The Sword Bearer (33 page)

Unutterable love was in her eyes and her arms extended toward him. The yellow streak was still in her white hair, and her best apron rested smoothly on her long gray skirt. A terrible sob shook him and his sword arm dropped to his side.

"It's not real, John! It isn't anyone. He's just pulling the im-age out of your own mind. Walk through it! It isn't there!"

He knew Mab's words were true. He also knew as never before how very evil the goblin was. He knew more. He knew the power of Old Nick was the power of an evil still inside himself, a proud and rebellious evil, an evil he must now de-stroy. His heart was throbbing again and his mouth was dry as he said, "You're not just
outside
me, but
inside
me, Nicholas Slapfoot And the Changer's sword is going to destroy you. It can wait no longer, and neither can I!"

To walk unfeelingly toward his grandmother with his sword at the ready was unbelievably hard to do, even though with part of his mind he knew she was an illusion. He looked beyond her, focusing on Old Nick, shuddering as he reached her and half relieved, half distressed at the way she turned to a vapor which swirled around him as it dispersed.

Old Nick, still backing up, stumbled and fell. Swiftly John raised the sword high, gripped it with two hands and stepped forward quickly. The goblin's hook was held menacingly above his ugly head as he struggled back onto his feet. But John was too quick for him. With terrible power, power that was never his, he swung the sword in one awesome sweep, cleaving the head and neck down the center, cleaving the chest and the whole trunk. An explosion of red fire flung him to the ground, but he leaped again to his feet only to see a collapsing mound of ugly dark green slime slop sideways into the water.

There was a splash as it poured itself in and a furious boiling and bubbling in the water which lasted for more than a minute. More bubbles rose to the surface from time to time. Then there was stillness. The waters settled and were clear. He felt free and cleaner than he had ever felt in his life. All the pain had gone from his shoulder. And he was alone with Mab again.

"Well done, John-of-the-Swift-Sword. Very well done in-deed!"

John swung round, panting, to see Mab on hands and knees by the water at the foot of the stone steps. "Oh, Mab! It hap-pened so quickly. I'm glad he's gone. He was a thing, not a person—just an awful, awful
thing.
And it was sort of inside me too—I mean the evil!"

Mab struggled painfully to his feet. "I dreamed your dream, and when I awoke I knew I must find you. My old heart well nigh ceased to beat" He stepped forward unsteadily and pulled John against him. "I knew it was to happen. Yet I dreaded it. You have grown dear to a dying man, John-of-the-Swift-Sword."

For a few moments he held John against him, swaying a little, and then released him. "See," he said. "Look what I have in my hand."

Slowly he opened his hand to reveal a glowing pross stone. "It caught my eye from a crack in the rock by the waterside as the Goblin Prince was melting. Doubtless it was lost there the afternoon you first attacked him. Take it. Let it be a memory between us when we part. Take it and think of old Mab when-ever you look at it."

John took the stone between his fingers. It glowed with its own soft light, a light which soothed and comforted him. "Thank you," he said softly, looking into the ancient prophet's gray, sweat-covered face. He looked away again, for a tear was coursing down one of the wrinkled cheeks.

John took Mab's arm. "We must go back," he said. "You must rest. Lean on me." They moved with painful slowness toward the stairs. Only then did John remember.

"Oh, Mab!"

"What is it child?"

"My ring and my locket!"

"Your ring? You have a ring?"

"He had them round his neck! Mab, I must get them!" He had been too concerned about the battle to take much notice. But now terror invaded his body. They were his only link with the father he had never met. Turning from Mab he ran back along the wharf. Mab followed him feebly.

At first he could see nothing either where the goblin had fallen or on the smooth rocky bottom below the water. Its depth was impossible to gauge, and the dim red light made him frown and screw up his eyes. Had the ring and locket been destroyed with Old Nick? He put the thought out of his mind. Then to his relief he caught sight of a red gleam. After moving his head up and down a few times he was sure.

"You swim, John-of-the-Swift-Sword?"

Ashamed to have forgotten the dying seer, John turned. "I'm so sorry," he said. Mab sank to the ground, leaning his back against the wall.

John untied the thongs of his sandals and shucked them. Next he pulled his tunic over his head and stood on the wharf again, doing his best to gauge the depth of the water and the position of the thin gold chain. Then he dived.

The water was cold but John was intent on what he was doing. He was an old hand at finding coins on the bottom of swimming pools, and there was no doubt in his mind that he would succeed in recovering his treasure.

It cost him three attempts. Each time he would wait on the surface, treading water while he recovered his breath. His third dive took him right to the spot. The moment he felt the pre-cious metal safely between his fingers he rose to the surface. Joy and relief surged as he rose.

He heaved himself from the water and crossed to where the old man sat. There was no chain. Only the ring and the locket. He handed them to the seer and then reached for his tunic and began to pull it over his wet body.

"I showed them to you in the boat when you rescued me from the tower," he said, his voice muffled from inside the tunic. "I showed them to Folly ... and to Vixenia too, I think. My granma was going to tell me what they were .. . but she died. I told you she died, didn't I?"

"No, John. I've never seen them before. You certainly told me your mother and your grandmother had died. And you said that your father was a drunk who didn't want you."

John sat on the rock and began to lace up his sandals. "There's a picture of a soldier in the locket—and a lock of hair. I keep thinking it might be a picture of my father. Maybe now that I've killed Old Nick, the Changer will come and take me to him. He said tonight. Oh, Mab, I wish he'd hurry."

Mab had already opened the locket and was examining its contents, his wrinkled face a mask. "I should have realized you did not come from a world near here," he said quietly, "nor from an age that is close to us in time."

