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‘Come to me, Will,’ she said. ‘Give me your hands and I will show you wonderful things.’
‘Willow? Is…is it you?’ He shook his head, trying to clear it but the whole world was swimming now. ‘Who are you? How do you know my name?’
‘I’m your friend, Will. I’ve been searching for you, and now I’ve found you. You’ve come to me at last, my own true love.’
‘I…’ He wiped at his face, striving against the weariness that was overpowering him, but there was a cloying sweetness on the air. It was as if his arms and legs had lost their strength.
‘Sit down. You’re tired. Don’t you want to sit down?’
The girl’s glowing eyes had lost their sadness. Now they assured him that sitting next to her would be the most wonderful thing there was. He remembered the look on Willow’s face when she had reached down to help him out of the muddy hole. How could he not do as she asked? It was hot now and the still, quiet warmth of the afternoon closed in around him like a suffocating blanket. He drew breath, but the air did not seem to satisfy his lungs and he sighed for more.
‘Let me touch you,’ the girl said, soothing his struggles. He felt a cool hand stroke his knee, his arm, the side of his face. ‘Isn’t that better? Isn’t that so much better than waiting alone? Close your eyes, Will. Rest. Soon we will be together.’
A part of him resisted, knowing there was something wrong, something important, but when he tried to think what it might be it vanished. His eyes felt dusty and sore, and it was getting too hard to keep them open. He fixed his gaze on the dragonflies still turning and circling above the water. The brilliant blue flashes of their bodies swept out the loops into which his spell had locked them. I must release them before I go, he thought. But somehow he could not remember the releasing words, and it seemed not to matter any more if they flew on while he rested.
The dragonflies’ weaving patterns reflected in the dark waters of the pool like a mystic symbol. It seemed as if the surface of the water was a looking-glass, a looking-glass that had the power to change him. He would have smiled but the tiredness was too great, and the soothing voice irresistible. ‘Close your eyes, Will. Come with me. Come with me into the beautiful, cool water. There is a wonderful world below. A wonderful realm bigger and more beautiful than anything you’ve ever dreamed. So much. So much you never thought could be. You’ll see many things, many wonderful things. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Come with me, then. Come, and we shall be together. Together forever.’
He felt the last shreds of resolve drain from him. The drowsy opal sky burned and seemed to press down on his head. He felt the warm mud seeping between his toes, making the ache in his feet go away, making the hurts of his long journey out of childhood fade. When he looked again he was already knee-deep in the water and the girl was naked beside him. But it was all right. It was how it was meant to be. Velvet smooth mud caressed his skin, inviting him deeper. He sank to his waist, then to his chest, and then he felt the water creeping up his neck and chin. The air above was filled with the lulling drone of dragonfly wings, repeating, repeating, endlessly repeating. And Willow, graceful beside him, walking a watery aisle, her cool hands on his face. Then she kissed him full on the mouth and led him down into the wonderful world that lay below the surface.
PART TWO THE POWERS OF THE EARTH (#ulink_52c53b5f-bd74-55b7-b097-ec62aa2f6049)
CHAPTER SIX A NEST OF SECRETS (#ulink_6083197b-4beb-5e6c-9264-e6cd825915b1)
When Will burst into wakefulness he was choking and fighting for breath. A cage of bony fingers imprisoned his face and, as they were ripped away, they tore at his cheeks.
‘Be gone, foul hag!’ a tremendous voice roared.
He saw a vile creature draw back from him. Its mottled grey skin sagged and fell in slack folds, its hair hung like fronds of stinking pondweed, its mouth hissed and spat as it struggled against Gwydion’s grip.
‘How dare you exact your revenges upon the innocent?’ the wizard demanded. ‘This obligation I lay upon you: get back into the slime where you belong and bother the sons of men no more!’
The creature’s long fingers grasped for Gwydion’s face. Their ends had suckers that tried to attach themselves to him, but the wizard held the hag away. For a moment it seemed that it would succeed in embracing him, but then he laid a mighty word on it, and it collapsed into the water and melted away.
Will was on his hands and knees coughing and spluttering. Every time he tried to draw breath, water vomited from his lungs and he began retching. Gwydion pushed him down and squeezed the water out of him and soon he was able to lie on his back and breathe freely again.
‘It was horrible,’ he said wildly. ‘Horrible! I thought it was a girl! I thought it was Willow!’
‘And what of your promise that you would not stray beyond the bounds of Wychwoode?’ Gwydion’s voice was soft but there was such a power of accusation contained there that Will shrank from it.
