The Crown of Dalemark (33 page)

It was indeed a very plain blade, he saw. “I reckon we broke all the rules there,” he said in mock regret.

“You touched at least half a dozen knots,” Moril gasped hopefully.

There was a strange look on Cennoreth's face. Possibly she was trying not to laugh. “No, he didn't,” she said. “I was watching quite carefully. Which of you is supposed to be having the sword?”

“She is,” said Moril.

“Then please give it to her and then clear up my hearth,” Cennoreth said. “I think I'd better look at my weaving.”

Maewen got to her knees and held the scabbard out. Mitt slithered the sword inside it with an angry flourish. It looked ceremonial, done that way. Mitt had not the slightest doubt that Manaliabrid would consider that Noreth had won the sword. He turned away disgustedly to help Moril collect fire irons and prop them in noisy bundles by the grate.
Clatter
. It was not that simple to defeat Kankredin's plans.
Clang
.
Boing
. Well, it wouldn't be, would it? Kankredin was of the Undying, and that meant strong. After all, Old Ammet was so strong that just saying one of his na—Oh flaming
pants
! Mitt stopped with pokers bundled to his chest and looked up at the dangling, broken thongs and torn-out nails.
This
was why the Earth Shaker had reminded him of those names! And he had never even thought of using one.
Clatter
—flaming—CRASH. There.

Dejectedly Mitt followed Moril and Maewen over to the window. Wend was standing, leaning on the loom, watching Cennoreth smooth and smooth at the most recently woven end of her cloth. You could see the likeness between them now, Maewen thought, although Wend looked so smooth and young. But she also saw another likeness. That dreamy, devoted way Cennoreth was smoothing at her weaving was like Mum's, when Mum was on a new statue. They were rather the same shape, though Mum's hair was straighter and darker. Cennoreth clicked her tongue and shook her head as she stroked the cloth, again like Mum. A comb fell out of her hair, and she rammed it back impatiently. That was even more like Mum. “This is a pretty snarl!” she said.

It was odd cloth—even odder than Mum's sculptures, which Maewen secretly considered quite mad. At first sight it looked as if the witch had used every color off all the bobbins at random, changing color so often that it all went down to reddish brown muddle. But after you had looked at it awhile, letters seemed to appear in the weave, small and close and almost making words. Then just as you thought you had found a word, you found instead patterns, large patterns and small ones, rambling and winding all over the cloth in various bright colors. The pattern Cennoreth was smoothing at was a rusty orange that suddenly turned into bright red. Indeed, it had turned red so suddenly and recently that the scarlet yarn was still in the shuttle, hanging down from the half-woven edge in a row of other shuttles, ready to be used in the next line.

“There's no need to stare,” Cennoreth said. “My grandfather asked me to go on weaving. It's not my fault it comes out as it does. Just look at this! I can't think what you're doing with my son-in-law's sword, young woman. You're not who you should be at all. What's your real name?”

Their four faces stared at Maewen, and the shock on three of those faces was lurid in the low light from the window. Moril's mouth came open. Wend was white. He and Mitt both edged back from Maewen, and Mitt frowned, calculating and enlightened, as this cleared up several mysteries he had not properly considered before.

Maewen backed, too, clutching the sword. She felt she might have dissolved with horror without something to hang on to. “M-Maewen,” she said. Cennoreth looked at her. Under those accusing blue-green eyes, Maewen found she had to correct herself. “Er, Mayelbridwen Singer, really.”

“Hmm. That sounds like an outlandish version of my daughter's name,” Cennoreth said. “Where are you from?”

“The present—I mean, your future,” Maewen confessed.

Everyone was startled. “That can't be
possible
!” Wend said.

“Oh yes—or at least, it's quite true,” said Cennoreth. “That red snarl is from no bobbin here in this room. I was planning how to get that color dye, but I haven't done it yet—though I suppose I will in time. I
thought
it felt strange when I threaded the shuttle the other day, but there's been a fog, and the light wasn't good. I didn't really see it till now.”

Wend seemed completely shattered. His face looked older than his sister's. “Unpick—unpick it!” he burst out. “Before it's too late, Tanaqui—unpick!”

“Don't be silly,” said his sister.

“But you've unpicked before!” Wend said.

“Not often and not for centuries,” she retorted. “And only when the One has asked it of me.”

“But
I
asked you last time!” Wend cried out. He seemed quite desperate. “Don't you remember? I asked you when that slimy traitor killed the Adon. You unpicked then!”

“Duck, that was unpicking a death,” she said, very seriously. “You wouldn't want me to unpick a living person.”

“Why not?” Wend demanded. “She's an impostor. Unpick! Send her back! I don't want her here!”

Maewen clutched the sword and stared from one to the other. Wend must be mad, after all. “But you
do
want me!” she said. “You sent me here! You told me in the palace you wanted me to take Noreth's place!”

Wend rounded on her, so angry and tall and so full of queer power that she backed away again. “I do not want you! Why should I send you here?”

“Because,” Maewen faltered, “because the real Noreth disappeared and you know I look—”

“Disappeared!”
Wend shouted. His eyes were not mad, Maewen saw, but so full of grief and shock and anger that they glared as if he was not really seeing her.

“I thought you knew,” she said. “What you said, you know, by the waystone—at Adenmouth—”

“What!”
said Wend. “For so long?” He rounded on his sister. “Where is Noreth of Kredindale?”

Cennoreth ran her finger down the rust-colored pattern, and on down the scarlet twist of wool, until she came to the thread hanging off in the shuttle. “It's not here. That part isn't woven yet.” Wend made an angry noise. “Don't you understand, Duck? I don't know
either
.”