"What do you mean?" John asked. "Isn't this place sort of connected with the real world? I thought it must be, sort of, like a world-inside-a-world."

"No, John-of-the-Swift-Sword. You have come from a distant world, and an age that is not now." There was a long pause, a pause John knew he must not break. At last Mab spoke. "How slow I have been! I should have known."

John stared at him.

"With the Changer, such things are a small matter." He sighed weakly. "Now I can tell you about your father."

"You know him?"

"Now I do. I now know who he is. Or rather, I know who you are. I have known about your father long enough. There are too many things I have learned in my six centuries here." The seer's voice was weary. He was still staring at the photograph and the lock of hair.

"John-of-the-Swift-Sword, you are known in your own world as John McNab."

"No, Mab, John
Wilson."

"Wilson cannot be your real name."

"But it is. I've always been called John Wilson."

"Perhaps so. But your father's name is Ian McNab. Wilson was your mother's maiden name. She and your father married against your grandmother's wishes. Your father knew nothing about your birth. He was away in France. The cable announc-ing your birth apparendy never reached him. He only knew that your mother had died."

John swallowed and took a deep breath. It was a new thought. John McNab. And his father's name was Ian McNab.

"Will I find him?"

"Unhappily, yes. The Changer never lies. His promises are sure."

John struggled with a frightening thought "You mean he won't—won't want me?"

Mab sighed. "Who would not want a son?" he said. "All men long for sons. And from what I know of your father. .

"What do you know about him, Mab? Tell me. Tell me every-thing you know." He shivered with fear and longing as much as with the chill of the water that still clung to him from his dive off the wharf.

Mab closed the locket, then spent almost a minute examining the ring. "Your father was born in the north of Scodand," he said at length. "Twenty miles northwest of Inverness. He spoke Gaelic as a young child and learned to speak English at church, listening to an English minister so that he spoke it with an English accent When he was fifteen he came to England to find employment and for several years worked as a miner in Bolton."

John nodded eagerly, storing every word in his memory. "Is that my father in the snapshot?"

"Yes, and the hair is a lock of his hair. When the photograph was taken he had just volunteered to be a foot soldier in the Lancashire Fusileers. He had been married a week at the time."

"Let me look at it again!" John extended his hand for the locket and stared at the picture with a new eagerness. His fin-gers were trembling.

"Your father was a good soldier, but he drank too much," Mab said quietly after a moment "He became a regimental sergeant major, but was demoted to the ranks for something that happened when he was drunk"

John felt a pang of fear. "What happened?"

"It is little worth repeating. What matters is that the Changer came to him then. The war was virtually over. He had become the personal servant of a British colonel in the Allied head-quarters in Paris. Once he stopped drinking he was able to save enough money to emigrate to Canada and booked a passage on a liner, traveling between Cherbourg and Montreal."

John drew in a deep breath. "So he did go to Canada. Then that's where the Changer will take me."

Mab made no reply. His shoulders were hunched and he fiddled listlessly with John's ring.

"I just can't wait!" John went on excitedly. "I wish the Changer would hurry up and let me meet him!"

"Unfortunately, you have met him already." Mab's voice was low and bitter.

John seemed not to hear him for a moment Then as the words penetrated, he said, "What did you say? I've already met him? When?"

It was then that a peal of gentle thunder shook the rocky walls around them, and a glowing blue mist drove out the red light until the two of them were alone in radiant blue.

"Oh, Changer. You have mocked me!" the old man cried, staggering feebly to his feet "You asked me centuries ago if I wanted a son, and I told you I did. 'Then you shall have one,' you said.

"But hundreds of years have passed. I thought it a kindness that I should live so long. But you brought me here and made me live so many years that I am now old and withered and dry as a stick You have even made me love the child."

His head was tossed back and his body became rigid. He clenched and unclenched his fists in a fever of pain. He swal-lowed, took a deep breath and continued. "I know not by what mysterious magic you placed centuries between us, but you mock me, Changer. You mock me! What good am I as a father when I stand before the gates of death? What use am I to my son? What joy shall I have when I love him for a day or two, only to perish and leave him alone?"

John trembled. His own face was now drawn and pale—just like the seer's. He felt the universe was turning in nauseating somersaults around him. Mab? His father? Or was the old prophet mad?

A sound of rumbling thunder grew in volume, and the voice that John knew to be the Changer said, "Peace, Ian McNab! Peace! Your days are numbered here, but you will not die soon in your own world. Instead you will pick up your youth where you left it, as you enter once again the world of men. I do not mock you, Ian McNab. I restore to you your earthly years and give you your son!"

A steel gray door appeared before them bearing the number 345. And as Mab stepped forward to seize the handle, he was changed. John struggled to his feet

"Mab! What's happening to you?"

The wrinkles were being smoothed away. The white hair was curling and turning a reddish brown. Green eyes sparkled with life and wonder. Mab's face was no longer gaunt nor his frame fragile. His beard vanished and a red mustache sprouted on his upper lip. He stood before John in a Harris tweed jacket, a tartan kilt, gray woolen socks and brogues.

He released the door handle and with a cry of joy seized John in his strong arms, whirling round and round crying, "I am Ian McNab, your father, son! My son, my son, I'm your father!" until he was breathless and John was dizzy.

So much had happened so quickly that John could only gasp and laugh. His face was flushed and his eyes were round with wonder. John noticed he was wearing his green blazer and shorts and that he was smaller too. He was sure the Salford Grammar School cap must be on his head. He could also feel his glasses resting on his nose.

But he cared little about how he was dressed. His eyes would only look at the marvelous man in the Harris tweed jacket and kilt.