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Colin and Susan looked up, not knowing what to expect: the voice sounded friendly, but was that any guide now?
Over the top of the rock dangled a pair of feet, and between these were two eyes, black as sloes, set in a leathery face, bearded and bushy-browed.
“Rocks are old, stubborn souls; they were here before we came, and they will be here when we are gone. They have all the time there is, and will not be hurried.”
With this, the face disappeared, the legs swung out of sight, there was a slithering noise, a bump, and from behind the rock stepped a man four feet high. He wore a belted tunic of grey, patterned with green spirals along the hem, pointed boots, and breeches bound tight with leather thongs. His black hair reached to his shoulders, and on his brow was a circlet of gold.
“Are – are you a dwarf?” said Susan.
“That am I.” He bowed low. “By name, Fenodyree; Wineskin, or Squabnose, to disrespectful friends. Take your pick.”
He straightened up and looked keenly from one to the other of the children. His face had the same qualities of wisdom, of age without weakness, that they had seen in Cadellin, but here there was more of merriment, and a lighter heart.
“Oh please,” said Susan, “take us to the wizard, if you can. Something dreadful has happened, and he must be told at once, in case it’s not too late.”
“In case what is not too late?” said Fenodyree. “Oh, but there I go, wanting gossip, when all around is turmoil and urgent deeds! Let us find Cadellin.”
He ran his hand down the rough stone, like a man stroking the flanks of a favourite horse. The rock stirred ponderously and clove in two, and there were the iron gates, and the blue light of Fundindelve.
“Now the gates,” said Fenodyree briskly. “My father made them, and so they hear me, though I have not the power of wizards.”
He laid his hand upon the metal, and the gates opened.
“Stay close, lest you lose the way,” called Fenodyree over his shoulder.
He set off at a jog-trot down the swift-sloping tunnel. Colin and Susan hurried after him, the rock and iron closed behind them, and they were again far from the world of men.
Down they went into the edge, and came at last, by many zigzag paths, to the cave where they had rested after their meeting with Cadellin. And there they found him; he had been reading at the table, but had risen at the sound of their approach.
“The day’s greeting to you, Cadellin Silverbrow,” said Fenodyree.
“And to you, Wineskin. Now what bad news do you bring me, children? I have been expecting it, though I know not what it may be.”
“Cadellin,” cried Susan, “my Tear must be Firefrost, and it’s just been stolen!”
“What – tear is this?”
“My Tear! The one my mother gave me. She had it from Bess Mossock.”
And out poured the whole story in a tumble of words.
The wizard grew older before their eyes. He sank down upon his chair, his face lined and grey.
“It is the stone. It is the stone. No other has that heart of fire. And it was by me, and I did not hear it call.”
He sat, his eyes clouded, a tired, world-weary, old man.
Then wrath kindled in him, and spread like flame. He sprang from his chair with all the vigour of youth, and he seemed to grow in stature, and his presence filled the cave.
“Grimnir!” he cried. “Are you to be my ruin at the end? Quick! We must take him in the open before he gains the lake! I shall slay him, if I must.”
“Nay, Cadellin,” said Fenodyree. “Hot blood has banished cool thought! It is near an hour since the hooded one strode swampwards; he will be far from the light by now, and even you dare not follow there. He would sit and mock you. Would you want that, old friend?”
“Mock me! Why did he leave these children unharmed, if not for that? It is not his way to show mercy for mercy’s sake! And how else could despair have been brought to me so quickly? I am savouring his triumph now, as he meant me to.
“But what you say is reason: for good or ill the stone is with him. All we can do is guard, and wait, though I fear it will be to no good purpose.”
He looked at the children, who were standing dejectedly in the middle of the cave.
“Colin, Susan; you have witnessed the writing of a dark chapter in the book of the world, and what deeds it will bring no man can tell; but you must in no way blame yourselves for what has happened. The elf-road would have been but short refuge from him who came against you this day – Grimnir the hooded one.”
“But what is he?” said Susan, pale with the memory of their meeting.
“He is, or was, a man. Once he studied under the wisest of the wise, and became a great lore-master; but in his lust for knowledge he practised the forbidden arts, and the black magic ravaged his heart, and made a monster of him. He left the paths of day, and went to live, like Grendel of old, beneath the waters of Llyn-dhu, the Black Lake, growing mighty in evil, second only to the ancient creatures of night that attend their lord in Ragnarok. And it is he, arch-enemy of mine, who came against you this day.”
“No one in memory has seen his face or heard his voice,” added Fenodyree. “Dwarf-legend speaks of a great shame that he bears therein: a gadfly of remorse, reminding him of what he is, and of what he might have been. But then that is only an old tale we learnt at our mother’s knee, and not one for this sad hour.”
