The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (19 page)

“Ay,” said Gowther. “It starts above Langley reservoirs. I dunner reckon much to it, though – mile after mile of trees on parade; it inner natural.”

“That is the place: a dungeon of trees. But their sad ranks grow thickly, and there is little chance of finding aught that hides within. The forest will keep us till Friday's dawn, when we shall climb over the last mile of the moorland to Shuttlingslow.”

“As easy as that?” said Gowther.

“
If
we can gain the forest,” said Durathror.

Fenodyree's plan was to head south for a few miles before turning east, and to travel, wherever possible, through woods. The intervening stretches of country, he hoped, would be crossed by following the lines of streams. Ignoring discomfort, the advantages of this plan were many. Along the
streams, alder and willow were certain to be found, linked by lesser growth, reeds, rushes, and straggling elder. Moving lower than the adjacent fields would make for greater stealth, since there would be no danger of being outlined against the sky. And, in the last resort, it would be possible to lie close under the bank if caught in the open by the approach of birds. Also, running water kills scent, which might be important, for there were still two of the hounds of the Morrigan left alive.

All this Fenodyree explained; his plan was accepted without dissent, and they now began the most arduous part of their journey, falling into a pattern of movement that was to govern them for slow, exhausting miles. They had to keep together as a body, yet move and act as individuals, each responsible for finding, and gaining, cover before birds were overhead, and pushing on as soon as the sky was clear. Desperate scrambles, long periods of inactivity, mud, sand, water, ice, malicious brambles; one mile an hour was good progress.

The brook led them south-west, towards the left of Sodger's Hump, and inevitably crossing under the Congleton road, which was not at all to anybody's liking. However, a few yards short of the bridge, though still dangerously close, a tributary joined Bag brook. It flowed in an acute angle from the left, from the direction of the Capesthorne game covert.
This meant that they were almost doubling back on their tracks, but it promised to be such an accommodating route that no one regretted the lost ground or wasted energies: it was worth all that to be travelling in exactly the right line – an experience that was to prove all too rare. Not long after turning up this smaller brook they saw the first hikers on the fringe of Dumville's plantation.

The brook came from a valley of birch scrub and dead bracken; this was an improvement on bare fields, but ahead towered a sanctuary of larches, and the crawl seemed endless.

“By the ribbons of Frimla!” said Durathror when they were beneath the laced branches. “It is good to drop that coward's gait and walk on two legs.”

“I only hope the birds are deaf,” said Susan.

The ground was covered inches deep with dead larch twigs and small branches. It was impossible not to tread on them, and with five pairs of feet on the move, dwarfs and humans passed through that wood with a sound like a distant forest fire.

From the larches they crossed a small area of scrub to a plantation of firs – specimens of Gowther's despised “trees on parade”. But these trees were well grown, and there were few low branches. The floor was mute; no sun cut through the green roof: here twilight lay hidden at noon. Everybody was
more at ease than at any time since leaving Highmost Redmanhey.

“It's a treat not to think eyes are boring into your shoulder blades, inner it?” said Gowther.

“And to be out of the sun,” said Colin. “It was trained on us like a spotlight.”

“Well, the light's certainly dim enough in here,” said Susan. “It's taken till now for my eyes to get used to the change.”

“I mun be still a bit mazed, then,” said Gowther, “for to my way of thinking it's coming on darker instead of lighter.”

“It is,” said Fenodyree.

The wood broke on the foot of a small hillock, and there all was plain to see.

The blue sky and brilliant sun had vanished. From horizon to horizon the air was black and yellow with unbroken clouds.

“These are but the outriders,” said Durathror. “Do we stay here beneath shelter, or move on?”

“On,” said Fenodyree. “While we may.”

A path took them through the covert, past many green pools; and, at a plank that spanned a boundary ditch, all shelter ended. Before them was parkland, the nearest wood a quarter of a mile away across open country that offered no scrap of cover.

“Well, that's that, inner it?” said Gowther. “What do we do now? Wait while night?”

Fenodyree shook his head.

