the suspect foot as she could. The farmer went through the ritual of prodding and feeling, but when he came around to the off hind quarter and bent down Sally gave Maddox a little more rope and he lunged and bit the farmer's ear. The man swore. Geoffrey apologized and spoke crossly to Sally. The farmer's wife leaned out of an upstairs window and jeered at him. He didn't seem to fancy any more feeling and prodding, but took the horse for two and a half sovereigns.

It turned out that Maddox wouldn't let Geoffrey ride him, even with Sally leading. This suited Geoffrey very well, as it allowed Sally to ride and rest (it wasn't like real riding—no bumpity-bumpity—more like traveling on a coarse, swaying sofa) while he walked beside her. The pony's pace exactly matched his, and they ambled west in a mood extraordinarily different from yesterday's. Then they had felt invaders, alien, blasting their way between the growing greens of early harvest; now they were part of the scenery, moving at a pace natural to their surroundings. Haymakers straightened from scythes and waved to them, shouting incomprehensible good-days. For two miles, between Orcop and Bagwy Llydiart, they walked with a girl of about Geoffrey's age, a plump, bun-faced lass who talked to them in a single incessant stream of lilting language—about her relations and acquaintances, never pausing to explain who anybody was, but assuming that they both knew Cousin William and Mr. Price and Poor Old John as well as she did. The idea that anybody really lived outside the span of the immediate horizon—closer now as the foothills of Wales grew steeper—was clearly beyond her. Two or three times she referred casually to the presence of the Necromancer, twelve miles westward, as one might refer to the existence of a river at the bottom of the paddock—a natural hazard that must be reckoned with but which nothing in the ordinary round of life could affect or change. She left them before Bagwy Llydiart, in midsentence. Geoffrey and Sally got the subject and verb, and the girl who opened the farm door to her got the object.

In the village, which is really only an inn and a couple of houses, they bought bread and bacon and cider. Geoffrey had been rehearsing his story for the last half mile up the hill, but found it wasn't needed. The bar had five old men in it, all talking eagerly about the demon-driven engine which had been slain on the bad road by a storm from over the mountains. The accounts of the two demons were exciting but confusing, because two different stories seemed to have arrived in the village together. In one the car had been driven by monsters, horned, warty, blowing flames from their noses; in the other by a man and woman of surpassing but devilish beauty. Both stories agreed that no remains had been found in the car, which made the supernatural quality of the drivers obvious. Then the landlord joined in the talk, after doing complicated sums with Geoffrey's change—England seemed to have some very peculiar coins these days.

“I did hear,” he said, “as how Lord Willoughby had hunted un all the way up from Hungerford, and precious near caught un two nights back. And they'm sending south for his lordship's hounds, as may still have the scent in 'em, after nosing round where the engine stopped in the dark.
I
don't reckon 'em for demons. What need would there be for the likes of demons to go stopping in the dark? You mark my words—they was nobbut wicked outlanders, who seed the storm a-coming and left their engine in time. S'posing his lordship brings the dogs up in coaches, they'll be on the bad road two hours since. Then there'll be fine hunting.”

“Lot o' s'posins,” said one of the old drinkers. “They'm demons for my money.”

The argument circled back onto its old track, and Geoffrey left, sick with panic. Fifteen miles start, perhaps, and there'd been a good stretch yesterday evening when everyone was riding. That should confuse them. On the other hand the hunt must have guessed where they were making for by now, and once they'd been traced to Overton Farm there'd be descriptions available, of a sort.

Sally had become bored with waiting, and was trying to balance, standing, like a circus rider, on Maddox's back. It can't have been difficult on the broad plateau of his shoulders, but she looked nervous and sat down the moment she saw Geoffrey.

“What's the matter?” she whispered.

“Nothing. I hope.”

“Oh, you must tell me. It isn't fair being left in the dark.”

“Something they said in the pub. It looks as if we're still being hunted by those hounds.”

“Oh bother. Just when everything seemed so easy and right. What are you going to do?”

“I don't know. Plug on, I suppose. They can hunt us wherever we go, you see.”

“I suppose perhaps if we got close enough to the Necro man they might be too frightened to follow us.”

“It's a chance—the best one probably.”

“I wonder if they'll start hunting our weatherman too. That would surprise him.”

Indeed it might, but no doubt he'd talk his way out of it. Geoffrey decided not to stop for lunch but to eat walking. Maddox decided otherwise, and won. They ate their bacon (smoked, not salted, and very fatty) and drank their sweet unbubbly cider a mile out of the village, where the hill sloped gently down in front of them. Maddox found a stretch of grass which appealed to him and champed stolidly. Geoffrey and Sally sat on the gate of an overgrown orchard and looked west. Now, for the first time, they could see how close the ramparts of the Black Mountains loomed, a dark, hard-edged frame to the green and loping landscape. Nothing on the near side of the escarpment looked at all peculiar. The haymakers were at work, as they had been in Wiltshire; an old woman in a black dress, leading a single cow, came up the road toward them and gave them good-day. Perhaps fewer of the fields were worked here, and more had been let go, but that might be simply because the soil here was less rewarding than in the counties they had passed through yesterday. You couldn't tell.

