The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (12 page)

“But I don't know how it is they managed to do all this in the dark.”

“How can an eagle fly? How can a fish swim?” laughed Fenodyree over his shoulder.

“Yes, but how did you find
me
so quickly?” said Colin. “Was it luck?”

“Luck?” shouted Durathror. “I had but to put my ear to the ground, and your bellowing all but split my head! The wonder of it is that I found no more than two of the svartalfar in your company.

“Shh!” said Fenodyree, holding up his hand. “We must go carefully now.”

He listened, ear to the ground, as Durathror had done.

“Svarts are moving, but they are far away. There may be no danger here, yet.”

The tunnel opened into a broad gallery; before them rose an outcrop of rock, and it was the shape of a lion's head. Above the head the gallery stretched to a great height, cutting through other levels and caves as it went.

“This is the Cave of the Svartmoot, and no place for us at any time.”

The words were barely out of Fenodyree's mouth when a faint sound came to them from far away. Colin and Susan had heard it once before: it was the gong that had brought the svart-alfar out of the Devil's Grave on Stormy Point on the
night when the children had been run to earth in the marsh below the Holywell.

“Ha!” cried Durathror, and the sword Dyrnwyn sang aloud as she sprang from her sheath in an arc of light.

“Not now: not now,” said Fenodyree. “It would be a good fight, but we should go under, and the stone with us. We must pass unseen.”

Durathror lowered his arm unwillingly, an expression of disgust on his face.

“By the cow of Orgelmir!” he growled. “Yours is sour counsel! I shall not forget this day. Never before has one of the house of Gondemar turned from battle – and with such carrion, too. When all is safe in Fundindelve I must needs come here and put right this ill.”

“Your arm may yet grow tired ere you see the light,” said Fenodyree. “That is the call to svartmoot. We must hurry.”

He scrambled lightly on to the lion's shoulders, and the others followed. From the shoulder they climbed up a wall, pocked with smooth footholds, to a narrow ledge that curved round to a gallery, overlooking the head. The sound of many feet could now be heard drawing nearer. Every tunnel murmured.

Fenodyree made for a passage that wound into the roof.

“Quickly, now! They are coming by this way, too, and we must reach hiding before they meet us.”

The tunnel wall ended, and they were upon a wide platform: far beneath lay the cave. At the back of the ledge was a recess.

“In here! And show no light.”

Colin switched off the lamp, and felt the dwarfs press to him as they crowded as far away from the entrance as they could. Susan, crushed against the rear wall, could hardly breathe.

They were none too soon; for barely had they settled themselves when the svarts were upon them. They swept by the opening like a racing tide. For a full minute Colin and Susan listened to the slap of feet, and the hiss of breath. And then the unseen crowd was past, and the noise of its going blended into the general confusion of rustling, croaking, piping, and pulling, which grew steadily louder as svarts poured into the cave from every direction, and the air grew rank with their presence.

As though at a given signal, the hubbub died, and a tense quiet fell upon the assembled multitude. The svartmoot had begun.

“D
o not move,” Fenodyree whispered. “Durathror and I go to watch the moot. We shall come back as soon as we know what they intend.”

The dwarfs went so quietly that even in that silence Colin and Susan heard nothing.

Below them, some minutes later, a voice began to speak in harsh, high tones. The language was unintelligible; it was full of guttural and nasal sounds, and the words hovered and slurred most jarringly. The speaker was working himself into a state of excitement, or anger, and the crowd was carried with him. It began with a muttering, soon building to a howl at every pause in the address.

Colin felt a hand on his arm.

“Come with me,” said Fenodyree. “Shortly you will see; but keep low.”

Colin groped his way on all fours till he reached Durathror, who was lying at the edge of the platform, and mumbling into his beard. Not long after, Susan joined them. The noise below was now continuous.

“They are cowards,” said Fenodyree, “and must be driven to a frenzy to meet our swords. But he does his work well.”

“Ha, I guessed it would be so! They are powerless before sudden light, therefore they are to prepare themselves with firedrake blood; and here is the Keeper!”