“We must not travel in the dark; not when we are so far from help. We shall move soon. The storm is at hand, and at its height it will pluck even the morthbrood from the sky. Then shall we cross.”

They did not have to wait. The first snow whipped by as Fenodyree finished speaking, and the next moment the world had shrunk to a five-yard circle, shot through with powdered ice, and bounded by a wall and ceiling of leaping grey.

“Naught can find us in this!” shouted Fenodyree against the skirl of the wind. “Now is our chance!”

Once they were out of the shelter of the wood the full weight of the storm flung itself upon them. Susan, Colin, and the dwarfs are picked up and thrown to the ground, while Gowther lurched as though he had been stunned. They groped their way together, and linked arms, Gowther in the middle as anchor, and the wind frog-marched them at a giant-striding run direct to their goal.

It was the shallowest of valleys. They bounced over the edge, and were dropped by the storm as it leapt across the gap. Close to where they landed a fallen tree threw up soilclogged roots, a natural shield against the wind.

“We shall fare no better than this,” said Fenodyree, “and
we cannot battle with such a storm, so let us make the most of what we have.”

At first it was enough to be out of the storm's reach: the snow hissed past, and little settled. But the air was cruel; and behind the roots there was not much space for five people to move, so they crouched and stood by turns, and the breath froze on their lips, and their eyelashes were brittle with ice.

The children pulled on all their spare clothing, and huddled to share the dwarfs' cloaks. Gowther came off worst. He had to make do with sticking his feet into the rucksack, and wrapping himself about with the clammy, cold, rubber-scented groundsheets. It was then that Durathror spoke of the lios-alfar, and of his friendship with Atlendor.

“But why should the elves leave here in the first place, and where did they go?” asked Colin when the tale was ended.

“The lios-alfar,” said Durathror, “are the elves of light, creatures of air, the dew-drinkers. To them beauty is food and life, and dirt and ugliness, death. When men turned from the sun and the earth, and corrupted the air with the smoke of furnaces, it was poison to the lios-alfar; the scab of brick and tile that spread over this land withered their hearts. They had to go, or die. Wherever men now were, there were noise and grime; only in the empty places was there peace. Some of the lios-alfar fled to the mountains of Sinadon, some to the Isle of Iwerdon across the Westwater, and others past the Depths of
Dinsel in the south. But most went north with Atlendor to far Prydein, even beyond Minith Bannawg, and there they dwell upon the high hills. Now some, at least, have come south, but to what end I cannot tell, nor why they are hidden from me. But there can be no evil in it, that much is certain.”

During the afternoon the wind dropped, and the roots were now no shelter from the snow. It fell steadily, monotonously, so that it seemed to the half-frozen figures behind the tree as though they were on a platform that moved upwards through a white, beaded curtain. Reality, space, and time dissolved in the blank, soaring, motionless world. Only an occasional squall drew back the curtain for a second or two, and destroyed the hypnotic illusion.

Towards nightfall Fenodyree made up his mind. Ever since the wind had ceased to clamp them behind the tree roots he had been weighing the advantages, and disadvantages, of moving on. As things stood, they were more than likely to lose their way, and they were dangerously close to Alderley, and to the Edge. No, that was a risk he did not want to take. But, on the other hand, it was becoming obvious that they could not survive the night in the open. Already they were experiencing the fatal, warm drowsiness of exposure, and the mesmerism of the snow was undermining their resistance to the peril. Both Gowther and Colin had had to be roused more than once.

“We must move,” said Fenodyree. “If we do not find a roof for our heads we shall not have need of one by morning. I shall see if there is better cover downstream. The fewer tracks we make in this snow the safer we shall rest, but it would not be wise to go alone. Farmer Mossock, will you come with me?”

“I will that!” said Gowther. “I've about had enough of this place!”

Fenodyree and Gowther disappeared through the curtain.

They followed the valley for a quarter of a mile, and came to a cart track near to where it joined the Congleton road on their right.

“Hey!” said Gowther. “I know wheer we are! Straight on'll be Redesmere, and theer's some pretty thick woods just ahead: it's mainly rhododendron again, but happen we con make ourselves summat out of it. It's the best we'll find round these parts.”