‘I didn’t mean to disobey! The forest got cut down and I sent word for Willow to come to the place we knew and then, and then—’
‘And then you fell neatly into a trap set for you by the marish hag! And I hoped you could be trusted.’
Will was shivering and could not stop. ‘What…what was it?’
‘A hag. A creature that preys on fools.’
He put a hand to his throat. ‘I almost drowned…’
‘Oh, you would not have drowned! You would have been kept happily alive for many days and weeks as part of the loathsome larder that all such water hags keep down below. And there all the juices would have been sucked from you one day at a time as you dreamed your death dream!’
Will wallowed in the mush of stinking, black ooze that had accompanied him out of the pond. ‘Master Gwydion, if you hadn’t come…’
‘You are lucky indeed that I have returned.’ The wizard looked down on him as if from a great height. ‘Augh! I cannot abide the stench of dirty magic.’
‘But how did you know where to find me?’
‘Do you remember your little friends the dragonflies? Your use of naming magic upon them drew me just as it drew the hag. You are fortunate it drew nothing worse, for you were lit up like a beacon!’
‘I didn’t mean to do wrong. I—’
‘You are no better than the child who delights in pulling the wings from butterflies. Cruelty is a grievous failing, Willand.’
Those words cut deep. ‘But I didn’t harm them.’
‘Of course you harmed them. And after all you were told. Who are you to entrap dragonflies and use them as you did? They are living creatures, with their own concerns and neither the time nor the strength to dance attendance on the will of a lad who merely wants to impress a pretty girl!’
‘I never thought of it that way.’
‘Indeed you did not!’
The wizard paced up and down the bank and Will looked away in shame. He saw his dragonflies lying exhausted on the surface, their tiny legs moving weakly. He had nearly killed them.
Gwydion reached down and lifted them from the water one by one and whispered words that unbound them, so they revived and flew away whole from the glow that was in his hands. When he had done with them he looked around, his face still grey with anger. ‘I hope you now have the strength to walk, for we must be gone from here.’ His anger blazed up. ‘Na duil! Look at the desecration they have wrought! They have hewn down an ancient and sacred grove. This is a high crime, the like of which we have not seen since Nis and Conat burned the groves of Mona!’ He turned suddenly. ‘And you! Where are your braids?’
‘I cut them off.’
‘Young savage!’
He was shivering, and now he began to babble. ‘When the hag came to me she was beautiful, Master Gwydion. She reminded me of the white lady. The one who stood by the bridge over the Evenlode when we first came into the Wychwoode. You know, the one I asked you about. Why was she weeping?’
Gwydion laid his hands on Will’s shoulders, his expression hard to fathom. ‘That is the innocent form of her apparition. She weeps for a lost love, for she was driven to madness by a jilting.’
‘Who was she?’
‘Do you not yet know? Did I not tell you that Lord Strange was once the handsomest of noblemen? Before he became a lord he was the younger son of a noble family that lived many leagues to the north, but being without title he greatly desired advancement. While travelling near Wychwoode he met a beautiful girl called Rowen who lived close by. She was a churl’s daughter, a commoner, but she loved John le Strange with all her heart, and she was happy when he promised her they would marry.’
‘Do you mean his wife? The lady who taught me to read and write?’
‘On the day that everyone expected John le Strange to marry Rowen, he announced that he would marry another. That other is the Lady Strange whom you know. Rowen fell prey to despondency. She allowed herself to sink into madness and wandered the Wychwoode, living in the wild for a year before committing herself to the Evenlode. Now she cannot bear to see others who are in love. It is her delight to lure hopeful young men down to their doom to make them pay for her suffering. And meanwhile Lord Strange’s foul betrayal left him open to the spell that holds him in its power. Now do you understand?’
Will nodded. He thought again of the figure in white weeds that he thought he had glimpsed floating in Grendon Pool. ‘Now I see why Lord Strange must wear his wedding ring through his nose. He is more cursed than ever I knew.’
‘Take this lesson from today – bitter grudges corrode the human spirit, while only forgiveness restores it. The same is true of painful memories.’
Will hurried after the wizard until they regained the forest. Had he been a dog, his tail would have been between his legs. He halted and saw how Gwydion drew apart and flushed the anger out of himself. The wizard became as still as stone before he gathered his powers. Then, holding out his hands in an attitude of appeal he focused a thousand brilliant points of light on himself and called forth a staggering thunderbolt.