The hysterical voices diminished to a murmur of intense excitement. Then, for a second, the cave was hushed.

“Down!” whispered Fenodyree. “He is taking off the cover!”

A sheet of fire sprang upwards past the ledge, and boiled against the roof.

“Eeee – agh – hooo!” roared the svarts.

The flames sank to a column twenty feet in height, which lit the cave with a red glare. A similar light had burned in St Mary's Clyffe earlier that day.

“You may look now,” said Fenodyree.

Colin and Susan raised their heads, and the memory of what they saw remained with them ever after.

The floor and walls of the cave were covered with svarts. They swarmed like bees. The first two layers of galleries were thick with them, and the children were glad Fenodyree had climbed so high. The lion's head, and a small space beneath its jaws, formed an island in a turbulent sea. On top of the rock stood two svarts, one black, the other white, and they were man-size.

“There you see Arthog and Slinkveal, lords of the svartalfar. Slinkveal is cunning past the thoughts of men, but Arthog it is who speaks, and carries out his brother's word; and his heart is blacker than his hide. See now the firedrake: the eyes of svarts can look on it without pain, and it makes them strong to face the purer light of day: henceforth your lamp will be no weapon.”

The flame was rising out of a stone cup, full of a seething liquid, that was held by a hideous, wizened svart who sat cross-legged on the sand beneath the lion's jaws. He was obviously very old, and his sagging skin was piebald, white and black.

“It is time we were gone,” said Fenodyree. “We have a comfortless road ahead. Crawl to the tunnel, and do not show your light until I give you word.”

For a few yards only, the red glow lit their way. Behind them the tumult increased again.

“There is a corner ahead,” said Fenodyree, “and once round that you may use your lamp.”

He hurried them along at a relentless pace; and he seemed very despondent. Durathror, on the other hand, was in a much improved temper, and began to laugh to himself as he jogged along behind.

“Did I not say the journey would be merry? Ha! By the blood of Lodur, it is better than all I thought! So we are to be
tracked down, are we? And we are to be met at the plankshaft, I hear; and if, all else fails, they wait for us at the gate. Let us hurry to the gate, cousin Squabnose, for I would have these rat-eaters remember the gate in after-time, what few there will be to sing of it when we have passed!”

Fenodyree sighed, and shook his head.

“You forget our charge, old Limbhewer. Firefrost is more to us than life, or death in glory: we must sink our pride, and run before these goblins. The gate is not for us.”

“Not for us? Then how, pray, shall we gain the upper world? There is no other road.”

“There is: just one. And, in its fashion, it bears more perils than the gate, though these cannot be mastered by the sword. At least, if we should perish on this road, Firefrost will lie hidden for untold centuries to come; for we are going where no svart will ever tread, nor any living thing, and only I, in all the world, can tell the way.”

“But Fenodyree,” cried Susan, “what do you mean? There are lots of entrances!”

“Not here. We are in West Mine, and from it there was one exit made. But so deep did men delve that they touched upon the secret places of the earth, known only to a few; and, of those, my father was the last. There were the first mines of our people dug, ages before Fundindelve; little remains now, save the upper paths, and they are places of dread, even for
dwarfs. The way is hidden, but my father taught me well. Never have I trod the paths, save in evil dreams, and I had always hoped to be spared the trial; but now it has come to that.”

“Nay, speak this no more,” growled Durathror. “I like it not.”

They travelled on without rest, talking little, for Colin and Susan had not the energy, and Durathror was subdued by what he had heard.

“It is not far,” said Fenodyree, “to … ah!”

Ahead of them a light flickered on the wall: the source of the light was hidden round a bend in the tunnel, but the dwarfs did not have to guess what to expect.

“What say you now, cousin?” whispered Durathror eagerly. “Do we run like shadows before this light, or do we snuff it out?”

Fenodyree's face was grim.

“We are too near: we must not turn back.”

“Good! This shall we do: let the men-children stand here. Go you forward to younder opening, and stay hidden, with drawn sword, till I call. I shall wait behind this boulder. Hold your ground, Stonemaiden; be not afraid. No svart will touch you, that I can promise!”