“Nor have we time for folk-talk,” said Cadellin. “We must do what we can, and that quickly. Now tell me, who can have seen the stone and recognised it?”
“Well, nobody …” said Colin.
“Selina Place!” cried Susan. “Selina Place! My Tear went all misty! Don’t you remember, Colin? She must have seen my Tear and stopped to make certain.”
“Ha!” laughed Fenodyree bitterly. “Old Shape-shifter up to her tricks! We might have guessed the weight of the matter had we but known she was behind it!”
“Oh, why did you not tell us this when we first met?” the wizard shouted.
“I forgot all about it,” said Colin: “it didn’t seem important. I thought she was queer in the head.”
“Important? Queer? Hear him! Why, Selina Place, as she is known to you, is the chief witch of the morthbrood! Worse, she is the Morrigan, the Third Bane of Logris!”
For a moment it seemed as though he would erupt in anger, but instead, he sighed, and shook his head.
“No matter. It is done.”
Susan was almost in tears. She could not bear to see the old man so distraught, especially when she felt responsible for his plight.
“Is there nothing we can do?”
The wizard looked up at her, and a tired smile came to his lips.
“Do? My dear, I think there is little any of us can do now. Certainly, there will be no place for children in the struggle to come. It will be hard for you, I know, but you must go from here and forget all you have seen and done. Now that the stone is out of your care you will be safe.”
“But,” cried Colin, “but you can’t mean that! We want to help you!”
“I know you do. But you have no further part in this. High Magic and low cunning will be the weapons of the fray, and the valour of children would be lost in the struggle. You can help me best by freeing me from worry on your behalf.”
And, without giving the children further chance to argue, he took them by the hand, and out of the cave. They went in misery, and shortly stood above the swamp on the spot where they had first met the wizard, three nights ago.
“Must we really not see you again?” said Colin. He had never felt so wretched.
“Believe me, it must be so. It hurts me, too, to part from friends, and I can guess what it is to have the door of wonder and enchantment closed to you when you have glimpsed what lies beyond. But it is also a world of danger and shadows, as you have seen, and ere long I fear I must pass into these shadows. I will not take you with me.
“Go back to your own world: you will be safer there. If we should fail, you will suffer no harm, for not in your time will Nastrond come.
“Now go. Fenodyree will keep with you to the road.”
So saying, he entered the tunnel. The rock echoed: he was gone.
Colin and Susan stared at the wall. They were very near to tears, and Fenodyree, weighed down with his own troubles, felt pity for them in their despondency.
“Do not think him curt or cruel,” he said gently. “He has suffered a defeat that would have crushed a lesser man. He is going now to prepare himself to face death, and worse than death, for the stone’s sake; and I and others shall stand by him, though I think we are for the dark. He has said farewell because he knows there may be no more meetings for him this side of Ragnarok.”
“But it was all our fault!” said Colin desperately. “We must help him!”
“You will help him best by keeping out of danger, as he said; and that means staying well away from us and all we do.”
“Is that really the best way?” said Susan.
“It is.”
“Then I suppose we’ll have to do it. But it will be very hard.”
“Is his task easier?” said Fenodyree.
They walked along a path that curved round the hillside, gradually rising till it ran along the crest of the Edge.
“You will be safe now,” said Fenodyree, “but if you should have need of me, tell the owls in farmer Mossock’s barn: they understand your speech, and will come to me, but remember that they are guardians for the night and fly like drunken elves by day.”
“Do you mean to say all those owls were sent by you?” said Colin.
“Ay, my people have ever been masters of bird lore. We treat them as brothers, and they help us where they can. Two nights since they brought word that evil things were closing on you. A bird that seemed no true bird (and scarce made off with its life) brought to the farm a strange presence that filled them with dread, though they could not see its form. I can guess now that it was the hooded one – and here is Castle Rock, from which we can see his lair.”
They had come to a flat outcrop that jutted starkly from the crest, so that it seemed almost a straight drop to the plain far below. There was a rough bench resting on stumps of rock, and here they sat. Behind them was a field, and beyond that the road, and the beginning of the steep “front” hill.
“It is as I thought,” said Fenodyree. “The black master is in his den. See, yonder is Llyn-dhu, garlanded with mosses and mean dwellings.”
Colin and Susan looked where Fenodyree was pointing, and some two or three miles out on the plain they could see the glint of grey water through trees.
“Men thought to drain that land and live there, but the spirit of the place entered them, and their houses were built drab and desolate, and without cheer; and all around the bog still sprawls, from out the drear lake come soulless thoughts and drift into the hearts of the people, and they are one with their surroundings.
“Ah! But there goes he who can tell us more about the stone.”
He pointed to a speck floating high over the plain, and whistled shrilly.
“Hi, Windhover! To me!”