It was bluer than the flash of a dragonfly, brighter than the noonday sun. It flashed forth with a bang and burst the dam asunder. Out of the brilliance, a cloud of steam boiled up into the air, and the pent-up waters were suddenly relieved. They raged out for a few moments in a dark flood, then the water was gone and all that remained of the pool was a foetid acre of mud in which ooze-worms wriggled and thrashed.
Will followed, both comforted and cowed by the wizard’s overawing presence. He was unwilling to break the silence and was still shocked at what had happened. When he closed his eyes he could see crimson spots that the flash had made. A dozen men could not have dug a hole that big in half a day – it was easy to respect such power, and hard not to fear it.
At the tower moat they were met by a guard of alert soldiers. Some of them started in surprise when they recognized Will’s companion. They drew weapons, fearing what they called sorcery. No doubt they had heard the thunderbolt, but Gwydion offered only the same words of greeting he had spoken last time he arrived at their lord’s tower. But there was no need for the guard to seek permission to admit them, for both Lord Strange and his lady came to the gate.
Will felt wretched. What on earth had made him cut off his braids? He stood before the severe lord and his retinue, his clothes mud-soaked and his face blotched and bloodied. He had proved himself an oathbreaker and a fool, but at least no one was taking any interest in him. All eyes were upon Gwydion.
‘You are welcome, Crowmaster,’ Lord Strange said stiffly as he halted.
‘Welcome?’ Gwydion laid aside all niceties: ‘I am unable to forgive you for what you have allowed here, John le Strange. There is a madness abroad in the Realm. But what madness is it that allows the ruining of an ancient grove while the Lord Warden of Wychwoode sits in his tower, turning a blind eye to all that passes?’
Lord Strange’s fearsome face was set, his small, pale eyes unblinking. ‘Madness, you say?’ he grunted. ‘You may count the felling of Grendon Copse a grievous loss, Crowmaster, but it means little to me, for I am unlearned in the matter of trees. I was placed here merely for the sake of the king’s convenience, and as you must know – I cannot tell a sacred grove from any other kind.’
‘Have you learned so little from your misfortune? Even a fool would know that he had no business allowing the cutting of any of the oaks of Wychwoode. You are making preparations for war.’
Will saw a sneer playing at the corners of Lord Strange’s mouth. ‘Preparations for war I do not deny. But your memory fails you, Crowmaster, for it was you who brought warning of strife to me. Is it not prudent to stand ready for the blow which you say is coming?’
Gwydion shook his staff and banged its haft into the ground. ‘John le Strange! I have known you since you were a babe in arms. Once I had great hopes of you and your line, but you have failed me. That foul mill was stamping out swords long before any news of war was brought here by me. Why have you ignored your duty when the king himself set you to command watch and ward over this ancient wood?’
‘I did not ignore my duty,’ Lord Strange’s snout jutted. He put his hand to his monstrous face as if some part of him wanted to preserve the secret still. Then he wiped the foam from his lips then said in a voice that was barely audible, ‘for it was the king himself who ordered Grendon Mill to be built.’
It seemed to Will that, behind his solemnity, Lord Strange was laughing. He looked to Gwydion with alarm. The wizard was barely in control of his displeasure as he said, ‘I thank you for that morsel of courage at least, but it would have been better for you had you found your tongue sooner, for now you have presided over the murder of the living heart of Wychwoode. This forest is doomed to fail and never again to be as it was. But know this, John le Strange, the circle of fate turns ever upon itself. By your cowardice and negligence you have tainted yourself. Because of this your blood shall fail as the forest green fails. Your firstborn shall be a girlchild, and all who follow shall be girlchildren likewise. Unless you purify your heart of greed and ambition, you will have no son, and your title and worldly wealth will pass to the son of another. I bid you think on that in my absence.’
Gwydion turned away. He was going from a lord’s presence without dismissal, which was a great slight, but the curse had stunned everyone, and there was not a soldier in the Realm who dared lay hands upon a wizard.
The guards fell back as Gwydion swept from the scene. Will followed, hoping that the wizard’s power would see them safely away from the tower. Whatever happened, it seemed that a dismal shadow had been cast over the future of John, Lord Strange, and that he would not let it go. But, despite the unbearable tension Will felt between his shoulder blades, no call to arms was made, and no order to loose an arrow was given.
‘This is bad, very bad,’ Gwydion muttered as they passed from view.