And he melted into the dark.

The light grew stronger, and cast shadows on the wall;
spindly shadows, with broad heads and hands; and round the bend came the svarts.

There were ten of them, white svarts, with pug-noses. Each carried a torch of wood that had been dipped in the flame of the firedrake's blood. From a girdle round each of their waists hung a crude axe or hammer. The head was a roughly worked stone, kidney or dumb-bell shaped; there was a groove about the middle, round which was bent a withy lashed tight with rat-skin thongs.

Colin and Susan involuntarily shrank closer together, and the lamp trembled in Colin's hand. The svarts halted; a deep sigh ran through them; and slowly they began to advance.

In spite of the knowledge that Durathror was close at hand, the children had to fight to stop themselves from running.

The svarts came on: the last of them was past Fenodyree. They held the torches high, and the other hand was poised to clutch. Colin flashed the lamp in their eyes, but they did no more than blink, and laugh hungrily. The children retreated a step. The svarts rushed forward. But at that moment Durathror stepped from behind the boulder, his sword Dyrnwyn in his hand, and bowed low before them, and addressed them in their own tongue.

“Hail, O eaters of toadstools! We are well met!”

The svarts fell back, mouths agape, and hissing after the
fashion of giant lizards. But those to the rear of the pack had more courage.

“See!” they cried. “It is he whom we must kill! The men-children are of no matter, but our lords have long wanted
his
life, and for him was the moot held.”

“No! No!” screamed another. “There is the maid who tricked us, and see! see!
she has the stone once more
!!”

“The stone! The stone! The stone!”

“The morthbrood have played us false!”

“Or she has stolen it!”

“Seize them! We shall take the stone to ourselves!”

Their eyes glowed green and yellow as desire mastered their cowardice.

“Ho!” cried Durathror. “So there is courage in svart-alfarheim! This is a day of marvels, to be sure! Come, let my sword test the mettle of your new-grown backbones!”

“We come! We come!”

And they hurled themselves upon the dwarf.

“Gondemar!” bellowed Durathror, and he whirled Dyrnwyn above his head with both hands. Two svarts died under that stroke. They buckled at the knees, and crumbled into dust.

“Gondemar!”

Sparks flew as iron rang on stone, but there were now six svarts in the tunnel, and four torches guttering on the sand.
Six to one: far too few for battle, whatever the prize. The svarts turned tail, and ran. Durathror rested on his sword.

“Cousin, it would seem Dyrnwyn is too bitter for their taste: let them then savour Widowmaker!”

Fenodyree came from hiding, and the svarts halted in dismay.

“It is the white one's dog!”

“What does
he
here?”

“It is a trick!”

One of the svarts turned, and ran towards Durathror, but, seeing he was alone in this, he scuttled back to his comrades, who were by this time in distress. Fenodyree was laying about him in silence. He did not feel Durathror's joy of battle: these creatures stood between him and his purpose, and must be killed: that was all. He was no born fighter.

The uproar grew less and less. Fenodyree's round helmet spun under foot, and his mail shirt rang with the dint of blows: but not for long. Soon the two dwarfs stood gazing at each other across a litter of torches and stone hammers.

“I see Widowmaker is well named!” Durathror chuckled. “She has gained two upon me in this fight; I lead you now by one only. I must find me more svarts!”

“Nay, come away, cousin; we must not turn from the path, nor rest, till we are beyond their reach.”

Colin stooped to pick up a hammer. It was heavy, but balanced well.

“Shall we take a couple? They may be useful.”

“They would drag you to your death, where we are going,” said Fenodyree. “Leave them; we do not need such tainted things.”

“Durathror,” said Susan, as they journeyed on, “where do the svarts go when they disappear?”

“To dust, my Stonemaiden; to dust. They cannot endure the bite of iron: it has a virtue that dissolves their flesh – and would all creatures of Nastrond were as they!”

“Here is the first of our trials,” said Fenodyree, “but it is naught that a cool head will not overcome.”