Maddox took nearly an hour to finish his meal. Without event they covered the long drop into Pontrilas, where they crossed the Monnow and found a two-mile footpath up to Rowlstone. Here the country grew much steeper, so that Geoffrey realized how tired his legs were, and that there was a blister coming on his left heel. On the crest of Mynydd Merddin they rested and looked back.

“See anything, Sal?”

“No. They couldn't be coming yet, could they?”

“Not unless they were dead lucky. We ought to have three or four hours yet. What we really need is a stream going roughly the way we want to go, and then wade down it, but there doesn't look as if there's anything right on the map. This one at the bottom's too big, I think. On we go.”

Clodock, in the valley, was an empty village with its church in ruins, but the bridge still stood. The mountains heeled above them. Geoffrey led Maddox up a footpath, very disused and overgrown, to Penyrhiwiau, where the track turned left and lanced straight toward the ramparts. Already it was steeper than anything they'd climbed, and the contour lines on the map showed there was worse to come. The hills were silent, a bare, untenanted upheaval of sour soil covered with spiky brown grass and heather. He'd been expecting to see mountain sheep and half-wild ponies, but not an animal seemed to move between horizon and horizon, not even a bird. He felt oppressed by their total loneliness, and thought Sally did too. Only Maddox plodded on unmoved.

His heart was banging like an iron machine and his lungs sucking in air and shoving it out in quick, harsh panting, like a dog's, when they took the path southwest for the final climb. This path slanted sideways up the hill, so that they could look out to the left over the colossal summer landscape. No road could have taken that hill direct: its slope was as steep as a gable, and was topped with a line of low cliffs, where the underlying bone of the hills showed through the weatherworn flesh. Their path slanted around the end of these and then (the map said) turned sharply back, down through terrain just as bleak to Llanthony. It looked as though there was a stream they could wade down starting almost on the far path. His legs were too accustomed, by now, to the rhythm of hurrying to move at a slower pace, but when they rounded the cliff at the top he knew that he had to rest.

Sally slid off Maddox and lay on the grass beside him, looking back over their route. The pony nosed disgustedly among the coarse grass for something worthy of his palate. Geoffrey swung the map around and tried to work out exactly where they'd been. Mynydd Merddin seemed no more than a gentle swelling out of the plain, until you realized for how far it hid the country behind it. Then that must be their path, coming down by the tip of that wood, and into Clodock, which was easy to spot by its square church tower. Of course, he would not be able to see the footpath from here—it had been so overgrown that …

He
could
see it. Not the path itself, of course, but the horsemen on it. And, in a gap, the wavering pale line which was the backs of hounds.

He stared at them hopelessly.

“Come on, Jeff. We can't give up now, after getting so far. Do come on.”

He shambled up the path, too tired to run, to the crest of the hill. Perhaps he'd be able to run a bit down the far side; then, if they could get to the stream, or at least if he could send Sal off down it, there might be hope. Eyes on the track, he weltered on.

“Oh!” cried Sally, and he looked up.

They were on the crest, and the Valley of Ewyas lay beneath them. It was quite crazy. Instead of the acid, barren hills that should have been there, he saw a forest of enormous trees beginning not fifty yards down the slope with no outlying scrub or thicket to screen the gray, centuries-old trunks. Beneath the leaves, beyond the trunks, lay shadows blacker than any wood he had ever seen. Above, reaching north and south and out of eyesight, the green cumulus obliterated the valley. Out of the middle of it, a single monstrous tower, rose the Necromancer's castle. It could be nothing else. Their path led into the wood and straight toward it.

Chapter 9

THE SENESCHAL

A crooked tissue of wind brought the sound of hallooing from over the cliffs behind them.

“Come on,” said Sally, “it's the best bet. Maddox, you're going to have to see if you can go a bit faster.”

With the help of the downward slope the pony managed to produce out of his repertoire a long-forgotten trot. In a way he was like the Rolls, a rectangular, solid, unstoppable thing. Geoffrey, now in a daze of tiredness, let the path take him down in a freewheeling lope, which he knew would end in fainting limpness the moment the path flattened to a level. They plunged into the trees.

It was darker than he'd thought possible. This was a quite different sort of forest from the gone-to-pot New Forest which they'd breakfasted in yesterday. That had seemed, somehow, like a neglected grove at the bottom of a big garden—after all, its trees had been tended like a vegetable crop only six years before. But this one had not seen a forester's ax for generations of trees. The oaks were prodigious, their trunks fuzzy with moss, and the underwoods were a striving, rotting tangle, tall enough to overarch the path for most of the way—this was what made the shadows so dark. The silence was thick, ominous, complete; even the noise of Maddox's hooves was muffled by the moss on which they ran, a soft, deep, dark-green pile which would surely be worn away in no time if the road was used much—used at all. Why had the forest not swallowed it? It lay broad as a highway between the tree trunks, without even a bramble stretching across it.