‘What is?’ Will asked, looking over his shoulder again.
‘Lord Strange is the gauge that shows the prevailing temper of the nobility. He has grown worse these last few months, I think. And that worries me.’
And now that Will thought about it, perhaps Lord Strange had indeed become more pig-like of late. Seeing him every day might have masked slow changes that were stealing over him.
‘If the spell’s getting worse, why don’t you take it off him?’
‘How little you know,’ the wizard said, and walked on in silence for a while, but then he added, ‘John le Strange was once the handsomest of men. Both his vanity and his ambition laid him open to magical attack. The spell he labours under was not put on him by me, but by Maskull. My ingenious enemy wished to make of Lord Strange a gauge with which he might test the governance of the Realm.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Friend John does not know it, but his appearance follows – and depends upon – the state of corruption of his peers. Is that simple enough for you?’
Will scratched his head. ‘Do you mean, the worse his fellow lords behave the uglier Lord Strange becomes?’
Gwydion nodded. ‘Exactly!’
‘Well, you could’ve said that in the first place! That’s nasty.’
‘It is a cruel and clever spell, is it not? And all the more cruel for the Hogshead himself already has the means to set it aside – if he did but realize it.’
Will blinked. ‘Do you mean that?’
‘All he has to do is attend to his own duties selflessly and in good conscience. That would break Maskull’s spellhold over him.’
‘You mean, if he started being a little less greedy then he’d start looking less ugly again?’ Will blew out a breath. ‘But, why didn’t you tell him that?’
‘Because Maskull’s spells are rarely simple. There is a stubborn protection that binds this curse. It makes all assistance deadly to the victim. Did I not say that the spell was constructed by an ingenious enemy? John le Strange must release himself, and I have gone as far as I dare in pointing him in the right direction. If I, or anyone else, were to tell him what to do, then he would die.’ The wizard looked back. ‘Friend John was sent here to keep him out of sight – sent by one who could not stand to see their own failings portrayed in his features. Unfortunately, ambition convinced him that the only way back from exile is to help the king’s weapon-maker.’
The idea that had been forming in Will’s mind sought release. ‘Is the king a bad man, then?’
‘The king himself is a gentle spirit. It is those who surround him whom we must worry about.’
They went on in silence as Will digested the wizard’s words, and soon they had passed fully into the forest’s green embrace. Then Gwydion produced a bag from the folds of his robes which he gave Will to carry.
‘What’s this?’
‘It is my crane bag, made long ago from the skin of a large wading bird that once lived in the West. The bag is of small size, but you will find it is of surprising capacity. It contains all needful things for the wayfarer. And whatever you put inside, it will always weigh the same.’
Will took it. ‘Then I suppose it must be magical.’
‘There is a very considerable spell upon it.’
He hefted it dubiously. ‘You don’t carry much else that’s made of leather.’
‘I do not like to kill my friends for the use of their hides. What would you say if you knew that a book had been bound in skin cut from a dead person’s back? Would you read it?’
‘Urgh! No!’
‘You may make a face, but that is so with some manuals of sorcery and star lorc. However, the hide of this bag is quite different. It was sloughed and shed long ago, when the crane, whose name was Aoife, returned to human form.’
The wizard said no more about that, and Will lapsed into silence too. He began thinking about Willow, appalled now at the way he had endangered her. What if she had been taken by the hag? What if he had seen her body, white and bloodless, at the bottom of the pool when the waters had drained away? It was too horrible. Magic, as the Wise Woman had said, was mostly about consequences. Harnessing the power was the easy part, what was difficult was managing what happened as a result.
The more he thought about Willow the more heartsick he felt. He had so wanted her to come, but now he would never even know if she had agreed. He wanted to have the chance to explain. He wanted it so much that it hurt to think about it. He tried to put her out of his mind, but there was something that the wizard had said that would not let his thoughts rest – he had said that the hag could not bear to see others who were in love…
Might that mean he was in love with Willow? And might it mean Willow was in love with him too?
The idea excited him mightily. He was considering whether he could ask Gwydion about it when the wizard halted and thrust out a hand.
‘Did you feel that?’
‘Feel what?’ He felt only a breeze that shivered the birch leaves.
The wizard braced himself and looked around, as if he expected some great beast to leap from the forest and try to tear him to pieces.
‘Feel what, Master Gwydion?’
‘A passing danger…but we are not its target.’
‘But what was it?’Will asked suspiciously. ‘I saw nothing. I felt nothing. I never do.’