The speck paused, then came swooping through the air like a black falling star, growing larger every second, and, with a hollow beating of wings, landed on Fenodyree’s outstretched arm – a magnificent kestrel, fierce and proud, whose bright eyes glared at the children.
“Strange company for dwarfs, I know,” said Fenodyree, “but they have been prey of the morthbrood, and so are older than their years.
“It is of Grimnir that we want news. He went by here: did he seek the lake?”
The kestrel switched his gaze to Fenodyree, and gave a series of sharp cries, which obviously meant more to the dwarf that they did to the children.
“Ay, it is as I thought,” he said when the bird fell silent. “A mist crossed the plain a while since, as fast as a horse can gallop, and sank into Llyn-dhu.
“Ah well, so be it. Now I must away back to Cadellin, for we shall have much to talk over and plans to make. Farewell now, my friends. Yonder is the road: take it. Remember us, though Cadellin forbade you, and wish us well.”
“Goodbye.”
Colin and Susan were too full to say more; it was an effort to speak, for their throats were tight and dry with anguish. They knew that Cadellin and Fenodyree were not being deliberately unkind in their anxiety to be rid of them, but the feeling of responsibility for what had happened was as much as they could bear.
So it was with heavy hearts that the children turned to the road: nor did they speak or look back until they had reached it. Fenodyree, standing on the seat, legs braced apart, with Windhover at his wrist, was outlined against the sky. His voice came to them through the still air.
“Farewell, my friends!”
They waved to him in return, but could find no words.
He stood there a moment longer before he jumped down and vanished along the path to Fundindelve. And it was as though a veil had been drawn across the children’s eyes.
PART TWO (#ulink_c92befb1-dfec-5c18-a3be-844b0d1f7fbe)
CHAPTER 8 (#ulink_4d86703b-be08-520e-9fb9-76588353f630)
MIST OVER LLYN-DHU (#ulink_4d86703b-be08-520e-9fb9-76588353f630)
Autumn came, and in September Colin and Susan started school. Work on the farm kept them busy outside school hours, and it was not often they visited the Edge. Sometimes at the weekend they could go there, but then the woods were peopled with townsfolk who, shouting and crashing through the undergrowth, and littering the ground with food wrappings and empty bottles, completely destroyed the atmosphere of the place. Once, indeed, Colin and Susan came upon a family sprawled in front of the iron gates. Father, his back propped against the rock itself, strained, redder than his braces, to lift his voice above the blare of a portable radio to summon his children to tea. They were playing at soldiers in the Devil’s Grave.
Nothing remained. This place, where beauty and terror had been as opposite sides of the same coin, was now a playground of noise. Its spirit was dead – or hidden. There was nothing to show that svart or wizard had ever existed: nothing, except a barn full of owls at Highmost Redmanhey, and an empty wrist where once a bracelet had been.
The loss of the bracelet was the cause of slight friction between the Mossocks and the children. Bess was the first to notice that the stone had gone, and Susan, not knowing what to do for the best, poured out the whole story. It was really too much for anyone to digest at once, and Bess could not think what to make of it at all. She was upset over the loss of the Bridestone, naturally, but what troubled her more was the fact that Susan should be so fearful of the consequences that she would invent such a desperate pack of nonsense to explain it all away. Gowther, on the other hand, was by no means so certain that it was all fantasy. He kept his thoughts to himself, but in places the story touched on his recent experiences far too accurately for comfort. However, the affair blew over and no one mentioned it again, though that does not mean to say it was forgotten.
Shortly before Christmas Colin discovered that the owls had left the barn, and for days after, the children were in a fretful state of anxiety over what the disappearance could mean.
“Either Cadellin’s got the stone back again,” said Colin, “or he’s lost the fight.”
“Or perhaps it’s only that he’s sure we’re out of danger, or perhaps … no, that wouldn’t make sense … oh, I wish we knew!”
And although they spent two whole days ranging the woods from end to end, they found no clue to help them. If there had been a struggle as fierce as Cadellin had predicted, then it had left no trace that they could see.
It was a young winter of cloudless skies. The stars flashed silver in the velvet, frozen nights, and all the short day long the sun betrayed the earth into thinking it was spring. And late one Sunday afternoon at the end of the first week in January, Colin and Susan climbed out of Alderley village, pushing their bicycles before them. They walked slowly, for it was not a hill to be rushed, and the last stretch was the worst – straight and steep, without any respite. But once they were at the top, the going was comparatively good.
They did not ride more than a hundred yards, however, for Colin, who was leading, jammed on his brakes so violently that he half fell from his bicycle and Susan nearly piled on top of him.
“Look!” he gasped. “Look over there!”
It could be only Cadellin. He stood against the skyline of Castle Rock, staff in hand, facing the plain.