“It may be better than you think, my friend!” said the dwarf, his eyes gleaming. “I had given no thought to Redesmere.”

They retraced their steps. All the time, Gowther had been at pains to put his feet exactly in Fenodyree's tracks, and his boots had blotted out the dwarf's smaller prints. Going back, they trod the same tracks as on the outward journey, and the result would give any hunter much to think about.

The snow was now a foot deep all over, and considerably more where it had drifted.

“We shall cut branches here and there to make a thatch, if nothing better comes of Redesmere,” said Fenodyree. “But we must not waste a moment, since it is past sunset already, and that is danger even before the coming of night. If we are to … ah!!”

“What …?”

“Sh!
Look
!”

In the time that had elapsed since they passed that spot on the way to Redesmere something had crossed their path, leaving tracks like nothing Gowther had ever seen in all his days. A shallow furrow, two yards wide, had been swept through the snow, and along the centre of the furrow ran the print of bare feet. Each foot was composed of a pointed big toe, divided by a cleft from the single wedge that filled the place where the other four toes would normally have been. The prints were evenly spaced – three yards apart.

“Hurry!” gasped Fenodyree. “And may we come in time!”

He did not draw his sword.

“I've a real snow-thirst,” said Susan. “More than anything else at this moment I'd like a gallon of milk.”

“Oh, don't,” groaned Colin. “A gallon would only wet my lips!”

The stream-water was too cold to drink: it numbed their throats, and made their teeth ache. And their mouths were dry and sweet with fatigue.

They spoke little, for conversation had died long ago: it took too much effort. They moved only when cramp demanded.

After Gowther and Fenodyree had been gone about twenty minutes, Susan, developing pins and needles in all her limbs, got up to stamp around and flap her arms. She was on the point of crouching down again when she heard a faint swishing sound, as of somebody wading through the snow. Thinking the others were returning, she stood on tiptoe to peer out of the valley. This brought her eyes just above ground-level; and at that moment a flurry of wind pulled aside the veil of snow. A second later the wind had gone by, and the veil fell back into place, but in that instant, Susan's eyes had registered every detail of the thing that was passing within ten yards of where she stood.

It bore some resemblance to a woman, an ill-proportioned woman, twenty feet high, and green. The long, thick-set trunk rested on massive legs with curving, bloated thighs. The arms were too short, muscular at the shoulders, but tapering to puny, indeterminate hands. The head was very small, elliptical, and scarcely broader than the neck on which it sat. There was no hair; the mouth was a shadowed line; the nose
cut sharply down from the brow, between eyes that were no more than dark smears. It wore a single garment, a loose tunic that reached to the ground, and clung to the body in folds like wet linen. The flesh gleamed dully, and the tunic, of the same colour and texture, might have been of the same substance. A statue of polished malachite; but a statue that moved.

Susan began to scream, but before the sound reached her lips, a rough hand was clapped over her mouth, and Durathror pushed her down into the snow.

“Lie still!”

For a time, above the beating of her heart, she felt the earth shake beneath a ponderous tread that died away.

“Did you see it?” she whispered.

“I saw it. We must find my cousin: next time our luck may not hold.”

“What is it? What's wrong?” said Colin from the bottom of the slope. But as he spoke Fenodyree, with Gowther on his heels, staggered out of the gloom and caught Durathror by the arm.

“Mara!”

“It has this instant gone by,” said Durathror. “It did not see us: there is still too much light.”

“So did it miss our tracks. Come: we have found shelter.”

“Then why do we delay?”

They slipped down the valley as quickly as they dared.

“Is curiosity satisfied now, farmer Mossock?” said Fenodyree when Susan had given a breathless description of what she had seen.

“Ay, it is that! But what in creation
are
they?”

“Troll-women: from rock are they spawned, and to rock they return if the sun should find them above ground. But by night they are indestructible, all-powerful. Only our wits can save us now, and be thankful we have more than they, for the mara's brain is as meagre as its strength is great.”