Maewen could have sworn that Wend was crying as he swung round again and glared at the boys. “And do
you
know?” Moril and Mitt shook their heads. “You wouldn't!” Wend said disgustedly. “You only think of yourselves. Don't you understand? All my hopes were on Noreth. There could have been a Queen again!”

“No, there couldn't,” Maewen said unwisely. “There was a Ki—”

Wend swung round and shouted at her. “What do you know about this? You're not Noreth! You're no one!
You're
not the one I've kept the green roads for, all these years! You can go hang, and the green roads with you! Not one step more do I go with any of you!”

He turned and stormed through the room, going from space to space between the bobbins in enormous strides. The door to the kitchen-room slammed behind him.

Very shaken, Maewen looked at Mitt and Moril. She was afraid they were going to be as angry with her as Wend. What she saw growing on both their faces was simple, devout relief. Mitt even gave her a shaky grin as he asked Cennoreth, “He do this often, your brother?”

Cennoreth was frowning out of the window, at the rocks and apple trees there, busily and absently attending to her weaving, tying off a thread of dark green yarn beside the hanging scarlet shuttle. Very like Mum when something upset her, Maewen thought. At Mitt's question, Cennoreth gave a start and looked down at what her hands were doing. “Oh dear,” she said. “You must forgive my brother. There are times when he feels that every mortal soul just lets him down. He
can
behave like this when his heart is very much in something. I expect he has gone to look for the real girl.” She sighed. “I think you'd better go and collect the supplies I promised you; they're on the table in the kitchen. Your friends will be waiting.”

She turned back to her loom. Mitt and Moril nodded at one another, and the three of them worked their way through the bobbins to the kitchen door. There was no sign of Wend in there, but on the table stood a crock of milk, butter, a bowl of eggs, and a round of cheese. Maewen looked up from wondering if Wend had put them there, to find Mitt and Moril facing her meaningly across the table. Here it comes! she thought.

“Who
are
you, really? You said Singer,” Moril asked her.

“That's a surname,” Maewen explained. “My dad said we had Singer blood. Believe it or not, he was showing me some of our family tree the night before I left, but the part from this time was really confused, and I've no idea whether I'm related to you.” It felt so good to be able to be herself again that she could have chattered on for minutes. “I may be called Singer, but I can barely sing a—”

“How
long
into the future?” Moril said.

“Oh. Er—two hundred years, I think.”

Mitt and Moril looked to one another. “That long!” said Mitt. “Then you'll know what's going to happen here—right?”

“Not really,” Maewen confessed. She was rather dashed to find that what they were really interested in was their own future. She had wanted to amaze them about planes and computers and television. “History doesn't tell you about the Undying or the green roads or anything,” she explained. “It's mostly kings and politics. Noreth didn't come into any of the history I learned, but I'll tell you who does: Amil the Great. I'm almost sure he's almost now.”

“Who?”
said Mitt.

“Amil,” Moril said, rather accusingly. “That's not a king's name. It's one of the names of the One.”

“What about him? Tell,” said Mitt.

Maewen racked her brains. “Well, there was a big uprising, and Amil the Great took the crown and united all Dalemark. He reigned for ages and rebuilt Kernsburgh and changed the whole country.”

“Ah,” said Mitt. This sounded good. Let him and Navis only get in on that, and Earl Keril and the Countess could go whistle. “When is this uprising going to start?”

“I can't remember the date,” Maewen confessed—which was
stupid
, considering how often she had heard it in the palace—“but it can't be more than a year away now. I've been thinking all along that I've only got to keep going until Amil comes.”

“Then
where
does he start?” said Mitt. He needed to know where to make for.

Maewen flogged her brain again, feeling quite resentful at being released from her imposture only to stand up to a history test. She would have told him so, too, if she hadn't thought she owed it to them. The trouble was, what she remembered was a muddle. “I
think
it began in the South, down on the coast—No, because I seem to remember that the North Dales and Dropwater came into it, too. And Kernsburgh, I think. Yes, I'm pretty sure that some of it began near Kernsburgh.”

“Kernsburgh.” Mitt and Moril looked at one another again. She could see that both their minds were hard at work. “Kialan's bringing Ynen to meet us at Kernsburgh,” Mitt told Moril. “If he can.”

“Kialan,” said Moril, “would make a good king.”

“My money's on Ynen,” said Mitt. “I grant you that Kialan's kingly, but Ynen's got the character.” Both boys looked at Maewen. “I reckon,” Mitt said, “that our job is to go along there and hand over that sword and that ring and the cup, to one of them.”

“Yes,” Moril agreed. “I don't think we can stop. The One's got an interest in it. You can tell from this king's name.” He frowned down at the little white goat cheese in front of him on the table. “But I don't understand. What's
happened
to Noreth?”

This was the part Maewen had been dreading. Both of them were eyeing her, picking out the features that did not match their memory of Noreth—or, maybe, wondering if she was a murderess. “I don't know,” she said. “Honestly. She was gone when I got here. I found her horse—at least I suppose it's her horse—wandering about by the waystone. I thought maybe one of the earls might have kidnapped her.”

Again Mitt and Moril exchanged looks. “It could be,” Moril said. “About the only earl in the North who won't want to stop her is Earl Luthan.”

Mitt said, “Then we'll look for her … after.”

There was a silence, filled with the soft singing of the kettle on the banked peat and clacking from the loom next door. A memory teased at Maewen, now she had space to think. “I remember! Wend told me, back in the palace when he was tricking me into coming here, that Kankredin had got to Noreth somehow.”

Both of them pounced on this. “The voice,” said Moril.

“Now we'll tell you something,” said Mitt. “That voice that talks to you. You think it's the One, don't you?”

“But it's not,” said Moril. “It's Kankredin.”

“How do you know?” Maewen said guiltily.